About the series "Betwixt Silver and Gold" · 5:20pm Sep 16th, 2012
(Not really all that spoiler-y.)
Betwixt Silver and Gold is a series consisting of the following stories:
1. “Javelin”
5. “Whopper of the Year”
6. “[ Redacted ]”
My favorite story out of them all is “Luna and the Tree Ponies”. It’s a stand-alone story. Second-favorite is “Javelin”, which is also stand-alone. [ Redacted ] is a good deal darker in tone than the stories that precede it, and “Whopper of the Year” does act as a sort of climax for the three stories that go before it, so feel free to stop reading there if you don’t want some grim-light.
I came up with this series back in September of 2011, but I didn’t like the idea of posting anything until I was sure I could finish it. Unfortunately, it’s taken me all the way until now to do that, so a lot of the ideas I had for this series were contradicted by Season Two. However, I like these ideas too much to change them, so I guess this series can be considered in the “Alternate Universe” category.
Here’s the over-arching plot of the series, to point out everywhere it diverges from canon:
Betwixt Silver and Gold consists of two overlapping stories: a “big” story centered around Princess Luna, and a “small” story centered around Vinyl Scratch (aka DJ Pon-3).
The “big” story is about twin threats to the very existence of Equestria. At the time when the Sisters created the ponies [1], they used the power of prophesy to push back these threats by ten thousand years. One of these threats are the chaotic beings who messed up Equestria so badly that the ponies were needed to stabilize it [2], and the other is the all-controlling source of magic in Equestria.
The Sisters were preparing the ponies so they could handle these twin threats, but their efforts are suddenly undermined when a mysterious group of conspirators sabotages the prophesies, bringing Doomsday to the present day.
The “small” story is about Vinyl Scratch hitting a wall in her DJ career, and deciding to branch out into manufacturing, inventing the pony version of the compact disc, and attempting to market it to a resistant public. Her biggest obstacle, though, is her own inner doubts: she has to get over her fears that her greatest secret will be discovered [3]. Along the way she befriends Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and comes to discover that they are far more than the “crazy ponies” she thought they were [4].
[1] “Hearth’s Warming Eve” makes it clear that the ponies pre-date the Sisters, while a hint dropped in “Luna Eclipsed” suggests that the ponies, in fact, created the Sisters.
[2] That instability is now almost certainly the result of Discord’s original reign of terror a thousand years ago (“The Return of Harmony Part 1”).
[3] If you read “Javelin”, you know what this secret is. “A Canterlot Wedding Part 2” showed that this secret does not in fact exist.
[4] This character arc is dependent on the fact that most ponies outside Ponyville don’t know that the Mane Six are heroes. Unfortunately, the very public stained-glass windows shown at the start of “The Return of Harmony Part 1” make this impossible.
Cool. One question I have though, is are you planning to continue this series? Because it seems like at least a few plot elements have yet to be resolved, particularly the events that lead to the Mane 6 acquiring the CD's and other assorted human artifacts. For that matter, what about the 'other assorted human artifacts'? We know that at least one was a javelin, but the others were described vaguely enough that I at least was unable to figure out what they were.
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I've got a second series called Thought Experiments that will finish out the artifacts plotline. So far, only the first story ("The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville") has been written.
303816 Got it. My next to questions are about the Doctor. What was the he up to? And why did Celestia say the machine in the TARDIS that turned him into a pony was under her control in The Trial of a Time Pony, when he said that he'd invented it in Luna and the Tree Ponies?
Well, the Doctor's acts are somewhat spoilerish. As I said above, he was messing with the timing of certain future events. And he made it very clear that the current Elements of Harmony are part of his reason for doing this, so you can be assured that whatever's going to happen, it will happen soon.
As for the other part, remember that this series was conceived between Season 1 and Season 2, when I believed that Celestia and Luna created the ponies and were nearly all powerful. Celestia is stating that she has a certain level of control over all pony-based magic in Equestria. The machine in the TARDIS reproduces one of her family's spells, so she has ultimate control over it.
303918 Ah, I see. So the story isn't over yet. It seems to me that if the machine simply reproduces the effect, making a new one would solve the problem of no longer being able to use the old one. And even if that isn't the case, this is the Doctor we're talking about. He'll find some way to get back if he really needs to.
Just curious, yet again, is Vinyl's secret directly revealed in your stories? Or is that an off-screen event of little note, something I believe to be true after reading [ Redacted ].
If this comment is spoiler-rific in any way feel free to off it, but, I'd still appreciate an answer even if it's in PM.
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Her blindness? The story of Prince Steadfast's humiliation has spread far and wide, and you can't tell that particular story without Vinyl's blindness being included, so it's pretty much general knowledge by the end of the series.
Unless you've managed to figure out one of her other secrets...
Typically the loss of a sense in a story leads a character to have a unique power, or end-game position of importance, or is a subtle cue about a grand price to be paid for an even grander advantage for something. But, as of now I only have theories and none of them have been substantiated enough for me to choose one or the other. However, while I think the super hearing is more of a higher level of focus and commitment to that sense instead of a power, I do not believe that is the only thing she has as an exotic ability/fate.
edit: and sweetie belle has every right to be unsure...
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Well in that sense she does have a unique power, even if it is a passive one: her horn sight. She uses this in "Whopper of the Year" to help Luna extract Waking Terror from Princess Celestia, and in "[Redacted]" Waking Terror uses it to enter Celestia and Twilight's nightmare. The former story revealed that no pony with working eyes could do what Vinyl did with that power.
This, however, is not the full extent of what she's capable of. I will say that it's not a coincidence that she was the one who figured out how to use music to single out a single pony's dream in "The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville".
i just feel like the Horn Sight ability is just a side affect that occurred to balance out the blindness, that said I sitting back and waiting for the other hoof to drop... cause even I get the sense that there is more to Vinyl's disability/powers than is being shown. There has to be a greater excuse that she was granted these Positive Abilities, a purpose that was left unfulfilled (I'm unsure about this) when the prophesy was cracked open. I'm hesitant to believe that it, the prophesy, is actually gone, but, may be less obvious.
Or I'm over thinking this too much because I have too much time on my hands... worse thing have happened though.
What was the Luna Eclipsed secret?
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In that episode, Twilight proclaimed that Starswirl the Bearded was the "father of the amniomorphic spell". Now most of the people trying to get some sort of meaning out of this phrase declare that "amniomorphic" is Greek for "Harry Potter", but I read that same Greek as "changing of form in the womb". Which I say means that the spell was used to turn two ordinary pony fetuses into the world's first two alicorns, in order to fight back after Discord's takeover of Equestria.
4479168 That would be indeed awesome though I doubt the writing staff went that deep into it.
...Much as I wish they had, because AWESOME
So I just spent a couple days making my way through this series, and I'm very glad I did so.
It kept the hopeful aspect that I feel a lot of MLP "darker" fanfics lose when they try to make everything high stakes and shocking, but these stories maintain their hopefulness and their beauty even with the darker and more daring elements taking center stage at times.
I love Vinyl's characterization, her attitude and determination. She will question the line she's been fed, and she will scoff at rediculousness, but she's never mean to anypony about it, she never lashes out at another just because her own perspective is being questioned or disproven. She learns, she accepts, and she makes sense of the world.
Thank you for these stories, I appreciate them deeply.