power levels · 2:33am May 20th, 2015
Here's a fun little game I like to play. The game is called, "How do I reconcile the way the Celestia in your fic is pretty much pre-Crisis superman, while she's just the tallest and pointiest unicorn in the actual show?" I can always just cheat and point to the "AU" tag on "A New Sun," but I'd rather make excuses.
Things that have casually beaten Celestia in a straight fight:
1. The Smooze, basically
2. Discord(?)
3. Chrysalis
4. Tirek
5. Nightmare Moon
Excuses:
1. According to the original movie, nothing can stop the Smooze, and nothing stops us from declaring him an interdimensional world-eating threat that just happens to be feeling pacifist today, since bringing something like that to a garden party is exactly what Discord would do
2. Dude's hell of wily, and also has the power of Morpheus of the Endless from the looks of it
3. powered by love, love conquers all
4. Clearly worse than the smooze, and to be fair, Goku fought him to a standstill -- and have we not established on the internet that Goku is roughly as strong as Superman?
5. Amped up Luna, good enough for me
But hey, it's alternate universe. Staying canon is fun and neat but ultimately not my problem. 
I've had no problems with your interpretation of Celestia's power and agree with you whole heartedly when it comes to what has defeated her being up there on the OP scale, which doesn't make her any less powerful.
1. The Smooze, basically -- She had no reason to push off the little bit of gunk on her horn and take control of the situation there personally. It was better to let it go as it was to go, and if things got worse, she could think of something. As such she simply did a brute force minor lightshow to allay Twilight.
2. Discord(?) -- She actually defeated Discord once with the elements alongside Luna. But yes, Discord is more powerful than Celestia in a straight fight. See #4 though.
3. Chrysalis -- She took a pratfall here. Even Chrysalis did not believe she could take down Celestia.
4. Tirek -- Here she was backstabbed by Discord. She could have taken Tirek just like Discord was able to, if she could manage to find him before he became too powerful. Once he had all of the unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus magic to back him up, the power of a single alicorn was insufficient to stand up to him. It is an interesting question if Twilight with the power of 4 unicorns behind her could have defeated Tirek or not. Note Tirek also had the power of Discord at that point, so it is very possible that the power of 4 alicorns in a single vessel could trounce Discord in a brute force battle(which Discord tends to avoid anyway). They kind of fought to a stalemate on the brute force scale, but Twilight was not used to the level of power she was at.
5. Nightmare Moon -- Luna and Celestia are fairly evenly matched. Luna with an edge is more powerful than Celestia.
One more thing on Chrysalis//Celestia. Consider the Tirek//Twilight battle and how much devastation happened when their magic crossed. *IF* Celestia had used her full abilities, you would have had something similar, just in the middle of Canterlot. Hundreds if not thousands of ponies would have DIED and there would be no castle left. Yes it would have taken out Chrysalis, but it would be a pyrrhic victory.
3081950 Very good point... looking at the final battle between TnT (hey, why didn't I spot that until now?
Also, alliteration C&C.): that final explosion was in the kiloton range. That would indeed have disintegrated the castle and ripped Canterlot off the mountain. Maybe she just held back too much out of fear of killing all her ponies.
Also yes to Nightmare Moon. NNM was clearly more powerful than Celestia: the Elements took her down, not Celly.
But for this story, canon analysis would just get in the way and make things needlessly complicated. Hence AU.
Doesn't mean it's not fun to do though :)
2. Discord(?)
remember he took her down but then he met his end to little Fluttershy with simple friendship.
I'd like to see a pitched battle between your Celestia and Arads' Solaria. They're awfully similar.
Hm, on that note, where is Discord in your universe, if he is not a regent yet still godly powerful?
3082769 Yes, and I was doubtful when that episode first aired, but in hindsight I like how that worked. Discord hanging out with Fluttershy is awesome, and Discord himself is a cool character now that he's a more sympathetic antagonist.
3083556
The following stops being canon the moment it stops working, but it's what I've had in mind so far. If the text ever contradicts any of this, just ignore this comment. In fact this applies to every comment I make. All my comments are quasi-canon at best.
I haven't read any of Arad's Celestia, but I've caught up on Stardust and its direct sequels, and honestly I don't know if I could read about Solaria. It's a good idea and I see it's a popular fic, but "evilestia" is something I haven't ever been able to enjoy.
In a straight fight, limiters removed, final destination? I'm going to bet on my own version of Celestia just because I deliberately decided that all regents are game-breakingly overpowered, each in their own special way. "My" Celestia (in quotes because obviously none of this is mine because it's a fanfic) is supposed to be The Great Diplomat and benevolent politician, so fighting is something she really doesn't do, and she certainly isn't going to advertise this... but galaxies exist at her whim. At any time she can just be like, "Hey aether, let's compact this whole galactic filament into a singularity, which I can stand next to without being harmed because I'll do whatever the hell I want, and then it can explode and the force will certainly send me a 100 or so megaparsecs away, but I'll be fine because among my many powers is the ability to not give a trillionth of a fuck about explosions of any size. Weee!"
You can probably see why the canon villains of the actual show present a bit of a conundrum for me.
This may be AU, but you can only take this so far.
I do have limits in mind. She can't create or destroy matter or energy or aether. Hunger and thirst don't kill her, but she can get tired, and she's capable of passing out from any of those. All this power is limited to physical stuff -- dreams, symbols, myths, folklore, the collective unconscious, all these things belong to Luna, though Luna's influence over all of that is more subtle than Celestia's influence over the physical world (except in dreams, where Luna has no limits except logic, and yes, we should all be grateful the Nightmare showed no interest in anything except self actualization).
The most important limits are that I figure a lot of this doesn't scale down very well, and that Celestia doesn't see the point of brute force as a solution to any of the problems that matter to her. "A binary star system is collapsing in on itself? Whatever, none of the planets have sentient life. A foal is crying? Oh no!! Here, I have tissues." Anyway, how does that compare to Solaria?
As for Discord, he can do in the real world what Luna can only do in dreams. He's a sentient concept like the Nightmare, meaning he has no native plane, almost no needs we could easily understand (except he's a social creature in that he communicates and can form relationships, again like the Nightmare), is not made of matter/energy/aether but is capable of faking it... all that kind of thing. Discord isn't showing up in this fic.
3083825 Oops, I wrote an essay.
3083825
I'm with you there. I find that most of the time it's done poorly and just sounds like one of those 'new lunar republic vs solar empire' things. I like it a lot more, because it's her progressing from being a not good princess to a good princess. It's quite enjoyable, as things go.
On the subject of making Celestia infinitely powerful, I'm with you that she should can alter the fate of celestial(pun absolutely intended) objects, but I think a plural of galaxies would be a bit much. Maybe strong enough to destroy one globular cluster- you know, like Omega Centauri(150 ly diameter), where I am convinced the ponies reside, but that's headcanon so not relevant- but not enough to destroy a galaxy.
Galaxies are awfully big, you know.
And anyway, I prefer Twilight Sparkle to be the uber-op messianic crystal pony spess jebus type to conquer the Milky Way.
3083876 I just stared reading that. As of chapter two, I like it more than I expected.
Omega Centauri? The star on horseback? Maybe. I like to imagine Equestria in the Horsehead Nebula because the pun is wonderfully stupid and obvious, and the fact that one of the background ponies has Orion for a cutie mark makes it even better because how in the hell are you managing that, but since the ponies appear to have a similar sky to ours, I guess they'd have to be in the same galaxy.
We'll compromise. Galaxy-spanning powers, but only one galaxy at a time, and no distance limitations. Subject to change if it becomes inconvenient.
Don't forget rule 0:
0) The show isn't actually all that good.
If you write your Celestia to honor ACW canon and make sure your story universe is compatible with all that power of love and hype over obscure British royalty, your story will be worse, and people will rightfully look down upon you for having made a mistake. Because the show executives made a mistake. They were excited about the royal wedding, and thought they could get viewers by capitalizing on it, so they godmoded, gave McCarthy the pig, and told her to put lipstick on it. And there's really nothing outrageous about that; people get excited, hierarchy ruins creative work, shit happens.
If you write your Celestia completely ignoring ACW canon, your story will be better, and anyone who complains probably never considered that just because some canon is worth emulating, doesn't mean all canon is worth emulating.
You know, I mean, unless you actually liked ACW, in which case your story will be "better" if you emulate it, and I'll go find something else to read. But, substitute whatever episode you didn't like for that one, and you actually lose credibility by trying to honor its premise.
tl;dr you're a worse writer if you do what you don't like, out of obligation, so don't.
3085049 I love this show and I liked ACW. Admittedly I liked the second half better because Chrysalis owns, and the wedding itself was a little boring for me, but eh.
As for the power of love, again, I like this show, and the show's subtitle is "friendship is magic," so FiM is literally about the power of love anyway.
I do agree that, where canon gets in the way of a story worth telling, the writer should throw canon away and not worry about it. I think it's also fun to try and work around canon wherever possible, though, even with the episodes I don't care about. Like I said, it's a game.
3086122
Well, my point is that the show isn't perfect, or even very good in certain significant ways. Putting that into perspective is important if we want to avoid adopting bad story elements out of obligation to canon. "Oh no Celestia is pre-Crisis Superman" is kind of a non-issue if you write a good story about it.
Also I really really really didn't like ACW.
3087357 Fair, but weaseling my way out of being noncanon is still fun for me.
As for you disliking ACW, why, yes, I think I worked that out from your other post. :emotesuggestingpurelygoodnaturedandinoffensivesarcasm: