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For years Nightmare Moon was considered "nothing but an old pony tale," but what did those tales actually say about her? See Luna, Celestia, and Discord as viewed through pony myths and legends.
I may add more short stories on in the future as new chapters.
Image courtesy of anbolanos91 on Deviant Art. Thank you! :)
I'm a big fan of folktales and I've always wondered what Equestria's would be like, given that they actually have a for-real "fairy tale wood" in the form of the Everfree Forest. This one was particularly inspired by Baba Yaga in Russian folklore, who lives in the woods in a hut that stands on chicken legs. The protagonist usually has to say a rhyme to convince the chicken-hut to turn around so they can get through the door.
Poor Luna indeed, victim of such a bad press! Very well done fairy tale, it certainly hits all the traditional elements, especially the recurring rhymes, the ancient trope of having three challenges, and the guile hero narrowly escaping death by appealing to the monster's vanity.
Celestia wrote it, didn't she? 
Okay, this was brilliant! Very much Grimm's tales for ponies, complete with the rhymes and trickery and the final gobbling. 
(The parts about "unnatural" plants not growing in neat rows, and "unnatural" animals not trusting Geode and even trying to eat her fit in perfectly with the My Little Terraformer ethos, too.)
As for Luna's reaction... I think she'd be indignant at first, and then write her own book of fairy tales very much in the vein of Edward Gorey and/or Angela Carter - funny, dark, occasionally gruesome and very enjoyable. A bunch of stupid and/or cocky protagonists might end up gobbled!
I loved this. Clever little Geode seems to have a streak of Pinkie Pie in her, as well as Applejack. Now Luna and Zecora have new material for next Nightmare Night, I can actually hear this in Zecora's voice, only she'd have to save up the rhyming for just Geode's lines, and I'm not sure she'd agree to that.
I agree that the ever-widening doors and the gluttony have that overtone of Brothers Grimm that makes all the difference. I'm impressed that Geode doesn't need to ask a cat or a talking doll and figured out what to do on her own.
The younger sister is always the smarter and more cunning one in these types of stories. Even if in real life the big sister might be the more subtle one and the younger sister the more direct and forceful.
Little Sister's amazing body-swapping antics were inspired by Luna in "Luna Eclipsed." Apparently she can turn herself into Nightmare Moon at will, so what other shape-changing capabilities might she have? Possibly none as bizarre as the ones seen here.
Ooh! More pony folktale goodness!
Again, the story is very true to the feel of fairy tales, what with the whole "let's trick Discord into messing himself up" thing, and Big Sister's logarithmically mounting curses, and the overall ambiance of course.
And although mixing the roles and personalities of Luna and Celestia seems more plausible, I kind of like the idea that young Celestia was very direct and straightforward indeed!
This is based heavily on the Russian tale "Old Favors Are Soon Forgotten", which left me depressed for two days straight after reading it. (In the Russian tale the peasant saves a wolf and meets a horse, dog, and finally a fox.) An example of how folktales are not necessarily straightforward and moralistic. Sometimes they're meant to disturb, and not in the "I will grind your bones for my bread" way.
Wait... So when they get to the changeling, who is helpfully fooling the griffon into getting back into the bag so the pony can trample the shit out of him, the pony kills the changeling? 
That's just wrong. 
Another excellent fairy tale, and yeah, this one's pretty spine-chilling.
That's messed up. Sometimes the only lesson in a folktale is that people are bastards.
As an aside, I've been wondering what a pony version of the parable of the scorpion and the frog would be like, or if it would be basically the same. I've had a hankering to use it in a story to explain how Discord could have once been friends with Celestia and Luna (a popular fanon idea) and still betray them; "It's my nature."
You'll note some of the "Native American equivalent" characters in this are ponies; I figured that just because the tribe seen in "Over a Barrel" was buffalo doesn't mean all tribes are buffalo. Kind of like how I figure there are French ponies, even though that one griffon is French too. 
Funny thing, I heard a Chinese folk tale which was pretty much exactly this. Probably says something about something or the other.
And to be fair, the pony was talking to a changeling, who are pretty much Always Chaotic Evil. And hey, once burnt twice shy, huh?
>>1325633 No--she kills the changeling. (And the griffon too, he is trampled to death.) In the original version the peasant kills the helpful fox in the last line . . . I read it again and again, hoping I was misunderstanding. "The wolf, he killed the WOLF, right? Oh my God, this is awful!" Then I realized . . . it is supposed to be awful. And we're told all along what to expect from (in the original) the horse and the dog who are driven away when they're no longer useful. I think the original reflects a struggle to between what has to be done in a hardscrabble Russian village--no room for animals who don't "contribute" something, or no one will survive--versus what should be done. Of course in Equestria the fact that cows and such are intelligent complicates things. In either case, it's only the outsiders (the wolf and fox in the original, wild animals) who are willing to even consider the peasant's arguments. The others already know . . . old favors are soon forgotten.
This probably isn't a story modern day Equestrians would hear often, since they're living in plentiful times where they aren't faced with this dilemma.
I think you are right about "creature" instead of "person", I'm going to try that. Thanks!
>>1325630 Oh, have you ever read Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones? The main character is the eldest in a "fairy tale" type world and she's resigned herself to working in her mother's shop forever while the youngest sister has adventures. Great book and very funny!
I like these stories, shame there aren't more of them. Wonder if the ubiquitous nature of 3s and 7s would still apply given a presumed natural predilection for base 4 or base 2
I don't see why not, it's as if humans have any natural predilection for base 3 or base 7... that I know of
>>1325744 *nods* That's how I always thought of it. It sucks but it's also pragmatic, it's the fact that in a hard life everyone needs to be useful for you can't afford to feed every mouth.
This was very cute, It really captured the feel of old Native folktales.
Also, I *Adore* your icon.
I love these stories.
You have really captured the fairy tale atmosphere.
This story is just crying out for some artwork.
Something based on on Ivan Bilibin's work perhaps?
I don't really have much to say, but I felt I really ought to leave a comment of some sort on a story (well, set of stories) which I enjoyed so much. Folktales are a wonderful artform, and it's clear that you've got a talent for creating believably simple yet powerful examples of such. Thanks for writing these.
I love these kinda of stories that are written from an equestrian perspective, adapting things from our world to how they would be seen by the ponies. You pulled it off very well, showing in a believable way how folk stories would be on their world. I hope you have plans to expand on these, because they are great so far.
I've really enjoyed all four tales you've posted so far. My only critique is that Coyote's dialogue seems more modern, more casual, than I had expected.
Are you planning to write any "Brothers Grimm", "Tall Tale" or "Jack Tale" format stories? Do you have more of these planned?
I think we've all agreed at this point that this story is overall boss as hell, so I'm going to just point out a few specific bits that I really enjoyed.
he lived in the knothole of a tree that was still an acorn
That is such a Discord thing to do.
Then Big Sister and Little Sister found their true speed, racing so fast that the world spun around and around under their hooves, like a top.
"Like a wheel" might be a better description, but still, this is a great moment of cartoon slapstick- and the fact that it turns out to have consequences for the world is an awesome bonus, as well as a good reason for the Sisters to be so serious about their revenge.
“I carry them always, in case of just such an emergency.”
Ahhhh. So that's where Pinkie Pie learned that trick.
But we still say somepony is "between the Two Sisters" when they are in a difficult dilemma.
This is some masterful fairy tale right here, explaining the origin of a turn of phrase- somewhere between an Aesop's fable and a Just So Story.
I also like the repeated characterization of Big Sister as "a direct, forthright sort of person." As someone else already pointed out, the domain of the night includes secrets, deception, and of course dreams, whereas the daylight symbolizes truth and certainty. Plus, from what we know about ancestral Celestia from canon, this does seem to apply- she tried to talk straight with Nightmare Moon, and when that didn't work she went straight for the best weapon she could lay hooves on and blasted her all the way out of the atmosphere. Presumably a thousand years of ruling alone and having to cultivate both aspects helped to develop her into the subtle and meticulous Celestia we know today, whereas Luna's direct and forceful approach in modern times is the result of wanting to connect more genuinely with her little ponies after such a long time away.
This one seems... out of place in the collection. The first two stories used characters we already know to be part of pony folklore. The first and third stories used simply defined fairy-tale style characters. This one... uses characters from distinctly non-pony folklore, with no explanation of how they're connected to the pony world or why they might be in that world rather than the one we know them from. What's worse, Coyote fills a role Discord already plays in one of the other stories- the playful trickster often himself tricked- and the story's ending marks it as an origin story for the moon, but doesn't involve Luna at all or even mention how she might come along later. It really feels like you just liked this story and wanted to fit it into this collection by just swapping the native American tribes for pony and buffalo ones, without considering whether the story itself has any place here.
Still, I liked the first two (and, begrudgingly, the third) enough that I'm going to add the collection to my favorites and check whether you wrote anything else I should try.
Ooh, nice!
These stories really set Nightmare Moon up as a figure like the Devil in old fairy tales: dangerous and frightening, but something that can be outwitted and defeated, or manipulated to your advance, by the heroine of the tale. I wonder how Luna feels about these...
Lol howabout a brothers grim stile tale next you know the ones that run the blood cold chill the bone and crawl the flesh and are men to to scare the horseapples out of youn foals so they behave. Or just gine ponys nightmares for weeks... like the ones dash likes to tell.
I meant related in the context of family, but good answer.
As for this story, I can't help but think of it terms of Celestia's millennium-spanning PR campaign to change the public interpretation of her sister from omnicidal abomination to childhood boogeymare. Sadly, this took longer than she expected, and so she couldn't enact the second phase of the plan, which would recast Luna in a more tragic, sympathetic light. And thus "Luna Eclipsed" happened.
In any case, an excellent fairy tale. Is it based on anything specific, or did you come up with it yourself?
>>2500807 I think Celestia allowed ponies to turn NMM into the dark monster of their fantasies (even after she was imprisoned in the moon) in part because it was impossible to stop them (especially before rapid communication systems were implemented) and partly because it might make things easier when her sister returned, since it would be obvious that Luna wasn't 50 feet high, breathing fire, etc. Like, you might believe it if you heard someone's brother is a jerk, but would you believe it if you heard their brother is Bigfoot?
Molasses' story is based on a bunch of folktales where a peasant tricks the Devil or a bear. The Devil demands half the produce from a field, so the peasant plants radishes and gives the Devil the tops, keeping the roots for himself. The next year the Devil demands that he gets the tops and the peasant get the roots. But that year the peasant plants wheat. 
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yeah, fairy tales aren't all sunshine and rainbows, kids!
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