Present Perfect vs. Tonight I Shall Be Laughter · 12:25pm May 17th, 2018

Let's travel back in time.

It's 2011, season one has wrapped up, and all we know about Princess Luna is that she's small, blue and back from the moon. She is the fandom's first waifu, a character they can pour their insecurities and hero complexes onto. Equestria Daily is rife with stories about Luna being sad: sad because she was on the moon for a thousand years; sad because ponies think she's still Nightmare Moon and are super-scared of her; sad because the Nightmare is still inside her and she can barely keep it at bay; sad because she's still just as unloved and unappreciated as she was when her mean older sister banished her. She is a total wooby, and things have gotten so bad that "Sad Luna" is its own genre. Many fans are sick of it, to say nothing of Luna herself.

Enter the Happy Luna contest.

Run by midnightshadow and hosted on Equestria Daily, it was an attempt to inject some levity and lightheartedness into the fandom's understanding of Luna. It was very much an appreciated effort, and ended up being a rousing success.

The "winner", or at least top billed entry — it wasn't really a contest in the classic sense, but midnight did give some kind of ranking — was Cloud Wander's Tonight I Shall Be Laughter, and the subject of today's journal. Was it the pre-Luna Eclipsed story the fandom truly needed? Is it really the comedic classic everyone remembers? How does it hold up to today's canon and story standards? Answers to all these questions and more below the cut!

The title of this story refers to the idea that, having been freed of the Nightmare by the Elements, Luna has bits of them within her. Feeling them out of balance, she makes a conscious decision to exercise one or another at any given time. On this night, Laughter is what she chooses, and so begins nine thousand words of Luna fucking with her personal guard.

It's pretty great. :D

Almost all the humor comes from Captain Bucephalus of the Lunar Guard. (A Lunar Guard before batponies!) Appointed the sole guardian of Princess Luna, he's found himself well in over his head, as the thousand-year-old Guard protocols don't really cover what to do in the event of there being a Princess around who, y'know, actually needs guarding. He bumbles his way through a small adventure, trying to chase her down after she abandons castle, proving to be equal parts capable, incapable, brave, stupid and stalwart.

He is, in short, the kind of character I was looking for in my "lovable idiots" post. As some commentators there suggested, he has his own motives for doing what he does, and the fun is watching as reality steadfastly opposes his understanding and expectations. I wish I had thought of him at that time, because he's really one of the fandom's earliest examples of a really great OC. (Bucephalus to the fore!)

Not to give Bucephalus all the credit, Luna is also good in this. It is, of course, unfair to base analysis off canon that happened after publication, but it's an interesting study nevertheless. No one but no one expected Luna to turn out the way she did, yet Luna as presented here fits well with the boisterous Princess we eventually saw in the show. Granted, this comes from her actively not angsting over Nightmare Moon and choosing to have some fun for once in her life, but it does fit.

(It's possible the story was modified somewhat from when I first read it. The mention of "Traditional Canterlot Voice" suggests this, as it was uploaded to Fimfic a good half year after Luna Eclipsed aired. This could also have led to an emphasis on the "fun" in the early chapters.)

This characterization was of course tantamount to a contest like Happy Luna, all of it being more or less a direct refutation of Sad Luna tropes. And even more important than that is a very early, throwaway line about there being a flood of well-wishers trying to visit the Tower where Luna is kept. Again, this was a direct refutation of more 'classic' interpretations, where ponies were wary of their new Princess and stayed away from her. No, in this story, ponies are good-natured at heart, and Luna's isolation is the fault of her overzealous guard doing what he thinks is his duty to the best of his abilities.

Or rather, it isn't, and the scene where she realizes this is a very satisfying bit of character growth for her.

But yes, you wouldn't see Luna wearing a fake mustache — in a completely inspired sequence made all the more hilarious because the disguise works — in most early-fandom Luna fics. This was the Luna we needed.

Which isn't to say it's perfect. I have to admit, I found myself thinking it was more the first time I read it: bigger, grander, more consistently hilarious. I was let down by little things like use of asterisks in one spot, a POV switch in another, and a single utterance of "OMG WTF?" The sock trope is honestly used pretty well in this, but it's still a fandom trope and helps paint Luna as a little more childish than anything (another classic interpretation of her that I still don't think the fandom has gotten over). Pinkie comes off a little too Pinkie at first. Most of all, the story felt compressed. Not rushed, mind, but it could have gone longer without being unwelcome, and Luna's epiphany resolves the only conflict pretty quickly.

Still, this story is genuinely funny and the ending will leave you warm and smiling. Tonight I Shall Be Laughter is the perfect example of what the fandom was capable of doing ~~five~~ seven years ago, when it could just get over itself and make a darned effort.

4/5

The Luna fic the fandom always needed.

Tomorrow: AbsoluteAnonymous's The Games We Play.

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