Moon Dancer · 4:46am Jul 27th, 2015
Moon Dancer
Family Name: Moon. Personal Name: Dancer. Use-Name: Moondancer.
Kind: Unicorn. Sex: Female. Age: Adult. Born: 1482.
Coat: Light yellowish-gray. Mane: Brilliant amaranth red with moderate purple and grayish violet highlights.
Eyes: Dark purple. Aura: Light ceriseish gray.
Cutie Mark: A crescent-moon (dark puple) surrounded by 3 stars (light purple).
Talent: She thinks her talent is for library research. While she's very good indeed at library research, her true talent is extraordinary combat reflexes. This fits her name, which actually indicates her destiny is to dance like the Moon Princess (her family's remote ancestress, see below), which is a poetic way of saying cut a swath through a fight as if everypony else is standing still. Moon Dancer has resolutely avoided physical education as much as possible, and as a result is blocking the healthy expression of her Talent, which is why it manifests itself in blind berserker rages which she can neither fully control nor remember.
Skills: Moon Dancer is extraordinarily intelligent and well-educated, almost a match for Twilight Sparkle in this regard and more than a match for her in the fields of history and science (but not magic). She is tremendously good at research and has read almost every common book in Equestria, and her memory for read material is near-eidetic. Her knowledge of scholarly topics is considerable for such a young mare, though she is severely lacking in any social skills beyond basic upper-class manners. She has also learned alchemy and taught herself how to make improvised explosive devices out of simple home-made pottery. She also, unfortunately, has a considerable knowledge of the various pseudo social sciences and pseudo economics of Equalism and believes in them.
Appearance: She wears her mane done up in an untidy topknot, with stray ends poking out at odd angles, and prefers to wear rather dowdy, front-buttoned sweaters. She thus looks like a young version of a crazy old spinster, eccentric but rather harmless. Between her temper, her ideology, her talent and her skills, this is a very deceptive appearance. She begins to improve her personal style somewhat after some time getting to know Rarity Belle.
Personality: Moon Dancer is brilliant, introverted, idealistic, alienated and extremely naive. She is mostly heterosexual (though she has a distinct schoolgirl crush on Twilight Sparkle) but has never had any opportunity to express the sexual side of her nature, outside of private sessions with steamy romance novels. She has studied social history and sociology, and believes many theories about society, most notably Marksism, an Equalist school of thought, but has very little social experience whatsoever. She is capable of strong passions; however, the only emotion she usually feels comfortable expressing is anger, which she can carry as far as berserk rage. She is extremely dangerous when she gets sufficiently angry.
Motivation: She tells herself that she wants social justice, by which she means an Equalist society. The truth is that what she wants most is personal acceptance: love and friendship.
Relationships: Night Dancer (father), Honey Moon (mother), Teacup Moon (younger sister), Twilight Sparkle (second cousin and best friend), Minuette, Twinkleshine and Lemon Hearts (friends), Starlight Glimmer (co-conspirator in the Equalist movement) Penumbra (mysterious possibly-demonic Pony-shaped spirit guide, who may be an avatar of King Sombra), and Triumph-By-Devastation (a Shadow Vice of Wrath, whom she holds captive and communes with in her basement).
History: Moon Dancer was born to an old, wealthy upper-class Canterlot family. Her parents' marriage fell apart and became a sham when she was a filly just old enough to feel betrayed by what was happening. She early showed both an extreme aptitude for scholarships and an extreme lack of aptitude for getting along with other Ponies. After making and losing friends at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, she graduated. Her parents gave her one of their old houses as a graduation present and then basically ignored her. She drifted into dark paths and joined the Equalist conspiracy to overthrow the Realm, though as of yet she hasn't committed any serious violent crimes (she is, however, technically a warlock, for summoning the demon Triumph-by-Devastation -- a crime still punishable by death, though none have been executed for this offense in centuries). Recently, she has resumed her old friendships, and is having second thoughts about fomenting violent revolution.
Comments: Like Twilight Sparkle, Moon Dancer is a remote descendant of Princess Luna, and by more than one lineage. One of her ancestors was Night Mace, child of Night Watcher and Princess Luna; from which the Moons are ultimately descended. The Nights, from whom she is also descended, are derived from Night Orb and Night Oil, two of Night Mace's full siblings. (The other full sibling, Night Skies, was an ancestor of the Nocturnae).
Ironic, given Pony POV Moondancer. Where her special talent is manipulating and controlling moon light (such as creating completely solid blades weapons from it).
3272830
Heh, maybe I should go with that instead. Or both, really, as I've already characterized my Moon Dancer as being really deadly in combat despite a lack of training. In my story, Moon Dancer doesn't fully understand how she killed those two Changeling Warriors, but she basically did so with photonic blasts while keeping them off her with rapid and hard kicks.
Understand, she's had only the bare minimum of self-defense training that any gentlemare would have as a matter of course. She has the potential to be far more dangerous, if trained properly. In fact, her lack of training is dangerous in another way -- she's blocking her talents which is why she can't access them consciously.
Part of her problem is that her self-image is "scholar." If she had ever met Wind Whistler, she would realize just how "scholar" and "utterly badass fighter" are not mutually-contradictory descriptions.
The interesting thing about Equalism is that it proves how 'human' the characters are; after all, only someone who thinks like a human being would be so completely offbase about his or her own essential nature and so rigid in the defense of his/her colossal ignorance.
Given that talent, it's exceedingly fortunate that Moondancer's tearful rant with the piñata whacking stick in her magic didn't descend into trying to beat the candy out of Twilight. Good thing Pinkie was there, because that outcome seems frighteningly probable...
Also, I'm noticing a theme in the naming pattern of Shadow Vices. Of course, this is working off of a sample size of two (Winning-through-Degradation and Triumph-by-Devastation,) so it could just be a coincidence.
3273224
I think she came very close to physically-attacking Twilight Sparkle at that moment. Though she successfully reined-in her temper enough to avoid going berserk. Moon Dancer is smart and strong-willed; note that the only point in the story so far she's gotten seriously violent, she did it against alien enemies who were attacking the city. And had damaged one of her books.
She might have even been able to overcome Twilight Sparkle. The sudden furious attack from somepony Twilight assumed friendly, or at least not a foe, would have come as a surprise, and she could possibly have taken Twilight down before Twilight could have used her (far greater) powers to defend herself.
And you're right about the Shadow Vices. Both in terms of names and titles.
3272998
As in our world, it derives mostly from Envy.
3273263 That sure does seem to be what drives Starlight. The two of them might lie to theirselves about what motivates them but where the beast sleeps, they hate the idea of ponies being comfortable in their own skins when that's not possible for them. As Beatrice Horseman might say, they're Starlight Glimmer and Moon Dancer....they were born broken and there's no cure for it.