User:Reversedragon/metasoc/EscapeSSSR

Escape from the SSSR [outline]

24-4

how I would have written the Starlight Glimmer plot if it had been me:

there is a pony village far away from Ponyville it's rather big, it's one of those villages with a population of more like 2,000 and there are about 30-50 ponies in charge of it instead of just one but they all look exactly the same because we have to get our dumb jokes in. there is an enchantment on the town that makes certain things within it look exactly the same when ponies are in agreement all the other thousands of ponies across the village look normal.

one day Twilight and her friends are summoned by the map to solve a friendship problem, and they head out to the village — within a distant region called the Lithuwhinnian SSR

when they get there, they find out the central party is terribly divided over something. probably a somewhat small and insignificant issue like.... whether they are going to put a holiday on Saturday or Sunday. most of the central party ponies look the same but two or so are aligned onto the appearance of the first pony that said something different. the problem here is that the two factions of the party are fiercely arguing with each other and cannot come to a compromise. each of the factions is equally loud despite their numbers and is determined that the whole other faction needs to shift over to their side.

the "mane six" are a little baffled that this problem is worth their time we take a moment to show Twilight is completely confused by the concept of democratic republics and doesn't see why the village needs a central party when any society is just one big group of friends individually talking out its disagreements. it gets outright a little uncomfortable — we really begin to realize that Twilight has only lived in a kingdom and has no understanding of real-life Liberal democracies much less Marxist republics. and then the show snaps back out of the near-Fourth-Wall-break to its usual tone of fantasy and hijinks.

the "mane six" get to observe a bit about the village as they look for the friendship problem.

Pinkie Pie is surprised that it's still fun, even if her bar for what is fun may be a bit low sometimes. Twilight is pleasantly surprised they have a reasonably-sized library. she is taking down occasional notes on the history and local culture of the region. Applejack is happy this place is simple and practical and nothing like the big cities Rarity goes to. she remembers the time Rarity tried to take her to the weird artistic food shops and is glad they serve regular food here.

Rarity is surprised they have clothing designs, even if it's not the vast variety of Manehattan. the pony at the clothing shop quickly explains how this was made possible because the central party all came together and approved a development plan and they were able to build more things. she points to something in the shop commemorating the original creation of the Element of Unity and the achievement of creating this shop at once. the "mane six" are a little divided between being wowed at what the central party has actually achieved and maybe a little confused at why it took so many ponies to decide this. Rainbow Dash: I thought you'd have, like, a whole rack of sackcloth tunics. salespony: well, back over on the other block we did, but we don't talk about that. they've gone to clearance.

Fluttershy is looking around at some kind of landscaped green space or central park, not quite amazed but certainly interested that there is a nice quiet green place around here only punctuated by birds. and then... she sees something that horrifies her.

there is a big statue in the central park of some important pony of legend that everyone is pretty sure they've seen pictures of in various places around the entire town. this pony is leading all the other ponies of the village while carrying the Element of Unity, leaping forward dynamically like some kind of knight, to save this village by smashing its ancient enemy — Discord.

Twilight gets the full story from the local historian Eagle Down. (Eagle Down is a Pegasus with a diving black eagle mark) it seems that a long time ago, the ponies of this region were the only ones capable of defeating Discord. every other area was terrified and nobody had found a powerful enough spell yet. the region had actually once had its own princess, the princess of personality, but she had tragically succumbed to an incident where the land had erupted in nonsensical plate tectonics, exploding into a churning sea of grated land-islands that shattered most of the other villages and absorbed the princess — turning her into an evil entity of shifting personalities vaguely similar to Discord himself. or perhaps vaguely similar to that episode where Fluttershy turned into three different shopkeepers except magnified in stakes

afraid as they were, the remaining ponies had to devise a plan to protect themselves from Discord and the Terrain of Personalities. they formed close together, declaring that they would not forsake each other and would fight together. everything was done hastily, and in a panic one of them whipped up a basic flag by hurriedly painting two lines on a single-color flag. their flag raised high, they performed a ritual to transform a few different artifacts made by Earth Ponies, Pegasi and Unicorns working together into the Element of Unity, simultaneously turning the six protectors into their main commander. [I think I'm saying or implying the commander is literally a fusion Pony? I honestly don't remember that part of this and it's a surprise discovering it again.] everything going into the Element of Unity was so repulsive to Discord that he nearly disintegrated from reality and would only come back to cause trouble for Celestia and Luna much later. when Discord faded, the Terrain of Personalities mostly faded as well, leaving the land in peace.

Twilight is, again, a little confused because at this point Discord is not a problem any more, and is now their friend. "...right?" the SSR ponies are surprised because they could never imagine someone else having that power, although they are willing to accept it could be true.

Fluttershy tries to explain that Discord is not actually so bad. the SSR ponies are distrusting and almost offended after a lot of ponies pretty much died in the ancient incident. Twilight and the others explain that, yes, after much trouble, they have made friends with some very difficult characters.

"great," says one of the SSR ponies. "maybe you can talk some sense into Starlight."

shortly, the "mane six" get to meet Starlight Glimmer. she is the newest member of the central party, nominated after years of overwhelming enthusiasm to get in. she had always been eager to help others and be some kind of important hero, leading to several incidents in which she unsuccessfully tried to "help" other ponies with magic. the village responded to her with varying reactions, from telling her not to stand out or bring so much trouble to telling her she would surely make it into the central party if she would only study enough. there was one common thread in what everyone said including the complements: Starlight didn't really fit in. this had only become more evident over time.

"so why is everybody so divided over this holiday thing? you were part of the vote, weren't you?"

[Starlight] "nobody actually cares about that vote. I think it goes deeper than that. ever since a little while after I got into the party, everyone has been trying to kick me out. they think I don't know anything. they think I'm 'incompetent'. this is why whenever the party becomes divided on an issue, everyone looks at me like I was the one that did it. 'if we all understand theory correctly, we should get the same answer'. why? it's not like we're actually the same ponies. I am not the one dividing the party. it's Eagle Down if you ask me."

the "mane six" feel for Starlight, at least at this moment, and wonder if the problem is actually that the central party doesn't accept her rather than a problem with her. this is what they've always been telling everybody, so they reason it has to be true here too. Starlight is delighted to hear this. the others take a moment to second-guess what they said and if maybe Starlight really could be causing the problems, but in the end, they don't really know, so for now they let it rest.

we now get the time to go back to what the historian said. according to them, Starlight has no idea how the central party works and "no understanding of theory", holding up some old philosophy book with a familiar legendary unicorn face on it. Twilight had remarked that the book was very interesting although not the way they did things in Equestria.

the central party meets again to try to finish the vote. this time, the minority faction seems to switch over to the majority.... until, without warning, Starlight switches back again, now appearing as herself. the other party members glare at her. she swears she didn't do it, and attempts to switch to the majority, without success. other party members suddenly switch to Starlight, only making everyone more outraged. the majority members insist they aren't actually switching their vote. some accuse them of lying for unknown purposes. others become convinced Starlight is casting a spell on the majority to change the vote. one member is convinced the false minority faction is actually trying to frame Starlight. the room becomes really heated as everyone is getting mad at either the false minority faction, the majority faction, or Starlight. all the while party members are still periodically switching.

Pinkie Pie spontaneously plays a loud air horn. all the party members stop what they're doing and look at her. "now, I don't know much about political parties, but I don't think they're supposed to be shouting matches, are they?"

"no," about five of the majority faction reply in unison. exactly one of the members that did not reply switches over.

"I think..." Pinkie Pie says a little too dramatically, "it was somepony outside the party." she turns to Twilight. "I've been reading your book. it says that when a conflict appears in a party it's actually the regular ponies that did it. who ever would have thought?"

one of the party members attempts to correct her. "no, actually, that refers to nominating us in the long term, not—"

the walls of the building come down as if three of them were cardboard and one of them was gingerbread. there is a steamship spiraling across the sky, and everything is wrong.

the town statue, which is improperly right next to the building the vote was taking place in regardless of geography, animates itself into an intact Discord that takes a brief moment to boot the hero off into the distance before turning into the real Discord.

"hello comrades. I've been doing a bit of reading while I was gone. what do you think of my development plan?"

the ponies have scarcely a couple seconds to scowl at him before Discord snaps and switches some of them into smaller copies of Discord. another tiny Discord climbs up off one of the false Discord-votes to say, "I think it's wonderful." meanwhile, another obligatory tiny Discord appears to say, "I don't know about this."

one of the party members acts quickly to cast unicorn magic (whether this takes an astral horn appearing or whatever is happening) and materialize six distinct element gems similar to the Elements of Harmony. Discord shows a faint look of surprise but also acts fast to hurl exactly one of the elements out to the faraway destroyed lands that were previously the Terrain of Personalities. it lands in the bottom of a canyon with its shape switched over into Discord's face.

"oops. it looks like one of your elements decided to take an individuality break. hope it comes back well-rested."

"Discord! why are you here?!" Rainbow Dash shouts.

"well, I'm here for the vote, of course," Discord says while looking like a somewhat reasonable party member with a suit. he holds up a calendar where every Saturday and Sunday have been merged into a single long box, while we can see every building in the village sporting another of these new calendars. "now that we're done with that boring weekday vote, how about we get to the more interesting one?"

Discord now looks like he's leading some kind of island-based reality show with elimination votes. "is it or is it not true some of you have been thinking about removing Starlight Glimmer from this party?" Discord dispels his changes to the members and releases them back to their original forms. "I'll leave you to vote. yea or Starlight?"

the party members begin to descend into confusion again but there are some clear responses.

"We probably should remove her," says a member called String Course. (he has a cutie mark of about two light bricks between two taller dark bricks.)

"Starlight, don't let Discord get to you. right now we need to support each other." this member switches into Starlight.

spreading across the village, a few ponies switch into String Course, but a lot of them switch into Starlight instead. most of the central party does. the "mane six" do when the realize they can. the rest of the village begins switching into Starlight. some ponies realize their mistake and stop being String Course. nearly the whole village has become Starlight Glimmer.

the Elements of Unity rise up and start glowing, though clearly not at their full power. they flicker vaguely like a worn-out light bulb.

Starlight, in the heat of the moment, forgets that one of the elements is gone, and leaps into action at the center of the chaos with the five elements around her, a spell charging up, and a look of determination. Discord seems to be subtly smiling more than fazed by this. Starlight casts her spell to charge up the elements. they spiral above her glowing brighter than ever. some of the Starlights over where the central party is look very tense like they know they should say something but can't.

shortly, the elements rage in circles out of control, each turning into a distorted crystal mask with a different identity. Starlight looks panicked, and casts another spell to freeze them in place. thankfully, that at least stops things from getting any worse.

"well, well," Discord remarks. "you didn't do very well at your challenge, did you? hard to see how you have any place on the island."

Discord waits a moment, taking a sip of tea.

within moments, the whole village starts switching in waves to String Course, save a small handful of ponies including the "mane six". Starlight hangs her head. Discord finally snaps everything back to the way it was and blows away as a cloud of smoke.

the "mane six" rush over to Starlight, but she turns away.

"Starlight. Discord set you up. he's more powerful than almost anything. don't be hard on yourself."

[villager] "Starlight, you know how the Elements of Unity work. this is your fault."

Starlight begins sulking out of the village.

ultimately Starlight ends up in Ponyville or somewhere

she tries to fit in but everyone is a bit inconsiderate for inexplicable reasons, always dropping suggestions that she is worthless or doesn't belong and couldn't run any of the businesses that exist in Ponyville

Starlight gets increasingly upset. crying, raging in place, unable to sit calmly. she truly looks like she's in pain on some level. images flash through her mind. the old republic standing together against impending destruction with the flag of two lines. an alternate version of being voted out of the village where things are normal but all the ponies switch to String Course and simply glare at her and show her the door. Discord smirking at her while the village and everything around her gets torn apart by the Terrain of Personalities.

Starlight is deeply stressed. to her perception the world seems to darken. her eyes weep shifting black clouds. a wild storm of magic forms around her horn. unable to think straight, she lunges forward and casts the storm onto the rest of the town.

by the time Twilight gets back, she is surprised to find that everyone in Ponyville has turned into Starlight Glimmer and has an "=" cutie mark. Twilight narrows her eyes because here it's quite obvious what's going on.

Twilight and the others search for Starlight, but she is seemingly nowhere to be found at the moment, and all the "equalized" ponies are a lot less helpful than normal. they pretend to be completely friendly and obliging but can't do much of anything.

eventually Twilight ends up trying a different tactic and starts asking the townsponies to talk about bad memories. they somehow know about each of the traumas that led up to Starlight doing this. then Twilight asks them where they would go to hide from their memories. they end up pointing her to exactly where Starlight went.

Twilight goes to face Starlight. they talk about what has happened. as we get into this we start to see what the real conflict is. the Lithuwhinnian SSR has one set of standards and Ponyville has another, and Starlight is desperate to properly fit into and understand something Twilight doesn't understand whatsoever. Starlight wants to be in Ponyville less than she wants to go home. Twilight isn't entirely sure how to make her at home in either place or where she is going to end up. she offers to teach Starlight about the Ponyville region and the Elements of Harmony just so she will have somewhere to recover, and assures her that it doesn't need to start off too fast. this seems to help some amount.

throughout the show Starlight's conflicting loyalties would then come up repeatedly as she wishes to return back home and somehow go back to before things got complicated, or outright sees the ponies of the Ponyville region talking trash about the SSSR and calling ponies from there weak or naïve or what the hell ever. we would be more honest about the implied concept of microaggressions toward former enemies of Equestria, where now everybody just hates the SSSR for not being Twilight's kingdom of friends theory and not neatly integrated into the internal structure of Equestria to the point where in this kind of setting Celestia and Luna would basically be conquering it. this all of course clashes with Twilight's message of friendship and getting all the creatures or regions to live in harmony, so ultimately she has to try her best to make peace between Equestria and the SSSR.

Discord appears again once or twice to mess with Starlight and make Twilight think that the SSSR doesn't deserve to be protected and ought to be smashed so everyone can 'be individuals' and 'have more fun'. the interaction is part of what makes it clear to Twilight that the SSSR is not the enemy and even Starlight's outburst is not what it appeared to be; Discord is currently being more cruel than anyone there.

[Discord] "that village is like one big display of same-faced mannequins. nothing interesting happens there."

(miscellaneous scraps)

24-4

Starlight: I had an awful dream where everypony had made up this new insult and because I walked away from the village and away from the party they relentlessly kept calling me a "trot".

(later) Spike: why would you be worried about what some stuffy old village thinks when you can be a trot Twilight: Spike, that doesn't mean anything!

24-6

pinkie pie tells all sorts of horror stories about the SSSR she somehow knows, every one of them with an incongruous smile as if this is nothing but a fun fact. the stories all call back to the real Starlight Glimmer episode but are more elaborate

'then why would you want to come here' pinkie: because they make the best vegetable spread!

when she finds the legendary vegetable spread, pinkie pie is every bit as excited as it seemed she would be, but rarity says it is 'unremarkable'

4-15, 4-19

SSSR = stellar single-soul republics

the SSSR is made of three national republics it could have been six but that just seemed too large-scale compared with the relatively small scale of Equestria one is the Lithuwhinnian SSR, which contains Ponies one is the Sakkirin SSR, which contains all variations of Kirin: Kirin, Senrima, and (unknown)

24-4

I like the idea that the SSSR actually has more technology than Equestria and it's like, this futuristic setting in comparison, stunning all the ponies who see it. flintstones meet jetsons

MLP has never necessarily had a 'future' realm per se even though we've got sky and underwater and frightening forest and 1900s big city etc

Ponyville has remained this idyllic medieval town of tiny artisanal businesses but the SSSR had nobody telling it to do that so it has become a bit more industrial

24-4

the former princess of the SSSR region, Princess Persica, was once responsible for granting every equid a name and cutie mark

Ponies get a cutie mark, but many creatures including Kirin get an invisible "element" which corresponds to their name and cutie mark. this process finally explains why some ponies take a while to get a cutie mark

when Persica was transformed into the Terrain of Personalities there was a short time where Ponies did not have cutie marks or they randomly cycled in weird ways. no one really liked this, so they worked immediately to recreate a council of cutie marks that would be able to procure an artifact for the task and take it over. this was during the "old" republics, and was crude at first, but was redone and improved when the three became the SSSR.

now there is just some Ministry of Cutie Marks or something, and you go in there and find out the SSSR is responsible for all the world's cutie marks and if you were to destroy the SSSR no ponies would have them and other creatures like Kirin would hardly get names. this could lead to a hilarious conflict where the ponies of Equestria at first freak out that the SSSR is "assigning everyone jobs", and then realize that this is the way it's always been and they've always been used to, and they can't disrupt the SSSR or they lose cutie marks.

24-4

G5 ... the weird way its pieces go together it's almost like the ponies are so afraid of having a bad leader they don't want a unified country and would rather it keep splintering into tinier pieces while everyone pretends things are okay.

I think it may have been loosely intended that the cutie marks thing is supposed to be the power once restricted to the elements extending to all ponies, instead of what seems more like everything descending into chaos and the stories trying to pretend everything is normal and okay.

anyway... I do think the G5 show could have been better if it had been a little self-aware about what a trainwreck it could be and decided to make Discord some kind of teacher at the friendship school helping all the ponies (and other creatures that should still exist) through this time of unstructured chaos that everyone has apparently chosen. this could be played positively as the writers trying to genuinely dig out of their hole and explain to us why chaos and disintegration are a good thing, or it could be played negatively where ponies eventually realize everything is a mess and they need to find their way out of this instead of just telling themselves individuality will fix everything.

24-4

I've had one particular line from the make your mark theme echoing in my head:

Keeps getting Better and better it's the irony of that line next to how it is questionable the show is good and especially questionable whether it keeps getting better

mlp g5 is already a horror story. it makes a lot more sense played as subtle horror. everything keeps getting better. nothing is breaking apart. just keep smiling. Better and better!

24-4

there are two major possibilities for this SSSR timeline

1. it is just an alternate story for Starlight and it culminates in forming the Starshine League and saving Equestria - acting as a kind of pseudo-prequel for "G4B" where nothing works quite the same but things neatly come full circle anyway

2. Starlight goes back to the SSSR as her plan fails and Equestria insists on devolving into postmodern Existentialist-Structuralist nonsense

3. option 2 happens but Starlight has to fix it - likely only with the help of Moondancer - and we end with option 1