YMMV / The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle

• Broken Base:
  • The Reveal that Gallant Heart was a mole and Luna knowing about the assassination and not telling. Some fans think that it works, saying it adds a layer of complexity to Gallant Heart's character. Others think it adds too much complexity and that it opens up too many Plot Holes.
  • The Genre Shift upon the Wham Episodes of Aftermath of a Fallen Star. There are two camps for this: 1) It's a natural progression of events due to Disaster Dominoes. or 2) A shoehorned in epic adventure plotline that takes the reader away from the character reactions for the sake of an End of the World scenario.
• Complete Monster: Amadeus Blueblood is a powerful Canterlot noble who at first just treated ponies of lesser status, especially the guards and servants, like trash. He's soon revealed to be far worse, involved in, among other deeds, bribery, blackmail and outright assassinations. Manipulating his own son, who he's heavily implied to have corrupted into becoming what he is at the time of the story, he has him assassinate Twilight Sparkle; blackmails Gallant Heart with his beloved brother's life; and has the entire conspiracy, including his son, brutally killed to cover his tracks. After the princess punishes his clan for his association with his son, he poisons his own wife so he can escape to Unicornia with his daughter, Majesty, who he drives down the path of evil, just like he did with her brother.
• Continuity Lockout: Stories that take place after Aftermath of a Fallen Star often hinge on the fact that you read it along with the original and know about all the plot twists from there. So don't skip unless you want to find yourself getting into spoiler territory.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Stag, a changeling OC, has quickly become this due to his profession.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Due to the Happy Ending Override and unpopular Genre Shift of later works, many treat The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle as stand alone fic, maybe incorporating Aftermath of a Fallen Star minus the aforementioned parts and setups for the sequels.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • What Blueblood did to Marble Pie was bad enough, factor in her canon personality shown in Hearthbreakers, it takes a new dimension of despicability and plausibility in exploiting her feelings such.
  • The ponies' Fantastic Racism, whether it was towards other pony tribes or other races have always been toned down due to being a kids show while being played straight in dark fics like this. Come Season 8 where it's revealed that Equestria's education system is canonically employing segregated education for the three tribes, barring other races from learning in their approved schools and their isolationist policies is also the reason why there is lack of knowledge of the outside world regarding other races resulting in xenophobia. Suddenly, these kind of scenarios went from "bad fantasies" to "pretty much what would canonically happen" should the censors ever come off.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Fleur-de-lis is portrayed as a changeling who is Happily Married to Fancy Pants, who is aware of her true nature. Season 6 of the canon show reveals that such a relationship would actually cure a changeling of their Horror Hunger for love, and the first friendship between a changeling and a non-changeling sets the stage for their Heel–Race Turn.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The episode "The Gift of the Maud Pie" reveals that, yes, Pinkie's abilities do run in the family.
  • Pinkie Pie's chapter reveals that she has three primary voices in her head, one happy, one sad, and one angry, very much like Joy, Sadness, and Anger.
  • A Not-So-Safe Harbor which dabbles in all forms for crimes outside Equestria that has a diverse population of various races and species living together? Are talking about Erebus Isles or Klugetown?
• Jerkass Woobie: Stag, because towards the end of his second chapter we discover why he hates Chrysalis and why he's so protective of children.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Blueblood and the rest of the conspirators assassinating Twilight.
  • Amadeus Blueblood masterminding Twilight's assassination, convincing Blueblood (who was having second thoughts) to go though with it, and blackmailing Gallant Heart, who was supposed to be a mole, into doing it for real.
  • Silver Spoon saying she's glad that Twilight died since it (ostensibly) means that her plans for Equestria will never come to fruition. This is lampshaded by Apple Bloom who states that there is nothing wholesome or redeemable about Silver Spoon at this point, and would have knocked her lights out if Diamond Tiara didn't beat her to the punch.
  • Equestrian's First, an anti-Twilight terrorist cell, bombing Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns on the 15th anniversary of her death. With that in mind, it's hard to feel sympathy for them when Stag infiltrates their base with the help of an unwitting scout and has them all executed.
• Narm: In Aftermath of a Fallen Star, each character's point-of-view chapter ends with a short epilogue describing what they went on to do with their lives, with almost every character being given a Red Baron-esque title. It works for some characters such as Rainbow Dash, the "Loyal Flyer", or Fluttershy, the "Gentle Butterfly". Not so much for Pinkie, the "Pink Balloon" or Donut Joe, the "Empty Donut".
• The Scrappy: Amadeus Blueblood, while very much supposed to be hated, was disliked as the source of the Happy Ending Override and Genre Shift that made the later stories so unpopular they had only 1/10th the likes. He's seen as only having been successful due to the heroes being inept and the setting having so much corruption fans saw things as hopeless. Even karma catching up to him was undercut by the heroes mistakes allowing him to posthumously set up the conflict that would further darken things and completely move the story away from what made the original fic well received.
• Sequelitis: Due to how bleak and hopeless the overall setting is as of the epilogue of Aftermath of a Fallen Star, subsequent sequels were not as well received as the previous works, only getting about a tenth as many likes. This has not gone unnoticed by the author, who is asking for reasons why.
• Strawman Has a Point: Twilight's parents are definitely jerks for keeping Mystic grounded but they are right in the fact that Mystic will be targeted by Twilight's haters the moment she enters Celestia's school (see: Regal) and risk being among the dead during the terrorist attack while making her Celestia's personal student would just be begging for a case of History Repeats.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It would have been interesting to see how Queen Chrysalis (who assuredly does not like Twilight) would react to Twilight's death and her plans to make peace with the Changelings, but this can't happen because she's dead.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The first story had a Bittersweet Ending while the sequel Aftermath of a Fallen Star further explored how it effected her loved ones while developing into a Deconstruction of Equestria's Sugar Bowl setting. This increasing darkness culminated in a Happy Ending Override revealing the seeming good to come out of it played into the hands of the true mastermind behind the assassination and Equestria was so intolerant and backwards the attempt to modernize the country is met with civil war, leading to a Genre Shift away from the personal tragedy that made the story popular. In its place was an increasingly Crapsack World so bleak it now came off as meaningless shock value^exampleSeremora's bio reveals countless innocent souls (including ones whose afterlives she attacked, meaning you're not even safe in Heaven) are stuck in a Fate Worse than Death in her belly, and her own mortals must put their souls in Soul Jars to avoid the same "afterlife.", villains too evil to be compelling yet would inevitably come out ahead, and the heroes being useless to stop this or making things worse trying, leaving seemingly no chance of a worthwhile ending. The sequels to Aftermath of a Fallen Star took over six months to receive 100 likes while the author's later one-shot stories easily breached that number in a couple weeks. They later admitted they mishandeled the story such they're canceling the series.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Princess Luna taking Cruel Mercy revenge against Amadeus Blueblood was supposed to be a Tragic Mistake with the unforeseeable consequence of leading his daughter Majesty to become a more dangerous threat. But after her knowing of the plot against Twilight but failing to do more like warning Celestia^noteLuna's justification for not telling Celestia was that her overprotectiveness of Twilight would clue in to the conspirators that their scheme was discovered and go into hiding while Twilight being informed that there are assassination plots against her would make her Go Mad from the Revelation due to her fragile mental state., Luna leaving him alive and sane enough to corrupt Majesty, who'd have even more reason to oppose Equestria, came off as her repeatedly screwing over everyone with her bad judgement. Had the story continued, Luna would have called out and punished once this went public and realize she let her desire to play the hero cloud her judgment, but by then the author author admitted it was part of their mishandling of the Genre Shift that cost so many fans they decided to scrap the series.
• The Woobie:
  • Celestia. Big time. Twilight's friends and family as well, especially Twilight Velvet and Spike.
  • Twilight herself, prior to her assassination. She was well aware of the backlash she was receiving from the public.
  • Flash Sentry, it's simply impossible not to feel sorry for him once his chapter ends.
  • Alura Blueblood, Amadeus's wife. Despite everything, she's simply broken over the death of Prince Blueblood, having been in mourning for five months after his execution. It also doesn't help that Amadeus poisons her in order to cover his tracks.