They Sent Her to Hell... · 6:15am Sep 20th, 2018
Season 8 conclusion: Princess Luna, protector of foals, personally escorted a severely misguided filly into Hell where she is locked in a very small cage... I'm not even sure what else to say. It's funny because if you've ever known people like that, you probably have wished they would go to hell, and they probably were mostly all school children, but... damn.
A little history for you: If you have ever used the word Hell, you were probably referring to the Greek Tartarus, a fiery place where evil people are sent in the afterlife to be punished for their misdeeds in life. The Greeks lived in a volcanic region, so of course the worst possible thing to them was the liquid fire that sometimes shot out of the ground. The Greek concept of laying a nearly unending cruel revenge upon the dead was so alluring that it effected every civilization it touched. The walls of Etruscan tombs changed from peaceful depictions of the afterlife to cruel visions of Tartarus when the Greeks spread the concept to the Romans who spread it into Tuscany after adopting the concept themselves. Roman jews adopted the concept of a place where evil was punished by fire but they didn't rename it; it can still be found written as the Greek word Tartarus. Originally, and still in middle eastern sects of judaism, jews believed that all the dead would be resurrected at the end of time. Christianity, being formed in Rome after the Greek concept of Tartarus was well ingrained into Roman and thus Roman jewish culture, adopted the concept too, and like everybody else, they called it Tartarus.
So why do we say Hell instead of Tartarus today? Where did we get this word? From Hel of course! But if you've watched Thor: Ragnarok recently, you might know her better as Hella. Hel ruled a place called Hel in the Norse afterlife which was covered in the worst thing that that Norse people knew at the time: ice and cloudy sky that would prevent a hint of warmth to come into the desolate land. Norse mythology spread pretty far and hard too, and some words got tossed around when Rome invaded the British Islands, so the Greek concept stuck to the Norse word as the language grew up into it's modern form.
In the past, we have seen a kind of mental corruption cured by the Elements of Harmony, we have also (sorta) seen one who cannot function in society banished into solitude until time spent completely alone allowed Luna to learn what she needed to learn to function harmoniously, and Discord in his chaos was imprisoned in a stone Time-Out where he could see all the fun stuff he was missing around him but not take part, presumably teaching him to calm his happy ass down, BUT... what is sent to Tartarus? Creatures that cannot change their destructive ways no-matter-what who are also magical forces of death and destruction - not merely predators in a world ruled by pray, but who consume the world like fire with no capacity to stop themselves until there is nothing left to destroy.
On the surface, Darla Dimple-I mean-Cozy Glow, wanted to suck away all magic in Equestria, which is pretty horrible, however, if you listen carefully, this was merely a means to an end to her. Her goal was to be the head mare at the school of friendship to manipulate students so she would be powerful... However, most people's desire to be powerful is the desire to be lazy. Ms.Dimple-er-Cozy Glow, is anything but lazy - packing lunches, organizing schedules, cleaning rooms in the castle, tending a library, mastering high level magic of an ancient nature that would probably only be available in an ancient language requiring to learn that language even before attempting to learn the magic contained within it, so she's not lazy. She's probably insane, because it's illogical to master a skill only for the purpose of making it impossible for that skill to ever be used again. despite all the ease it brings a person.
Could it be that in Cozy Glow's insanity that she is addicted to work and her desire to have power through friendship is a desire to always have an unending amount of work to do? Either she is insane and her real end goal was to become the new princess of friendship and ascend into godhood for the sole purpose of working forever OR she is a foolish manipulative brat who really TRULY has her priorities all mixed up.
*Sighs and shrugs* Way to go heroes; you literally sent a kid to Hell...
...well, I think show itself was and is ..a bit too much of _human way_ of doing things .... Instead of more fictional for us, but at least theoretically possible _different_ ways of ..living. Guess if we accept some selected works of fimfiction as fixfic(s) to *this* ..then..whole thing ..kinda .... becomes better.
Thanks for writing this little thing about term 'Hell' history. {I was surprized to learn here on Fimfiction, in comments, AD in current chronology actually mean something different from "After Death" (as I sorta assumed, after all this talk about killed Jesus ...) }
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Indeed it is too human, and I have said that since S2E3. *Erases four paragraphs explaining why S2E3 was wrong* I believe MLPFM started as a way to teach moral lessons that feed the hungry soul, and the letters to Celestia were the sum of those lessons, and no, they did not happen every week. Case and point: Winter Wrap Up happened first, then Call of the Cutie, then Fall Weather Friends - unless you are Discord, Fall doesn't happen after Winter in the span of one week.
I have long accepted that MLP fanfiction is far better than the actual show, and Hasbro knew that too, because about in the fourth season, they started hiring fanfiction writers to write the show. It's blatantly obvious that Josh Haber was a long time MLP fan because he wrote "Stranger Than Fan Fiction" which was a reference to the schism created in the fans when Hasbro took the show away from Faust. Josh Haber is clearly a fan of fantasy adventure - his first MLP episode referenced a fantasy adventure video game, another referenced The Hobbit a fantasy adventure book, he wrote most of the two-parters starting in S5, but the biggest problem with fantasy adventure as a genre is that it has unrealistic motivations for the main antagonists - either they are big bads because the author needed that role filled and it's not about the big bad's motives, it's just about defeating the big bad. Fantasy adventure is a great genre for indulging in the guilty boy fantasies of having magical artifacts and being an irreplaceable underdog who suddenly gets undeniably recognized by everyone a hero, but it is not a great platform for exemplifying morality. In his mind, Josh probably thought that the last scene of School Raze relieved the audience to know that Cozy Glow didn't have any remorse for her actions, but to people watching the show as a movement of characters are still asking, "Why did you send this mentally disturbed child to hell?"
... Anyway, AD is Latin for "Anno Domini (Nostri Jesu Christi)", which is literally "Year-of ruler/king/lord (our Jesus Christ)". Generally, every kingdom and civilization kept time based on who was ruling and history had to be kept by knowing what king came before whom, but this made it difficult to compare universal history between countries. Early christians adopted that concept, calling Jesua of Nazareth the "king of the jews" - that's what really got him killed: his fans thought too highly of him in a place that took the word "king" very seriously. Anyway, his followers insisted that he still ruled after his death so they marked time from the year he was born, and just to clear up the confusion, the time from his birth to before his first birthday was 1AD because it corresponds to the phrase "in the first year of our lord" they wouldn't have said "In the zero-eth year of our lord".
Moving on, christianity rose in Rome, Rome invaded... everyone, carrying the tradition with them. After that, in no particular order the French, Spanish, and British empires invaded everyone again, carrying with them the tradition. Because history didn't really matter to peasants, keeping a record of time in this fashion was initially to aggrandize the religion and those in charge of it. As interest in science and history developed, the desire to unify a measurement of time through the ruling eras of other countries became more relevant, especially before the start of this de facto measure of time. Most people today don't know or care what AD and BC actually mean any more than they care to know what AM and PM mean, because it's just a marker of time. Generally, the use of AD/BC has been replaced by C(E)/BC(E), which stand for "common/current (era)" and "before common/current (era)".
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Yeah, but then more analytical look at 'why this happened' needed not just in itself, but mostly for finding some ....way out of such situation? Or at least it should be like this ... because those beings are magical ponies who can, depending on author do things from strange to impossible (in mind sphere) - even awfully-bad case probably can be ..attempted to fix? From CelestAI-like scenario (played either by powerful group beings, alicorns, or any combination of them), or even by whole towns..yes, probably with safeguards and 'transparent walls', but at least attempt at untangling one single being, instead of just locking her away. I mean seriously, if society of heavy magic users in thousands years of history never come to some idea about monitoring, preventing, and, I fear to say, rehabilitate such dangerous, but potentially every important members of their society ...well, humans managed to gain tons of power without any group-level ways to harmonize its use...but, those are not humans, so why not try to find at least some possible way how they detected early and avoided such trap? A bit like psychmatemathics, but with emphasis on helping more than one, and in wide waves ... may be with healthy bit of paranoia about NOT wrecking their childrens even by accident, because consequences will be ...too grand... In short, society where caring about how beings actually live is ..actually, requirement to live, otherwise - big bang... and no more ponies due to internal (to their civ) factor of non-caring.
Again, I found this quite ...sad to see how sci-fi genre explored tons of physical, biological, astronomical and alike (im)possibilities, yet sociological angle remained very conservative..Things are either too optimistic, or darkened for better effect, or just not explored in any deep details..so, social dimension of realities seems to be, underexplored. But then again, at least for me all those explorations of alternative modes of living must give something back to humans, who forced to live in current very problematic reality..warning about dangers (up-to-date), some ideas how to overcome some of those, things to try in their own life (with this world constrains equated in) ....
Also, PeachClover, I was about to ask you what was up with this Atlantis thing (you dropped ref. to this at Conversion Bureau forums, in some discussion)? I assume you referred to some alt.history thing?
There seems to be story in the making about this .... incident .....
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/445902/cozy
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For having been away from FF for too long after this message came in, I didn't see it until now. Interestingly enough, I have come across that story on my own. It is really nice.