And That's Terrible Chapter 4: The Follow-Up · 3:38am Aug 21st, 2015
Well, folks, it took me three years, but I finally finished the brawl between a magic pony princess and the premier comic book supervillain.
This took me forever to get together, for a number of reasons. First, I'm lazy and stupid. Second, there was no real way for me to get Celestia out of her predicament from the end of the third chapter without feeling like a cheap copout, which would have admittedly been in the same vein as the Silver Age comics this story was styled after. Then supplementary materials introduced Celestia's fiery "war form," and we had an idea.
And third, I really didn't know how I would end it.
The stuff with Superman and Luna was thrown in out of necessity. Originally, I wasn't going to show the battle against the robot army at all; Celestia just shows up after Luthor teleports away to find they've neatly dismantled all of them. I eventually realized this was stupid and a disservice to everyone wanted to see Princess Luna kick a robot's head off, so I figured I'd show a scene of them nearing defeat, cut back to Celestia, and then cut back to show them standing triumphant. After I figured out this was similarly a disservice, I finally just threw in the Mane 6 in a Big Damn Heroes moment, which is, again, appropriate considering the story's style.
Celestia blinding Luthor was a part of the story since the very first words were typed out. It was originally followed by her bucking his armor over and over until it broke, but that didn't seem big enough for a climax. So we got a Macross Missile Massacre instead.
In the original planned ending, all three heroes would have confronted Luthor at his bunker together. The cannon would have simply exploded when Luthor tried to fire it out of desperation, again because part of the door had damaged the crystals inside. The sudden Kryptonite exposure would have weakened Superman enough that Luna had to teleport him out, leaving Celestia with the moral dilemma. (And no, there was never a draft where Celestia left him to die. As much as it sucks for her, Celestia is a good pony that values life, and wouldn't let someone die simply to sate her own hunger.)
The giant cake was directly inspired by a Silver Age Superman story, where Superman bakes a giant cake as a final farewell to Smallville before moving to Metropolis. (Clark Kent is moving at the exact same time, but surely that's a coincidence.) And yes, "Super-Baking" was a real power Superman had. The dude once had the power to shoot tiny duplicates of himself from his fingertips. He flew around the world really fast until it spun around backwards to travel through time. His sneezes could destroy galaxies. He managed to get out of paying the IRS a billion dollars - in the 1960s. I'm just saying that being able to bake stuff really good and really fast isn't Silver Age Superman's most bizarre power.
There were originally two epilogue scenes that I ended up scrapping. The first was Superman sharing a piece of the cake with Lois, who is doubtful about its origins and his adventures with magic pony princesses. (Then again, the DC Universe has super-intelligent gorillas, martians, space rocks that turn you gay, casual time travel, and a civilian population that isn't suicidal like Marvel's, so it's pretty easy to see why magic ponies would be pretty believable.) The second was to jump companies and have the whole affair be watched by Doctor Doom, who is now planning his own conquest of Equestria. The first was dropped partially because I didn't like how the joke was coming out (and because the New 52 is stupid and I hate it and Superman and Wonder Woman do not go together stop building altars to Kingdom Come already and get your act together). The second was dropped because I didn't like how the joke was coming out, and really did not want to write a sequel to this.
The one thing I did keep was Celestia winking at you. That was a deliberate shout out to how so many of Superman's comics ended with him winking at the audience after a lame pun or someone brushing off any possibility that he and Clark Kent are the same person. Nothing special, but it was important to me.
And so Celestia has defeated Luthor. While she didn't get back the stolen forty cakes, she did get a giant-sized one, and isn't that what life is all about?
See you in fifty years when I update something again.
Poor Luthor never learned that Macross Missile Massacres NEVER work! Like... EVER! Missiles are like ninjas, the more of them you have the less effective they are!
Man, don't stress about the update thing!
As I'm pretty sure I said, or at least implied, over in the story - this has been a fun ride, and I've enjoyed it. Also of your two proposed alternate endings, I like the Clark/Lois one the best and will personally be imagining that that happened anyway.
Now THAT is a real superpower.
And if we include the movies... well.
As bad as the movie was, I found this part hilarious, mostly for the unexpected power.