An Apology, a Celebration to Our Show and Fandom, and Story Scraps Part 1

Well, this is embarrassing.

After the last blogpost where I made a big show about being back and writing more content, I fell off the wagon, and fairly hard too. I haven't written anything in pretty much a year. Work was soul crushing. I went back to school to pick up a second Bachelor's Degree, which I split time with my job to do. As more and more days slipped by without inspiration, the numbing futility of it all set in, and I just gave up. I'm sad to say I did, because really you're never suppose to say 'die.' Die I did though. I have to admit even posting the 'I'm Not Dead' blog entry was more to motivate myself towards future content than because I had written content then and there. I'm really sorry it turned out the way it has.

So you're probably wondering why I'm even posting this. Why am I even here?

Well, it's the Sunday after the series finale. Life, work, and school are hell, like they always are, but I made the time to come into the afterparty, so to speak. Am I back? Honestly, no. I am here to lay bare my secrets; what plots I had half built, what visions will never be, the works. This is my way to pay tribute I suppose to a show which has brought me so much satisfaction, stimulation, and even a real life friend of my own. We strove together to finish our own failed stories, acting as each other's editor, counselor, and listener when times were tough. Though we've only know each other for about five or six years now, though we argue about so much, he's my best friend and like a brother to me. Friendship really is Magic. A toast then, to the pastel ponies who brought two down on their luck men together, and to hundreds of thousands of the rest of us who were touched by them, whether for a month, a year, or the whole run. Salut.

Now then. To the nitty gritty.

OF DUNES AND DJINN

The story I was working on actively before I quit was a tale called Of Dunes and Djinn. It was my take, in the most broad of strokes, of the first Equestria Girls movie. For example, it was all still set in Equestria. No magic mirror, no high school drama, no Prom antics. Instead, Twilight, freshly christened princess but minus the wings, was acting as a delegate and ambassador on a relief aid campaign to the far off lands of Saddle Arabia. Accompanied by Spike and Zecora, they would set out via airship across land and sea to arrive at their sandy destination, only to be stranded by an attack of energy beings known as djinn. These creatures were introduced along with the setting itself in With Good Intentions, an origin story for AJUO's antagonist and Revival of Chaos' token unliked teammate Bunsen Burner. Their airship damaged, the trio and the crew, minus the Saddle Arabian ambassador who came with them to call for aid, are saved by the mysterious Archsorceress of the Saddle Arabian court, who has a pointed but peculiar interest in the absence of Princess Celestia. The story continues inside the capital of the trade empire of Saddle Arabia, the immortal city of Baghdad. Yes, that Baghdad. In my narrative/timeline, if you're needing some memory jogging, is a post-apocalyptic revitalized Earth, where the extinct humans are either spoken of in whispers as the Ruined, sorcerers and conjurers who made monsters and enslaved ponies, or revered as The Upright Ones (wordplay is fun), saviors of all races for defeating Discord, and who gave their last to ensure the other races could carry on. Twilight discovers that some force seems to be coercing the Djinn into attacking the entire empire and its trade routes. The reason for this and their master is unknown, but Twilight investigates into the matter as best as she can while also trying to avoid creating an international incident on her first outing as a representative of Equestria. Long story made short, the Archsorceress is in fact Sunset Shimmer. Zecora is taken hostage by her as it is revealed that she is host to a djinn, which Sunset intends to absorb along with as many others as possible to achieve her own uplift into an alicorn state. Her initial plan was that she would attract Celestia's attention with the djinn attacks, and that she would arrive to bear witness to her ascension, and that she would beat her former teacher in combat as her first act as the founder of a New Solar Empire. Celestia, however, was preoccupied with calming Equestria after the country-wide Changeling scare that nearly tore the region apart with violence and paranoia while she was away (See Revival of Chaos for context.) Twilight's snooping causes her to accelerate her plans, and so using zebra shamanic arts she attempts to absorb as many djinn into her being as possible. This action, rather than turning her into an alicorn, transforms her into a humanoid, demonic form much like at the end of Equestria Girls. Spike saves Zecora, who without her djinn begins to rapidly age, and then goes off to fight the transformed Sunset, using his sense of greed to voluntarily shift size and strength into a unrestrained dragon. They fight, and it is awesome. In the end though, Spike only proves a distraction for Sunset, and she defeats him with her newfound chaotic power. Twilight assists Zecora in speaking to the djinn inside of Sunset's body, all of which she then draws out of with her shamanic practice. The energy beings blast out of her violently, leaving Sunset as just a very powerful unicorn once more. Fully intending to kill the three of them, Sunset is stopped by the timely arrival of Janus, the alicorn Titan of Order, who restrains her and drops her in a pocket dimension until a cell can be prepared for her in the Royal Science Division so she can stand trial for her crimes. Celestia arrives when Janus informs her of the situation, and with the help of Luna transports the massive airship and crew back to Equestria with their magic. Celestia then has a talk with Sunset in her new jail cell, first trying to plead and reason with her, but eventually leaves her to the care of her guard and jailer Flash Sentry (See? I found a use for him!) Twilight, still confused about Sunset, talks with Celestia about her former student, and the two share a conversation about her tragic fall. The End.

If I may pause on plot to world build a bit here, I had envisioned a mythologized cosmology for the races in the East. See, zebras, or Zebharans as I call them, are a race that can channel and manipulate the magic that permeates the Earth, mostly via alchemical means rather than unicorn conjurations. The exception is by 'joining breath' with the djinn. Zebharans believe that the djinn are in fact the faint echoes of the Upright Ones, and that by communing with them, taking one into their body, they gain a connection with the past and the world itself. To outsiders this is misconstrued as necromancy or demonic possession, but this rather is a union of beings, not control of one by another. This mechanism is how Zecora became a 'djinn-breather' several hundred years ago when she joined with a very powerful but benevolent djinn, and eventually migrated into the West to Equestria.

What's also interesting though is that Zebharans believe that Discord is also a djinn, though they don't know him by that name. Instead, Zebharan shamans called him Iblis, the Djinn Lord of Discord, or just Iblis. The key thing to know about this is that djinn are not a species, but are instead a classification of beings who have achieved a state of being 'smokeless fire,' signifying their deeper, more familiar connection with the workings of the universe. In the event that serves as the foundation for Zebharan and proto-Saddle Arabian belief, Iblis (or Discord) was brought down to physical form from his original state of being pure energy; this they see as his fall, solidified (heh) with his imprisonment in stone. Just as Discord was corrupted though, so too he corrupted them, by stripping the Upright Ones souls from their bodies, cursed to drift across the sands for their acts of defiance against him. With Discord killed in the end of Revival of Chaos (spoilers), a power vacuum has opened in the cosmic hierarchy, and so any djinn that can amass power and influence in the material world, whether through fear, respect, or love, gains metaphysical strength, and if they gain enough power and influence they can embody a concept and a name, thus making them a Djinn Lord. If this sound like the Elder Scrolls to you, it definitely was an inspiration. There's also some influence from traditional Arabic tales as well if you didn't notice. This is how I was going to in later stories introduce Tirek, the Djinn Lord of Despotism (for his unrestrained tyrannical rule and empire building), Scorpan, the Djinn Lord of Decay (who has powers that cause metal to rust, flowers to wither and die, and which generally turns him into a walking wasteland), and Grogar, the Djinn Lord of Despair (whose psychological manipulations induce any number of negative moods and mental illnesses, and who can produce paranoia, mania, depression, and insanity in large populations, effectively making him a Lovecraftian Nightmare Factory)

This is where I'll end this post for now, but there is more to come, specifically the idea I had for the sequel to AJUO and Revival of Chaos. It was never fully fleshed out until now, but it deserves an entry unto itself. It was going to be called AJUO: Apocalyptica. More on that later, as I need to get some sleep and study for a Mid-Term tomorrow. For now though, peace.