A Millennial Breeding Program -- in the Nicest Possible Way · 1:41pm Jun 1st, 2014
These thoughts are in response to a comment of the esteemed Alex Warlorn, who said:
One reader suggested that Trixie and her sisters were an unwitting Element of Magic breeding program, but that felt WAY WAY WAY too immoral for Celestia. She loves her ponies too badly to use them as chess pieces.
A SUBTLE Millennial Breeding Program
I think on the one hand that Celestia is deliberately breeding Ponies with the qualities needed to become Elements, and on the other hand that she's doing this in the nicest and least obtrusive way possible. She's over 2500 years old, a master social manipulator, and the ruler of a Realm. She doesn't have to do anything crude such as force Ponies to mate, all she needs to do is use her influence -- both political and social -- to make sure that Ponies with compatible personalities who have the qualities she's looking for are thrown together in life and given the opportunity to fall in love with one another. And if one such match goes astray due to chance (two ponies don't like each other, one of them falls in love with somepony else first) -- she has lots of lines and centuries with which to play this game. She can wait.
It helps that the qualities she's looking for tend to make the ponies she's matching fairly attractive to one another. The reason why there's so much shipping on this site is that male versions of most members of the Mane Six -- and many of their kin -- would actually be fairly attractive to most female versions of those characters (and fans don't seem to get that most individuals are heterosexuals or at most bisexuals with heterosexual capabilities). Virtues call to virtues. This is actually true in the sense of evolutionary sexual-selection.
Yes, there are wild cards and unexpected crosses. But because of the evolutionary sexual selection mentioned, this often strengthens her lines. In my fanon, for instance, Sweetwing Wind was actually not supposed to be the Penultimate (to use the "Doc" Smith term, which is appropriate because Celestia's doing the equivalent of looking for Second Stage Lensmen here and the Elements of Harmony's original inspiration probably was the Lens of Civilization); Ill Wind's parents were the Penultimates, and Ill Wind was supposed to be an Ultimate, the Element of Kindness.
Ill Wind turned out to be an even worse result than was Sunset Shimmer. She merely wanted to become a Princess and rule. Ill Wind rediscovered a technology that permitted mass murder to be turned directly into magical energy, built the machine and handed it over to a genocidal madpony.
One of the problems with what Celestia was doing -- and the worst criticism that could be leveled against her from the POV of the Ponies themselves -- was that by attempting forced-draft evolution, she was in some cases producing pyschologically-unstable Ponies with potentially-terrible capabilities. In a word, supervillains.
Fluttershy
Meanwhile, Sweetwing Wind went along her merry happy somewhat air-headed and already neurotic way, followed a legend, decided to go looking for Flutter Ponies on the edge of the Badlands, and found one of their descendants. She collided right with someling else's (cruder and clumsier) super-being breeding program, and the two lines merged. And the result was Fluttershy, who was far more powerful and dangerous than anything Celestia had dreamed of producing. And crazier, as well.
But Chrysalis hadn't counted on an extraordinary burst of energy and courage from Sweetwing. She wasn't supposed to escape. With her she bore Chrysalis' long-hoped for hybrid, who was supposed to be "Whisper" (Ahtu had suggested the name, though Chrysalis was unaware of its other possible meanings), the Ultimate Changeling Infiltrator. Ceymi, essentially, but without the traits which Chrysalis thought of as "weaknesses" -- utterly ruthless and manipulative, with her empathy entirely divorced from sentimental attraction for the cattle. She did not realize that the Pony she'd chosen -- because she had sensed the very same strengths that came from -- was a Penultimate toward Kindness.
As for Celestia, when she found out that Sweetwing had essentially bred at random, she simply assumed that a product of one of the other lineages would have to be her Kindness when Luna returned. She had a few, and she made sure there were several in Ponyville. One candidate even worked for the postal service, which made her direct placement fairly easy. It also helped that some candidates might have the ability to attune to more than one possible Element -- for instance, Applejack might have been Kindness or Loyalty, as she possessed those qualities to the extreme, as well as her more obvious Honesty.
Fluttershy might have died or gone mad if Rainbow Dash hadn't befriended her. That too was unplanned, but an example of the ways that the virtues called to one another. Had they been of opposite sexes, they probably would have married and had children some of whom would have also been candidate Element Bearers. As it was, Fluttershy had the ideal characteristics of the Ultimate Infiltrator -- she was manipulative, could cloud minds to prevent being noticed, could communicate with and befriend almost all other forms of life, and had mind control at a level far exceeding that of Ceymi, eventually exceeding that of Chrysalis herself. She could feed on love with such subtlety that nopony ever directly noticed she was doing this, unless she told them of her powers.
Because she was raised by Ponies (and wild animals) she didn't realize that she had other powers as well. For instance, it never occurred to her to try to Shift or Firegate; nor did she realize that she could make herself a living ram with her flightfield. Spending her first two decades of life entirely in the form of her mother's Kind, she didn't even know she could form a horn, or project paramagnetism through it.
She could do two things that not even normal Changeling Royalty could do, though. She could subconsciously micro-Shift -- alter her body without even realize it, enabling her to physically adapt with super-Pony speed to whatever demands she placed on it. That was why when Fluttershy really tried to perform a physical feat she could always do it in the end. (That was also how she escaped Chrysalis when she was 14). As a subsidiary power, she generated the right pheromones to aid her communication with any species for any purpose she desired, which was useful when dealing with strongly scent-based creatures.
And -- though she didn't discover this until her third confrontation with Chrysalis, south of the Badlands in a castle older than the Cataclysm -- she could not only take love, but give it as well -- directly, to any being. She was, basically, a living version of a Changeling Pool, with the ability to channel psychic energy from one being through herself into another. This ability was to prove crucial to the survival of all Ponykind, a couple of decades later.
Celestia did not, of course, expect her Element of Kindness to be able to tame Discord. At most she had some vague sort of hope that someday, when the race of Ponykind had been further strengthened, they might produce Ponies who could survive extended interaction with him, either due to their personalities or magical talents or both. She both emotionally and strategically wanted to get Discord on her side, and imagined that it might be possible someday.
Trixie and Her Sisters
Trixie and her sisters were, of course, candidate Elements of Magic. Trixie even got picked up by the system Celestia had put in place to identify such successes, and spent a short while at the School for Gifted Unicorns ... until Trixie dropped out and took up with her old teacher, White-Beard the Gray, better known to Celestia as Wise Dreamer, and by some other names more famus to history.
The basic problems with Trixie were that her spirit was too independent for organized discipline -- she would only accept leadership or even guidance from somepony she loved, and she did not love easily -- and that she was one of those examples I gave of the candidates being mentally-unbalanced. She could have easily become Nightmare Delusion, but Wise Dreamer got to her in time and channeled her great talents and greater potential powers to more productive purposes by convincing her that she was a Heroine, and that as a Heroine she was expected to live up to a certain moral code.
The idea appealed to the adolescent Trixie, who loved tales of adventure and had even as a filly fantasized about doing great deeds of magic and wonder. By the time Wise Dreamer had to leave her (discarnating voluntarily, though Trixie thought he'd just died of old age), Trixie had learned the basics of stage magic and built up an act largely around portraying herself as a heroine and letting the audience participate in her fantasy world. When she was in a good mood, they got to be the grateful villagers she'd saved; in a bad mood, some of them got to be the evil monsters. But she never really hurt anypony -- because she was a heroine, and heroines are good.
Of course, Trixie had nothing approximating a normal social life, and never learned any of the normal skills for dealing with friends, or potential lovers. When she met Piercing at 19, and he appreciated her act, thought she had potential, and actually gave her good advice on how to improve it, she was purely and innocently happy to have found a true friend -- something that had only ever happened to her once before, when she met White-Beard. She didn't even recognize the strength of her response to him as being more than friendly on her part. When she woke up in bed with him one early morning, she was horrified at what she saw as her betrayal of her own ideals and fled Baltimare. It was partially a matter of good luck for her, partially virtue calling to virtue (though in very strange forms, as regarded both of them, since Piercing really was a playboy, normally) that Piercing actually had fallen in love with her.
Trixie went back to her fantasy world of perfect heroism, while Piercing occasionally tried to locate or write to her, being defeated by Trixie's own random wanderings. She wound up in Manehattan on the night of Luna's Return, which was also the night the Shadow Coven of the Manehattan Nightstallion struck. The Shadow Coven's plan to destroy the city might well have worked if their course hadn't led them through a square being played by one stubborn little showmare, who was not about to give up her audience to any hecklers, even super-powered evil demonic hecklers. And the rest is An Extended Performance.
She wandered around some more, annoying some Ponies, entertaining others and doing the occasional deed of valor (often accidentally), before she wound up coming into Ponyville one fateful day in late August of the same year (1500). She did not play well with the other Element Bearers. She didn't even know that there were other Ponies at all like herself, and would not necessarily have appreciated the information unless it had been broken to her, very gently, by somepony she loved.
Her instincts were still good at the crisis. You will perhaps notice that at no point does it occur to her to not try to protect Snips and Snails from the Ursa? This is a rampaging beast larger than a house, it's mad at them rather than at her, and its presence there is entirely their fault and has already cost her the caravan wagon. Yet she's gamely up at bat, trying her best to save their stupid ungrateful little lives while they're criticizing her for doing so.
After that, she tries to recoup her fortunes by raiding a Dragon's lair, gets captured by the Dragon, and is facing some unknown but probably dreadful fate when Princess Luna rescues her. Trixie could have solved most of her problems then and there, only she used her usual tact and charm to make Luna (dis-)like her, overestimated the degree to which Luna disliked her, and unnecessarily fled again. Thus, she just missed Straight, Shadow and Piercing, who had been on her trail, on and off, for months.
She was rescued from (literally) running off a cliff by Granny Pie, Claire Pie and Little Flappy. After she stopped screaming in terror at the invisible multi-tentacled giant fluffy pony creature and the fanged equinoid flying horror, she wound up recuperating on the Pie Rock Farm, working for them, and (sort of) befriending Pinkie's younger sisters. Who kind of reminded her of Nixie and Lexy. A bit. Perhaps more importantly, Granny Pie taught her much of the magical theory that Trixie had avoided in school as being "boring." She still thought it boring, but enough of it stuck that Trixie would get to survive her next set of exciting adventures ...
As for Trixie's sisters -- yes, I see them as (very flawed) candidate Element Bearers of facets of Magic. Most of them are as obnoxious as Trixie, but in different ways, and less powerful to boot. They can do one thing Trixie can't, though, a very useful thing.
They can get along with each other. And even other Ponies. Which is a talent Trixie herself doesn't properly appreciate.
Conclusion: So, basically, yes, I do think Celestia's conducting a millennial breeding program for Element Bearers -- and potential new Alicorns. But I think she's doing it in the nicest possible way. Her Ponies aren't "chess pieces" to her -- she doesn't force them to breed, or do anything beyond the normal workings of Equestrian law -- but she does deliberately use her influence to increase the chances of the matings she desires taking place.
It doesn't take much. It doesn't even take her doing anything indecent, immoral or unpleasant to them. All she usually needs to do is arrange for introductions of admirable unwed Ponies to one another, and let Nature take its course. Lawfully, that is.
No wonder everypony in Ponyville is crazy. That many potential Element Bearers are going to drop the mean sanity of the town by an appreciable degree.
And Fluttershy's love conduit ability is going to be devastating to Shadows. Revive Kills Zombie in action.
(*nods*) A point commented upon by visitors.
And yes, the Night Shadows come to rue the day Fluttershy was born.
Interestingly enough I had an idea for a story where there was a forced breeding program but it was not done by Celestia. It was done by the Earth Ponies as a way to curb the power of the Alicorn sisters as they were afraid that since Earth Pony abilities are more subtle that they might forget that Earth Ponies are important too and mistreat them as the other ponies races had. Of course that turned out to be untrue but in that fear the Earth Ponies turned to their knowledge of genetics (which they learned from their dealings with plants over centuries) to put together an Earth pony line designed to counter the Alicorn sisters.
This eventually became the line that leads to Pinkie. The reason the Pie family lives so far away from civilization is to prevent their power from being unleashed (a Pie from long ago decided to try to break the line by doing this and destroying the Bene Gesserit of the Earth Ponies so that they would not be controlled by fate though it appears his actions were in vain). Pinkies power has only started to come out due to the Rainboom she has seen. Her special abilites are related to this. One of the reasons why the Pie family tried to avoid this fate is that madness is a side effect of not being a perfect Kwisatz Haderach . This also explains Pinkie's quirkiness though since she is not insane she may actually be a perfect Kwisatz Haderach.
Clearly I have been reading too much "Dune" and ponies.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match... Ha ha.
How exactly did Pinkie Pie fit in with Celestia's plans? Who were other potential Elements of Laughter?
Maud Pie, emotionlessly, "Interesting. And I thought I was born into a mostly normal family."
I don't how the heck the mare you describe for Fluttershy here became best friends with Rarity, and became the Element of KINDNESS.
Big Mac is perfectly sane. It's a stereotype to call everypony crazy.
2166957
Sweetwing was crazy, but kind to Fluttershy. And Rainbow Dash's loyal and loving friendship saved Fluttershy from true madness. The animals helped a lot too, as they were never gone for long periods of time.
As for Rarity, she aggressively and skillfully pursued the friendship. Partially for social-climbing reasons, as she instantly recognized Fluttershy as high Pegasus nobility. But being Rarity, she found it impossible to not be helpful to somepony that nice, and she started teaching Fluttershy how to deal with social situations better.
Ironically, her Changeling powers helped Fluttershy be kind. When she was kind, she received love. And love made her feel good. She got caught in the same virtuous circle that trapped Moth (in your world) and Nictis (in Phoenix_Dragon's).
I'd like to see what Rarity could do with a Gray Lensman's uniform.
2167330
Improve the style? Add a lot of gems?
I came here from your "blog list" blog, expecting ... I don't know, an outline of Changelings as a 'peer' to the 'core' species -- thus, say, species.List={Earth Ponies, Pegasus Ponies, Unicorn Ponies, Alicorns, Changelings}. But this... Fluttershy is a Super-Super- demi-Changeling what? Trixie outstaged a demon-posed group of cultists what?
I have no firking clue what is going on here, but clearly it is crazy awesome.
(you could just have a mislabeled link though, I clicked on "The Fifth Kind: The Changelings" to get here.)
2464930
Thank you for pointing out the wrong link there!
Fixed it.
Did that whole thing about Trixie (not the stuff from An Extended Performance) come from a different story of yours?
2467934
It was a combination of the Pony POVerse Trixie, the Lunaverse Trixie, and some ideas of my own (Piercing Gaze is wholly my creation). The rebellion against being seen as just one of five sisters, and White-Beard the Grey, come from the Pony POVerse. The near-asexuality and general attitude toward others comes from the Lunaverse. Piercing Gaze and his strong effect on her is my own creation.
2467987 That I know, but did this happen in some story that you wrote?
Things like this :
and this:
Really sadden me that they probably only happened in your headcanon rather than in accessible stories I can go read.
2165490
It has occurred to me that Pinkie Pie is, in many ways, a nicer and more cheerful Paul Atriedes. But then Pinkie is also born into a nicer and more cheerful social world.
In the Duniverse, pretty much every incomplete Kwisatch Haderach was crazy, yet. And Paul's own sanity is questionable, though a lot of the problem is that he's facing a much worse situation -- a Galactic Empire pretty much accustomed to murderous tyranny as the norm. Pinkie might be a darker character if she'd grown up in a world dominated by somepony far darker than Celestia, or even Luna.
3130091
Holy thread necromancy Batman!
True though it appears that there were different levels of madness depending on who we are talking about. For instance if I recall correctly the man Paul fights with a knife at the end of Dune was also a potential Kwisatch Haderach but perhaps a less perfect one and he was probably more crazy than Paul (though one has to consider his crazier upbringing as well).
Further I think part of why people Paul thought he was crazy was the issue of knowing the future and not being able to change it while knowing it was very grim. This made his actions even harder to understand in their own time.
In this future I have conceived Pinkie's ancestor found out about his history during a major event (the fight with Discord or perhaps the War of the Moon). At this time these powers were very useful but due to being older the changes in personality caused him great pain. After the war he wanted to settle but realized that he and his family would never be free unless he could escape his fate. Of course this is very difficult due to his sense which may or may not be working in his design and how ponies generally believe in fate to begin with (going against fate in my canon is a non-spoken taboo especially the farther back you go). Through numerous events Celestia helped this ancestor at least feel like he escaped his fate and put him on a rock farm in an area where it was unlikely that the power would ever get activated. That is why they farm rocks far from established civilization. This is why their family have unusual powers but at the same time think nothing of it.
I do think Pinkie could be a darker character (though still likely a good one and probably still fun though her humor might be less kid friendly) in a darker world. I think that could be a fun story too. I would tell you to do it but already have a lot on your plate with all your storys such as your retelling of the future of Cloud Kicker Universe lol.