Things I did not know about Princess Luna · 4:08pm Feb 27th, 2014
1. Her favorite food, when hanging around my head, appears to be pork tenderloin in spicy barbecue sauce. How exactly this relates to her (unmentioned but generally presumed to be vegetarian) appetites in canon is unclear. How exactly this relates to my always apparently having the princesses be carnivores is also unclear. (In my defense, Celestia and Twilight are strict ovo-lacto vegetarians, just as they are presumed to be in the show.)
2. She really enjoys the music of the Beatles and Elvis Costello. Huh.
3. She is a creature of nearly-overwhelming emotion and passion, and I despair at being unable to display even a small fraction of this on the page, which segues neatly to point four:
4. She is both a terror and a joy to write a story with.
Watch this account tomorrow for the upcoming "Philomeanie," a tale about Luna's age-old hate affair with her least-favorite phoenix.
EDIT: Release pushed to Saturday due to the extended PM site outage.
Oh? Philomena being a bum? Sounds familiar.
Welp, looks like Skywriter has finally contracted the dreaded Fic Madness.
It gets all FiM writers in time.
1878993
"Finally"? My dear, I've been chatting with characters in my head and feeding them dinner for well over a decade now.
1878993
Wait, you mean Pinkie hanging inside my head and chatting incessantly until she convinced me to write that first fic is not how it usually happens?
Tibbles. Don't forget Tibbles.
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1879037
Well, it's how it typically happens for me. I suspect it happens with greater frequency for others planning Pinkie stories as well.
1879048
I love Tibbles! Sadly, this is S1 Luna, chronologically slightly before "A Bird in the Hoof," and I put Tibbles a few years later.
I totally hear you on points 3 and 4. The good news is that it seems people who don't have Luna in their heads all the time don't have such a deep appreciation for her, so they won't notice if you don't fully capture her passion and emotion. That being said, you've been writing Celestia and Cadence exceptionally well. I believe you can totally do Luna justice.
And about her enjoying pork tenderloin--the legends of Nightmare Moon say she was a cannibal. No reason she couldn't partake of other animals' meat, right?
I always liked the idea of Luna eating meat. It seems to go well with her sort of misfit, fish out of water status in modern Equestria. Anyway, looking forward to the loving adventures of luna and philomena
1879084
I quietly believe that in ancient times the poor ponies looked at Luna's carnivory and Celestia's vegetarianism and drew the most alarming possible conclusion (go figure, with this species...); the legends continue to be blown out of proportion to this day.
About #1, alicorn metabolism burns a lot of energy. Look at Celestia's cake binges, or Twilight devouring hayburgers with abandon. Luna just has different tastes...
1879140
This makes a lot of scary sense.
Given how much i like how you write Celestia I'm quite excited to see what your take on Luna is so i'll be sure to read yor next piece as soon as it becomes available.
As for Luna and meat I like the idea, as they say there's often a bit of truth in legends and apparently the legend of Nightmare Moon involves rampant cannibalism, so maybe Luna used to openly enjoy eating meat around other ponies before her banishment. It's probably more filling and requires less volume than the table full of cake that Celestia needs to gobble to keep her hunger in check.
There's probably a story there somewhere about some poor servant that has to go aquire Luna's daily pork.
Also the priestesses feed fish to Cadance but does she still eats it now that she's grown up?
Well this should be hilarious
Woah, I just came up with a weird head cannon: What if the reason Alicorns eat so much is that Cystic Fibrosis is in their genetic code. Since they are immortal, it can't kill them, but they have to eat an extremely high-calorie diet just to stay at a healthy weight.
This isn't for the Augie Dog's Luna contest is it? If so I'm just glad I gave up early!
So, almost my mother-in-law. Mercifully, at least she stopped haunting my dreams years ago.
1879189
Cadance's fish-eating will be covered in the chapter after the next of "The First Time You See Her." Thanks for asking!
I've a feeling this has something to do with tulpas.
1879304
Nothing so codified or formal.
1879304 The way a character occasionally moves into an author's head is the main reason why I don't think tulpas are nothing but bunk and nonsense. (I can't help but think the way some people regard them as magic, or demons, or actual spirits of some kind is kind of silly though.)
Oh, and its interested how ideas converge. While my mind didn't go to Luna being carnivorous, in my head she used to wear the pelts of wolves who had threatened ponykind. She was called "the mare who hunts wolves" for a time.
1879286
The musical tastes? The predilection for barbecue? The depths of emotion? All of the above? And was the woman in question almost your mother-in-law, or does it almost describe your extant mother-in-law? So many questions!
Nice to see another story with the pranky phoenix.
Luna eating meat? Meat does have high proteins. With how much magic they possess, maintaining such an near-immortal body takes heaps of energy. Where as normal ponies can take their time digesting hay and grass for nutrients, and the fact they DO eat eggs, it stands to reason that Luna could eat certain meats.
Though, I picture more the devouring of flesh like a lion would a buffalo be more of a thing she did as Nightmare Moon to those who fell to her madness. Maybe Luna subconciously recalls the taste of meats and is less disgusted by the thought of eating another life, if we go with the whole Life and Death, Creation and Destruction, Light and Dark Celestia and Luna would represent.
Not to mention the bonus of creeping out her sister during the late dinner hours, Celestia possibly having her meals during Twilight hours to meet have her sisterly chats with Luna. Breakfast and Dinners taken later/earlier depending on the perspective: Celestia late dinner be Luna's waking meal, Luna late breakfast be Celestia's waking meal.
I like S1 days. Sure, there was a lot of sad Luna stories and coming to term with catching up with societies' changes which the show barely grazed upon. But it has the most gap between timelines to be literally anything you want and still be able to fit within some leniency toward staying within the show's canon believability, if one were to really aim for that. So many amazing Luna stories then, and many since. Though, many of my favorite authors have either disappeared from the fandom or lost interested in writing. So many great stories left unfinished...
Quality is so hard to find these days considering how many people write now a days as compared to 2011. In any case, I look forward to your story. Nice title btw. Last story I began but yet to continue was http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36740/palace-perils which basically deals with the two in such a case.
Best of luck!
1879004
Characters like to move into my head. Apparently it's roomy in there?
Seriously, though. If you can't have a conversation with them, how are you supposed to write them?
1879331 The idea of an entity built inside your own unconscious mind with thoughts and opinions constructed entirely by your own intelligence and perspective does not sound out of the realm of possibility for me. It's when the weirdos from Tulpa Forums start spouting about tulpa activism that things start to spiral into the ridiculous. Oh, and then there's 'possession', which is a whole other brand of assorted nonsense.
1879314 You're my sixth favourite hipster, Sky.
Huh. The Luna in your head seems a lot cooler than the Pinkie in mine. But, on the other hand, my Pinkie is basically my muse in a pony costume, so there we are.
I'm definitely okay with the Princess of the Night being cooler than I am.
1879789
That's all right. Being your favorite hipster would be too mainstream.
[youtube=_3n1VzT_yis]
1880164
That's a great track! In my head she was all about "My Dark Life".
1880297
Both tracks are from the same album, actually—All This Useless Beauty—though I believe this version is from Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. I inevitably start whistling it every time I'm reminded of Babylon 5.
Of course she loves the Beatles. They are The Beatles. Since we know that Luna is not a massive fool, it only stands to reason.
1879140
A semi-casual study of Anthropology reveals that most of the time (not all the time, but most) tales of a given tribe's practicing cannibalism came from other tribes who wanted to drive home how dreadful that tribe was and how it was right and proper to burn their huts and steal their goats.
In Equestria just as in our world, bad press, like good barbecue, gets juicier the longer it cooks.
On a tangentially related note, I'm really looking forward to when you get to the point of Luna's redemption/return in your "Cadance of Cloudsdale" cycle. I know it's a long way off and I'm not in any way trying to rush it, I just think it will be a very interesting point of interaction to see play out from how you've formulated the characters, especially from what you seeded in Cadance and Celestia's interactions in "How to Remove a Unicorn Tooth".
1879183
Prosaic details like the Princesses' eating habits are just the kind of things I love to blather about. 
Boy, I'm being a real comment butterfly on this post.
There's also a mythological angle here, vis a vis characters like Thor in the classical Norse edition, one of whose superpowers was the ability to eat vast amounts of food. There's one myth of a series of challenges from a tricky Jotun where Thor got into an eating contest where the only thing that could out-eat him was a wildfire disguised as a guy, and a drinking competition where he almost drank the ocean through a gimmicked drinking horn.
I somehow see this factoring in with our favorite sun and moon goddesses. (Especially Celestia. The moon goddess only eats until she's full.
)
1881039
While the ponies probably did not intentionally demonize Luna, the inflated-in-telling rumors that spread about her in the wake of the rebellion were likely not kind ones.
1881091
Thanks! Not sure if this topic will be covered; possibly in a side story? Cady is in self-imposed exile for the first two seasons and only even meets Luna during the (real) wedding preparations. There may be a simple-dialogue short in there somewhere.
1880367
Thanks for the nod! I've got "All This Useless Beauty" from the library in my player right now.
Have you ever had cake without milk in it? No, I didn't think so.
1884104
Exactly my point.
1884254 Oh. I thought the modifiers were dietary exclusions rather than inclusions. Which would make more sense, since "vegetarian" means the same thing as ovo-lacto vegetarian.
1884262
It's often contrasted with "Pesca-Vegetarian", which is vegetables and fish. I used the modifier only because it helps me distinguish those two from Cady, who in my mind in that world is a fish-eater but nothing else meat-wise. Words are weird.
1881731
Well, whatever interactions come between the two, I'm thinking in particular about the whole "I thought you were the one." conversation after Celestia rescues Cadance from the frozen north. The bit dropping when news reaches our Princess of Love would be considerable.
Anyway, I love your writing. I could tell before I read your authors note on "Philomeanie" that you've had first person contact wit' da boids.
1884748
The owner-pet interactions there are exaggerated for comedy by a depressingly slight amount.