A.I. writing fanfic!If You Weren't Afraid Afterwords and Q&A Answers! · 5:48am Aug 12th, 2017
Please note, spoilers for If You Weren’t Afraid lie below. Q&A answers can be found at the end of the blog post.
History
If You Weren’t Afraid has a bizarre history. Fitting, for a story I still consider to be pretty bizarre.
It started out life near the start of my career here on Fimfiction. In fact, let me find that one blog post… Aha! August 6th, 2013. Four years ago!
Hide and Pie: Based on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Hide and Q,” in which a crew member is granted godlike powers by John de Lancie. I want to take the basic story into My Little Pony; Discord grants Pinkie Pie draconequus powers during a bet with Celestia, and Pinkie goes all out.
However, I want to utterly cream the message of the Star Trek episode with one of my own. I wanna show just how much good Pinkie is capable of with and without the power, rather than give another cruddy old “power corrupts” moral. In the end, it’s a Pinkie character study, with room for Discord to develop, too.
It’s also Discord and Pinkie in the same story; if I can’t make it hilarious, I don’t wanna write it.
It’s a little bit removed from the final product, eh? About the only thing to survive both my growth as a writer and as a person was that somebody other than Discord would gain access to his powers. Eventually I realized that this concept just wouldn’t work by itself. What kinda philosophy would it have? “Comic powers save lives?” “Don’t let Pinkie bring pastry to life?” “Season 1 TNG episodes were pretty hit and miss?”
I had tons of false starts, which I am very grateful for. I hit upon the idea of starting it with Pinkie’s birthday (which eventually evolved into the Cake Twins’ birthday), with the powers being a present from Discord. It never moved past the first few paragraphs, because it just felt wrong.
So I put it on the backburner for three long years, never forgetting about it, but never really going for it either.
Until I had a little miracle, the twin stories of Fahr Drill and Lord Mayor Applejack. Fahr Drill was my intended start for a fairly simple new series about the kids of Ponyville as teenagers. Lord Mayor Applejack was the result of a high fever and reading my first Terry Pratchett book: The Wee Free Men. Together, these stories formed the base for a new world connected to the show we know and love. I had intended to move straight from LMA, to Scootaloo Will Fly!, to finally what is now Rhythm and Rhyme, but inspiration struck a different chord.
Believe it or not, I consider If You Weren’t Afraid a direct sequel to Scootaloo Will Fly! A huge part of that story dealt with the new situation Discord found himself in. Since I intended to create adventure stories, I needed a reason for Discord to not be able to simply fix everything with his amazing power. I needed a way to still have stakes.
However, I also knew the dangers of simply writing a character out. This needed to be in character, with respect to the Discord of the series. It needed to be sympathetic, debilitating, but also curable.
It needed to be more than a handwave. It needed to mean something to the characters.
Therefore, in Scootaloo Will Fly! I spend some time setting up the world and conflict. Getting things aligned. Preparing for the eventual follow-up.
Then Daybreak happened, and I realized the world I was building was a lot larger than I originally intended, inhabited by dark forces with the power to stand up to and even defeat Discord. Or, perhaps, to merely exacerbate his condition.
Now, there was weight behind Discord’s plight, a chosen malady, a cure, and an antagonist force.
Hmm. Seems we still need a supporting cast, then.
Characters
I had intended to utilize the Cake twins as a background element throughout the series, mostly tied to their relationships with Scootaloo and especially Pinkie Pie. It was halfway through Scootaloo Will Fly! that I needed to lead Scootaloo towards Discord for their big scene together. Since she was babysitting the Cakes, I had a thought: How do the younger generations view Discord? He’s been on the side of good all their lives. Living in the same town. Playing pranks on their parents and older siblings.
A spunky kid like Pumpkin would love hanging around him.
Then, as much as I think Pinkie and Discord would get along tremendously, the series deigned to give Fluttershy and Discord a deep relationship. I thought to explore this connection and how far it might go. I figured Fluttershy would be more likely to become desperate to live out her Element, going beyond what was healthy. But I also knew that Discord’s love for her could bring her back, and her love could do likewise.
Pound came about because you can’t really have a Cake Twins story without one of the twins. In Scootaloo Will Fly!, I wrote him as a fairy laid-back sort, one whose dreams were to follow in his parents’ hoofsteps and bring joy to ponies through baking. What sort of role would he have in a country-spanning adventure story?
Funny enough, one that I’d told before, but never been happy with.
In my old vast series of adventures, Blueblood’s Ascension, I decided I was going to write a Flash Sentry character who was not bland, boring, or annoying. He was going to be funny, helpful, brave, and faithful.
He got steamrolled by much stronger characters, eventually ending up in a relationship he wasn’t sure would last, having fought in a battle he didn’t help win, against people he’d thought were his friends.
Pound was an attempt to tell Flash’s story again, with a more satisfying end. The kid’s not built for this adventuring stuff, and he’s self-sacrificial to a fault. It’s not helped by his near-idolization of Fluttershy, who he sees as a sort of ideal for kindness. Go fig. But then, that makes his moment to stand up and take charge more meaningful. It’s his grand moment to contribute to the team and make a difference for his own self-worth.
Did I succeed? You be the judge.
Tirek almost died in that opening scene. Very nearly. Two things saved him: Tone and sequence of operations. It was in the middle of writing the scene with the fire ants that I realized that his death did not fit with my vision for the story at all. It was too dark and mean-spirited (*cough*Daybreak*cough*). As I wrote his survival, I began to think ahead in the story, about how his existence might impact future events. How it might drive future events. Before long, the Demon King was an inescapable, indivisible feature of the story.
Of course, a villainous entity needs somebody to talk to. Munchy originally appeared in chapter two as a brief gag, showing the vast catalogue of villains contained within Tartarus. The silly little cannibal sprang to life on his own, grasping Tirek’s leg during his escape and whisking himself right into the story. I, of course, needed an endgame for Tirek’s arc, and dear Munchimonious opened the door to their final lines in the last chapter.
I don’t currently have plans to write about these guys again. I almost prefer to leave their continued existence and strengthening friendship to the readers’ imaginations. Surely, you can come up with something more satisfying than I could. Do they eventually become bosom brothers? Or do their differing tastes in meal choices separate them eternally?
That said, the muse has pushed my train onto a different track before, so don’t count them out completely.
Now, the fairies. That’s a tale worth the tellin’.
Jeuk is a character who’s been in production for as long as I’ve had an idea for this story. Observe this preliminary story idea from way back in 2013:
In the Absence of Sunset Shimmer: I know that Equestria Girls is more controversial than Alicorn Twilight, and I don’t really give a darn. I was going to patently ignore it until I received the spark of brilliance. The question is, “What happened to Sunset Shimmer’s human counterpart?”
The answer, according to me, is that she fell into Equestria at the same moment that Pony!Shimmer ran away in shame. It’d be different from the usual Human in Equestria story in that the world will be very familiar to Human!Sunset. People will know her, they will talk like the people she knows, they will act like the people she knows, but in the end they are all very different people. She’ll have to choose whether to try and embrace her new life, or to do everything in her power to get back home.
This is about Sunset’s personality, and how she could change from being a student of Celestia to the local school tyrant. Insecurity and potential are running themes integral to Human!Sunny’s character.
Unique to this story is the spiritual element; Sunset Shimmer’s guardian angel accompanies her to Equestria. He’s there to protect her and give her hope, though she never even knows he’s there. I think it’d be a good way to get an outside perspective on her life, and give room for a few miracles.
He’s a bit of a foil for the villain of the story: Jeuk, the Demon of Itch. Yes, he’s all about making people itch. He loves it. He’s playful while the angel is serious, manipulative while the angel is straightforward, and cruel while the angel is kind.
It’s an odd mix to have angels in a pony story, unironically, but it has, shall we say, potential.
Now there’s a story that sounds familiar in all the wrong ways! Most of my stories go through a very long and very careful refining period, the exception being Lord Mayor Applejack of all things. I’ve always been fascinated by the spiritual world in all its forms, along with its inhabitants. Beings with powers we can’t even imagine, that are so far beyond our reach—yet still with an element of fallible free-will, in the case of the heavenly hosts. See the part of the Bible where one-third of the angels of Heaven decide to disobey God. Whoops.
But to be honest, I was right when I said that angels don’t quite fit in with Equestria as we know it. It’s a world heavily based in Greek Mythology, with creatures and magic and fate and all that kinda stuff.
I wanted to stay as far away from the Greek Pantheon and its concepts as I could, because the thought of anybody worshiping Celestia leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Personal preference and all. And yet, I still wanted to play with that element of spirituality. That little glimmer of the paranormal.
I got inspiration from two places: The Chronicles of Narnia and Tales of the Questor.
Narnia loves its ability to mush all kinds of mythologies together, and I love it for that. Centaurs and griffons and talking animals and witches and dark gods and pirates and Jesus-Lions! We’ve seen that My Little Pony isn’t afraid to be a grab-bag of various folklores, so why not expand upon that? But what folklore, what legends, what mythology would give me the sort of beings I wish to include? Ones with rules and limitations to work with and around? Ones to be scary, or beautiful, or horrible, or awesome?
Tales of the Questor is a high fantasy comic, with serviceable artwork but a personally-powerful story. Powerful to me, that is. I love it. It’s one of my greatest inspirations. It has a vast world built around it, with economics, trade, industry, magic, sciences, people groups, history, and pages and pages of bestiaries. The mythology has a fairly strong Christian element to it, which drew me in at a young age. It is rare to see that sort of thing on the internet, with any amount of quality, and to me it’s kind of a breath of fresh air.
Now you’re starting to get why I wanted to write about angels and demons in the first place.
This webcomic has an extensive arc where the protagonist, Quentyn, accidently runs afoul of a Changeling Prince, a high-ranking official of the Unseelie Court. What commences is a blood-pumping race against time to survive until the first rooster crows… before the Wild Hunt runs him down.
I’d always known of fairies and other strange Fae creatures. Rumpelstiltskin comes to mind, as does Tinkerbell. But this was my first major introduction to the mythology surrounding the actual Celtic folklore. What’s that? The Banshee that frightened me as a child (thanks, Darby O'Gill) was also a fae creature? Trolls under bridges? The Headless Horseman himself? This is a rich fantasy playbook, ripe with beings and concepts to borrow!
Thus, Jeuk the Demon of Itch became Jeuk of the Unseelie Court.
The Demon of Itch is a fairly humorous reoccurring character in my pastor’s sermons. He’s usually brought up to illustrate a point about the devil’s desire to assail us at every turn. And he's brought up to make us smile, but that’s beside the point.
But then, itches can be far more insidious than mere physical annoyance. An itch can be indicative of a harsher malady. Or it can be a mental itch, something you can’t get out of your head, something that keeps coming back to plague you. A memory of a bad decision. A regret from years past. The thought of old friends no longer friendly.
I’ve always enjoyed manipulative villains. The sort to twist their words in such a way as to create a noose. Who always have an answer. Who are always three steps ahead of the game. Who know what you’re thinking before you even know it. I basically always use this type of villain in some capacity for one particular reason:
It’s so dang satisfying to see them get their comeuppance! Seriously, who doesn’t like to see the formerly-confident villain freak out as all their plots and plans crumble to dust around them? Who doesn’t like to see them get their just desserts? I know I do.
And fairies lend themselves well to being this type of villain. Always just this side of being on another plane of existence. Always watching and plotting. Always manipulating.
Jeuk wrote himself fairly easily after he walked onto the stage in Chapter One. To this day, I think he may be one of my favorite villains I’ve ever written. Delightfully faux-affably evil.
Then we come to Ribbon Wishes, who was a very difficult character to nail down. She is the counterpart to Jeuk. Not necessarily a complete opposite, since fairies are mysterious and flighty no matter which court they’re a part of. She is, as Dinode pointed out, not exactly the angel our protagonists were hoping for. She’s clearly out for the good of Equestria, but the good of individuals is a little up in the air.
Her existence in this story was meant to show that not all fairies were evil. There are those on the good side, but they are not all-powerful cure-alls. They are free-thinking creatures as well, with their own desires and motivations. She receives her orders from the Lord of the Seelie Court, whose identity is implied, but not stated. It’s all designed to put doubt in the characters’ heads just what is intended by the Seelie Court.
Bound by rules of the court, magically weaker than Jeuk, and neck-deep in her own agenda. She’s an enigma, and shall remain that way for some time.
I feel that there were points where this character surprised people who expected her to be irrevocably good and kind. Perhaps this was a fault of mine, or perhaps I was able to pull off a twist on audience expectations. Only my coroner knows for sure (Death of the Author Joke, yay)!
Locations
Elysium was, naturally enough, inspired by the Garden of Eden. Principally due to the fact that the mythical Elysium was part of a different world, where the dead go to their rest. Eden, on the other hand, was the origin of life. It held the Tree of Life, the fruit of which was said to grant immortality, before the entire garden itself was destroyed.
Naturally, I chose to put a Greek spin on things by making the Tree of Life bear golden apples. Although, in that “universe,” golden apples are not necessarily givers of life, but pretty baubles. Norse mythology has golden apples play much the same role as Greek ambrosia, the food of the gods. So, there’s the Narnia “include everything” influence at play.
Hmm. Golden apples and ambrosia both being referenced. Coincidence? I think not!
Las Pegasus has apparently appeared in the show since I started writing this story. I have not yet seen the episode. Thus, any and all departures can by explained away by the alternate universe tag I never used.
Pegasus cities strike me as a keen way to stretch the ol’ inventiveness muscles. Cloudsdale is a floating city-ship, carried aloft by air currents and maneuvered by jet streams. I think Baltimare is shown in the original map to have a rather large cloud structure within it. For Las Pegaus, the city of cheap thrills and expensive mistakes, I envisioned a cloud bridge spanning two mountains. This allows for a lot of earth pony and unicorn foot traffic that would otherwise need to be enchanted. Thus, just by choosing the location they did, they effectively tripled the potential tax revenue.
Tartarus is effectively a mesh between what we see in the show, and what I’d already come up with in Blueblood’s Ascension. It has the individual cages and rocky nature of the show’s, while the proximity between prisoners and sheer volume of them come from the aforementioned story. I picture Tartarus as getting pretty crowded, since by their nature, the prisoners neither die nor reform. They put the most unrepentant monsters there; the world-devourers, the emotionless destroyers, the unliving hate golems, the Char-Gar-Gothacons. Naturally, since this is My Little Pony, some of these great evils can get a little silly, see the Smooze and Munchy, but they’re still dangerous in their own right.
On to Ponyville. Fun fact, did you know. In the story In the Absence of Sunset Shimmer, I accidently had Pinkie Pie refer to Ponyville as a newly-minted city. Even though I had intended to have the vote take place in this story. I suppose it’s possible the stories could overlap, but it’s highly unlikely that would even make sense.
Other Thoughts
On the note of ITAOSS, I had never intended for this story to be longer than 100,000 words. Heck, I originally thought that it was going to be half that. And I suppose it could have been. They could have found the destroyed Elysium and picked up a seed from there. They could have had a confrontation with Jeuk where Discord himself took the sole lead.
In fact, it was supposed to be a pallet refresher for me after the overbearing dark grayness of Daybreak. An easy, short story for me to relax and push out.
It would not let me write a quick and easy story. It kept growing, and maturing, like a slime mold culture. Pumpkin’s inclusion meant I needed to give her relationship with Discord an arc. Her inclusion meant that Pound needed things to do which would impact the end. Fluttershy needed to be worn down to the point where she would be receptive to Jeuk’s manipulations. Discord needed a voice beyond mere humor and one-liners, but one that still needed to make sense with his character. The conflict between the Seelie and Unseelie courts needed to be expounded upon. Twilight Sparkle needed to be unavailable to help, so Tartarus needed to have a subplot to call her away.
This story inflated like a balloon and I kinda love it. Part of the reason it took so long to write was that every moment had to be perfectly planned and planted, otherwise things would be super-contrived. About the only part that was potentially uber-contrived was Adagio’s inclusion, but I figured her arc in the rest of the series gives me a bit of a “buy” in that regard. I built her up from chapter three, at least.
On that note, I’ve internally referred to this story as part of the Adagio trilogy, the stories that really serve to reveal the facets of her character as it appears in The Heart’s Promise. What are the other two? Well, In the Absence of Sunset Shimmer, of course, and also the earlier story… Hyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Now, it was requested of me to repost the following comment in a blog post, as it really encapsulates the heart of what I was trying to convey with this story. It was a response to a question regarding what I meant when I named a chapter “The Most Noble Sacrifice:”
But onto sacrifice and its place as the title of the chapter. It doesn't refer to a specific sacrifice in the chapter, per se. Sacrifice has been a theme throughout the entire story, practically from the word "go."
Discord sacrificed his good health to keep Equestria from going screwy. He further sacrificed his happiness to hide the ill effects from his friends.
Fluttershy is the most sacrificial pony. Her mercy, the very root of her strength, can also be her downfall. She would give her life for any of these people, and nearly has several times. She sacrifices her own happiness as a regular occasion.
Pound sacrificed his well-being and the goodwill of his parents to follow Pumpkin through the forest. He then sacrificed himself at every turn after that, in his intentions to follow Fluttershy's example.
Pumpkin constantly sabotaged her relationships with others, partially out of a real need to be alone to collect her thoughts. You don't get that with a house as full as the Cakes'. She's sacrificed her friendship with her brother in order to get solitude on a few occasions. She's also sacrificed her personal possessions to spend time with her only real friend, Discord.
All these sacrifices hurt the characters and those around them in some way.
It's been said, No greater love has he than he who is willing to lay his life down for a friend. This doesn't have to mean death. Here, at the end, all four characters are linked together, willing to live the rest of their lives helping the others. Sacrificing their own time and strength to lift the others up. Each working hard to bring hope where there was none.
It's a theme explored throughout the tale, of how sacrifice tainted with fear brings only pain, but true friendship is a sacrifice worth making.
All things being equal, I’m very happy to have written this story. And I’m even happier that it’s finally finished. For the most part, I feel that I did everything I could to make the ending as satisfying and complete as possible for a surprise mid-series novel. And that’s sort of the goal of a mid-series story. So that you can sit back, pat your belly, say “that there was a good meal, I’m tided over… until the next.”
I hope that you remember If You Weren’t Afraid. Perhaps as a midscale adventure, perhaps as a fantastical history lesson, perhaps as an interpersonal drama. And perhaps, perhaps, you’ll remember it as that one where the Cake twins hung out with Discord.
Questions and Answers: Answered!
RadicalDishonesty
I still think it's a little... unusual that the Main characters were all independent, living on their own or nearly so and world heroes at 16-17, and the next generation are still not independent at 19, and not yet adventurers.
Like, during the first fics, the next gen kids felt like teenagers, but the main 6 felt more like adults that had the MLP "are sometimes immature" thing in episode 1.
The latter is what I expect for modern society, but the former being what it is seems more unusual, really. I guess made in line with EQG.
So, here’s the thing about the kids. They haven’t had much in the way of world-spanning adventures because the adventures haven’t hit home in a while. The world is changing, and a lot of that change has happened off-camera in regards to the teens.
They have not lived boring lives. The CMC were kidnapped by the changelings when they were still eight/nine. Button Mash, Spike, and Rumble all have off-screen adventures with the fire department. Rumble himself is now a Royal Guardspony. Button Mash is just getting started. Spike is always in the thick of it.
All in the background. So, “show don’t tell” is killing my worldbuilding essentially.
As for their independence specifically… Nah, they’re pretty independent. Apple Bloom is a strong mare in charge of many chores around the farm, alongside growing in her potion-making studies and acting as local handimare. The only reason she hasn’t moved out, as she’s said, is that she’s waiting for Applejack to return to full-time farmwork.
Sweetie Belle started making dresses for Carousel Boutique when she was around fifteen. In Scootaloo Will Fly!, it was shown that she was the owner and operator of Carousel Boutique Ponyville Branch, the same age Rarity was when she started the business. Add to that her burgeoning radio stardom, and she’s practically one monster attack away from being just as capable as her sister.
Scootaloo may be the source of this thought process, since she was the protagonist of the first major Future!CMC story. She’s the only one without clear direction and drive in her life, as far as a career goes. She does work hard, both as a farmhand at Sweet Apple Acres and the local babysitter. And when she’s not doing that, she’s building her body into a well-oiled machine. I’ll admit, even at eighteen, she’s not quite at the level of heroism and derring-do that Rainbow Dash was at barely sixteen.
I mean, the kids do all have jobs, lives, and dreams, but perhaps I haven’t given these things as much focus as I could have. I mean, the only stories that’ve heavily focused on them have been shorts, Scootaloo Will Fly! and the ongoing Rhythm and Rhyme. I guess it’s a matter of poor pacing, as far as the stories go.
But still… this series is about them, all things told. And about the six bearers, of course, but also about the kids.
Flynt Coal
Joking aside, I'm really curious to see where pony Starlight Glimmer fits into this 'verse. I don't think she's ever been so much as mentioned, which in itself indicates to me that she never became Princess Twilight's apprentice (and not just a result of the fact this was all conceived before season 6 what are you talking about?).
I’ll keep this contained to Pony!Glimmer for the time being…
She’s been mentioned once, in DayBreak.
“Manta Ray Books still publish Starlight’s ideologies,” Celestia said. “Even after Miss Glimmer publicly renounced them.”
I’ve kept her out of the limelight because, when she was first introduced, I was not sure about whether they would reform her or keep her violently nuts. So I hedged my bets. I was lucky enough that Starlight was reformed before I finished Daybreak, so we were able to get a little reference to current episodes.
As far as the series goes, she’s a travelling monster fighter mage, making friends and taking names. She travels from village to village, solving their friendship problems and freeing them from whatever evil overlord wannabe is terrorizing them this week.
She’s been named a Knight of Harmony, taking the title the Knight of Friendship (Twilight Sparkle, by contrast, is the Knight of Magic).
She still visits Ponyville regularly to spend time with her friends and report back to Twilight Sparkle. And to gawk at Merry Mare’s campaigning antics.
I'm also curious to know what Thorax is doing and why we haven't seen him yet (again, aside from the obvious "before season 6" thing).
He will be discussed in an upcoming chapter of Rhythm and Rhyme.
Lastly, has Trixie ever been mentioned? Can't remember if you ever alluded to what she's been up to or if she's just "Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Series"
Aside from occasionally travelling with Starlight, she’s mostly up to her old tricks. She’s currently dating Pony!Flash Sentry. Excerpt from The Unmitigated Disaster:
Spike tapped his claws together. “Are you sure you’re doing this for the right reasons? Not just because Flash Sentry—”
“Mister Sentry,” Twilight hissed, “and who he makes out with in broad daylight are his own business!”
“I’m sure Trixie didn’t mean to hurt you,” Spike said as the headline “Magician Outperforms Princess in Battle for Soldier’s Heart!” burned through his mind.
Twilight Sparkle has since gotten over Mister Sentry’s bogusness, and wishes Miss Lulamoon and Mister Sentry the very utmost freaking best.
Dinode
Are there also multiple species of Seelie?
Yes, but we have not seen many of them. All of the Unseelie species have a Seelie counterpart, since they all started out as fairies from the same family. As of now, the only species we’ve seen is the one that Ribbon Wishes belongs to; which is, terrifyingly enough, the same as Jeuk.
Long called “skinthief” by their fellow Fae Creatures, these beings have the ability to cloak themselves in flesh to appear as a pony or other creature for as long as is needed. The pony living next door could be a skintheif. Or perhaps your significant other? Part of the hatred for changelings stems from their similarities to evil skintheives, though neither skintheives nor changelings are the only creatures with the ability to change their form. They’re just the unlucky ones who got singled out.
Of course, uncloaked skinthieves revert back to their angelic appearance, which varies as widely as ponies themselves do.
Please note that skintheives do not, in fact, thieve upon actual skin. They merely have the ability to generate their “coat,” so to speak, out of magic and organic matter.
Howard035
That said, one area I would recommend you work on filling in in detail is the time period between the birth of Celestia and the fall of Sombra, basically 73 BCE to 20 BCE. If you remember, I had a lot of trouble figuring out the timeline for the birth and childhood of the Regal Sisters, and the lives of the Founders during that time period.
The info is filled in, it's just fairly scattershot. To compile it in order... well, it wouldn't have worked in DayBreak. But for a blog post... Don’t worry, what follows is just the broad strokes.
The ponies come from the Crystal Empire, and only traveled to Equestria because the Windigoes made it mostly unlivable. The creation of the Hearth’s Warming Eve Spell put an end to their reign, which effectively doubled the size of land that ponies owned and inhabited.
Celestia and Luna are born.
They are found by the founders, and quickly taken in due to their resemblance to a specific prophecy. Their home for the better part of eighteen years is Fort Everfree in Equestria.
They are trained to be warriors by Hurricane and Pansy, politicians by Platinum and Puddinghead, mages by Clover and Starswirl, and down-to-earth friends by Smart Cookie and her husband.
During this period of time, Celestia begins to explore other worlds with Starswirl, while Luna explores the realm of dreams with Clover. During a Diamond Dog attack on Fort Everfree, Celestia raises the sun on her own to save her sister.
Part of their challenge in growing as individuals is their quest to find the Elements of Harmony, which are spread across the world. In their travels, they meet a scatterbrained Discord and befriend him.
While they are away, Platinum’s father dies, leaving her as Queen of the Crystal Empire. She returns to rule there, leaving Chancellor Puddinghead as Lord Mayor of the growing city of Everfree. Everfree would become Equestria’s capital in the ensuing years.
On a visit to Equestria, Celestia joins Starswirl on a trip to a mirror-verse Equestria where the inexcusably handsome King Sombra rules Equestria. Luna has her first encounter with Shadowfright, a Nightmare Fae, though she does not realize that he is from the Unseelie Court, nor does she know what the court is.
The following season, a trip to the Crystal Empire brings Celestia in contact with her world’s Sombra, who is a bit more standoffish, but still quite fetching. Being eighteen, Celestia has a bit of a one-track mind in regards to stallions… It’s only because of Sombra’s distracted nature that she does not attempt to pursue a relationship with the admittedly older stallion.
Meanwhile, Luna has grown increasingly discontent with her position as “Second to Celestia in everything imaginable.”
Still their friendship is strong enough that they are able to find and wield the Elements of Harmony… just in time for Discord to exhibit a full mental break. Their first test of friendship, and loyalty to their country, is to encase their friend and oft-times sidekick in stone to protect their loved ones, and himself.
With the Elements at their beck and call, the sisters are even more welcomed as champions by the people of Equestria. Some even say that they should be crowned as royalty, but others are more keen on them being mere warriors.
In the thirty years that follow, Celestia’s visits to the mirror world and her beloved Alt!Sombra cause the mirror portal to become unstable. Starswirl is forced to break the link to keep the multiverse stable, simultaneously shattering Celestia’s heart. Their friendship never truly recovers.
In these years, Luna begins to guard dreams. She and Clover explore the relationship between stars, ponies, and dreams. Luna encounters her first antagonistic nightmare, which torments various ponies night after night. She frees them from its hold, but goes unrecognized due to the nebulous nature of dreams. They’re simply hard to hold onto for very long.
The song “The Rising Morning Light” is written to celebrate a military victory of Celestia’s. Luna is left seething.
Sombra strikes. His long years of waiting have paid off. He alone will rule the Crystal Empire and its magic. At long last, true peace can ensue. At long last, Equestria will become a single, elegant machine, guided by one will. His.
The Crystal Empire is caught completely by surprise. Their defenses are rotted from within, their armies loyal to Sombra through coercion or enchantment. The population is enslaved. The Queen and her other children are imprisoned. Sombra reigns supreme as he awaits a response from Equestria.
Their response is a full-scale assault.
Celestia and Luna were visiting the young city of Fillydelphia when the call to action came. Hurricane urged them to join the fight to save her lifelong friend Platinum. Starswirl messaged ahead that he would arrive with the Elements of Harmony, which were left enshrined in Fort Everfree.
But he does not arrive before the battle.
Celestia and Luna confront Sombra. In the scuffle, Platinum is killed defending them. Sombra, enraged, defeat in sight, activates his last-ditch attempt to stave off defeat: A time-bomb which will send the Crystal Empire flinging through time and space.
The sisters get as many people out as they can, including Platinum’s younger son Periwinkle, but the empire itself is lost.
In the following chaotic years, Hurricane disappears. Many suspect she died in the wilderness, while others feel she went to live with the griffons, intent on forgetting her perceived failures.
Starswirl, too, vanishes. Clover believes he felt death coming on, so he stepped through one of his own mirrors to spare his people the reality of his mortality. He had always sought immortality, but never achieved it.
Periwinkle and Clover the Clever marry, bearing a son named Bluestone and a daughter named Twilight. From these two come the noble house of Blueblood and the noble house of Sparkle. Periwinkle abdicates the throne, claiming that he has no desire to even remotely follow in his older brother Sombra’s footsteps, nor does he wish to tarnish the name of Platinum further. He supports Clover in her research, and is well regarded by modern historians as a patron of the arts and sciences.
Puddinghead, the eldest founder, full of years and rich with great-grandchildren, dies in his sleep on Hearth’s Warming Eve, chuckling to himself.
All of the remaining three founders are growing old, while the sisters are forever young. The people of Equestria need strong leaders. Heroes to look up to and strive towards. Who will keep their country secure. Who will allow them to grow and thrive.
Celestia and Luna are crowned High Princesses of Equestria, and rule fairly for twenty years…
But they are not fair to each other.
Celestia is embarrassed of being thought of as anything less than perfect. She needs to be perfect for the good of Equestria. She needs to be an example, an unblemished light in the darkness. She is strict with her friends and her sister. She is holier-than-thou. All the while, she stands tall and alone in her rulership of Equestria, never confiding in her sister, never sharing the burden, never heeding her sister’s council.
Luna blames Celestia for the mess at the Crystal Empire. She grows, slowly but surely, to hate Celestia and her stifling attitude. To hate the light that the ponies dance in and praise Celestia for. To hate everything to do with her sister. Rather than speak to anyone about it, to get help, to reason it out, she lets her feelings fester.
This is the “in” that Shadowfright needs. The very thing he’s been poking and prodding her about for the last fifty years.
He promises her fame. Glory. Followers. Love. Affection. Purpose. Anything she could ever ask for. And most of all, he promises that she can upstage her oaf of a sister.
Despite her better judgement, despite the little voice telling her it was wrong, she accepts his help, with the intent to show ponies just how beautiful the night can be. Just how much she can contribute to Equestria, if only she’s given the chance. She, along with a bevy of like-minded ponies, march on the city of Everfree with the intent to wrest control from Celestia.
A midnight moon rises on the noon hour.
Luna and Celestia argue as they have never argued before. Fifty years of repressed anger, wild emotions, and unfettered disgust collide with fear of failure and forced fortitude. In her boiling rage, Luna claims that there will be no more daylight at all, that there shall be an everlasting night. When Celestia tries to magically wrestle the moon from Luna’s grasp to set it herself, no more words can be said.
Luna snaps.
Their battle carried them across the entire city. Magic flares. Buildings are blown over. Trees become splinters. The full power of two alicorns fighting each other, each in their prime, at the peak of their abilities, trained their whole lives to fight unspeakable monsters.
Celestia is worn down, while Luna grows all the more stronger at the thought of finally being better. Their battle continues until Celestia crumbles in the shattered remains of her castle.
It’s then that she sees full force what her life has been to that point. She sees the crumbling walls, the torn portraits of old friends long gone, the stained glass windows shattered by powerful screams, and the frightened subjects huddled in the corner, hoping against hope that they’ll live another day. She sees that she failed long before she faced her sister in a life-or-death struggle.
As she looks up at the screeching madmare flying before the noontide moon, she realizes she failed her sister most of all. And for that, she will pay a great price.
The rest is history.
Hm. Tales of the Questor, huh?
I read that once upon a time.
I eventually stopped reading, although I don't remember why. I haven't read any of his ponyfics or anything.
... the author tends to write smug characters, when they are right (and worse when they're his soapbox), and it annoyed me, but Questor was his least-smug story!
Anyway, it's really cool to see how things changed over time.
Thanks for the answer of the pace of the characters lives, too. I figured, some time after I asked the question, I was probably picking apart hairs.
I did enjoy If you Weren't Afraid. Interesting that a story that was supposed to be 100% Discord wound up more, in my mind, about the twins.
Obviously looking forward to Rhythm and Rhyme, which has criminally low numbers of readership.
Wow, thanks for the really detailed answers! I'll remember IYWA as a classic questing-adventure fic in the mold of some of my favorite Narnia stories. I do like to imagine Munchy and Tirek slowly becoming good friends over time though. If Luna observes this, I could see other pairs of prisoners having "daring escapes where they work together and bond in the process, even though they are caught in the end." (Ignore the other inmates who say the pair were just dreaming the whole thing).
Didn't know you were a fan of Ralph Hayes. Are you reading his Darth Vulcan series on Archive of Our Own? It's quite interesting, and still getting updated.
Is Scuttlebutt a Skinthief?
Thanks for laying out the timeline like that. I suspect you have a much stronger series bible than the show does at this point. For those who've read Daybreak already, When you say the Sisters were "born," you mean Hurricane concieved them with the help of a teenage Sombra and some unknown Pegasi father, then dumped them in the wilderness before 'discovering' them in front of the everyone, right? That was always a part I found tricky to get understand.
4631301
It might be because the update schedule slipped by a lot when his health issues started getting really bad. These days, I'd say his comics get updated about as often as I post chapters. Once every few months.
The man's passionate in everything he does. Writing, drawing, arguing, politic-ing... He can be abrasive, I cannot argue that point. But he can also be very insightful, heartwarming, funny, and downright epic when he puts his mind to it. Tales of the Questor is my favorite story of his, but I do enjoy a couple of his pony stories, too.
Much like TotQ, Nightmare Night and Nyx is his least smug pony story. There's a little soapboxing in the later chapters, mostly between Applejack and Bruce Mane regarding free trade, but I do feel much of it comes together to form a very sweet "what if" sequel to Past Sins. It's actually the story that inspired me to write fan fiction in the first place. If you've got a couple hours and aren't immediately put off by Nyx's existence, track it down and give it a whirl.
Hey, it's a concern I share, too. It's hard to correct at this point, since I'm pretty much locked into a specific number of stories until the end. Rhythm and Rhyme will do them some good, alongside a couple upcomings... as soon as I finish Absence of Twilight Sparkle, of course. Really, I'm super excited I'm coming up to a bunch of Teen-centric stories.
I think that's mostly because of my lack of updates. I haven't taken the time to write, and the stories have lain dormant. Without constant updates, it's not on the front page. When it's not on the front page, it gets lost in a sea of "Button Mash plays Minecraft" stories. A respectable genre, to be sure, but altogether too prevalent.
Also, sometimes I worry that the Jan Animations kerfuffle left a bad taste in the fandom's mouth. One that still sours today.
4632433
Oh, this is a lovely not-quite-rehabilitation idea! It could even be beneficial toward heightening security, as the guard can study prisoners' favored escape routes.
I was never really too into Darth Vulcan. The premise--an anti-displaced fic--is fun, and Mr. Hayes is a humorous writer... but I've never really liked the whole "power-fantasy in a fluffy world" aspect. It was around the time he killed that dragon that I said "Eeeeeeeh, I've got these other things to do."
The story of his I do want to get back into is The Great Alicorn Hunt, his take on the whole "Everybody's an alicorn" theme. The first story in the "series" was a forgettable one-shot exposition fic about Twilight Sparkle no longer putting up with Celestia's perceived crap, but The Great Alicorn Hunt itself is tremendous, hilarious, and quite intriguing at times. The premise of the mane six hunting down ponies with the potential to ascend, with the intent to one day have everybody ascend, just tickles my funny bone in a nice way. I especially like the sequence where Rarity must enter the deep swamp to find her first pre-ascension princess.
Plus, Bishi is a much better little brother for Fluttershy than Zephyr will ever be.
4632433
No, he's a wight. A shape-shifting creature who prays on ponies' fears by taking the shape of undead creatures. He's cannibalistic, in the sense that he eats other sapient beings.
Pretty much. They were actually born by the time the Hearth's Warming Eve spell was created, and their father was likewise long dead. I didn't mention either of those because... spoilers for DayBreak. Previously unmentioned: Hurricane left them with her great-grandmother, who was getting on in years in a bad way. She lived out in the wilderness, in a paltry log cabin, where Celestia and Luna spent their infant years. Hurricane only went to "Discover" the alicorns when she learned her GG died.
She was a badflank old commander in her own right, only succumbing to illness after a couple centuries of harsh living. She found a lot of joy raising the tots, before the sleep finally claimed her. She knew she was caring for the future of ponykind... Something Hurricane never truly understood.
4685306 I've also had some issues with Hayes, but I can separate the work from the artist. Thanks to your earlier recommendation, I got caught up on Questor, and I really love the interesting things he's doing with the setting.
Yeah, Darth Vulcan does come off as pretty power-fantasy heavy, in later chapters it's been made clear he is actually the bad guy, and the good guys have finally started pulling ahead, but that is a long road to hoe.
I am reading The Great Alicorn Hunt, though to me it has started sagging as he's focused on the CMC (well, not Sweetie and the Swamp Lich, but Scootaloo versus the Straw Man politicians and academics). Those scenes with Twilight and Flash in Hollow Shades though, are some of my very favorite chapters for how evocative they are.
And I still remember laughing out loud when the names of the villains were revealed for Nightmare Night and Nyx.
Thanks for clearing up the early life and times of the Regal Sisters in your timeline!