The Immortal Game liveblog 1: Thoughts Going In · 8:26pm Aug 31st, 2015
Okay, now The Unbearable Lightness of Bucking is up, I can get cracking on the liveblog of AestheticB's The Immortal Game. This is the start of my series, so a quick note before I begin: I will be using page breaks in future posts before I start discussing details of what I've been reading. Be warned, though, that there will be unmarked spoilers beyond that point, and very probably in the comments of each post as well. Right then. Here's The Immortal Game's short description:
Princess Luna leads the Elements of Harmony against the corrupted Twilight Sparkle
This doesn't seem like a desperately original concept on the face of it, but a straightforward idea done really well can still make for a fine story. (See various show episodes.) It looks pretty dark, which ties in with what people have hinted, though as a Teen-rated fic there are (or should be) a few limits on what's portrayed -- there's also no Gore tag. This is a very old story, having started life (at least here on Fimfiction) back in October 2011, so much less had been done with the FiM universe.
The Immortal Game got a six-star rating on EQD, but for a story this old that doesn't necessarily signify outstanding quality by 2015 standards. The long description is, well, long, so I'll put that and the rest of this post past a break.
Long ago, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived a powerful King and his dark Queen. Immortal and ignorant, their end came at the hooves of their daughters, Celestia and Luna, who sought to build a better future for ponykind.
Now ponykind’s old gods have returned.
Twilight Sparkle is trapped inside her own mind, slave to a cruel and impulsive consciousness built from everything she is not. Powerless and voiceless, she must find a way to stop the being that calls itself Nihilus from destroying everything she holds dear.
Luna is tasked with assembling the remaining Elements of Harmony in hopes of freeing their leader. For if ponykind is to have any hope, it is in Twilight Sparkle. And if Twilight Sparkle is to have any hope, it is in her five friends.
Facing her father in mortal combat, Celestia must do everything she can to ensure that ponykind has the tools to survive before she falls. With inevitable defeat bearing down upon her, she makes the first move in the oldest and deadliest game known to creation.
This gives us quite a bit of information about the story -- in particular, that Celestia and Luna overthrew their parents, that we're going to be meeting some gods and that all the Mane Six will be playing significant parts as the story unfolds. (Cue my usual apprehension about whether Fluttershy's role will actually be satisfying.) In a fic as long as this, it may not be too much, but it's still more than I'd expect. (At least it's more helpful than "Rainbow Dash flies east." 
)
The story's genre tags are Dark and Adventure, which both seem fair enough. Not Alternate Universe, though, which is interesting -- to me, that omission means that the fic should be recognisably set in the world of the FiM we know, even if that world has been twisted and deformed. The character tags are Celestia, Luna, Mane Six and OCs -- nothing too startling there, though on the strength of the description, I'm a little surprised that there isn't a specific Twilight tag to accompany them.
Something that intrigues me is how Luna will be portrayed. This story was first published on Fimf on 29 October 2011, just a week after "Luna Eclipsed" went out -- but the first couple of chapters were revised in July 2012, which makes me wonder whether that was done to make Luna conform more to her S2-and-on character rather than the brief glimpse we saw of her in S1. And we get a mention of both "the being called Nihilus" and Celestia's father -- could they be one and the same?
The cover art, for which I can't find a source on a quick search, is quite well done. In the foreground, what is presumably the corrupted Twilight (unicorn, of course) and what I imagine is Rainbow Dash in the background -- you can just see the colours of her cutie mark. The atmosphere is that of a raging storm, though there is a bright light off to the right which may or may not hint at something more hopeful. As with the description, not enormously original but striking nevertheless.
Next time, I'll be covering the first two chapters of the story itself. The first is called "He Has Returned" (which inescapably makes me think of "It has returned" in the S3 premiere) and the second is "My Name is Nihilus", which I suppose speaks for itself. In a story so old, a bit of sunshine-and-rainbows scene-setting wouldn't shock me, but clearly we're going to get to the action fairly fast after that. I wonder whether Twi starts the story corrupted, or whether Nihilus does that in chapter two? We shall soon see!
Ya never know, Nihlus might be
Galadrielthe Dark Queen.Looking forward to this! I didn't realise how old this story was; I'm gonna be curious to see how Luna is portrayed here...
Not to judge a fic by its cover... but that art is screaming dark and twisted.
3360806 Happy Tolkien, Tolkien, happy Tolk-- okay, that's probably more Jetfire's thing. But yeah, how Luna is portrayed could be make or break for a story like this.
3360877 It is looking that way... I just hope it has something going for it beyond that. You might have got away with "look how dark and twisted I can make a ponyfic" way back when, but not now.
It will be interesting to see how well it stands when considering modern canon. I have very fond memories of Immortal Game, but it has been quite some time since I read it.
3363768 I've read the first two chapters now. I won't post about them for a few days, but your first sentence is something I'm going to address.