Let's Talk About "The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon" (Chp 4-6) · 4:18am Apr 27th, 2017

If you haven’t read this story before reading this, you’re doing it wrong. So, go do it right by reading the story and then come back!

Part Two of my follow-up for "The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon!" This part covers the chapters The Madmare Who Invents, The Mare Who Writes On The Moon and The Explorer who Dreams. If you missed Part One, you can find it right here!

No long introduction this time. Let's just jump right in!

The Madmare Who Invents

The University was a building of significant importance. Its architects and engineers had their choice of building material, and many were considered. It is important, then, to consider what it could have consisted of, but was not.
...It is important to note that the University was constructed of sandstone. Sandstone is not beautiful. Sandstone is not temperamental. Sandstone is not auspicious, nor is it revered, refined or especially respectable. What it is, however, is functional. Sandstone is comparatively easy to cut, it's comparatively cheap, and it stands strong against the test of time.

This entire sequence is amazing. Brilliant. Thoughts on what marble means, on what wood means, on what iron/brass/lead/glass means… but instead we end up with Sandstone. At first, I actually misread this and ended up confused. I thought for some reason that it said the University was not made of sandstone. And I thought that to be an odd material… only to look it up and realize the author had done their research.

Well done indeed.

It was a building that Twilight had a lot of respect for. Its occupants, too.

I love the order of these two sentences.

It was also one of the very few places in the Empire that Twilight could wear her absolute favourite brown tweed jacket and a modest bow tie without feeling silly.

...especially when followed up by this wonderful, wonderful line. Seriously, someone needs to do an entire series of art pieces on the Mane 6 in their clothing styles from this book! Someone do it! Do it now!

The main courtyard was flanked on both sides by sandstone arms forcing their way out of the main, four-floor hub of the building, reaching out towards the smooth cobblestones of Old Minusculus Equusurbem;, literally "Diminutive Horse City" in old Equus.

Okay, actually, I love this. I love this too much. This is ridiculous. This is almost pedantic. But it’s also totally freaking awesome!

The Capital had far exceeded the bounds of what Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie could ever have imagined when they combined what remained of their territories to make a final stand; a bastion of Civilisation, standing against the nomadic military conquests of the pegasii.

This bit right here (bonus points for using the British spelling of Civilisation) is a magnificent piece of worldbuilding. It’s an infodump, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. And even if theoretically it could be integrated more into Twilight’s perspective or the “Narrator’s” perspective, I don’t care.

This tells us that this is a completely different world. This isn’t an alternate timeline, because an alternate timeline implies that there’s a specific point of divergence (For examples of this, see “The Cutie Re-Mark” and Starlight’s little temporal stunt). This is a completely different world. Equestria was not founded as we know it. The three tribes did not come together. Instead, two tribes joined together in mutual defense against the aggressive onslaught of the militaristic pegasi. Not only that, but it tells us that it was a move of desperation (“...what remained of their territories to make a final stand...”), which honestly makes a lot of sense.

If the unicorns of this world have remained at the power levels we see in the modern age, then being a unicorn would be almost no tactical advantage against an airborne enemy. No shields. No magic missiles. You couldn’t even throw a damn rock at them! It makes sense that the Earth Ponies and the Unicorns would have to consolidate to have any hope of defeating the Pegasi and even then, I wonder how it’s even possible they succeeded.

This single line makes this entire world worth exploring in-depth. I’d love to see this book be part of a full-blown series of novels. An entire universe of stories.

Get to work dangit!

The Electrical Engineering department...would probably be her best, safest bet. She pointedly ignored it, looking at her alternatives.
...
The Electrical Engineering department was famous for its revolutionary new communication technologies, technologies that were connecting the globe in ways never before imagined. Twilight Sparkle pointedly ignored it. Talking to him should obviously be avoided as much as possible.
...
Biology? Now, that was just getting silly. Unless somepony could breed some sort of dragon that could fly her through the aether...
No, no... No. Down that path lay madness, and an incredibly jealous Spike.
She was getting desperate now, grasping at straws. Psychology? No, they'd just call her insane, and ask her why she thought an aether-faring dragon was a good idea, and about her relationship with her mother, who she should probably call — on the telephone, an invention of this very University's Electrical Engineering department, which she very pointedly ignored.
It was only, to her horror, after she had seriously started considering asking for the Drama department's help that Twilight Sparkle, Philosopher In Residence, inventor, tinker and polymath extraordinaire... admitted defeat, hung her head low, and forged a slow path to the Electrical Engineering department

You play out this joke magnificently. This was simply delightful.

And a dragon’s nightmare’s indeed.

(And Drama? Really Twi? You’re usually not that desperate… /thinks-of-a-doll… Withdrawn.)

Two boards parted like theater curtains, exposing an almost offensively bright pink mare, who had a mane less like a hairstyle and more like she had actually held her head in a cotton-candy vendor's machine.

My actual notes:
“No way.”
“NO WAY.”

“I'm dreadfully persnickety about my punctuality, you must understand."

We love you, Twilight.

“I can be really scatterbrained myself," the pink atrocity to good sense assured her.

Love it. LOVE IT. LOVE IT.

...I think you get it.

Oh! Title. I'm The Electrical Science's Lecturer's Assistant. It's an acronym!

So we’re doing this, eh, Edison? Okay. Let’s do this.

“Eugh," the pink mental invalid spat around the chalk in her mouth, "you unicorns are lucky. Chalk tastes terrible.”

Okay, that one was harsh, Twi.

Twilight could tell they were cocoa stains and not coffee because of the tiny little marshmallows melted into them.

Seems legit.

"Well, I worked out why Professor Spark's generator design didn't work and fixed it – I tried to make a better one, too, but he got really mad and told me I was making the wrong kind of electricity. I told him it was different, but better. Then he got really, really mad at me, I thought his head was going to explode!" Pinkie laughed a lot at that, but it wasn't happy laughter. It was almost manic. In fact, there was no place for 'almost'. Her loud, boisterous voice got quiet.
"He didn't let me help him for a while, after that. He didn't kick me out, though." She brightened considerably, at that thought. "Oh! That's an idea!"
"What is?"
"I'll show you!" Pinkie jumped with joy and began pushing apart blackboard after blackboard, as an explorer would clear through jungle with trusty machete. Row upon row of formula and theorum were brushed aside to reveal what could generously be called a small living quarters, and more accurately called a hovel.

I don’t like this Sparks pony.

I know I’m not supposed to.

But I really don’t like this pony.

“Apparently," Twilight breathed, staring at the lectern in wonderment, "you. You're a sandstone mare."
"No I'm not, I'm a fleshy one."
Twilight ripped her eyes away from the more-magic-than-magic coils and stared down the mare on the far side of the room. "No, I mean... you don't care what you look like to the world. You're not expensive, and you just work. You do your job, and you do it so well, because you know that inside you're brilliant, and that's the only thing that matters.”

I really like the sound of sandstone mare, for some reason.

Pinkie blushed faintly at the praise, visible even through the pink. "You really think I'm smart?"
"No," Twilight corrected, looking around the room and seeing the piles of junk lying scattered on the floor for what they truly were: buried treasures. "Brilliant.”

This… I actually don’t have words for this. Beautiful? Maybe? I don’t know. I just needed to highlight it.

“What? I said... is that wrong? I can't be the first pony to tell you that?"
Pinkie nodded, even as her cheeks became matted and slick, trails falling from her eyes. "Other than Professor Spark, but he says I can't go out and talk to ponies, or they won't think I'm smart. They'll think I'm crazy, because I am crazy, because you're not really there! You're just another... another one of them! I really, truly thought you were real...”

And dislike has transformed into loathe then metamorphosed into hate into… can we meet this pony so we can buck him in the face?

...Electrodes at head height.

Buck him off Canterlot mountain. Let’s see if he can invent wings on the way down.

“Twilight doubled over, panting, a migraine beginning to form. She wasn't used to magic that complex, no unicorn could have been.”

Original Note: “I do hope you explore this.”

“But you know what? I'm crazy too." Half the distance between them had been closed now. The sobbing pink pony dared look up.
"R-really? Really, really?"
"Really, really." Twilight nodded. Three quarters now. "And you know what else? I'm so crazy I think there's a mare on the moon. I've seen her, too."
Pinkie snorted, giggling a little. "You're right, that is crazy.”

Giggles and tears.

“She hugged the broken pink pony, and held her tight.
"A proper burial," she promised, "at Old Bones Park.”

And now just tears…

And in that look, Twilight told Bright Sparks that for what she had planned for him, there would need to be fewer witnesses... or perhaps far, far more.

Even I don’t know which I want to happen to him. He got off bucking easy.

“A big laser,” Pinkie explained, “I want to shoot the moon with a big laser, so when the light shines off it, I can prove it’s actually way up there, and it’s not just in everypony’s imagination, or painted on the sky.”
“Well, there’s our last two letters then. Laser Artificer. Twilight’s Extra Special – wait, did you say bouncing light off the moon?”

Ain’t friendship grand?

Looking back at this chapter, I realize just how dark it is, hidden in a beautiful silly pink package. Twilight going from utterly convinced Pinkie Pie is an idiot to a dim, but enthusiastic rube to… “I’m looking at the most brilliant pony in creation.”

And then finding out what Bright Spark had done to her. Great job. You made me want to actually strangle an imaginary cartoon pony. This was horrific. Probably even more horrific than the Celestia scenes we see later. Actually, scratch that, it is more horrific.

Celestia is unbalanced. We can see that in her actions and her inconsistent and contradictory behavior. She’s insane, driven mad by… well, you know by what.

Bright Spark did this, knowing full well what he was doing, because he could, because he could take advantage of Pinkie, because he was greedy and because he wanted to. Insanity is disturbing. Intentional blase malice is evil.

If you had to ask me who the worst villain in this story was… it would actually be Bright Spark. I’ve heard stories about Edison (and always wondered how much was true and how much was false)… and I really pray he was nothing like this.

Pinkie’s outburst was simply heartbreaking. Her screaming that Twilight couldn’t be real because she was bucking kind to her?! Yeah. Buck Bright Spark off Canterlot mountain in the nude. Let him invent some wings on the way down. If he lives, he gets banished and thrown in a dungeon in the place he was banished to. If not, problem solved.

But better? Thank you that Twilight was smart enough to realize when someone was smarter than her. But that’s what was special about Pinkie. She never made Twilight feel stupid. She wanted to help. She wanted to share. She wanted to just… matter.

And she changed the world.

Yeah. This… this was good stuff. Anything that kicks off this much of an emotional reaction is really good stuff.

The Mare Who Writes On The Moon

Lacquered wood. Polished brass. Vented steam.
Things that now seemed to represent an age rapidly heading towards antiquity.
Copper coils. Iron generators. The inexorable invisible flow of electrons. They were the future, a future Twilight feared and didn't quite understand. The ever-enthusiastic pink hoof of TESLA, though – Pinkie Pie, if the mood struck her – had pulled her into a whole new world of modern science, one that she would have to tentatively make peace with.

That’s quite the character development you got going on, Twi. So I wonder if it’s simply the shock of Pinkie’s brilliance, the desperation of making a connection with The Mare or something else entirely that’s made her so willing. I almost think she should have put up more of a fight.

I’m also fairly glad she didn’t.

Until that merry day, piles of copper wire wrapped around wood had been unceremoniously dumped in the basement and converted into an impromptu apartment, or perhaps more of a lair for the budding mad scientist.

Until the merry day when she gets her own place. This has a whole new meaning the second time through. At first, I just loved the turn of phrase. Now… I don’t even know what I really feel about it (That’s a good thing).

And totally a budding mad scientist. Which are seriously the best kind.

She had pounced on Applejack in the street like an overly excited kitten – fueled by that perverse mixture of sleep deprivation and caffeine that lead a pony to the most irrational and singular of actions – and all but begged for her assistance.

Death by cuteness! MEOW!

That disappointed look on Applejack's face when Twilight suggested she go up alone gave Twilight far too much joy for something that would otherwise be quite sad. She made certain to keep herself from lingering on it.

Yeah, heaven forbid you linger on that one, Twi.

...and how does AJ being sad end up being so cute?

She nuzzled the sleeping genius, and was rewarded for the gesture with a particularly loud snore.

Okay, just managed to res myself from that death by cuteness up there… let’s see what’s… OH NOT AGAIN! ./dies

Spike enjoyed his sleep-ins almost as much as Twilight herself, but with the difference that Spike would flame an alarm clock to a melted husk as soon as hit the snooze button.

I’m glad my wife can’t do this. Because she would totally do this.

A wordless conversation passed between the unicorn and the earth pony farmer: Applejack offered a questioning look, Twilight shot back a dangerous one; Applejack replied with raised eyebrows, Twilight said 'yes, that bad' with the tilt and nod of her head. Applejack ended the back and forth with a low whistle.

Twi uses EYEBROWS. It’s super effective!

Supply and demand. Demand isn't just what ponies collectively want, it's what ponies can collectively afford.

True economics. Nicely done.

The Empire, the aristocracy was formed by demesnes channeling local monies to a few knights…

Well done. I like to think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but this forced me to actually look up a word. I ended up doing that a few times throughout this story. So well done using proper terminologies.

“Applejack shrugged. "Got a lot of kin. What's one more that you never saw?"
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"Nope," the pony muttered quietly, "just helps to pretend.”

Poignant. Poignant as hell. I wish there was a serious slow-clap animation, because this deserves it.

“Well, if you could get me a bucket of radium–"
Twilight's response was gentle, but as firm as bedrock. "No."
"Aw. But it's so pretty!" A worryingly disarming pout. Twilight almost reconsidered. Almost.”

Pinkie uses RADIOACTIVE PUPPY DOG EYES. It’s almost effective.

Canterlot uses CONTINUE TO EXIST. It’s super effective.

“On second thought, if this was how seriously she was taking caffeine withdrawal, it might be for the best she take a break from it…
Nah.”

Screw that! Then you’d start acting like a normal pony and you’d be boring. We like crazy Twi.

A big red button had been installed next to the levers and wheels. The big red button.

Oh Celestia, YES.

She'd give anything to see it more.
lot of help from her friends, really.
The Mare couldn’t see that…

Okay, this was one of two incidents in the book where there’s either a sentence or a paragraph or something missing. I re-read this five times and went back to check the original (since I read on .EPUB), but yeah. What was missing from here?

The Mare laughed, tapping her hooves together joyously, and danced around a bit in a circle, entirely forgetting herself.

Now, I couldn’t possibly die from cute three times in a chapter… right?

...wrong.

SQUEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee /dead

She seemed to remember herself, at last, or at least that she had an audience. She stopped abruptly, falling rather unceremoniously on her rump, blushing furiously enough that even with three hundred eighty four thousand, four hundred and three kilometers between them, Twilight saw it as clear as the noonday sun. That blush burned about as brightly, too.

Twilight was far too adorable in this chapter. Seriously, she’s finally getting to see her dreams come true and she’s amazing. Not only just as a character, but as she reaches out to Pinkie and AJ. It’s beautiful… and the end was a bit of a heart-wrencher, you jerk.

...and I don’t get to talk since I once ended a chapter with “Twenty seconds later, the screaming started.”

Yeah, all authors are intrinsically evil.

But we’re okay with it.

The Explorer who Dreams

I remember my first readthrough of this story. There was a certain point where I stopped really thinking about the story and wondering what was going to happen next and instead just enjoyed the experience. I looked back at previous events with great joy, but I have this strange ability not to fret (too much) about the fate and coming events.

That being said… come on. Who else could this be but Rainbow Dash?

A problem that couldn't be solved by steam power? Such a thought sent liquid nitrogen through her already miserable veins.

“Liquid nitrogen through her already miserable veins?” Oh, Sweet Celestia, this is magnificent!

“A nuclear reactor is out of the question. I don't even think my house is zoned for it. I can't even imagine the paperwork I'd need to fill out to be zoned for it."
Pinkie hummed her disappointment. "Aww.”

Spoilsport.

The impossibly infectious smile returned. Somepony would have to catalogue it for the Collection Of Notable Diseases In The Empire.

It’s a danger to everypony! It’s almost as bad as The Curse of Singing that Ponyville suffers from.

...almost.

Alright, so steam is out. As is nuclear power. Wind isn't enough, and I don't have a hydroelectric dam just lying around. Even the ones that are quite literally lying around, I can't just borrow.

Pfft. You used to be cool, Twi. You used to know ponies. Can’t even steal a dam? Pfft.

A single bolt of lightning carried about as much energy as five hundred pounds of coal in a burst, and a talented pegasus could generate several an hour.

500 pounds of coal = 1.21 JIGGAWATTS?!

Also, I really liked seeing coal used as a measurement. It just seems… cool. I don’t know why (No, I’m not doing the obvious pun).

No, Twilight strove to conduct herself in this as a lady.
Admittedly, ladies did not engage in casual acts of industrial espionage, but that was probably only because they lacked ambition.

Damn right! Lazy good-for-nothing lady posers is what they are. Pfft. We know what a good lady is capable of! And we’ll even see more of it in a few chapters…

P.S. Best Rarity is right here.

A dim and dirty incandescent bulb of Bright Spark's own design hung from the reception room's ceiling, swinging lazily back and forth on its frayed and corroded length of wire.

Well, if I needed any more proof that Bright Spark was Edison… that does it. (Though the selling line about the eternal lightbulbs Pinkie made helped a lot too).

Bright Spark may have stolen an awful lot from Pinkie Pie, but he certainly hadn’t stolen her good cheer.

*mutter* Idiot. *mutter*

All this she considered when she noticed the creeping, flowering tendrils growing out from the door at the end of the blue line.

Flowering tendrils? Why am I suddenly thinking of those vines from Jumanji?

“Aha! A headhunter!" a raspy, masculine voice declared triumphantly. "Finally caught one, wot wot! Oh, this will be a fantastic haul for the colts back home, tally ho!"

You know, on second thought, I think I was burning through these pages so quickly I didn’t stop to realize that the next part would be Rainbow Dash. It’s blatantly obvious now, but my response to this line was…

Oh Celestia...

The knife, Twilight identified, appeared to be a rather sharp golden letter opener, curved wickedly to be reminiscent of a sacrificial blade, taped to the end of a cricket bat.

“...at the end of a cricket bat?!”

“I be her, quite right!" Rainbow declared, proudly. Her eyes narrowed a moment, and she coughed, tapping her chest. "My apologies, what ho, I seem to have slipped back into Pirate Dash for a moment! That was a long time ago, all behind me now. Explorer Dash is where the mind needs to be focused, yes yes, quite right!”

...this is awesome.

No, seriously. Rainbow Dash’s dialect was probably my favorite dialect of the entire thing. Now, granted, the Explorer Dialect isn’t a constant thing—which is probably a good thing—but I have to admit that she slips into much more normal dialogue a bit too often for me. I wanted her to keep this bombastic delivery method (almost literally, she’s using her words as verbal carpet bombs), because it was so ridiculous, yet so perfect. We’ve switched her obsession with the Wonderbolts to her obsession with Daring Do and it is magnificent.

Though I can’t but wonder what her cutie mark is now. The only ones we ever see are Twilight’s and Applejack’s after all. The clothing bit and the cutie mark privacy was a brilliant dodge to hide these little tidbits or simply serendipity.

Twilight expected a bread knife, or perhaps a few butter knives taped together. What she did not expect was for the pegasus to grip firmly in her mouth a large, genuine, authentic kukri.
Alright, the letter opener she could forgive, but how the heck had she gotten that one in the office? How had no one taken it off her? Had anyone tried?

What do you think, sugarcube?

With a jerk of the pegasus' head, a vine fell toppling to the ground, leaking a noxious white sap. The knife fell back behind the desk, too. "Don't tell Mr Spark! That one's just between you and me, eh?!" she implored, smiling wide.“Now! What can this intrepid explorer help you with?!"
By the Princess, this mare was crazier than even Pinkie Pie.”

And it's SO AWESOME!

Even bad chocolate tea was still chocolate tea.

Confession: I did not know chocolate tea existed until this. There’s a reason my Sunset Shimmer is obsessed with Earl Grey, after all.

“Oh yes?" Twilight hummed, almost as if she were bored. "Prove it."

And the crowd goes wild!

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, tongue sticking out of her mouth. Twilight would forever think of it as Dash's 'thinking' face.

You should have used this a couple more times. It’s comic gold.

“First you steal my assistant," a rather distinguished and erudite voice scolded from the doorway, with that perfect diction and enunciation that could only have come from very expensive private schooling, "and now you steal my admittedly horribly incompetent artificial weather manager? I dare say, Ms Sparkle, I took you for a lot of things –" That most of them were clearly rather unflattering was left unspoken. "–but a headhunter was not one of them.”

...well ponyfeathers.

The entrepreneur, inventor, genius, scholar, and all-around insufferable jerk regained his composure with a chilling, restrained grin.

...I love this story.

For some reason, her signature involved the drawing of an explosion with lightning bolts coming from it. For other reasons, this didn't surprise Twilight in the slightest.

Twilight shook her head, her magic clamping Bright Spark's jaw closed. Rainbow's eyes widened spectacularly, but Twilight didn't notice, didn't see.

Took you bloody long enough, Twi.

“Only your name is left, and a title that made her your own. What I can not abide, Mr Spark, is you taking away that mare's rightful existence in history, something that would only hurt you. Not her. A pain you would not feel now, in the present, but only in the annals of time. The idea that you would have to share your reputation with a madpony named Pinkie Pie; that's what you thought was truly dangerous, wasn't it?”

“Firing squad to Aisle One, firing squad to Aisle One please…”

Seriously, I want this pony taken out and shot.

That was as far as he got before Rainbow Dash bucked him hard, flipping him head-over-teakettle.

Yes. So much yes.

“I love boffins! Where do you think us explorers get all the best gadgets, what ho?! So, whatta ya need me to do?!”

Finally, someone who appreciated what Q Branch does!

“Oh," Twilight puffed, reading over the designs with a haughty smile, "I just need you to power the death ray we're aiming at the moon."
Rainbow's grin redoubled. "Awesome.”

Another brilliant installation of one of the Mane 6 into this universe. Completely believable. This is, without a doubt, Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash was bloody brilliant as the Livingston-style explorer voice, which was the first really good example of this. Different life, same personality.

But even more believable is the position she was in. She was stuck in a job she didn’t want because she was too good at what she did before. She hated her job, but she needed it to get her dream. It’s something very familiar that so many people deal with every single day.

But more importantly… we got to finally meet the first villain of this story and them buck him in the face.

Because loyalty.

I’ve never loved Rainbow Dash more than this moment.

And that's the end of the follow-up for chapters four through six of "The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon!" Tune in tomorrow for the next three chapters!

The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon Follow-Up:

Chapter 1 through 3: The Mare Who Lives On The Moon, The Farmer who Builds, The Mare Who Runs On The Moon
Chapter 4 through 6: The Madmare Who Invents, The Mare Who Writes On The Moon, The Explorer who Dreams
Chapter 7 through 9: The Mare Who Would Gift Twilight The Moon, The Socialite who Schemes, The Mare Who Would Escape The Moon
Chapter 10 through 12: The Guardian Who Loves, The Mare Who Would Love The Moon, The Science of Magic
Chapter 13 and 14: To Love the Moon, To Love the Moonshine & The Student who Defies
Chapter 15 and 16: The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon & The Stars Will Aid in her Escape