Lesbian ships are the best

Cover art for my new fanfic: Beyond the Mirror. Summary:

The Friendship Games are over. Unfortunately, their consequences are just beginning.

Twilight Sparkle is trying to live a normal life while coping with uncontrollable magical transformations, the fear that her friends only see her as Princess Twilight's replacement, and a rather inconvenient crush on Sunset Shimmer.

Sunset, meanwhile, is determined to help Twilight however she can, all while wrestling with the ghosts of her own past in Equestria and experimenting with the mysteries of human-world magic—sometimes with disastrous consequences.

With magical mishaps, emotional baggage, unexpected adventures, and a growing romance, the two friends are about to learn that some wounds take more than magic to heal.

Note: although it is a sequel to another story, imo you don't need to read the previous one to read it. All you need to know is that Sunset was adopted by Celestia and Luna in the human world, and that she can sometimes partially transform into a demon.

Cover art for my new fanfic, Princess For a Day. You can check it out here.

Summary:

After successfully stealing Twilight's crown and returning to Equestria, Sunset Shimmer confronts Princess Celestia, demanding the throne she believes she deserves. To Sunset's surprise, Celestia immediately grants her wish, appointing her as Equestria's new ruler before calmly stepping aside.

Sunset intends to enjoy every second of it, but instead, she finds herself tested in ways no spellbook could have prepared her for.

As the kingdom's problems grow more complicated and even the sun itself refuses to set, she'll have to choose between the ruler she always wanted to be and the pony she's capable of becoming.

Cover art for my fic The Fall of the Princess. Check it out if you haven't!

Summary: After going through the magic mirror and finding a world ruled by Daybreaker, Celestia learns that the empress has a daughter in this timeline. Wanting to save her from a grim fate, Celestia takes her back to her own world, but… is she prepared to raise such a troubled filly? And will she be able to undo her violent upbringing and help her become her best self? Or did saving her end up dooming her own dimension?

New Equestria Girls fic I wrote! Check it out if you havent.

Summary: Stripped of her siren form and immortality, and power, Adagio awakens in a world where blood can be drawn and fear cannot be ignored. Forced into a fragile body and confronted with her sisters’ vulnerability, Adagio must cling to control while accepting an impossible truth: this exile is real. As pain replaces invincibility and magic returns only in echoes, she chooses what has always defined her: survival, ambition, and the two beings she knows she can't afford to fail.

Just a drawing I made for my Equestria Girls fanfic, Beyond the precipice. Check it out if you haven't!

If you wanna know the context, without spoiling anything I'll just say that Sunset reminds Celestia of Luna when she was young, and Celestia reminds Sunset of, well, Princess Celestia.

And yes, I made Luna's skin actually dark because I'm still mad she got whitewashed in eqg.

Art I made for an ai cover of the song Free.

AI cover of the song "Free" from Kpop demon hunters. Why? Because I think it really fits these two.

Cover art for my new Equestria girls fanfic, Beyond the Precipice (also on AO3).

Summary: This story follows Sunset Shimmer’s haunting journey after the Fall Formal, as she struggles to rebuild her life and reputation at Canterlot High. Despite the lack of a formal punishment, Sunset feels the sting of rejection and hatred from her peers, who can't look past her previous wrongdoings. Her guilt and anger fester, amplified by the sudden, unwanted "friendship" efforts from the very girls she once tormented. As Sunset faces the painful reality of being isolated, both emotionally and socially, she finds herself confronting a more terrifying problem: the dark magic that once consumed her may not be gone after all. With a haunting reflection staring back at her, Sunset must face the fear that the monster she became might still be alive within, threatening everything she has left. But after everything she’s done, can those who care about her ever make Sunset believe she’s actually worthy of redemption? Or is she doomed to forever stare at the precipice of her mind?

Yes, yes, I know the title sounds crazy but please hear me out. I have evidence.

A lot of speculation has been made about what Sunset's cutie mark represents and how she earned it, but I haven't seen anyone mention a little detail during the finale of the battle of the bands in the movie Rainbow Rocks. To be fair, it's a blink-and-miss moment, and I myself didn't notice at all until I rewatched the movie for the thousendth time, but it's there nonetheless.

Before the final battle, unlike the other girls, Sunset doesn't have her cutie mark anywhere on her clothes, which is an odd detail. Then, as she begins singing in the climactic scene, there’s a burst of magical light, and within it, her cutie mark symbol is explicitly depicted as the “sparks” of the energy. Afterwards, her cutie mark appears on her skirt, in roughly the spot it would occupy on a pony.

The animation intentionally ties the cutie mark to her action, making it feel like an active manifestation of her identity.

Importantly, when the other girls ponied up for the first time, although their clothes did change slightly, they didn't gain their cutie mark on them (the cutie mark was already present).

Why it makes sense:

Sunset’s sun-shaped cutie mark has been interpreted as a balance between light and dark, resembling ying and yang. It's a duality of ambition and redemption. The two “earnings” reflect her dual life: ambitious unicorn in Equestria vs. redeemed human in the human world.

More so, it feels like an intentional choice. The magical burst literally animates her cutie mark into existence on her human form. This signals to viewers that this isn’t just aesthetic; it’s a visual metaphor for self-realization in a new context.

In conclusion, Sunset Shimmer may be the only character in the MLP universe to earn her cutie mark twice, with each earning tied to her discovery of her “true self” in separate worlds. This subtle detail elevates her arc: she isn’t just redeemed, she is dually realized, bridging her identity across both realms.

Cover art for my Equestria Girls fic, Where sunshine lingers. It already has 3 published chapters and more to come in the future, so go check it out!

My friend @rena-yume recently convinced me to watch Equestria Girls, once again proving I'll watch anything that has potential for lesbian ships.

Hi, everyone! I'm here to complain about the main story yet again because omg, is it bad. Not as bad as chapter 8 (I doubt anything can be as bad as that thing), but bad nonetheless.

But let's start with the things I actually liked, which is... honestly a surprising amount, but that only makes the subsequent disappointment all the more painful imo.

The good.

I really, really, REALLY liked the parallels and contrasts between the Panopticon inmates and the Aperion believers. It was amazing, I loved every second of it, and I wish they had done something better with it.

Think about it! The people in the island are compleatly free, technically, but they consider themselves prisioners of the phenomenal world and consider that only the Truth can free them. Meanwhile, the Panopticon inmates are prisoners in one of the most desolate places on Earth... yet they consider themselves free; free to think, to write and to say anything they want, since "no one can be imprisoned twice". Which is a great concept! A very philosophical discussion about what freedom even is and how each person attains it. Truly a fascinating idea.

Then we also have the fact that both Aperion and the Panopticon are ruled by numbers. However, while in Aperion they followed the strict methods of mathematics and believed in the existence of an Ultimate Truth that ruled everything, the Panopticon inmates use a dice with numbers to decide everyone's destiny, believing it to be truly random and therefore fair (spoiler: it's not, it's absolutely predetermined).

I find it a bit ironic that Aperion fell because they discovered that the ultimate truth didn't exist and the true nature of the Storm was Chaos, while the Panopticon fell because they discovered that the dice wasn't random (chaotic), but instead followed a fixed pattern. Nice little contrast there... but I digress.

I also liked that Urd took a slightly more active role and we even got to see some scenes from her pov; that was neat. Recoleta is also a pretty cool character with a good design, and I adored the Idealist's personality and manner of speech. Octavia was also pretty cool (wish she was playable), as well as the Jailer.

The bad.

Oh boy... where do I even start? I guess the most obvious thing first: the aesthetic. Omg, who was the freaking genius who thought that having a backrooms aesthetic be the best course of action for a story taking place in a mental asylum was a good idea??? It's not! It sucks, it's not immersive and it's stupid!

It feels like the devs are trying to say "see? We know what kids like these days *wink*" and it's cringy as fuck. It's not eerily deserted and mysterious like the backrooms are supposed to be, and it's also not a proper mental asylum. It's just an ackward, distracting amalgamation of both. Why is there water everwhere??? Even inside the cells? What's the purpose of all that water??? And wouldn't it be frozen, since they're almost at the Antartica? Ugh, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

But anyways, I could've looked past the abhorrent aesthetic if they had at least made a good story with a satisfying payoff and an ending that made sense.

They did not.

Ah yes, Aleph made an entire mental asylum and managed it for almost 15 years just so Recoleta could write her fucking novel that no one understands anyways. Well, he also mentions experiments and the Manus, but both of those are glossed over and not explained enough, to the point that they feel like they don't even matter.

Also... Recoleta being a ghost. What was even the purpose of that??? It couldn't have been just shock value, right? Right???

She tears the novel and "dies" and comes back in the next fucking stage for some reason that makes no sense at all. Bruh, just have her die for real, I wouldn't even mind having a dead character in my suitcase if at least the story would be more coherent and have more of an impact, but Bluepoch are cowards that can't kill playable characters for some unknown reason.

And don't even let me get started with what happens after that. Omg, I'm starting to wonder if maybe Vertin and Sonetto suffered a severe lobotomy that left them braindead after chapter 8 or something. Seriously. They saw that the Panopticon was collapsing and... instead of trying to evacuate the immates or even taking a minute to explain what's happening to the Jailer, they just... leave. Huh??????

I can kind of understand Vertin and Sonetto leaving, since they were just seaching for Urd and maybe they're hyperfocused on that, but imo it's out of character for them to leave without even trying to help anyone when the reason they leave is that the Panopticon is collapsing. Yes, I know they ask García if he wants their help to evacuate and he refuses, but he's just one inmate! There's hundreds in there, judging by the cells, so why just make a half-assed attempt to help one of them and then leave???

Meanwhile Recoleta... I really can't excuse her leaving. Later on she'll go back and be like "they're my friends, I have to help them". GIRL. Why did you leave in the first place??? If they're your friends and you can't just leave them to die, why the fuck did you leave them to die??? Is it just so we can have a "cool" scene of Recoleta walking slowly across a field while the asylum is burning in the distance? Because it really seems like it.

And there's yet another problem. Vertin and Sonetto take Aleph's ship to go to the Antartica and find Urd, which is fine, but then they just... tell him to wait there until Fundation officials arrive? COME ON! He's associated with the Manus, and you've seen him experiment on ppl! Even if he's just a human, he could do heinius things in the nearby town. YOU CAN'T LEAVE HIM THERE UNSUPERVISED! Couldn't they at least have called the local Police and ask them to keep him in custody while the Foundation arrived? Couldn't Sonetto have stayed behind, while Vertin embarked alone in her quest to find Urd? I find either of those situations much more acceptable ngl.

As for the Panopticon ppl... Ugh. What a fucking ending. Seriously. Did they run out of budget or something? We couldn't get a final scene with Octavia and the others explaining why the fire started and why they decided to stay? Because the way I see it, they just wanted to be free to express their art and hope maybe their art could help change Latinamerica... how would they do that from the freaking afterlife??? (No, García's lame "there's no better place for me than here" doesn't count; that's just one person's opinion, and he isn't even a leader, like Octavia).

Seems like a lame attempt at shock value, trying to replicate the amazing storm scene in chapter 7, just without an ounce of the emotions, meaning and phylosophical implications it had. I'm seeing a trend here, ngl, with both chapters 8 and 9 trying to replicate scenes from chapters 2 and 7 respectively and failing misserably at it.

Ugh, I'm starting to hate the main story ngl... which is a shame because the side events that have nothing to do with it are actually quite good, while the events that try to be main story are a hot mess (looking at you, 2.4).

In any case... I didn't love it, but I also didn't hate it. It had some solid ideas and concepts, but it feels like they rushed the ending, added a bunch of things that didn't make sense just for shock value and compleatly underminded whatever message they were trying to tell.

This is a theory I thought about the other day after finishing the 2.5 event, Showdown in Chinatown (so if you haven't finished that event, click out if you want to avoid spoilers), but before I fully explain it, I'll give you some context.

In the first stage of Chapter 3, we're introduced to SPDM with a teacher asking the kids about the war between humans and arcanists that happened in Constantinople. First, Sonetto gives an answer that pretty much puts all the blame of the war and the eventual result (the arcanists being defeated) on the arbitrary and violent nature of arcanists. Then Matilda interferes with information that was provided to her by her grandpa.

Matilda's version of the story is pretty much the opposite to Sonetto's; the humans ransaked Constantinople to gain access to the literature of arcanum, and then isolated and blamed arcanists, forcing them into hiding.

Although the truth is most likely somewhere in between, you can probably see that Matilda's version is more in line with Manus Vindictae's way of thinking; humans have been marginalizing arcanists for centuries and stripping them from any position of power (although of course the Manus use this as an excuse for revenge, which Matilda never suggests). More so, it hints at Matilda's family knowing something about the origin of the name "arcanists", which I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with Arcana herself.

Now, what happens next? The teacher inquires further to see what else Matilda can tell them about this version of the story and the song it came from, however, strangely enough, Matilda can't remember anything else.

She even goes as far as remarking how weird it is, since she had been humming it just the night before. And it's not like Matilda usually has bad memory; being the third best student in the school, she's bound to have above average memory, so it's even stranger that this is happening to her.

Now, my first assumption (and I most ppl's probably), was that the Foundation was brainwashing the kids and making them forget the outside world... but that's not the case; all of the kids Vertin asks later on remember at least something from their life before joining SPDM. More so, I always saw it as a plothole that the Foundation could erase memories, but then didn't do that to make the kids (or at the very least Vertin) forget about the disastrous parade ceremony, that even Constantine admits was a bad move on their part.

I even thought maybe the whole artificial sonambulism they put Vertin through might have been to, not only keep her in a coma, but also to erase whatever bad memories she had of the foundation and therefore make her more obedient. But as we see in the Tuesday's event, Vertin clearly hasn't forgotten about her friends or how they died.

So... what caused Matilda's memory loss then? Well, the answer is simple: her mom. Hear me out.

During the 2.5 event, we learn that Scott stole and sold 5 arcane items from the Foundation's archives, but her motivations and her methods seem very suspicious, so Black Ibis, a member of the Vigils, keeps her under surveillance after they're unable to learn anything by interrogating her. And this vigilance pays off; she is soon contacted by none other than Matilda's mom.

By the looks of it, Matilda's mom is able to hypnoptize other ppl at a distance (we don't even know where she is), and contact whoever she wants by the use of crystals. She can also lock memories of ppl to prevent any information she doesn't want to fall into someone else's hands from being retrieved. That's what she did to Scott... and to Matilda too, probably.

Listen, Matilda's mom is very suspicious. Black Ibis mentions that one of the items stolen could perhaps be used for "that ritual" (probably Arcana's resurrection), and so whoever stole it likely has that as a goal. However, it seems she's been pretending to be in the Foundation's side all this time, to the point she sent her daughter to SPDM and she herself was staying at a Foundation's safe house. But of course she's highly intelligent and talented, and so, to prevent any sensitive information from being found by the foundation, she locked some of Matilda's memories, just in case the Foundation would try to pry into Matilda's mind.

Matilda very likely even knows where her mother is, but that memory is locked. If her powers were more developed, however, she probably would be able to break this barriers and find her. At least that's how I interpret what her mother said to Scott.

But why lock the memories about the song Matilda's grandfather used to sing? Probably because the song, somehow, is associated with Manus Vindictae, Arcana, or some other group that the Foundation deems as dangerous. Remember that Matilda comes from a long line of pure blooded and extremely talented arcanists (as is explained in her first bond story); exactly the type of arcanists that would be most likely to be approached by the Manus.