The Archetypist and A Once and Future Darkness · 2:49pm Mar 30th, 2019
So, a bit of background here.
Are these stories sequels? Spiritual sequels? No. But maybe they're like mirror images of each other. They each take an idea and run with it in different directions.
A Once and Future Darkness was written almost four years ago, for one of my early Writeoff events. It had an odd run during the competition that I will try to summarize without getting angry. In short, if you haven't read it, it was about a renewal of an ancient competition between Luna and Celestia for primacy over the world. For a thousand years the competition had been on hold as Luna was otherwise indisposed, but with her return she was free to vie once again with her sister. As Luna was the princess of dreams, the competition took the form of dreams beginning to bleed into reality and all that entailed.
I'd written about dreams before. Salvation uses dreams extensively as a plot device. They appear frequently in my other stories as well. Almost every time, the main question they raise is who are we in our dreams? Is our dream-self our true self, stripped away of all our social masks, hang-ups and inhibitions, or is our dream-self only half of us, the unconscious, unbound half, unrestrained by reason?
It's an important question for me, because in my dreams, at least, I've done some unvirtuous things. I am often a terrible person in my dreams. So for that to be the true me is a rather bruising thought. It has a lot of unpleasant implications. If you've ever wondered why dreams appear so frequently in my stories, it's because I'm trying to explore this central question. It matters a lot to me.
Anyway, back in 2015, A Once and Future Darkness was praised early on in the competition for its writing, its imagination, etc. But about halfway through someone mentioned that its central plot device, that dreams were bleeding into the real world and causing chaos, wasn't really Luna's thing. She was the guardian of dreams, their shepherd. She wouldn't allow them to run out of control.
I disagreed. To me, Luna is the princess of night and dreams and all that implies. Not just good dreams. The princess of all dreams. The dreamrealm is her realm, and that should make you worry about her.
Anyway, long story short, A Once and Future Darkness didn't win. My Luna conflicted too much with the head canon Luna of too many readers, and that was a fatal flaw. Many of them commented that if anyone was going to mess with dreams like that, it should be Discord. He loves chaos.
"Well, fine," I thought in a bit of a snit. "I'll show you what Discord would do with dreams." And two years later I wrote the original, short version of The Archetypist. It did a little better in the competition. It's a totally different story, sharing almost nothing with A Once and Future Darkness except that single idea – dreams matter. And now, as I've written in other blog posts, it finally has the full re-write it deserves. I promise this will be my last blog post about it for a while.
If you liked A Once and Future Darkness, though, I think you'll enjoy The Archetypist.
Called it, lol
I generally agree. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Morpheus presides over the realm of dreams, imagination and story-telling as a great whole. I feel a similar interpretation of Luna's role is perfectly legitimate.
Huh, interesting.. I'll take this perspective along with me in this new rewrite!
Stories about dreams:
Are always hit-and-miss with me. I so rarely remember my dreams--maybe one per year sticks with me after I've woken up--that I don't really have a lot of personal experience with them. It's such an odd concept, waking up with memories of stuff that didn't actually happen, that I find it hard to suspend my disbelief...
Mike
The only reason I can't agree with that is she helps stop nightmares as part of her duties in the show, it's an interesting idea though.
Dreams are so strange and varied, I can't think of a time where I did something bad in a dream. I doubt the you in dreams represents a more "real" self if only because they tend to be uncontrollable, stuff just... happens and you have to go with it. I ain't no dream scientist though.
5035236
When she chooses to.
Wait, people got upset about that?
The Luna in A Once and Future Darkness is definitely not canon compliant, especially with four more years of canon behind us, but I mean, the story itself is an explicit AU that ends in an eldritch apocalypse. It does not and never did make the claim of being, say, a canon-compliant character study or story.
Half the damn things that win Writeoffs (at least back when I was paying attention to them, which I lost the habit of) are explicit AUs or personality studies whose relationship to canon is... tenuous, at best.
Also too, A Once and Future Darkness is definitely in your top ten. Even if I did for some reason think someone else had written it.
A Once and Future Darkness is my personal favorite of your works, so I'll def def def try to read The Archetypist soon!
5035242
Well... yeah?
5035406
My point is that she's not bound to fight them, she excercises her dominion over them.
5035545
Yeah she chooses to to do so, in a similar way to how she chooses to raise/lower the moon. She doesn't have to do either, she claims them as her duty and chooses to do them.
5035563
If you think about it luna spends less time stopping nightmares, and more time causing them to prove a point.
just look at the episodes where luna interacts with sweetie belle/apple bloom
5037757
Those nightmares were not created by Luna at all, in both of those episodes she helps deal with the underlying fears causing them. Although For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils is less about the nightmare itself and more about Sweetie and Rarity, Luna still helps out.