Present Perfect vs. Longest Night, Longest Day · 8:48pm Jul 1st, 2019
Back when I read RainbowDoubleDash's Boast Busted, I was left with a lot of questions. The next place to turn in the Lunaverse then is its prequel, Longest Night, Longest Day, a retelling of the show's pilot with Trixie and company and all the character flip-flopping that entails. And thankfully, Goombasa was happy to provide a full audiobook, which is why I didn't get around to it until now. <.<
So, let's go find out where all this Lunaverse madness got started! Y'know, in-universe.
Longest Night tells the story of Trixie (and Lyra) coming to Ponyville after an incident with an Ice Palace — a fantastic spaghetti incident if there ever was one — to oversee the, uh, shoot, I didn't write it down, but whatever Luna does instead of the Summer Sun Celebration. We get to watch Trixie make a fool of herself as she slowly but surely ruins everything, then get a chance at redemption after Corona emerges from her thousand-year prison in the sun. Along the way, we meet familiar show canon characters, to find out what they're up to in this 'verse (Twilight, it should be remembered, was introduced in Boast Busted), and are treated to some solid world-building.
I want to touch on that last note in particular. We've all read stories where Nightmare Moon won — I mean, that's an AU that exists in canon — and ponies have to make do with trying to grow crops under constant moonlight and so forth. In this world, the moon is revered and the sun feared, so ponies are more nocturnal, but not entirely. I got the sense they probably wake up at night and go to sleep in the evening, so they're getting both day and night in their lives. Because of the legend of Corona, they take shelter during midday.
And that's all really cool. If this story does one thing right, it's world-building, but it does come with some downsides. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but this story has a few beefs with canon, namely that it wishes everything in the show were more epic, and it really wants all the characters to have perfect information about their world.
I objected to the latter quite a bit. For instance, everyone knows that Corona was Celestia, Luna's sister, and they all know the story of her banishment, even a thousand years later. That was a major knowledge gap in the show, and it resulted in, y'know, ponies not fearing to be seen by the Mare in the Moon. Is it better that they know? I don't think so, though an argument can be made that, if they hadn't known, we certainly would, and that would force the story to just tell us things we can figure out for ourselves.
Another place this comes into play is the Elements of Harmony. It turns out everyone knows about them; again, no mystery, no ancient legend. Except there is a mystery; the Elements everyone knows are kept in Canterlot castle are actually fakes, powered regularly by Luna so they pass magical scans. The real ones are where we would expect them to be. Except, the only people who know this are Luna and Trixie, and it's not revealed until we first learn where the Elements are thought to be kept. Ergo, there's never an opportunity for the reader to find themselves taken into the web of lies. I mean, if there'd been a reason for the Elements to have come up sooner, we could have assumed the different location was part of the AU, then been pleasantly surprised by the double-fakeout. Instead, it's just, "We should get the Elements, they're in Canterlot." "No they're not." "Oh." Not to mention that they still don't know what the sixth Element was, and I found that really hard to believe.
This need for perfect information of course doesn't just apply to the characters. It's been a while since I read Boast Busted, but I didn't mention the writing in my review. Here, it's a distinct let down, not the least reason for which is all the explaining. It's got Past Sins levels of the author leaning over the reader's shoulder, constantly going, "Did you get that? That's important, let me make sure you got that." When, for instance, a canon character is introduced, giving us a long, detailed description of what they look like is not important unless something about them has changed. We can identify Bon-Bon, for instance, just by saying she's a cream-colored earth pony, or a mare with curly blue and purple hair, or by the way Lyra reacts to her since that's, y'know, showing and not telling. Instead, everyone from the mane six on down gets a long paragraph of description when they're introduced.
Worse are scenes like Luna raising the moon, when the epicness is raised to eleven and the writing just drags on and on trying to impress us. Like, yes, I get it, magic is way cool, but can we please get on with the story? Nothing is ever left at a satisfactory level with more description can be had. It's probably why there's so much LUS.
I'd like to switch tack now and take a look at our main characters. I think I'll talk both about them and their trial in the Everfree Forest in one go, because I have thoughts on those.
First off, of course, is Trixie. We meet her and Lyra coming to Ponyville, and she is more or less the vain, self-absorbed arrogant mare you'd expect her to be. A background is given to her, hailing from Neigh Orleans and having lost her accent during her stay in Canterlot. (My absolute favorite scene in the story involves her getting really drunk, regaining said accent, and hitting on everyone in the room before passing out on a table. This is the Trixie I like.) She has the fucking saddest tragic cutie mark story I have ever seen, and I love it to bits.
That said, I frequently found myself wondering just how she was our protagonist. She's a snotty little brat for most of the story, and once we switch gears to plunging through the Everfree, she's often a whiny hoof-dragger. This is the story of how she gained five fast friends, but I was not exactly convinced by the end that she had. I mean, she blackmails Carrot Top, derides Lyra at every opportunity, goes behind Raindrops's back with something she hates, uses Cheerilee to get what she wants and… actually is a very kind and sympathetic friend to Ditzy Doo. <.< Like, they're the two ponies you really get a sense have forged a friendship over the course of the story, and their scenes together are usually good. The relationship shows that Trixie has the capability to be a decent pony, she just tends not to be one. But it also doesn't make up for all the rotten shit she pulls on everyone. We just get to the climax, I guess they're friends now because narrative convenience, Rainbow of Light, we win.
I liked her, is my point, but I don't know why anyone else did.
Lyra is probably the second most important character in the story, if only because she shows up in the first scene. She's another student at Luna's School for Gifted Unicorns, getting through her magical studies on a music scholarship (which she never fails to remind us of). She's been hired by Luna to babysit Trixie because of that whole Ice Palace spaghetti incident, but heck if she can actually exert any control over her. She's also, of course, in a relationship with Bon-Bon and very excited to see her once they get to Ponyville.
I want to take a second to make an aside: these were some strange characters to pick to be the Elements of Harmony. Not just because Raindrops has zero presence in canon, but because they're all very attached. The mane six, for instance, have family, but most of them are not in Ponyville. Applejack and Rarity are self-employed; Pinkie and Dash have jobs but kind of aren't expected to work them. Fluttershy… Fluttershies, who knows.
In contrast, Ditzy has a kid. Lyra has a marefriend. Cheerilee just started teaching not long ago. Raindrops, compared to canon Rainbow Dash, actually gives a darn about her weather patrol position because she can't just old memes clear the sky in 20 seconds flat. Carrot Top is the only one without anything really holding her in place beyond her own farm; she's more or less in Applejack's place. My point is, you wouldn't expect these ponies to be the ones to go haring off after ancient artifacts to stop a great evil, for all that Bon-Bon and Dinky are kidnapped and thus give Lyra and Ditzy motivation.
Getting back to Lyra, her element is Loyalty, and I… am not entirely convinced. Her Everfree trial certainly is a Loyalty trial, but it's got issues. The problem she encounters is a trio of sirens (not the Dazzlings, though; one's a guy, and the Dazzlings were never this pedantic) trying to lure them all into a river. Lyra, Spike and Zecora are all immune to the song, and Lyra has to perform a countersong to save them. Except the Rule of Epic is in full force here, so we get this ridiculous back and forth bard duel that probably looked way cooler in the author's head than it does on the page. I skipped over it because I had no idea what the song was supposed to be. Conveying music via the written word is hard, you guys.
Next is Carrot Top, the Element of Generosity. She's the first of the Ponyville ponies Trixie encounters, I believe, as she gives her and Lyra shelter from the midday sun. And if that's a sign of someone being worthy of bearing Generosity, then probably every halfway decent pony in Equestria is, too. I wasn't convinced on her Element, is my point, especially when her obstacle involved plunging through a patch of Poison Joke to get a magical flower to cure a magic-drained Lyra. It just doesn't fit the Element at all. (The Poison Joke at least had some interesting effects, but again, it was something that was a known quantity in the story.) Personality-wise, she's just kind of a regular pony. I don't even know if I have any notes on her.
Ditzy Doo is Kindness, and she's also about what you would expect out of her. She's not even particularly slow, no word salad or muffin obsessions to be found, just very gentle and caring because, yeah, sometimes ponies are mean to her because of her eyes and also, hey, Derpy is a mean name in this story. Her Everfree trial involved noticing that a full-grown Spike was actually Spike and talking the others out of clobbering him. By that point, it seemed like the author just wanted to get things over with, already, so the problem is less that it's not Kindness-related and more that it was barely a trial.
Cheerilee is a little on the interesting side, because she and Lyra are old friends and, as I said, she's just recently started teaching. "Is the town teacher" is the sum total of her character, and the manipulation I mentioned earlier involved Trixie playing on Rarity's sympathies to get the students' macaroni pictures included in the town's whatever-the-Summer-Sun-Celebration-is-called-in-this-AU decorations. She didn't do it because she wanted the kids to be happy (well, not primarily so), but to ruin the decorations. We'll get to the mane six and their roles in just a bit.
Cheerilee is the Element of Laughter, and out of all of them, this is the one I don't buy. Laughter was basically tailor-made for Pinkie Pie, and if you don't have someone as always-on as she is, you're not gonna convince me they're fit for the Element. Things she does includes getting everyone to know each other better with a little ice-breaking exercise, as well as demoralizing Corona during their climactic showdown by criticizing her grammar.
I really have no words for this. She gets the others to laugh at Corona and call her names because she's still speaking old Equestrian, vis-a-vis Luna Eclipsed Luna, and grammar has moved on, darnit. I cannot believe I've read two stories, in short order no less, where the villain is defeated via put-downs. Well, okay, Corona isn't defeated, but this is literally the first thing they do that actually has any kind of effect on her.
Point is, Element of Laughter, not hardly. Most of the time, I kept wondering if she wasn't Kindness.
Which leaves Raindrops, the one pony who had zero canon personality. In my Boast Busted review, I mentioned that she didn't leave a strong impression on me, and/or I wasn't convinced she was actually friends with the rest. Well, now I see why. If Longest Night did anything right, it was her characterization.
She's a pony with anger issues, many of them directed at Rainbow Dash. She knows martial arts because the discipline helps with the anger. She really is a thorn in Trixie's side for the most part, and the feeling is mutual. After reading this story, I get how she can be friends with these ponies; it's just that she's not easy to get along with, so you kind of have to see how everything falls into place before seeing her removed from the origin story.
As for her Element, it's Honesty, and I mean… Eh? It's not the worst fit of the bunch. Though her trial — and this is what she herself claims — is getting everyone to run off into the Everfree in the first place. And that is definitely cheating.
Before I talk about the mane six in this AU, I want to mention something. For years now, I've been seeing people — and there's every possibility it's just the same person — complaining about anyone who shows the least positivity toward the Starlight Brigade in canon, because the show writers are trying to "get rid of" the mane six and destroy their characters in the process. Those bitches don't know shit. In the case of Longest Night, it's not done with anything like malice, but one of the points of this story was to deconstruct canon, and, well, this is what character destruction looks like. (For discussion of Twilight, see my review of Boast Busted.)
We start with Applejack, who is the head of the Apple Trust, and that name right there ought to tell you that we're not in Pony Kansas anymore. Applejack in this story is all work and no play. She's honest, but she's also dishonest, playing up the "we're farmers so we're poor" shtick to monopolize all the food stalls at the dammit-I-really-should-know-what-this-festival-is-called. She's really good at citing tradition, finances, profit, regulations, you name it: her family and company are on top, and she aims to keep them that way.
Next is Rarity, who took me a very long time to figure out how she differs from canon. Admittedly, Rarity in the very earliest days of the show was a lot more self-centered, far more of a diva, and far less of a good friend than she is now, so likely that had something to do with the subtlety at play here. Point is, she's far pushier and has less respect for others' tastes, to say nothing of personal space. She sees Trixie's getup and essentially goes, "How dare you wear that trash in my presence," and though she makes her a brand new outfit, no charge, it's not something Trixie actually wants to wear. AU Rarity, in short, is insensitive.
Rainbow Dash barely appears in this story, and that's kind of the point. I mean, to characterize early Dash — getting back to that "canon characters were largely unattached" idea — Rainbow Dash has a job with the Ponyville weather patrol, yes, but you get the sense she doesn't really care about it. She can clear the skies in record time, meaning she has lots of extra time to practice her stunts and tricks, nap, and daydream about the Wonderbolts. AU Dash is lazy to a fault, not even caring about work that much, and okay with others picking up the slack for when she wants to fuck off and do something else. This is why Raindrops is always angry.
Pinkie Pie was another difficult call, like Rarity. I mean, you know what happens when a new pony shows up in town, and that happens. And Trixie goes to the party, and it's not bad. But Lyra and others warn her to be very careful with how she handles things, or she'll get locked in an infinite party loop of some kind. I mean, this is even more subtle than Rarity, but probably also along the same lines: she's laser-focused on doing one thing, to a fault, regardless of what others think. Insensitive and manic.
Last, then, is Fluttershy, but I want to go back to Rarity for a moment. One thing that really messed with my expectations was that, when Trixie went to check up on how the decorations were coming, Rarity had a ton of sketches to show her. Of course, she had nothing done, and I suspect perfectionism was at play there, but she did, eventually, deliver the promised decorations, and they were just as good as she said they would be. Not something I expected!
Fluttershy, in the same way, is tasked with the music just like in the show… But she's too shy to actually follow through. This is basically Fluttershy with the "shy" turned up to eleven. Dash's main appearance is in this scene, too, trying to bully Trixie and Lyra out of bothering Fluttershy, over Trixie's objections since someone has to do the music and why can't she just deliver what was promised? So Fluttershy is introverted to the point of being completely useless, and Rainbow Dash is a Very Bad Friend for sheltering and indulging her instead of gently encouraging her to overcome her problems.
The mane six in this 'verse are a good idea. We're taking preexisting negative character traits and expanding on them. And why? Because otherwise, they would either be A) too out of character to be recognizable, or B) ideal candidates for the Elements of Harmony. If you want to remove the mane six from the roster for your AU, this is how you do it. And even if the execution wasn't 100% perfect, the concept was solid and there's definitely room for improvement further exploration.
Speaking of room for exploration, there are two characters left to talk about: Luna and Corona.
Luna, for all that she appears for a handful of scenes (being first in Canterlot and then imprisoned on the moon) is actually a lot of fun. I hope she shows up more in later Lunaverse stories, because I can see so many possibilities for her. As is fairly usual for her these days, she's characterized as a very behind-the-scenes kind of ruler, and much is made of how much politicking and intrigued happens in her court. Trixie's "banishment" to Ponyville is meant to be one such sort of intrigue, and forms a rift between them for a while. But Luna is also fun-loving, and an artist who enjoys showing off. She carries a lot of ancient baggage, too. I like her.
Corona on the other hand… Okay, come on, this was not a good villain, I'm sorry. She's op af, as the kids say, one of those villains who cannot be overcome because she's always thought two steps ahead of the heroes. If not for the Elements Ex Machina, they would have had no hope of actually defeating her. And as it is, they actually don't. The Elements strip her power away, but for whatever reason, Celestia remains arrogant and unrepentant and is able to escape (which answered one of my main questions after Boast Busted).
And I really don't get why. I mean, her great downfall isn't arrogance so much as she's delusional. She keeps getting angry at ponies when they call her "Corona" and not "Celestia". Her catchphrase is "I am the sun!" as though that protects her from reality. She professes to care about her subjects, since she is the rightful Queen of Equestria and all, kidnapping them, yes, but making sure those kidnapped are not harmed. Y'know, so long as everyone else does what she says. She even cares about things like making sure the government will be able to run properly with her at the head. Sometimes, I found myself wondering why she was the villain! And then she would vacillate back into "Saturday morning cartoon" territory and remove all doubt.
She was confusing. I got the sense she was the kind of character the author found they really enjoyed writing and were loathe to give up. She has to be defeated by the end; that's how the story goes, that's how to write a satisfying conclusion to this kind of adventure. Without her defeat, the country has ten days of nonstop sun to look forward to. Which, by the way, is about the most directly villainous thing she does. But she just never goes away. She never stops. She can't be put down by the heroes, they're just there to act as conduits for the things which can. And once she's put down, she gets to laugh another day because…
Okay, big spoilers, there's one more character I want to talk about. Zecora was the worst part of this story by far.
See, when Trixie and the gang enter the Everfree, they really have no idea what to do. Trixie knows about the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, they have Raindrops for aerial reconnaissance, but they're really fucking lost. Then who should they run into but everyone's favorite rhyming zebra! (Aside: To answer another of my Boast Busted questions, Spike lives with her.) She helps guide them through the forest, only Trixie starts getting suspicious because they keep running into these obstacles that have every chance of shutting their adventure down permanently. And I of course, oh Trixie, you so racist, trust the zebra.
And then I find out Trixie was right. I was so angry.
Shades of The Immortal Game past, Zecora is the reason Corona escaped the sun. She's the reason Celestia gets away at the end. She's a fucking double-agent, and I am so very angry about this, if for no other reason than it flies directly in the face of the episode which introduced her in canon. Zecora got shafted; she got thrown under the narrative bus for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom.
And the author explained things to me; you can go to the last-ish page of comments on the story and find our discussion of just what's being planned for her. But unless you have RainbowDoubleDash spoiling plans for future sequels, there's no way to know that there's a reason for any of this to happen. It just looks like outright character assassination. Even the mane six get off better than Zecora did.
I'm still mad, you guys.
It's been long enough that I don't remember if I had any kind of plan going into this or was moving toward any kind of conclusion. Let's scour my notes for other things worth talking about!
- There's at least some comedy in this story that really works. My favorite bits involved Trixie fantasizing about what Luna might do to her if she screws up. Granted, she sets about screwing everything up on purpose anyway, but that's Trixie for you. She and Luna have a much different relationship than Celestia and Twilight in canon.
- Oh yeah, there's a Cupcakes reference in here. <.< It's oblique, but you can't miss it if you're at all familiar with the story.
- Since Apple Bloom is part of the Apple Trust, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are not a thing. We get one scene showing that Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are friends, at least, and I really appreciated that.
- Trixie's major internal conflict stems from finding a letter from the previous Night Court representative to Ponyville, Blueblood, informing her that it's an appointment for tainted nobles to be banished from Canterlot to. This is what sets her up to fail as she gamely sabotages the festival, all because Blueblood was lying and how was anyone supposed to know that?
- Dinky is fucking precious.
- There's a thread in this story about Luna being a picky eater — Trixie wants more than just apples at the festival for this reason — but there's also another thread about Trixie enjoying eating bizarre combinations of food, so I often had to wonder just how biased she was in her reporting. :)
- To add to the list of "things that seem like they would have been cooler in the show but actually aren't": Corona and Luna have it way the fuck out when she gets back from the sun. This is a neat idea, climactic confrontations between gods are always awesome, but it goes on for too long and takes the focus away from our main characters. That's why you've got to measure out your epic fight scenes.
- This fails the
LunaCelestia Test, and also the Zecora Test, though not for lack of trying. It does not fail either spectacularly, in other words. - One set of descriptions I did appreciate was the first look into the Everfree Forest. The festival is held in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, yet despite the trees being leafless and the sun shining high in the sky, it's still creepy and offputting.
- The chapter where we get to know all the characters via Cheerilee's ice-breaker is actually my favorite. Worth mentioning.
- I really hated that they use "ether" to restore magical power. What's next, phoenix down?
- There's a surprisingly good moment where Spike gives them a thumbs-up, and Trixie has no idea what it means. The description was horrendously awkward and thus fit the situation perfectly; I was duly impressed.
- Though Twilight doesn't show up in this story, Shining Armor does, and gets to be wildly awesome for one scene. He was the second biggest surprise cameo after Spike.
- I don't think being invisible would stop someone from sleeping because their eyelids were transparent. Just saying. <.<;
- Disappointingly, I still don't know what Don Rocinante is. I'm assuming it's Don Quixote, though I don't know how you get a name like that. It definitely seems to be an in-universe play and/or novel of some kind.
- And in the one bit near the end that I ended up reading myself, there was a slew of have/of confusion. Like, "should of" and so forth.
I feel I've been pretty negative about Longest Night overall. It's not terrible, but I was disappointed. Boast Busted was such a great story, and I wanted this to meet and surpass that greatness. Instead, the writing backslid and the story was often sidelined to discuss headcanon. It succeeded at being rushed and a slog at the same time. It's making me question whether or not I want to continue with the 'verse. I think I will, but I'm going to be far less forgiving of the next story.
3/5
Surprisingly not the best introduction to this AU.
Man I remember reading that long ago. This story has all the flaws that the real series opener has as well. Way too much exposition, element trials that had basically nothing to do with their professed elements, and a villain who seemingly could have crushed the protagonists at any moment but didn't because reasons. That and the fact that its hard to believe the Element of Magic was able to actually establish solid friendships with the other five in a few hours, even with some life-or-death trials involved.
Alicorns in this story do seem to be genuinely near-omnipotent in a way that haven't been in the show since season 1.
I think overall this story is mostly about world-building, which pays off a ton in later stories in this universe. Celestia being an active and ongoing threat is a huge change that drives the setting and the tone in dramatic and interesting ways, probably best of all in " The Return of Tambelon."
Rociante was the name of Don Quixote’s horse, so .... reference!
As a writer of the Lunaverse... I actually really love Longest Night, longest Day.
Lunaverse Season 1 is a bit more about the Lunaverse-six becoming friends. In the show after "Friendship is Magic" you sort of could be forgiven for thinking that most everypony in season 1 has known each other and been friends for years; in the Lunaverse, a lot more effort is put into showing them getting to know each other better.
Or at least that's one excuse. Another is that I jut wasn't as good a writer back then as I am now. Looking back on LNLD there's a lot I'd do differently with the benefit of both hindsight and an extra seven years of writing experience under my belt.
In fairness, the Dazzlings didn't exist yet at the time of writing LNLD. When I started this story the most recent episode was Season 2's "Putting Your Hoof Down", and it ended during the gap between Seasons 2 and 3 of FiM. Twilight wasn't even an alicorn yet, Sunset Shimmer didn't exist yet, Hell, Shining Armor didn't exist yet, he was a late addition to LNLD and retroactively added to Boast Busted.
The Longest Night. It's because it happens on the winter solstice, i.e., the longest night of the year.
Cheerilee was, for me, the hardest Element to pin down, exactly because of what you're saying: the Element was more-or-less tailor-made for Pinkie, but I didn't want my Element of Laughter to just be a Pinkie clone. You'll note that Cheerilee is the only one of the Luna-6 that didn't show up in Boast Busted in any capacity. I did consider switching her out for Roseluck, or some other pony, but truth be told fitting anypony into Laughter instead of Pinkie would have been just as hard, especially, again, given that we're still in the middle of Season 2 when I wrote Boast Busted and LNLD.
Other authors in the Lunaverse later did a much better job expanding her, partially by leaning on how Celestia in the show, plus others, have also referred to it as representing "optimism" and other such euphemisms. Cheerilee expresses her Element in that way, by basically being perpetually glass half-full. She's not about raucous laughter, she's about making sure ponies are never too down, keeping their spirits up.
Actually, no it wasn't, that just sort of accidentally happened while I was writing it. What I wanted to do was establish the Mane-6 as being just a bit more flawed, so that later stories could use them in antagonistic (not necessarily villainous) roles if myself or other authors wanted. Well, four of the Mane-6. Twilight was already covered in Boast Busted, and my intention with Pinkie Pie was always that she was the same pony, a sort of multiversal singularity who's the same no matter what universe you're in.
But, again, I just wasn't as good a writer seven years ago.
Yeah, this.
You have every right to be. If I could go back in time and re-write this, a big change would be Zecora. I'd make it apparent from the start that she's playing a longer game.
I mean...at the start of the show they weren't either. Apple Bloom didn't meet Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo until the episode "Call of the Cutie", the 12th of Season 1. Conversely Sweetie and Scootaloo did already seem to know each other in that episode.
That being said, yeah, the Cutie Mark Crusaders don't form, although the three of them are still friends - it's just a larger circle of friends, with Dinky Doo, Snips, Snails, Twist, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Tootsie Flute, Truffle Shuffle, Bee Bop, Featherweight, Rumble, Alula, Firelock, and Pipsqueak all part of it.
Rocinante is the name of Quixote's horse. It's sort-of like having a Legend of Epona story, or a Lord of the Rings knockoff where Gandalf is replaced by Shadowfax, or talking about an ancient conqueror and naming him Bucephalus (the name of Alexander the Great's horse)
The next story is Family Matters. Bring tissues.
5082601
My touchstone for alicorns is basically "Superman from the Justice League cartoons if he was also a 20th level D&D wizard". So not omnipotent, but very powerful. It was about a middle-ground interpretation of the alicorns at the time that I began writing the Lunaverse, as back in Season 2 Celestia and Luna were treated by the fandom as being anywhere from "a bit stronger than Twilight" to capital-G GODS, in the Judeo-Christian sense.
I wanted them powerful enough that without a lot of preparation there was no way a mortal pony could take them unless they were very powerful, while still having them be well short of actually omnipotent and nothing remotely resembling omniscient.
5082635 Man those were the days. Celestia didn't just move the sun, she created it! And she certainly wasn't afraid of chickens.
5082664
Actually that is hilarious and I am so totally canonizing that in the Lunaverse at some point. It's exactly the kind of weird, left-field quirk that I love seeing in characters.
I have flirted with the idea here and there that when Celestia says "I am the Sun", though, she is being literal, and that Luna is literally the Moon as well. The alicorns are sort of...more, then they appear to be, they're intrinsically tied into their respective celestial bodies. The physical horse form that ponies get to see is the real them, but it isn't all of them. This is why, for example, when the Sun approached too close to the Moon in LNLD and burned its surface, Luna cried out in pain.
I actually mostly like this because I want to at some point turn the usual interpretation of this ("YOU CANNOT CONCEIVE THE TRUE FORM") onto its head, that Celestia and Luna and Cadance in some ways find mortal ponies to be impressive because they can actually fit all of who and what they are into a single body. They don't have to spread themselves out across an entire celestial body the way Celestia and Luna have to, or fold their being up on itself over and over again the way Cadance does. They can just be without having to put any thought into being.
5082623
Now I just feel dumb! :B No wonder I didn't figure it out.
5082633
100% willing to believe as I continue on.
They were so close, though! I really had to wrap my head around "this was written before Rainbow Rocks". I think you can still be credited with predicting them. :D
ooooh
Bee Bop? O.o Who the heck is Bee Bop? Not even searching derpibooru really answers this question. :B
5082670
Bee Bop is a background foal. Remember: ancient history. There weren't all that many named foals to work with either. At the time of starting LNLD, Rumble didn't exist yet. And also for awhile the Lunaverse had a beef with Rumble because he got a character tag before Raindrops did even though Rumble in "Hurricane Fluttershy" only had a single line and basically no other meaningful appearances after that until much, much later in the show, while Raindrops had been in the opening credits since Season 2 (talking with Berry Pinch, just before Twilight spots her friends).
But then Raindrops got a character tag, and all was well. And in any event the point is that the Lunaverse sort of had to grow in its own direction when the show wasn't providing us material to work with, and as a result some mere background ponies from the show got a fair bit of development in the Lunaverse.
Not only did I predict them, I predicted Tirek and friggin' Grogar.
Also amusingly in the story An Early Reunion I have a pony named Starlight in a fairly significant role, although he's very different from the canon Starlight that we eventually got.
5082667 Yeah, I personally prefer the more grounded, depowered, quirky alicorns of seasons 5-9, but that idea of them being the sun and the moon is certainly an interesting one. One of the really old, really famous stories used to call Celestia "The Pony Who is Also the Sun."
And as for the chickens, I think it was inspired by the comics, where Celestia and Spike fought off an army of cockatrices attacking Canterlot in one of the early issues. That would give anyone alektorophobia.
5082670
Bebop? He's that dude on the right.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3e/Bebop_and_Rocksteady.jpg/300px-Bebop_and_Rocksteady.jpg
... what?
I used to be very fond of the Lunaverse in particular Raindrops. Lyra's characterization influenced me in writing Pirene, at least. I admired its commitment to multi-person, multi-arc stories. It definitely had its flaws, though.
5082719
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows was actually worth it, if you didn't see it. They nailed Beebop and Rocksteady.
5082833
I did, in fact, see that flick! Much better than the first reboot movie (not that such is a high bar), but Bebop & Rocksteady were easily the best part of that movie. It worked best when they just leaned into the gonzo kitchen-sink nature of the old TMNT comics/cartoon.
(Stephen Amell's Casey Jones left a lot to be desired, however).
Though the O.G. 1990 TMNT movie remains one of the best comic book adaptations of pretty much ever. The sequels ... not so much.
5082833
5082847
It's just fucking insane how good the first live-action TMNT movie is. 1990. 1990! How the everloving fuck did they make something so good in 1990?
5083170
Well, it was an independent film, so that might have helped. The highest-grossing of all time until The Blair Witch Project, I believe.
5083173
Pretty much. Eastman & Laird we’re directly involved, after all.
Fight choreography by a Golden Harvest stunt team helped a lot too. And, y’know, FX by Jim Henson puppeteers, if I recall correctly.
Yeah, that sounds like a missed opportunity, and the missing knowledge of Magic just baffling given the rest.
There's a reason I love late season Trixie episodes! It sounds like they have a lot in common.
Didn't the Lunaverse start in the S1-S2 hiatus, or early-ish S2? That is to say: Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and sorta-Twilight developed families later, didn't really have them in the mainly S1-based analog. Even with Pinkie, I don't think it was that established at the time how much the Pies were still a part of her life, though she also had the Cakes). Even with Twilight all there really was was that she had parents growing up. And turned them into plants that one time.
Fluttershy has to be the beneficiary of parental largesse or something. It seems like in principle she could be a vet or whatever, but there's no way she could have handled the pony interaction that entails prior to S1.
So what you're saying is... this is an AU to Horizon's Versebreakers! OK, not really, since I'd figure the siren singing magic is distinct from his musical number magic, but one can dream. Sadly sounds like it wasn't as well implemented in any case.
I assume then this adventure lasted a lot longer than the apparent time in the premiere?
The mane six deconstructions do sound interesting, and plausible ways to sideline them a la "Return of Harmony".
I'd prefer to imagine that it's the other kind of ether, like they were scoring it from pony-Hunter S. Thompson. :V
5085721
Fear and Loathing in the Everfree Forest. XD
5085804
Also extra relevant given the one comic review and your bat pony name discovery: "We can't stop here, this is bat country!" :D
5085721
The first chapter of the next story in the series, Family Matters, addresses this. Also yes, you got it in one.
“Oh, no,” Fluttershy explained, looking embarrassed. “Um, I don’t mean an actual part. We’re invested in it. It means that any money that the factory makes, my family gets a share of. Um, a large share. A controlling share, actually. Then we put the money we get into the bank, and it collects interest. That means that the banks give us money just for having money.”