Shadow War Correspondence: Trinity

I've been following Jordan179 for a while now, mostly to read his excellent world-building blog posts. In his posts, he often comments on how things work in "his" Equestria, the Equestria of the Shadow Wars universe; a universe which depicts the conflict between the ponies we know and love, and malevolent cosmic entites. Since I've been curious about it for so long, I decided to start reading the Shadow Wars 'verse, by order of publication... and since I'm reading them, why not comment as I go? This is a series of my posts on the subject; part-review, part-commentary, and part-whatever I feel like talking about at the time. Enjoy!

Trinity is the first piece published by Jordan179. I feel like that is an important distinction to make because, while I enjoyed the story and it is a part of the background informing the characters of the Shadow Wars series, I don't believe it works as the first story in the Shadow Wars sequence, and certainly isn't where I'd recommend anyone begin, particularly if you familiar primarily (or, as in my case, exclusively) with Friendship is Magic.

This particular story is set fifty years before My Little Pony: Tales, at a testing site in New Mexicolt, Amareica on the eve of potential world war, where a group of scientists (including doctors Oppenhorser, Finemare and Schwarzwalder Fuch) are detonating a nuclear weapon.

And... this would be my primary reason for disliking this story as a starting point; it is a story which features none of the shows characters, nor their world; the ponies of the Age of Wonder's have technology which far out-stripes that of Canon!Equestria, to the point where various characters will drive cars. Furthermore, as the list of names above might show, the ponification of the Manhatten Manehatten Project can appear to be rather superfical; at one point, Oppenhorser directly quotes the famos line of his real life counterpart about having become death. It's difficult to ignore the notion theat the only, unequivocally "pony" thing about this story is that the characters featured all happen to be equines.

However... bear in mind what I said before: I ultimately like this story.

Most of that is the result of the writing. The prose is self-assured, and feels very deliberate. The scene in chapter 1, when the bomb goes off, is masterful; I don't usually like 'ticking clocks', since they can often seem artificially inserted to increase the tension, but here it works, particularly when interspersed with the technicians monitoring the dials, Finemare's comment about thing's being worse than expected, and the back-and-forth banter of the scientists. The fact that the short description of the story mentions that the G2 world is facing a countdown increases the tension, since the readers don't know how this will turn out; when Ritten Truper echos the question of "Burning the atmosphere", he is speaking for the audience. A fanfiction set around the Manhatten Project proper would have that tension defused, by the simple fact that we know the atmosphere wasn't destroyed; putting such a question here, in what the reader already knows to be a doomed world, raises the possibility that that could actually happen- and then we have a timeless, still moment, to better appreciate the impending apocalypse.

And it is beautiful.

I take issue with the (oddly detached) narrator when they describe the miracle of Celestia and Luna's incarnations, and the subsequent births of Sundreamer and Moondreamer, but in a way, that kind of works; both D's comments in later chaters (and Luna and Celestia's in A Meeting by Moonlight and Adrift) suggest that cosmic entities such as the Alicorns (or, on a meta-level, readers) can't fully appreciate emotions and things. While the description of sub-quantum scale data packets is clinical and dry, it is immediately contrasted with the emotive language of the fireball, of the furnace air, the tower of dust and the spectral rainbow lighting it. We see logic (typically a cold force) Create, while emotion and passions derive from something being Destroyed.

Subsequent chapters balance the detachment and emotion better; chapter two comes from inside Fuchs head-literally- and chapter three has Finemare as the point of view character. Attaching the camera to a character, rather than a vague narrative force, helps to focus the story.

That's the other reason why I particularly like this piece; the characterization is well-done, particularly in the case of Finemare, and particularly in chapter three; we've been introduced to Finemare as an intellectual, have had her eccentricities hitned at by the narrator and by Fuchs, but this is the first time when we really get to see thigns from her point of view. There is a certain detachment from things, but this time, it clearly comes from Finemare herself being incapable, or attempting to escape from, processing things- and enough emotion bleeds through that we can emphasise with her grief, even as she herself tries to reconcile it with Joyous Physcology, or the out-of-body experience of not realising she herself was wailing.
Yes, I can admit that those are indicators of grief which have been done before- but they are presented well, and are a major merit to this fiction. Sweetie Finemare may not be a character from the show, but she is one who I want to read more about.

Honestly, my main point of contention so far as characterization is concerned is that I dislike D; I don't want to refer to the character as Discord, partly because he doesn't feel right to me. While I don't expect the usual song-and-dance routine with him, I have a very different interpretation of Discord. Where Discord is normally a very childish character, D seems almost... cultured in an alien way, berating Fuchs as a philistine. Of course, according to other stories, the Cosmic Over Souls of the two sisters are quite different than their mortal incarnations; the same is, more likely than not, true of Discord. Even so, it's not a take I'm completely comfortable with- particularly given his... "relationship" with Raindew. While it is clearly something the audience isn't supposed to like - the haunted look in her eye for instance, or the fact that he says he is faking interest to satisfy "our lusts of that sort"- it also makes it harder for me to accept his eventual reformation.

Still, on the whole, it is a story which I like, and which I would be interested in seeing continue. However, it is also one that I feel works better as a background element. On my first attempt at reading it, I found it difficult to stay invested in this alien setting and these unfamiliar characters; reading A Meeting by Moonlight, however, contextualized this in terms of characters I did understand, and made me both more willing to accept the world on it's own merits- and added to the tragedy that it was lost forever. If you are going to read this, I would recommend reading A Meeting by Moonlight first.

Also: the births of Celestia and Luna coinciding with the atomic bomb is amazing.

Comments

[Jordan179]

To explain: I call it "my" Equestria because I'm aware that even when I try to make it conform to canon, it's still my interpretation, and of course sometimes I'm not even trying. I also freely fanon-mine from writers I like -- for instance, the overall structure of its history is very much based on Alex Warlorn's PonyPOVerse, some of the ancient civilizations come from Cold In Gardez, my Changelings are partially inspired by Ardashir's and Phoenix Dragon's, my Discord is in personality inspired by a combination of Alex Warlorn's and AlaraJRogers'; my concepts of Pinkie and Cheese by Scoots2; and of Cheese's family by Sketcha-Holic's.

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My original inspiration for Trinity was that I had read the Pony POVerse and loved the idea that the My Little Pony Tales world preceded that of Friendship Is Magic. As a child I grew up reading stories of modern civilization shattered and ages of darkness and slow recovery ensuing; having that be part of the My Little Pony world was a beautiful concept. Alex also had Celestia and Discord incarnating in the world long before that -- before even the original My Little Pony series, and their games with one another being responsible both for the rise of Pony civilization and for the plethora of monsters which threatened Ponies in the time of Megan, which, since it had been forgotten or reduced to legend by the time of the My Little Pony Tales world meant that it must have happened many centuries earlier.

So I wondered: what were Celestia, Discord and Luna doing in between then and their eventual reincarnation into the age of Friendship of Magic? I decided to have Celestia and Luna incarnate as (superior but unaware) mortal mares, because that's something his Concepts sometimes do, the better to understand the ordinary beings of the races and worlds whose protection and development is one of their greatest purposes; Discord, of course, wouldn't want to be ordinary, but since an empowered immortal avatar of Discord would have just openly smashed the My Little Pony Tales civilization, I decided to have him be an intangible spirit of chaos, with the power to transmigrate between and control host Ponies. That would have the benefit that he could be more than one character in the unfolding history.

My style and inspiration is very much Golden and Silver Age science fiction books and movies. Sweetie Finemare is a Science Hero who would have gotten along just fine with Doc Savage's Crew, and her fellow scientists are very aware that they are unlocking powers which could either destroy Ponykind or give them access to the whole sidereal Universe. Sweetie herself is a fan of the science fiction of her world; she imagined herself and Rich Greentree as something between ordinary lovers and Science Hero chums, and this is part of how she inadvertently destroyed him -- because the science fiction of the 1930's was a tad light on safety concerns.

Discord, as the intangible spirit D, is a villain in the model of 1940's - 1960's science fictional alien invaders, when the writing might be good but the special effects capabilities very light by our standards. Here's the suite that I listen to the most when I think of him.

Sweetie, even as she comes to deduce D's existence (she's far from it as yet) sees D in this light: he's a being from Beyond, a terrifying thing of vast and alien intellect which can hide among them as a Pony, and whose motives are incomprehensible and malign. It amuses D to let her deduce his existence, in part because she's one of the few Ponies he actually respects and with whom he wishes to play at length (in canon we see similar behavior from him in this regard toward Twilight Sparkle).

D is not as nice as Discord later becomes. He's not even as nice as the Discord who tyrannizes the world for a thousand years; that Discord has been raised as a Pony, been Dissy, known friendship and love and -- though Discord actively suppresses Dissy -- on a fundamental level likes Ponies. He doesn't like Ponies enough to treat them well, but he does like them enough to see them as sort of his own kind; he tries to avoid outright killing them in his play, and he protects them against outside invaders. Later, by the end of the Shadow Wars, he comes to love Ponykind, and understands why Celestia cares for them so much.

D still sees the Ponies as Cosmically irrelevant, as his rival for Celestia's attention. Being Discord, he'd still rather play than kill, but he's perfectly willing to play by killing, especially Ponies in whom he has no particular interest. His development of respect for Sweetie Finemare is part of the process by which he starts to change his opinion of Ponykind -- though he still almost causes their destruction as a species. Sweetie's not the first Pony he's liked or respected -- even in his first advent among Ponies, he met some, such as Honey Tongue, whom he found exceptional. But then, the change of even the incarnation of a Cosmic Concept can be a slow process.

So D isn't really meant to be that likeable. Yet.