The Empty Room
The Empty Room is a My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fanfiction by Wanderer D.
Originally, it's about the ramifications of Celestia discovering she had a child, and not remembering any of it. Unfortunately, things quickly get worse with the death of Twilight Sparkle, the release of Celestia's Super-Powered Evil Side, and a shadowy figure known only as the Guardian seemingly running things from behind the scenes.
Tropes used in The Empty Room include:
- Action Girl: Jade/Rarity and Rainbow Dash, most notably when Nightmare Moon takes them both to Ponyville.
- Anti-Villain: Nightmare Moon.
- Artifact of Doom: The medallions, which also suffer from a severe case of Clingy MacGuffin.
- Back from the Dead: Twilight Sparkle (twice) and Trixie.
- Batman Gambit: Several of them layered on top of each other, to the point where it pretty much reaches Gambit Pileup levels.
- Because Destiny Says So: Trixie's death adventure and revival turn out to be pre-destined; she had to die to travel back in time and help create the Cambro.
- Big Damn Heroes: Quite a few times.
- Black Cloak: Each member of the Council of Nightmares wears one at some point or another.
- Black Comedy Rape: Quick! To the mattress fort, Applejack!
- Chekhov's Gun: Way too many to count.
- The Chessmaster: Nightmare Moon and, to some level, the Guardian.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Paper Craft.
- Dark Action Girl: Twilight Spark.
- Death Equals Redemption: Arguably, Trixie fits the letter of the trope better than the spirit; she begins the story dying as a potential antagonist, then becomes one of the lead protagonists.
- Death Is Cheap: Unless you're a background pony...
- The Dragon: Too many to count, though Twilight Spark, Jade and Spitfire may be the most obvious. And in Spitfire's case, this became more or less literal as well.
- Driven to Suicide: Bon-Bon.
- Earn Your Happy Ending
- Eldritch Abomination: The Guardian.
- Evil Counterpart: Twilight Spark.
- Face Heel Turn: Medallion on...
- Played straight with Princess Celestia and Rainbow Dash and subverted with Princess Luna and Twilight Sparkle.
- Geometric Magic: In the same room where the Cambro has been for so long. Your Mileage May Vary, though.
- Heel Face Turn: Medallion off! Also Twilight Spark, who, when the dust has settled, gets to live as an earth pony named Dawn.
- Hyde Plays Jekyll: Midnight.
- Functional Magic: Both the magic inherent to the universe as well as the Cambro with which Trixie and Twilight Sparkle are resurrected.
- Hermetic Magic
- Heroic Sacrifice: Lyra.
- Let's not forget Blast!
- Magic Music: Lyra performs one for Nightmare Flare.
- Never Found the Body: Well, they did find a horn, but...
- Well, there is a body, we just didn't know whose it was at first.
- Oh Crap: Twilight Sparkle at the end of Chapter 17.
- Playing with Fire: Spitfire quite literally after Nightmare Flare turns her into a Chimera.
- Purple Prose: The man sure does love his descriptions. Doesn't really detract from the story, fortunately.
- Rags to Royalty: Twilight Sparkle, Sleeping Beauty Style.
- Red Shirt: Guards through most of the chapters. A funny example is the transition between Chapters 6 and 7.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Pretty much The Man Behind the Man and all its Elite Mooks.
- Sealed Evil In A Room: Among various other things...
- Shout-Out: .hack, other MLP fanfics, and The Sixth Sense, in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
- In Chapter 17, the Cutie Mark Crusaders get directions from a colt with a big backpack and a black and yellow bandana...and get lost. Ryoga much?
- Spear Carrier: A few guards have done so, when they don't end up burned to a crisp.
- Super-Powered Evil Side: A very important trope to this fic...which often ends up being subverted somehow.
- Nightmare Moon, oddly enough, turns out to be the Big Good of the story. She even willingly disperses, leaving only Luna, at the end.
- The resurrected Twilight Spark is another subversion. She's a deranged clone made with the real Twilight's horn.
- The only one played absolutely straight is Nightmare Flare.
- Time Travel: Trixie via the Cambro.
- Taking You with Me: Performed by Blast near the end of Chapter 19.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Lampshaded by Pinkie Pie inside Luna's mind in Chapter 7.
- The Undead: Trixie and Midnight.
- Unstoppable Mailmare: Guess.
- The Vamp: Twilight Spark...at least until she discovers her true nature.