Present Perfect vs. The Immortal Game · 5:47pm Aug 25th, 2016
I'm finally done!
The Immortal Game by AestheticB: the audiobook which took up the fast few weeks of my reading time. I can't think of another story I've heard so much about and read so little of over the years. Formerly Ponies Make War, it's a beloved classic of the grimdark, mature-rated-for-gore sort.
Honestly, I can't see why, and we'll spend the rest of this journal figuring that out. (Buckle up, it's a long one!) But first, let me give a shoutout to the person who did the reading: Raven Feathers!
As far as I can tell, this and The Moonstone Cup (which I'll get to later) are his only readings. The latter was released three years ago, and he hasn't done anything else since. Which suits me fine: he wasn't that good. Long intros and outros on each video, background noise, and breakneck pacing left me cold. So, it doesn't matter one way or another, but there you go. To the main event!
I've made no bones over not enjoying this fic. If you've talked to me over the past month, there's a good chance I let you know exactly how I felt about it. After enjoying Twilight Sparkle Gets a Free Salad so much and finding out this was one of only two other stories AestheticB had written, I just had to read it. Yet not since Allegrezza have I spent this much time reading a story I didn't like. The reasons for this are as diverse as they are numerous, so let's not waste any more time.
Things get off to a near-immediate bad start with a long-ago fight scene featuring Celestia speaking Ye Olde Equestrian — which would normally be a good thing! — only to fail the Luna Test right off the bat. The EME game in this story never recovers and was a constant source of annoyance for me. The writing, though overall good, definitely had some issues, from the occasional highly jarring close repetition to telling, LUS and frequent uses of "hand". And because I can cover the writing problems in a single paragraph, I wanted to get those out of the way first thing.
The other thing that first scene does is set expectations for aesthetic. Namely, it lets us know in no uncertain terms that This Story Will Be Epic. And that's cool, I was down with that; a story tagged adventure that starts with a scene set in the long-ago of Celestia and Luna leading two armies against each other had better be epic! The weird part is how 'epic' is defined in this story: not just via scope of timeframe or by continually ramping up both the danger and the power levels, but also with a philosophy of "more magic = more epic". I couldn't quite get on board with this. I'm talking about the sort of thing where magic is used to make action more dramatic, such as when Celestia dodges an attack not by jumping aside or even using her wings, but blasting herself to the side with telekinesis. The point being, often times, "epic" became synonymous with "ridiculous", and I just had to ask why all the trouble was gone to when mundanity could have served the story well. (I mean, if you want actually epic, then you want Fluttershy screaming at a dragon.)
This being a fic that starts out in the long-long-ago, it should come as no surprise that it deals with the echoes of the past resounding in the present. The initial Celestia/Luna conflict is, I was surprised to note, prior to Nightmare Moon, but is one of many things that reflect this theme.
Also unsurprising is that we soon meet Celestia and Luna's parents, King Titan and Queen Terra, freed from the thousand-plus year prison their daughters put them in by a jerkass (this isn't revealed until much later) and ready to put the kibosh on all this "happiness" stuff ponykind is afflicted with. They, being the main antagonists, turn out to be pretty interesting characters, so I guess I'll talk about characterization right now.
Titan and Terra were fantastic because the author got the "cold, otherworldly" angle right. They're very much a Titania and Oberon-styled pair, placed well above mortals in both power and knowledge — both are linked to an alicorn's age in the text; also, as an aside, a weird bit involved the two of them, and Luna, not aging while imprisoned, and thus Celestia, for instance, is older than her mother — very much aware of this and absolutely not willing to accept mortals treading outside their destined paths. This is Titan's shtick especially: he is the alicorn of order, and his one goal is to return the world to its "natural order" as defined by him; the Everfree Forest is presented as an example of what this is like.
Titan himself is the only one out of the pair who maintains this cold detachment all the way through the story. Part of me wishes this hadn't been the case; a few chapters before his fall, he's described as being lonely, because not even his wife can understand the world the way he does. (He's of the "Mortals will die, so they are insignificant" mindset.) It set him up for a tragic reformation at the end, but unfortunately he just suicides. Call me sentimental, but I kind of wanted him to live out the rest of his days as a mortal with Terra.
Of course, there's also the fact that he's an incest fetishist, which I'm not saying is bad or good. I mean, I was pretty well able to accept that he wanted Luna to marry his newly-made son, because they're royalty and all. But he has a very specific design for "I must have a son named Empyrean who is married to my daughter". Like, this happens twice. I never quite understood why it was so important to him. And yes, alicorns are described as not procreating like mortal ponies, but if they're gonna use mortal familial relation terms, I'm calling it like it is. :V
Not to get too off topic, but I really liked Empyrean. He only shows up once or twice, but in his present incarnation, at least, he comes off as an alicornified Blueblood, and I loved this. The fact that he's described as being an infant in an adult body was yet another horror Titan wreaked upon the world, and it made a ton of sense. Like with his father, I was sorry he didn't live to the end of the story. (Actually, I was with Fluttershy in being sad about it; like, he didn't need to die, it was a waste. Also, points for coming up with a good name for him.)
Terra, meanwhile, is probably my strong favorite character in this piece. She starts out with not so much cold detachment so much as cold fury, the sword to Titan's shield. This is great, because she's supposed to be the alicorn of nature — Celestia even calls her "Mother Nature" at one point — but she's just as ruthless and tyrannical as the alicorn who's a control freak. As her backstory is revealed — again, one of my favorite parts of the story — it comes to light how nuanced she is as a character, and to what lengths Titan will go to control everything. I was glad she got depowered and could heal and learn to live as a mortal; despite what I said about Titan, she's the one who really deserved to have that second chance.
The aforementioned jerkass was one Captain Esteem, who, it turns out, is Rarity's father. This story must have been written between Luna Eclipsed and Hearth's Warming Eve, because no effort was made to integrate the Hearth's Warming canon into the story, but Luna appears in her 'adult' form. (Plus, there's nothing like Shining Armor or anyone else who appears later in season two.) The sharp-eyed will note that Sisterhooves Social aired between those episodes. So what about Magnum and Pearl? (I can't remember wtf their canon names are.)
Well, it turns out Esteem was such a shitty parent, to say nothing of an all-around bad pony, that his daughters were taken away from him and put into a foster home in Ponyville. I rather liked that as a way to match with canon, if only because it explains why Rarity speaks like a Canterlotian when her sister doesn't, and why her parents sound like they're from Whinnyapolis. As for Esteem himself, he's basically the final boss for act two of the story (I mean, it's actually Empyrean, but he can't do shit), and his general intensity about everything was great. He's ruthless, he's cunning, he's a fantastic blade caster (more on that in a bit), you can see what traits Rarity got from him, and I loved his mantra of "titles are important", even if I thought it was a bit odd for everyone else to pick up on it.
What I didn't like was his motivation. He is, as I said, the one who released the King and Queen (it was never explained how, now that I think of it). Why would someone do that? Because his cutie mark means his talent is war, and he's suffering Cutie Mark Malfunction Syndrome or whatever it was termed once upon a time. :/
Now, come on, I cannot rightly believe that a pony would be born into Celestia's Equestria whose talent is literally war. A running thread in this piece is the whole "grimdark reality beneath the happy veneer of Equestria", a la Upheaval. The thing is, despite the fact that Twilight herself says as much halfway through, it's just not true. The fact that Celestia was able to create Equestria as a utopia is proof that the world isn't "naturally" dark, it was a real paradise built atop what the world used to be like, subsuming it. I mean, otherwise, Titan wouldn't have to do anything to impose his order, just remove Celestia and things would revert. Not to mention ponies actually have to be taught how to fight, so it's not like they're all beasts waiting to be unleashed. This isn't light layering over dark, it's the two existing side by side and the victor overtaking the other. The text wants you to think otherwise, of course, with even Twilight buying into Titan's rhetoric, and the (thankfully not constant) reminders that everything is grimdark just felt like trying too hard. They were another thing I disliked.
Speaking of, let's talk Celestia. She's portrayed as the conniving, if benevolent, tyrant sort. An early scene shows her playing "the Immortal Game" (more on that later), which was interesting, watching her plan moves well in advance of when they would happen, in anticipation of her own demise. (More on that later.) So many stories just tell you she's a chessmaster, but actually getting to see it in play was neat.
That said, her characterization never sat right with me. A large portion of the second half of this story is devoted to Twilight being angry at Celestia because she uses ponies, ultimately 'crafting' Twilight to be a weapon, first to free Nightmare Moon, then to defeat Titan. Also because Celestia didn't save her from being turned into Nihilus, despite the fact that Celestia was physically unable to at that moment, which is never explained to Twilight. If you know me, you know that I can't stand the idea that Twilight — season one/two Twilight, at the very least — would think Celestia had anything but the best of intentions, that she wouldn't believe Luna when she told her Celestia loved her… All of that rankled me like no one's business. I hated it. I even made a note that old-timey Celestia was a better Celestia than modern Celestia. :/
Worse — and this might be getting a bit off track — another thing that bothered me was the issue of godhood. The alicorns are frequently referred to as gods in this story: by the text, by themselves, by other ponies. In the case of Titan and Terra, this made sense: Titan at least claims to have created everything, and the two of them are stupidly powerful. But with Celestia and Luna, the epithet doesn't sit very well. Sure, Celestia's name is often taken in the show as we would with a god, but never is any sort of devotion or worship implied. That everyone in this story just accepts this at face value never ceased to bother me. Just, "Oh, yeah, Celestia and Luna are our gods, we have to help them kill these other gods that we don't like." Like, that's not ponies, not in the least.
And I say it's worse because even Celestia buys into it. I can grok fics wherein she and/or her sister are worshipped (by some ponies) as gods; again, given what we see in canon, it makes sense if you want to take a grander, more serious look at the show. But, late in the story, she makes mention of not being accustomed to being question. She makes a big deal out of Twilight taking over everything — which was as ridiculous as it was melodramatic — and it becomes clear that she thinks of herself as a god, too. She doesn't question it. And all I could say to that was, no, that's not my Celestia.
Also, she flat out murders a guys and spends next to no time justifying it. :| Like, come on, fuck.
Luna fares far better by comparison. It helps that she, in the show, has some of that same cold detachment as her parents. She does spend a good deal of time angsting over all the usual things: being Nightmare Moon, no one loving her, not fitting in with modern times. I was able to take it, I guess, just because I've seen it before, so it was in no way jarring. She's got a good arc through the story, trying to find redemption by leading the charge against her parents, but ultimately stepping aside when it's better to have Twilight and friends take over. She even gets to give Twilight a "friendship is magic" speech near the end, demonstrating how far she comes.
As for Twilight and friends, they were all well written. I have an early note specifically praising the writing for Pinkie, as a matter of fact. Rarity was of course a major character, given her dad was one of the main antagonists. She's presented in classic "badass Rarity" form, having a sword and all and knowing how to use it because war dad, but she's noble and self-sacrificing in all the right ways. I rather liked that she got really caught up in being the only knight — sorry, knight commander — of Luna's newly-formed order. She also has some great scenes doing things like worrying about what color to use to describe something while fighting hordes of enemies. ("I couldn't possibly die with my hair looking like this.") Applejack has some strong, if expected, thoughts on family versus duty, Pinkie admittedly goes through a very expected flat-mane episode because everyone's fighting. Rainbow Dash I'll get to in a bit.
Fluttershy was interesting, in that she very strongly refuses to participate in the fighting. Sure, she stays back as a medic, that's pretty expected (when she's not killing non-ponies with the Stare, anyway; that was kind of silly), but she draws a line, and then vehemently refuses to cross it. Although, I think when they were deciding what to do with Terra, she was actually one of the ones for killing her, at least at first; I recall that scene being rather confusing. But ultimately, Fluttershy ends up with nothing to do in the final battle, because she's Fluttershy, so what happens? Dragon ex machina. I can't say it wasn't set up at all — the dragon's brother is mentioned a few chapters prior, and serves as a major plot point in the historic portions of the fic — but given how relatively little leadup there is to him, it really does feel like the author realized halfway through the story that they were about to get Fluttershy involved in a war she didn't want any part of. So Luna convinces her to go wake the dragon and get him on their side. Fluttershy goes and tries, and fails, and then succeeds because random bullshit forest magic thorn crown? And then she drives the dragon straight into Titan — at the most narratively convenient moment, no less — whereupon he dies, but not without at least bruising the King more severely than anyone else in the fight. Her role in the story was weird and clunky, is what I'm trying to get across, and I'll never understand what the fuck was up with that crown — not so much what it was as why it happened to her, and why right then.
One other thing about the mane six bothered me: ship teasing. I've got a note right here from the second chapter that reads ">shipping jokes; no, but if there's actual shipping later, I might be mad". There never was — and I can't recall what that >shipping joke was, either — at least, not really. Near the end of the story, as they're all charging into battle, there's a scene where Applejack ends up on top of Rarity, they think they're gonna die, AJ says she has something she wants to say, and then they don't die and spend the rest of the story being awkward around each other. It's never resolved or explained. I hated it. D: Do not tease me with best ship.
Anyway, I've left out Twilight so far, and there's a reason for that. She's more or less the main character of the story, but interestingly doesn't show up until about seven chapters in. This is because, as is related later in flashbacks, she ends up being one of Titan's first victims, kidnapped, mind-raped, and infected with what is essentially the thing that turned Luna into Nightmare Moon. (It's not quite Agentless Luna, but only just.) This turns her into the boss of act one…
…Sigh. Nihilus Nix Naught. :| She came up with the name herself.
Past Sins flashbacks notwithstanding, Nihilus is the anti-Twilight, a creature made of pure hatred for the rest of the mane cast, designed to torture and subdue them by any means possible. She does this by mind-raping Rainbow Dash into submission and then being generally boring for the rest of her thankfully short life. Seriously, she does a bunch of evil things — while, amusingly, listening to Twilight in the back of her mind — that are so evil as to be cartoonish, like, say, reenacting The Severing. Seriously though, threatening ponies with death, while hardly run-of-the-mill for them, is boring for us. I left myself a note that I would have stopped reading in chapter six if this weren't for a vs. post. She had some potential thanks to her resentment of having to serve the alicorns, but she was destroyed before that was able to come to fruition. Thank pony god.
As for Twilight herself, she spends the rest of the story alternately whining about having been Nihilus — seriously, the concept of "you were mind-controlled, thus had no free will, thus cannot be held accountable for your actions" is lost on everyone in this story — whining about being Celestia's tool, and taking charge of everything so she can kill a god. Despite all that, she was written in my favorite early-show style, and she grows during the course of the story until she really is the symbol other ponies see her as. (That bit was surprising when it was revealed, that she's more or less revered as the savior of ponykind, but I had an easier time accepting it than I did "Everyone thinks the alicorns are gods".) I compared this to The Hunger Games, because Luna spends a lot of time playing the image game once she makes Twilight into a General. Twilight of course ends up being an alicorn herself by the end, which I was fine with — the final scene reminded me somewhat of Magical Mystery Cure and I had to wonder about the timing — save that the way she ascends is complete and utter nonsensical bullshit that is never explained. And it's said that she somehow becomes the exact same age as Titan, which of course uses all this newfound power to kick Titan's ass. Like, what the fuck, it's obvious you wrote yourself into a corner there.
Lastly, Rainbow Dash. Like I said, she gets mind-raped by Nihilus, but it's not quite that simple. The spell used is very insidious, causing Rainbow pain whenever she goes against Nihilus's orders, which include things like "be cruel to others" and "kill Pinkie Pie". So the whole time, this greyed-out Rainbow Dash is forced to hurt her friends, using another fucking terrible self-made name ("Wrong"), and I just hated it. And of course she spends the rest of the story whining about it, despite the fact that she herself was able to just randomly break the enchantment somehow? I guess I really detested Rainbow Dash's entire role in this story, now that I think of it.
To put it succinctly, I don't like seeing the canon characters suffering mental trauma for extended periods of time. I've praised, say, Project Horizons for its depictions of PTSD and other afflictions. But Blackjack's not a canon character; she exists, more or less, specifically so she can suffer. But watching Twilight and Rainbow Dash dealing with their PTSD — which, again, well depicted — was not something I wanted. I hated it so much, and it made the middle third of this story more or less unbearable. There's something to be said for events having negative consequences on the characters, but one can definitely go too far in that direction.
I guess I want to move on to powers and magic. The magic system in this story was pretty darned interesting, even if "all unicorns can learn a spell which turns their special talent into a weapon" is kind of stupidly grimdark. That, I should mention, is blade-casting, which allows a skilled unicorn or alicorn to form a sword out of stuff, the number of pieces of stuff defining how powerful they are. Rarity, for instance, has 14 diamonds for her blade. (I have no idea how this is supposed to work.) Her father has 13 shards of obsidian or something, another guy — shit, I forgot about him — has 13 spheres, which I never understood. Titan has 26 pieces of absolute darkness or something. Twilight has 27.
Point being, they get this power to manipulate the 'shards' to either be a blade, or their individual components, and that, I think, is why size matters: if you've got more shards than your opponent, you can block one more hit than them. Of course, as interesting as the concept was, I was frustrated by how little of it was explained. Esteem's favored tactic involves sending his shards to encircle his enemies and then having them explode. This is never explained. It's just "the shards exploded" and then he can reform the blade later on. How do they come back? Why doesn't have hundreds and hundreds of tinier shards from every time he blows them up? I have no idea. Also never explained is why blade casters have to wear a robe Actually, that was explained, but it must not have been a very detailed explanation, since I've forgotten it. ("Moment field" is another small, frequently referenced thing that was never properly explained, and I always felt lost whenever one made an appearance.)
I will say this for blade casting, though: it sets up a very good scene near the end of the story. Maintaining a blade is linked to resolution, having something to fight for, and when Twilight is able to demoralize Titan enough that his blade flickers out… Suffice to say, it was a very exciting moment, and a very satisfying payoff to all the related world-building. (Although it's silly that she essentially wins by being mean to him.)
A lot of other things involve darkening up the setting, and none more so than the Stare. Like I said earlier, Fluttershy is able to just kill dudes by Staring them, but it should be pointed out that those 'dudes' are actually 'puppets', hollow shells created by Terra to fight their enemies. (I made a note of interest in how similar their design was to changelings, at least in color scheme.) But she even says herself that she has the ability to override another creature's free will, and that the puppets, lacking such, just explode because of it. Like, way to make something quirky into something grimdark. (Also, way to pull a Bats! and just have her use it at will.) This is also reflected in the often cheesy names the various characters give their blades (Esteem's is a Baldur's Gate reference).
I'm getting distracted now because I reminded myself of Sir Unimpressive and want to talk about him. He's the guy with the aforementioned sword made of spheres (again, how does that work?) At first, I didn't know what to make of him, completely because he shows up in act two with a bunch of other OCs, most of whom end up dying immediately, so I didn't figure he was going to be important. Well, I dunno about 'important', but he does stick around, and he was quite a hoot, your standard fiery, drunken Scotsman archetype. (I don't know how he was written, but the reader gave him a Scottish accent, which fit perfectly.) Of course, "he's drinking again" was used as a running gag, and it's kind of a low form of humor, but there wasn't a scene he showed up in that he didn't brighten with his world-weary snarkiness. Oddly, I realize I have no idea what happened to him. Did he die? Did he turn out to be the supposedly dead Captain? (He made a big deal out of not telling anyone his real name.) Was he just completely forgotten, since I can't remember what happened to him at all? I hope I find a note later on to refute that conclusion, but it may very well be the reason he just up and disappeared, which would give me one more reason to hate this story.
On that note, I should mention two more characters, both of them from the historic segments. The first is Astor Coruscare, introduced in the first chapter as Celestia's personal student and right hoof. She gets a whole chapter-plus to herself later on, in which we find out she was a very angry pony. Living in an orphanage with no memory of her parents, fate basically shat all over her and taught her that life is pain, princess, so she decided to take out her frustrations on everyone else, with Celestia only barely able to rein in her outbursts. Astor, as it turns out, is a psychopath, clinical and everything. She's incapable of empathizing with others, and obstinate in the face of Celestia's urging to make friends and so forth. It shouldn't be any surprise, given her status and name, that she's Twilight's distant ancestor. Funnily, she was such a powerful unicorn that they created a scale on which to rank unicorn magic, named for her, with her as a perfect ten. She dropped down to a 9.3 after Twilight was born and they had to recalibrate the scale.
The other character I wanted to mention is Sir Valiant. Forget what I said earlier about Terra, he is my favorite character in this story. And yet he only shows up for one chapter! He's Astor's bodyguard, a knight of Titan's order, and generally calm, unselfish and sympathetic, a perfect foil for Astor. Over the course of that chapter, what happens is Titan takes note of her power and orders that she be bred. Astor, being fucking crazy, thinks this is a good idea — remember, the war being fought was between Titan and Terra, and Celestia sided with her father — and comes up with a plan to have all the army's unicorn stallions battle it out for the chance to fuck her. Sir Valiant is very upset by this, though he doesn't make a big show of it. There's no "I love you, let it be me" confessions, he's just constantly trying to get her to rethink the whole thing: "Don't you want a say in this?", "Maybe you should go about this another way", etc. Eventually, he goes "fuck it", hauls off and slays a fucking dragon, dragging its head back as a proposal, and securing his place as Twilight's other long-ago ancestor. (It's revealed later that he only helped Luna kill the dragon, and she let him take the credit, or at least the head.)
On a side note, I believe Valiant was also one of those "titles are important" people, though it's more his sword having the same name as Esteem's which suggests a distant relation between Rarity and Twilight. It would make sense, given how powerful Rarity and Esteem are shown to be, but nothing is ever made of it. I have to wonder why so many things in this story are suggested but never confirmed.
Moving on — I'm sorry this is so disjointed, but I have a lot of ground to cover and keeping it all straight in my head, even with notes, is impossible — one thing I would like to talk about is hope. I've been editing for a while a story called DECEPTION, which is why I haven't talked about it yet. One thing that irks me about that story, which I was unable to dissuade the authors from, is that their antagonist is too good: he plans too well, he foresees every possible counter to his plans, he always has a ready argument against anyone who tries to persuade him that he's wrong. He is, in short, overpowered in every way, and I'm often overcome with despair because there's no obvious way the heroes can ever stop him.
Titan had something of the same problem in this piece. He's such a powerful alicorn, there's no way Celestia and Luna can stand against him, to say nothing of the mane cast. Time and again, they come at him with new tactics, and every time, he either shows that he's planned for it, manages to fight back, or just ends up being completely immune to it. The Elements of Harmony end up in this last category; it's never really explained why, save that they were created by his first wife, who he slew after she betrayed him to Discord way back in the way-way-back. (Also, I was super-mad when Fluttershy lost the ability to talk to animals because the 'natural order' was returning. It wasn't explained that way initially, and seemed to suggest that, by killing the various puppets, she'd lost her connection to Kindness.)
Again, this breeds despair in me, the reader, because the only possible outcomes I can see are a loss for the heroes, or victory by deus ex machina. And, unfortunately, deus ex machina is the way this piece ends up going. The mane cast continually develop new powers as the story progresses: Fluttershy with her grimdark uber-Stare and bullshit thorn crown; Rarity with her blade, which, I should mention, wins them the fight against Nihilus because Twilight didn't know Rarity could do that; Applejack with her invincible, like she seriously just stops being dead on more than one occasion; Pinkie with her admittedly useless explosives. I can't remember what Rainbow did other than whine. The six of them figure out a way to connect to each other via the Elements, so they know when they're needed to save one another, so they can fight in close quarters without hitting each other, and, in Twilight's case, so she can use their fighting techniques herself. Honestly? Kinda neat. But it does come out of nowhere, another random deus ex in their burgeoning litany of bullshit powers, which ends in Twilight becoming an alicorn because she threw herself into a giant shaft of magical light meant to divest ponykind of its free will at the end of the story.
I mentioned the Elements; they pissed me off, too. There's a big, long thread through acts two and three of Twilight trying desperately to figure out how they work. Number one, why? Even Spike tells her, to her face, that the Elements are like Pinkie Sense: she doesn't need to know how they work to use them. Despite this, Twilight spends numerous sleepless nights poring over everything she can find on them, but never comes up with anything. When they fail to work against Titan, it seems like the answer to this mystery might be the secret to defeating him, but it's never found. (Unless "Harmony made them" was the point, in which case it wasn't given the right weight to feel like a satisfying solution, to say nothing of the fact that it really had nothing to do with anything but — sort of — why they didn't work on Titan in the first place.) The fact is, Twilight never figures out how they work, even when they're used on Terra. It felt like a tremendous waste of time, pointless to bring up and yet another thread in this story that is never sufficiently resolved.
I mentioned Spike. He and Sweetie Belle (Allure, I think, turns out to be her birth name) are another thorn in my side, if a small one. Spike was with Twilight when she was tuned into Nihilus, and later it's revealed that he was not only killed, but eaten by Esteem who, oh yeah, I forgot, has goddamn fangs and eats meat because he's actually a bad OC. This sends Twilight into a murderous rage or something, as I recall. Whatever, it doesn't matter; what matters is that I fell for this ruse just as much as Twilight did. Spike was merely being kept in the dungeon, and is released when Esteem and Empyrean are defeated. And I felt stupid because he's the fucking bad guy, of course he would lie about this to demoralize Twilight! Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle seems to die early on, when Rarity's boutique is burnt down. She spends the whole story repeating "My home was destroyed and my sister may be dead", and it's literally only the final chapter that we find out, no, she was alive, despite the fact that Apple Bloom we knew to be safe the whole time, and that just really irritated me.
(Side note: Scootaloo does not appear in that scene, so I'm assuming she's dead. :V)
Speaking of death, let's talk about that for a second. Like I said, the first present-day scene involves Celestia planning ahead of her imminent demise. It's said again and again that her power will be taken and given to a new Prince who will be created from what's left of Celestia. I thought, damn, starting off by killing Celestia, that's some heavy shit. Except, no, it's revealed halfway through the story that she was just depowered, as her mother later would be, rendered a mortal pony who's still able to evade her parents because she has the apparently non-magical ability to split her mind into two or even three parts, to compartmentalize things like pain while the rest of her plots and plans. (Twilight ends up with this ability later on, for no reason other than 'litany of bullshit deus ex powers'. I really wish its origin had been explained, because Celestia's age is what lets her do it, so how could Twilight spontaneously figure it out?)
The point being, during that whole portion of the story, everyone thinks she's dead. Luna even carries around a little figurine of her that she gets from a ponified Monopoly game. (I was surprised at how touching this was, despite the inherent goofiness of the setup.) But then we find, no, it's just dramatic wording on the author's part, and Celestia gets her power back when Empyrean is hit with the Elements. Again and again, the alicorns, Celestia especially, face death in this piece: stabbed, choked, crushed, hacked to bits, I'm pretty sure one was even beheaded. Every time, the story stops, and the characters wail, "Is he/she dead? Did we win/lose?" And every time, the alicorn just puts themself back together and stands the fuck up. After about the second time, it lost all dramatic impact, and this was a Very Bad Thing. Even the scene near the end where Celestia and Luna are losing against their father, each of them with one half of his sword stabbed through their heart, I'm just sitting there going, "Well, this might kill them, but obviously they're not going to die." Remove the danger quotient and you remove a good bit of what makes an action-heavy story appealing. (It doesn't help that the reveal of Celestia being alive in the first place was a non-event.)
Though I will take this opportunity to say that the action was, for the most part, good. Well-paced and easy to follow, it was also frequently important to the story. I mean this in the "Do we show the steamy details of the sex scene or just fade to black?" sort of way; action and sex are very closely linked in this regard. There were some scenes that dragged on and on, as the power levels ramped up, or as we were forced to sit through the same fight from more than one perspective, but face-offs like the one between Rarity and her father were used for character-building and thus worth reading for reasons other than hacky-slashy-bloody-death. Though I could have done without Esteem's near-meta awareness of the ideological symbolism of his fights. To illustrate the importance, or lack thereof, of detailed fight scenes, one of my notes states: that exchange of "She figured Pinkamina would go down with a fight. She was wrong. Pinkamina didn't go down." would have sufficed for the entire fight scene. And it would have, and I wouldn't have felt like I'd missed anything, because it was some really punchy writing.
But, speaking of stupid shit, it's revealed early on that Pinkie Pie uses pegasus magic and Fluttershy uses earth pony magic. Now, this is pretty standard fare; as headcanon goes, it's fine. What made it is stupid is the further reveal that these magical aberrations were due to them being the last (???) members of not one, but two completely separate pony tribes. Pinkie is an arch-pony, and Fluttershy is a… I forget, but it started with e. Point is, it doesn't matter, because the ramifications are never gone into. Terra was ordered to exterminate both races a long time ago, so why didn't get them all? Does being an arch-pony give Pinkie her Pinkie Sense? Her ability to break the fourth wall? To pull things out of her mane? Is Fluttershy's thing related to the Stare, talking to animals, or both? Whatever the answers, it led to nothing at all, as the author literally made up and killed off two entirely new tribes for the sole purpose of justifying headcanon that pretty much everyone uses.
Because I feel like I'm losing track and I've had this little carrot sitting here for a while now, let me talk about the title for a second. Like I said, this was originally called Ponies Make War before being changed to The Immortal Game. I'm not sure when the change happened or why, but both titles have their appeal. My quibble is actually with how they're used in the story. The former shows up as the title of a book Celestia hid from everyone except Twilight (another thing I didn't like!), which I thought was a cool way to use it. But then, during the final, climactic battle, literally everyone has to take a moment to say, "Ponies! Make war!" before leading a charge further into the Everfree Forest. I hated this so much. D: It was so cheesy and forced, and it never got better, no matter how many times it was said!
The latter title ends up being dropped numerous times in the second half of the story, so I have to imagine the change was made around then. It, too, irritated the hell out of me, because looking at it and going, "Oh, obviously immortals are playing some game that mortals likely have no hope of surviving" is one thing. It is a very different thing when said immortals keep referring to "The Immortal Game". I can't really explain it, it just really, really annoyed me that they kept dropping the title like that. :/ (Especially when Rainbow Dash had a way better warcry in "Thunder and lightning! Wings and steel!")
Another carrot I want to touch on: This story is too long. I mean, it's not quite half a Fallout: Equestria, but along with the occasional drawn-out action or draggy sequence of POV-switching, there were many, many moments where I got to the end of a chapter and said, "Okay, how are there X more chapters left?" Time and time again, it seemed like things could wrap up in short order, yet they never did. (Admittedly, every time I asked that question, I received an adequate answer for how.) The spots where characters expounded on headcanon, or characters' abilities were given a full run-down, or drama was needlessly added because narrative inconvenience sure didn't help. Had this been a hundred thousand words shorter, it may have had less room to exasperate me. And this despite time skips that would randomly remove weeks or even months!
(I also hate this story for trying to buy brownie points by calling it the Books and Branches Library. ;_; Goddammit.)
Okay, I do want to mention the rating. This is M-rated, and it's rated for gore. I'd say the rating is earned, but it's not as gory as, say, Fallout: Equestria or its ilk. If nothing else, the gore scenes are pretty few and far between, and mostly revolve around brains, especially toward the end. In fact, the number of times 'brain' was mentioned in the final fight started to fuck with me, like, can we please attack some other organ now for variety? But overall, it's probably not going to be that big an issue for most readers, just for the record.
Also, they killed Bon-Bon, those bastards. :(
I should mention that despite all the outward attempts to darkify this story, there's a lot of humor. From Rarity's mind wandering during battle, to just about everything Pinkie and Sir Unimpressive (and Discord!) do, to "It is my royal imperative to frolic", humorous lines abound throughout the story. And for the most part, they fit, either filling the action-packed sections with light-hearted one-liners or making the downtime segments feel more like the show. I mean, there's really nothing like someone telling a joke to let you know that these are still the characters you know and love. Whedon was right. The grimdark version of "Art of the Dress" was something I had considerably less appreciation for.
I think I've touched on everything at long last, so let's wrap this up.
The Immortal Game is many things. Like Fallout: Equestria, is it super-grimdark. Like Upheaval Breaking Point, it presents Equestria as a thin veneer of color over a naturally grimdark world. Like Project Horizons, it is too long. Like DECEPTION, its villains are too powerful, necessitating dei ex machina to defeat them. Like Past Sins, it has a character named Nyx.
On the other hand, it also has fantastic action scenes, excellent characterization, strong world-building and a smattering of good humor. It's not a bad story by any stretch, but I found myself more irritated by it than not. I don't know if it's just that it was better when it was fresh, and hasn't aged as well as other classics or what. All I know is, in the end, despite numerous plot threads suggesting otherwise, neither understanding the Elements nor working with her friends was what won Twilight the day; it was just pure, unmitigated bullshit.
2.5/5
Everything I dislike about grimdark epics rolled into one fic.
And the king will be bones and shout "Die now!" and I'll stand there and whisper "No."
What is a pony? A miserable pile of fat and proteins.
I guess it is not for everyone. I liked it, though that may be because it was one of the first and only grimdark epics Ive read. Many of the cliches you point out were the first time Ive been exposed to them, so they were novel to me.
Now you're just giving me Dangerous Business flashbacks, you tease.
Actually, Sir Unimpressive was an allusion to Vimbert, since he helped edit the thing... I think. I don't know, that dude was goddang everywhere back in the day, couldn't shake a stick without hitting a story he was involved in in some way. Also, Aesthetic has said before that he actually planned on ending it at I think three separate parts in the story, but kept going because of fan response or something.
I came to this story when it was already called The Immortal Game, which I think is a good thing. The word "ponies" is like "puppies," or "kittens." You really can't make them intimidating. If I had seen the title "Ponies make war," I would have thought about a water balloon fight at a picnic.
My biggest problem was the level of detail got ridiculous sometimes. For example, the scene where Twilight is fighting Terra, we get, like, 1 1/2-2 pages of her explaining her "God killing weapon." Also, Esteem was too over the top for me, like, "Jim Carey and Robin Williams in an Alabama meth house" over the top. Like the scene where he apologizes for spraying blood on Rarity... because it doesn't match the color of her fur. That and the whole, "has fangs eats meat rawr lookit me Imma scury" shtick. On top of all that, the "mind rape" thing got overdone, and the wangst was too heavy. Twilight was played too cold for my tastes, even with all she'd been through.
Now, all that said, I really enjoyed it when I read it back in the day. I don't think I would as much now, but I do remember this story eliciting some strong emotional responses, in particular I loathed the villains so much. But looking back, I didn't know as much about writing, so that might be a factor. Not because I'm a better author than Aesthetic, but because I can now spot tropes and I know more about characters.
Though I never read it, I always regarded this story with curiosity because it has a similar premise (but, it seems, different execution) than my first story.
4171136 My main issue with this story was Esteem. Even when I did the TSC crossover chapter, Esteem proved a really difficult "villain" to take seriously and I really wish I had thought of something or had had more experience at the time to deal with him.
Aw, that's too bad. The Immortal Game is like my favorite fanfic ever.
Sounds you would have enjoyed the Abridged edition:
Or maybe the ultramature edition:
4171136
I'd pay to see that.
Oh wait...
4171117
This actually makes a lot of sense. I've had a lot of time to gather these cliches over the course of five years of reading.
4171136
At least the god-killing weapon was interesting. There were numerous spots where I noted to myself, "This is going on too long, thank god it's not actually boring." Little of this story was.
I even made the comment to myself, "Isn't Sir Unimpressive a fic author?" To which the answer is eh, kind of. If he was a reference to Vimbert, then ugh, I hate that kind of thing, even if Vimbert's a cool dood.
I did a Fic-a-Minute of this story a while ago, but I didn't actually read it. I'm not adverse to lengthy stories, but I had a suspicion that I wasn't going to like seeing the cute ponies suffer. From the reviews like this, I think I made the right choice.
In my research of this fic leading up to my FaM, I'm pretty sure this was started before (or shortly after) season one had ended. This caused the author much grief when season two rolled around and suddenly had to account for Discord and Luna's new look. I'm guessing he went back to address these things rather than just write them off as not existing.
Action scenes are a tricky beast to balance. Too little and the readers feel like they are seeing just the cliff notes. Too long and it begins to drag and have to fight the urge to skip ahead. Sounds like this story had a good balance for that, but needed to skim on some of the details.
Looking forward to what you have to say about The Moonstone Cup. Read that as it was being updated, back when Twilight didn't have wings but may as well have.
I think The Immortal Game is a story where if I read it today it would not end up in my favorites list. In fact, I vaguely recall struggling with the decision back in 2012 or 2013 or whenever I read it. It had some really nice lines that I liked, such as "Twilight Sparkle is the new ten" and Rainbow Dash's warcry, but the story definitely tapered as it progressed.
Hey PP, thanks for saving me some time and effort of trudging through this thing.
When Wanderer D did the crossover with his fic, I looked into reading it, as the setting seemed sorta interesting, but the more I scanned the comments and stuff, the more I lost interest. Now I don't even have to worry about it!
The big things I got out of it was probably the combat described (unique magical combat always interested me when it's not Magic Fireball etc.) Swords that broke apart into seeker missiles? I'm keeping that idea. If I can figure out where to use it. Also, Twilight's gravity iron railgun cutting laser. That was cool too.
The other thing might was mind control, or how to avoid it. Might have started my interest in making characters that were philosophical zombies.
Actually I think she was body snatched in a way, because she was still aware of everything that went on, she just had no control. Still stupid either way for her to whine about it.
Apparently I enjoyed "The Immortal Game" more than you, but yeah, Titan's end upset me so much that it's one of two things that really stuck with me. Unfortunately, it's because Titan and Terra are replacing Tyrantlestia and Nightmare Moon. Remember how those two are treated? Think about it.
Terra had her personality forced on her, so she's redeemable, but Titan, who is just that way, is simply "too far gone." No matter that they're both doing pretty much the same thing throughout the story. And at the end? He was mortal in a way that Celestia never was. He was completely and utterly harmless to Twilight, so naturally she beheads him when he gets uppity. And this is after the story fights tooth and nail to justify letting Terra live.
The world actually can function under the tenets of Harmony, contrary to Titan's beliefs? Only after the proponents of Harmony murder all resistance.
4171136
Twilight's weapon is the other thing that really stuck with me. It's an amazing combination of magic, creativity, and destruction all rolled into one. I loved the concept.
It's too bad the God-killing Weapon never successfully killed any gods.
A) The last few chapters are garbage, otherwise I like this.
B) Are you sure you hate this? Because you sure praise an awful lot of it.
Well, that's my RIL shorter by one story with no wasted time. Thanks.
That actually sounds a lot like my reaction to MMC.
Seriously? The linear in age power increase and relatedly Luna's consequent relative weakness compared to Celestia were two of the very few world-building aspects that I remember from the story (along with the magic blades, which I liked) because it was given a ton of weight, and the climax relies on BS undercutting it?
I probably would have hated this too, if I'd made it that far, but in addition because it'd be reminding me of plot lines I'd thought mishandled from the start.
...That actually rings a bit of a bell. The fangs and meat part. But the bigger problem was always that he didn't make sense to me from what I could tell of the Equestria set up, and his motivations were weird, and it seemed like way too much was done to make him just a gigantic douche.
I really hope that was given actual development, because just dumped out in the summary, it sounds really dumb.
Title dropping someone else's fic, that's a less common trick. :p
That sounds a lot like what I was thinking when I dropped it.
4171146
He was probably my #1 issue too.
4171710
Well, things don't always add up to the sum of their good parts, I guess. And it got a lower score than FoE, which he really didn't like, but in which setting he ended up wanting to write stories.
Oh, are you reviewing old, classic stories?
Do you take requests? :D
4171710
Overall, my impression is negative because so much of it made me so irritated, but I gave it a middling rating because I recognize that it's really about as much good as bad.
4171768
Let's say I will let you make them, but nothing may come of them. :B
4171845
Theres this one story from long before I joined the fandom that I've been obsessing over lately. It has a kind of mystery element to it, in that one of the mane 6 is pretending to be Mare do Well again in order to try and get close to Dash.
Which of the mane 6 it is isn't overtly stated until the very end, and yet many readers and the author herself were said to have insisted that the mystery part isn't supposed to be the focus of the story, and instead we are supposed to focus on the themes and the story's delving into everyone's character depths.
Thats great and all, but to me trying to figure out who was behind the mask as I read it helped make the story so much more intense and meaningful! I've been itching to do some comics/animations based on the story, but I'd want to focus on the mystery part and I feel like it would be going against the author's wishes to do so (and its not like I can ask her since she's long gone from the site by now).
So the point is I'd like your input on "The Games We Play" by Absolute Anonymous
I'm so glad you reviewed this. The fic was written and read over such a long period of time with so many tonal shifts that I couldn't tell what I forgot or what changed, or if the experience would be better or worse if read all the way through quickly. Indeed, it really needs a good editing. The first act is interesting and sets up the 'make war' part pretty well, and then we get amazing characters like Valiant (Thank you for reminding me of that! Best memory of the story by far!), Empyrean, and Unimpressive (who does indeed completely disappear), then a third act where through sheer force of will alicorns are finally killed.
It sounds like reading it all at once really highlighted the poor economy of dramatic tension, with all the power creep, backwards power creep, and abandoned plot threads. But this story has so many good ideas and great characters who are used well, although not to their full extent, that I can't help but give it positive rating and recommendation. Perhaps someone can make a guide of which chapters to skip and come out with an excellent read.
4172073
argh, fuck
I started reading that a while back and really liked it, but the reading I was listening to quit after like four chapters. D: I really need to read it again sometime, I wanna know what happens!
Consider it promoted. >:B
4172113
Fuck. I'm mad Unimpressive just disappears. Like, come the fuck on, what was even the point then?
I read this as it was coming out, and I suspect the time between chapters improved the experience for me. Also, it was near the beginning of pony fic for me, so I was forgiving of anything that wasn't completely amateurish. Twilight Sparkle Gets a Free Salad is still one of my top favorite stories, though.
I remember being really annoyed about Rainbow not appearing or even being mentioned in the epilogue.
Beyond that, I have a lot of nostalgia for this story, and I'm going to carefully keep that nostalgia away from a more recent, potentially more critical look.
Ah, the The Moonstone Cup. I miss it so. Cyanide just had to up and leave after that amazing thing, didn't he.
I think I lucked out on Immortal Game, as I only read the second half after it was finished. So I got all the awesome alicorn action and wasn't too concerned with what made sense and what didn't.
4172318
Goddammit, how many balls were dropped in this story?
4172497
I'll be honest, I swear I started reading Moonstone Cup once upon a time and didn't like it, but then I may also be thinking of another story, because I don't think that one's about racing?
4172132
Yaassss! I look forward to it!
I dont think there are any full readings of it, but hopefully you find time to read the text version of it soon?
4172696
There... might have been a race involved? I don't remember one, and it seems like a weird fit for a magic competition/tournament. If there was one, it wasn't really the focus, and wouldn't have taken up more than a chapter.
4172888
Sadly, I don't do 'soon', especially not with 100k+ stories c.c
4171530 Well, Titan was also responsible for the murder of like, a ridiculous number of ponies, plus mind raping 3 of the 4 other living alicorns, plus a ton of other atrocities. So as I recall Twilight gave him a chance to repent, and when he didn't it was like 'Nope, not letting the murderous power-hungry ex-god live' which IMO was one of her smarter choices. Because I mean this is the universe the guy constantly had bullshit reasons for suddenly achieving new power levels.
Seriously, Titan is like Goku in this story. That's probably my biggest gripe, and speaking more to PP as well now : It got really really exhausting when it was 'We have this awesome idea!' 'Haha no as the bad guy I thought of that I am SUPER CHESSMASTER' like okay, you do that a couple times, fine, eventually its pure narrative exhaustion.
There's a lot of other stuff to complain about - Titan and Nihilus are the top two for me, though. 2.5/5 is where I'd rate this story too.
The worst part was a friend got me to read it when Celestia makes a world of cardboard speech to Terra and I wanted to see Celestia -do that fight- and instead Terra ran away. I was PISSED at them.
I have to say, I was super excited to see this review show up in my feed today. This story has a very significant place in the history of my time here on fimfiction.
First, the most notable thing is that your (very comprehensive) review matches my own views of TIG extremely closely. If one were to draw a venn diagram, there would be very little that does not overlap. Some things which irritated you, I had little problem with, and vice versa. An example would be that I thought the fight scenes were very tedious. You mentioned that they were much longer than necessary, but you also said that you really enjoyed them. I thought the choreography was well done, but there was a quality about the action sequences which got under my skin almost every time. I think it was the repetitiveness. Just about every fight followed the same pattern. The heroes appear to be gaining ground, only for the villains to absolutely demolish them to the point where everyone is convinced they are going to die. Then, some bullshit out of absolute nowhere comes along and flips the tables entirely, allowing our heroes to survive. This back and forth table turning (bait and switch, really) got super old for me after the first few times it was used. And honestly, that pattern kept up until the bitter end, long long after it became... "Entirely Predictable".
I've ranted at length about this story and its many aspects which frustrated me. I should dig some of them up because there are some good observations to be made. But for all its faults, there are some things which the story did quite well. Its sense of scope and scale were exactly what appeals to me, and that is exactly what I myself am writing as well. The stakes were very high, and the tension was held very well. Almost too well, as many times, I felt the story was just too much and had to set it down for a while.
One thing which seriously bothered me was something you also mentioned as bothering you. And that was the chronic abuse of the canon characters. It's one thing to do that to OC's, but having the entire first act of the story with Twilight and Rainbow so utterly emotionally devastated was extremely draining for me. I had such empathy for Rainbow upon reading what the sliver did to her, because I identify with her virtue of Loyalty myself, and what she was forced to endure was off the charts horrific, from my perspective.
I actually took several months away from the story to reset my mind before continuing. I got to this point where I started skimming ahead just to see how long I'd have to endure this stuff before it got better. It was then that I found the scene where Celestia escapes her mother's sadistic torture garden, only to be immediately fucking caught again!!
That was when I decided I needed a break. Nevermind that the torture itself was nearly unbearable. This was long before I understood that... physical damage means nothing to an alicorn. Long before I realized that any and all physical mutliations could be magically restored without so much as a scar because Alicorn Powers > all.
I also gave a very brief critical rant at the end of "Entirely Predictable" which got some major downvotes from devoted fans. I don't think I was unfair in my rant either. Still, fans will be fans.
Something you didn't mention which I should raise was the time I got rather pissed at the story for reenacting the "I am your father" scene from Star Wars, almost literally word for word. I actually ranted about this in the comments section of that chapter. But yeah, that was more cheesy than an all you can eat pizza buffet. The scene was where Esteem tries to convince Rarity to rule Equestria together as father and daughter.
But like you, despite how much the story bothered me, I really did appreciate a whole lot about it. My favorite chapter was Don't Leave Me Alone by far, as it contained some truly original worldbuilding which I found intriguing. It brought back that sense of wonder and sheer scope which I craved from the beginning. I also appreciated that alicorns were depicted as seriously badass, which is something I've been building up in my own story as well. I didn't like how Luna got the short end of the stick, though. Time and time again, Luna got her ass kicked for no reason. Particularly infuriating was the moment where Luna confronts Nihilus.
I was so jazzed up after reading that paragraph. I wanted to see some genuine ass kicking where Luna could truly show her stuff. So what happened?
Luna got her ass handed to her.
Seriously. WTF?
The story did this to me on numerous occasions.
But anyway, I did finally read it after well over a year of avoiding it. Why? Because when I first began my project, one of my editors started talking to me about how there are these really weird, almost creepy coincidences between my story and TIG. He pointed them out, and I kept saying "Okay. I'll take your word for it." But knowing that TIG and my story shared a fair bit in common caused me to avoid it because I didn't want it influencing the direction I went with my project. After my entire structure was laid out, I finally decided to read TIG. It was a good decision. Still, despite there being some very similar themes, the plot is entirely dissimilar, thankfully. Your review also serves as a nice "list of things not to do" which I appreciate.
I'm sure I missed heaps of stuff to comment on. Another time, perhaps. It's super late here and I'm off for the night.
4173132
I made that joke about Entirely Predictable in my notes :V
NO BUT I HAD A NOTE ABOUT THAT TOO
Honestly, this by itself really made me agonize over that final .5. I mean, there's homages and references, and then there's just straight-up plagiarism, and plagiarism of obvious things, no less!
4172994
Terra was also responsible for multiple genocides and explained in great detail how over time the old her had died, and her personality become exactly the callous, murderous one that Titan wanted. The only difference between her and Titan in action and personality was that Titan had made her that way. If Titan is irredeemable, then so is Terra. But Terra was allowed the chance to change despite everything she'd done.
First, it's completely unreasonable to ask someone to make an instantaneous complete personality reversal. So Titan really was never given a chance.
Second, he'd been stripped of everything he was mere moments before, so he's had no time to cope or even approach a rational thought. Imagine if someone chopped off all your limbs and then told you if you were anything but perfectly okay with the situation, they would kill you. You have less than 10 seconds; could you save your own life by not being angry? Nobody could do that, and it's unreasonable to expect Titan to be.
Third, he is incapable of hurting Twilight after she'd stripped him. She responded with decapitation.
And finally, Twilight was fighting for Harmonia's world, but she won by using Titan's ideals. By murdering Titan in the end, Twilight proved that Titan was right all along: the natural order of the world is not Harmony, no matter how much Twilight or anyone else might claim otherwise.
4173174
Right. And the Star Wars scene might have worked as a reference (if it wasn't a case of direct plagiarism) if the story's tone was such that made that appropriate. But this story's overall tone was deadly serious. You don't just... Ugh.
To have a deadly battle raging, only to bring it to a close with a freaking joke reference to Star Wars??! 
This was completely jarring because when you see a fairly unique story shedding so much blood, the very last thing you expect is for the characters to suddenly bust out in a humorous pop culture reference.
Looking at my rant about that, I forgot to mention one more thing about the battles, which I think is worth noting:
This is an important point to make when it comes to constructing action sequences. Or any plot element, really. There's this thing called "author decree" which needs to be applied with great care. The author of any story has stuff he wants to tell. But oftentimes, those things come at the expense of flow, which is the natural way events play out in the scenario the author constructs.
I see this all the time when editing people's stories. I saw it in Pen Stroke's new story which I edited (that was just published today, check the feature box). It saddens me when I see authors do this over and over again. Author decree disrupts flow in a noticeable way because it makes the story feel artificial. It's where the audiences yells "Bullshit!". But it's not merely caused by forgetting details. It's usually because the author has written themselves into a bit of a corner, and they just fudge the details and events so that the plot can continue as they desire. A person wins or loses a fight simply because the plot needs them to rather than because of complex nuances which the author carefully crafted ahead of time. It's lazy and shows a significant lack of planning. (Great stories take a long time to write, people!)
Anyway, I wanted to toss that in there as well, because just about EVERY damn battle in TIG has this problem.
4174096
This is the same reaction I had to the scene in Fallout: Equestria where Calamity meets his dad. I'm glad I've forgotten exactly what happened, because it was the most tone-breaking reference I've ever seen in a fic.
You and I seem to be cut from the same cloth. :V I'm sorry.
4173244
Two things :
1. Terra was under mind control when she went on her murder-spree. It's kind of different; she's a dog whose being constantly electroshocked if she doesn't sink her teeth into the children before her. Give a dog enough pain and it will stop thinking twice about eating babies. She deserved far greater mercy because her crimes were the result of her being twisted and tortured by her father.
2. Titan was given his chance. Yes, the window Twilight gave him was a small one. Yes, he could not hope to hurt her. But if any being on the entire planet deserved death, it was he. Harmony's point - the one she died for - was that their lives were not greater than the lives of the ponies they ruled. That just because they had more power did not give them the right to trample everything beneath them. Titan, in that moment, showed he was still desiring the trampling. He wasn't murdered; justice was meted out.
4174141
And you put down such dogs because they are irredeemable at that point, a point that modern Terra was well beyond (she enjoyed "eating babies"). Irredeemable is irredeemable whether it grew "organically" the way Titan became it, or it was forced the way Terra experienced it. Picking one to be saved over the other is then completely arbitrary.
And in that moment, Harmony as a valid concept failed, because Twilight proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Titan was right all along: Harmony is not the natural order of their world; it can only exist if forced on others. Which is a horrible, horrible contradiction.
Titan's death meant that everything Twilight had fought for was a lie.
4174137
lol Hey, I was much more forgiving before I learned to write. It's amazing how many works of fiction are ruined now.
Hopefully, when the time comes, I can write something that meets your standards somewhat.
I know you're pretty strict. My main philosophy is that a story is all about the characters. It's what few authors remember when they have that oh-so-important plot to eagerly explain to the readers.
On a happy note, Pen Stroke has recently joined my editing team. He's actually a pretty decent editor with a good grasp of tonal consistency. He's already made some quality suggestions (mostly in the form of cuts). I'm convinced editors are almost always more intelligent than writers. This shows up in a big way when two people edit one another's stories.
I'm not sure who edited TIG... but I've often thought they should have been fired. There's a whole lot of blatant typos and just flat terrible prose in addition to all the problems previously pointed out. Stuff any editor ought to have caught.
4174192
We put down dogs because we can't fix them. Terra is fixable, and also harmless. Big difference.
As for Titan, we'll have to agree to disagree on perspective there. Harmony in there to me is a 'Better angels of our nature' theory - it doesn't mean freedom from all conflict, just that the general trend is towards ever-better.
4174307
My argument is that if Terra was, then so was Titan.
Jeez, i'm pretty sure the comments are longer than the OP.
I wish I could go through and read them. Instead, I'm just going to completely ignore them and probably say nothing at all original!
I read TIG almost two years ago now, and it still remains one of my all-time favorites. I've never been so fascinated by where a fic was taking me as when I read Background Pony and I've never been as entranced by artful and creative writing as with I Am Demon; with The Immortal Game, I've never been so thoroughly entertained.
I love how it dives right into all the details and complexities of magic, and how it makes Twilight and Celestia really feel like genius instead of just acting like it. I felt a little thrill for Twilight's growth as a character in my eyes when she started using Celestia's mind-splitting trick on her own. The villains were each phenomenal in their own ways, and I really felt like I understood and believed Titan's motivations and the beliefs that drove them, which I never really do for high-and-mighty god villains.
I don't remember much and what I do remember is probably pretty rose-colored, but I'm glad Titan didn't have a real remorse/redemption moment or full change of heart at the end. It wouldn't fit his character. His resolve wavered (I don't remember if he lost it completely or not), but it wasn't because of anything as warm as the kind of loneliness that might actually allow for making friends. He's still too cold. He's like the Master at the end of Fallout; you poke a hole in the weak spot of his argument, and it all collapses from under him.
I liked Titan as a character and a villain because he had such a different view of how the world is, even though you're right and that view is objectively incorrect. To me, that was kind of his whole point. He ruled that way for so long, from (effectively) the beginning of things, that he does believe that wholeheartedly. He doesn't have the same experience his children have and we have that prove this other order is a legitimate alternative, and so he dismisses the whole thing because he's pretty much incapable of bending. I thought that was a cool dynamic to have between him and Celestia, and a defining application of his character.
As for Celestia and Luna being gods, that's never bothered me no matter how headcanons choose to interpret it. Just because ponies don't worship them doesn't mean they can't really be gods. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians worshiped their gods because they thought the gods actively demanded it. Their gods commanded sacrifices because the smoke pleased them, and they punished disrespect and appreciated devotion and loyalty. At the same time, their world and their affairs were inherently separate from those of mortals, with relatively few exceptions. Mortals were a source of pleasure and occasionally tools for the gods, and other than that they could manage themselves.
Judeo-Christians (Does that include Muslims? Because Muslims, too) worship their God for different reasons, but generally speaking, they do it more for their benefit and welfare than for his. They praise him and call their spiritual business "worship", but God's glorification isn't the end goal of that worship like it was for Polytheism.
I can't really speak for Hinduism, or whatever other religions worship higher powers. But alicorns are unique from all human gods I know of, in that they rule their mortal subjects directly and in-person. They don't offer salvation or enlightenment for spiritual obedience. In fact, there's nothing really spiritual and hardly anything even metaphysical about them. They're purely magical, something which is easily understandable and relatable to the mortals they rule. They're not unknowable; they're not even all that mysterious. They're just unattainable, and that's godhood enough.
How many fantasy settings have deities? I can only think of one that treats them like real humans do, and that's Elantris. The rest have creation myths and polytheistic pantheons of actual higher powers; beings of unattainable magic you can usually travel somewhere and visit.
I've never understood why fantasy worlds have churches or worshipers for their gods at all. They have less reason to than the Greeks did. At least the Egyptians had their complicated afterlife judgment to motivate them to worship and obey; the Greeks were basically running off pure harvest/weather/fertility superstition (and from my own Judeo-Christian perspective, ancient traditions derived from ancestors who sacrificed to a different God). For the most part, fantasy gods don't claim much control over those things. Tolkien's didn't, and no one in Middle Earth ever really mentioned them except in old books about the place Elves want to go to, but they were still undeniably gods.
Fantasy writers give their deities worshipers mostly because ours do in the real world. But we don't have godlike seemingly independent of higher powers, and we're pretty darn sure we can't build a spaceship or a portal to visit heaven and meet God. In fantasy, when you can do all those things and no one really expects or believes that a higher power will ever actually have a hand in your life, the concept of worship would probably never even develop.
Why would ponies worship Celestia or even Terra or Titan like the Greeks worshiped Ra? What reason do they have? Even if Titan really did create their world and Celestia probably could if she wanted to, having that power doesn't inherently merit religious devotion. Godhood has a lot of different definitions and qualifications. Personally, I try to keep my headcanons realistic and conservative, and I'm totally okay with Celestia calling herself a god. If alicorns are just a long-lived race with normal, biological life cycles, and even if they really don't control heavenly bodies or base emotions, then they could still be considered gods, at least from the perspective of "mortal" ponies. And if Celestia ruled as a lone alicorn over those mortals for thousands of years, then she wouldn't really have a good argument for denying godhood, if she didn't believe it herself from the beginning.
Goshdang, I've been writing this for a long time. I guess your slightly-irrational-and-tangential issue with alicorn godhood bothered me in a slightly irrational and tangential way. Point is, I don't think being worshiped is a prerequisite for godhood, and the vast majority of the inter-medium fantasy genre would agree with me. I'm not sure why you thought it was.
Anyway, from what I remember from reading this thing with my eyes two years ago:
-Sir What's-his-name wasn't written with a Scottish accent. Pretty sure I would have remembered something like that.
-I think his sphere sword worked because the sword spell adds a tangible "blade" aura to the normal telekinesis spell, so his magic gives them a cutting edge when they're put together.
-Also, alicorns were special because they could make swords with pure magic and no actual pieces. Luna used dual swords, didn't she? (There's your connection to Past Sins.)
-Didn't Esteem have more sword pieces than Rarity?
-Twilight's god-killer spell was so cool that I still have that scene copy-pasted and saved in my Google Drive so I can pull it up and remind myself how badass ponies can be.
-I agree with pretty much everything you said that I haven't already addressed. Except I kinda liked Pinkie Pie's fighting getup and gimmicky explosives. And my botherings were much less intense than yours in all cases.
-This story would make an awesome manga. Anyone else? It would translate over so well.
-(I actually took a stab at making that translation myself last year. I only got a few panels in, but I scanned these and have been busy ever since pondering the question of which is harder to do well: drawing and inking by hand, or scanning hand-inked drawings onto a computer. Does anyone have the answer? Or scanning advice?)
TL;DR of last comment:
PP makes decent points about a lot of things that I remember noticing when I read TIG two years ago, but none of them bothered me at all because I was having way too much fun with freakin' TIG.
Also, gods don't need worshipers to be gods, silly.
4174743
My whole problem with the godhood issue is that the story takes for granted something that is completely unsupported in canon. It was offputting throughout the entire thing. (Well, that and I never envision Celestia as arrogant enough to go along with such a label. It put her on the same level as Titan and Terra, demeanor-wise.)
This makes sense, but is, yes again, an important detail that was left completely out.
I'm bad with numbers, I honestly don't remember.
I tried manga once, it was awful. :B
4174837
See, though, that's kinda my point; I've never gotten the distinct impression from show canon that they don't think of themselves as gods. At the very least, that just means being of a significantly higher order above "common mortals" that's considered unattainable, except perhaps by divine invitation or self-invented super-spell, and that fits alicorns pretty perfectly. It's not even comparable to settings where elves are immortal and far more powerful than humans could ever hope to be, because those elves are never capable of moving the sun on their own, or having power equivalent to at least one-quarter of the population (which is still a lot more than a lot of fantasy gods can claim; pretty much every RPG ever allows or even designs for their gods to be beaten by the player(s).).
And I don't think it counts as arrogance if it's true, especially considering just how far above mortal ponies Celestia is in terms of intellect, maturity, and power, even in the show. She's not infallible or unbeatable, but again, those aren't requirements for being a fantasy god.
Plus, super-smart, thinks-of-herself-as-a-god Celestia from TIG would still seem pretty much exactly like show-canon Celestia when interacting with common folks, and her dealings with "peers" and inner thoughts would simply have to be dumbed down to be accessible to the target audience.
I've never really gotten why people object to this headcanon so strongly.
4175309
I think the "they're treated as gods but are really just long-lived" headcanon is attractive because it means they really are just ponies. I find that important because, well, it's one thing to be ruled by a being who's wise because she's lived so long, and quite another to be ruled by a being who can just do whatever. Maybe it's because, if she's truly a god, and thus omnipotent, her machinations (i.e., not taking care of all of Equestria's problems herself) feel more like playing a game than actually teaching others to get along by themselves.
Ugh, I hate that I'm even using this argument, but remember when she fell to Chrysalis? Was that a ploy? Is Chrysalis a god as well? Maybe it's just because I'm not religious, but I have always had a hard time accepting alicorns as gods. To say nothing of what that would make Twilight nowadays... The point is, gods aren't as approachable as the alicorns in the show are, I think that's all it really comes down to for me.
4177264 I kind of just said this:
They don't have to be omnipotent to be gods, either. In real-world religions, only the Judeo-Christian God is truly omnipotent; all the rest are simply unimaginably powerful, which is different. Plenty of pantheons didn't even claim responsibility or ability for creating the world themselves. If they had no limits, they would have no troubles among themselves, and that's kind of a staple of all mythology. Celestia can be a god because she's literally more powerful than at least one-quarter of the entire pony population combined, probably far more, since she's probably significantly stronger than Cadance and Twilight. And considering it probably only took a group of the more powerful unicorns to move the sun before she took it over, that gives us some idea of how much more power Celestia has beyond that level.
So the love of Cadance and Shining Armor didn't give Chrysalis omnipotence, but it did give her more raw power than Celestia had at that point, apparently. (Though I have read interpretations of that scene that just have Celestia lose that fight because she was so unprepared for Chrysalis to be so powerful.) I don't know if Chrysalis is immortal or not, but the power she got was only temporary, so she couldn't really be considered a god like Celestia still could be, even though she beat her in a fight. Unless you count temporary gods as legitimate, but that depends entirely on the definitions and nature of godhood set by the setting or belief system.
Have you seen the new DBZ Battle of Gods movie, where Goku is turned into a god to fight the guy? It's a fundamental change, not just a boost in his power past a certain threshold. He actually hates it and gives it up because it's not something he did or can achieve on his own. But he's been shown to beat (more-or-less) actual gods before, as just a super-powerful mortal. That didn't make him a god, either.
Almost on the other hand, calling Celestia a god doesn't assign her any more power than she already had; it's just sorting her into a category based on who she already is. She has limits, but then again, so do most gods. Even the Judeo-Christian God (there's gotta be a way to abbreviate that clearly in this context) has self-imposed limits. She's approachable because that's just how things work in Equestria. God-rulers are nothing new to this world, either. It's just that Celestia has actual demonstrable power, whereas the Egyptians just had faith their pharaohs were secretly gods.
It's only in the modern world's paradigm of religion that one can think a god has to be unapproachable, because the general consensus these days is that all gods are either unknowable, imaginary, or otherwise unobservable. Anciently, though, that idea was a rarity, and most people took it for granted that gods were just living on a mountain somewhere, or across some bridge far away, just above the sky, or even just in that palace no one is allowed into. A personal, approachable god like Celestia is hardly a leap from that mindset.
I think your definition of godhood deserves some re-examination. It has nothing to do with being worshiped, and it certainly doesn't inherently include omnipotence. What do you think gave you these impressions?
4177992
In all honestly, I don't think I really care. :/ I mean, you're making me argue against myself here, so I think I'll just bow out of this one. (Not meant as a slight, more that I'm bad at argument.)
4178490 My very first thought after glancing over the preview of my last comment:
"Wow, when did I get so accusatory about this? I kinda feel bad already. Ah well, *Post Comment*."