Sanity-checking and Questions about Copyright

Warning: The following blog will contain spoilers for the current incarnation of my story idea. Please DO read it if you are willing to bear that risk, and offer suggestions for how it may be improved or for things that would fit well. There are a few parts that I feel are a bit too much like crossovers or that might break immersion by being "Look, suddenly a ___!"

I wish to talk about introducing AU settings hopefully without getting too many people either confused or whining at me for not being canon. I suspect that it will be hard to avoid the last entirely. Please read the outline through before commenting: I will be working with the ultimate unreliable narrator, and even the known laws of (magical) physics (basically, the ones from more-or-less-canon) will be overturned by the time I'm through. You will still need to rely partially on "because I say it makes sense in context" because I can't truly handle all the minutiae from this short description, unfortunately, but do let me know if you see anything weird. I may have an explanation I can answer with, or it may be a real issue.

My version of Equestria draws some inspiration from a few sources: My own idea of how magic might work, with inspirations from Worm and Eragon (fairly minor, actually, but now I have names for stuff, so it looks like there's more); two of David Weber's stories/series (Mutineer's Moon and Safehold); RHJunior's Great Alicorn Hunt; and the excellent works by Alara Rogers and Jordan179 (less direct, but some of the stuff about ancient history and the origin of the Nightmare may come up. I'm not sure).

I don't plan on having any crossovers, items, or characters from any settings other than MLP, but I wanted the mechanics of the story to be something the reader gets to discover. Essentially, the world of Equestria isn't what it looks like on the surface, and even the path that gets us there is already heavily AU before accounting for the underlying mechanics (think the Plato's Cave conjecture, with a nice layer of Sunset Reset or The Great Alicorn Hunt papered over it, rather than canon). I wanted to point out all those arbitrary laws of magic or even the seemingly-obvious stuff like "Of course levitation makes an aura appear around the object" and try to figure out why it all happens, while using some sort of pseudotechnological setting rather than something as unscientific as magic. So, instead of life-force and harmonic magical auras, it's Shards* and Manton Effects. And stuff glows because it looks cool, serves as a warning, and was designed intelligently to be internally consistent with a set of physics that not only doesn't exist, but has never existed. Its only purpose is basically to be an API for the underlying true mechanics and to redirect research from finding out the truth.

Part of the reason for the no-crossover rule is that I don't want to risk a copyright notice for the story, since if I'm going to write this abomination I want people to be able to read it (or at least have the chance to). Of course, it's based on a number of major events, characters, and places *in MLP* (even if I intend to drive canon otherwise far off the rails), so it's debatable how original it'd truly be. Anyone reading this who has actually sold a MLP story, please let me know the legalities of all this. I don't actually think I'd sell it (you all get to read it for free! Rejoice!), but I at least want to engage in some flank-covering.

Short summary (very incomplete, and only partially because even I have no idea how it'll end up going):
Somewhen a long time ago:

1. Mankind discovers a funny planet covered in crystals. Investigating, they awaken them, causing them to scan the ship and its computers.
2. The crystals are interested in what the humans managed, and create minds in their image to interact with them and discover more information.
3. They either screw up, or never think it through, and create ponies, but not alicorns. Thus they have to deal with the fact that their research subjects, right when they start to find some really interesting information or learn enough to be useful, tend to die of old age or statistics.
4. There's a war, which may bear some resemblance to both/either the end of the First Imperium and the Melconian War, assuming that I do enough research on what those were.
5. The ponies run for it, and are left on the ship a LONG time.
6. Faust is the AI (Unique Scholar Template #250, or 0xFA-UST) of the ship, who somehow managed to gain magic of her own.
7. Faust terraforms a rogue dwarf planet (is that the term for the small ones that don't have nearby galactic neighbors? Astronomy isn't my strong point. Please let me know) before waking everypony up from cryosleep.
8. Faust creates a pony avatar for scientific research and interaction. This is the basis for the myths of Queen Majesty. Her research results in alicorns, when a pony is deemed interesting enough to the Shard (a good tip for this is to find out something deeply related to that pony's true talent--which may be canon, or perhaps some story I read and now don't recall invented the backstory for Cadance?), it releases certain permissions, namely additional power, biological immortality, and the ability to respawn if actually killed.
9. The downfall of "Dream Valley." I have not gotten a good idea for how or why this happens, but is likely to be similar to what happened in Safehold: someone got ticked off with her plans to eventually return to the stars, and dropped Ortillery on her stronghold before rewriting history.

(Skipping a few other relevant ideas that would happen around the disappearance of the Pillars, Luna's fall, Discord, etc)
Modern Day - 100 years (ponies live to be around 250-350 years in this. Granny Smith is (seemingly) something of an exception. She's not an alicorn (that they know of), but is so badflank that even Death goes "nope."):

1. Sunset Shimmer, the current protegee of Princess Celestia, realizes that the Mare in the Moon is going to return. She begins trying to obtain power to stop Luna's return, but does not realize that she'd need friends for this. Celestia is also a bit disturbed by the fact that, as her student was never told that it's her sister (cryptic mentor FTW), Sunset's coming up with rather final solutions.
2. Celestia tries the "go make friends" routine. Sunset is a bit high-strung and is mostly conscious by judicious application (read: ludicrous amounts) of caffeine, and interprets it as "I no longer want you as my student." If I can recall where I read the idea (they did a better job than I'd likely manage), I'll try to include the part where she thinks of Celestia as her adopted mother, but has never really heard anything that lets her know that Celestia feels that way (she does, but when you've been ruling a squabbling batch of nobles for a millennium after losing your sister, it's hard to show emotion).
3. Sunset grabs a bunch of useful items and bugs off through the mirror portal. This does not lead to a strange alternate bipedal universe, but one of the old landing craft that brought the ponies to Equestria. The mirror is broken, or perhaps something else happens (ideas?), but the ship's faltering computer detects that Sunset may well die, and uploads her mind into the VR system.
4. I have not yet decided whether I want the ship to be a craft bought from the humans (and thus, causing her memories and the ship's VR data to form a small slice of the insanity that is the EG setting while she's "dreaming"), but she eventually learns enough of the science of Faust's day to make herself a nice new body to work from. Yes, she'll be somewhat OP, but will mainly just serve as a voice of reason if the ponies go too potato at any point, and help as an outside agent to figure out things about magic for the larger story. There is a reason that I think it might be useful for her to have the EG adventure, even if I think it would be insane to actually have as a real thing in that universe, to happen, including the part where she meets the rest of the M6 even if there's no reason (that you yet know of--see "other crap" note 7) for her to dream of ponies yet to be born.

Modern Day, or at least ~ Episode 1's modern day

1. She finally wakes up... as a pegasus. (Again, there's a reason, but I'm worried this will seem random at the time for the reader)
2. She travels to what she recalls was a small town far enough from Canterlot to be safe from her mentor, but close enough to find out if she's still Wanted (and I don't mean the "she's appreciated" way!). It's Ponyville. This does not work as intended...
3. Instead of what she expects, she finds out that Nightmare Moon was already defeated and reformed (which rather short-circuits what she recalls as her main goal for the last few years, and leaves her a bit more stable but wondering what to do next) and that the town is a lot larger than she remembered.

4. Meanwhile:

   • She uses older and/or Unicorn terminology (pegasi don't have "mentors" among other things) and Purple Smart begins to take notes.
   • She realizes that some of her dreams at the ship featured ponies she actually ends up meeting.
   • She is unaware that one of her new friends was her replacement, and also one confusing day from mentioning her to Celestia (which eventually happens).
   • Twilight does not know about Sunset, Celestia's previous student, because she left long before the former was born. Fixing plot holes, yay!

Future Events replacing the MLP timeline:

• The events of Parting Words happen. I really think that this is something that should, at least in the abstract, happen, and I want to see Celestia break out of her cryptic mentor role. Also the SEP field will be useful, and I want to have a quip about Celly's mustache collection (is that my weird humor striking again?).
• She tries to fly... after optimizing the innate spell that pegasi use (note that all ponies are equally capable of magic. The "interface" is a bit different, and it's against modern, common belief that it's possible, so most have not even tried since around Luna's day. Let's say that there end up rumors of a new Shadowcaster...) resulting in a "Stealth" Rainboom (it had no visual effects beyond high-speed flight until she tried to stop) that blows out half the town's windows and dispatches Lyra and Bon Bon as investigators.
• The Mane Six all ascend to alicorns (much as per The Great Alicorn Hunt) and Celestia shares with them information about what little they know about ascension (see this for some of the theory, although I'm not following that exactly, or at all for the most part). Of other note is the fact that the wielders of the Elements all seem to end up ascending, which Celestia reveals is part of his theory; while the Pillars could never wield the Elements, Star Swirl did do research on them. She had never said anything before because she wasn't sure it would actually work.

• Events proceed somewhat similarly, but with changes (no order; really incomplete):

  • Discord engineers the Tirek incident. He knew that he couldn't truly defeat him, but he could help provide the last Key and help stop Tirek permanently by letting someone else solve the problem. He got both thanked and yelled at for this plan, because it is considered bad form to endanger a nation with a Xanatos Gambit. If that even counts as one, since they may well have not forgiven him at the time, and he couldn't reveal it for it to work...
  • Sunset, having had diplomatic training due to having had more time, being Celestia's de-facto daughter, etc, defuses the Gilda, Zecora, and Trixie situations by pointing out various obvious facts. The Mane Six also react a bit better during the golden ticket episode (I believe there's a story where this happened (was it the Celestia's Tiny Student series?)), and realize ahead of time that they probably would not enjoy the Gala, but decide to go anyway when the other tickets arrive.
  • Sunset, having tagged along with the Mane Six (at this point, she will have cleared the air with Celestia) to Cadance's wedding, detects and shuts down the changelings' methods of drawing energy from other ponies, but realizes that they didn't have a choice. Rather than banishing the changelings, Cadance and Shining Armor defeat and then negotiate with them. Celestia reveals that the Crystal Empire is due to return soon. The Sombra fight will be harder, but they'll have help...

• Eventually, their research begins to reveal the true secrets of magic (I may draw inspiration from TGAH again here), the key notes being:

  • The Elements of Harmony are a backdoor to magic itself. Think of them as a cluster-trigger to an unlocked Queen Administrator. With consensus from their wielders, they may modify attributes of others' magic. Tirek got the 'rm -rf' version of this, as an aside. They were a bit angry with him.
  • Star Swirl's final spell is basically a self-targeting version of this.
  • They get back in contact with the Faust AI, still living in the moon (the disguised starship that brought them all to Equus), and she assists them in unlocking ascension and immortality for all, as was her original goal. The Shards are also happier with this, since they weren't really able to fix this on their own, but also considered it a problem.**
  • The story ends as the Shroud, the unseen barrier that made the planet invisible from the outside universe, shatters, and the planet itself jumps into warp, for them all to reach to the stars once more. I don't think there would be any real sequels, but a crossover at that point would be fun.

Other crap that didn't fit in the outline, but will probably appear in the story (meaning that it's my headcanon for this AU):

1. Celestia/Luna were two orphans found and raised by Star Swirl. He and the other Pillars vanished about 40 years after C&L grew up.
2. Discord was an eccentric scientist researching the origins of magic back in Faust's day. He got eaten by his own spacial warp, and came back a bit insane and a lot more powerful. Perhaps he found the answer. Perhaps the answer drove him mad. Asking him hasn't been very informative...
3. C&L go by "Princess" in honor of Queen Majesty and her lost enclave, which is still regarded much as we do the Garden of Eden even by a species that actually can go visit the Fields of Elysium or the Pits of Tartarus (see that bit about the Eldunari below). Faust finds this endearing.
4. The Nightmare is essentially a corrupted Shard, details not yet known. It got Stygian, partially escaped, took over Sombra, partially escaped again, took over Luna, and was finally pasted during the events of the show's beginning. This resulted in it finally being partitioned enough to be defeated for good and also provides an ascending difficulty scale for the nascent Elements.
5. Sunset actually ascended, but basically turned into an Earth-pony/Pegasus hybrid since, when the ship absorbed her, her personal Shard got confused. Ponies aren't supposed to leave their original forms, so it thought she was still a unicorn. Better yet, alicorns are capable of shapeshifting. If she had only tried to get her horn back, things would have gone a bit differently!
6. Changelings were the result of an ancient alicorn (or maybe a unicorn trying to solve mortality for herself, which would make more sense) doing a few experiments that weren't quite sane. She basically ended up a multi-bodied hivemind, but lost her natural energy regeneration.
7. There's a short story (I forget which one, but it may be in my library) where friends quite literally make you more powerful. Now consider Pinkie Pie, who is friends with literally everyone in town. Twilight doesn't deal with this fact well. I'm actually drawing on this a bit for how Changelings feed, how Tirek worked (think more of the Butcher from Worm; He'd co-opt the ponies' Shards for his own gain, like a virus, rather than stealing some ephemeral innate force), for the Pinkie Sense, and for the power of the Sisters. It's basically the Shard Network from Worm (although I think some wuxia novels have something similar with the "Power of the Empire"), meaning that they share [data] and power in the background. Sometimes they share with their ponies too...
8. The sun and moon are actually "small" satellites orbiting the planet put in place by Faust. The original control systems were lost in the fall of Dream Valley and the first Discord Incident. The weather, however, is merely the ponies being OCD to the point that the weather got messed up to the point that they need to help. Similarly, the wildlife is actually mostly domesticated by this point, but pony magic (minor Master effect, anyone?) is also to blame for their cooperation.

*I'm aware that Wildbow has released information that the Shards really just wanted to be able to solve a population crisis, not that they wanted to solve entropy or any sort of high-minded problem. It might even be said that they had already cracked entropy, if one considers their multiversal existence and the amounts of energy they regularly threw around. Fortunately, this isn't a Worm fanfic, and I'm not actually using his Shards. Think more of the Eldunari, where they provide the dragon's power and serve as a backup of the mind even in death. Just, here, they exist in a pocket realm, house the true mind of the pony (note again the unreliable narrator: The ship didn't exactly uplodad Sunset's mind, since it had no mind there to upload...), and provide the power for magic. Sunset has a heck of a time researching magic since there's no scientific explanation behind their functioning since "magic" doesn't actually exist in the first place. I'm still not sure on what motivation I want my not-Shards to have, though...

**This part is, aside from the original war, Sunset's ship, and the moon-ship itself are the parts that feel most disconnected to me. Admittedly, this may be because I haven't actually figure out how they do connect, but I'm not sure how to actually do that either.