Apr
17th
2016
Reflections · 7:51am Apr 17th, 2016
This is not so much an idea as it is a conversation piece.
The idea of Celestia meeting herself is not unknown in canon – the entire Reflections storyline in the comics is kind of about Celestia meeting a mirror universe (in the Star Trek sense) version of herself.
But what if different interpretations of a canon Celestia were to meet? Deity Celestia vs. Simple Alicorn Celestia? Troll/Puppetmaster-Celestia vs. Gambler-Celestia? CelestAI vs. Conversion Bureau Celestia vs. any of the above?
Just how capable is each of these interpretations of self-reflection, anyway?
I....
Well, I think it's been done multiple times. I know of a couple CelestAI versus Xenolestia fics, and Molestia has met with Celestia sometimes.
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Well, the more exciting ones are probably covered, but what about Deity vs. Alicorn?
3876057 Sort of covered - at least, Twilight from Deity!Celestia's world finds herself in Simple!Alicorn!Celestia's world... and it's hinted that she might have inadvertently created that world.
3876057 Canon Celestia vs Fanon Celestia you mean? I don't think it's been directly done, but I did see a really weird fic that did it. To a lot of people, the main depowering of Celestia was when she got owned by Chrysalis, and had things like a wacky picture of her eating cake published. This story, published right after the end of the 2nd season, was a meta-fixit fic about how Twilight accidentally cast a spell that "ruined" the setting, by making Equestria more technologically advanced and depowering Celestia from a goddess.
In the end of the fic, Twilight tells Celestia about how powerful she used to be, and apologizes. Celestia tells Twilight its ok, she suspects she is able to be a lot more equine and empathize with her subjects better than she would as a nigh-omnipotent deity.
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Strictly speaking, there's no canon Celestia between these two. That is, canon appears to have thought she was a deity when Lauren Faust was around, but changed the mind and the evidence even before she was completely off the team. Death of The Author II: the author doesn't have a clear interpretation in the first place.
The story you just described sounds very similar to "Around the bend" that Eruantalon just linked, at least in the fact that it's Twilight doing the reflecting... Why is it always about Twilight, even when it's Celestia on the line? :)
Of course there are multiple interpretations of each of these in turn: there are many different versions of what it means for Celestia to be an actual deity [1] from those writing fanfic during the first two seasons (and later ones from people who either are unaware of the implications of the season two ender or are aware and don't care) while "canon" Conversion Bureau is a Divine Celestia, or one version thereof. Similarly Puppetmaster Celestia can range from Total Controlling Bitch to Tragic Heroine Making Impossibly Hard Choices Nobody Else Can.
There's perhaps less variation in Simple Alicorn Celestia because she's more a case of What You See is What You Get, and we've got a fair amount of characterization by this point, at least if we include the comics, plus the character of Celestia as derived from other people's fanfics, in which writers pursue some (by 2016) fairly established tropes.
I'd say perhaps CelestAI is the least capable of self-reflection: most versions don't seem to be able to go beyond their initial programming to the point of questioning whether maximizing all sentient life's happyness through Friendship and Ponies is really the best thing for either Herself or all sentient life.
[1] For instance this Celestia http://www.deviantart.com/art/The-Sun-Is-212732769 is very definitely a Cosmic Power, but she sure as hell isn't Lauren Faust's Cosmic Power.
Well. I suppose "Simple alicorn Celestia" is to "Deity Celestia", what "School-Principal Celestia" is to "Simple alicorn Celestia".
Which seems to hint at a Celestia existing at an even higher level, and so on.
There are interpretations of Celestia and Luna wandering the planes of Equus long before the rise of sapient life - where they in fact are the ones that created ponykind. Then there are interpretations, where they literally had been there, ever since the dawn of time, where they didn't simply create ponykind - but a few other things that were necessary for life to even exist before that.
...And yes, if capital 'D' Deity Celestia is sucker-punched by Chrysalis, that raises some rather interesting questions. Either that, or that Celestia got some serious downgrade as she got older.
Still, throwing multiple interpretations of Celly (Principal, Princess, deity-of-ponykind) into an empty pocket dimension and have them solve the riddle of what's going on might be interesting as a character study or something.
Of course, the one who put them there was another Celestia.
Why? To teach an important lesson, of course!
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If the capital ‘D’ Deity Celestia gets sucker-punched, it can only mean one thing:
She’s actually a clone stand-in, that Celestia sent to the wedding because she couldn’t be bothered to come herself. :)