Okay, this is pretty good!

Might want to consolidate this into less chapters with more words each, though.

>>553950553950 Yeeeah... I know what you mean. They're a lot shorter than the chapters most people post, which makes it look longer than it is, which might scare people away. As in, the whole story so far is about the length of one chapter from a typical story.

And if it gets long the chapter list could get really unmanageable.

The best part about this whole deal is the fact that it sounds like an actual episode: not too far outside of in-place lore, but still ambitious enough to make you keep reading. Good work!

This is actually quite brilliantly written: very funny lines, nice interaction between characters, consistent characterization... I can only guess that the reason this story seems to be so underrated is because the formatting of the chapters is scaring people away in the first place.

Keep up the good work.

Sooo ... forgot to protect her against vacuum?  Or radiation?  (I guess I should just read the next chapter). n.n

The Smarty Pants incident?  c.c

But they'd already solved the air problem!  Scuba gear!

Awww, poor Fluttershy.  *petpets*

And I guess that's one way to reconcile the Ditzy/Derpy name discrepancy.  n.n

Using poison joke does sound like something Twilight would do.  So geeky!  <3

Ponies in spaaaaaace!

Assuming they actually do make it to space this time.  n.n

>>554006554006>>554205554205 Thanks!

>>555105555105  Vacuum, mostly.

>>555517555517  From Lesson Zero, when Twilight enchants her Smarty Pants doll to hypnotize everyone who sees it and Celestia has to swoop in and save the day.

>>555545555545  They don't have enough!

I like it so far.   Keep it up!

keep writing, you making ME, a lover of more sane fanfics a lover of this fanfic keep it up! and keep the lols coming

Eeeeeee!

Filthy's going to have to pay for it now.  

Poor Rainbow Dash and Thunder.  Yikes.

>>568314568314>>568796568796 Thanks! I'll do my best to keep it funny... although meeting aliens is bound to be spooky. Well, it shouldn't be *that* dark or I'd have put a dark tag on it.

>>572727572727 Technically, Pinkie and Twilight are in worse trouble right now, although I guess obvious solution is obvious.

Tight ninja suit would work, you know. That's the principle behind mechanical counterpressure suits!

>>586788586788 Ha! I did have a character improvise a mechanical counterpressure suit in an RPG session once. I wouldn't think off-the-shelf ninja suits would do the trick, but I've never actually tried one on to judge how tight they are.

As a friend of guy behind the Sperrets, I'm quite amused by this crossover.

Yay!  They found Dashie!  Or at least a monitor hooked up to a camera that's on her.

The language-learning game was cute.  n.n

So the moon ponies are ... ponies?  Weasels?  Weasel-ponies?  Humanoid weasel ponies? With hands and clawed paws?

... I think I need a description.

Also, magic beats technology!  But Blizzard beats Pinkie.

>>660444660444 They're weasel-furries. Well, space ferrets.

Magic and technology are not designed to counter each other (yet?), so they tend to trump each other randomly.

Aha!  Space ferrets are moon ponies!

I guess sperrets are usually pretty mellow.  I hope Warp and Wolf are okay.

Also, poison joke is NOT FUNNY!  It needs to tune its sense of humor.

>>660502660502 Heh. It probably gets worse every time you're exposed, because you're ready for what it did to you last time.

Derpy, the mistress of information warfare attacks!

>>696030696030 Without advanced sperret defenses he would have been hypnotized indefinately!

Is Derpy-hypnosis a fanon thing?  O.o

She seemed pretty scary, pushing Chance around like that!

>>704973704973 Sort of. It wasn't actually supposed to be literal hypnosis, just morbid fascination, but if it keeps you staring it's going to trigger your defenses because memes can be sneaky that way.

And just because this plan ended with the ship being destroyed and all the equipment buried and burned and all the moon ponies turned to stone in Twilight's dream doesn't mean _anything_ will go wrong with it in reality!

Also, poor Derpy.

>>725742725742 That was just a dream! And everypony knows Twilight is kind of paranoid about how Celestia will react to everything she does.

It's not like Twilight was having a prophetic dream accidentally granted by the untrained unicorn whose special talent is predicting the future.

Yay!  The giant space weasels aren't dead, they're just dragged into banishment on Equestria and imprisoned in the place they were banished to!  

Maybe Twilight can ask Luna what happened to them, if they make it back to Equestria.

Oh no!  The moon is Princess Luna's HEAD!  D:

Pinkie Pie's singing cracked me up.  Especially the other characters' reactions to it.  And "And other things that somehow rhyme with shovels".  =D

>>784678784678 All I could think of was 'hovels' but that doesn't really go with moon.

At least they're only planning to drill a hole through a small ridge and then reshape one of her ears. I mean, mountain ranges.

'None of us know your name'.  Heeheehee!

The conversation about who might be the superuser is amusing, too. It *does* make a lot more sense, when you think about it...

That Pinkie Pie still does musical numbers in text cracks me up for some reason.

>>824591824591 Which makes sense? Discord being the super-user? He'd probably be really annoyed if he heard someone say he made sense.

As for the singing, well, she has to inspire competence *somehow*. Wait, that probably only makes sense if you play D+D.

Hopefully this chapter isn't too graphic, but I figured 'hey, I have this 'teen' rating that I haven't been using -- let's make up for lost time!'

O.o

Pinkie's nightmare was pretty funny. "How was I supposed to know they were planning a surprise party for me?"

>>845594845594 Luna certainly enjoyed it!

Great. Now I can't help but hear Luna's lines in Harbinger's voice!

Public-key cryptography using abacus? Ouch!

>>851049851049 From what I understand, the hard part is generating the key pairs. It probably takes new recruits a couple days.

..and yeah, it's basically a cruel, cruel prank.

(and I couldn't resist the ME2 quote, sorry)

OH GOD THE SLUGS.

>>851117851117

Image: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/SC_49_MLPFiM-17_11_StoneSnailTwilight.jpg

The last part reminded me of Skies of Arcadia- "Moonstone-Cannon-----FIRE!"

Alternatively, the Rains of Destruction. I always liked the use of orbital weaponry in my fiction.

>>860650860650 Nightmare Moon only wanted eternal night so that she could keep Equestria safe with her orbital battlestation. It was all a misunderstanding.

I like Celestia being paranoid and untrusting; it's a nice change of pace from how omniscient everyone seems to picture her.

Keep up the good work!

>>862144862144 I get the impression that Twilight Sparkle is Celestia's Derpy.

Parasprites. Gala. Want-it-Need-it. Ruining her brother's wedding. "I just don't know what went wrong!"

>>862421862421 To be fair, she saved that last one. She went about it the worst possible way she could've, but still.

>>863378863378 Heeheehee! I do consider her teleporting around the wedding rehearsal, shouting 'Evil! Evil! Evil!' to be a crowning moment of awesome for her, though. Yes Twilight Sparkle! Use your powers of Introversion to embarass yourself like no pony ever has before you, or ever will again!

>>863466863466 "That princess is evil, I tells ya!"

Well, that could've gone worse. At least they didn't blow up Manehattan. n.n

So which was the line you couldn't resist? "I'll need to authenticate that order"?

And now I know why the night guard designed the new security protocols.  Hee!

>>867499867499 Noo... "Equestria is now at war with Twilight Sparkle."

And yes. Equestrian security was probably as awful as the moon's. If you don't test your security measures they tend to be full of useless overengineering that's easily bypassed by something you didn't think of with backdoors 'just in case' that surely nopony will ever find because you hid them so cleverly.

Well, Celestia did forgive Nightmare Moon for trying to imprison her and bring eternal night.  She might forgive Twilight for accidentally almost blowing up Manehattan.

>>891922891922 After a thousand years.

*cracks up at the new Elements of Harmony*

I'm not sure getting the elements to work is going to be as straightforward as Shining Armor hoped.  n.n

>>917329917329 From 'Return of Harmony', it looks like getting them to work with the wrong people is easy, but they don't do anything?

I think the new Elements are of Discord.  Eeeeee!

>>923573923573 They're trying to be good!

>>923690923690 They're not succeeding.  n__n

Trixie and Cherry Berry really don't seem up to this job.

>>971019971019 I wasn't planning to have this much camera time for them but writing the Elements of Fail is too much fun.

This is pretty fun:

I mean, who needs Cavorite when you've got ponies?

Mike

>>984258984258 And later, 'who needs heat shields when you can do a sonic rainboom?'

Are you suuuuuuure that's not Nightmare Twilight?  Eeeeee!

>>10751301075130 Peer pressure is a dangerous thing.

>>10751401075140 Is that going to be in the letter to Celestia at the end?  

Okay... Am I losing my mind here or did Twilight successfully design and build a CLTV (Crewed Lunar Transfer Vehicle, to the space-geek community) on what seems to have been only her third or fourth attempt? That filly IS a genius! FWIW, I suspect that they should have tested out stuff like the life-support system, navigation, tethers and other hardware in LEO (Low Equestrian Orbit to the lay pony) first before going straight to a lunar landing attempt but... hey! Fortune favours the bold and science is as much an art of asking "Why not?" as it is one of asking "Why?"

It should be interesting to see how they survive this one (someone forgot the need for retro-propulsion - *stares accusingly at Twilight* ).  Come to think of it, how are they going to get down? Why have I got this mental image of Luna laughing her haunches off?

>>10914121091412 She did use magic to cheat. A lot.

Also, the Equestrian moon is like 200 times closer than our moon. It's lower than the orbits most sattelites use.

That was pretty hard on the copies. D:

I'm kinda with Tess about killing a copy of yourself being unethical. Yikes.

>>10921231092123 The worst thing about getting in the habit of killing off copies of yourself is that any copy you don't kill is going to know it's them or you!

Shining Armor's recommendation to the Element of Loyalty was the most strained of them all. :D

Give it a shot, Rainbow Dash!  You've hardly ever tried talking before. It might work.

>>12155991215599 Shining Armor is the new Spike.

More Twilight Sparkles!  I wonder if Celestia will declare war on the new ones too?

>>12535691253569 Equestria has always been at war with the mirror realms!

... maybe.

So next chapter, we find out why Queen Meanie's spell didn't grab the actual ponies?

>>13326471332647 It did! It just didn't teleport them all the way because she was interrupted in the middle of casting it. I, uh, thought that was obvious?

I could probably insert a lengthy explanation during the next chapter if you think it needs one.

... what?

OK, I kinda get Twilight turning herself into an Earth pony, but why make Pinkie Pie an alicorn?

>>13594151359415 So that the sequel can be called Super Magical Space Princess Pinkie Pie?

It's not like it's a plot point or anything; the story's almost over. There'll be a sort-of-explanation in a chapter or two.

I think I need to go back and read this story again as it is confusing the heck out of me (started before this chapter too).

So Pinkie gets Shining Armor?  What a twist!  Though that is not who I thought Pinkie would end up with.  I do love that last section especially the last line.

>>14122211412221 I think the last few chapters I started having ideas for at least three other fanfics and ended up inserting 30-second versions of them into the epilogue. They're, um, plot hooks! For a potential sequel! That's the ticket.

I hope the overall story isn't too confusing... but... historically... judging from reactions to other stories I've written... it might be.

Hate to ask for one but perhaps a "quick" synopsis of the story would help me.  Then when I go back and read the story again it may make more sense and perhaps I could see where I get confused.

Just so you know despite the confusion I did enjoy the story at least where I understood what was going on.    That is the reason why I would like to know exactly what I missed in the story.  

>>14125981412598 Okay... let's see...

Pinkie Pie wants to go to the moon and tries to have Rainbow Dash fly her there in Fluttershy's wagon. It fails because of vacuum which only pegasuseses can breathe.

So with various ponies' help they build a Jelly Jar space ship that can hold an atmosphere (regenerated with earth pony magic), and Rainbow, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Ditzy, Derpy, and Thunderlane fly to the moon. Then crash into the moon.

Pinkie and Twilight teleport onto the only nearby thing that might have air, which turns out to be an alien space ship inhabited by weasel-like 'moon ponies' (not their actual name, but Pinkie calls them that and the automatic translation software accepts it as their translated species name) who've been trapped on the moon ever since they accidentally freed Nightmare Moon from her imprisonment. The pegasi get in a couple fights with the moon ponies for stupid reasons, but eventually Rainbow and Derpy end up on the ship too. Ditzy and Thunderlane head home early (and get lost).

Then Derpy breaks the ship accidentally, so they have to find a way to get down to Equestria. They decide to build a giant ramp to launch the ship off the moon, but there's a small mountain range in the way and they try to dig a tunnel through it with mining lasers. This gives Luna a giant headache and ponies on the ground start to worry. It also reveals the entrance to an ancient ruined city full of traps. The ponies on the moon explore the city while Luna and her night guards try to get in contact with them, spy one them, and generally figure out what's going on.

Then, due to a misunderstanding and mistranslation, instead of the automatic ramp-building machine they find the moon cannon and almost blow up Equestria. Celestia is not amused and declares war, and sends the entire pegasus wing of the royal guard up to the moon to harass them. She also has Shining Armor find new ponies to replace the possibly-traitorous elements of harmony, and he basically picks the first ponies he can find, almost at random -- Trixie, Cherry Berry, and himself.

The ponies on the moon finish building the ramp and hide from the royal guard inside the ship while sending down Rainbow Dash to prepare a giant cloud for them to land on, with a want-it-need-it spell on her eyes to make sure everypony cooperates. She ends up charming a whole bunch of ponies who hold the elements of harmony hostage, while she convinces the weather ponies (and charms a bunch of other pegasi) to help her build the cloud. The wonderbolts are sent to stop them, and Rainbow gets blasted with the elements of harmony, but manages to convince everypony to help her and arrest her and Twilight afterwards. She also takes her element back from Shining Armor because he sucks as Loyalty.

The moon ponies and other ponies on the moon come down in the ship, but the ramp doesn't work and the ship ends up crashing. Twilight has two mirror-clones that she created to try to help her study the moon ponies' library more quickly; one is insane and the other is evil. The evil one is the only Twilight still conscious enough to teleport everypony off the ship before it crashes, but she appears to leave the real Twilight and Pinkie Pie behind, although actually they're taken partway and end up falling safely onto the cloud.

Luna rescues the moon ponies -- her night guards were also moon ponies in disguise, and now she has four. She's been using them to try to advance Equestrian technology and that's still her goal (with the moon ponies' promised payoff being a rebuit ship to try to leave Equestria at last).

Pinkie and Twilight are arrested and brought to Celestia for trial. She's about to pronounce sentence when the new elements of harmony rush in and blast them. Twilight gets turned into an earth pony (and decides to study earth pony magic); Pinkie Pie gets turned into an alicorn, and ends up going back in time to turn herself into an alicorn to prevent a paradox, but ends up going back too far in time and is a completely different pony by the time she returns to the present.

Twilight as an earth pony still seems very odd. I do like her reaction to her father treating it as a disability, though.  It's not a disability!  No one in Equestria talks about earth ponies like they're inferior to any other kind. n_n

>>14162801416280 Of course they don't. If they did, the Windigoes would get them.

Well, I can't say I'm confused by what happened, but Pinkie Pie getting turned into a unicorn and going back in time 400 years to become Cadence doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do with anything else in the story. O.o

>>14232721423272 Well, the turning into an alicorn part was foreshadowed a lot.

The going back in time to turn herself into an alicorn was planned from... well, from before the halfway point. Because of the bit near the beginning where she was talking about going back in time to turn herself into a pegasus.

The Cadance thing was sort of a 'oh god, it almost works doesn't it' moment. I couldn't resist.

>>14128641412864

Pinkie Pie wants to go to the moon and tries to have Rainbow Dash fly her there in Fluttershy's wagon. It fails because of vacuum which only pegasuseses can breathe.

So far so good.

So with various ponies' help they build a Jelly Jar space ship that can hold an atmosphere (regenerated with earth pony magic), and Rainbow, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Ditzy, Derpy, and Thunderlane fly to the moon. Then crash into the moon.

Got it

Pinkie and Twilight teleport onto the only nearby thing that might have air, which turns out to be an alien space ship inhabited by weasel-like 'moon ponies' (not their actual name, but Pinkie calls them that and the automatic translation software accepts it as their translated species name) who've been trapped on the moon ever since they accidentally freed Nightmare Moon from her imprisonment. The pegasi get in a couple fights with the moon ponies for stupid reasons, but eventually Rainbow and Derpy end up on the ship too. Ditzy and Thunderlane head home early (and get lost).

Still with you.

Then Derpy breaks the ship accidentally, so they have to find a way to get down to Equestria. They decide to build a giant ramp to launch the ship off the moon, but there's a small mountain range in the way and they try to dig a tunnel through it with mining lasers. This gives Luna a giant headache and ponies on the ground start to worry. It also reveals the entrance to an ancient ruined city full of traps. The ponies on the moon explore the city while Luna and her night guards try to get in contact with them, spy one them, and generally figure out what's going on.

Yeparoony

Then, due to a misunderstanding and mistranslation, instead of the automatic ramp-building machine they find the moon cannon and almost blow up Equestria. Celestia is not amused and declares war, and sends the entire pegasus wing of the royal guard up to the moon to harass them. She also has Shining Armor find new ponies to replace the possibly-traitorous elements of harmony, and he basically picks the first ponies he can find, almost at random -- Trixie, Cherry Berry, and himself.

I think this is where I started to miss things though it probably was me

The ponies on the moon finish building the ramp and hide from the royal guard inside the ship while sending down Rainbow Dash to prepare a giant cloud for them to land on, with a want-it-need-it spell on her eyes to make sure everypony cooperates. She ends up charming a whole bunch of ponies who hold the elements of harmony hostage, while she convinces the weather ponies (and charms a bunch of other pegasi) to help her build the cloud. The wonderbolts are sent to stop them, and Rainbow gets blasted with the elements of harmony, but manages to convince everypony to help her and arrest her and Twilight afterwards. She also takes her element back from Shining Armor because he sucks as Loyalty.

Mostly still with you but with missing somethings from the previous section I was not completely with you.

The moon ponies and other ponies on the moon come down in the ship, but the ramp doesn't work and the ship ends up crashing. Twilight has two mirror-clones that she created to try to help her study the moon ponies' library more quickly; one is insane and the other is evil. The evil one is the only Twilight still conscious enough to teleport everypony off the ship before it crashes, but she appears to leave the real Twilight and Pinkie Pie behind, although actually they're taken partway and end up falling safely onto the cloud.

I missed stuff here for sure.

Luna rescues the moon ponies -- her night guards were also moon ponies in disguise, and now she has four. She's been using them to try to advance Equestrian technology and that's still her goal (with the moon ponies' promised payoff being a rebuit ship to try to leave Equestria at last).

Got this

Pinkie and Twilight are arrested and brought to Celestia for trial. She's about to pronounce sentence when the new elements of harmony rush in and blast them. Twilight gets turned into an earth pony (and decides to study earth pony magic); Pinkie Pie gets turned into an alicorn, and ends up going back in time to turn herself into an alicorn to prevent a paradox, but ends up going back too far in time and is a completely different pony by the time she returns to the present.

Good to go.

I think it was the change in tone and story type starting with the time around the moon cannon firing that got me confused (probably because I was trying to think of it as a story that it is not).  The evil Twilight part really confused me though I think it was due to my missing a discussion on mirror magic or similar so I was thinking "why is twilight evil?".

Now for my other comment.   MUST KNOW MORE ABOUT CADENCE/PIINKIE.   I understand the section I just want to know more lol.

Also thank you very much for your outline as that was very generous of you.  It helped a lot and believe it or not I actually was closer than I thought.  The confusion was relatively minor it was more that I just was not sure I was getting it rather than actually not getting it.

>>14274681427468 Well, Twilight wasn't supposed to actually be evil...

Pinkie/Cadance, eh? That'd be covered best in a sequel I think. But I wanted to write the changeling story!

Ok terrycloth, this is brilliant! Not only is the entire story hilarious but it makes so much sense, to me anyway, that revelation at the end especially; I went and re-watched the wedding episodes and it just fits so well.

I will say that I don't think Trixie would fit as the roll you gave her, I mean friendship is magic not magic is magic... she would need to be the keystone of the group, the reason why they're friends... oh well.

This was an extremely good, and funny, read; thanks for the story! Also you made my favorites list with it.

>>14562341456234 Thanks!

Yeah, the idea wasn't that Trixie (or Cherry Berry) was a good choice for the element, but that she worked at trying to make friends with everypony (using Twilight Sparkle's notes on friendship) and managed to do 'good enough'.

Even if I get nothing else out of this story, the notion that Derpy and Ditzy are separate ponies has made it worth my time.  So far, ambitious and subtly funny.  I plan to read more.

Congratulations on the Seattle's Angels feature!

“Ah ain’t usin’ no magic, Twi,” Applejack said. “You just gotta know how to talk to the plants.”

>>10923381092338

I have a very firm policy of never killing off any of my copies; that way, I know by symmetry that the real nemryn has a very firm policy of never killing me off.

>>24065002406500 Of course, once you realize that you're actually the real Nemryn you can dispense with that policy because it doesn't protect you anymore.

those mining lasers remind Honeytiger of tekkit.

It isn't bad. However, there are some serious problems in the second half. There is a ridiculous amount of plot holes and OOC behavior. Plus, I don't recall seeing a description of the moon ponies' appearance.

Why would everyone be so quick to judge Twilight? What happened to "never think the worst of someone"? They were a bit too quick to condemn her, even after Luna tried clearing things up. That's another thing-- when Luna tried to explain what was happening to Celestia, the elder sibling brushed her off! If that had happened in canon, Celestia would've immediately been arrested as an imposter.

I don't think Twilight would've been reckless enough to use the "Want It, Need It" spell, either.

Now for the plot holes, most of which revolve around your blatant misunderstanding of how the Elements of Harmony work. It doesn't make sense that they'd turn Twilight into an earth pony just because she thought about it. In fact, it doesn't make sense that they would've activated at all, and my reasoning is twofold:

1) While Twilight made some poor choices, her intentions were entirely benevolent. The Elements don't work on something that isn't evil (the now-reformed Discord being the only exception; his power is their polar opposite, after all).

2) The friendship bonds. The friendship that allowed the Main 6 to wield the Elements in the first place was forged by a harrowing nighttime journey through the deadly Everfree Forest, with Nightmare Moon's malevolent machinations around every corner in addition to the forest's normal dangers. This incredible trial by fire was further strengthened by several years of living together in Ponyville. And here you are expecting us to believe a single sleepover can have the same effect. I don't think so.

tl;dr: The premise is great, though the actual story wasn't quite what I was expecting. Towards the end, things quickly stopped making sense.

I must admit, however, that that is a clever take on Cadence's back story. Even this, however, has a plot hole. I'd like to let it slide, due to the cleverness, but I wouldn't be a good critic if I didn't ask about it. How do you explain Cadence being so much younger in Twilight's flashbacks during the wedding episode? She's almost a foal herself in those!

While there's no way the plot holes can be fixed without taking the fic in a completely different direction, I like to think positive, so I'll see where the sequel takes it.

One last thing: How can you make a lunar adventure story without making a Moonstuck reference?!

>>24180782418078 Thanks for the comments... not sure how you can say I 'misunderstood' how the EoH work since their behavior is almost completely undefined, though.

It's annoying enough that everyone else apparently thinks they should work as a toggle. x.x Although it was really annoying when the discord episode showed it being used that way.

My thoughts on it are -- as explicitly stated in the story -- that the elements aren't hard to activate, but (implicitly stated, and taken from 'return of harmony') they'll work better for ideal groups of very close friends. Their effects are unpredictable but tend to 'increase harmony' -- firing them at evil creatures is always *safe*: it'll defeat them by rendering them harmless somehow. Firing them at misunderstood unicorns or pinkie pies, not so much.

As for Cadance -- I didn't think she looked that much younger in the flashbacks really. But the eventual not-yet-written sequel addressing her does cover that, kinda. And Twilight was skeptical too. n.n

>>24187472418747 "The effects are unpredictable" and "increase harmony"... You just contradicted yourself there. How can they increase harmony by being unpredictable?

...I'll have to get back to you in a few hours. I have a few other things to say regarding your statement, but I can't figure out how to put them into words right now because it's 1 a.m.

>>24188012418801 You can't predict their answer because they're smarter than you and aren't ponies. There are millions of things that would increase harmony and they'll pick the best one based on criteria that you don't know except in very general terms (they 'increase harmony').

Also, like I said, the effects are almost completely undefined so I'm describing how I see them working in this story. I can certainly see them working in other ways in other stories and I won't promise not to have them work completely differently in stories that aren't sequels to this one.