Canon Villains in My Fanon · 12:47am Aug 12th, 2014
My thoughts on the villains
Nightmare Moon: She's the classic Fallen Hero who the heroes have to redeem in order to get her on their side. Remember, this is basically Princess Luna gone insane / possessed by a demon and as such she's not really trying all that hard to kill anypony, though her Evil Plan would have eventually killed almost everypony. I subject her character and motives to a lot of analysis in my story Nightmares Are Tragic. Some of this stuff is unique to my Shadow Wars verse or shared with the PonyPOVerse, but a lot of the analysis works just fine with the show's version of Nightmare Moon as well.
Discord: He's a mad Trickster God, and far too powerful to defeat in direct combat. He has to be out-tricked; his weakness is that he likes to play with Ponies rather than kill them. (His form of "play," of course, may very well wind up killing them or driving them mad -- he doesn't play very nice). He's a very complex and interesting character; there's some sort of backstory involving him and the Two Royal Pony Sisters and in the later episodes he winds up more or less falling in love with Fluttershy and befriending the Mane Six, though he's still a jerkass. I explore him in Divine Jealousy and the Voice of Reason (incomplete).
Queen Chrysalis: Evil, sadistic and highly-manipulative, with a Paper-Thin Excuse that she needs to feed her people (yes, but Changelings don't need to kill to feed, which suggests obvious symbiotic possibilities). It's very obvious from her behavior in A Canterlot Wedding that she likes hurting Ponies, even more than does Discord -- since she feeds off love rather than pain or hate, this is clearly optional behavior on her part. You can meet her in her sinister glory in Collateral Damage.
King Sombra: A mysterious figure -- obviously cruel and evil, but we never find out why he's this way. He seems to have once been a normal unicorn stallion who somehow transcended the limitations of the flesh to become a spirit of pure evil. In my fanon he was Prince Crimson Quartz of the Crystal Empire, who was driven mad by abuse and suffering to turn to the Shadow. I've started a story about him but haven't gotten very far with it yet.
Tirek: In my fanon he's one of the last and most powerful survivors of a pre-equine race which once ruled the world and believes they should rule it again. He despises Ponies as lesser beings and believes that they should exist only to serve him -- if they are to be allowed to exist at all. In my continuity, six thousand years before the present he nearly annihilated Ponykind; he has also gained enough power that he will only be reborn if slain. Hence he is Tirek the Annihilator, Tirek the Undying in the darkest and oldest Pony legends. He's not a nice guy.
Sombra in the comics, is suggested that he exists PURELY because of a sympathetic causality inversion of reality. That there WAS NO King Sombra in the core pony universe until Princess Celestia visited the reflections world and met the GOOD King Sombra, which when the worlds began become contrasts to each other, created the EVIL King Sombra in Celestia's world.
So Tirek is just a less constrained more evil cosmic Luna?
Do the Changelings grow more powerful with love, or is it just food? Do they have a "hive mind" in your fanon?
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Ah, but the good-evil duality might not have yet been synchronized. Which leaves open the horrible possibility that Celestia focusing her attention on the Mirror-Sombra may have destined the Prime-Sombra to turn to evil. That would be an especially cruel possibility.
Another obvious question: now that the Mirror-Sombra has become evil, what happens in the Prime-Verse? (Of course, if Prime-Sombra is dead for good, it doesn't matter that much).
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I don't get the similarity between Tirek and Luna here ... or even, really, between Tirek and Nightmare Moon, other than "evil."
2362784 Well he's basically become immortal due to his power, and he's focused on destroying lesser races. So he's kind of a destruction entity yeah?
And didn't Luna say she was basically one as well? Albeit, one with a purpose?
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They do grow more powerful. The way I explain this is that Changelings use love as psychic nourishment and this fuels both their Shifting and their limited regenerative capability. They also eat normal food, but they have a much-shrunken digestive tract (remember their organ-load includes supporting horns and wings and shapeshifting and emotivoric capabilities, and as Heinlein put it "tanstaafl") and can't really eat much physical food beyond a sort of pap that they make in their Hives, or they'll just get sick. They use love rather as we use vitamins -- they won't die quickly without it, but they will be malnourished, fall ill and die within a matter of months if they get no love at all.
If they get a surplus of love, they can improve their own capabilities. This is how Queen Chrysalis got strong enough to defeat Celestia in A Canterlot Wedding.
Sort of. The constant flow of communication -- psychic, pheromonal, positional and vocal -- in a Hive causes a Hive Mind to emerge. The Hive Mind takes care of very routine functions like making sure Changelings don't bump into each other and know to maintain the Hive at a fundamental level (providing light, food, water etc.) It is about as smart as a sheepdog, and will die if the Hive breaks up (though it may be rebooted if the Hive can reform).
Princess Ceymi finds it rather stupid and annoying in Collateral Damage, which is a sign of her growing alienation with Hive Chrysalis.
2362801
Oh, I see ...
... Tirek is far more evil and petty than Cosmic Luna. Cosmic Luna is Gravity, the force that binds the Universe together and which often creates through destruction, a sort of Shiva-like being. Tirek is just a nasty bigoted super-powerful descendant of Serpent Folk / Pony hybrids called the Viprans, who lost control of the Earth to the G'marr, Eldren and Ponies long ago. All I have to say to him is "ka nama kaa lajerama," and go all Kull on his plot!
2362816 Ah, okay. And what's that goo that they use to imprison ponies? Why do they have holes in their bodies?
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Spittle, which they can modify to make several kinds of binding and structural material (they use it extensively in building their Hives). As for the holes, I'm guessing they're useful both to reduce weight and to provide some extra space for the Shifting process.
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Though they've had millennia to regrow their hidden city of Vipra-la, and its defenses.
"Organisms of Vipra-La! Detach and defend!"
Yeah. Old-school.
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Hmm, if he could shapeshift a la' the Changelings, Tirek would almost be a MLP version of the David Icke reptoids...
2362914 So that they can change into forms with different body structures?
What about the Demons in the comics? Those weird guys who like hoodies and messing with RD?
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2362801
I think there's a closer connection between Sombra and NMM. They are both ponies who took on Shadow Parasites/delved into darker depths for a boost, and ended up going insane and/or evil. There's no real connection between NMM and Tirek by any stretch of the imagination.
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I went with the official "Sombra is dead".
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My Tirek can shapeshift. He's a powerful mage descended from the Serpent Folk, after all.
"Vipra-la-la-la-la!"
2363293 Sorry, my mistake! Maybe the ponies should go looking for King Kull when Tirek shows up. Though his solution to problems tends to be a bit shall we say, rougher than theirs?
2363167
His death seems a bit anti-climactic, though, and he left no corpse. Also, my version of him -- Crimson Quartz -- was experimenting with complete personality backups in crystalline computational matrixes before the end. The cool alchemical version of that technology, naturally. 1+1=as many Sombras as I want.
Trixie will encounter two of him in my version of Magic Duel. The partial copy of him who takes her over, and the shadow of the original Crimson Quartz personality which survived in the Alicorn Amulet.
My version of Magic Duel, when I write it, will answer a highly-pertinent question -- how the hay were two colts pulling around that huge wheel-less land barge? Among other questions.
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Kull's thirsty axe shall drink deep of Viprallan blood tonight!
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Incidentally, I recently re-read the Kull story that introduces the Valusian Serpent Men. Kull fell into the trap. Didn't do the Serpent Men much good, now did it?
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Painfully.
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Well yeah, but it should have been impossible.
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"OUR world doesn't make sense! Who needs continuity?" -- Pinkie Pie
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2362778 I don't know that that's true. After Celestia meets Good Sombra, it becomes clear that his world ALREADY has a Celestia and a Luna, and Starswirl postulates that there MAY be a Sombra in their world and if he's as awful as Sombra in the other world is good, he must be really awful.
Celestia coming to Sombra's world didn't create Evil Celestia, so I don't know why coming back should have created Evil Starswirl.
There doesn't appear to be any kind of direct binary opposition involved. For one thing, it seems that there's only one Starswirl, although Alicorn Princess Starswirl seems to be something both Twilight and I would very much like to see.
I'm very enamored of the Mirrorverse, but Princess Trixie and her Magic Dragon is probably on hold until I make more progress with Looking Glass World.
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If that's true, the joke is well and truly on our world's Luna -- and it's not a very funny one.
2363560 Luna certainly seems very unamused. The nice thing is that Equestria's Celestia seems to have room in her heart for both Lunas--since she rides to the rescue of Alt Luna--and the nasty thing is that Evil Celestia has room in her heart for neither.
I'm kind of hoping Sombra Prime isn't Killed Off For Good. He had such awesome potential.
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It's more than that. In my fanon, Luna befriended Crimson Quartz before he became evil Sombra's turn to evil over a thousand years ago was one of the reasons she became Nightmare Moon.
I see Sombra as a tragic figure. One who saw the Crystal Heart as a weak point as much as a defense. If the crystal ponies grew complacent in their little bubble, then the Heart would weaken, and they would be consumed by the lingering darkness that was the legacy of the windigoes. And, with his talent for understanding that darkness, he could see the process had already begun.
He solved the problem the only way he could see, in a violent coup that led to mass militarization and forced construction of multilayer defenses. This was to be be temporary; once the Empire had more than one way to stop the shadows, he would usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. Sadly, a pair of meddling alicorns came in at just the wrong time, at the absolute nadir of the Empire's quality of life. They refused to listen, and he could not stand against them directly. Really, that was the defining tragedy of his life; no one listened to him unless he made them listen.
For a time without time, he drifted in the dark, cold subdimension his foes called home. He passed the time by categorizing them, studying them, treating his exile as field research.
Then one day, a mass of them passed by and through him, stealing an imprint of his form and mind. Helplessly, he watched as his Empire returned, and an umbral mockery threatened it. The light of the Crystal Heart, the tool he had so easily dismissed, dragged him out of the shadow realm and back into the facsimile of his body, just in time for it to explode. And yet he was grateful, for he could finally move on.
But, you know, that's just my take.
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Well (a) he had some help in the form of Brule the Spear-Slayer and (b) he was the hero in a Robert E. Howard story, and he was cornered with nowhere to run (people forget that Conan ran away more than once in the Howard stories!).
Now I want to read about an emotivore who feeds off pain, but seeks to cause happiness for personal reasons.
Actually... that would be a really interesting take on a character like a doctor or a nurse. Holing up in a hospital would provide a steady diet of pain and suffering, so the creature could afford to try to alleviate said pain and suffering, because there will always be new suffering patients coming in.
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I like your notion of a good guy pain-eating emotivore. It follows my general theory that it's not a matter of good or evil powers, but rather good or evil individuals, which is part of the reason I don't give Chrysalis a pass.
There's of course an obvious moral hazard there, but no worse than many real people manage to conquer.
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I have noticed a tendency for Robert E. Howard stories to have as their climax fights to the finish of the hero or heroes against a horde of Mooks led by the major villain or villains. Rainbow Dash would not at all mind being the hero of a Robert E. Howard story. Actually, she probably thinks she is.
2367379 Oh but this gives me ideas... I can so see Dash as a REH heroine (Sword Woman, er, Mare?). Even though I normally think of the closest pony to a Howard character to be Applejack, as much due to her 'Scots-Irish' heritage as her own actions and personality.
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Applejack is an Amazon. In canon Luna finds her admirable and beautiful (why else the "fair Apple" appellation -- yes, AJ's blonde, but she's not the only blonde mare in that world, and I've never heard her using it to Derpy.
Rainbow Dash works well too.
So what do you think of Tirek's origin in my verse?
Though I'll admit yours makes perfect sense for him and Scorpan.
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Pretty neat -- I went for a more Lovecraftian origin in my verse, but you having be a psychopathic prince from a civilization which was nastier than Equestria (but not outright chaotic evil) worked well too. Did you run more chapters of that? Sometimes I miss notification.
I realize I'm being super late to the party, but, I was perusing your essay list and your other blog posts (specifically about Starlight Glimmer and her happy fun-time town) and was just wondering where she fits within your 'verse?
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I'm loath to fix her nature too firmly in the Shadow Wars Story Verse until the big reveal doubtless to come in the Season Five Finale, but my theory about Starlight Glimmer is that she is yet another failed student of Princess Celestia, along with Sunset Shimmer. Her response to failing was to decide, in sour-grapes fashion, that success is a lie and the attempt the source of all pain (listen to her little brainwashing record she played for her victims in Hut 101 in The Cutie Map). She instead adopted the normally Earth Pony philosophy of the Levelers.
Or, to put it in the words of her ancestors of the Time of Consolidation:
"When Sisters on the road did fare,
Who was then the royal mare?"
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What joke do you mean?
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Celestia won the love of Good Sombra, while Luna had her sanity shattered by Evil Sombra. As always, Celestia got the better outcome.
Honestly, this is something that applies to SWSV Fusion and Gravity, though in ways mostly incomprehensible to mere mortals, as much as to SWSV Celestia and Luna. Though it is true that it was Moondreamer, rather than Sundreamer, who got to know a great love.
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Got it.