The Time of Extermination - Badflanks With Pretty Tail-Bows · 10:25am Dec 3rd, 2014
I am Mare Memory. I keep the records of Dream Castle, records which date back many hundreds of years, to the time of the Queendoms, when we still had towns and cities and realms which covered the countryside – before the coming of the Annihilator. And some from the Age of Creation – when the Gods walked the Earth incarnate, and great magics were commonplace.
What use are records? Without knowledge of the past, we would be nothing – scarcely more than talking beasts, remembering no further back than the times of our grand-dams, or perhaps their grand-dams. Perhaps a century – that is but an eye-blink against the millennia of our history. We would be but savages.
No! The records are most especially important, now that we face Annihilation. We must remember – we were not always like this, hiding in our castle from the Monsters, going outside only in large parties, ready at any moment to fight to survive. Once, we were the Queens of the Earth, the dominant race on this round world!
There were towns and cities and realms that covered the countryside. There were roads, and travelers and caravans moving unafraid. There were great temples and libraries, fleets of trading vessels which carried the commerce of one land to another, so that all might trade and prosper.
The Earth Ponies farmed the land, all the land, and they dwelt on their lands and there were no Monsters to take them; some of them drew the wagons that bore goods to the cities from the hinterlands. The Pegasi worked the weather, and crewed the trading-ships, directing fair winds, and some were bold Couriers who knit the lands together in a webwork of shared knowledge. Skilled Unicorn craftsponies took the products of many lands and made beautiful things, some of which survive today in our castle. Sea Ponies freely swam in all the waters of the world; in the forests, the Flutter Ponies kept all Nature in balance.
When did the Sisters meet their Brothers? When was there love and joy and the making of new life? Whenever we wanted! The Sisters dwelt in the cities and the Brothers beyond the walls, but all the Brothers needed to do was walk into town to visit their beloveds. Think of it – year-round, after work we could play together, as families.
You do not know that word. Think of a Festival, when the Big Brother Herds come in to meet us, but not as frantic, for it would not be just a single cycle in a year, but usually at least once a week. And fathers would see their daughters, and mothers their sons, yes, even when full-grown! There was laughter and happiness then, year-round!
No, I do not remember this personally. I am old, but not that old. But my grand-dam said that her grand-dam told her that she knew her sire and the colts from her dam well, before the first Horde descended on the Queendom of the Shining Land. That was when the Brothers could no longer dwell in the hinterlands, because it became too dangerous.
Some Realms tried to have fortresses for their Brothers nearby. But this did not work: the Monsters would either mass against the forts, and force the main castle to try to save them, or the other way round. And then all would die. This way, if a Castle is overrun, its Big Brothers survive and carry on the lines of the colts of its Little Sisters; if a Big Brother Herd is slain, they live on in their fillies in the Castle.
This is not the only way things can be. This is the way they must be now, but one day we will recover, one day we will live in the open, without fear, as we did before.
We are a great species, and we have not yet begun to fulfill our true destiny.
We shall rise again!
We must remember ...
(words attributed to Mare Memory, ~ 15 BTM - Before The Megan)
Over six millennia ago, Ponykind was dying. Its realms shattered, its cities overrun or starving with the loss of their hinterlands, Ponies survived only as furtive nomadic herds or castle garrisons. The nomad herds were continually-decimated by monstrous predators, and the castles were falling, one after another, to the armies of ruthless warlords. To intelligent Ponies such as Mare Memory, the trend was obvious -- decade upon decade, more Ponies were dying than were being born.
It was the Time of Extermination, and the experiment in equinoid intelligence begun by the Great G'marr and continued by the High Eldren was almost over. It was far from certain that any Ponies would survive: if they did, it would be only as the slaves of greater races.
The lights were going out, everywhere, and it did not seem they would ever be lighted again in the history of their species. Night was falling on Ponykind.
A sort of graceful fatalism descended upon many Ponies. They were a kind and loving species, and they mourned their losses, but they saw no way to change their fate. They fought as best they could to stay alive, but resolved never to descend into savagery, to keep the flame of what later civilizations would call the Harmony alive among them, until it might be extinguished only by their deaths. They might die, but they would die as Ponies, not as brute beasts.
It was in this hour -- the darkest that Ponies were ever to know until the Cataclysm two thousand years later -- and in Dream Valley, that an amazing generation of heroines were born, heroines who represented perhaps the greatest concentration of courage and talent that Ponykind has ever known. It is almost as if something -- some force of Providence -- was acting to preserve Ponykind. Their names have become legend: Firefly, Wind Whistler, Twilight Mist, Galaxy, Surprise and many more.
It was they who summoned The Megan, they who helped slay Tirek the Annihilator, they who first learned how to fight back against their destroyers, and who taught other Ponies to do the same. And it was they -- after the Megan left this world -- who led the fight to reclaim this Earth for Ponykind.
Badflanks. With pretty tail-bows.
This is their story.
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Does this sound like a good series concept? An extension of G1, both backward and forward in time?
I'd certainly read it. Especially if you actually entitled it Badflanks With Pretty Tail-Bows.
All of the yes. Go for it.
Nice. Seeing people meld the two together is always interesting, particularly if it also goes into the "fridge logic" of how dangerous things actually were, and the brabery of the characters, by looking beyond the "little girls' show" filter.
Also, you have to name it like that. Even if you don't, my mind will replace the title and refer to it as Badflanks With Pretty Tail-Bows.
This sounds like a fantastic idea and I'd love to see you do something with it. That or team up with DGDavidson as you two are the best known to me who really enjoy the older gens.
Ironic, since the pony pov verse Luna tells a shocked Applejack that ponies were not even sapient creatures while Tirek was a simple Centaur Prince of the Centaur Empire (the first and perhaps greatest civilization on the planet at the time, and the first species to challenge the dragons' absolute dominance of the planet). I'd say more, but it would be spoilers for parts not written yet.
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I know, but that means that either Tirek was very old by the time of Rescue at Midnight Castle (certainly possible), or that you were chronicling an earlier incarnation (also possible). My deep-time chronology of the Ponies goes differently anyway than yours, along these lines (zero point is YOM 1950, because that's how the Paradise Entity measured paleontological time) so the "present" is around 4054 years after 0 YA):
~1.3 MYA - The Great G'marr, a Voormis-descended race, alter basal Equus equus into the Proto-Ponies, who are sapient, multi-hued but lack magical abilities. The Proto-Ponies are among many genengineered servitor races of the Great G'marr; others are derived from various hominid stock, both of Homo (mostly erectus) and other genera.
~1.2 MYA - Onset of the Pre-Pastonian glacial cycles triggers the decline of the Great G'marr.
~800 KYA - The Eldren, one of the hominid servitor races of the Great G'marr designed from Homo erectus, rebel against the Great G'marr and begin driving them first out of Hyperborea, and then out of the Waking World. During the long Pastonian Stage (800 KYA - 676 KYA) Eldren civilization grows. The Proto-Ponies are prized by the Eldren for their high intelligence and cooperativeness.
~621 KYA - Onset of the Gunz Glaciation (676 KYA - 621 KYA). The Eldren become harsher during this Ice Age, and those in Hyperborea turn to the worship of intolerant Yhoundeh, the Elk-Goddess (herself, ironically, the product of G'marrean genengineering).
Hundreds of thousands of years then ensue during which the Eldren slowly rise in science and sorcery, becoming the dominant race on the planet, and driving the last remnants of the Great G'marr and those of their servitor races which they do not like into extinction or other dimensions. During this time, there are numerous interglacials and much history. The Proto-Ponies exist both free and as servitors, and are thus subject both to selective breeding and the slow forces of natural evolution.
~130 KYA - Start of the Sangamonian Interglacial. Eldren culture enters its greatest period of efflorescence in their history.
~120 KYA - Eldren civilization learns to tap the Earth-currents and develop other sources of energy, including nuclear fission and fusion. The Eldren master the science of genetics and the magic of biomancy, and begin to extensively modify the servitor races they have inherited from the Great G'marr. They also extensively modify themselves, becoming the High Eldren -- the Moochick's race.
117 KYA - The Eldren learn how to incorporate magical extensions into the genetic code. Creation of the basic Five Kinds of Ponies -- Earth, Unicorn, Pegasus, Flutter and Sea. These genes eventually backflow into the Proto-Ponies, resulting in the end of the Proto-Ponies through absorption into the new Five Kinds.
115 KYA - The High Eldren fight their Final War. Atlantis, Lemuria and the remnants of Mu Thulan are sunk, and the Earth's climate knocked into an Ice Age (the Wisconsin). Most of the High Eldren on Earth are wiped out; most of the survivors flee to other worlds or dimensions. Some remain out of apathy, degenerating into the various Elven Realms which will still exist on the Earth in the Time of Extermination. Others remain out of love, wanting to repair the damaged ecosystems and restore Earth's habitability -- one of these is the scientist-sorceror who will be known to future ages as The Moochick.
I really need to publish my Ages of Pony Earth, which has the deep time stuff. This part of the deep-time stuff I concretely chronologized just now, under the impulse of this discussion. Thank you.
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One of the concepts I've had since I seriously started thinking about the relationships between different kinds of fictional reality was the difference between conceptual realism and realism of presentation. I'll give you a simple example.
Gargoyles is conceptually a realistic show. Given the necessary fantastic assumptions (secret races dwelling on the Earth, aliens, magic powers, ancient conspiracies, etc.) the characters relate to one another and to their environment in fairly realistic fashions. Death is a clear possibility (it happens to several characters in the episodes). Love and romance are well-handled.
But its presentation is as a cartoon. Thus it is not as realistically-presented as, say, the typical skit of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Which is conceptually surreal. Causality is mutable in a Monty Python routine, and logic exists mostly to be lampooned (many of the jokes in Monty Python are conceptual and based on the logical extrapolation of silly premises).
G1 My Little Pony was done with the diabetically-sweet trappings of a 1980's show for little girls, and it was done as a cartoon, and it had to work as a toy commercial (just as with the for-boys G.I. Joe and Transformers). But if you paid attention to what was actually happening in terms of plot, it was potentially dark-as-hell, and the backgrond was very dark.
There are the Ponies, who are sapient and civilized (we first meet them living in a castle, one obviously built by themselves for their own race). More than that, they're very nice -- "caring" and "kind" would be good ways to describe their culture. And there are signs all over the place that they used to exist in much larger numbers -- Dream Castle itself is far too large for the number of Ponies surviving, and there are ruins littering that whole world. And in the episodes we see them time and again coming under attack by powerful enemies, who mostly would have defeated them if not for Megan, her siblings, and some very badflank Ponies (including most notably Firefly and Wind Whistler).
This means that they are a dying race -- one being driven into extinction by malevolent sapient foes. There is no way that enough Ponies are being born each generation to make up for the numbers who must be logically being killed by their enemies. Megan stepped right into the middle of a Holocaust -- and by her bravery, determination and intelligence, started to turn it around -- partially by giving the Ponies access to more advanced technologies, but even more importantly by showing them that they could fight -- that they didn't have to just passively await their annihilation. And Megan couldn't have done it without the courageous Ponies of Wind Whistler's generation.
By the end of the series, the Ponies of Dream Valley have lost their castle, but gained an even safer home (Paradise Estate, which seems magically veiled). What's more, they are venturing out farther and farther, freeing bands of enslaved Ponies (such as the Glitter-Eyed Ponies) and making friendly contact with other groups of free Ponies. We are seeing the start of a catalytic process that sweeps the planet until the Ponies become the dominant species.
This is epic in its substance, even if the main heroines wear pretty, pretty tail bows.
Oh, about the tail bows. These are flirtation devices. They allow the mare's tail to more completely conceal certain key parts of her anatomy, but she can briefly (or at length) reveal those places by simply flicking her tail aside. The implications of this should be obvious.
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Of course.
Oh, and the contents of the first and second episodes of FiM are also material for an epic... I have little doubt that it could have been made into at least half a season by itself with a little additional creativity thrown in for the trials the girls face in their travel.
Also, don't forget that Tirek wields the Rainbow of Darkness, which seems antithetical to the harmonic magic that ponies use.
He wields weaponized hatred, envy, and God knows what else.
In rainbow form.
I'm all for the 'Dark is not Evil' trope and stuff relating to it, but that is an example of using Darkness for evil done scarily well... and it's all in the subtleties.
Sometimes, a show can throw a curve ball that smacks you right upside the head without you even noticing it approaching.
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This is one of the points at which my Shadow Wars world and the Pony POVerse essentially have different Parallel Pasts. It's situations like this -- originally for the Cthulhu Mythos when I was seriously into the Mythos, 25 years ago, that I first invented the concept of Parallel Pasts.
Wow -- it's been over a quarter-century now. The space from the end of World War II to the Moon Landings, roughly.
I'm old.
Yes, do it!! And if you do write it, please do name it Badflanks with Pretty Tail-Bows.
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The funny thing is that this began as my joking name for a plan to write stories about the Time of Extermination. I was looking at a list with art of the G1 Ponies, and I noticed two things: (1) a lot of them were awesomely tough, and (2) the one piece of attire almost all of them wore was a tail-bow, tied near the root of the tail, where it would obviously look very flirty.
There's something kind of sweet and magnificent -- rather like the G1 mares themselves -- about the notion of characters like Wind Whistler and Firefly facing terrible danger and foes intent on their extermination, yet still taking the trouble to look feminine while doing so. That's an assertion of the primacy of Life over Death that is wholly in the spirit of Ponykind, whether back then or six thousand years later in Equestria. That those foes could kill the Ponies, but never dominate them.
Maybe I will call the series just that.
2638256 Mares rule, monsters drool!