Backup Elements - The Basic Rules · 6:13am Aug 19th, 2014
Introduction:
So I was thinking about the concept of backup Elements of Harmony.
In my Universe, what's really been going on is that Princess Celestia has been engaging in a millennial plan to bring forth an unusual number of beings capable of attuning to the Elements of Harmony, and concentrating them at Ponyville at the time of Luna's Return. Now, the only sort of being capable of attuning to an Element of Harmony in the first place is a Cosmic Concept in physical incarnation, which means that she is, in essence, deliberately attracing nascent Cosmic Concepts to her spacetime.
Wisedreamer (himself a minor Cosmic Concept, what the Cosmics call a "helper"), thinks this is dangerous, because they're turning out a bit crazy:
"They mostly are, dear filly," Wisedreamer said. His bushy eyebrows descended. "A librarian who is afraid that you'll clap her in a dungeon if she gives the wrong answer on a test. That little bouncy pink Chosen One of a whole lost timeline. A half-pegasus of the highest lineage and greatest power, who is afraid of her own shadow. Her best friend, another pegasus who imagines herself an entire army in one mare. Really, the only sane ones are the Apple clansmare and that dressmaker, and even they are a bit touched, sometimes."
"I know," admitted Celestia. "But they're who I have, now. They're the ones who attuned."
"You do know why this is happening?" said Wisedreamer.
"Yes," said Celestia. "You've told me many times before. I can't just ... how did you put it?"
"Grow Alicorns as if they were potatoes?" the bearded mage kindly suggested the missing words.
"That was, I believe, your phrase."
"And true," said Wisedreamer with some satisfaction. "You cannot force Concepts into being, and expect them to emerge wholly sane from the experience."
Of course, Celestia has another purpose in mind in doing this -- she wants to raise up allies to defeat the oncoming Night Shadows.
I. Concepts, Major and Minor
The Cosmic Concepts are sapient entities who emerge from the nature of the Universe. The earliest Concepts were the personfications of physical laws -- for instance Celestia is an incarnation of Fusion and Luna of Gravity. They came into being because the requirements of coordinating physical law across the Universe during Cosmic Inflation required increasingly complex informational transfers, the protocols for which developed sapience. The first of them were Existence and Life, who are also called the All-Father and Life-and-Light (aka Fauna Luster) and who are in a sense (though not a strict biological sense) the "parents" of the others.
These Concepts call themselves Nature's Law and are known to the Ponies as the Alicorns, though only a very few Ponies are aware of just what the Alicorns are truly avatars. These are all super-intelligent but (by their own admission) rather "simple," as their basic natures appeared before there was any sapient life in the Universe. They have been becoming more complex and capable by deliberately Incarnating as members of various sapient races. In doing so, they have evolved much further toward A Form You Are Comfortable With, and are seen by many normal sapient races as "friendly" -- which they are, compared to their Cousins. They cooperate fairly well with one another, most of the time.
Another group of Concepts were the personifications of frequent strange attractors resulting from the intersection of Nature's Laws, though they are also in a sense simultaneously of equal or even older age than the others, because the potential for these intersections came into being with the Universe. The original ones are Havoc and Entropy, who are in the same sort of sense the parents of the others. They are called Nature's Fury, and are known to Ponykind as the Draconequii, even though Ponykind only knows one Draconequus well -- Discord. It is probably a good thing for Ponykind that they are not more intimately acquanted with more of the Draconequii. They are, essentially, manifestations of Chaos.
Neither Nature's Law nor Nature's Fury is truly evil by the standards of other sapients. They simply are: their existence at their Cosmic level is essential to the functioning of the Universe, and in that sense both Law and Chaos are "good." But this is a very cold and callous sense of "good" -- even Nature's Law is ruthless and sometimes destructive by the standards of incarnate sapient beings. Celestia, Luna and Cadance have all more or less fallen in love with Ponykind and "gone native" -- it is easy to forget that the Cosmic Alicorns are not necessarily all that friendly. Most Cosmics don't give a damn about any particular sapient species.
There are other beings who personify aspects of the Universe who do not really fit into Nature's Fury or Nature's Law. Azathoth, for instance, seems to be a personification of the Big Bang, a sort of living white hole. Nyarlathotep is a personfication of Communication, though he seems to have developed his own agenda and decided to betray our whole Multiverse. These and similar beings are often called "Outer Forces" or "Outer Gods."
A naked Cosmic Concept -- as opposed to an Incarnate one -- is incredibly intelligent and powerful, and is essentially as far beyond its Incarnate self as a Pony is a frog. An Incarnate Concept has much more in common with whatever race it has Incarnated itself as than it does with its Cosmic Self. Some Cosmic Concepts get along better with their Incarnations than others -- Celestia, for instance, is mostly okay with Cosmic Fusion; while Luna rather hates and fears Cosmic Gravity; and Discord deeply hates and fears his Cosmic Self. A Cosmic Concept can make a temporary, very strong Incarnation by creating a "battle form," which is essentially a living war machine formed out of its own energy and stray matter -- even the weakest of these forms are far more powerful than any Incarnate Cosmic. They can destroy planets, suns and in some cases whole star clusters -- and that's without even using their most powerful weapons.
It's best to stay away from a naked Cosmic Concept, because it might destroy you. Possibly because you annoyed it in some incomprehensible manner. Does a gnat know why a Pony's tail crushed it? Does the Pony care about the gnat? Is the Pony even wholly aware of the killing?
Exactly.
The new Concepts that are coming into being are very complex ones. They personify complex ideas such as Honesty and Kindness, tendencies which cannot come into being without sentience or even sapience (from the Cosmic perspective, the intellectual difference between Opal and Rarity is not as great as it seems from our point of view). Interestingly, they seem to be able to generate more than one avatar at the same time -- it is not certain if this is because Concepts do not exist in linear time, because they are slightly different Concepts, because the link between Concept and Avatar is not pure Identity -- or for some other reason beyond equine comprehension.
For instance, Twiight is the Avatar of Magic, but Trixie is the Avatar of Illusion. Magic and Illusion are related Concepts, and it is possible that the Alicorn Magic is the same being as the Alicorn Illusion. Or they may be Sisters, rather like Celestia and Luna (who personify different but related Physical Forces). They may be related in much the way that two cards of the same suit are related. Or something beyond our understanding.
There are several important patterns here:
A. A Concept usually goes through several Mortal Incarnations before it can generate an Immortal Incarnation
It is known that Twilight Sparkle has the same spark as Dusk Skyshine, Clover the Clever, and probably several earlier Ponies. It is quite likely that the same thing is true of all the Element Bearers: we know for sure that an earlier avatar of the spark in Rainbow Dash was a friend of Dusk Skyshine's during the Age of Wonders. The same may also be true of the Backup Element Bearers.
B. The first time that a Concept generates an Immortal Incarnation it does so by Ascension
We saw Twilight Sparkle do this. She was originally a Mortal Incarnation -- had she not ascended she would have lived an ordinary (though brilliantly gifted) mortal life as a Unicorn Pony and then died. The series hasn't progressed far enough to prove her immortal, but I take it for granted that she is now -- she has Alicorn regenerative powers, which means she can only be slain by great violence or a weapon specifically designed to be fatal to her. The same would be true of any of the other Elements if they Ascend.
C. Ascension is hard -- it requires the potential Alicorn to learn the ways of all or a majority of the major Pony Kinds and perform a very difficult feat involving the Concept of which it is the Avatar
Twilight Sparkle could not Ascend until she closely befriended members of two other Pony Kinds and battled against another one (though we don't know that her fighting the Changelings was actually necessary for Ascension). She then performed an intensely difficult feat involving her own Concept (Magic) by completing Star-Swirl's unfinished spell (and Star-Swirl was himself the Avatar of a Minor Cosmic).
Presumably, the same goes for the other potential Alicorns. For instance, Fluttershy would have to deeply understand the other Pony Kinds (she is a Pegasus and a Changeling, but not a very well adjusted member of either Kind); she has befriended members of all three of the Equestrian Kinds. She may be in the process of performing an intensely difficult feat involving her own Concept (Kindness) by truly reforming Discord (which may have been another reason why Celestia assigned her this task -- this is notably something another Cosmic (Celestia herself) was unable to do.
D. Ascension is a form of death and rebirth -- the Cosmic Concept actually destroys the original Avatar, but in that moment decides to be recreated as an immortal Avatar with the same identity as the mortal one
We see this in "Magical Mystery Cure," the Season Three closer, in that Twilight is actually disintegrated into energy, accompanies Celestia on the Cosmic Level -- and then is reintegrated back in Equestria by the same energy. The point of this is that Celestia (and her friends and family) got back the Twilight Sparkle version of Magic -- as an Immortal Avatar, an Alicorn. They did not have to wait for Magic to decide to incarnate again on Earth or to grow a new identity from birth. This was possible because Celestia acted as "midwife" to the appearance of the new Cosmic.
An aside: Trixie doesn't know any of this and would be utterly terrified if she did. She thinks of the Alicorn Illusion as either some sort of patron goddess, or as her Powered-Up Side. She doesn't grasp yet that Trixie is just a manifestation of the Concept of Illusion, rather than the other way round.
E. Once a Concept has generated an Immortal Avatar, it will gain access to the memories of all its lives and be able to choose its rebirths
This is why Celestia and Luna were born Alicorns. Cadance could have chosen to be born an Alicorn but prefered to experience some mortality first -- she is in the process of regaining her memories. Twilight has still not begun the process of regaining her memories because she is a very new Alicorn. This is why Luna remembers Moondreamer and Dusk Skyshine, but Twilight doesn't. Yet.
(to be continued)
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Though these ideas diverge in some obvious and radical ways from those of Alex Warlorn, I never would have started thinking in these terms about the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic universe. He greatly deserves credit for this, in his PonyPOVerse.
This is fascinating, and I can't wait to see where it goes.
I'm going to botch this because of how shoddily I did at physics but the relationships between cosmics and their avatars are like the relationship between elementary particles and their functions aye?
Like how an electron can interect with other things (and probably needs to to do its job), but its main duty is to be electricity and do all its other stuff I can't think of at the moment.
The only connection I see with the POVerse mythology is the existence of multiple draconequi who are aspects of chaos. Sorry if I'm being obtuse here.
Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep.
There's your Lensman HiE crossover. The Unit and Clarissa Kinnison are dropped into Equestria by a process similar to that which removed Kim Kinnison from their timeline at the end of Children of the Lens. There are six of them and they're the ultimate products of a millennia-long breeding program, so obviously they are each analogs to Elements. I nominate Clarissa as
and Kit as 
. Hearing the exchanges between Discord and the Eddorian High Council should be particularly enlightening.
A good way of explaining the mane six and their drawbacks. They are a team of heroines and a hero the in case of spike, but they like the rest of Ponyville are a bit crazy in their own way. It would also lend to why Trixie is who she is as well and why Wisedreamer had to intervene to make sure she doesn't go nightmare.
2382609
IMO the Elements of Harmony as invented in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic were originally based on the Children of the Lens (possibly through some intermediate carrier of the idea such as the Green Lanterns), so ... yeah, why not? It even makes sense within the logic of the Lensman universe -- there is explicitly a multiverse in that series.
2382640
Are you saying that there's actual textev of an explicit inspiration of the Elements by Lensman in canon (which would be extremely awesome), or just in your own model of it?
So do you discount the Word of God tweet that Twilight will not outlive her friends, or do you think that the other mane six will ascend, or that Twilight will die in some extraordinary circumstances?
2382774
I think that either the Mane Six will all Ascend, or die together in some epically-heroic fashion. The first is more likely given Executive Meddling combined with the extremely-positive tone of the series.
2382647
I'm saying that the concepts of psychic amplifier artifacts, and of the union of a group of chosen individuals through them into a whole greater than the sum of its parts, especially coupled together in a single fictional work, originated from E. E. "Doc" Smith in the 1930's through 1950's. I do not know if the show writers ever read the Lensman series, but the concept has entered popular culture through the Green Lantern comics, which are strongly derivative of the Lensman series.
I like how the cosmic scale isn't all horror. Yes, there's an element of the terrifying, unknowable vastness of beings unto whom we are as flies unto wanton boys. But the avatar process allows them to come down to our level, to understand the strange behavior of the self-aware, self-obsessed molecular machines that not only seem to think that they matter on a higher level, but are proving it by creating new Concepts.
That's the really impressive part to me. Not just ascending to godhood, but to Elder Godhood.
(That said, I remain convinced that Pinkie's ascended form should be a draconequus. What is laughter but the mind trying to parse the unexpected interaction of disparate concepts?)
2382774
2382788 The way I heard it at the last Writers' Panel I was at was that there was going to be little if any age progression at all. That was the context in which the "is Sparity ever going to happen on the show" question was answered: no, because he is not going to get old enough for that to happen. This has implications for Granny Smith as well: no, they're not going to kill her off because they think they can't pull off characters actually dying on the show. They even suggested that the CMC are never going to get their cutie marks, although there I think they might have been being coy.
So "Twilight is not going to outlive her friends" = "the show's never going to let it get there."
Fanfiction, on the other hand, deals with precisely the sort of things that the show doesn't, including age progression. If alicorns never die -- or simply age extremely slowly, as the recent book hinted--then even if the Mane Six ascend to alicornhood, their partners, siblings, and even their children will die before they do. That's the stuff of vampire movies.
2382867 But she's so much cuter the way she is!--and I'm sure Cheese would agree.
2383265
Hey, Discord can turn into a pony.
derpicdn.net/img/2014/5/10/622884/medium.jpg
Thus Pinkie's old form will be but one of the infinite cute forms that she can assume!
2383265 The impression I got from the tweet was that it was in response to a question about the far future, so if I followed Word of God in a fic, I'd take that at face value.
That said, I personally don't consider Word of God or the EU (books and comics) to be canon, and I have my own headcanon that Cadance and Twilight aren't immortal per se. Their lifespans are tied to Shining Armor and the remaining five Element bearers, respectively, because of the reliance of the concepts they represent on other ponies. (Basically, one can not have love or friendship by oneself, so the representative of the magic of love or friendship can't live forever alone.) They could get around that if they had a different love or equally strong friendship before they lost their first anchor, but I doubt either would be looking for one.
2382119 Another connection is that the POVerse has the backup elements. And there's probably more, but I seriously can't remember anything right now. My terrible Social Studies teacher fried my brain.
2383265
Well, sure, in the context of a few years in the lives of the characters, save by violence there is no way that any of them would be dying -- probably not even Granny Smith. Even in my chronology, if the show lasts (say) 7 years (a very long TV run), at the end of that period Twilight would be 24 and AJ 29 -- still pretty darn young.
(Incidentally, one of the reason I have the real Sturm und Drang Twilight of Old Equestria stuff start happening around 8-12 years after Luna's return is my knowledge of how long TV series tend to last).
And yes, that lets them get around the whole Sparity thing because Spike would still be way too young for Rarity to actually make love to him -- it would never get beyond cuddling in the show. In fact I assume that Spike's age is the main problem -- Rarity has become more or less xenophiliac toward Dragons (actually, she shows some signs of it when she vamps Red Haze -- her admiration for his appearance may well have been quite sincere even though she was mainly trying to manipulate him). Or, perhaps more importantly, Spikeophiliac. That's the assumption I'm making in Divine Jealousy and the Voice of Reason, anyway -- that her attraction toward Spike is romantic/sexual but that she's holding back a lot because of his age, and also because she hasn't quite changed her own search image of The One to include the possibility of it being a Dragon.
Video fiction, for various cultural and practical reasons, tends not to do the passage of time very well. It's very "now" centered. That makes it bad at dealing with issues of immortality, or of love that is a bad idea due to age now but might be a better idea at some point in the future. Usually, TV would deal with something like that by doing a "next generation" type show -- they would timeskip from the end of one series to a new series set "X" years later.
The obvious solution to this, which most fanfic writers don't get because they write Equestria as technologically-static, is for medical technology to advance to the point of at least biological immortality. Which dovetails nicely with my Luna's objective of expanding Ponies offworld, and Claire's Gates.
2383313
She is Pinkie Pie, the Stotting Silliness with a Thousand Masks!
2383985 Basically, yes. I doubt the run of the show will extend over ten years, maximum, although that is a sad thought, so I don't want to dwell on it! If it DID have a run as long as the Simpsons--not necessarily a good thing--they might or might not decide to let the characters' ages progress. Bart, after all, is still in grade school, as are the kids in South Park. If they ever wanted to hit the reset button for a reboot, they certainly can do a time skip. That's more or less what I'd expect them to do, although I think they'd jump more than the one-half to one generation that Next Gen fics tend to like. Just giving all of the Mane Six partners and babies doesn't move the ball far enough down the field.
With Spike, I think the age issue probably does trump the species issue.
I figure the elements amplify the power of the bearers, in physical form or in the Rainbow Power the S4 finale introduced. Its like supercharging their virtues together in a force that so far has defeated every major enemy the Mane 6 has faced thus far. And this is very painful, toxic as described to the Night Shadows in Shadow Wars. Yet the Mane 6 can't just rainbow blast every night shadow, there are limits.
They are very important as a line of defense even in Tundara's Myths and Birthrights, yet his approach who can wield the elements is different. I recommend reading A Dream of Pride and Envy as well as the archived myths main story at this point, they have information about this.
2382107
Yes! This is more or less how the earlier, simpler Concepts work -- they are personified Laws of Physics. In the case of the newer Concepts, they are much more complex Laws, mostly of derivative sciences such as biology or psychology.
The Draconequii are Natural Processes rather than Laws. The Alicorns and Draconequii are actually dependent upon one another, as Processes cannot occur without Laws, nor Laws be realized without Processes.
This doesn't change the fact that the members of each faction mostly dislike the members of the others.
Cosmic Celestia and Cosmic Discord decided to buck this trend. The jury's out on whether or not this was a good plan.
2382867
What many modern horror writers miss, but which the best writers of the weird tales of the first half of the 20th century fully grasped, was that you need to balance wonder and horror. A world of unrelieved horror is just plain nasty, and the reader never really cares about the characters unfortunate enough to live in it.
Show the Nazgul and the Martian Fighting-Machines or the Swarm of Queen Chrysalis, but also show what they are threatening -- the lovely fortress of Minas Tirith, the English countryside, the spires of Canterlot. Better yet, show the beauty of the fictional world first, make the reader love it -- and then threaten it with destruction by some eldritch horror. That way, the reader cares about what is at risk of being lost, he feels it if the world under attack is damaged, it matters to him.
The annihilation of whole cities about whom we know and care nothing does not make us hate the Enemy. The death of or even mild abuse of a single child we've come to care for makes us swear eternal vengeance upon him. There's a reason why Tolkien shows us the Shire, Rivendell, and Lothlorien first, before we ever see Isengard or Mordor.