1905: better season 5 end — Infodump and Part 1

Title: better season 5 end
Author: iamli3
Media: Animation
Topic: My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic
Genre: Adventure/Drama/AU
URL: Chapter 1
Critiqued by AdmiralSakai and Serketry

Hello hello all you patrons!

Lone Wolf is really starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth as I ponder more and more the question of its author’s relationship with objective reality, so I’ve decided to reenlist Serketry, my companion in all things My Little Pony, to wade through the seedy underbelly of bronydom that is fimfiction.net and see what I could find.

Howdy, everyone, glad to be back! Uh, well, I was, before I learned what we’d be… reviewing…

Namely that what I could find, as it turned out, was a ‘fic called “better season 5 end”[sic] by someone or something called iamli3.

Which, oddly enough, we reviewed the same weekend the Season 7 finale came out.

season 5’s ending was bad , i made it better….

What.

Calm down, I’m assuming he just was unable to properly type ‘season 5’s ending was badass’.

But I’m pretty sure the only way the My Little Pony Season 5 finale could be made better is if Ronnie James Dio and Till Linderman descended bodily from their blazing thrones atop the highest summit of Metal Heaven in a flying golden battleship piloted by Dog-Tier Jade Harley to anoint it with the tears shed by Wikus Van Der Merwe in the penultimate scene of District 9.

Or if it had Dragonlord Ember in it, because come on.

 

4/10, needed more Discord

 

Or DAAAAAYBREAKARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

♪Sie ist die hellste Stern von allen… wird sie nicht von Himmel fallen?♪

Because everything’s better with DAAAAAYBREAKARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Including DAAAAAYBREAKARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR herself.

Hell, the episode even included an implied DAAAAAYBREAKARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR when she hadn’t even been seen yet. But now we’re entering pure speculation.

For those of you not familiar with this particular element of My Little Pony, at the beginning of Season 5 Twilight Sparkle and her friends encountered a very clever and powerful unicorn by the name of Starlight Glimmer, who had set up a commune-like village in the hinterlands of Equestria where ponies were made ‘equal’ by having their cutie-marks magically removed (along with large chunks of their personalities):

Despite a few unwilling mark-removals along the way the Mane Six did manage to take Starlight out of commission, de-lobotomize everypony, and re-integrate her village back into the wider Equestria, but Starlight herself got away… and proceeded to personally stalk and study Twilight Sparkle throughout most of the rest of the season.

That’s her on the left behind the menu, observing Twilight interacting with her old Canterlot friends, discussing how the sudden demise of a single friendship can ruin somepony’s life.

And here she is in the bush on the right, listening in as Twilight explains why time travel is extremely dangerous.

The culmination of her plans was a confrontation in Twilight’s own castle, where she tricked the much more powerful Twilight into activating a goddamn epic-level TIME TRAVEL SPELL to send them both back to Cloudsdale when Rainbow Dash was a filly.

With the specific goal of disrupting the very precise timing of a series of events that lead to the Mane 6 discovering their cutie marks, moving to Ponyville, eventually becoming friends, and making up the very force that took down Starlight to begin with.

Much shooting of spells ensues-

-and we do mean much shooting-

-but since for Starlight to succeed all she needs to do is cause basically anything to happen in a way or at a moment it originally didn’t, Twilight is unable to stop her from accomplishing her objective:

The direct route, incapacitating Rainbow Dash…

To the indirect route: “Just remember how you’d feel if someone said those things to you…”

To the very indirect route: “Hey, Dash, check it out! Two flying unicorns trying to blast the everloving FUCK out of each other!”

Every time things go south either Twilight or Starlight reactivates the spell and tries again from before when the critical instant was messed with, essentially running what is for each of them a prolonged duel over an endless loop of the same section of outside-world time. But it’s not that simple: while Starlight skips directly back a few minutes into the past, because of the way the spell works Twilight has to return to the present in between each iteration. Only it’s not her present any more.

You see, what Starlight didn’t realize was that Twilight and her friends did more than just save Equestria from her. In fact, the Mane Six prevented any number of horrible things from happening. Things that, with Twilight’s impact on history excised by Starlight Glimmer, now did happen.

First Equestria is trapped in an endless war with a resurgent, Sombra-ruled Crystal Empire, with everypony working day and night just to keep up the fight.
Then ponies are reduced to scattered bands of guerilla fighters on the run from Queen Chrysalis and the Changelings.Then Nightmare Moon covers the world in endless night and grows increasingly and alarmingly unhinged. It only gets worse from there.

Then, as a final act of frustration and defiance Twilight drags Starlight back into the present with her; and they both discover that thanks to her actions, all of Equestria is simply… gone.

Each successful attempt to change the past spawns an increasingly bleak future, running through the gamut of previous villains, and ending on the complete annihilation of all life in Equestria.
Yes, that’s a filly being sent off to war.
Yes, that’s Zecora getting executed by Queen Chrysalis.
Yes, that’s Nightmare Moon, ranting to her guards about time travel while Celestia is imprisoned on the moon.Yes, that’s Tirek razing the Everfree Forest- or at least we can hope it’s just the Everfree Forest.Yes, that’s Discord tormenting the Royal Sisters by reducing them to his jesters.Yes, that’s the Flim Flam brothers reducing Equestria to a smog-choked factoryscape.

And yes, that’s the end of the fucking world.

Needless to say, Starlight Glimmer does not take well to seeing that while she may have started her village with the best of intentions and even gone so far as to alter history to protect it, at the end of the day all her utopian ideals amount to is the complete obliteration of pony civilization.

It’s only when she’s exhausted every magical and tactical option at her disposal (and believe me, there are many– and they’re all pretty fucking badass in their own right) and is staring oblivion in the face that Twilight thinks to ask Starlight why she’s doing what she’s doing.

Starlight projects Twilight into a memory of her own childhood. Sunburst, the one of the left, gained his cutie mark before she did, and was whisked away to Canterlot’s magic academy. Starlight, devastated, vowed to never let a cutie mark stand in the way of her friendships again. Or much of anything else. Up to and including causality.

It’s only once Starlight starts to open up about what happened to her (and, of course, realizes the DYSTOPIAN HELLHOLE her actions will cause in what used to be the Equestria she knew and loved) do she and Twilight realize that the other isn’t some sort of complete monster, and vow to put the past behind them (in more ways than one) and return to their own era while leaving history unchanged. Starlight is willing to accept whatever punishment Twilight and the rest of the Mane Six dish out…

Except, as the seasonal arc has been showing us, every friendship is important, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t so black and white, and abandoning even a single pony can cause unforeseen consequences down the line. Thus, Twilight decides to offer Starlight her hoof in friendship.

To put it another way…

Friendship is more metal than Metal Gear.

So let’s see just how iamli3 plans to top that.

season 5’s ending was bad , i made it better….

season 5 ending was the worst episode of the entire series to me ,

Keep in mind, this thing was released in January 2016, long after Mysterious Mare-Do-Well and Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep.

And yet before… The Times They Are a Changeling…

Yeah, why couldn’t we have had a random Internet nutcase rewrite that one?! It’s not like they could’ve done worse than what we got.

in fact i consider it a disgrace to intelligence that the writers would produce such ass of an episode , i instantly thought of so many better ways this concept could have been handled , and they were so easy too , so easy that i made this….

…

The Mykan is strong with this one.

this takes place starting from when starlight confronts twilight , and does a different take on what could have been done with the episode from there…..

‘When Starlight confronts Twilight’ covering a period of roughly… the entire fucking episode. Could you possibly be just a bit more specific?

this fic was proofread by revolver’s dusk

http://www.fimfiction.net/user/Revolvers+Dusk

and even though i felt like i had more corrections to make on the fic after the proofread than before ,

Well that’s an encouraging sign…

Did his editor also completely lack a Shift key?

Maybe his editor’s the one who inexplicably added a space before and after every comma.

he was a big help to me for the entire duration of writing this , without him this fic would have far worse off….

You know, two writers sometimes helps, as one person acts as the sounding board for the other. Other times, it splits the narrative unevenly and the result is worse than the sum of its parts. I wonder which one this will be.

I just wish by ‘far worse off’, he meant ‘wouldn’t exist at all’.

if you enjoyed this fic then plz share it with others , as that will probably be the only way people will see it….

OH, IF ONLY THERE WAS SOME WAY OF RELEASING YOUR WORK ONLINE, PERHAPS EVEN ON A SITE DEDICATED ENTIRELY TO MY LITTLE PONY!

You have nothing but your own incompetence to blame for your lack of readers.

And your truly prodigious dislike bar:

Seriously, how does that even happen?

ON FIMFICTION.NET, NO LESS. FIMFICTION!!!!!

Actually, it probably has something to do with easily half of the comments on this thing being the author flaming at his critics.

omg the mare in the moon is wrong in the cover image , or did the animators from the show just mess up on that too? cause it’s mirrored in the episode so i thought that was actually a neat attention to detail they added….

Ripping on the animators for using clever visual cues to indicate that it was now Celestia in the moon. This is not a good sign.

Wait, is he complaining about his own cover image?

Boom, it was accurate all along.

Yeah, and about that cover image…

Serketry found the original:

“Not Meant to Be” by MoonlitBrush. An artist who evidently did like the Season 5 ending.

The irony levels are off the charts, and this guy really needs to get off his high horse.

So to speak.

Man, we have so much riff material and we haven’t even made it out of the god damn summary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a week after posting this now i have made a blog post detailing why season 5’s ending was bad , so that would be a better place to discuss that if it doesn’t also have something to do with the fic specifically….

 

Meaning a place for the author to go and yell at you in the comments and use emoticons as line breaks. Oh and also include links to his global-warming/chemtrails conspiracy website, only he stuffed it up and put the wrong URL so instead of taking you to the conspiracy website it just reloads the blog page the link is on.

Aaaand after that… ominous start, we get to the ‘fic’s first (and only) chapter, which is also titled ‘better season 5 end’[sic]

The doors to the map chamber opened.

HOLY HELL! AN ACTUAL CAPITAL LETTER!

Ah. So the editor is the *only* reason why the entire fic isn’t like the summary. Good on ye, person-I-can’t-be-arsed-to-remember.

…

…

…

Celestia preserve us all.

 

Twilight was shocked to see a familiar pony sitting in the seat marked by Fluttershy’s cutie mark

So, it looks like he left the ‘butterfly effect’ reference from the original show in, too.

Maybe he didn’t notice the reference, and just hasn’t started the revisionism yet?

Or is just so utterly uncreative he is incapable of doing anything other than what the show did, yeah.

adjusting something in her mane, the very same pony she was just telling Spike – who was somewhere else busy putting the luggage away – she thought she saw earlier that day.

WOW that was an awkward mess of a sentence.

Took me a minute to parse it.

“Starlight Glimmer!”

Starlight gave the smuggest look. “Welcome home Twilight,” she said back with a sneer while picking up a scroll from under the table, “Enjoy your last precious moments in it!”

Was that last part of the line in the actual episode?

No.

Yeah, I didn’t think so. After all, a mostly-herbivorous pony wouldn’t normally keep so much HAM in her castle.

“What are you planning? What’s this all about?” {Why don’t i have any guards?}

And…

I guess putting internal monologues in italics the way literally everyone else does is just too mainstream for the great iamli3, re-writer of the Season 5 Finale.

You know, if you’re gonna use such an artificial structure, I’m surprised it wasn’t //commented out.

Also, how is this supposed to be rendered in a television show? Since, you know, that’s what the Season 5 ending originally was.

Typically I don’t mind using literary conventions instead of the ones from a video game or film if that’s what the original medium was (in fact, it’s typically an extremely good idea, see ‘loss of morale’ in John And The Dragon Rider for a good example as to why), but this person is getting all high and mighty about being a better writer than Josh Haber and Megan McCarthy (the actual writing team behind the Season Five finale) when he can’t even be arsed to subject himself to the same constraints they had to work under!

“Oh you know, the usual. Just walking into your home, taking away everything from you, and forgetting about you. HEY, kinda like you did to me! Funny how that works…”

Is this supposed to be threatening dialog? Starlight came across as unbelievably smug in the opener, but this is markedly less so.

I could maybe buy Discord saying something like this and selling it, but Starlight had a very different way of going about things.

Yeah, she was a lot more direct, shouting, “Cutie marks for cutie marks!” to make sure Twilight completely understood her motives here.

Yeah, and most of the time when she’s not hopping mad her dialogue actually sounds very friendly and cheerful, but there’s always this little mocking, sarcastic bite to it that makes it very clear this is not a pony you want to be fucking around with. But I guess subtlety is not a thing we are doing any more.

“Im sorry about what happened in that village, but you have to understand what you were doing to those ponies wasn’t right! You lied to everypony to give up their cutie marks and be your friend! That’s not what real friendship is about. We couldn’t just leave and forget ever seeing that.”

You know, for two ponies who legit want to kill each other, these two are incredibly talky.

iamli3’s jamming all the middle and ending dialog right up front, killing the pacing of the episode!

Yeah, I think the main issue this guy had (and what a lot of other more reasonable people had with it) was that canonically Starlight turned way too quickly-

And cramming everything into the first 3 minutes was your solution?!

Twilight tried to reason with her, but Starlight wouldn’t have it.

Is this… script? Why isn’t there actual dialog here? Actually, I take it back, less dialog is alright with me. But, if you’re trying to write a screenplay, you can’t have filler text like this, actors need actual direction and real lines to read!

Maybe his idea of the Season Five ending includes the narrator from Peppa Pig?

“We were all perfectly content to keep living our humble lives in our little village until you came and ruined everything. And you think that just because you’re the “Princess Of Friendship” everypony has to conform to being friends the way you think they should? ” She yelled back.

“That’s not what i meant at all!”

“Well it doesn’t matter what you meant! What matters is what you did, and what I’m going to do to you! I WILL have everything I want. And right now, I’m wanting some revenge.

WOW.

This is, like, sub-Jeff the Killer level villain dialogue right here.

I’d expect something like this from a schlocky 80’s action movie. And not one of the nostalgic ones.

Using this scroll, I’ll get rid of your friendships and have my revenge!” Starlight began to cackle while waving the scroll in front of her.

Oh, is she going to tell Twilight she’ll never manage to hit the weak spot located in the top center of her magical shield next?

Why is she telling Twilight all this up front? She was being purposefully vague in the episode to lure Twilight through the portal to trap her in the past.

“Oh no you don’t!” Twilight instantly called on her magic and zapped the scroll in front of Starlight to destroy it.

And Twilight, being a gullible idiot, still does follow her.

BIG mistake.

Instead of the magic blasting the scroll to bits, most of kind of just bounced away or was neutralized;

Yes, I’m sure the animators for your episode will have a great time rendering ‘kind of’ in Flash.

What…? Why? The scroll was meant to be destructible, and if Starlight spent less time gloating here and actually entered the portal, everything would still be fine!

Serketry, I hate to break it to you, but as long as iamli3 is in charge, everything will not be fine.

Celestia damn it to Tartarus.

but having given direct contact to the scroll through her magic, her essence was now imprinted on it’s memory along with Starlight’s, a small mark appeared on it showing her connection to it.

Yeah, that’s another thing you can easily communicate with no dialogue in a TV show- complex technical and magical exposition.

I’ve seen shit like this before, it just means her cutie mark suddenly appears on the scroll. There, now wasn’t that easy to describe?

“Hahahah sigh, so predictable, twilight.” Starlight laughed.

Did she just say ‘sigh’?

“i instantly thought of so many better ways this concept could have been handled”

Twilight tried again, only this time she aimed for Starlight hopping to knock her out

Twilight tried to knock Starlight out by jumping up and down on her?

Bunny hopping! Shit, Twilight’s an MLGPro!

I bet you can find that on fimfiction.net too.

and stop this before it got out of hand, but to her surprise Starlight deflected the blast with her own magic with ease.

Could we please get a visual for this? I mean, we know what it looks like because we saw the original episode, but the reader of your ‘totally new’ episode does not.

“Par for the course,” Starlight said amusingly. It was then that Twilight noticed something a little different about Starlight, her mane wasn’t just tied back at the top but at the bottom as well in more of a ponytail fashion, with what appear to be amulets…magic enhancing amulets just like the Alicorn amulet!

…

So, Starlight Glimmer has the motherfucking Alicorn Amulet now.

And not just one, she has… umm… err…  plurals!

I.e. the pony with enough good intentions to pave the road to Tartarus into a twelve-lane superhighway has an amulet that gave Trixie Lulamoon powers roughly on the level of Discord’s. Now, that would be a worthy contender for something on the level of the Season Five finale.

Yeah, but it’s kinda played out? We’ve seen this thing once, bringing it back without either a modification or an explanation for how she got it from Zecora would be lazy as hell. Kinda like how it is here.

Oh, and guess how much of a change in the storyline the Amulet actually causes.

I bet just as much of a change as Zecora’s door stopper would have.

“Like them? I always have a backup plan, my magic was already stronger than most other pony’s, and with these magic enhancing amulets, I’ll easily be able to keep up with anything you throw at me,” She said with another smirk.

“And with this cumbersome expositional dialogue, the author will never have to worry about conveying information in a way that sounds natural or unforced!”

Ok, is this to address the ‘OP Starlight’ hatedom? Because it was interesting seeing an opponent who, through raw power, was on equal footing with Twilight, but more specialized. The classic Wizard versus Sorcerer fight. But no, they hobbled her personally and then jacked her back up with artifacts to keep the plot the same.

I am beginning to suspect that this author is not the biggest fan of Starlight Glimmer as a pony.

“What happened to my magic!? Why wasn’t the scroll destroyed?”

Twilight… you saw your bolt reflect, right? Deflector shields are pretty common. So I guess Twilight just never fuller recovered from Starlight’s brainwashing at the beginning of the season.

Hmm.

I hereby christen thee TWITLIGHT SPARKLE!

“Oh did i forget to mention? This is a type of scroll and spell designed by Star Swirl, it’s not so easy to destroy it with magic,

*KA-CHUNK*

Well that plot point dropped like a comical 100-ton weight.

and once somepony comes into direct contact with the scroll it will remember them, and will call to them when it’s activated, speaking of which…”

WHY ARE YOU TELLING HER THIS?

Starlight used her knowledge of the enchantment to activate the power of the scroll,

Really? And here I thought she’s use her knowledge of a completely different and unrelated enchantment!

it began to cause whirls in the room as it ascended.

Oh no! Anything but……. Whirls!

…they missed the chance to say swirls appeared in the room, a byproduct of a Starswirl spell. It’s lame written out like this, but it’d be a cool visual shorthand.

Especially if it had the same pattern as Starswirl’s cutie-mark, yeah.

“This scroll will connect to another dimension,

No, those are the mirrors Starswirl made, wrong god-tier artifact, dunkass.

and it will send us to it, it’s identical to our own world though don’t worry, I’m not a monster, I’ve just made a tiny little adjustment.”

Twilight watched as the scroll first projected a three dimensional landscape view of a land that was mostly identical to the current Equestria, a somewhat darker Equestria she noted, but the majority of the layout and the landmarks looked familiar.

“In the world we’re going to, that precious “Sonic Rainboom” that gave you and all your friends their cutie marks never happened! Meaning that you will have never become friends!

“Why yes, instead of showing Starlight doing this, just having her tell Twilight about it is clearly the better literary decision.”

…

As is making it another dimension instead of just a splinter timeline for some reason I legitimately cannot fathom.

Wait, WHAT!? This is skipping a CRUCIAL step! The original spell took them back to just before a filly Rainbow Dash performed the Sonic Rainboom, and Starlight had to step in and interfere directly to actually change the outcome of events. She didn’t know how everything would unfold besides ‘the Mane 6 never become friends’.

In fact a ‘fic that I can already tell is going to rage about how quickly Starlight was redeemed has already removed the big thing that made Starlight’s quick redemption seem natural– that, being a well-intentioned extremist, she very probably assumed a future without Twilight in it would be better-

Or at least not this:

♫The world has turned, so many have burned, but Starlight is to blame…♫

-and seeing that her actions resulted in the end of Equestria was a huge emotional shock to her that cut through all her bravado and ideological certainty.

Oh i can’t wait to see your face when none of your friends even recognize it! Hahhahahha!”

She literally says ‘hahahaha’.

No, she says, “‘Hahhahahha!’” Evidently the extra a’s were making her too OP.

Oh god, the orgasm laugh is back again! This author truly is Mykan!

Then Starlight triggered the final activation of the scroll.

Sometimes the pacing of a scene gets stretched all hell when we introduce all these text blocks of riff, but it still seems like Starlight’s been activating this scroll for some time now.

“What?! No you can’t do this this is crazy! Starlight please listen to reason, I can see that you’re really hurting, i can help! I can help you make new friends!” Twilight tried again to persuade her.

How do you know this? In the original you’d gotten Starlight yelling instead of shooting at you by that point and she just outright told you, but here that never happened! Did you read her character wiki or something? Roll a nat 20 on Sense Motive?

Well, that’s what happens when you copy and paste large swathes of dialogue from the end of a two-part episode to the beginning.

Yeah, but the show’s analogous dialog isn’t anywhere near this clunky!

Also, Twilight really sucks at redemption speeches in this.

“Pfft, like i would ever want your help making new friends, you’re my enemy, and now I’ll show you what happens when you cross me.” Starlight spat.

Starlight Glimmer has now added ‘mob boss’ to her ever-growing resume. That’s… great, I guess.

“You don’t have to do this!” Twilight pleaded.

“I already have and there’s no stopping it now! See you on the other side Twilight Sparkle.”

WHY

ARE

YOU

TWO

STILL

TALKING?!

In the episode, Starlight has three lines of dialog, two short laughs, activates the scroll once, and leaves less than a minute after she makes her entrance. Here, it feels like we’ve been slogging through the opening scene for over an hour!

I mean, it’d be one thing if the author specifically said he was trying to expand on the Season 5 Ending beyond what the time constraints of two 22-minute episodes allowed- well, it’d still be bad because all he’s been doing is stealing ending dialogue and shoving it up front in a much inflated form, but the idea would be solid. But no, he continues to claim he’s so much better than the original writers when he subjects himself to none of their constraints.

She responded satisfactorily

Yeah, that‘s a great direction to give to your voice actors- respond satisfactorily.

after casually checking her mane again. Then the world appeared to start to warping, in reality it was only the ponies and the scrolls that were warping, only to fade out of existence, leaving no trace behind…

That’s not how you describe a scene. Perspective is important, you can’t describe things simultaneously without actually having a pair of shots to show both perspectives.

…

“Twilight, I finished unpacking!” Spike said walking up to the front door, “…Uh, Twilight? You in there?”

But nobody came.

“Huh…” Spike shrugged and decided to go make some lunch. They were both rather hungry after the presentation. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon…”

Hmm.

The world has turned, so many have burned… but apparently Spike is still a dumbass.

Oh. So, they left Spike out. In some ways that’s a good thing, but in this context it means Twilight won’t have anyone to discuss the situation with, which limits how we can see her thought processes.

Oh, right, this guy uses {internal monologues} to solve that problem. //not very well

Don’t worry, I’m sure the author will compensate by providing us with tons more rich, chunky exposition from Starlight Glimmer.

…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Crap.

Now I’m seasick. Or possibly listening to a pure sine wave, I’m not sure.

In the other dimension, whirls and distortions happened from out of nowhere before the two ponies and things faded into existence this time.

Oh yes, let’s not forget the things. You can’t have a proper dimensional hop without a few things, now can you?

I think his editor was starting to give up at this point, the sentence is as distorted as the subject.

It’s not hard to see why.

The alicorn princess was quick to gather herself, she appeared to be fine, Starlight was there too, large trees surrounded them and it appeared to be night time. “What’s going on?! Why is it night? where’s Ponyville?” She was getting worried. Then the scroll flew down and landed on her face.

So I take it the map table didn’t transport; even though it was the focal point of each timeline, grounding everything back to one fixed point.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Starlight said while picking herself up in her own magical aura and floating closer to twilight before landing, “Without your friends coming together to keep the town safe, the Everfree forest must have overtaken it, forcing the ponies to abandon it, a small price for them to pay for my juicy revenge.”

“My rich, chunky revenge…”

… thanks Admiral, now I’m not even hungry.

She looked at the surrounding area as well. “As for why it’s night out, the scroll must have simply taken us to a different time of day, given enough changes you could potentially end up in any time in history or even create a new future.”

So… this convoluted scheme the author came up with to avoid having time travel in his story… also involves time travel.

 

Good on ye.

Twilight pulled the scroll off her face and began to read it. Being made from Star Swirl it was written in his ancient language

Old Ponish. The language is Old Ponish, which, from the samples we’ve seen, is Old English from around 1000 years ago.

The scroll is made from Starswirl?!

Well it is parchment. Animal skin.

Wow.

This version of the episode just got dark.

of which she was familiar but not fluent in, she had spent many sleepless nights in the Canterlot library trying to learn it and…

“Hey wait a second! How did you even get access to Star Swirl’s wing of the Canterlot library? That is the most secure section of the archives! Not just anypony can enter it whenever they want.” Explained Twilight.

Well, at least now that plot hole nobody cared about and a million people had easy explanations for is closed.

I didn’t really mind that, as the previous episode that features the library showed that the security there is absolute garbage.

And all it took was another whole paragraph of rich, chunky exposition.

“Oh that was easy” Starlight chimed. “I simply told them i was friends with the “Princess Of Friendship” and the guards let me in no problem. What fools.”

You know, that’s about the most in-character I’ve seen the guards in these fics.

Twilight was almost shocked again. “You LIED about being friends with me?? Why? Why didn’t you just come see me and talk first and try to be friends?

…Twitlight, you appear to be missing the point. What part of “I am your enemy” did you not understand?

“Because the last time we met we were literally trying to blast each other to smithereens?”

…well when you put it that way…

“I would have been happy to show you Star Swirl’s work, at least once i was sure you weren’t going to do something bad that is…like this.”

Oh god, if iamli3 hates this episode, how pissed was he at No Second Prances and Every Little Thing She Does?

She gestured to the scroll, and continued to try to decipher how this spell worked so she could fix all this.

“An amusing offer Twilight, but one that simply will not do, you took everything from me when we last met, and now I’m going to show you how that feels, I’ve worked to hard and long for this and I’m not going to let a little sweet talking change my mind.” She smiled looking away.

That was… almost dialog from the show. From a bad future, maybe.

“I don’t go for even… I go for winning!”

“Oh and you can stop wasting your time trying to figure out how this scroll works, it wasn’t easy, but once i found this spell and figured out how to construct it on this scroll, I then used substitute incantations to hide the effects of the real ones, I wrote it in a code basically, and only I know what that code is.”

“Using multimodal reflection sorting…”

For this fic’s attempts to de-power Starlight, this seems like a really complex way of building her back up again.

Yeah, actually that seems to be the thing here. This story isn’t so much a better Season 5 end as it is the same Season 5 end with a bunch more exposition added onto it.

More rich, chunky exposition…

She wasn’t bluffing either, Twilight knew how this language structure worked, but this scroll was all wrong. she couldn’t make heads or tails of anything besides the obvious like it showing her being connected to it with that extra mark on it next to starlight’s own mark, and what it had done.

Gosh, it sure would be great if Twilight had someone else to hash these details out with… like, I dunno, a small purple dragon, maybe?

Hmm.

Nah, that would get in the way of more rich, chunky exposition.

She really was trapped.

And, sadly, this blasted thing is already pushing 30 pages and there’s no end in sight, so it looks like our tour through the ‘better’ alternate futures… or dimensions… or whatever the fuck this is supposed to be is going to have to wait until next week. Guess I spent so much time talking about the good episode I forgot I was supposed to be riffing the ‘fic!

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