You Never Know When Inspiration Will Strike · 2:12am Jun 18th, 2023
So, I enjoy listening to a lot of fan-songs, and not all of them are MLP ones. Pretty much any media I get into enough, I'll spend time trying to see who's writing and performing songs about it. And recently, I've apparently done something to make Youtube start offering me recommendations of Cult of the Lamb songs to listen to. Since it's on my wishlist and I already spoiled the twist at the story's ending for myself a while ago, I figured, eh, sure, let's see what the fandom for the game is creating.
So I ended up listening to this:
Warning: It's, well, Cult of the Lamb, so expect blood, death, brief toilet humour, and general disturbing imagery consistent with that game.
But I'm a writer, and so the more I listened to it, I started to ask myself, has anyone done a crossover with this yet? After all, it's cute animals slaughtering each other and forming cults to dark gods. Remove the fact that they're anthropomorphic (or don't, if you'd rather, since the anthro tag is a thing) and it's prime fodder for a dark pony AU.
I couldn't find anything when I looked, but I also could just not be throwing the right things into the search. All the same, with a seeming void, my brain started placing its own creatures into the places of the ones in the video, and...
I'd had vague thoughts of a story about Starlight Glimmer lurking around in my head for a while. An alternate take, where instead of ending up Twilight Sparkle's student, she ends up brought before the Two Sisters for her shenanigans instead, and it's Luna who takes pity on a pony that she sees a flicker of herself in. A pony who's lonely and lashing out, trying to force other ponies to see things how she does and responded to an obstacle by seeking powerful magic to remove it.
However, redemption with Luna at the helm is earned by essentially conscripting her. She's a powerful mage, and now she's going to put that power to good use protecting Equestria and the world at large, while seeing exactly where continuing to spiral down the path she'd taken was going to end up. Because her brand of rehabilitation will always come with a dose of fear of the alternative to changing (she was a good choice for the future spirit in the A Christmas Carol homage episode is what I'm saying).
I had that setup. What I didn't have was the villain. Who she'd be clashing against in Luna's name. But Grogar would make a very good stand-in for He Who Waits Beneath, wouldn't he? Sure, everyone and their grandmother has done their version of Grogar even before the show gave us its bait-and-switch with him, but if I was going to be dissuaded by someone having done something before, I'd write for a much less prolific fandom. And if you want to show Starlight a sign of how far she could have fallen... what better than a cult?
It's one of those "long way off" story ideas, and I should probably get more experience with that game before attempting a crossover, like actually buying and playing it. But all the same...
"Deep in the dark of the woods,
Where secrets sleep.
We serve He Who Waits Beneath.
'Til the soul, devotion reap,
For the Lamb who herds the sheep.
In the dark of the woods, we pledge our lives,
Sages say that faith is blind.
Arms raised high in sacrifice,
Pull down wool over our eyes."
The puns write themselves, and if that isn't a sign it needs to be involved with MLP, nothing is.
I do love that song.
I've some vague ideas to introduce Cult of The Lamb into EQG via Thems Fighting Herds (A relative/friend/acquaintance of Poms ?) but it's a way away.
That song, Pull The Wool Over Our Eyes, by The Stupendium: my new ear-worm. I’ll check your story out but I’m already jumping down that rabbit hole. Thanks!