Applied Starlight: Thoroughly Explained · 8:30pm Nov 16th, 2014
http://herrmyrddin.deviantart.com/art/Crazy-Twilight-Sparkle-Vector-293598689
Welcome to complete insanity!
This is "Applied Starlight: Thoroughly Explained", a blog post that is intended to analyze and explain this whole story of mine in excruciating detail. Why am I posting this now for a story I published five months ago? Well, it’s been one week since the story got on to Equestria Daily, and since then I’ve gotten a lot of really good questions that weren’t answered in the existing blog post, so I figured that if there was ever a time to do this, this would be it.
Before I continue, though, I first want to give a big thank you to all my commenters, but particularly LuxAeterna, TheifofZ, Monarch Dodora, Sealcake, and Lord Mackeroth. I wrote this story always intending it to be a massive puzzle—a game between me and my readers—and I’m so incredibly happy people actually played along and tried to puzzle out the mess of my story. You guys made everything worth it; it was always an honor to receive such detailed and interesting comments. So, I guess now it’s time for me to give something back.
Anyway, be aware that I never intended for anyone to figure out everything I’ve written below. Applied Starlight may be a "puzzle", but I withheld puzzle pieces in order to make things ambiguous and allow for alternative interpretations. I considered every explanation that used the puzzle pieces I did include to be a valid solution.
But this blog post? This blog post ruins everything. It completely and utterly destroys all of this story’s mystique and wonder, which is another reason I waited five months before writing it. I think most people will appreciate the story being explained, but for those who want it to stay ambiguous: turn back now. Or just ignore it if you don't like my explanation.
Also, this post assumes you've read my previous blog post. If you haven't, read that first.
Finally, this blog is obscenely long. Obscenely. I did say this was going to be thorough, after all.
You’re still here? Good. Let’s finally bring this story to a close.
Harmony, Stars, and Turtles
Before anything else, we need to define what "Harmony" refers to in this story. Harmony is energy, order, life, light, etc. Everything and everyone is part of Harmony. It's not some "godly" thing that exists above everything else, it's just the name for the force that connects everyone, working in harmony to create something real in the chaotic, mostly empty mess that is the multiverse.
In this story, Harmony is metaphorically referred to as "stars".
Far, far away, all so distant from each other, there were clusters of magic where order and life exist within the universe, but where she was there was nothing. Our physical universe is just like that, in miniature. The universe is so vast and close to entirely empty, but here and there—so far from each other—there are stars that provide order and light and life. Without the stars the universe would be dead.
It's important to note that Harmony is not all-permeating and does not exist everywhere. The universe is mostly empty space. That's just the way the world works. On the large scale, a universe is almost entirely empty, with tiny stars and galaxies here and there giving it meaning. On a small scale, every object you touch is mostly empty space as well—atoms are extremely tiny and extremely far away from each other. Even though it’s really only an illusion that objects are solid, that doesn’t make them any less real. Same goes for Harmony.
Remember: Harmony is not God. It doesn’t have an agenda, and it doesn’t exist separately from everything else. It’s merely the collective will of existence, working harmoniously.
Another quick thing to remember is that in this story there exists an infinite multiverse. Each universe is (jokingly) referred to as a "turtle", as a reference to this little anecdote. There’s a reference to turtles each time a pony crosses universes.
Out of the nothing came the sudden existence of an uncountable number of giant turtles all piled on top of each other leading infinitely in every direction at once. She was lying on top of one of them: a giant, newly-born baby turtle.
I gathered up all my power, all my will, and launched myself at the glass with impossible strength. I heard it crack; it sounded like the cracking of a turtle’s shell.
The Corrupted Stars
Everything above is good as background information, but it doesn’t directly relate to the story. What is relevant to this story is Corrupted Harmony, the antagonists. Corrupted Harmony is what happens when little bits and pieces accidentally "break off" from Harmony as a whole. What you end up with is something of great power that still tries to fulfill its duties (bringing harmony to the world) but is completely disconnected from life and doesn’t really understand what to do. Unlike Harmony as a whole, Corrupted Harmony does have an agenda and even has a personality—not really because it’s supposed to, but because it’s trying to emulate life the best it can, even though it’s incapable of truly doing so.
Corrupted Harmony isn’t aware that it’s "corrupted". It thinks it is Harmony. Thus, it refers to itself as "the stars". From this point on, whenever I refer to "the stars" I mean the corrupted stars, the antagonists of the story.
The stars are parasites. They have very good intentions, and arguably are the reason why all the ponies have seen so much peace even though they live in a such a dangerous world, but they don't understand how living creatures think and what they appreciate. The stars believe that all conflict is bad, even though conflict can be constructive and lead to progress and personal satisfaction. The stars' ultimate goal is to create a self-sustaining universe that is free from any difficulties or conflict.
Fortunately, the stars don't have nearly as much power over things as they'd like to have. They can create new universes, but because they’re disconnected from Harmony, they can’t actually create life in that universe. They need to bring in a source of life from another universe to act as the "spark" first. They also can’t manipulate the universe once it’s been "finalized". Think of it like Conway’s Game of Life. The stars can set up the initial state of a universe, but once it starts evolving on its own the stars lose their power. The only ponies they can still manipulate is the original "spark" that they brought in and any ponies that get too close to the spark (or any other source of power that the stars have).
Applied Starlight is about the stars and their attempts at using their limited powers to create a perfect world.
Starshine and Generation 1
For those who don’t know, Generation 1 is actually a bit dark for an 80s cartoon for little girls… well, not really, but it’s certainly filled with a whole bunch of monsters and isn’t as peaceful and civilized as G4 as a whole. The stars existed during G1, and they did not like what they saw. It was nowhere close to a perfect world.
The story starts with a G1 pegasus pony named Starshine. She was the stars’ first victim. In the last chapter of the story, I linked to Starshine’s "My Little Wiki" page. Take a look at it, and scroll down to "Backcard Stories". Here’s what it says:
On a cool rainy morning Starshine was ready for excitement. "I want to have some fun today!" she shouted to the dark giant rain clouds. Stamping her hoof impatiently on the ground, she pleaded, "Send me on a secret rainbow journey!" The clouds opened and a multi-colored beam of light swooped down to lift her up into the sky!
Traveling in the beautiful light, Starshine's rainbow-colored hair stretched out behind her like the tail of a shooting star. The light carried her on a special adventure to a land of enchantment and magic!
"Hi, Ho my brightly colored beauty!" shouted the Milky Way. Starshine winked at a comet and laughed with the man in the moon. By evening she was home again. "This has been a very exciting day indeed!" she thought as she gazed up at the sky. Twinkling down the stars whispered, "Come back again, Starshine!"
Last line bolded for emphasis. Now, let’s look at this:
You should know me. You invited me—you always did like having fun. I asked you to come back again, Starshine, and you did so over and over until you never left.
It should be pretty obvious where I’m going with this. The stars lured Starshine’s soul to an empty universe where she could act as the spark to bring life to it. Chapters 1, 3, and 5 roughly describe Starshine’s experiences in the new universe.
I am a superposition. I am a variety of possible events condensed into a single point, and I represent the actions of many. I cannot define myself because that would collapse the wave function preemptively.
This line is just an overly-complicated way of saying "While we’re following Twilight’s viewpoint right now, pretty much this exact same stuff happened to Starshine". However, their experiences split off from each other in Chapter 7.
Now then. In her new universe, Starshine experimented a lot with her powers, like Twilight did. The first time she tried creating a pony, she noticed how it involved the stars swirling around arbitrarily, and so named this brand new pony "Star Swirl" (who would eventually become "the Bearded"). She later moved on to recreating some of her friends from G1 (like Twilight did with her friends), including Twilight, Firefly, Surprise, Sparkler, Applejack, and Posey. These are the ancient ancestors of the Mane 6 (Firefly is actually canon, too: "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3" revealed she started the Wonderbolts). The universe was eventually finalized, and Equestria (and G4 as a whole) was born.
Starshine, of course, is Celestia.
There are also a few hints in the story showing that Twilight and Applejack of G4 have inherited some of the qualities of Twilight and Applejack from G1. In the last chapter, the first link is to the "Who’s a Silly Pony?" song from G1. Similarly:
"Ah guess Ah was quite a silly pony for worrying so much," Applejack said.
Likewise, go to 1:08 in this video, then check this part:
I wish for life.
I wish for light.
I wish,
I wish,
I wish…
Celestia, the Nightmare, and the Book
With this new universe created, the stars were doing pretty well. Starshine had subconsciously brought over a lot evil from the old universe into the new one (such as Tirek), but they were all quickly able to be dealt with. The stars may not have been able to directly control the universe anymore, but they had influence over Starshine, and they made sure Starshine had power, authority, and immortality. She was the Celestial Princess, ponies loved her, and she could deal with threats herself. The stars didn’t even need to influence Celestia all that much, because she didn’t want her ponies threatened either. All the villains were quickly destroyed or locked away, and all was well. Celestia only had very vague, subconscious memories of her role in creating the world.
Then came Nightmare Moon. Like always, the stars influenced Celestia into dealing with the threat as quickly as possible. Remember the Season 4 premiere: While the common fan interpretation of Luna’s fall to Nightmare Moon involves days worth of nighttime and possibly a drawn-out war between the forces loyal to Celestia and the forces loyal to Luna, the episode showed that Celestia banished Luna to the moon after only a few minutes. This story treats that as canon. The stars do not want conflict in their perfect world, and will deal with potential conflict as quickly as possible. It was fairly easy for the stars to do so because stress reduces the ability for Celestia (or any other pony) to fight the stars’ influence.
However, this event alarmed Celestia, because she realized she was being controlled and induced into banishing her sister, and she became hostile toward the stars. She tried to sever her ties with the stars and lock up their power in a book, but this completely failed. What instead got attached to the book was a portion of the stars, plus all of Celestia’s memories of being Starshine (thus, she lost all knowledge of the stars). The rest of the stars remained bound to Celestia. Hence, there were two batches of stars now—the ones bound to Celestia, and the ones all mixed up with Celestia’s memories inside a book.
Why a book? Because I said so. It fits thematically: this entire story is about the art of creation and fighting with a Narrator, so I wanted a book to be a central symbol in the story. This is actually a pretty meta story, if you choose to look at it that way.
Following this, there was a thousand years of utopian peace, where Celestia ruled and the stars continued to exert their influence as to create their perfect world.
Twilight Sparkle Just Ruins Everything
Even though the stars were happy to just banish anything that threatened the peace, a true "perfect world" wouldn’t have evil in the first place. Considering Celestia desperately wanted Luna back and reformed, curing Luna was something both wanted to do.
Celestia and the stars both saw their chance in Twilight Sparkle. She is the embodiment of Harmony, the Element of Magic, and the stars believed she would be the one to fix the world and bring it to true perfection. Thus, "the stars will aid in her escape" and Luna was freed, and then reformed by Twilight and her friends. Success! Twilight is the Chosen One! The world will be brought to true Harmony and Perfection!
...Oh.
Turns out Twilight was the exact opposite of what the stars hoped she was. Far from bringing perfection, it seemed that her very presence caused conflict and destruction in Ponyville every single week! Even worse, Twilight had somehow dragged back evils from a thousand years ago such as Tirek to terrorize the world once again! Oh, and then she went ahead and destroyed mountains in a DBZ-style battle to try to take him down!
The stars were pissed. Twilight was going to ruin everything they’d worked for.
Taking control of Celestia to take out Twilight would be risky. Celestia might manage to fight back, and Twilight is pretty powerful on her own. Not to mention that the world would be thrown into conflict for other reasons if it got out that Celestia killed one of her fellow princesses. There was, however, still the book that contained the stars/memories mixture…
In this story, the stars are represented by narration. Italic text refers to "pure" events—untouched by the stars. That’s why Ch. 2, 4, and 6 have no normal narration, and all dialogue is in italics. The stars have little direct influence, but Twilight’s focus on the book made her slowly susceptible to their influence. At the end of Chapter 6, Twilight accidentally (being goaded very subtly by the stars into making stupid decisions) blew up half the trees in Sweet Apple Acres (read the details about that here).
In Chapter 8, Twilight was incredibly stressed. As I mentioned earlier, being stressed lowers a character’s resistance to the stars, but that still doesn’t mean the stars could force Twilight to do anything. The stars did, however, manage to convince Twilight to accept their power and perform their spell, which ripped her soul out of her body and dumped it into the empty space between universes, where she was left to die.
But instead of dying, Twilight performed "applied starlight" and lived.
Twilight Sparkle had no star. She was outside the boundaries of any universe, all alone, with nothing to give her life and light. … [But] she didn’t need her own star, she just needed a little bit of starlight from every star. She managed to integrate all the terribly weak, uncoordinated residue magics from countless stars into a structure that gave her the power to create a universe. You could call the process "applied starlight", if you wish.
So, how was she able to do this?
Because Twilight is awesome, that’s how. No other explanation necessary.
(In case you’re wondering, the "applied" in "applied starlight" is being used in the same way as this comic. As in: "Universes are just applied starlight.")
Hey, We’re Finally at Chapter One!
There was nothing.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Anyway, Twilight created a shell of a universe to exist in, and—realizing that their original plan wasn’t going to work—the stars changed tactics and started to build upon the tiny universe Twilight created using their own power, using Twilight as a new "spark" to eventually create life there.
Note that it was only Twilight’s soul (a pony’s source of harmony and magic) that crossed universes, not her body. And, as the stars said:
...you know very well that memories are stored within the brain and nowhere else. That is why brain damage can cause amnesia. Memories are little more than organized arrangements of chemicals and electrical impulses…
The fact that Twilight can’t remember her name, can’t tell what body shape she is, how old she is, etc. in the early chapters represents two different things: one, this is just her soul, she doesn’t yet have the memories stored in her meaty brain (she slowly gains them back throughout the story), so she has no memories of who she’s supposed to be. Two, it represents (as I mentioned earlier) how these early chapters apply both to Twilight and Starshine—the identity of the character we’re following is ambiguous. Because the stars are all mixed up with Celestia’s original memories, the stars’ influence causes Twilight to go through similar initial circumstances as Starshine—the nothing, the white, the glass, etc.
For undefined reasons, over the course of the story Twilight slowly "reconnects" to her body and regains some of her memories. How does this happen? I dunno, make up your own reason. Maybe when Twilight’s soul split off to a new universe, she actually did so by moving "sideways" through the fifth dimension, while staying in the same place in the normal four. Thus, Twilight’s body and soul still occupied the same place in spacetime, but were offset by a fifth-dimensional brane, which could be slowly pierced through because magic and willpower. Quite frankly, the actual mechanics of this aren't important, it just happens.
As another note, remember that the narration is the voice of the stars, and the stars are liars. They’re the worst kind of unreliable narrator: ones that specifically try to mislead. Remember that point in Chapter 7 where the narration was calling the stars "blissful" and "beautiful" and like "twinkling little bits of fairy dust"? Of course the stars were describing themselves that way—they were trying to trick Twilight into thinking they’re harmless.
Anyway, this part of the story should be pretty easy to follow—it’s just metaphysics junk. Twilight slowly regains her memories, her friends and Ponyville are recreated, and there’s a whole lot of dream-logic. The stars were still in the middle of their initial setup of the new universe, so they were perfectly willing to go along with Twilight’s whims to placate her, so long as it didn’t harm their overall goal. All of Twilight’s friends were just the stars in disguise. There are a bunch of references at this point connecting the events in the early dialogue-only chapters to the starworld, so I’ll just start quoting a few things I remember:
She would bet everything she had that the forest of trees before her were all apple trees, but lacking the fruit.
Sticking around Applejack was affecting her conscience for reasons she didn’t understand, and she wanted to get away as soon as possible.
Twilight blew up half the orchard. That’s why Applejack had farm troubles in the starworld.
"…No, wait, Rainbow, I have an even better idea! Fly up there and steal the moon and bring it back down here ’cause I wanna try the moon cheese too…"
"I presume this was another one of your pranks, Rainbow," Rarity said … "Now, please return the moon. All of Equestria needs it; stealing it just for a silly prank is extremely immature of you at best."
"The sandwiches and the apple pie slice I ordered?"
She opened [her eyes], and saw two sandwiches and a couple slices of apple pie right under her nose, being held there by a beaming Pinkie.
There’s a little more than that, but you get the idea.
One-Four-Three
Think about it! A hundred and forty-three pages worth of ancient, undiscovered writings!
"That’ll be one forty-three, please."
"One four three," Pinkie suddenly blurted out, looking surprised by the words that had come out of her mouth.
From my perspective as the writer, one of the main reasons for the repetition of "1-4-3" was simply because I wanted my "loving tribute to mind screws" to have an Arc Number. "1-4-3" actually has no in-story significance—it exists purely as a clue for the readers.
"1-4-3" refers to the order that the MLP Generations were created in the context of this story. First was G1. Then Starshine sparked a new universe and created G4. Then Twilight sparked a new universe and created G3. Thus: 1, 4, 3.
This is really important to understand: In real life, G3 came before G4. Obviously. But in this story, it’s the other way around. G3 hasn’t happened yet. The universe in G3 comes after the universe of G4.
In the last third or so of the story, there are a lot of references to G3. But in this story, those aren’t references to the past, they’re an origin story for how G3 became the way it was. 1, then 4, then 3.
The stars are trying to create a perfect world. A world without threat or conflict. They’re doing this via Twilight, who is populating this world with dreamlike caricatures of her friends. Applied Starlight is a G3 origin story!
Let’s look at Rarity and Rainbow Dash to see a specific example of this in action. In Chapter 14, Rarity was created as "Princess Rarity". Later, in Chapter 19, Rarity and Rainbow Dash accidentally switched personalities mid-conversation. This is why Rarity is the "Rainbow Princess" in G3, as well as why she has Rainbow’s personality (an energetic brat) in that movie. (Also, random trivia: G3 Rarity is voiced by Cathy "Spike the Dragon" Weseluck!)
As for Rainbow Dash, the line "Rainbow Dash always dresses in style" is pretty infamous among fans of G4 (you can see it by skipping to 0:45 in the video above), but G3 Rainbow is similar to Rarity in other ways too. She’s a fashionista, she has a British accent, and she calls everyone "darling". She considers herself to be quite… dashing.
Now I’m just going to run through some of the references I remember. You can skip this bit if you don’t care.
The baby dragon gurgled, drooled over his bib, and then finally opened his mouth wide enough for Twilight to stuff a spoonful of crushed gemstones into his mouth.
This bit does triple duty: One, it’s a pun on FIM always calling Spike a "baby dragon". Two, it was mentioned in Chapter 7 that Spike hadn’t hatched yet in the starworld. Three, it’s the stars being assholes. Back in Chapter 2, Twilight chastises Spike for being "such a baby" and the stars immediately go "we will remember this one". It’s their attempt at being clever and ironic.
Minty grinned. "One forty-three, please."
Minty is a G3 character, and probably the most well-liked one among bronies. Twilight subconsciously came up with her by mixing up Bon Bon (who’s a candy maker) and Lyra (who’s, uh, green).
"Hi, Twilight! Wanna cookie?" […] Behind her was the small form of Sweetie Belle, bright and cheerful and holding a large tray of chocolate chip cookies in her magic. It brought a smile to Twilight’s face.
At 0:50 in the video above: "Sweetie Belle’s magic brings a great big smile" while holding a tray of cookies.
"C’mon, I want to show you some games to play…"
0:37 in video: "Scootaloo will show us games to play".
"It’s what’s in style!" she screeched to nobody in particular.
As I mentioned before, "Rainbow Dash always dresses in style".
Pinkie Pie yelled into a microphone, brushing her wavy hair away from her face.
G3 Pinkie doesn’t have curly hair.
"There’s no way of knowing where we’ll be going!" Pinkie responded with glee, striking a pose of triumph.
0:16 in video: "No way of knowing where we’ll be going".
Caught off balance, Rainbow Dash flailed around in midair for a moment before being caught by Starsong, a helpful pegasus from the group below.
Starsong is another G3 character; she appears at 0:56 in the video. Gee, I wonder why this series has so many characters with "star" in their names…?
Remember: In the context of this story, these aren’t references to an already-existing G3. These are explanations as to why G3 is the way it is. It’s an origin story.
As a final note here, why did Applejack and Fluttershy not make the transition? Well, for Applejack it’s because Twilight still subconsciously felt guilt toward Applejack and was trying to avoid it. Now, for Fluttershy? Well… it’s stupid and subtle.
Fluttershy blinked. "Um, you… you know, the Amarezon. Um, where I’ve been for the past few weeks. I… I got to study some of the rainforest animals. D-did everyone forget I left? Oh no, no one forgot me, did they…?"
The stars just kinda forgot about her.
The Stars’ Stories
In Chapter 18, the stars propose five different theories to Celestia that are all pretty good at explaining this story’s nonsense. I’m just going to focus on the first two here, because the last three aren’t very important. It suffices to say that the stars are not Discord in my canon.
The first theory that the stars propose is that the whole story has just been Twilight having vivid hallucinations, caused by her brain being magically overloaded when she performed the corrupt teleportation spell written in the book. Additionally, they said that "the stars" are merely Celestia’s instincts—the part of her mind that takes over when she’s in distress so that Equestria always has a strong leader.
The second part of that statement isn’t wholly inaccurate. While the stars are certainly a separate force and not just Celestia’s instincts, they are bound to Celestia and deeply connected with her, and they do take over for Celestia when she becomes too emotional. A distressed leader is a threat to their perfect world.
As for the first part of their claim, of course it’s not true, and there’s actually evidence supporting that. The first contradiction is that the stars said Twilight was just hallucinating everything, but hold on a moment:
"The doctors say she’s near completely brain dead!" Fluttershy retorted angrily.
You don’t have vivid hallucinations when you’re brain dead.
The second contradiction is that in this theory, it’s taken as a given that Twilight’s state was caused by casting whatever spell she found in the book. But how did that book open? It was established very clearly in the early chapters that the book was locked up tight, and it would require a lot of time and very exacting precision spellcasting to open it. It’s not something Twilight could do in a fit of emotional brute-forcing.
The second theory proposed by the stars was pretty much accurate, it just left out the stars’ role in everything. Twilight’s soul got punted out of her native universe, she found a new corner of spacetime, she applied starlight to it, and a new universe was born. However, the stars actually brought up a very good point: Since memories are stored in the brain, how was it possible that Celestia was able to see what was happening to a soul in another universe?
Considering that Celestia was able to see what was happening, this suggests that these events weren’t happening in another universe after all, and it must have just been the result of Twilight dreaming. But wait a minute! Twilight was brain dead! It wasn’t possible for her to be dreaming something so complicated. So, where were those memories coming from?
Bear with me while I try to explain this. The reasoning is kind of circular. At the beginning of the story, Twilight did not have any memories. She did not know who she was, she "couldn’t quite remember what life was", and she was just confused about everything in general. This was because she had no access to her brain, which is where all of her memories were stored. However, as I mentioned in a note above, Twilight does start to regain some of her memories throughout the story.
For undefined reasons, over the course of the story Twilight slowly "reconnects" to her body and regains some of her memories. How does this happen? I dunno, make up your own reason. Maybe when Twilight’s soul split off to a new universe, she actually did so by moving "sideways" through the fifth dimension, while staying in the same place in the normal four. Thus, Twilight’s body and soul still occupied the same place in spacetime, but were offset by a fifth-dimensional brane, which could be slowly pierced through because magic and willpower. Quite frankly, the actual mechanics of this aren't important, it just happens.
While it wouldn’t make sense for Twilight to remember everything immediately, it’s explicitly shown throughout the story that Twilight slowly regains most of her memories. It’s not possible that her body was the origin of the starworld memories, because she was brain dead. Thus, the memories must have originated from somewhere else, and were connected to her body in some way, because they couldn’t be part of her body. And these memories must have existed, because Celestia viewed them and they could not have come from the body she scanned. And since the part of Twilight that was "elsewhere" remembered her old self, then it must have been connected to her body and could scan her former memories. And if that was the case, then there’s no reason why Celestia couldn’t follow that connection herself to view Twilight’s new memories. Which must be the case because otherwise the memories have no origin. Or, in other words, the stars’ claim is false because everything would make even less sense if it were true.
I know that the logic is a circular and hard to follow. It’s a pseudo-example of reductio ad absurdum—proving that something is wrong by showing that if you try to prove it right, you fail. Once the impossible is ruled out, whatever’s left—however improbable—must be the truth.
The Final Battle
In Chapter 19, the stars try to bring Twilight down to Dream Valley. This whole part is just a big metaphor. Remember when I said earlier that the process of the stars shaping a universe was a lot like Conway’s Game of Life? Well, the stars finally finished setting everything up in Chapter 19, and all that was left was to get Twilight (the spark) to fully activate the universe and get it moving.
Up until this point everything (besides Twilight) was being directly controlled by the stars—every pony, place, and thing. The stars don’t actually have that much power (relatively speaking) and keeping a whole world held together was pretty taxing. They needed Twilight to spark the world into action because they wouldn’t be able to keep it together for much longer. That’s what the chapter was a metaphor for—once Twilight reached the valley, the Game of Life would finally begin for real.
Then Twilight realized what was going on and fought back.
(Just as a side note here: From my perspective as a writer, that whole scene where Twilight and the stars fought each other by using narration and interrupting each other whenever one of them started narrating something the other didn’t want to happen was one of the funnest things I’ve ever written. Every other time I write it always feels like work—I get my satisfaction after I finish, not during—but in that case writing that scene was actively enjoyable. It was great.)
Ultimately, the stars won when Twilight tried to defeat them using brute-force, but then she realized something.
I didn’t understand for so long. I didn’t understand until right this moment.
It was just a spark.
It’s the same thing she realized when she first faced Nightmare Moon: she’s the spark. The stars hid her cutie mark from her because they were worried it might remind her of who she truly was. She’s the spark that brought her friends together. She’s the spark that activated the Elements of Harmony. Her very talent is Magic and Harmony.
She realized that the only reason that the stars put so much effort into placating her (recreating Ponyville, her friends, taking things slow, trying to convince her to follow their lead) was because she must have a choice. The stars wanted her to be the spark for a whole new world. But she could choose not to be.
She was Harmony. She wouldn’t let Corrupted Harmony defeat her.
And that was that. The entire universe Twilight occupied came into existence only because of her act of applied starlight, and the stars were completely powerless if she chose not to help them. The stars need her, they desperately needed her, and there was nothing they could do about it if she deliberately defied them. It’d be different if the universe was already "sparked"; then the power would be in the stars’ hands (another reason the stars were so hasty to get Twilight to activate everything), but as it was there was nothing they could do.
In the end, Twilight used the massive power she had absorbed from being at ground zero of a universe’s creation to break free and head back to G4.
As for G3, the universe she left behind? There are two possible interpretations. One, Twilight leaving caused the universe to fall apart and dissipate into the nothing between the clusters of Harmony (the true stars). Thus, Applied Starlight would be a story about how Twilight destroyed G3 before it even began.
The second interpretation—one that fits closer with canon—is that the stars decided to try going ahead with their new universe anyway, even without a soul to bring life to it. After all, it was a perfectly good universe, and they’d spent a lot of time on it. Maybe if they kept running the universe long enough life might spark on its own? They’d never tried making a universe without a soul before, but it was worth a shot.
That’s why G3 is so bland and soulless.
Then She Woke Up
"Then she woke up" is said from the perspective of Celestia’s stars. It simply means that Twilight woke up from her coma (though the wording is delightfully ambiguous).
Again, there are two interpretations about what happens after that. The "canon" one is that—since memories are stored in the brain—Twilight doesn’t remember anything of her experience once she wakes up. Everyone’s relieved, Applejack gets a payout from Ponyville Disaster Insurance and replants her trees, "that time when Twilight nearly fried her brain miscasting a spell" becomes yet another quirky adventure in their lives, and everything continues into Season 5 as normal.
The more fun interpretation is that Twilight somehow keeps her memories and so knows that Celestia’s being controlled by the stars. Twilight’s attempt at "curing" Celestia backfires, and the whole thing leads into some epic fanfic where Equestria falls to civil war with Twilight, Celestia, and Luna all on different sides battling each other while the stars panic about their perfect world being ruined—which is exactly what Twilight wants. It’s actually a really good setup for a Tyrant Twilight fic, now that I think about it. I can absolutely see a stressed and crazy Twilight making that logical leap: the stars want the world to be perfect, and the stars are the enemy, so she must instead lead the world to ruin!
As for the links, they’re just meant to be little clues to attentive readers. If you’ve actually read this massive thing (is anyone actually going to?) you would’ve noticed that every link was already used somewhere in this explanation. To reiterate, though:
"Applejack’s a silly pony": This illustrates that G1 was the origin for G4 in the same way that the starworld chapters illustrate that G4 was the origin for G3.
"Turtles all the way down": There’s an infinite multiverse. Multiple universes come into play in this story. This story was originally planned to put more emphasis on the turtles and specify that each universe was a sleeping turtle; thus, the end was supposed to imply that maybe it was the turtle (the universe) that "work up". This idea was cut.
"My Little Pony: The Runaway Rainbow": Hints toward the relationship between the starworld and G3 better than just linking to the G3 intro does. The description mentions "Princess Rarity" and characters like Minty.
"Starshine": This should be obvious.
So yeah. To sum everything up, Applied Starlight is a story that follows Celestia and Twilight as they create each of their respective worlds. On a small scale, it’s about the origin of Equestria and how it affected Twilight’s own creations, but that’s really just a microcosm of the larger story about universes and Harmony and the relationship between them.
APPLIED STARLIGHT
A story about the creation of the universe.
Oh, and Equestria, too, but that was more of a side-effect.
So, That's It? There's Really No Deeper Meaning to Anything?
Well, there's also the whole meta-narrative where the fic is about the process of writing. The narrator represents the author trying to craft a story. Stuff like:
- The nothing is where the author is before they start, no concrete ideas at all.
- The blank whiteness that represents a fresh piece of paper with a few random notes and doodles on it.
- The starworld represents building new ideas based on previous experiences (like how many events at that point of the story referenced the dialogue-only chapters).
- The "complete" world represents the author's first works.
- Finally, the end represents the realization most authors eventually face that sometimes their grand plans may not work out because the characters and the world they've built are naturally progressing in a different direction. As TV Tropes puts it, I Just Write the Thing.
Admittedly, this aspect of the story is a lot less consistent and coherent than the literal interpretation of events. Whenever the literal plot and the metaphorical plot contradicted, I decided to prioritize the literal plot. The entire Celestia "side story" (what a funny term to use here) has no metaphorical meaning, for example.
Some other questions I only remembered after I wrote the relevant part and didn’t want to try to integrate naturally into the blog post:
Q: What’s the deal with the whole "she" thing used throughout the story?
A: If the stars have a lot of power (or are actively trying to exert a lot of power) over a character, then in their narration they use the character’s full name. When they’re only passively controlling the character, that’s represented by only using pronouns.
Q: This story only deals with G1, G3, and G4. Where does G2 come into it?
A: Unfortunately, nowhere. See, My Little Pony Tales isn't technically G2, it's actually still part of G1 (G2 was a short-lived series of toys that had more horse-like proportions). G2 has no cartoon of its own. I originally played around with ideas for including Tales somewhere in the mix (the stars split G1 into two parallel universes for...reasons...), but in the end I just threw up my hands and said "Screw it". Tales is just yet another turtle floating in the vast singularity of turtles, and it’s not part of this story.
Q: What’s the deal with the white rock? It’s at least important enough that it’s included in the cover art.
A: The white rock is something that took on a life of its own; it was originally only there as a reference to One Over Zero (see the original "Explained" post). In the cover art it’s supposed to kind of look like the moon, since that's what it eventually becomes. I was planning on the whole thing being the setup to a really stupid joke in Chapter 17 about Rarity being obsessed over the rock (her moon) and calling it "Tom Junior", but it was never written because it was stupid.
Q: You use "anypony" and "anybody" interchangeably. Why?
A: "Anypony" isn’t used in G3. Thus, the starworld scenes all use "anybody".
Q: You put an unhealthy amount of thought into this story. Are you sure you don’t have a mental disorder of some kind?
A: Pretty sure I don't. I identify with Twilight the most out of all the characters in the show. I don’t suppose that’s very surprising?
And… it’s over! Whew. That actually took a lot out of me. As always, if there was something I didn’t explain up there, or if I wasn’t clear about something, I’m always open for questions. About anything, really.
As far as I’m concerned, though, Applied Starlight is finally, truly over. It feels nice.
Have a stellar day. 
http://nova225.deviantart.com/art/MLP-FiM-Meteor-Sky-215973054
I look forward to reading this later. But seriously dude, use a [page_break] to make one of those "Read Later" cuts so this doesn't clog up news feeds.
2599255 I legitimately didn't know that had to be done manually. Whoops. Sorry, fixed.
I'm gonna re-read the story later to really see the pieces in place
And that sequel sounds awesome
2599320
I hope I made it clear that it's a sequel I never plan to write. It was just a cool idea.
2599493 I know. But it is a cool idea. I wrote a longer comment at first, but for some reason it didn't got posted. What I meant was a bit clearer there.
That was satisfying to read, Really. Tied up loose ends in a sensical (mostly) and satisfying manner, as well as answering questions I haven't gotten around to asking. This was a damned good story. Well done, man.
2602488 Glad to hear it. Thank you!
And NOW it make sense.
2608703 Is there anything I missed that you can think of, or did I manage to cover everything?
2609062 No, I think you did great. I have to admit that I'm now tempted to read this fic again, this time with a new perspective.
2609083 I probably shouldn't be disparaging toward my own story, but I don't think re-reading it will help give you a new perspective on things—if anything, it probably makes it worse knowing everything in advance. I dunno. If you do decide to, let me know what it's like reading the story with a full understanding of it (is it better? Worse?) but I wouldn't recommend it myself.
Hwelp, it wasn't significant the narrator blamed Applejack for something she didn't do, then.
WELL TOUGH I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT IS
2671379 The stars never said that about Applejack. What part are you referring to? (Unless you're talking about the song lyrics.)
2671397
Oh, I made a previous comment in the last chapter about the 'Silly Pony' video - it struck me as odd that the narrator said Applejack walked into a post, but the video showed someone crashing into her, and it reminded me of how the stars kept changing Twilight's actions by telling her she wasn't doing what she was actually doing. I wrote the comment below as a follow-on from that and neglected to actually link them together in any way whatsoever.
I am a silly human.
2671696 Oh, that's clever. Unfortunately, no.
The video was simply the easiest (and funniest) way to show that G4 Applejack is related to G1 Applejack in this story, which is important for figuring out all the Starshine stuff.
I like your idea, though.
Hmm... having read this post, I now think my problem with this story is that, while it contains plenty of good substance, it approaches its own universe from the wrong angle. You tried to both directly show all the things you explained here, while at the same time you also wanted to tell just a "conventional" story, with only cryptic details hinting at whatever deeper meanings could be found within the tale. In other words, you placed what are actually crucial plot elements (since the fic still relies on actually having a plot) into roles normally reserved for subtext (such as the book), and you bombarded me with hints at things that turned out to be just further subtext rather than actual plot elements.
For example, I honestly can't remember a single hint at the whole "Starshine created Star Swirl" thing*, but the (seemingly) random numbers that Pinkie chanted I could clearly remember, and their connection to G1-4 is more of a fourth wall-breaker rather than an element of the plot.
While admittedly this offers a more intriguing experience than the average fic, the end result is the reader getting a whole mess of things that come across almost as non sequiturs rather than a coherent tale. Personally, I prefer a story where the events make perfect sense both without any deeper meanings attached, and gain even greater depth once you start digging into them. Here, I think the story relies a bit too much on one solving the mystery to get a sense of its real depth.
*(I did suspect the parallel between Starshine and Twilight, though I actually expected Starshine to turn out to be the "narrator", perhaps stuck in one of the layers or whatever and trying to get out with Twilight's help.)
2762813 (I'm going to respond to both of your posts here.)
Nah, I disagree about "1+2+3+4... = -1/12" being a better example. In the 1 = 2 example, you start confused, then you specifically look for the "solution" to the screwiness, and then you understand in the end. In the video you posted, all of that's replaced with yelling "bullshit!" and then pouting unhappily when you learn that it's the proper solution in physics.
Cross of Iron... I haven't seen that video before. It's cool, but pretty...odd?
The "Starshine created Star Swirl" thing was a combination of two things. First, in Ch. 2 Starshine is introduced as Star Swirl's mother. Second, in Ch. 18:
As for your comments as a whole, I understand why you weren't thrilled with the story. Hm... I've mentioned this previously in the comments, but this story was birthed from a joke. The core original premise of the story was trying to think of an idea that explained why G3 was so bland and soulless, from an in-universe perspective. It was silly, but I thought it'd be fun. I started with that, and then moved backward from there. "Okay, G3 is bland and soulless...what if it was like that because it literally didn't have a soul? But why would a universe not have a soul? Hmm, say that universes are created by some sort of 'architect', and maybe it had run out of souls when it got around to creating G3? No, that doesn't really make sense. Okay, let's say the architect can't make souls itself, so has to bring in a soul from another universe in order to 'spark' the world into being..."
And on and on from there. I kept on working backward until I had constructed a full mental picture of how this would all work—the "rules of the multiverse", all the backstory, all the characters in play, etc. And then, once I figured all that out, I had to take the next step and write a story about all this nonsense.
I can state truthfully and without shame that this story was fiendishly difficult to write.
So yeah. My point is that I completely understand what you mean by this story "approaching its own universe from the wrong angle", because I started with the universe and then tried to attach a story onto it. Overall I think I did pretty well, and I'm proud of it, but I absolutely see why someone would just find it too spastic and unfocused for their liking.
Anyway, thanks for all these comments!
2762975
Just so we don't end on a sour note: aside from all the things through which I attacked in your fic, after having discussed it in so much detail, I must also congratulate you for the work you did. This story contains excellent ideas and mechanics, it uses a known premise in a not-so-conventional manner, and the "flaws" I keep ranting about are more of a personal taste issue rather than genuine faults.
Other than that, there was plenty for me to enjoy, enough to make me wish the fic could have fully exploited what it set up, and because it did not (again: this is personal taste), not to mention because I'm assuming you didn't get too many comments focusing on the negatives, I wrote a review with the most negative attitude I could muster, within reasonable boundaries, of course...
After all, what you do well needs no further pointing out, now, does it? Instead, I want to let you know what (I think) you didn't get right.
Bottom line is: keep writing. You have potential, and you will only get better from this point forward.
2763925 Oh don't worry, I asked for a Zero Punctuation review in the first place because I wanted a negative review. That was the whole point! I braced myself for a lot worse than I got.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear you appreciated the story, even if it didn't quite live up to expectations for you. It's actually a bit like the very first thing you said about the story:
The first part of that statement is actually a pretty high compliment all on its own, even if the end result wasn't ideal.
So, once again, thanks for all the time you've put into discussing the story with me! I really appreciate it.
One question left, actually. (That I can think of)
So, in the "canon" ending, Twilight doesn't remember anything and everyone goes on with their lives. Okay, but what about Celestia? She's gotta be perturbed by the events of chapter 18, and unless I missed something, she doesn't have any reason to lose those memories. So what's gonna happen there? Even after hearing of Twilight's recovery, I imagine she'll still be suspicious of foul play and want to do something about it.
2816180 Good question! Think back to Chapter 18.
The sad fate of Celestia is that it really doesn't matter. The stars are already so ingrained within Celestia that they can take control whenever they want. Twilight rebelled against the stars when they were weak and straining to keep the universe under control, but Celestia doesn't have that luxury. The stars in her universe have already had thousands of years to root themselves in her.
Celestia has pretty much only three choices: 1. Refuse to accept the situation and let the stars control her for the rest of her life. 2. Accept the situation and never take any actions against the stars (lest they take control of her again). 3. Allow her memory to be wiped so that she never has to know and can live her life happily.
This is probably what actually happened when she originally tried to confront the stars after Luna's banishment. The stars gave her the same ultimatum.
Celestia's fate is why this story has a "Tragedy" tag, despite Twilight's victory. After all, while the story focused on Twilight's POV, pretty much the same sort of thing happened to Celestia as well, except that she lost. The good news is that ultimately the stars will fail, if I've predicted the overall story of FIM correctly. The only pony the stars have direct control over in G4-verse is Celestia. Therefore, for the stars to have power, Celestia has to have power. They have no influence otherwise. The stars tried very, very hard to neutralize the only real threat to their power—Twilight—and they failed miserably.
In an interview, Lauren Faust said that the original plan for the end of the series was for Twilight to become Celestia's successor. While Lauren hasn't worked on the show since Season 2, that still seems to be the direction the story is going, so I'm working with that assumption. Thus, even with their thousands of years of preparation and manipulation, in the end the stars will still lose.
And Twilight wins.
If this whole story wasn't enough evidence already, you can tell I'm a Twilight fan.
2816656
Well, that's a bit depressing. Poor Celly
Though, if she accepts the memory wipe, which seems probable since she apparently did so last time, I guess the whole situation won't be too terrible for her.
Wow
that was long.
And this makes me love the story all the more. You put an insane level of thought and detail into creating this story.
I am seriously impressed.
Congrats on a magnificent piece of writing.
I love this for purely selfish reasons, although I think I put G3 before G1 in my "unified theory of everything" idea. :)
2816656
And, eight years later, as Twilight's rule over Equestria ended and G5 began, the stars fell at last! May Celestia have her peace at last.