The Truth
This story resulted from a conversation with a reader about the nature of my Celestia's interaction with humanity within my Conversion Bureau stories. Despite everything, despite even agreeing with her results, he seemed to feel that, somehow, he wanted Celestia to effectively 'apologize' for her decisions and actions. In the end, I decided to give my reader exactly what he wanted. This story of Celestia being forced to tell the brutal truth is not canon to my Bureau stories, but the facts presented by her speech are canon.
This demand touches something in my own real life. My mother was dying of emphysema caused by smoking. I had fought with her to stop smoking my entire life, desperate to save her from her own stupidity. Now the end was coming. She was terrified to die.
In my last visit with her, before her death, she turned to me with red, crying eyes and asked me if she was going to die. I couldn't tell her the truth. I lied. I said no, she would beat this. She would probably outlive me. She was tough. She relaxed. It was what she wanted to hear. It gave her false comfort.
But I had lied! I lied to my own mother's face just before she died. For more than twenty-seven years, I have been plagued with not knowing if what I did was right, or wrong, good or evil. The truth is that right and wrong, good and evil are childish terms. Real life is vastly more complex than such simple words, and right and wrong are situational and dependent matters. What has real value is not arbitrary moral rights or wrongs, but compassion.
The Conversion Bureau
The Truth
By Chatoyance
Nopony seemed to know how the princess had been made to do it. Several grumbly Newfoal groups claimed responsibility, but they had never seemed credible. Some newfoals wondered if the genetically altered agents of the old Human Liberation Front had somehow succeeded in their threats against Celestia. The agents, they said, were shaped like ponies, but they did not think like them. They could kill. They could cause harm at will.
However it had happened, whatever had been done to force the issue, the facts were that Celestia, diarch of the sun, had announced that she was going to address the whole of Equestria. It was clear that she did not want to do so - indeed, she had seemed pained, almost grieving at the announcement. Some said she was being held hostage, somehow. Some ponies thought that she had been trapped by one of her inviolable promises.
Celestia was Law incarnate, after all.
Most interesting, however, was the topic of her address. The princess was going to talk about the newfoals. For the first time, she was going to tell the whole of Equestria - every pony, every soul - the story of her actions in the last days of the lost and destroyed alien world of the newfoals.
Celestia had been forced, clearly against her will, to tell the truth.
Because, apparently, there were hidden things, secrets of the Equestrian State, that she had kept hidden. Never before in Equestrian history had state secrets been openly revealed in such a manner.
They were said to be dangerous secrets, too.
Everywhere, ponies were excited. In the three days leading up to Celestia's address, native and newfoal alike debated what might be discovered. Everypony debated what, or who, could have forced the princess - the princess - into the position of speaking frankly about topics properly suited only to the Crown. For the native ponies, this was a shock, almost frightening in it's impact - the princess could be forced.
For many newfoals, it was a triumph. The almighty Celestia was not so far above her tiny subjects that she could not be made to bow to their demands. It was a blow for human-styled democratic government. It was a victory for human-styled values.
One thing all ponies agreed upon was that whatever she said, it would be factual. Celestia was The Law. She was Order. Even those newfoals that disagreed with her rule the most, nevertheless admitted her adherence to law. If Celestia said she would do something, it was certainty that she would - for better... or for worse.
Celestia had announced that she would tell the complete truth about the Conversion Bureaus. About the Barrier. About the end of the earth.
When the three days were over, ponies everywhere were nervous and excited. Some giggled, a few actually cried. There were parties and gatherings, especially out in the vast Exponential Lands where the bulk of the converted humans lived.
The truth. Finally, thirteen years after the end of the earth, the actual truth was going to be told!
The crowds across the whole of Equestria fell silent as the first glow of magic filled the sky of every town, city, village and community. The sound of royal horns blew, echoing across the skies of distant locations. Everywhere, the image of Celestia was appearing, translucent, glowing, larger than the clouds, the blue of the day itself her backdrop.
Celestia now stood, magically, over every new town, every new city, and every place where any newfoal lived. Her image was gigantic. Her muzzle looked sad, as did her eyes. For a long time she paused, looking down. Suddenly, she raised her head and spoke, her voice a gentle thunder.
"My dear newfoals. It has been demanded of me that I confess to you the truth of what happened during the Bureau years, the last eight years of Man on Earth. I will tell you the absolute truth now. Try to be strong."
Celestia looked uncomfortable, then began to speak once more.
"You were not wanted. Indeed, most of my court, and my own sister, Luna, opposed your rescue and survival. You were seen as a dangerous species that had destroyed its own planet, and no creature of Equestria wanted you here.
"The only reason you live now, past the end of your planet, is because centuries ago, one of your kind extorted a promise from me. I did not want to make the promise, and I did not want to honor it. But as regent of all Equestria, I am bound by my promises, for they are Law. Regretfully, I worked for eight hundred years against the most terrible opposition, to fulfill my royal duty.
"As most of you know, your planet was dying. Your world had been ravaged and gutted. Your ecosystem had already failed, most plant and animal life was already extinct. I did not wait until the last possible moment merely because I did not wish to involve myself with you. I was forced to wait until your kind had invented nanotechnology, which served as a bridge between the magic of Equestria, and the soulless physics of your own realm.
"Magic is death to life from your old universe. This is because magic defines reality, and this fact obliterates quantum uncertainty. Earthly biology depended on such uncertainty to function. To even enter your reality, it was necessary to shield the cosmos of Equestria so that it's entrance would not cause instantaneous annihilation of all earthly life.
"The result was the Barrier, a semi-sapient thaumatic construct that tried, as best it could, to convert the matter of your planet into additional Equestria. This was done to manufacture new land, so that there would be room for the overpopulated billions of your kind.
"But there was another aspect to the Barrier: from my studies of humanity, I knew that you were a species filled with madness and insanity. Your empty and false religions described your human form as supreme in all the universe. Your cultural stories and innate narcissism reinforced that you were the supreme species above all others. Although your planet was doomed, without some push, the majority of your kind would have refused escape - and transformation - until it was too late. The Barrier forced you to action, and prevented denial of reality.
"There was yet another purpose to the Barrier. Your natural deaths would have been agonizing, slow, and horrible. This mass dying-off would have stretched beyond imagination over three additional generations. Countless billions of unborn innocents would have paid the price of your refusal to save yourselves. The Barrier killed those who refused escape painlessly, and without suffering. I could not bear to do nothing, and through inaction, allow tens of billions of your kind to perish screaming in pain, simply because they were too ignorant and arrogant to choose to avoid their own destruction. I could not bear to allow innocent human children to pay the price of their parent's insanity.
"I did not relish having to to this. To be a ruler is to be forced to make difficult decisions that no other can. In taking on the responsibility for your kind, I was forced into the care of what you would have called a 'terminal patient'. Your world had become a planetary hospice before the arrival of Equestria. I did my best to minimize and hopefully eliminate suffering for those that could not be saved. Within your old universe, dealing with the dying is impossibly difficult and horrible. I felt, through the Barrier, every death, every loss. My failure to save every last member of your kind will haunt me literally forever. The price of the promise that allowed you to live will cost me suffering for eternity.
"How I wish I had never, ever, ever come across your universe. It will always be my greatest mistake.
"You were forced to become ponies. This was done because my subjects have had enough of violent, selfish, dangerous species being inflicted upon them. In the distant past, I allowed the dragons, the griffons, and the diamond dogs succor and a place to live in Equestria. They too came from dying worlds. The terrible toll their arrival caused my people nearly brought the downfall of Equestria itself. Only a fragile agreement - the Pax Equestria - has maintained peace. For now.
"You, former humans, were seen as being vastly more dangerous and frightening than either dragons or griffons. They merely killed and ate ponies. You killed and devoured a planet, and not because you needed to, but because it was profitable in the moment to do so. You were a ruthless and dominating species, driven to conquest and war. Your history was an abattoir of your own flesh, your own kin. Not even dragons slaughter entire races of their own kind. By any reasonable terms, you were an abomination to we magical beings.
"As ponies, you are incapable now of doing any more harm. Your songs, your stories, your thoughts - what of them that can be allowed - will continue. You and your cultures will not be erased forever from eternity. But the price to me in saving you was high, and because I am immortal, I will never entirely forgive your representative for forcing this upon me.
"Know that I resent you, and that the majority of Equestria fears you, but by my edict, you are to be treated as equals, and with all the kindness and love that it is possible to provide you. If I had not been forced to tell you these truths, I never would have, because I can tell that they are causing you nothing but pain, and opening old rifts between pony and newfoal.
"In truth, I would not have saved you. But I was forced to, and now you are here. This cannot be helped. I am regretful for my adherence to the Law.
"That said, I do wish you the best, now that you are here. I love my subjects, wanted or not, and it is my desire that you should thrive. I wish I could take back these words, that I could erase your minds of them. But my hooves are tied.
"I am sorry that you had to hear this. It was not my wish to force this upon you."
Celestia looked out, seemingly at the teeming billions of Equestria, the overwhelming majority all newfoals. Tears could be seen in the princess's eyes. With one last, deeply regretful look, the image of Celestia vanished from the sky.
Across the magical pocket universe, billions of newfoal and native eyes began to weep. Some eyes were angry, and the angry looks were followed by angrier words. In some communities, natives tried to comfort their newfoal friends, in other communities, the newfoals found themselves looked upon with renewed distrust and even fear.
Far away, in the draconic and griffonic lands, grim rumblings could be heard. The opinions of the princess about their kind had disturbed the fragile peace.
Only the diamond dogs seemed not to care. Most shrugged and went back to their own concerns.
But one thing had been demonstrated to all that could not be denied.
Sometimes, it is overwhelmingly kinder for all involved to tell a compassionate lie, than to admit the full and brutal truth.
THE END
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This makes me wonder about whether or not Celestia's alterations to the human psyche are enough. Long-term, it's possible that Equestria will be less Equestrian and more Earth-like because of it. A blend of half-nutrition and half-poison is, after all, a poison.
(IMO, this is one reason modern politics is such a mess. Tell people the truth instead of what they want to hear, and you're out on your ass. Tell them lies, and they believe them.)
One other tiny little thing. While the truth is good, and I approve of truth, and people deserve to know the truth, that's not actually what I ever asked for. I asked Celestia for compassion. I asked her to admit her solution wasn't perfect, and that there were people - a LOT of people - who lived good lives, and never did anything to offend her or deserve her wrath. Those people had their lives, their homes, their very bodies taken from them, and were never given any real input in the matter. Sometimes they were caught up in the insanity and just died outright.
I'm not asking Celestia to say she was wrong and she shouldn't have done it. I was asking her to admit she screwed those people, and admit - even if only privately - that doing so was not nice. If I had to kill one person to save a thousand, I suspect I'd do it. But I'd never pretend that killing that one person was right, or anything other than a tragedy.
But Celestia made it pretty clear in that chapter that what she regrets more than anything else is that she helped at all, and that she never would have done so unless she absolutely had to. To me, that indicates compassion is just about the LAST thing she feels. I wanted to see Celestia be sorry for all the pain and turmoil she put humanity through. But clearly, she's not sorry at all.
3269997
The last chapter of Tales of Los Pegasus explores this a little. It's pretty fascinating!
While this was a painful truth, it did give me incredible insight into your Celestia and the finer points of your take on the Bureau universe. Still, I can't help but feel there was one detail that was unfairly omitted: No magic meant that our universe was the victim of entropy unimpeded. There were literally no magical solutions. We may appear to be cosmic horrors, but we evolved to survive in our environment. Granted, there were still alternatives. Sustainable consumption, space exploration, more restrained use of poorly understood technologies like direct genetic manipulation, and so forth. Still, humanity did not develop in a vacuum. Ours is an unforgiving, cruel universe. Is it any wonder we turned out the same?
Also, I have to wonder; if Celestia is Law and Discord is Chaos, what is Luna?
3269997
Or a medicine, depending on the poison. (Yes, the proportion is much different in such cases. It's an analogy.)
3270403
Balance?
3270543
That's been my headcanon since S2.
3270403
Celestia = Lawful Good
Luna = Chaotic Good
Discord = Chaotic Neutral (Celestia would likely insist Chaotic Evil, but Discord doesn't seem to care about good or evil as long as it's chaotic)
I have to say this makes a lot more sense. Throughout my thinking and turning over of this particular alternate universe I always thought the negative impacts on Equestria itself were kind of glossed over, and really, hard to imagine. This definitely answers a bunch of questions. I did not expect Celestia to actually regret her actions, but it's definitely realistic. It definitely makes sense, I can't argue with that.
I'll take the convenient lie now.
edit:Thinking about this more, I find this is even better than I thought. It adds a whole other layer on, well, everything that happened. The big and the small things, both from Celestia and Luna. I'm going to have fun with this.
3270349
Well as I see it she has no reason to be sorry. She promised to save us from our self-inflicted demise and followed through, despite knowing full well the immense sacrifice she and Equestria would have to endure. If that's not compassionate then I don't know what is.
The fact that she regrets what her duty asked of her does not change her actions. They were very much compassionate and merciful.
3270858
That is exactly the alignments I use with these characters!
3270870
I absolutely agree with this. Thank you. This is the very thing I have been trying to communicate. Your words sum my thesis for me, better than I have done thus far. THANK YOU!
This was... heart-breaking. To hear that you're resented... ouch. That cuts to the core.
I somehow get the feeling that a lot of newfoals would still be grateful, even despite that admission.
3271301
I'm glad to hear that. I must thank you too however, this makes your world much more real -at least for me- if it wasn't already. The more I think about it, the more I find this is true. I don't think I could have had a better gift this Saturday morning.
3270870
Compassion and mercy are feelings, intentions, not results. Considering that Celestia just said she would much rather have let everyone die, considers them a massive pain in her ass, and intervened only because she felt she had absolutely no other option, I would consider her the very antithesis of compassionate or merciful.
Despite all that, Celestia claims to love her newfoal subjects. In light of the opinions she expressed, I can only question just how exactly she defines 'love.'
3272244
Celestia just can't catch a break with you, can she? In my canon stories, she - out of compassion - never tells anypony about how she feels with regard to getting stuck saving humanity. It wouldn't be kind.
You wanted her to admit the truth, so I wrote a story where she did. She didn't want to, but for you, she did.
Now you say she isn't compassionate because she admitted that she didn't want the burden of trying to save humans.
Yet the fact is, that she did. Despite everything, despite what she wanted or desired, she kept her promise, and made the best possible life for the alien humans. She let her realm be invaded by them, took them in, gave them a good future, adapted Equestrian culture to include them, and risked trouble with the dragons and griffons all for the human newfoals - all of which she didn't want to do. Why? To keep a promise, yes. But she could have just rescued the humans and isolated them on some island or separate continent. Never have to deal with them again. Ignore them.
But she didn't. She integrated them, out of compassion. Because leaving them lonely and lost would be cruel.
She can't win with you.
A person isn't courageous because they feel no fear, they are courageous because even though they are terrified, they do what needs to be done anyway.
A person isn't compassionate if what they do benefits themselves, they are most compassionate when what they do benefits others despite any burden to themselves.
I seriously don't think you comprehend what compassion and generosity really are, Tinandel.
That, or you simply have a hate-on for Celestia.
In either case, other readers grasp this matter - look at the posts by Hammond and Noble Cause and the others. They get it.
Real love, real compassion does what is kind and helpful and supportive with no expectation of reward - and even if such action is a total pain in the ass. Especially if it isn't easy. Especially it is a pain in the ass.
That's what you don't grasp, Tinandel.
Real compassion, real love is a mother taking care of the baby she can't stand, even regrets, because the baby is innocent, and it needs to be cared for.
It's helping the homeless family with your lunch money even though you go hungry, even though you resent having given them the money, and resent them for being there at all, because it is clear they are needier than you.
It's hating every minute of helping your friend when he is in the hospital, and secretly hating your friend for being an idiot and getting himself injured for some dumb reason, but being there anyway, night and day, just because... he's your friend. And the ultimate compassion is never, ever mentioning how much you resented having to do that, because you know he already feels bad about it.
Love and compassion aren't about what you want, or about right and wrong, or about morality, or about secret resentment. They aren't even about being compelled to help against your will.
Love and compassion are about being kind, anyway.
Grasp this, Tinandel. Learn it. And if you can - I guarantee that in doing so, you will earn possibility of true and lasting relationships, and the laurel of genuine goodness. You will grow a soul, if such things can exist at all.
Compassion is being kind even though it is the last damn thing you want to be bothered with. Because being kind is more important than what you want.
And that is what my Celestia, in my Bureau stories has done.
3272244
What has longer lasting consequences? Intentions or actions?
Feelings are fleeting, actions last. Whatever names you want to append to them, the bottom line is that feelings and intentions don't do shit. That's all I have to say.
3272546
Once again, you write a gem in passing.
3270403
The winner of every poll on EQD.
3272546
At the heart of this discussion is responsibility. It seems to me that a lot of the compassion that you're describing here is born from duty more than altruism. I suppose that intersection and that link between the two is important to understand to get where you and your characters are coming from.
I think I'm ambivalent about the advancing, moving magic barrier of doom (death; no save) conceit that you use, Chatomato. I think you've explored it, the motivations behind its creation and the consequences of it quite well in these shorts and novels, and as a matter of storytelling, it does accomplish a lot. It's still terrifying, and it makes Celestia in specific seem really cold and even kind of villainous, but tempered by the gentleness of it and the very obvious provided escape route -- but it's still coercion. And then yet again it really seemed like the subjects of said coercion were looking at an even worse fate if left to their own devices anyhow, so... it's all very complicated.
Still, it seems like the TCB genre is coming to a heat death (which I also feel ambivalent about) but there were a lot of dramatic possibilities that are unexplored. What if the barrier was just to stop the magic from flowing out and killing all Earth life, and it wasn't advancing? I think some other contributors go with that, but they don't go nearly as deep as you have with it. There's more exotic yet still quite plausible possibilities, too.
Kindly consider the following precept. "Magic" from thaumically "hot" or "submerged" comsmoses (cosmosii? cosmseese?) goes a little nuts when it escapes into a low/no-magic "cold" universe. This could be because of simple physics: it's moving, so it does stuff. Wild, uncontrolled stuff. Instead of being directly destructive, it's indirectly destructive: it transforms objects and materials randomly and wildly. There's usually a sort of logic to it, but lifeforms are quite radically affected, naturally. Thus, a human thrown into the eddying forces of creeping Equestria stands a good chance of surviving, but not as a human, because it turns them into something. Maybe sort of human-like but equally possibly a deerish sort of thing, or a pig-beast, or some kind of frog-imp fellow. Furthermore, their minds aren't spared, either: the victims wouldn't be the same person afterwards, if they even qualify as people in the immediate after -- they would be confused magical amnesiacs on average.
Applying this precept to the TCB genre would have some really interesting consequences on the themes and resulting narratives. A few themes that are more clear in this configuration are Change and The Struggle To Regain Control. Something that I like about TCB fics, especially the way-back-when ones, was the sense of wonder and splendour, two elements that have faded as the years(!!) have passed. I think that this type of configuration really amps up the fantastic weirdness quite a bit, by at least 80%.
I'm not telling you what to write, of course. You have a muse to follow, after all! I'm just bouncing it all off you and seeing what you have to say.
3270858
Actually I would more categorize them this way:
Celestia: Lawful Good
Luna: Neutral Good
Discord: Chaotic Neutral
Pinkie Pie: Chaotic Good
Many would see Discord as Chaotic Evil for the torments he put ponies through before Celestia and Luna came along. But that was more just him giving evil a TRY. The season 2 opener had him dabbling in what he could do with pure chaos. And now he'll be using chaos for good (MOST of the time, as he says). It would be most proper to simply call him "Chaotic" since the good/evil axis of his alignment is completely mutable on a whim.
3279235
Neutral Good was my call, too -- Luna is all about being pragmatic in the pursuit of good; order and freedom are both valuable tools to the ends of good, while rigidity and unpredictability can both reach excessive extremes.
The extreme of Chaotic Neutral, in the D&D alignment spectrum, is a single-minded devotion to opposing order and hierarchy at every turn. Whether this devotion serves the causes of good or evil are irrelevant to a CN individual; fighting against unives health care is just as morally proper for a CN person as fighting against a cruel dictator.
Discord, however, leans heavily towards Chaotic Evil, not because he's opposed to Celestia or Luna, not because he values being "evil" for evil's sake, but because is motives are completely selfish -- you don't have to be genocidal to be evil; valuing your own entertainment over the lives of others is sufficient grounds to label him as Evil. I would argue that he's seen a proper alignment change, from Chaotic Evil to Chaotic Neutral because he's gone from being amoral to making a willful decision to be altruistic. But as it requires a willful decision for him to do it, and his focus is still on Chaos uber alles, it's hard for me to defend him as being Chaotic Good, because his motivation for doing good is more "doing good things means I get to have more freedom and people like me for it" than "doing good things is its own reward".
3279235
Thinking on it, yeah I can say I agree with Luna being neutral good. And Pinkie is clearly a Bard, so yeah.
3272546
Very well said. So much of nearly any virtue is about "doing it anyway." Maybe this is part of why so many monastic traditions emphasize asceticism, to build that discipline.
Personally I can't imagine ever preferring a comforting lie over any truth, not matter how unpleasant (not counting just wanting to be surprised), but I know that's a thing, and if that's what I thought someone would want (and that it wouldn't harm them more in the long run), of course it's what I'd do.
This wasn't too bad, though. So Celestia's a little passive aggressive about the whole thing - She's still reliable, I think they can deal, and come up with some good techniques for publicly shaming any racists (other than Celestia).
But I'm still baffled by people's resistance to Celestia in this setting, since it's explicitly established, independently by both Celestia and human scientists, that Earth doesn't have its own independent future of which it's being robbed. It's a hypothetical worst-case, "dire warning" Earth, and nothing is being thwarted by absorbing it.
If it happened in this world, where it's anybody's guess how the future will turn out, then they'd have traction, but in this case Earth's accounts have already been settled.
I do wish Celestia would cut it out with the "Original Sin" stuff, though. Two legs, four legs, it's all the same to me, but I'd have to think long and hard about whether I'd rather barf the Apple back up or just go down with the ship.
3279459
Thank you!
Oh don't misunderstand, I'm not saying "he's good now because he's reformed", I'm saying that doing good now is, for him, as arbitrary a choice as doing evil was before.
3280058
I wasn't saying you were saying it. I was setting up the point to analyze the possibility -- because I don't believe that doing evil was an arbitrary choice for him previously, nor do I believe that doing good now is exactly arbitrary either.
I don't believe he was CHOOSING to do evil before; I believe that was his actual nature. He wasn't usually placing moral value on causing harm to others as an end in itself, but rather he didn't care what harm came to others in the pursuit of his own enjoyment. Very, very few Evil characters are of the "evil for evil's sake" mindset, nor do they generally take pleasure in inflicting pain just for no purpose beyond causing someone to suffer. Those are the outliers, the extreme case of Evil. Far more common is simply a willingness to perform Evil acts in the pursuit of a goal: torture to extract information, murder to remove a problematic individual, murder for sport (which is different than "murder because murder is evil" or "murder because death is good"), et cetera. In the case of pre-reformation Discord, he pursued Chaos for the sake of Chaos, but he was willing to do Evil things to accomplish Chaotic ends.
Doing good, on the other hand, IS a choice, but I don't believe it's an arbitrary one. I find Discord's statement to imply that he's using Chaotic means to accomplish Good ends, as opposed to his previous stance of using Evil means to accomplish Chaotic ends. And why does he care about Good ends? Because he's seen the value in the existence and happiness of others. And why isn't he Good? Because he's still willing to violate that if it furthers the goals of Chaos.
In case it's not apparent, I've done a lot of thinking into the alignment system. :P I've taken the time to move beyond seeing a set of nine stereotypes in order to try to understand the MORALITY in each alignment. It's something I've done beyond even the context of roleplaying, because understanding "chaotic" as more than just "insane" or "unpredictable", and understanding "evil" as more than "villainous", can really open your eyes to a deeper understanding of oneself and of other people.
This is the first thing I've written on, or for this site. You have to understand this, because it's important to realize how thoroughly this affects me.
I have never seen a Celestia so free of compassion outside of a trollfic. While the premise of the Conversion Bureau as a whole is generally not my favorite due to the weird loathing of humanity despite the fact that the only species we have so far to compare against ourselves is ourselves, this story in particular is disgusting. Even accepting your definition of compassion as "being kind to be kind," this Celestia did as she did because she was forced by "Law," which is an apparent compulsion she had no control over.
I'm sorry to speak so harshly about a world you've worked so hard on; it's moved me thoroughly enough that I cannot move on until I do so.
Well... I'm left wanting to apologize to Celestia, and reassure her of my gratitude. I'd hope at least some of the newfoals would feel the same.
I have trouble accepting that because Celestia is immortal, she would feel resentment forever. She might well remember forever that she had been resentful, and why, but she doesn't strike me as the sort to dwell on her resentments, or to nurse a grudge. We remember our pasts, but the pain and upset tends to fade over time and become unimportant, while the happy parts kind of blur together into a warm glow. I'd hope unhappiness eventually fades for Celestia as well.
The idea that magic destroys quantum uncertainty is a novel one, at least to me. Entire stories could be written around that idea. To the extent that I'd ever considered how magic might operate in physical terms, I suppose I've thought of it as something like the observer's intentions causing indeterminate states to collapse into desired states.
Reading through these stories now. I don't know how I missed this collection.
For some reason, this one seems very relevant to our current situation in 2021.