Next big pony story 4chan spiel

Pablote here, and since we need to pump the thread at least once an hour to keep it afloat, I may as well expound on the not-a-magical-inflatey-prison story idea I brought up earlier with an ungodly fuckhuge wall of text.

This would be a sequel to Sombra's Game, and I guess complete the trilogy with The Sun and Moon are Harsh Mistresses. The current version, after a few revisions to keep up with canon, is as follows:

Every year, the princesses hold a private, formal dinner for their villainous friends, both reformed as well as the (ahem) reformations-in-progress, who come in chains and under heavy guard, but who are nonetheless treated with respect for one night.

Twilight is put in charge of the dinner for the first time, and she, predictably, begins cracking under the pressure of everything going right. Meanwhile, Starlight is invited, and she meets up with Trixie and Sunset Shimmer, who are comparatively much more normal and much more relatable than all the other freaks and weirdos attending.

Of note among the villains attending is the thing that I'm just calling The Miasma aka the thing that allowed Luna to turn into Nightmare Moon (going with the comic explanation; as far as I'm remembering they still haven't offered an explanation to render it obsolete it in the show and they never officially ascribed a name to it) which is just a mass of dark, cloudy energy in a mason jar. With all the constant bickering going on at the table, Twilight fears that the dinner's overall success is slipping further and further away from her. Her stress, anxiety, and resentment for the other attendees feeds The Miasma like the slime from Ghostbusters 2, making the jar dance around until it grows so big it bursts out and possess her, turning her into Nightmare Twilight (will think of more clever name later).

Her desire to make everything reliable and predictable corrupts her, and she immediately begins enacting her plan to turn everypony, and eventually all of Equestria, into mindless automatons.

******

The princesses do what they do best and sacrifice themselves to get everypony else to safety, villains and all, and are transformed into machines along with all the royal guards.

Everypony else appears in a remote part of the palace, and the villains immediately begin plotting their escape, but Discord stops them, and reveals that with all the princesses out of commission, as the chief security guard, he is technically in charge now. Some others object, but he points out that he's the one who made the collars they're wearing, and as long as they still have them on, he holds complete power over them. He contains the palace my removing it from reality and into his realm, but the order that Twilight is imposing over everything is slowly weakening him, so he reserves the strength he has for making sure that everypony else is trying to fix the problem (rather than trying to do it himself). From there, they all split up into groups to find and take down Twilight.

And, with that incredibly obtuse setup out of the way, and with all the godlike characters hamstrung or effectively removed from the picture, the story then follows Starlight, Trixie, and Sunset as they move through the constantly-shifting and trap-filled palace, occasionally bumping into some of the other groups.

That's basically as far as I've planned. In my original iteration Sombra was still evil, and I had a very downplayed thing where Celestia is happy to keep him around and loves hearing him say how much he hates her because if this universe's Sombra still exists and hates her, it gives her hope that mirrorverse!Sombra still loves her. Also, that they mainly genderswap him and keep him around as a personal chambermaid and continually sexually harass and fuck with him while he does the things they order him to do.

******

Much to your personal disappointment, this has changed to reformed!Sombra attending, who is not only a cool dude now, but is a bro with Shining Armor and is heavily involved as the Assistant Head of Security. He's engaged to Radiant Hope and asks Shining Armor to be his best man at the beginning of the story.

I know, I know. Booooooo. But, I liked his redemption arc too much to disregard it, so that's what you get.

Also, the first iteration of the story centered on Sunset Shimmer, since I felt she should have filled the role that Starlight Glimmer fills now, just...several seasons ago. The dinner was specifically for in-process reformations, and because of a complication due to how recently reformed she is, she is obligated to return to Equestria and attend anyways. Luckily, Trixie tries to sneak into the dinner, since she still yearns for attention and wants to be thought of as a dangerous villain, but Twilight lets her attend so she can buddy up with Sunset and keep her company, once again predating what the show did with Starlight. Starlight...complicated things, and on the one hand I feel like she and Sunset are so similar that keeping Sunset around is a bit...much, BUT, I also know how many people like her, and I want to try to flesh them out a little and differentiate them personality-wise, so for now she's staying in and the unicorns are a trio. Trixie is the rash, impulsive, self-obsessed Id, Starlight is the logical, intellectual, naive Superego, and Sunset, being formerly power-hungry but by now much more experienced in the art of friendship than the other two, is the grounded Ego. So, I'm hoping that I can make it work. Otherwise, Sunset's going on the cutting room floor.

******

With the release of the movie, I'm gonna have to put Tempest Shadow/[SPOILER REDACTED] in there somewhere, now, but I don't know where. And, without spoiling anything else, since I know that some of you fuckers STILL haven't seen the movie, I don't...reeeeally know what to do with The Storm King. Those who have seen will understand where I'm coming from with this, and to elaborate further will be heading into spoiler territory.

And if you're worried about character bloat in general, don't be (too much). I'll set up a strawpoll ahead of time asking what villains everyone would be interested in seeing featured in such a story, and from the top voted ones I'll draw the more prominent roles as they're needed; the rest will unfortunately (but hopefully understandably) be relegated to smaller roles and cameos.

So...yeah, that's pretty much it. Despite all the shit I just talked about, it's a "Starlight, Sunset, and Trixie try to traverse a perilous maze and fall cartoonish victims to various traps" story. For those of you worried it would turn into another Breathers, don't worry, nobody's less eager for that to happen than me. It would be a much tighter narrative, like the two stories preceding it, and it would just be a few chapters long.

Any feedback on what I have so far is, of course, appreciated. It's a ways off but I still do plan on doing it, and I'm already ready to change bits and pieces of it to suit unfolding canon, so I can definitely change it according to good suggestions and advice.