The Midnight Filly: Author's Notes

So, years ago there was an author on this site who went by the name RealityCheck. He's since left this site for another site due to disagreements with the mods here, but he was also a frequent blogger. One time, he used this blog to introduce a story idea that he didn't have time to write himself for whoever wanted to use it: an alternate universe where Celestia gave the Elements of Harmony to new ponies after Nightmare Moon's banishment rather than hiding them away, with the Mane 6 being the newest set. I decided to take him up on the offer and started work. I changed quite a bit from his original idea, but one thing I didn't change was that Twilight was already an alicorn. Since some of my prereaders commented on this, I decided that a story explaining how this happened was in order, and thus came Midnight Filly.

Now for the story specific notes:

As the capital of Equestria and Celestia’s home, the Summer Sun Celebration was held there once every four years, while the other cities and towns of Equestria took turns with the other three years. The one in the season premiere was Ponyville's first time hosting it.

The part about Celestia pulling power from the sun raising comes from the Journal of the Two Sisters. I just came up with a headcanon on why it worked. For that matter, the whole concept of "mage sight" was a fairly recent addition to the world, made to explain how Twilight could figure out how to dark magic. Of course, it does explain a few things about canon Twilight, as well as a few other unicorns.

Pinotto is the Italian name of Costello, of the famous Abbott and Costello. Red Wand is based on Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.

If you're wondering why Cadance would have time for babysitting, it's actually customary for Kindness Bearers to do things like that between missions.

For the record, alicorn life spans are closer to 5,000 years, like MCU Asgardians, but given that Earth Ponies usually can only live around 200 and the others only 100, I think we can forgive Sunset's inaccuracy.

Twilight's mention of the nightmare with Nightmare Moon? Yeah, remember that, it's gonna be important in a couple chapters . . .

While unicorns are the best at Casting, Earth ponies can do a bit of it too. They are just usually limited with giving their life force to encourage growth, whether that's plants for farming, body parts for healing, or rocks for rock farming.

Ratchette was borrowed with permission from Estee. Also, Crafting is making magical tools, artifacts, and devices. It typically requires either a pegasus for weather machines or a team of at least one unicorn and one Earth pony working together, one to change the item and one to keep it from wearing off.

The scene with Twilight's entrance exam is actually the oldest in this story. It was originally going to be the opening of the story, with flashbacks to a few of the earlier parts, but one of my prereaders pointed out I was doing too much telling and not enough showing, so I pretty much started again from scratch. I did manage to recycle most of the scene though, with only a few changes.

There was also originally going to be a mustache spell during the magic surge that targeted Shining Armor, but was intercepted by Daring Do. However, that was only going to be seen during a POV shift to Shining and the other Bearers as they came galloping to the school, but since I ended up sticking with Twilight's POV I decided to drop it.

I got the idea for how dark magic works from RealityCheck's story "The Audience". Basically, dark magic is "dark" in the sense that ultraviolet and infrared are "dark", it is outside of the normal spectrum. In other words, it is any magic your own body and mind isn't built to handle. In this case, Twilight forced her magic to flow through the part of her brain that is in charge of moral decisions, burning it out until the Elements could heal it. Sombra, of course, never had any morals to burn. That technique requires a lot of power to get started, but once started it is easy to maintain.

The Tazzy Twister was named after Loony Toons' Taz, and was the result of somepony trying to get around the main weakness of a Come to Life Spell; while a little energy is given by the spell itself just like telekinesis, the rest of the kinetic energy has to come from somewhere. The Come to Life Spell does this by essentially eating whatever it is making move, making it eventually break down, while the Tazzy Twister eats whatever it destroys.

Before I came up with the Bear Summoning spell, I had Twilight snatch a scroll from a guard pig that opened a portal to Tartarus, but a prereader of mine pointed out how little sense a portal to a prison dimension with variable size but not variable time would make for the guards. I like this new idea better.

While I changed up the exact numbers, Pinotto's math trick is a famous sketch done by various comedians, including Abbott and Costello.

Of course, even as a filly Twilight was able to figure out what the trick was. (Interestingly, I once used a version of this same sketch for a class).

Welp, that's all for now. Stay tuned for the first chapter of the novel: Bearers of Harmony. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here, in the story, or by PM.

Shalom everyone.