Thoughts about the finale · 7:47am Dec 5th, 2015
I liked it, overall. There are some issues. There are also some things that it demonstrated that we didn't know before.
-- Confirmed: Nightmare Moon had some means of keeping the planet alive via moonlight. Her reign was never supposed to end the world and kill all the ponies. I imagine that some life had a harder time adapting to growing in moonlight, and that under Moon's reign, there are probably high rates of depression, most fruits and vegetables taste like crap, and Everfree Forest life, used to living in dimly lit conditions, has probably overgrown and invaded Ponyville, but ponies and their food supply haven't died from the lack of sunlight.
-- Time travel doesn't work the way we think it does. I actually did not like the notion that the different random means of stopping the Rainboom caused different villains to win, because in the absence of a Twilight Sparkle, it is hard to imagine the sequence not being: Nightmare Moon takes over, then the chaos frees Discord, and then Chrysalis, Sombra and Flim Flam Bros are irrelevant because no one left can beat Discord. How was Nightmare Moon defeated in the world where Discord was chasing Celestia and Luna with clown noses? How was Discord defeated in the Chrysalis universe? What stopped Sombra in the Flim Flam universe? I know why the writers wanted to do it that way, of course, but it's really hard to justify how it could have worked that way. That being said, we now know that despite what Discord said in one of the comics, time travel can in fact change the past.
-- I saw someone ask why hasn't Discord changed the past, then. My guess is, firstly, he's a lot smarter than anyone gives him credit for, and he's been around for a long time -- he probably knows there are effects he doesn't want. Interestingly for a guy who loves chaos as much as he does, he prefers chaos that's under his control, and time travel is the very definition of the butterfly effect. Secondly, he wouldn't do it now because he wouldn't risk losing Fluttershy's friendship, and he wouldn't have done it the last two times he had just broken out of stone because it's probably boring and no fun.
-- Twilight Sparkle edited a spell by Starswirl, became an alicorn. Starlight Glimmer edited a spell by Starswirl, didn't. Confirmation: that broken spell was supposed to be an alicornification spell. But it wouldn't work without the presence of friends whose destinies were intertwined, and Starswirl didn't get that that was what he was missing. Twilight didn't become an alicorn because she created new magic, she became an alicorn because she created a working alicornification spell and then cast it on herself. Without knowing that that was what she was doing, of course.
-- Starlight Glimmer beats Twilight, when she is a unicorn and Twi is an alicorn? Oh noes, everyone's headcanon is ruined!... nope. Old age and treachery beats youth and skill. They weren't going to say so in a children's show, but Starlight beat Twilight because Starlight is about twenty years older than she is and much more experienced. Of course this doesn't stop Starlight from being a total immature idiot about what motivated her, but more on that later.
-- Unicorns apparently can't memorize worth shit. Starlight wrote that spell and cast it like a dozen times. Twilight cast it several times herself. Yet once the scroll is destroyed, no one can ever use that spell again? I call shenanigans. Besides, Starlight did repeatedly cast it without the scroll. So all this proves is that Twilight can't cast it anymore. Also, that Twilight is too dependent on books. She uses them like I use the Internet -- she doesn't memorize stuff, she remembers where to go to look it up. This is consistent with her portrayal in the series.
-- Starlight Glimmer: stupidest backstory ever, or really stupidest backstory ever? But I can fix it! Further details in a future blog. Really, it just needed such a small amount of tweaking to actually make sense, it's a crying shame they didn't do that in canon.
Or, at least, some part of the planet. We don't know how much or how little of it she bothered to keep alive. (My current headcanon's that almost nothing is alive outside the Everfree Forest, but she's ordered everypony to keep pretending to be happy. I guess I should write that up into a story?)
Alternatively, perhaps having good friends around you is inherently necessary to become an alicorn? Considering how friendship is literally magic, that'd make sense...
Yep, I agree.
And what this also shows is that there's some way to write out spells like executable programs. We don't even see Twilight reading the spell off the page; we see her casting some generic "Load Library" spell that runs whatever's written there. I'm sure this has great potential - for just one example, suppose Starlight (who wouldn't be casting "Load Library" herself) had intentionally miswritten some part of it?
Let me guess... She was just telling the first part of her backstory? That's what immediately came to my mind, at least...
-Starlight being older - what makes you say that?
-I suspect casting with scrolls has more to it than just reading what's written on it.
Let's face it, almost no one knows how to logically write time travel because they never think about it in terms of cause and effect, but cause and what they WANT the effect to be. They also never think about how even staying in the past for a single second would change the world due to air currents, microbes that are evolved differently from any other hitching a ride, strands of hair, ect. You can go back in time to 1995 for only a second, but then I guarantee most people born a decade after that date wouldn't exist.
I liked that Nightmare Moon turned out to actually have a plan for ruling through eternal night. I've never really been fond of the "idiot" or "omnicidal maniac" interpretations of her character. I feel like they cheapen her as a villain.
I was left asking many of the same questions. But to be honest, I'm not sure that all of them were defeated in some of these cases. Just because one villain is dominant doesn't mean all other players are out of the game. For example, Sombra may not be dead in the Flim Flam timeline. He may just be somewhere far away from our POV, losing the war much faster to a fully industrialised Equestria.
Then there's Discord, who in many of these timelines could just be in the background somewhere, soaking up the chaos rather than contributing to it. I noticed that in his own timeline, he seemed to have removed Luna's corruption himself, and thus he was seen having fun taunting the sisters. In Sombra's timeline, however, despite Celestia fighting on the front lines against Sombra, old warhorse Luna is nowhere to be seen. It could be that she's actually dead in that one, and possibly others too, and Discord could be off somewhere sulking about that and planning some truly horrible revenge.
I... disagree on this. Besides the stated purpose of the spell being destiny alteration, not alicornification, an alicornification spell not existing prior to Twilight doesn't match the lore. Even leaving out the comics and their implication that Celestia and Luna were always raising new princesses since the time of the Crystal Empire, the books have been directly referenced in the show too many times to not be considered primary canon, and Cadance's book backstory is that she was a pegasus first.
Personally, I've always liked to believe that Star Swirl's famous amniomorphic spell is the alicornification one. An interpretation I saw a while back was that it means "amnio" as in amniotic fluid, the fluid that surrounds a fetus. So in this interpretation, "amniomorphic" means to change something at conception, or to change what a pony was born as. It's probably used for more than just making alicorn princesses, too. A spell like that could have a wide range of applications in Equestrian medicine, and could change the direction of their entire culture. Probably why it's seemingly what Star Swirl is most known for around season two's time, even despite everything else he did, including inventing time travel.
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Oh, I absolutely believe there was an alicornification spell prior to this one, and it may even have been Starswirl's, but given how many different reforming spells Discord ate, it's apparent that unicorns are fine with the concept of there being twenty different spells to accomplish the same end.
I suspect this one is a self-alicornification spell that transforms the caster, and the reason it doesn't work in the absence of friends is that alicorns are concentrators of Harmonic magic, and therefore Harmony needs to be involved in the spell. It's a destiny manipulator, all right, but the destiny it's intended to manipulate is the caster's. However, because Starswirl wrote it without recognizing the importance of friends in one's destiny, it misfired.
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For headcanon purposes, it works.
Alright, here we go!
This would only be true on the assumption that Chaos is what will break Discord's petrification, which it isn't, because Chaos is not the inverse of Harmony. Disharmony is what weakened and ultimately broke the seal, and in pretty close proximity, too. Nightmare Moon taking over would have certainly caused chaos, but not necessarily disharmony, and that's assuming that she kept Discord around at all. We never see him, so it's not really known what's happening with him.
Who's to say that wasn't Nightmare Moon? Discord likes his chaos, yes, but he also likely had a bone to pick with the Sisters. Nightmare Moon has, reasonably, a strong distaste for her old, "weak" self, so trapping her in a less powerful form would infuriate her. At that point, putting on a clown nose and chasing her around was just adding insult to injury, exactly the kind of thing a jerk would do. Prior to his reformation, Discord was a pretty big jerk (and if we're being honest, I'm not sure that has actually changed after turning over a new leaf). And again, we don't see "Nightmare Moon" at all, so we don't know what happened with her; all we know is that with all his power, the above scenario would be easy for Discord to initiate.
He never escaped, ergo, he didn't need to be defeated. The changelings control Canterlot, so disharmony is at an all-time low, so the odds of him getting out are not looking too good.
We don't know what Sombra's long-term plans were after he won, but we do know that he's an egomaniac, and that there is a world outside Equestria. Naturally, having Equestria wouldn't be enough, but raising up the kind of forces needed to take on the rest of the world requires significant manufacturing capacity. Capacity that can be easily achieved when you don't care what you have to do to achieve it, and Flim and Flam have shown that to them, the bottom line justifies the means. Nothing stopped Sombra, and in fact he is allowing and enabling the brothers to engage in their business: They get their bits, he gets his army, and both parties are happy. This notion is further supported by the fact that Sombra's governing style is very clearly fascist: Everything the crystal ponies do is done in service to the state, the state is an authoritarian dictatorship, and the whole of the Crystal Empire is mobilized for war or involved with the war economy to some degree. The slave helmets serve, in this case, as a literal representation of the curtailing of personal freedom and removal of individual choice from the political process (or at least from what process exists). Lastly, a hallmark of fascism is the very tight connection and cooperation between the government and corporate interests; by giving corporations large degrees of operational freedom, it allows them to more quickly exploit resources, which allows the government to exert greater control more effectively, which allows them to give greater operational freedom to corporations in a repeating cycle until the whole economy has been mobilized for the state. Yes, reality is more complicated than that, but on a basic level, that's fascism.
Really, maybe the most notable thing is that, no matter which timeline we ended up in, everyone still had the same cutie marks we expect them to, even when they had radically different personalities and, presumably, radically different destinies. It was probably just the art team reusing their existing assets because they didn't have time to come up with and make new marks for everyone, but it's something to think about. Is a pony's destiny so indelibly a part of their being that they will always find their way to it, no matter what?
Maybe they started eating each other; there are tales of Nightmare Moon eating foals, after all.
I think this is the major point that takes precedence over the other conclusions.
Since every loop only had parts of the consequences of the failed Rainboom, noone can actually say for sure how much of what we saw actually belongs in that timeline, i.e. is logically tied to the rest.
For example, in the Nightmare's world, the plants might still be alive for the same reason Discord isn't there.
And then there's that world where Twilight took Starlight: There's nothing there. If you look at the Map, you'll see that even the geography has changed.
And then there's the point that the Map itself is always there in the 'present'.
Lastly, I'd even question that time travel can change the past, because every time Twilight jumped into the portal, the loop began anew, undoing whatever changes had made to the past, and when the looping was finally over, they returned to a present that was completely unchanged.
i'd conclude that the looping was even a necessary part of the spell, because if I recall correctly, time portal opens up several times without anypony casting anything. The spell worked on Twilight, Starlight, Spike and the Map while leaving the Map in its original time. It iterated through several causally unsound timelines before stopping in a timeline where it itself was causally sound: the original timeline it was cast in, where the presence of the Map made sense.
I personally think this needed to happen, because time travel can't change the past if it is anchored to a specific point in the present: Star Swirl's spell returns you where you started, Starlight's spell needs the power of the Cutie Map to function.
Okay, let's take this in order:
• My hypothesis about about the No Nightmare Snowball phenomenon is that by banishing Celestia to the moon, Nightmare turned it into Diet Sun: Same great life-sustaining properties with no star-blotting brightness.
• I don't think history was changed so much as it was redirected. Starlight didn't eliminate the previous timeline each time she interfered with the rainboom, she just made it inaccessible from that sequence of events, as per Zecora's demonstration in the Chrysalis-triumphant timeline. This is why the three time travelers keep their memories and Twilight keeps her wings. The good future was still there; they just couldn't get to it until they kept the interference to a minimum, enough that the past cone could compensate for it.
As for how villains other than Discord could come out on top, consider how often ponies recognize the Mane Six for their accomplishments. Given that, would it really be so surprising for a different band of plucky adventurers to come together and defeat some but not all of the evils threatening Equestria without ever being mentioned? Yes, it's sloppy storytelling to give no indication of that, but it is consistent with how ponies treat Element Bearers.
• I always just figured that chaos and chronomancy don't blend well. You can't have any fun if you break your toys beyond repair; even at his worst, Discord understood that.
• The thing is, Twilight never actually recited the revised spell. She thought of the incantation in a friendship-induced epiphany, wrote it down, and was atomized by the Harmony Annihilation Array. I'm not sure what the spell was meant to do, or even if it was what triggered the Elements. I think her ascension came from getting tangible, reproducible results out of the until-then figurative magic of friendship. (Not to be confused with harmony magic, which is highly tangible. Just friendship.) Yes, Starlight hacked a Star Swirl original, but she didn't receive protodivine inspiration.
Of course, this is pure conjecture.
• It's the beam duel that frustrates me. I'm fine with Starlight outthinking and outmaneuvering Twilight, but matching her blow for blow in a contest of magical brute force just feels wrong, especially when Starlight was also lifting herself the entire time. Of course, Starlight was just physically dodging, while Twilight was relying on magic-intensive shields and teleportation...
I guess I'd need to see the whole fight to judge it for sure. And maybe visible MP meters.
• Twilight getting dragged to the new future after Dash's failure to rainboom seems to be an automatic part of the spell, not something Starlight actively does. Starlight does cast the spell without the scroll, but it's a time travel spell that can actually change the course of history, complete with a Starlight Glimmer-specific rider. It's probably pretty complicated. Twilight didn't think she'd need to memorize it in the Sombra timeline and never had a chance to do so otherwise.
• And speaking of that backstory... I've honestly never had a problem with it. Heck, I was expecting something like this, though not quite this petty. Starlight is clearly prone to massive overreactions and overcompensation. If she weren't, she wouldn't think that going back in time to erase the friendships of the one who wronged her would be a reasonable, just form of vengeance. That being said, I definitely look forward to seeing your fix.
To comment on the Starlight beating Twilight think, I don't think she actually beat her.
Watching it again, they only ever actually came to head on head combat once, then had to stop after they tired each other out because the fillies and colts didn't do what they were supposed to do and instead watched the fight.
Other than that, Starlight had the element of surprise the first time Twilight went back to the past (after the crystal war timeline), but every time after that Twilight was prepared and blocked Starlight's spell. Once she lost the element of surprise she couldn't get the jump on Twilight again, and the only reason they would have kept doing it over and over again is because Twilight couldn't try to stop starlight without changing the future in some way. (Like when she tried to blast starlight, who dodged it and it hit RD instead.)
That's my headcanon, anyways.
To me, the most interesting detail is Zecora's reaction in the Chrysalis timeline.
She immediately declared that it was her and her followers that "should not be". That means it's not a simple "alternate timeline" scenario, where changing the past creates a new timeline, perhaps erasing the previous one at the same time. To me, Zecora's reaction indicates that it's similar to the spell shown in the Magical Mystery Cure episode (where the Mane 6 cutie marks were switched): the spell rewrote reality to conform to the key changes (in MMC, the cutie marks having "always" been different; in TCR, the Sonic Rainboom never happening). Given that both spells were originally written by the same unicorn, it's not surprising that they would work in a similar way. What Zecora saw using her potions was probably an indication that Twilight and Spike (who were both unchanged by the spell) were "more real" than her and the others.
Since changing reality in such a scale would need an enormous amount of energy, the spell had to keep the divergence to a minimum. That would explain, for instance, why everypony's cutie mark didn't change: it isn't a necessary result of the key change, so not doing it saves energy. In the same way, the spell tried to keep the number of villains being released to a minimum, either by finding another set of heroes to defeat them, or somehow preventing their release (a freaky set of circumstances might have led Celestia to reinforcing the seal on the Crystal Empire before it's broken, for instance). On each iteration, things get worse, either because the spell is getting weaker (thus not being able to prevent stronger villains from being released), or because the spell is getting stronger (thus not needing to reduce the divergence as much).
Once the key change is undone, by letting the Sonic Rainboom happen, there's no more need for any divergence, and the still-active spell undoes all the changes, thus minimizing the amount of energy needed to maintain the divergence. An interesting consequence of all that is that both the "AlternateTimelines are destroyed" and the "AlternateTimelines are left in a hopeless struggle" scenarios don't happen, since there's only one timeline.
Now, as for some of your observations:
In my theory above, the spell was more like a high-power RealityWarping effect. Instead of changing the past, it changes the present to behave as if the past had been changed. Discord already is a RealityWarper (though not as powerful as that boosted spell).
The original spells were probably different, and the objective of the edit was different. Starlight Glimmer edited it to change the past; Twilight changed the spell to complete it. It's no wonder that the effect was different.
Starlight Glimmer didn't write the spell, she edited it. As others have noted, the spell was probably held in an "executable" form within the scroll. Starlight reverse-engineered enough of it to make her modifications, and perhaps to transfer it from a book to a scroll, but not enough to rewrite it from scratch. Once the scroll holding it is destroyed, it has to be rewritten from scratch.
The destruction of the scroll is also an interesting scene. It didn't seem to me like an accidental effect of the damaged spell scroll; it seemed like an intentional act by whatever controls the Map, destroying the spell only once all its effects were undone. What is the real nature of the intelligence behind the Map? Is it an automaton? Is it some sort of Higher Being? Or something else? And how prescient is it? Did it plan the whole thing since the beginning as a ploy to redeem Starlight Glimmer, or was it caught by surprise by the turn of events?
If there is someone who can fix Starlight´s backstory, that someone is you. Or Alex Warlorn.
But you go for it!
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I mean, it's just a hunch, but...
A lot of great questions.
I think 3594248 has the right of it, Celestia trapped in the moon amps up the photosynthetic power of the light from the moon. That said, if the planet is still tidally locked, the other continents are probably dead zones now.
3594189 probably has the right of it hear, Discord would definitely have more fun with Luna than NMM, so he would simply turn her back.
More generally, I think we can take this as an indicator that on its own, the petrification spell on the Elements of Harmony will not just wear out, at least not within one millennium. Either the theory that Discord's petrification was broken by new ponies being bound to the Elements of Harmony is correct, or he was freed by chaos from the CMC/Grand Galloping Gala, and those didn't happen in a bunch of timelines. The one where he did free himself, maybe a different set of Elements of Harmony were formed, and they just weren't as competent to beat Discord.
Twilight was in that universe for literally 3 seconds, then she left after seeing a cleared field with a Flim Flam branded machine in it. That's hardly evidence that those two have taken over. I think its more likely they're just rich industrial barons in that timeline, and Celestia is still ruling.
I thought it was pretty clear Starlight was only able to change the past with the help of the Map, a brand new artifact generated by the Tree of Harmony. That thing may well have even more power than Discord, and keeping the timelines consistent would certainly fit better with it's profile than with Discord's.
Starlight does seem incredibly powerful, with that incredibly useful self-levitation trick we've never seen another unicorn do. I think she may be more powerful than Twilight was as a unicorn. That said, they never directly crossed beams the way Celestia and Chrysalis did, so I suspect Twilight the alicorn is still much more powerful. Twilight has just never spent time practicing combat magic or dueling. It's like the world's smartest physicist versus MacGyver in a fight.
Don't forget she cast it in the room with the Elements of Harmony present, I think the spell had an extremely restrictive material focus requirement. When Sunset Shimmer magically hacked the Element of Magic, she became some kind of corrupted alicorn.
3594142 There doesn't seem to be any other alicornification spell. Celestia and Luna appointed powerful unicorns as princesses (which is kind of tribalist) but they didn't turn them into alicorns. Cadance never cast a spell, she unleashed some kind of spontaneous heart magic that triggered an ascension. I think there are definitely many paths to alicorn ascension (It wouldn't surprise me if Holder's Boulder is some sort of weird artifact that could trigger an alicorn ascension via earth pony magic, for example). There just doesn't seem to be other actual spells out there.
The scroll appears to be a second powerful magical artifact, not just a piece of paper but empowering the magic written on it somehow. Or maybe it's just paper, and Starlight was tricking Twilight with an elaborate bluff about a magical artifact when she was just using her own magical power all along..... again.
3594922 Whatever that tree is, I don't trust it. I think its supposed to be the equivalent of Discord, but for the other side. No one ever seems to question it either. Notice how much easier it was for the three tribes to become harmonious and live in peace once they resettled within a thousand miles or so of the tree of harmony? That's area effect mind control, friend.
So far the best theory I've seen is that Starlight was a lot more than friends with Sunburst. Tartarus hath no fury like a mare scorned, and all that.
My issue with Starlight's backstory isn't that it was too petty to be a proper force of motivation. Losing a close friend can be devastating, especially at a young age. My problem is that somehow blaming your friend moving away on the existence of cutie marks and waging a decades long secret campaign to destroy them (including founding a small cult/totalitarian regime and plotting the wider overthrow of society) is the height of insane troll logic. Could she not pick up a pen and write a letter? Why not blame him for not keeping in touch, or the parents for sending him away?
I could maybe see her blaming cutie marks as evil friend stealers when she was still really little, but what about when she got her own. And given how stupid powerful she is with magic, how did she NOT end up at the same school?
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Exactly. That's the sort of thing I plan to try to fix. (I even have a reason why she didn't go to Canterlot. :-))
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Hmm. What if Nightmare Moon was basically able to shove the sun aside, so it's not actively shining anywhere on the planet, and she's making the moon circle the planet? So there are essentially two nights, night with a moon and night without a moon, or dim and really dark. Stuff that can survive in dim light and chilly weather is surviving, and she may have quite a lot of pegasi working on stealing air from the equatorial regions of the planet and pushing it north to Equestria to keep Equestria relatively warm, while the rest of the planet has gotten very cold but not quite permanent winter yet.
The real question is, where did the sun go? The night can't last forever if the sun is shining anywhere on the planet. Also, the sun perpetually shining anyplace would eventually destroy that side of the world, and Nightmare Moon strikes me as the sort of tyrannical overlord who would prefer the world pay her tribute, not die.
3596194 That's a very good question. In theory the fact that the moon is shining means the sun should be at an angle to bounce light off of it, so we may just have to chock that one up to magic.
I think NMM is probably crazy enough to not mind all non-ponies dying off, or even ponies who refuse to bow down to her, so she really just needs to keep one part of the planet habitable (of course, there's minimal maintanence you have to do on the rest of the planet to keep your part ok). Don't forget dragons would probably survive just fine in eternal night, with the ability to burrow into magma and eat nothing but gemstones.
Ok, I think I've got it: So you know how Celestia couldn't raise the sun when Nightmare Moon refused to lower the moon the first time, implying they have the same orbital flight path? Which in turn implies the sun and the moon are roughly the same size, since the sun doesn't incinerate the planet. What if NMM has just arranged a permanent eclipse? The moon rotates around the planet, with the sun behind it. There's some light and warmth, but its never to bright to block out the moon and stars, which means it qualifies as "eternal night." I'm sure a competent scientist could come up with a dozen reasons why this would still doom all life on the planet, but its the best I can come up with.
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Cadance helped to reform Prismia, and then some unexplained magical phenomenon summoned her to the Dreamscape (or whatever that realm from Magical Mystery Cure was meant to be), but no mention is made of the magic giving her a horn. She was just "discovered" there by Celestia, and then was taken back to Canterlot and made a princess. And that's basically what happened to Twilight. She used Star Swirl's modified destiny spell on herself, and was then teleported to the Dreamscape for unclear reasons, and Celestia found her there and cast something else on her that brought her back to Ponyville as an alicorn.
There's some wiggle room to apply headcanon, sure, but the clear implication is that, regardless of tribe or magical skill, the ascension process is the same for everyone. First a pony is deemed worthy, then a magical force transports them to another realm, then Celestia meets them there and casts the alicorn spell, and then they go back to Equestria for the coronation. Everything else is ultimately irrelevant. Where the many paths to alicornhood fit in is in the worthiness. It's unclear what exactly one needs to do to be considered for the role. All we do know is that being Celestia's personal protege puts a pony on the fast track, but as seen with Sunset Shimmer, it's not a sure thing.
3596226 Interesting. So you're saying there's two steps to it then: A pony has to reach the dreamscape (to me this looks more like an afterlife, you don't leave a smoking crater behind when you visit the dreamscape), and then Celestia uses that as a sign of worthiness to cast the spell of alicornification. That would make Starswirl's spell just a means of reaching the dreamscape, then.
The problem I have with that theory is, that would mean Celestia has the ability to turn ponies into alicorns whenever she wants. Wouldn't she have created far more alicorns to help defend Equestria then? Sure, there's the risk of an alicorn turning evil, but compare that to the risk of Chrysalis, Sombra, etc that Equestia seems constantly faced with, a evil alicorn is well worth the risk. And that's just assuming alicorns remain mortal. If they are all immortal, it would mean Celestia is choosing to withhold eternal life from her entire kingdom, except this random Pegasus she has never met before who unleashed a blast of love magic in some village.
Alternative theory: Whatever path or spell a pony takes to reach the afterlife/dreamscape, it ascends them immediately, but they don't realize it because they are
deaddreaming and not physically present, so their physical self remains what they believe it to be. Then Celestia gives does a big song about how much they've changed, and casts a spell that makes them realize it, and this pops them out tobe rebornwake up. Without Celestia, they might eventually figure it out and leave on their own, or they may be trapped there forever.3596284
That, or the idea that the pony is "worthy" is not a moral judgement being made by Celestia, but some judgement made by a higher power -- Magic itself, perhaps, or perhaps the Tree of Harmony -- and without that judgement being made, the alicornification spell either won't work or will backfire horribly. So Celestia can't go around willy-nilly turning ponies into alicorns; they must enter that state between life and death, and they must get there on their own. (This actually works very well with my headcanon regarding Discord, who died, ended up in a place that wasn't exactly the afterlife and wasn't exactly not the afterlife, and had, basically, an interview with Chaos, which took the forms of the previous avatars as it asked him if he wanted to return to existence as its avatar. Alicorns seem to be emissaries of the Tree of Harmony, the Crystal Heart, or some other exemplar of Harmony; they're not quite on Discord's level because he is the Chaos avatar, whereas they are just emissaries of the Harmony avatar, but it's still a similar process of ascension.)
3596456 So Sunset Shimmer's creepy demon form is what you get when you try and cast the alicornification spell on yourself without the assistance/blessing of Harmony? That could make sense. It makes you wonder all the more about Cadance. She's the only alicorn never to have wielded an Element of Harmony. Unless Prismia's locket is the Rainbow of Light or something.
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Cadance wields the Crystal Heart. I am pretty sure the Crystal Heart, while not an Element of Harmony, is an offshoot of Harmony somehow.
3596560 Wouldn't surprise me in the least if it is related, they're both magical crystal artifacts powered by emotion. I suspect it was formed spontaneously by the founders of Equestria when they drove off the Windigos. That said, Cadance before she had ever touched the Crystal Heart. Given the shape of her cutie mark, perhaps Prismia's locket is made of a piece of the Crystal Heart that was chipped off?
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Well, the Tree of Harmony had Celestia and Luna's cutie marks on it before they went and retrieved the elements from the tree, and the Tree seems to know a good bit about destinies, so Cadance's connection to the Heart showing up on her butt long before ever seeing the Heart doesn't seem that out of line. But yeah, Prismia could have a chip of the Heart.
3596584 That's true, but Celestia and Luna were born alicorns. I wonder if whatever magic gives a foal there cutie mark is related to the magic that turns ponies into alicorns. Cadance received her cutie mark at the same time as her ascension. Perhaps the Crystal Heart may not have been "aware" of her as a foal, but when she opened herself up to destiny by getting a cutie mark, it recognized her and ascended her. Her cutie mark basically put her on the Heart's radar.
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The reason I say the Dreamscape specifically is a visual similarity. In For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils, when Luna takes Sweetie out of her own dream and they travel across the Dreamscape, it looks strikingly similar to the realm at the end of Magical Mystery Cure, just that there's more random dream shit going on. And Luna is able to pull memories from random ponies in the Dreamscape and use them to edit together a clipshow for Sweetie, much the same as Celestia was able to make all those weird TV screens full of scenes from Twilight's life. It seems to me that the writers were trying to hint that it was the Dreamscape that Twilight went to.
Can't answer for the crater, though. Maybe that was an effect of Star Swirl's spell, not whatever magic kidnaps ponies for alicorn consideration. Or maybe it happened to Cadance as well, and the crater is just what happens when one physically travels to the Dreamscape rather than just projecting their mind into it while sleeping.
As for Celestia's ability to turn any pony into an alicorn, well, yeah, that is what this theory implies. But I feel that you shouldn't be thinking of this power in purely practical terms. Does this imply that Celestia could create an army of alicorns to oppose threats to her kingdom if she wanted? Maybe. But does it sound much like Celestia to be that paranoid? Equestria's a relatively peaceful nation. The occasional apocalyptic threat might show up, sure, but so far, Equestria has gotten by just fine with the four alicorns it has, and of those four, one of them has apprently retired from monster-slaying entirely to become a full-time wise mentor figure.
And besides all that, I really think that the worthiness tests are being underestimated in their importance. Celestia obviously has her reasons for only choosing those few. For all we know, maybe Alara's theory is right, and true alicorn ascension is actually impossible if a pony isn't worthy. I won't even get into the moral questions of having the power to grant immortality to anybody but withholding it, since alicorns aren't all immortal according to the books, and this is a discussion about ascension according to book canon.
Since Alara's blogs often turn into headcanon-swapping anyway, I might as well bring up my own theories of the nature and purpose of what I call the "ascendant royals," which I wrote about in essay form here. The relevant section is the first one, "Equestrian Royals," specifically paragraphs 4-8.
3596902 Ok, you've won me over on the dreamscape, it does make a lot more sense than the afterlife, especially after Bloom and Gloom.
That said, I don't think Celestia could just choose to make ponies alicorns, or there would be a lot more than 4. You're right that Equestria is a lot more peaceful than we think of it right after that season finale, but for 980 years Celestia was on her own, and would definitely had a back-up alicorn around so the sun keeps moving even if something unexpected happens to her. I think you're on to something with the idea that only ponies who have accomplished something and been found worthy of some higher power that sucks them into the dreamscape would survive the spell, it seems to me to be the only way we don't see more ponies begging for alicornification. I'm glad we can agree that ascended alicorns are mortal, that may suggest Celestia regularly ascended alicorns in the past, and there just weren't any other than Cadance alive at the start of the show.
Finally, thanks for linking to that awesome essay of yours, its some really fantastic worldbuilding!
3597392
Thank you. Glad you think so.
And I agree, I absolutely believe that there have been way more alicorns than just the four we know that must simply have passed away. This even supported by the comics, with the character of Radiant Hope from the recent Sombra-centric stories. According to those, even a thousand years ago, Celestia had a personal student who studied under her in hopes of becoming a princess. Granted, Hope abandoned that destiny, but in all that time, I'm sure Celestia has successfully coronated dozens of alicorn princesses (and probably also princes).
Incidentally, this is also my explanation for why the girls were surprised to learn that Celestia was the sister from the legend who banished Nightmare Moon. The only possible reason why everybody didn't immediately make the connection is that there must have been other princesses throughout history, and the ponies thought it could've been any one of them, perhaps on the assumption that nobody who shares blood with Celestia could have ever turned to darkness.
3597592 Interesting theory, though I wonder why Princess Amore never made alicorn. Given her actions in the comics, she may not have been morally pure enough, or whatever.
Also, if say dozens of alicorns used to live in Manehatten a generation or two ago, and they acted like just regular folks, it would explain why an alicorn can't catch a cab there.
3597592
Thanks, you guys, you just made me make a bunch of alicorn OCs. Thanks a whole lot. :-)
3597597
There could be any number of reasons why Amore didn't ascend. Her questionable morality is one. Or maybe it was just because she was the leader of the Crystal Empire first and a loyal Equestrian subject second. After all, the Empire does apparently predate Equestria itself, if you go by Journal of the Two Sisters.
JOTTS also actually provides the basis for a convenient headcanon explanation for the Manehattan alicorn problem, because it tells us that Celestia and Luna were born as alicorns to an entire community of them. And this means that alicorns aren't all just ascendants, but a whole fourth race that just happens to be rarer and less involved in history.
No word in canon about whether or not the non-royal alicorns still exist, but I like to believe that the descendants of that alicorn community are still around in modern Equestria, living the day-to-day life. And if one lives in a fairly large community, such as Manehattan, they'll have run into a few once or twice in their life and thus know this already. This also explains why, when we were briefly misled to believe that Mare-Do-Well was an alicorn, Dash didn't assume right away that it must've been one of the princesses playing a trick on her.
I actually had a story planned based on this concept once called The Alicorns of Sixth Street. It was about a bunch of average joes in Manehattan who just happened to be alicorns, who would get together after work each day to just talk, drink coffee, and play pool.
3597647
Any time.
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This conversation was a fun read.
3597692 The alicorn tribe is either wiped out or hiding out somewhere far away. We've seen multiple times that there are exactly 4 alicorns in Equestria, not princesses, alicorns. If there are alicorns in Equestria, they are able to hide from Discord, Tirek and Twilight Sparkle, no mean feat.
Even pure-blooded alicorns seem to be mortal, unless they are lucky enough to be born with a special talent that lets them tap into the latent magical power of a celestial body.
3599148
Well, there are four alicorns that matter and are counted. There have been plenty of background alicorns due to animation errors, hence my little theory. It's just a headcanon thing that I use for story purposes, not something I have a truly concrete foundation for like some of the other theories I've talked about here, but I make a distinction between alicorn princesses, who are highly magical and thus high-value targets for someone like Tirek, and regular alicorns, who don't bother tapping into the raw power of the sun because unicorn or pegasus magic is just fine for their needs. Or in other words, there are plenty of alicorns, but only four with alicorn magic.
But yeah, no matter how I slice it, the original alicorn tribe that raised Celestia and Luna have gotta be long dead. I have a story in the works about that too. I call it Ragnarok.
3599360
I strongly suspect those aren't alicorns. They have wings and a horn, but they don't have increased mana beyond what the average pony does, so if they tried to use wings and horn at the same time both would be drastically weakened. This is why Twilight doesn't get instant respect just for having wings and a horn -- that, by itself, doesn't prove you're an alicorn.
But then, I believe that all alicorns are ascended (yes, I know that's not what the books say, but I take the books when I feel like it and ignore them when I don't) and that they're all unaging and hard to kill (which is not the same as immortal), so I don't really need extra alicorns running around in my backstory. I just like annoying the readers. :-)
3599380
Well, we write alicorns by different rules. I use a different basis for my headcanons, because I'm one of those people cursed with an inability to ignore anything, even the things I really dislike or which make no sense. I even accept the comics in their entirety, despite the massive headaches that that causes sometimes. I mean, I'm sure you can imagine. It's like the Year of the Unicorn problem times a thousand.
3599577
See, I was inoculated against this by one of my first fandoms being Star Trek. Star Trek is kind of the gold standard for the extended canon being inconsistent with itself (there are four different fates for the Romulan Commander in the Star Trek books I've read alone), the Star Trek comics vary wildly in quality and many of them fall into the range of impossibly bad, and the series creators paid attention to the books exactly once, when fans pressured them into accepting Vonda McIntyre's first name Hikaru for Sulu as canon. And that probably only happened because she wrote the tie-in novels for three of the movies.
So I'm well used to books and comics being optional canon that you can take or leave (which is good, because currently in Star Trek books two of my favorite characters are dead and my all-time favorite has basically sworn eternal vengeance on a character I like because of those characters being dead.)
3599594
Expanded universes are a bitch like that. I'll do the same thing sometimes, but it really depends on the series, and how much the EU material actually matters.
I was never big into Star Trek, but some other series that I am into have the exact same trappings, so I can relate. When you look at something like Doctor Who, there are different continuities of the EU. For example, the Big Finish audio dramas and the Eighth Doctor novels are internally consistent with themselves, but completely incompatible with each other. Since the books make a lot less sense than the audio dramas do in the context of the new TV series, I rejected those right from the get-go, and considered the audio plays canon instead. Lo and behold, a minisode in 2013 actually vindicated me on that one, but it could've easily gone the other way instead.
But with a series like MLP, I guess I'm more of a stickler because while there are definite contradictions across mediums, so far, none of them have been so massive as to get me to disregard their entire branch of the EU, especially considering that the show itself didn't exactly set a high bar for internal consistency. I mean, you've read my blogs, so you know how long I could rant about all the horrible things that Ted Anderson has done to this franchise, but it'd be hypocritical of me to call his works non-canon because of their contradictions, considering that I still acknowledge Mare-Do-Well.
Plus, MLP isn't one of those series like Doctor Who where the EU is just used to tell new stories. A lot of the time, it's actually the only source for answers to some pretty vital questions. What happened to Chrysalis after she was defeated? How did Celestia come to rule Equestria? What was King Sombra's motivation? Did Luna turn evil of her own will, or was she corrupted by an outside force? Even with their flaws, I default to EU material like the comics or books for this because... well, because fanfiction is non-canon by definition and so cannot provide answers, only theories.
But of course, sometimes speculation is more fun than knowing anyway. I swear, Carabas's Palaververse even ignores the show itself sometimes, but it's got some truly incredible worldbuilding. I know you've read at least a few of his stories, but if you haven't also seen his blogs, I highly recommend them.
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3599380 I'm torn here. I agree with Alara that there are probably some pegacorns, or what have you, born with wings and a horn, but they don't have much greater magical capacity than your average pony. That said, your story about a neighborhood of alicorns quietly hanging out in Manehatten sounds really fun, like an Equestrian version of Fable. You should definitely write that, and don't stick an AU tag on it unless you want to.
And yeah, Star Trek expanded universe be crazy. I still remember when Diane Duane wrote Dark Mirror and created an awesome mirror universe Enterprise, only to have that retconned by DS9. Also, it had singing alien space dolphins, so good times.
3599938
Ah, sadly, it's one of those ideas I had that was doomed to just be an idea. The concept was there, but I didn't have any notion of plot, or characters, or themes. It happens with me. I can generate a billion ideas like these, but following through is the real challenge, and my heart just wasn't in it for that one. Sorry to disappoint.
3600003 No sweat. I have tons of worldbuilding ideas but zero story-writing ability/inclination myself, so compared to me you are an incredibly prolific author. Still great to speculate on cool ideas, even if they never get fleshed out.
3600012
You should get into the essay game then. They're way easier to write, and cathartic too.