Backup Elements - Possible Candidates · 4:11pm Aug 19th, 2014
Introduction
So who would be (some of) the Backup Elements, and to which Concepts are they related? I'll organize this list by Element. Note that some Ponies might possibly be related to more than one Concept, it's sometimes hard to tell which because some Ponies exemplify more than one Virtue. To take an obvious point, Applejack is exceedingly Honest, Kind and Loyal based on her in-show behavior.
Magic
In addition to Twilight Sparkle, there are two obvious Backup Elements for Magic in-series: Sunset Shimmer and Trixie Lulamoon.
Sunset Shimmer
She had power and the willingness to learn how to use it. Where she badly failed was in Friendship, and this is an important failure because Magic has to coordinate the use of the Elements. Sunset Shimmer is not so much a loner as she is compulsively-dominant -- she can only conceptualize relations between persons in terms of leaders and followers. This, however, means that she does not really cherish her followers. Not can she open herself to friendship to others. Though this may be changing. Her watchword might be "Magic Is Mastery."
Trixie Lulamoon
She has less raw power than does Twilight, and also less of the patience required to learn. She may be trickier than Twilight -- she's certainly survived a long time completely on her own. She fails badly at Friendship, in the opposite way to Sunset Shimmer -- she's an Ineffectual Loner, who has nopony to help her when she's in trouble ("Boast Busters") or check her from carrying out disastrously bad plans ("Magic Duel"). Her drive is not so much to find followers as to prove herself the best. Her approach could be summed up as "Magic Is Illusion".
Generosity
My inspiration here partially comes from the Lunaverse, partly from my own:
Landscape ("Scape") Carrot
Applejack's lost love, Landscape Carrot is energetic and helpful, willing to go to great lengths to assist those in need. Captured by a Changeling Hive, he eventually manages to become their de facto leader and save their survivors when the hive is overrun by the Swarm of Queen Chrysalis. His ability to overcome his anger and feel affection even for his captors is key here. He might also for that reason be a backup Kindness, rather than Generosity.
Golden Harvest ("Carrot Top") Carrot
She is the Lunaverse Element of Generosity. Less intelligent and capable than Rarity, but much more focused on helping friends and family: she's nicer than Rarity in most conventional senses of the word. In the Shadow Wars, her quest to find Landscape, though it fails to find her brother, leads her to the ruins of Lith and the sequence of events which culminates in the defeat of the Windigo Queen -- mostly because of the actions of her best friend Derpy. She attracts the notice of Cloud Kicker / Winning Through Degradation, though at a time when the composite being has lost the ability to consume Elemental energies.
Loyalty
Ditzy ("Derpy Hooves") Doo
A good example of how a single Pony might be the backup of more than one Element, as she's Kindness in the Lunaverse. I classify her as Loyalty because pretty much every awesome thing she does in the Shadow Wars universe is directly motivated by the desire to help a friend or loved one. She risks the perils of the Everfree to secure the financial future of her child Dinky, she braves the horrors of the Windigoes to save her friend Golden Harvest "Carrot Top", and she becomes one of Luna's Champions primarily out of loyalty to Equestria.
Almost every bad thing that happens to her comes from the combination of her loyalty with her mild autism, which makes her a Horrible Judge of Character: most notably, it's how she got pregnant in the first place, and why she lets herself suffer such severe emotional damage from Cloud Kicker (notably, what makes her snap is when she realizes how the example of Cloud Kicker's behavior is harming Dinky). She is a good example of how character flaws combined with expression of an Element can be severely harmful to the character.
Her expression of Loyalty might be termed "Protectiveness" or "Support" -- she is quite emotionally-intense and has a killer instinct which is quite noticeable in times of physical danger. Not only does she have a machete, but after she fights the Windigoes, she has a magic fire sword too. If she didn't have these, she'd think of something. She always does, after all.
And you'd better not threaten her Muffin.
Lyra Heartstrings
Lyra is loyal first and foremost to her friends. Many of her earlier incarnations have been Humanoid; she dimly remembers this and is obsessed with the legends of the Eldren. She theoretically has the killer instinct of the Humanoids, but she's incredibly laid-back and sweet and any capacity she might have in that direction is not being expressed very well. She was preyed upon by Winning Through Degradation but not severely damaged, as Lust is weak against Loyalty: in the Shadow Wars universe she thinks that she had a brief but ill-advised affair with Cloud Kicker. Now lacking the emotion-affecting powers of the Vice, Cloud Kicker is unable to do her any further harm. Her expression of Loyalty might be termed "True Companionship," as she's quite cheeful, but not very emotionally intense -- her obsession with Humanoids and her love for Bon-Bon are probably the two only things in her life about which she is passionate. She's technically a member of the Fast Set, and often plays their parties, but between her love for Bon-Bon and her general good nature, she's about the least vicious member of that Set you'll ever meet.
Macintosh ("Big Mac") Apple
Big Mac's loyalty is extremely strong, but is limited to members of his family and (to a lesser extent) close friends (most of Big Mac's close friends are kin). As the Apple Clan is extremely loyal to Equestria, this results in a secondary loyalty to the Realm as a whole. His expression of Loyalty might be termed "Familial Loyalty." Its limitation is obvious -- it is difficult to generalize to all Ponykind, let alone the Life of this Universe.
Kindness
I've noted that Landscape Carrot might be a backup Kindness rather than Loyalty, since he strongly demonstrates both attributes in his career. In the Lunaverse, Ditzy Doo is Kindness -- the problem I have with this is that, while she is very kind in the normal sense of the word, she does not manifest an epic or empowered degree of Kindness. Plus, in both my Shadow Wars continuity and the Epic of Derpy and Carrot Top, she's a major Badass, and tends to fight in a direct, physical and often-lethal manner.
Blackcherry Lee ("Cheerilee") Punch
From age nine, when she had to take care of her younger sister Raspberry Lynn ("Berryshine") after the death of their father and alcoholism of their mother left her Promoted to Parent far younger than most fillies could have handled, the common theme of Cheerilee's life has been giving of herself to encourage the growth of others. She is close to the opposite of Fluttershy in many ways: most significantly she is extremely extroverted rather than introverted. She loves children and is a teacher by calling rather than merely as a job. She's not a trained fighter, but is brave, cool-headed and not easily intimidated. She is an expression of Nurturing Kindness.
(In the Lunaverse she's Laughter rather than Kindness. More on that later).
Apple Bloom
This identification requires some explanation specific to the Shadow Wars universe.
Apple Bloom's Talent can be best described as Growth, in the general sense. Specifically, she has the ability to build and grow things, where "things" can be anything from individual plants to structures to cities to whole colonies of Ponies and Earthlife on hostile worlds. Her destiny is to become the founder of the Lunar colonies and the caretaker of the Lunar Tree of Harmony. She is thus Nurturing Kindness in the largest possible sense of the word -- she is an expression of the spirit of sapience that carries itself and its associated life into previously lifeless places.
Honesty
A possible alternate Element for Big Mac is Honesty instead of Loyalty. My main reason for putting him under Loyalty is that Big Mac -- while honest -- due to his extreme introversion rarely expresses it to others. If Big Mac is Honesty, he is Honesty to Oneself as compared to Applejack's Honesty to Others. That two expressions of allied Concepts would Incarnate as siblings is not unusual: Celestia and Luna are perfect examples of that principle. It is also not unusual that two expressions of allied Concepts would be very close siblings -- again, Celestia and Luna stand as examples. Applejack and Big Mac also have a strong sibling rivalry, though it's never gotten as bad as Celestia and Luna's has been at times.
Raindrops
Raindrops is the Lunaverse Element of Honesty. She might represent Brutal Honesty as opposed to Applejack's Gentle Honesty, as she's very aggressive and consequently very unpopular. Winning-Through-Degradation was already neutralized by the point that Cloud Kicker met Raindrops, but acting on instinct Cloud Kicker partially broke her by seducing her and then making this fact public at embarrassing moments: Cloud Kicker could not consume her Element, but probably enjoyed doing this for its own sweet sake. This may symbolize the limitations of Brutal Honesty, as it can lead to self-hatred when one fails to measure up to one's own ideals. Cloud Kicker's approach notably wouldn't have worked against Applejack, who even in the Shadow Wars version of the Winningverse (where Winning-Through-Degradation defeated Pinkie Pie rather than being neutralized by her, and consequently is growing to the point where it has begun to prey on actual Alicorns), Applejack is one of the few beings who can easily resist Cloud Kicker's charms. This may be because Applejack, being Gentle rather than Brutal, is generally liked and hence in no danger of going Lone-Mad. In the Shadow Wars version of the Winningverse, of course, Winning has pretty much consumed Raindrops' Element.
Laughter
The Lunaverse has Cheerilee be Laughter, which is odd because while she is certainly cheerful, Cheerilee's main talents are not oriented around making others laugh. Nor is she particularly happy, either in canon, the early part of the Shadow Wars, or in the Lunaverse. Indeed, in the Lunaverse her past includes alcoholism, drug abuse, and extreme promiscuity -- not the traits of a genuinely happy Pony! In the Shadow Wars universe, Cheerilee deeply fears alcoholism, which claimed the life of her mother and the happiness of her next youngest sister: though she occasionally drinks, Cheerilee is terrified of the possibility of becoming an alcoholic herself.
Cheese Sandwich
He's an obvious Backup Laughter because he developed his own version of Pinkie's reality-warping powers soon after casually encountering Pinkie (when he was a blank-flanked colt; meeting Pinkie triggered his own Marking). Cheese Sandwich represents an extensive spread of Laughter (throughout Equestria) as opposed to Pinkie's intensive cultivation of Laughter amongst her friends and acquaintances in a single town. This mirrors the sedentary-mare / nomadic-stallion dichotomy from the Time of Extermination. Interestingly, Cheese and Pinkie are rivals upon encountering one another as adults, and then fall in love. This is a romantic version of the sibling rivalry and love that often characterizes the Incarnations of closely-allied Concepts. Since they're not actual siblings, they feel free to express their attraction in romantic terms.
Conclusion
These are my initial thoughts on the matter. Commentary is welcome, especially if someone thinks I've mis-assigned some of these Incarnations to Concepts, or if someone thinks there are some Ponies who should be assigned to Elements who are not on my list, or if there are Elements I should cover.
One question I have is this. If Cloud Kicker is a (badly-blighted) one of Celestia's Potatoes, then to which Element was she supposed to attune? (She failed in a very direct way -- she summoned the Vice Shadow Winning-Through-Degradation, which almost utterly consumed the Element within her and replaced it with its own psychic substance -- the reason any of Winning survived the attentions of Paradise and Pinkie is that they both have Codes Against Killing, and destroying all of Winning would kill Cloud Kicker).
I'm thinking "Loyalty," given her interest in the history of the Pegasi Clans. But I'm not sure.
I know much less about the extended universes you're referring to than you do (i.e., none at all), but I like Cheerilee as Kindness and Big Mac as Loyalty. Big Mac is a classic example of filial piety and it makes total sense. Honesty--well, he's honest, true, but he has even less to say than Mr. Ed, so maybe not so much. Also, we haven't seen many opportunities for him to show it.
Cheese Sandwich, obviously, although having to step into Pinkie's horseshoes would suck.
VERY insightful! I like it! Interesting!!! :-D
Scootaloo is a rather transparent successor to RD.
And Sweetie Belle, like many things in her life, is TOO fixated on comparing herself and imitating her big sister. She'd try to FORCE the virtue of being Generous, when her virtue is much closer to Kindness. The virtues are similar, but not identical.
There's already an actual story out which features her as Element of Loyalty, which I've helped edit: the incredibly loyal heart of a winning pony
The idea behind it, from what I could tell, was that her family ties to the Equestrian military would have been much more at the forefront, and that thus she'd feel much more the fundamental conflict between indulging her nature and trying to make her parents proud.
It could actually work, conceptually, if one were to use a different philosophical framework for how Elements are assigned; that is, that another way to "get them" is not only to have and express the appropriate quality; but also, to deeply and painfully recognize how the absence of such a virtue is conditioning one's life.
Thus, Rarity would be Generosity because she has seen that she is a very selfish pony, if she were to act on instinct; and thus, she tries to make up for it as much as possible with her conscious mind.
Likewise, Twilight was nearly friendless before arriving in Ponyville, and recognizing that that is not a good way to live triggered the eleventh hour epiphany that gave her the tiara.
There's also a case for Pinkie secretly suffering from depression or bipolar disorder, or for Rainbow Dash to "cover up" disloyal tendencies by hanging around her childhood friend as much as possible. Or for Fluttershy being so terrified of her own temper that she overcompensates in the other direction, but those last examples are kind of reaching.
What do you think?
Additional ideas for elements Cloud Kicker could use:
Generosity
In its most crass sense. Yeah, I went there.
Jokes aside, one thing that remains a constant in her worldview, and that struck me as interesting, is that she thinks she's always available to others.
She's always ready to give out her time to others: at the first sign of interest, she drops everything to spend time and energy for the ponies around her.
In her case, her flavour of the virtue would be Generosity-As-Validation: by giving so much of herself, by...well, degrading herself by giving out her services (and I don't mean only the carnal ones; sitting down to lend an ear to the first person who comes along is something she does often) for free, by devaluing herself, she can feel as if she is of importance to the ponies around her.
Kindness
This requires some...fairly intensive mental gymnastics, but it becomes plausible if one where to only consider intent*; IF she truly believes sex heals all wounds and helps all problems, AND if such a belief is not a way to rationalize her own lifestyle...there could be a cause there that she tries to help as many ponies as possible in the most fundamental and effective way she has.
Failing hilariously, of course, but still.
*i.e. if it only matters whether a pony has the magical mojo for the element but NOT if she's actually good at it herself. To make an example, a compulsive liar who nonetheless treasure Honesty and tries and fail to live its life by it would fit the bill.
And now I want to write a story where Cloud Kicker has the same backstory as the Winningverse, but her sex addiction is played completely straight (making her a very, very damaged individual) and where she nonetheless gets an element.
Dammit.
On the plus side, it'd be darkly hilarious, especially if one where to give her a profound, crippling loneliness and having her memorize PUA tactics in desperation. And having her blow half her paycheck in prostitutes anyway.
Also, I now feel every instance of Derpy should have a flaming sword, including my own. Though in that case, she certainly has plenty of strange and exotic weapons in her attic. Who's to say she doesn't already have one?
I have to say, I really don't like what you've done with Cloud Kicker. It's one thing to dislike a character. It's quite another to make her host to an eldritch abomination. That level of demonization is undeserved for all but the absolute worst literary sins. It didn't work when Alan Moore tried it with Harry Potter, and for me, it doesn't work here.
Aside from that, very interesting analyses of potential Bearers. I can't help but wonder about the other Crusaders, though. Not necessarily what Elements they might channel, but what you think their talents are.
Another suggestion for a backup for honesty might be Maud Pie. She's unflinchingly honest (she's unflinchingly everything, of course) but in an emotionless, scientific way: her dress doesn't say anything because clothes don't talk; she wasn't looking at that spider, she was looking at the rock underneath. The fact that she's never told Pinkie that she doesn't eat the necklaces indicates that she isn't trying to be brutally honest, and she does understand how to omit information when it might hurt someone, she's just not willing when the only goal is social niceties.
I'm a bit confused now about Cloud Kicker. I thought she was the victim of a Shadow, but the way you write about her here, she seems a willing accomplice to Winning-Through-Degradation. You say that she summoned it and that she preyed on Elements even after WTD was "neutralized." I understand your interpretation of her, but this seems counter to one of the major themes of MLP: Redemption.
I figure all the fan verses handle the selection of the Elements differently. Myths and Birthrights by Tundara is a good example. With the way he is structuring his version of the the ponies' world, including the mythology behind the alicorns is different. Then again, he's going a different path and season 1/2 are solidly canon for Myths. For one, the alicorns are their own breed solidly and the only way to bring about more is alicorn breeding. Yet he has a deep world he's building regardless.
What about the other Crusaders? And the other foals, like Dinky or Pound Cake or Pumpkin Cake? And I also think Shining Armor would do well as Loyalty, and Cadenza as Kindness.
*blink blink*
You got a lot of story stored up in your head, don't ya?
I'd like to see more stuff in show focusing on Big Mac. In the meantime, I have a story about him partly written and outlined, A Long Morning at Sweet Apple Acres, which is about what Big Mac and the Apples (minus Applejack in the later parts, of course) did on the night and early morning of the Summer Sun Celebration of YOH 1500. Basically, a look at Big Mac's relationships with his family, and how he leads their defense of Sweet Apple Acres against hordes of monsters from the Everfree.
Cheerilee is another character I find highly impressive. She's very determined and yet incredibly nice, which is why I can see her as a backup Kindness. In Collateral Damage one of the only bright spots is the way in which Cheerilee manages to hold her family together and begin on the path that will lead her to become a magnificent teacher.
As should be obvious from Collateral Damage, I assume that Mac and Cheerilee have been friends since childhood, and that what starts in "Hearts and Hooves Day" is not so much a discovery of each other as a rediscovery after circumstances (Cheerilee being a couple of years older, and her going off to a secondary school at Canterlot while he stayed behind at Sweet Apple Acres) broke their childhood friendship. I hope they wind up together.
I feel like an idiot because I didn't think of this earlier.
Pinkie Pie could make a good element of Magic/Friendship, under the right circumstances
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Ooh, that's a good point.
I didn't discuss alternate identifications of the Mane Six, but there are some obvious ones -- Applejack as Kindness or Loyalty and Twilight as Honesty being the obvious ones to my mind.
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Yeah ... in the better side of Cloud Kicker's personality, I get even from the fanon Winningverse stories a very strong sense of loyalty to her family, friends, and the Realm as a whole. Cloud Kicker's problem -- if she's not possessed by a demon -- is that she has no understanding of normal romantic emotions and aggressively inflicts her obsessive pursuit of sex-judged-by-volume-and-variety-of-encounters on everypony else, even her friends. She bends her powerful intellect and considerable charisma toward this end.
My main reason for thinking that she is possessed by a demon is that she is able to convince other ponies of things which should not be possible within the bounds of normal Pony psychology -- the way in which Lyra and Bon-Bon accept her intrusion into their relationship, or Luna orders Twilight to study her being prime examples of this. Everypony else in contact with her suffers a severe diminuation of intellect and willpower, which looks to me like a psychic attack (specifically, in the Hero System it would be a Power Drain with Invisible Power Effects -- they don't notice they're being drained -- one of the most dangerous abilities in the game).
Another possibility is that Cloud Kicker was simply born with a particularly nasty combination of psychic ability and goals.
... assuming a predisposition to the virtue with its expression being blocked, yes.
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The problem I see with Cloud Kicker as Generosity is that she's not particularly generous save to her family and friends. The problem with her as Kindness is that she's not at all nice to her casual lovers -- she will kick them out of her bed the moment she's finished having sex with them, and then humiliate them in public by loudly talking about their encounters. She will also speak in ways obviously meant to denigrate the beloveds of others, to the face of those others -- often by alluding to previous sexual experiences with those others. She's not unusually Selfish, but she is quite Cruel.
Again, the "demonic power" aspect of this is that she's mostly liked anyway. IMO somepony who behaved like her would be seriously despised by pretty much everypony in the community who was aware of her behavior -- especially many of her casual lovers. Some of the thing she does looks as if she were trying to make everypony hate her -- which under the demonic posession theory might be some last defiant remnant of Cloud Kicker warning others to keep away from her.
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Cloud Kicker summoned Winning-Through-Degradation -- not entirely understanding what she was summoning -- when she was a lonely little filly around the age of the CMC when we first meet them, and long before she had any real understanding of love or sexuality other than "it's how Ponies show they really like each other." She wanted to be liked.
Her entire sexual development occurred under the influence of Winning-Through-Degradation. Pinkie and Paradise mostly free her of the demon (robbing it of almost all its power and definitely of its ability to control Cloud Kicker) when they encounter Cloud Kicker years before Luna's return (at a time when Pinkie Pie is only a bit older than the CMC are now).
The problem is that simply freeing Cloud Kicker of the demon's control doesn't free her of the habits she's learned. Under Winning's tutelage and control, Cloud Kicker became incredibly promiscuous and with a very predatory approach to sexuality. She can't really "consume" Elements any more, but what she can do is emotionally-damage potential Element Bearers, and that can indirectly make their attunement more difficult to impossible. And she is still drawn to them, because Winning shaped her perceptions that way.
The biggest obstacle to her redemption is that -- to change -- she would first have to acknowledge to herself that she did terrible things (to be plain, given the demon's powers she essentially participated in the commission of hundreds of rapes accompanied by pyschic maiming of her victims) and also degraded herself under Winning's influence. Also, as time passes, she would have to acknowledge that she is now choosing of her own free will to continue this behavior in the more limited manner now possible.
She would rather think that she was just a really cool Pony who everypony wanted because she's so awesome and that what she summoned was just something that helped her a little with expressing her amazingness, until Pinkie Pie somehow used her weird Pinkie powers to hurt her just for being friendly. In part, because what Old Pegasus Clan honor would impel her to do if she really faced up to her own behavior would be suicide. Preferably, against a foe, and preferably against something from the Shadowverse.
Yes, this is a terribly sad concept. I don't know how I'm going to resolve it (if I ever do, but not resolving it is sad in another way), but Redemption Equals Death is a distinct possibility in her case.
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More than I'm ever likely to write, given the long-term economic necessity of establishing myself as a writer in my own story universes, such as the Age of the Ver (sapient high-tech dromaeosaurs on Earth 65 MYA) American Mandate (America becomes an empire and conquers much of the Solar System) and the Terran Confederation (Humans become more enlightened, make peace with other sapient animals, and Uplift many species both from Earth and other worlds as we rise to rule the Galaxy). Though I suspect something of the ideas I've come up with for the Shadow Wars verse will find their way in there now -- I've been thinking so much about it, after all.
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I can live with this... I thought that you were implying that Cloud Kicker maliciously and with full knowledge of her actions summoned a demon and preyed on other ponies. I can totally see her mistakenly and naively acting (a lot of her actions in the canon Winningverse follow that pattern). And the Shadows are obviously good at encouraging this sort of thing. Look at Nightmare Moon.
Redemption Through Death would be sad, but I could see it. A last (and hopefully successful) attempt at regaining her awesomeness, radicalness, and coolness (they're separate things, just ask Rainbow Dash.
)
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Well, yeah, the idea would work better as an alternate universe where things went slightly differently-maybe Winning* was only able to influence the perception of others but not of Cloud herself, or vice versa. Or maybe Winning never existed and Cloud became who she is through another way, or whatever.
*You know, you keep referring to it as Winning-through-degragation, but now that I think about it, Winning itself as a singular concept isn't exactly positive...food for thought...
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...isn't it simpler to assume the Winningverse hinges on a couple of simple but profound plot holes?
I mean, I really like it, and it has spawned some very, very good fics (A Moment in the Sun, The Lunar Rebellion, Rise of the Phoenix Empress et al come to mind), but it's not exactly the bible
Point of fact, I don't think I've actually upvoted The Life and Times of a Winning Pony, and I think it actually works better if you pretend Cloud herself is a huge unreliable narrator and wrote an epic of how she wishes things had gone...
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I just had a thought: in The Lunar Rebellion, it's heavily implied that at some point a quasi-real simulacrum of Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon is summoned to aid the rebel's cause.
In the future, Shadow Kicker's armor is known to have magic stealing properties*, and Shadow used said Armor to fight the host-less Nightmare.
Shadow Kicker is shown to be intensely uncomfortable when an enemy approaches her sexually (see her interactions with Sunbeam Sparkle), to the point where it's almost a weakness of hers: it takes her quite a long time to get over the way Sunbeam approaches once in a while. A demon would presumably tailor its own personality** and power set to be as damaging as possible to the first enemy it would encounter.
...I think I just found out a semi-plausible explanation of where Winning-Through-Degradation came from...
*it shortens Tirek by a couple of inches before the bearer is curb-stomped.
**Oh God, the concept itself is nauseous.
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Have you considered self-ebook publishing?
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Ahh, but she doesn't understand that she's hurting them-in her mind, everything is "just joshing". Unless it's pointed out to her and she apologizes, in which case it was "just one time".
Remember, whenever she's around other ponies, Winning bends everybody's perception to put Cloud in the most favorable light-if Derpy and Blossomforth don't complain (at first), how would she know that they're in pain? Especially if she has a voice in her head feeding her own rationalizations?
She's about as cruel as a baby. And anybody who's worked with babies can tell you that they're plenty cruel*.
Also, sorry for commenting like six times in a row; it was the only way I could manage to keep track of my thoughts in reasonable chunks
*seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. Morality and Empathy are things that are learned and taught, they're not just instincts (although they come from them).
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I could have gone that route, but that wouldn't have really explained her actions, only regressed the question, which would then have become "Why would a young and innocent Cloud Kicker be so malevolent?" And the answer is that she wasn't. Heck, as an adult she has to lie to herself about what she's doing to keep doing it.
I envision the young Cloud Kicker as a brilliant but alienated and lonely young filly, who wanted friends but had no idea how to get them, and wanted to be special like the characters she read about in history books. (It's Winningverse canon that she's fascinated by history). So when she heard about a way to get power -- and charisma -- she didn't stop to count the costs.
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I'm seriously considering it, because I think a lot of my writing would be more popular with the general public than it would be with most editors at old-style publishing houses. Self-publication would be the most obvious route for my planned novels, though I think that my short stories could sell to more traditional magazines. Baen Books is also a possibility -- they are much more open-minded than most of the publishing houses.
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Well, I assume in my main Shadow Wars universe that Cloud Kicker never got to have that childhood affair with Fluttershy, though she certainly wanted to do so. She has a huge crush on Fluttershy, which she expresses mostly by leering at her and acting very suggestively to her -- which creeps the heck out of Fluttershy and actually has tended to make her stick closer to Rainbow Dash and Rarity.
The adult Fluttershy isn't actually afraid of Cloud Kicker -- since she's developed The Stare she need not really be afraid of any Pony below the power level of an Alicorn -- but she finds her upsetting.
I've come up for a name for the Shadow Wars version of the Winningverse. It's the "Degradationverse," and Pinkie Pie knows it exists because the fate of her alternate in that world gave her the key warning she needed in most other timelines to defeat Winning-Through-Degradation when it attacked her as an adolescent. This is, in fact, why only the "Degradationverse" is seriously in danger from Winning-Through-Degradation -- Pinkie and Paradise aborted its rampage in the other ones.
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Both of these are sad fates for Cloud Kicker, though less sad for everypony else. Essentially, she'd be mostly just deluded.
Indeed ... I've more than once reading the canon Winningverse stories wondered what exactly Cloud Kicker imagines she's "winning." She's abandoned a potentially-brilliant military career (she is both very highly-intelligent and demonstrably charismatic) for a career in the Weather Patrol, and the only thing she seems to be good at is having sex with lots and lots of other Ponies. Which is more of a hobby than a career, and one which if the writer wasn't on board would probably not make her very popular in any sense save the purely sexual one -- she wouldn't have many real friends. And actually in the Winningverse itself she doesn't have a lot of real friends, and she abuses the few she has, mostly because of her nymphomania, to the point where she drives most of them away. Which is kind of sad.
I want to comment on Sunset Shimmer. She's the counterpart to Twilight that had Celestia as a mentor. I haven't watched EG and I don't intend to. She seems like a real piece of work compared to Twilight.
In Chengar's connected one shots side work of Tales from the Phoenix Empire, things are different from show canon and the primary Winningverse. So far none of the one-shots have peeked in on the Kickers in any form. For continuity, You need to read Rise of the Phoenix Empress and perhaps the Lunar Rebellion as it includes a character from LR as a alternate ruler instead of Celestia.
Do you consider all these other 'verses to be "Multiversal canon" to yours? Obviously the reverse would be up to the respective authors of each other 'verse, but do exact replicas of the stories you mention run parallel to this Equestria like you mention Wisedreamer helping in?
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Versions of them, yes. In some cases the versions are quite different; for instance, my version of the Winningverse is the Degradationverse, because the stuff that takes place in the Winningverse requires a huge stallion dearth, and much of it doesn't make sense even in its own terms. Generally, the nonsense radiates based on the inverse square of the distance from Cloud Kicker.
In other cases, the obvious differences are deep background or inconsistencies. For instance, my Cosmics are different in some ways from Alex Warlorn's, also the rest of the planet (beyond Equestria) is different from his, so the World Tour happens a bit differently. Specifically, my Equestrian Earth is from YOH 1500-1504 embroiled in the Great Tauran War (a war in the Old Worlds, which Equestria manages to avoid entering).
Some individuals have different backstories, too.
I know that this is an old blog post but by now the backup element bearers has increased in size.
Minuette would be a good candidate for laughter.
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You're definitely right about Minuette. Possibly Laughter-as-Optimism.
Twilight's circle of friends included Lyra (who I've already mentioned as a potential bearer) and Moon Dancer (who, given the events in Dancing Alone is obviously special).