I don't know if this thread's going to do any good (you could kill it if necessary, which it probably will be), but after the last week or so of comment wars, it's time to open the floor.

As we've already established, the Lunaverse was intended to be a more mature take on Friendship is Magic as a whole. This has resulted in stories going into far braver discussions than the show could ever hope to pull off, and that's a good thing. But at the same time, there has been discussion about the Lunaverse going in too dark a direction, or that it's already gotten too dismally grey and needs to step back, or any other number of things.

The fact of the matter is that we need to decide, here and now, what constitutes being "too dark." What elements should be avoided or reduced to a bare minimum in order to facilitate the right turn of events for us all? What needs to be bolstered and expanded upon? The floor is open to discussion. Just please, let's all keep it civil this time, okay?

591230
The Lunaverse is essentially a universe with different characters are are focused upon.
Changes are surely guaranteed, but I fear that mature content would be too much.

Without Darkness, there can be no Light. I believe the Darkness which spots the L!verse here and there is well compensated by the brilliant Light of Friendship. (until somepony forgets to pay the electric bill, and then we need to take up a collection)

Guess I need to catch up on some reading, because I have no idea what your talking about.

After backtracking on the opening of Where There is Smoke I think killing is pretty much the line we shouldn't cross. At the very least no one should die in the present (Sombra getting solar flare'd in the past I think is still okay). Basically, as far as maturity, we're just treating the L6 as independant adult, and so we need to put job schedule and money into consideration for events. Aside from that I don't think we need to go any darker to be edgier than the maneverse.

591376
Hmmm....It would be as compelling to see the L6 have to worry about sitters and being late for work when discussing the Gala as the current mild political problem. Heck, that could even been a way to make Boast Busters less dire. Contrasting a busy bureaucrat with a rich college kid wandering around on Daddy's jangle would be plenty dramatic.

591376

It's not so much death we need to avoid. It's the pointless killing and destruction and violence we need to avoid.

personally I'm not really much for this idea, I'm worried it could easily become extremely restrictive and stop a good story idea from being able to get anywhere, because it might get hit with the dark label before it even get's to open discussion.

That and what's to dark, can shift and change very easily given the circumstances of the situation and the characters involved, if we laid down hard rules on what was to dark; I feel we'd be restricting potential ideas and not leaving as much creative freedom for even simple ideas to come about, by restricting them before they even get on the boards. Especially when we can just discuss whether something is to dark within the forums before it could get theoretically out of hand.

Even in Disney movies, something intended nominally for small children, there can be a air bit of darkness and even death while still be appropriate for the age bracket. Scar's death, Cinderella's upbringing the end to Oliver and Company to name a few examples.

I do agree to an extent that to dark is something to watch out for, but I don't personally feel this is the way, sorry.

591644
I concur.

591398

except the busy bureaucrat and rich kid met while the bureaucrat was doing a kids magic show.

honestly I'm tired of maturity meaning I've got to watch bad guys get away with crap and good guys are hamstrung.

Basically the Lunaverse has been fine in universe except for the gov't. From an outside perspective there were times when the changes made to the M6 were grating

591666

It's not so much putting up restrictions as it is outlining just what direction we want the Lunaverse as a whole to go in, how far is too far, etc. But if someone wants to kill the thread, that's fine. It was just an idea.

591718
I understand what you were going for, I just feel that could very easily be an unintended consequence of it.
and I'm not much for planning the exact feeling on an entire season/L!verse in advance as it could again limit ideas and creativity, when an idea that's to dark can just be discussed on the boards. That and again darkness, much like goodness, is a very adaptable thing given different circumstances, characters ETC I don't think it's really possible or a good idea to determine how much is to much for the L!verse.
But that's just me and maybe I'm wrong.
Sorry if this came across as rude.

591779

thing is, the Lunaverse got where it was through the unintended consequence of the creator being easy going on what ideas could be written.

RDD has already set up a section for non-canon stories. The good ideas that are to dark can go there.

591950
That's mostly just the Night Court as far as I can tell and I don't disagree that we should be worried about the idea of thing getting to dark, but I don't think the current system needs to change.

There is no such thing as "too dark"

591376>>591644
I agree with Blackbelt, and I've stated it before: I'm okay with deaths occurring in the Lunaverse, but they should always mean something. Nopony is a mook.

A slight exception may be made in the case of any villain that might have a "putty patrol" type gig, where he or she can create en mass a bunch of minions who aren't really alive or sentient. Grogar is going to be capable of this.

Having said that, it can be really, really difficult to straddle the line of villain death. Both Crisis on Two Equestrias and The Return of Tambelon are going to have to deal with it, though only sort of in the case of Crisis

592570
Agreed, there shouldn't be any red shirts or mooks, but that does't mean death can't happen.

A slight exception may be made in the case of any villain that might have a "putty patrol" type gig, where he or she can create en mass a bunch of minions who aren't really alive or sentient. Grogar is going to be capable of this.

Golems, elemental, necromantics skeletons/monster things, that type of enemy I'm guessing? Cos they are great fun for this type of series.
oh and now I can't wait for Tambelon even more!

Interesting hints toward crisis, maybe it won't be Discord who's main villaining it up hmm Lavan, Tirek? I have no idea.
Though to be fair within G4 Sombra at least seems to have been killed and in G1 half the villains were corpses by the end of the story.

592641

Golems, elemental, necromantics skeletons/monster things, that type of enemy I'm guessing? Cos they are great fun for this type of series

Grogar basically creates golems. Stitchpunk Golems. Have you seen 9? It'll be a lot like that.

He makes stitchpunk golems because I think that skeletons and zombies and wraiths are going a bit too far, but I still want to give people nightmares.

592570>>592641

Exactly. Constructs, Golems, and the like are where we can get the whole "Deadly Force" thing, if any of use really felt the need to go that way. I will admit I would LOVE to see what happens when Raindrops has no reason to hold back, but I won't be the one to do that.

.....here's a logic bomber: What about Golems powered by souls?

592570 I guess you have a point, but still I went too far with the dragon killing thing.

592641 I agree that death should be a possibility but I'm not sure if actual death scenes, as opposed to implied or off screen death, fit into the current style of the Lunaverse. If in "Family Relations" Mac hadn't been joking about killing the three pegasi that would fit in to the story better than actually showing him stomping the heads into pancakes.

592672
I woulda figured the robots from 9 would or D&D be more Grogars style, just with magic rather than magical science. Still should be very fascinating to see what he's been doing in the shadows for so long and what kind of direct magic he can pull off and just generally everything

I do agree full on zombies would probably be a little far, unless they'd been long dead before he got to making them, "the black Cauldron or Hercules" and their dead folks for instance.

592676
I actually had a scene like that prepped for that dungeon crawl fic I was working on, suffice to say it was going to have a pretty epic fight between Raindrops and an elemental empowered golem.

and yeah agree I can't wait to see Raindrops cut lose ans smash her enemies.

Interesting idea with the souls I could see him doing it, or animating them with living semi sentient shadows of evil. hmm

592730
I'd have mixed feeling about on "screen" deaths scenes, I personally wouldn't be against it, nor do I think it would be that far off for MLP G1 and G4, o to her shows and movies intended for kids, but it would be one of those things that has to be well done and fit with the current story. As well as be rare and not overly gruesome and naturally serve a purpose within the world as opposed to just showing how evil the villain is.
But unless they make perfect sense within the plot, I'm not going to push for on screen death's or anything.

I do like the Disney movie comparaison. You can have stuff like Simba losing his father and Scar getting killed at the end, but you don't get random bloody death along the way. Basically as long as we keep the 'Disney movie' idea in mind it shouldn't be too hard to not go over the line.

592672
Wait does this mean no troggles or power staves? I'm unsure how to feel about that? I did love the power/blasting staves and the sense of hopelessness Grogar instilled in his subjects really helped make him as a villain.
Still I'm sure you can pull it off.

I hope death's not banned. I plan on killing Puissance in season three, after all!

592889
I couldn't think of a way to integrate troggles. Power staves, on the other hand...

592911
This...might play into that thing I said I didn't like about the Lunaverse, which is to say how much of late Season 2/Season 3 has been planned for when Season 1 hasn't actually finished yet.

592945 Ah, Golden Horseshoes story? The one I have talked about quite a bit.

Anyway, on topic. I think we should go case-by-case. No blanket rules.

Personally, in general, I'd like to keep things to a PG-13 rating. 12s. Whatever it is in your home country of origin.

Examples: Top Grossing PG-13 movies at the box office
1. Avatar
2. Titanic
3. Marvel's The Avengers
4. The Dark Knight
5. The Dark Knight Rises
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
7. The Hunger Games
8. Spider-Man
9. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Basically, if it could fit into the above, I'm okay with it.

...huh. 8 of the top 10 PG-13 movies of all time (by earnings at the box office) were made in the past ten years...three of them, in the past three years. Why is Hollywood concerned about piracy again?

592945
Fair point with the Troggles, I only cared about them because they were a good way of demonstrating Grogars (Darkseid) like levels of evil, being able to inspire such fear and hopelessness his minions give up.

"Power staves on the other hand..."
I can't wait to see see what happens with that.

592957
I agree that a case by case basis would work best.

592978
Great list and one I entirely agree with!

593017
Oh, there are other ways of making Grogar come across as vicious and evil.

Minion: But my lord Grogar, she is only one mare. What can one mare do?
Grogar: This. [shoves the minion off of the castle wall, and it breaks apart on hitting the ground]
Grogar: [shoves the minion off of the castle wall, and it breaks apart on hitting the ground] That.

Also a not insignificant amount of his dialogue will be taken from the names and flavor texts of Magic: the Gathering's Archenemy cards.

If Corona draws inspiration from Lord Zedd and other classic Saturday Morning cartoon villains, then Grogar draws inspiration from the likes of Machinedramon (from Digimon Adventure), Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Syndrome (The Incredibles), and Nicodemus (The Dresden Files). Basically, he's read the Evil Overlord List and, though he doesn't follow it to the letter, he's going to hopefully come across as very, very savvy.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
---
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
---
34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

593026

Oh, there are other ways of making Grogar come across as vicious and evil.

A very fair point.

Minion: But my lord Grogar, she is only one mare. What can one mare do?
Grogar: This. [shoves the minion off of the castle wall, and it breaks apart on hitting the ground]
Grogar: [shoves the minion off of the castle wall, and it breaks apart on hitting the ground] That.

I love it!
It's Interesting, Grogar seems have some genre savvy going on there.

Also a not insignificant amount of his dialogue will be taken from the names and flavor texts of Magic: the Gathering's Archenemy cards.

He sounds even mroe terrifying than I thought he would! I can't wait!

593026

If Corona draws inspiration from Lord Zedd and other classic Saturday Morning cartoon villains, then Grogar draws inspiration from the likes of Machinedramon (from Digimon Adventure), Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Syndrome (The Incredibles), and Nicodemus (The Dresden Files). Basically, he's read the Evil Overlord List and, though he doesn't follow it to the letter, he's going to hopefully come across as very, very savvy.

This sounds EPIC!
Almost seems like he should be a season spanner villain in his own right with all the savvy and badass.
The first two are some of my favorite villains, well Azula is my Favorite from avatar and Machinedramon is certainly up there within his won world. and Syndrome certainly had his charms. I'm as eager for this as I am for crisis maybe even a little bit more.
I'm sorry to say I haven't read the Dresden Files..

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
---
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I can't wait to start seeing this kind of thing shown within the episode.

593068
I love Machinedramon, too. He instantly had a solution to every problem, and he was the only one of the four Dark Masters that I could see as having actually put the time and effort into conquering the Digital World. He's clearly a cut above MetalSeadramon and Puppetmon what with his army and scorched Earth tactics, and was only subservient to Piedmon because Piedmon could take him in a fight. But when the WonderSwan games were made, it wasn't Piedmon who became part of Millenniumon...

Not that I don't like Piedmon, too.

Piedmon [disguised as a clown]: "How about a story? Once upon a time there were eight annoying brats called the Digi-Destined. They learned about how the Dark Masters had taken over the Digital World and so decided to climb Spiral Mountain to fight the Dark Masters. But, the brats were defeated, destroyed, and the Dark Masters lived happily ever after!"
TK: "That story wasn't very nice!"
Piedmon: "Oh - I believe I forgot to mention - it's a true story!"

Digimon had such memorable villains...Devimon will always take the cake for me, though, for the fact that he was perfectly okay with being killed, because he took Angemon with him, and Devimon knew for a fact that there were much more powerful evils out in the world. Even without him, Evil would flourish.

"You have used up all your power. That wasn't very smart, Angemon - now you are no use to anyone! You can't get away from the dark forces. Evil is everywhere, so don't savor your victory. There are other digimon who are just as powerful as I am. Some of them are even stronger...I wonder what you'll do when you run into them? You haven't won at all - what a waste of time!"

He was a martyr for evil. That's glorious.

593076
Yeah Machinedramon and his metal empire were probably my favorite part of that season, he was as you said, such a planner and competent, he actually seemed to have done something with all his power and his strategies/combat tactics were actually clever, like his as you said scorched earth tactics, great villain but quite smart, a rare thing for villains sadly.

Yeah Piedmon was pretty intimidating as well, especially when he's just sneaking around like a horror villain waiting to stab the heroes through the throat and taunting them like a monster clown psychopath, that quote was an excellent demonstration.

Yeah a good portion of Digimon adventures villains were excellent, I always enjoyed Etemon, he was clever and evil in that killer rabbit sort of way.

and Myotismon, when he was wearing the suit and conquering human world was also very savvy and intimidating, he didn't stay behind to fight the heroes when he could just seal them up cut off communication starts searching for the one to destroy you and actually try destroying them when you do. he was a good villain to me right up until he turned himself into a crotch monster, that was still sorta scary but not so much.

Devimon was excellent for all the reasons you listed and the epic quote, his views, his overall villainy and control made him incredibly intimidating and he managed to seem just as, if not more scary in 02 by driving people insane with the powers of evil.

It occurs to me normally golems wouldn't talk? I can't wait to see how that works.

This is actually a very valid point, considering the webseries I'm planning. I suppose dark themes are acceptable, but as some people have said, it can't get too dark, and I agree.

There are boundaries that I don't think I'll cross, especially in the webseries.

592945

This...might play into that thing I said I didn't like about the Lunaverse, which is to say how much of late Season 2/Season 3 has been planned for when Season 1 hasn't actually finished yet.

Why do I get the sudden impression numerous nobles are going to die or be hurled in prison or forcibly and quite literally kicked out of Equestria in the near future?

593189 As long as Puissance is left in a position for me to use her.

I personally think that just straight gorefics (Like Cupcakes or Parchment) should be avoided. I have nothing against gore, but straight gorefics usually have minimal plot and, strangely, not much action, and usually end up being quite boring.

Also, Apocolyptic genocide is a no-no. It brings character development to a screeching halt.

Well, this thread has proven to be...absolutely pointless. Way to go, IAH, you screw it up once again.

597861

The impression I got is that Grogar is a one-off thing, at least here.

I agree that a lot of the darker stuff is in the past, as it is with the show (seriously, what happens to Sombra and the Crystal Empire in the series is...pretty freaking dark for a kid's show), but at the same time there's a lot more loaded on the front that the show can get away with. The show defeats villains after one appearance; right now we have an insane goddess who's supposed to go even crazier as the season progresses, not to mention Discord at the end of the season, where he can do the most damage. Heck, the reason this thread got started in the first place was because of that 150+ post debate over whether or not AtGGG is going to feature Protagonist Centered Morality and how that sets up a bad precedent.

597861
I don't want to get too spoiler-y, but I'll just say that there is a 99.999...% chance that Grogar will not be appearing beyond The Return of Tambelon.

600017
You didn't screw up, we just got off on a tangent, because we're a bunch of people hanging out on a message board. It happens.

600017

You did not screw anything up. You got people to ask questions which otherwised wouldmhave gone unasked. I say mission accomplished.

600017 Ehh, I just didn't really want to reopen that fight by myself. Beyond that, I shouldn't be spending a lot of time arguing on the internet anyway these days.

600017 600309 600300
Got to agree with RDD and BB here. I've been on the wrong side of starting a heated discussion or two (quite notably that whole thing about just what kind of villains the political antagonists should become); it doesn't feel so good to come across as the 'party-pooper', but someone has to ask the difficult questions or else this whole project could go completely off target just because no one was bothering to pay attention to where it was going in the first place.

Also, at least you should take heart that no one seems to be personally excusing you of sabotaging story arcs that didn't even exist except in theory.

600017 I'd rather see you raise concerns about stories that aren't even written than just complain afterwards. We need some grounded types like you and Emeral so we don't go completely off the tracks. I don't think this thread was useless at all!

600017>>601290 Yeah, what Fizzy said. A reminder we shouldn't go all nuts-cuckoo.

At the risk of stirring up shite again, I was looking over the TV Tropes page and noticed these new additions:

Broken Base: There are four camps relating to 'At the Grand Galloping Gala', the culmination of the season 1 'Night Court' storyline. One faction feels that the fic ruins things because it makes the Night Court too dark and evil, able to cause a whole town to suffer because one pony in it hates Trixie. One faction feels that the fic ruins things because it turns Trixie and co. into hypocritical criminals and Luna into a tyrant for letting them get away with what is essentially treason in order to expose/punish the (comparatively smaller) crimes of the bad nobles. A third group thinks that the fic breaks everything in both ways; that by implying that treason is the only way to fix the Court, it makes the Court far more broken and malign than before while also not actually solving the corruption (since Trixie and co. would get away with what they did). And a fourth faction likes things just fine.

Darkness Induced Audience Apathy: As of 'At the Grand Galloping Gala', in which the L6 descend to the level of the corrupt nobles and plan to commit high treason to fight them, has caused some readers to stop caring which side wins.

Long comment threads in 'At the Grand Galloping Gala' reveal that some folks think that fic includes moral event horizons for Viceroy Night Light (who delayed reconstrution funding to Ponyville because he hates Trixie), the Court as a whole (who tolerates this), and/or Trixie (who RDD has implied will use the Truth is a Scourge potion on the entire Court and force them all to reveal all their secrets, which would be hypocritical, since that act itself is highly illegal and borders on treason but she intends to do it to protest the illegal dealings of the Court).

Just thought I'd point these out.

605669

Meh. Tropers will trope anything.

And it's the ymmv page anyway.

Pffft, and no mention of my single person camp who doesn't think the suffering that Ponyville went through was really all that bad. I feel like such a rebel.

Edit: Hell, might as well turn this into an argument that ATGGG has yet to actually make the setting too dark.

Unless I am totally misinterpreting, no one in Ponyville was starving or sleeping in the streets. Additionally, we know that they had something like 30 grand in their emergency fund, so they should have had enough resources to keep on top of any immediate emergencies. They spent a few days working fairly hard before the emergency funds showed up, but that should be the extent of their physical hardships. In the end, it was probably similar to what canon Ponyville went through after Swarm of the Century.

Sure, they also went through the mental hardship of worrying about the future for a few days before Luna laid down the law to Night Light, but I don't have as much sympathy for that as I could. Maybe they will think twice before going after anypony else in a mob. Considering that the first pony they went after ended up being the Element of Magic and a world savior, and the second turned out to be the daughter of a viceroy, they aren't exactly batting 1000 in terms of taking the law into their own hands.

605669
...

....

...I really can't wait to just be done with AtGGG already...

605758
Feel free to copy/paste that note into the TVTropes page.

607329

...I really can't wait to just be done with AtGGG already...

Only a few more chapters to go, my friend. Only a few more...

Here, let Rarity's lustful gaze fill you with renewed strength.