The Elements of Harmony failed. Twilight Sparkle was unable to activate their power, and the sixth never even appeared. It is her greatest failure, and the doom of all Equestria. Plunged into an endless night, she has to find a way to stop Nightmare Moon.
Her research is getting her nowhere, though, until she has a visit from a stranger in a dream, who grants her the power to face down the Nightmare. But is it enough, with the Elements lost?
Borrows themes and ideas from Persona and other places, but isn't a direct crossover with any of them.
Big thanks to Guardian of Brittania and Acarcion for help with editing!
Chapters (7)
My favorite part of picking stories out of the "New Stories" box is discovering a good one before anyone else even votes on it. That happened with this one. I shall continue to watch with interest.
Kinda interesting; let's see how this turns out.
Capitalization? Is Jojo's Bizarre Adventures another inspiration for this?
That aside--"I am thou, and thou art I. From the sea of thy soul, I come..." Get working on those Social Links, Twilight! You can only summon the Elements of Harmony Persona of The World by fusing a Heirophant, Priestess, Chariot, Star, Fool, and Sun. You probably've only got a single rank in those. You need all ten, so get a move on!
No, no, I get that you aren't straight-out copying Persona, I just thought it would be interesting to assign Arcana to the Mane Six. Although you did mention the moon in the author's note... are the phases of the moon going to be important? If this was around the new moon, it could be that Nightmare Moon's power faded a little to allow Luna to act... or it could be that it's taken her that long to get a safe moment to talk to Twilight.
I'm very interested to see where you'll go with this. Hopefully Twilight will remember the "your friends" part of Luna's speech. That aside, I'm incredibly interested to see what she'll do upon awakening. There's so many directions this could go from here.
Favorited.
4993034
You are indeed a smort guy. I give you an A+ on picking up references.
Note I almost titled the fic Strange Journey, which would have been a dual Jojo and SMT reference, but decided against it.
Stands make everything better.
Personas, not so much, since one of the prerequisites to have one is that you have to be a bit crazy. Oh wait, Twilight qualifies.
Somber but interesting. Will follow.
Hmm, interesting. I'm concerned about how Twilight is going to manage to not die in the real world, but I love the idea of fighting Nightmare Moon within dreams. I think I vaguely remember a similar idea in another, much older story, but I can't think of what it's called.
Anyway, here's hoping to an excellent story.
champagnewinemaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/600.jpg
OK, this is rather interesting so far, and I do so love the Persona series...
But I have to admit, I'm not seeing how the same mare that started her 'I'm back!' speech with:
Well, why that same mare isn't a shattered pile of broken dreams if her eternal night has gone so far that ponies living near one of the largest forests in Equestria are running out of firewood.
I guess Nightmare Moon might simply be in deep denial, but I hope that gets explained going forward.
However might be better in this sentence but though still technically works, however I believe helps it flow a bit better
The context feels a bit off here, makes it almost seem like the restless nights were after she kicked out Nightmare Moon, I suggest "after all those/the weeks of restless nights~" instead to provide the right context.
The more really isn't needed here, it makes the entire sentence a bit awkward to read.
I think it's fairly obvious but wrong "right" there, it's write
Adding before in where I've shown would provide a bit more context, its not really needed there but I believe it helps the sentence a bit.
Switching "also it" would make the sentence flow a bit better
Unless this is a ponyism I am unaware of I believe the proper term is the Dewey Decimal System
This is more a personal thing but the double use of "like" after a comma is really unnecessary, if you remove the first like the sentence still works fairly well.
It feels like there's missing dialogue here because Twilights sentence feels like she is responding to a statement that isn't there, if you add in something like twilight saying about Eventide being there, then spike responds about not seeing her then Twilights statement will make more sense.
The bolded part of the sentence is my editing, you can decide which you like more.
There's nothing wrong with this I just wanted to point how well written this part is.
I'm confused why twilight blushes here, nothing embarrassing is really said about either party.
Ok I might have missed some myself but I believe I got the majority of them, i hope this was helpful and good luck on the next chapter!
-Acarcion
5003731
This might have been better as a private message than a public comment.
With the fear of night, we stand to fight, with will of sorrow we find the morro. In a battle of fear, we fight for whats most dear. A cold heart will still beat, evwn though i will never meet. A being of shadow will dawn the new day, but with our greatst fear we win the old true way. A being of night shall fall in our fight but the being of the moon will rise again soon.
anyone hava any idea what any of this means? I probably just went insane, but a second oppinyon wild be much apreceated. Great chapter though.
Yes, comedy really is useless when you manage to be hilarious entirely on accident.
Twilight's antisocial antics are both funny and facepalm-worthy.
Wow this was beautiful...
Great storytelling and great character interactions, you keep the characters as themselves even under such extreme situations so no O/C moments and no bias toward one or another (For example, Twilight is an ass but she is right, RD has to slow down and start thinking)
Now, it seems like you will look into the consequences of the mane 6 actions, something not even the original persona game did, so there will be a lot of interesting developments in wait. I have the feeling that Fluttershy last err... victim? was Opal (or Gummy, both work but the first one would be better). That will make for a lot of drama later in the story.
All I wanna say now is "PERSONA!" Cause this whole chapter was very very Persona-y Twi was Yu, RD was Yosuke and Shy was Yukiko. Yet I had Kingdom Hearts music playing in the background and it all fit.
Well, yeah--I didn't figure it would be, given that last time Twi used that phrase Ponyville wound up tangled in Discord's plunder vines...
A metaphor for apples controlling her life or something along those lines?
5102215
More like the farm really. Even if she got her cutie mark for realizing the farm was where she should be, there'd still be a little buried resentment for something that more or less is keeping her from going out and doing things... A place that keeps her going through the same actions day in and day out, with little variance... Just like a puppeteer's little friends do for every single show.
Another great chapter, this story is becoming my favorite by far.
5110809
Not only that, you also have to add the guilt she is feeling. It looks like AJ promised her parents to take care of the farm (probably the last promise that she made them) so for her, even thinking to leave the farm is unacceptable. That makes her situation worse, she feels trapped by her situation and guilty that she feels like that, making her feel MORE trapped and we go on and on and on.
I'm also interested in Rarity, Fluttershy commentary makes me think that Rarity is afraid of using her magic for some reason, it will be interesting to see what happened.
Just found this and while I like the Persona vibes this gives it also feels like it has a touch of Devil Survivor and Silent Hill thrown in. It akes it a nice and Dark story that I very much enjoy, so thank you for this.
Good Luck.
A ticket to happy town.
Upon consideration, I think Twilight really needs to get laid.
Big Mac! Report for duty!
I can see it now. Pinkie vs Pinkemena
does anypony else think that someone would notice that Twilight is messing up big time cause while saving applejack shit went south with eventide FAST one would think Applejack would notice cause being a farmer means paying attention and isn't dark magic based on negative emotions? ps first post X3
What is it going to take Twilight. the Alicorn version of you from the prime universe?
Are the Shadowbolts a reference to another story on here? It reminds me of one.
Twilight really needs an enema.
5350607
Enemas usually aren't enough to clear brush and debris. Twilight has a stick up there so deep she needs invasive friendship surgery.
Which is half the reason the Elements never worked in the first place.
5350545
And you need to watch the first two episodes of the show again~ The Shadowbolts make a brief appearance there.
5351344 I know of the shadowbolts but there is a story here of Dash getting split and the different Dashs have only one of her colors in their mane. and you just happen to give the purple one the same position as the purple one in that story.
5351410
Color and emotion have some links. Red is anger, green is jealousy, yellow is cowardice, blue is sadness... Depending on whether you're dealing with a reddish purple or a bluish purple, purple could be lust (lust was originally associated with blue, so a blue-violet would work for that). It may not be a reference at all, therefore, but just a coincidence or a case of great minds think alike and fools seldom differ.
5351828 hence why I asked the question
5351828
I pulled some of it from Green Lantern lore and the emotional spectrum.
Man, I kept thinking to myself what could Dash's problem be? She's been running around helping everyone all the time, how could she even have time to be betraying her principles.
I was impressed, though; her internal struggle was probably the best one yet. It's easy to imagine making the same choice she did.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh he irony!
5353723 ikr
hahaha! That end was hilarious
hahaha!
Well I don't think Twilight even had her confrontation yet. She has her dream construct, but she is still missing her necklace/ crown. I'd guess that she'll have her "dream breakdown" right in the end. Considering how she's currently deluding herself I also have my suspicions why.
Wait, the Dreaming?
Man, I got my hopes up for the first MLP/Sandman crossover (that's worth a crap) on this site.
Eh. Still a good story. Have an upvote.
I could practically hear the boss music start on that line. As Persona ripoffs go, this is one of the more interesting I've seen so far.
They're the Lantern Corps!