Tear Jerker / Friendship is Dragons

• When Twilight's confronted by Nightmare Moon in the castle:
  Twilight: Please! Did my Arcana do ANYTHING?
  DM: The Elements crackle and sparkle for a few seconds…before fading back to their normal lifeless state.
  Twilight: Well, at least she can't use them…?
  Nightmare Moon: Hahaha…you little FOAL…thinking you could defeat ME! *she destroys the Elements*
  Twilight *aghast*: At…least…
• The scene where the GM apologises to Pinkie's player for manipulating her with misinformation about Zecora to get the group to argue uses screenshots from Pinkie's breakdown in "Party of One". While Pinkie's player doesn't take it quite that badly, it still makes you feel for her.
• While trying to rescue Rarity from the Diamond Dogs, Twilight determines that she can't copy her jewel-finding spell. Why not? Well...
  GM: Alright, alright! Look, all it would take is for Rarity to have shown Twilight her spell at least once. You've all known each other for a few weeks now. Are you sure, absolutely sure, that Rarity never shared her talent with Twilight?
  * awkward silence*
  Twilight: You mean... during the downtime? Just as friends? M-my character and... her character?
  GM: Yeah.
  Twilight: Well... I'm a Lawful Good wizard... and she's... a Rogue.
  * more awkward silence*
  Rarity: I believe the answer is 'no'.
  Twilight: I'm sorry...
  Rarity: No, no... It's fine.
  Twilight: Really?
  Rarity: Well, no, not really. But we shall have to discuss this later.
  • This stings a little worse when you remember that the whole reason Twilight even knows that Rarity's a Rogue in the first place is due to her player's accidental metagaming when they first met. This has led to complications before, but for Rarity's player to discover the hard way just how badly this has impacted their characters' friendship... and since she's a big roleplayer herself, she can't really say a word against it.
• When Pinkie Pie's player takes over as the DM for a session, she introduces the concept of Pinkie Sense. As in Canon, Twilight's player tries to come up with a reasonable explanation for it, until Pinkie brings up why she came up with Pinkie Sense in the first place: she sees all the other characters having something unique and extra-special and wanted something like that for Pinkie Pie, too.
  • Following her session, she asks the others if they liked it or not. Despite everyone saying they had fun, she was convinced that they were lying to be nice and thought everyone hated her game. This is particularly poignant because many Dungeon Masters, particularly ones just starting out, can often feel relate to this feeling.
• At the start of the Canterlot arc, it's mentioned in passing that Dash did some mercenary work, but didn't get any loot due to a loophole in her contract. Later, when introduced to the Wonderbolts, her player seems less than thrilled at how perfectly they fit her character, and suddenly starts insulting herself. She then explains what happened: the contract was written by two PC artificers, who took so long to draft it up she fell asleep from boredom. She then signed it without looking. At the end of the session, they revealed she'd signed over her share. The GM ruled this in-character and hilarious, not caring about how badly her feelings were hurt.
• After setting up for a Hurricane Fluttershy plot arc, the GM finds their players straying Off the Rails once more: this time, obssessing over AJ's absence. Finally, they ask the players to confirm whether or not they're abandoning the original campaign again.
  Twilight: I'm starting to feel bad. I don't mean to invalidate all your hard work every week.
  GM: Yeah, well... I spent an unholy number of hours trying to build an Excel spreadsheet with all the fliers' stats. Please, by all means, let's have a nice roleplaying session instead.
• An in-character argument between Twilight and Shining Armor bleeds over into real life with one line:

  Twilight: [sighs] Typical. Because nothing could ever be wrong with your life, right?
  [silence as the others stare at her]
  Twilight: Ngh... sorry... That just sorta... slipped...

  • This is swiftly followed by a quick time-out, and a glimpse into what exactly has been eating at her all this time. Mainly that she spent a long time feeling like The Unfavorite compared to her brother, and the circumstances behind their informal reunion playing a game of all things with some unintentional Reality Subtext has been weighing heavily on her.

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