We Hit Jackpot! · 3:36am Mar 16th, 2015
In less picture-based terms, it's the other triple I'm familiar with. While I probably won't walk away a big casino winner, I am holding my head quite high.
Now, for your reading entertainment, the last question Tia currently has in her fanmail box.
What happened 1,000 years ago? Discord, King Sombra, Nightmare Moon? A millennium ago you must of been a pretty bad ruler, Celestia, to let all that happen.
~A needless fluffing of the name for a fireball
"First off, no, they all didn't happen a thousand years ago. Only Luna has that exact date; the rest came at other periods of time further beyond that millenium.
While I don't quite remember exactly when each threat occurred at present time, I do remember the order: the Sirens, Tirek, Sombra, Discord, and NMM to my current knowledge.
Second off, assuming I'm an awful ruler because I let evil threats crop up in my land is like calling a farmer terrible because he let weeds crop up in his garden. I can lay down all the wards, laws and protection all I like on Equestria; a threat will still rise all the same, in the face of such adversity, and I have to be there and pull it or seal it away so it doesn't cause any more problems.
If I were truly as awful as you think, I would sit idle and watch it raze my land while sipping Royal Blend #37, zero bucks given. I am NOT that careless. I care for my ponies and do everything in my power to ensure their lives aren't a miserable hell under the hoof of a tyrant, jester, or soul-sucking leech. As much head pain as they give me, they are still capable of greatness, and I still believe in that possibility to this day.
Don't you dare suggest otherwise."
what about the nobles? they're a damn big evil
Well spoken. This is why you're best princess.
2881630 Well, for all we know, she's executing a slow and subtle plot to rid herself of the nobles as we speak. She does that, to my knowledge.
2881643 its not fast enough
2881646 To your pitiful mortal mind, maybe. Mountains crumble in one blink of Celestia's eyne and all that jazz. She can take her time.
2881649 uhh eyne?
Not to mention the thousand comments.
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2881630 I always imagined the "nobles" we're just rich people with no real adjacent political power (that money can't buy...)
2881651 I've been reading too much Shakespeare. Old-fashioned word for "eyes." Felt it fit.
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Can't expect a NLR supporter to understand politics
. If you just rip someone out of power who has influence, you'll either destabilize the system they bent and corrupted to keep themselves in power, which the rest of the good things you DO want are being supported by. Or you'll cause civil strife, or potentially a civil war. Things have to be done slowly, like how a starfish kills a mussel, by slowly tugging open its shell until the mussel can no longer keep its shell closed to protect its soft inner meat.
If you just rush in with an axe swinging, then you better be ready to completely wipe the slate clean and build something new and better immediately, because even while you get that set up your people are going to go through all kinds of unnecessary hardships that will make their simple little minds hate you, even though you're fighting for them.
Ave Sol Invictus. For Her Solar Empire.
2881852 but what if half of the nobles are plotting an assassination attempt? so then Celestia would be forced to arrest and possibly kill said half of nobles which would still have the possibility of a civil war respublica luna nova
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Incorrect! A civil unrest/strife/war issue would come about mostly if the nobles -seemed- innocent. Then they could play for public support against the 'tyrant sun queen' who is 'oppressing them'. Such as if Celestia just ran in and was like "ARGH ALL YOU NOBLES GOTTA DIE!" then... well. They'd rise up against her, and it'd LOOK legitimately like she was evil even though she was trying to help the common pony in Equestria.
If they are accused and proven of plotting seditious acts, ESPECIALLY regicide against everyone's favorite monarch who has taken care of them their entire lives and their parents' lives, etc. etc. for a thousand years effectively on her own, making sure the world kept spinning as it were, providing a stable and safe society for them to live in and grow in and play in and all the freedom they could want... then everyone would cry out for noble blood.
That is how fickle the 'group mind' is. They'd turn against Celestia despite all she's done, for just one act that looked bad. But it'd take something serious to turn them against the nobles, simply because the nobles line pockets with gold and don't LOOK too bad on the outside.
2883715 But what if they framed her like lets say they got some form of proof that celestia knew about the changeling invasion and that cadance was chrysalis and instead of actually going all fuck your ass up mode like we know she can do she held back a lot..
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Celestia was the only shown victim of that attack. (Which is bullshit, anyway - you're right in that she could have toasted Chrysalis, but I feel that in putting out enough power to stop someone as strong as Chrysalis she ran the chance of their exchanged blows potentially harming or killing the innocent ponies nearby, especially the main girls/Twilight.) If we assume ponies just trotted off without a care in the world like we were shown, I doubt they'd even mind. (Makes no sense!) But I digress. People try to put up 'evidence' all the time, and usually that can be handled with an invited third-party investigation, full disclosure, and PR damage control.
The people would have to -see her personally- make a move, rather than hearing about it. The public already kinda distrust nobles because they're snobby. It would have to be a direct order from Celestia herself. They wouldn't see the reasons why, just see her taking action against people who have influence in her country who haven't seemed to do anything harmful.
Now, if they baited her into attacking them first for the good of Equestria, THEN they could turn the people against her. But Celestia is far too old and wise for that. You can't be shallow-minded and short-sighted and keep peace for a thousand years.
2884047 while yes you bring up good points but we know celestia is better than just losing control over her power and hurting/killing innocent ponies
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2884616 where the fuck do those ponies get that god damn popcorn
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The Pink Dimension, obviously.
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2884680 ah yes I forgot about the pink dimension
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*sitting here taking notes on this debate*
U-Uh, I mean, I'm busy coming up with totally original content for the next letter instead of figuring out how to handle the Canterlot Wedding. Yep, that's what I'm doing.
For realzies.
2884230
Yes and no! That's a common mistake to think that we ever have full control when using over-developed abilities. Especially when we almost never have to use them to their full extent. For a real-world equivalent, this is true of our musculature, of which I can attest to. It can be very difficult for me to hold back, especially since it's not every day that I need to gauge how hard I hit someone. Most of the unfortunately frequent fights I've had in my life that were bare-handed did not last long, and I've often been accused of unnecessary force despite self-defense.
On to the fantasy scale, I believe Chrysalis became powerful enough not to defeat Celestia by any stretch of the imagination, but strong enough that Celestia could not hold back enough to prevent collateral damage. This is all headcanon, but the plausibility is solid, so let me spin this for you:
Let us picture that Celestia's combat magic is heat/light based, for she is our Revered Dawnmother and effective Avatar of the First Light. Now, we know that at some point Celestia (possibly with Luna's help, or alone if after NMM) populated Tartarus with all the nastiness that's in there. A jail for dark creatures too powerful to remove normally. Essentially, she put all the demons in Hell so they couldn't harm Equestria.
I still hold this to be canonical evidence pointing to Cerberus being Tartarus' appointed guardian by Celestia, or even possibly just being her dog. Perhaps even a conquered and reformed beastie who would have otherwise been put in Tartarus himself.
Back on point. We know she's got the power to take down Chrysalis from this (we shall refer to it as a 'feat', using the colloquial Marvel/DC comic fandom power-comparison form) yet she does not win in a contest of magic power. Now, we could be silly and believe that Shining Armor's love is so powerful that he's completely supercharged her... (let's call it an erosthaumic organ) processes and given her so much magic power that she's ascended past the pony who has controlled the heavens and defended Equestria by herself for the last thousand years.
But that would be dumb.
Instead, we can assume that while Chrysalis was supercharged, it was to the point that she surprised Celestia by being stronger than her usual opponents, what with effectively being the alicorn of the Changelings. However, as we can see Chrysalis FLINCH when their beams collide, she expected to lose that battle - VERY easily. She was scared. In other words, she knew that she could normally not hold off Celestia, or overtake her. Let us then imagine that Celestia normally operates at around an arbitrary percentage of her power... eh, 30%. But barely uses 5% of that a day for basic levitation purposes outside of actually raising and setting the sun and moon. For previous, ancient combat purposes, let's believe she's rarely had to go above that 30%, if ever.
With that in mind, knowing how hard she kicks ass up to 30%, she's honestly not going to be too familiar with 31%-100%, only that the devastation must be insane. She refused to fight Nightmare Moon out of not wanting to hurt her sister, if we remember, and Nightmare Moon made Luna relatively more powerful than ever. If we use my model, this implies that if she goes above her usual amount of power, she doesn't know how badly Luna could be hurt - or even killed, and she's willing to suffer herself rather than let that happen to her beloved family. She eventually resorted to the Elements, whose effects are apparently unknown but mostly benign (from what we know, she would know that they put Discord in stone, but did not kill him) and she chose to imprison her only sister rather than let her destroy the world with eternal night (Lauren Faust confirmed NMM to be a genocidal villain on her dA Q&A years ago). Now, if Celestia was not powerful enough to thrash her sister, all reason and logic dictates she would have fought NMM head-on, understanding that she was unlikely to kill her, but hopefully powerful enough to stop her. Instead, she abstains from direct combat in a situation that practically begged for it.
Marching on! So she goes up to this arbitrary 30%, but doesn't really know what she can do beyond that. When has she had to fight something she had to go all-out on? In cases like Sombra, she and Luna fought together. Against Discord, he was too powerful for both of them (their messed up looks and damage during Twilight's little look into the past attests that they did some fighting and potentially failed) and he had to be hit with the Elements. It's not definitively stated, but considering that Celestia states that Tirek was sent to Tartarus for his crimes, we can assume rather easily that she and Luna stomped his monkey-centaur ass before he got strong enough to steal their magic (thanks to Scorpan's betrayal) and sent him to Hell. So for all we know, she's not had to turn up the knob any more than that! Then we come to a situation where Luna's narcoleptic blue butt is asleep during the Invasion, the Elements are no longer bound to her, and she's facing an enemy who managed a power-up that even surprised said enemy.
Two options. Push it to the limit! which risks untold collateral damage. How much damage does she cause at 50%? 70%? Can she risk it? Sure, she's got her little ponies nearby, and any good ruler knows that to save all of them you sometimes have to sacrifice some of them. That likely wouldn't have caused her to take the fall, at most hesitate due to her caring personality (Celestia is shown during the battle with Discord to be the Bearer of Friendship/Magic, Generosity, and Kindness) but the big kicker? Twilight Sparkle and the Bearers of the Elements are literally all of five feet away. What happens if that 50% or more releases enough heat/light energy to literally incinerate whatever's standing too close to her? How would she know? How could she STOP it? She -has- to turn up the heat to stomp a mudhole in Chrysalis' carapace, but if she does there's always the risk of losing her precious student and the only mares who can currently wield the Elements, and therefore Equestria's only line of defense against ancient evil threats more powerful than she can handle on her own such as Discord. If she sacrificed them, what happens when a Discord-level threat appears? Equestria is doomed.
Option two! Throw the Faustdamned fight and rely on her student and/or her niece to come up with a plan to stop Chrysalis, who is now newly empowered with sheer arrogance to believe she is invincible for defeating the most powerful pony in the world, the guardian of Equestria, and ruler of the heavenly light (praise be unto Her). Thus dropping her guard and attentiveness long enough for those two ponies she trained herself to figure something out. In other words, take a great personal risk in order to give others the chance for victory. That is a very chessmaster-like gambit, especially one that might play on Chrysalis' obvious weakness of her ego. Something a very intelligent and wise person would come up with. She effectively gave them an opening by allowing herself to go down.
On top of that, even if we don't assume that Celestia has enough unstoppable thaumic thermo-radiation to kill ponies nearby when she cuts loose, a fight is an uncertain thing. It's not like in anime where the two combatants always smash attacks and weapons together each time and never miss or dodge. What would happen if she ended up deflecting one of Chrysalis' attacks at a wrong angle? It might hit Twilight and the girls. What would happen if the battle dragged on too long, and Chrysalis - realizing she was going to lose - pointed her horn at previously said Mane 6 and did her villain monologue of "Derp derp I'm holding your student hostage, Celestia! If your horn so much as twitches I'll blast her and her friends out the window!" What if Chrysalis used a spell that wasn't just some pointless beam, but an honest to goodness actual combat spell, perhaps some sort of poisonous cloud for all we know. Collateral damage comes in a nearly infinite number of unknown forms, and you can't predict exactly what's going to happen until it does. But that means risking one of your closest/only friends and Equestria's best hope against the strongest enemies that might ravage it. Can you risk it?
A whole lot of assumptions, as I said. But given my line of thinking and how silly the execution of the Invasion's duel was, and what we know about Celestia canonically, with the power of deductive reasoning, realistic situational probability, analytical insight, and the almighty inference, I believe this headcanon makes the most sense of all theories. Celestia lost on purpose to protect her loved ones, and give them the opening to put a boot up the bug's butt. Either because she's literally too powerful to face Chrysalis safely, or because a protracted contest between them could result in indispensable hostages or collateral damage from area attacks or whatnot. I also feel this fits in with Celestia's previous Bearer status and her overall personality.
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2884839 once again you bring up good point but what if while she is using her own magic she also subconsciously draws off of the suns power so if its noon she's at the peak of her power with no way to tune it down and this also explains why she wouldn't fight NMM its not because she was too strong its because she was too weak it also explains why Luna is the guardian of dreams and the night and why we so rarely see luna awake in the show at day
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It's a possibility! However, it's one of a nearly infinite number of possibilities without as much context. If you can control the sun and moon at will, is there a point to your power waning just because one's in the sky? Technically you could throw both of them up there and then Celestia and Luna could go on a warpath together in such a case. That's a very Avatar Firebender/Waterbender setup, which I find interesting enough for a story, but perhaps not solid enough to be a reason.
Rather that the Sisters are 'avatars' of their charges. Here's what I believe:
We know for a fact that Hearth's Warming Eve as a play is hilariously out of date (One? Two? Three thousand years? More? Celestia's journal in the Sisters' Castle was referred to as 'thousands', being plural, and you'd usually say 'couple of thousand' or 'two thousand' if it's that, but 3+ is just 'thousands) and made into a play that children can put on for parents or attend at sanctioned pageants such as the one the Mane Six put on in Canterlot. So we have the three tribes: The Pegasi are warmongering expansionist conquerors. The Earth Ponies are just trying to do their own thing but wind up as serfs for the militant aerials and the Unicorn nobility. The Unicorns live in a royal-based hierarchy. The Pegasi provide military protection and weather management for the Earth Ponies, under threat of letting them be overrun by wild beasts, monsters, and perhaps invaders from other species. The Earth Ponies make the food, and are thus necessary and important, but are the bottom of the ladder because the only threat they have is not producing food, which would get them killed long before they starved. But the Unicorns, what do they have?
The play says the Unicorns controlled the sun and moon. I think that's a lie, a great big lie that makes perfect sense to have been a lie. The Unicorns are intellectuals. Socialites. Artists. Craftsmen. It's too early on and in the dark ages of all things for them to know the extents of what's possible with magic, plus we know that unless their cutie mark is magic-related, Unicorns rarely know more than a handful of basic spells and potentially one related to their special talent (Rarity's gem-finding spell IS her special talent, not making dresses). So the Pegasi are eying them up, wondering why they shouldn't just march in and subdue the Unicorns and make them serfs just like the Earth Ponies. The Earth Ponies wonder why they should bother giving the snooty and crafty Unicorns any of their food to live. The Unicorns look around, and realize that magic is an even bigger mystery to the other ponies than it is to them. Now, what's the biggest thing they can hold over everyone else's heads... well, it's LITERALLY over their heads! The sun and moon that've been going up and down for as long as anyone can remember! "You see that? We do that. That's us. You don't feed us, you don't protect us from yourselves and others, that stops and we all die." Becomes the highest of state secrets that Unicorns don't -actually- control the heavens, and strong Unicorns are drafted to act the part of raising and lowering, so that even the Unicorn populace in general believes that is what they do - a self perpetuating lie, the kind of thing you'd expect from an intellectual in a situation where life and death is on the line. (If Unicorns were responsible for the sun and moon, the planet would have died off while they tried to figure out how to use levitation in the early days, nevermind figure out how to control the sky. Fridge Logic, ho!)
Where I'm going with this is, Celestia and Luna have -always- been in charge of the Sun and Moon. They're always connected to the heavenly bodies, whether they're 'up' or 'down'. They're always drawing power from them. I imagine there's a limit to how much they can draw on, possibly based on experience and willpower or whatnot, but that's going into "add a numerical system to an inference" territory and that gets spotty, since I'm not that good at mathematical bio-ethric conversions. Anyway, using said logic, we have more context for Celestia and Luna to not be empowered or depowered based on the position of the sun and moon, which they control with a flick of their horns in either case.
2887118 damn you can make an entire 30 minute youtube video with all of your comments