Sun and Hearth Post-Update Blog: Chapter 18 - The Battle One Always Loses · 1:17am Sep 18th, 2019
Post-update blog for Sun and Hearth Chapter 18 - The Battle One Always Loses
Spoilers below the cut.
Only three more of these to go!
End credits:
Author's Notes:
So, as I was stalking myself last night I looked at the stats page for Sun and Hearth, and I glanced at the referrals section, just to see if anyone had talked about me ever. Among the normal google links I saw one called "plagscan.com." I had an inkling of what that might be from the name, but I checked, and sure enough it appears to be a plagiarism checking site. Since the link was coming from them, I assume that in their checking suspicious samples one of them matched my fic?
I find this very, very weird. I wish I knew the context.
Anyway! The fight between Luna and Celestia was one of the other scenes I had to finish this story to show people.
I find the idea of a world with realpolitik but also nukes powered by friendship and true love to be way more interesting. Leaders have to keep that stuff in mind.
Also, when Luna tells you that this isn't really a great life direction to head, you should probably stop arguing and listen.
The scene with Princess Astra, on the other hand, was not one of my favorites. I don't like introducing characters without time to give them a lot of character. But Celestia's reaction was the important thing, so…
World Building:
But let's talk about Princess Astra!
Princess Astra is an ascended alicorn, like Cadance and Twilight. She was born a pegasus in Hippocampus, about seven hundred years before Equestria. She was the first pegasus to do a sonic rainboom, though at the time it was known as "thunder of colors."
The legends closest to truth say that one day, in an attempt to do something even more impressive, she flew higher than anypony had before and befriended the stars. In truth it was over several years, but she absorbed their magic and learned to read the future in them. The day she truly understood them, so that she could see each path the future might take and tell a pony's cutie mark from birth, she transformed into the first alicorn the world had ever known.
But just as she understood them, she understood that she must not use this magic for war or it would bring the wrath of the stars on the piny race. This was a bit of a problem in Hippocampus. The commanders were… not understanding.
So she wandered the world for a century, before finding a camp of ponies who had been expelled from the tribes. There she founded Star's Gallop, a small kingdom compared to the three nations (let alone Equestria), but peaceful and free.
She ruled for several centuries before meeting and marrying Beacon Light, a pegasus who left Hippocampus of his own accord. They had two daughters (duh), both born alicorns.
When they were both still young (Celestia had recently gotten her cutie mark) Astra knew that a grave danger was coming, but afterwards a glorious dawn like the pony race had never known. With that hope in her heart she prepared for war without the help of the stars, and when Tirek arrived she flew out to stop him, her husband at her side. Both fell to Tirek just days before Star Swirl arrived, but when Star Swirl heard of Astra's prophecy of a new dawn he stayed to tutor the young alicorn princesses.
Questions:
How much does it bug you that I spell Star Swirl as two words? I could go though and change it, if you guys care.
Do you think Cookie intentionally has a "perfectly competent" painting on his wall, or do you think he just doesn't pay much attention to his art? I mean, in roughly fifteen hundred years you'd think he could have picked up a work of genius somewhere...
I’m guessing Cookie likes the inherent imperfection he sees in the artwork.
I want to know the story behind that plagscan link too, as well as why one of my stories was linked to from a pet hospice site
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I honestly go back and forth between Starswirl and Star Swirl so often, I treat it as one of those little details that's never quite pinned down across pony probability space.
And yeah, when Luna warns you about slippery slopes, it's best to listen.
I agree! And it's interesting, you know, (or tragic) that in a real sense we do live in that world now. It just...isn't as obvious. No flashing lights and rainbow blasts. But look around the Earth and you'll see pretty quickly that the denial of certain moral realities, let's call them, brings unbelievable suffering. Followed by death. It's even been posited death itself is the result of a transgression of transcendental law.
Now, we do have actual nukes, and those are pretty flashy. Come to think of it, our world sort of works in reverse, doesn't it. It isn't the moral good which gets the light show, like in Equestria, but the moral bad.
I hadn't even noticed until you mentioned it. :P
What was Astra's personality like, when she was a pegasus? That she did the sonic rainboom invokes impressions of Rainbow Dash and her spunkyness for me.
Star Swirl vs. Starswirl, eh doesn't really bother me either way.
I don't recall the painting, but to me, he doesn't seem to be the type to care, or perhaps I'm completely wrong.
Learning more about your take on Ancient and even Prehistoric Equestria would be fascinating, like Twilight I am something of an armchair history buff.