Concepts & Creations: Distant Worlds · 6:16pm Aug 29th, 2021
Ah, I miss NCMares. I have Fluttercarrier framed on my wall.
Anyway, this one will be a little tricky, because there's a lot going on with it and it can be hard to explain without going into the weeds a little. I'm not sure how to start with this one. There are three stories going on consecutively, and if I focus on any one then it can seem like that's what the story is about. Guess I'll go with that anyway, and we'll begin with the least developed.
The first story is set in a world locked in the bronze age. The story takes place in a desert region surrounding a small oasis. Here two armies fight an endless war for dominance. One side is lead by Rainbow Dash, the other by Applejack. For years, maybe even decades, the two sides have been clashing for control of the oasis. There are things going on that to us, the reader, would seem strange but the combatants themselves have learned to live with. The fighting goes on day and night until one side or the other "wins", usually because the loser has too few combatants left to make for any sort of fight. A day passes, allowing both sides to rest.
Then morning comes, and all those who died have come back to life, and the fight starts all over again. This cycle has been happening for so long now that nopony even remembers why they're fighting in the first place. The only thing they know is that the other side is trying to kill them, so they have to defend themselves.
Now we move to another world. Here we sea a great ocean dotted with islands and reefs. Atop that ocean is a WWII-era merchant convoy consisting of some thirty ships and defended by a small fleet of destroyers. Beneath them: a single U-boat-style submarine. The submarine is commanded by none other than Twilight Sparkle, out to destroy as much merchant tonnage as she can. With a fleet this large it might even have been easy, if not for one significant problem: that destroyer fleet is commanded by Pinkie Pie. As Twilight has come to learn over the decades, tactical genius doesn't always matter when you're up against a pony who can predict your actions before you've even thought of them.
Pinkie and Twilight have been matching wits for ages, always trying to outplay the other. Sometimes, Twilight is able to leverage her superior brainpower and win the day, sinking as many merchant vessels as there are torpedoes on her sub, and maybe a destroyer or two while she's at it. Other times Pinkie one-ups her and Twilight finds her crew scrambling to escape depth charges and sealing flooded compartments. Like the desert battle between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, eventually somepony has to win, and when they do the entire scenario... resets. And so they find themselves fighting again and again and again in a seemingly endless loop.
The final scene has us in space, set around a lone solar system thriving with science fiction habitations from space stations to asteroid colonies. In this setting we find Fluttershy, a lone and entirely unwilling fighter pilot just trying to survive. Also there is a giant humanoid mech, outrageously powerful and going on a rampage of destruction. It is piloted by Rarity, but her actions seem to have no rhyme or reason. She merely travels from habitation to habitation, wiping out defenses and destroying everything. Fluttershy tries to avoid the destruction, but it isn't always possible, and every once is forced to actively defend herself as the giant, seemingly crazed mech corners her.
IF Fluttershy dies, the situation will reset and the nightmare will begin anew. Who knows what Rarity thinks of all this? She never contacts anypony.
Alright, so this is the overarching setting. I had several ideas on how to handle it, from writing three separate, seemingly independent stories to writing a single story that leaps from world to world. If I had ever actually gotten around to writing this idea (which, I should add, is one of my much older ones), I probably would have chosen the latter path. Making it work would have been a real chore, though.
I'm sure the truth is obvious to at least some people: the Mane 6 are unwittingly trapped in what are, essentially, video games. The idea is that a new form of spell was devised combining Luna's dream magic with creative artifact tinkering to generate a sort of virtual reality experience. The Mane Six were, of course, curious (some more than others). One day they go to play some of these games together only to get trapped in them, unable to leave even when all the appropriate conditions for doing so are met. I never decided if they simply forgot they were playing games over time of if there was some mental manipulation at play, but either way they eventually started thinking of their lives in the games as... well, their lives, like this was what always was and always would be.
Near the beginning of our story, things change in their collective games. For Applejack and Rainbow Dash, it's Scootaloo, who tries to encourage them to do things they normally wouldn't, such as meeting one-on-one instead of as a full army. For Twilight and Pinkie Pie, it's Apple Bloom appearing as part of their respective crews and encouraging them to investigate a specific island. In Fluttershy's case, it's Rarity abruptly going from "destroy everything at random" to "kill Fluttershy right now", while a new voice on the comms is encouraging Fluttershy to face it head-on.
I'm not exactly sure how it happens, but I do know the general direction. For Applejack and Rainbow, they eventually discover an "exit" beneath the oasis, a doorway that seems to lead nowhere. Thanks to Scootaloo, the two begrudgingly agree to investigate it together. Twilight and Pinkie Pie will discover a similar doorway on the island and do the same.
Rarity's and Fluttershy's, on the other hand, is dark. After an intense fight, Fluttershy manages to get inside Rarity's giant mech and to the cockpit, something she's never done before. There she finds Rarity literally fused with the machine and driven to babbling insanity by the results. She learns that Sweetie Belle had appeared as the Mech's AI interface and had been encouraging Rarity to pursue Fluttershy specifically so this meeting could occur. At her urging, Fluttershy frees Rarity from the machine and brings her to another door on the mech, an "exit".
After passing through the doors, the Mane Six finally wake up from their gaming pods to discover a world in ruin. There isn't a soul alive, only bones, and the state of things suggests the world's been like this for at least a few years. Exploring their surroundings, they eventually find none other than Queen Chrysalis, near death and attached to the core artifact that had been running the simulations. Chrysalis explains that she was the one who added and controlled the Cutie Mark Crusader avatars in the games in hopes that the familiar faces would help the girls find a way out.
Long story short, the changelings took advantage of when the girls went under for the games to screw with the magic and keep them locked there. With the Mane Six out of the way, Chrysalis then proceeded to conquer Equestria. She succeeded in not only this, but also in capturing and forcefully converting all the princesses into changeling queens. In this way Chrysalis secured absolute victory. And the Mane Six? She left them were they were, seeing no reason to interfere.
But Chrysalis's plan backfired catastrophically. There were now four changeling queens, and the love requirements to keep them sustained were, simply put, not sustainable. At first Chrysalis didn't notice the problem; she had a wealth of free love to consume and was sure it would keep them going forever. But eventually the amount of available love was dwindling, being consumed far too fast for the needs of the queens, much less the regular changelings. By the time Chrysalis realized what was happening, it was too late: the races of the world were dying, the changelings from not enough love production and the others from being sucked dry.
Celestia, Luna, and Cadance weren't like her. They'd already possessed excessive reservoirs of magic before being transformed. As queens, those reservoirs now depended upon love consumption, and it took a lot of love to keep a former alicorn queen healthy. This was something Chrysalis had completely underestimated, and now it was coming back to bite her in the ass. With love sources rapidly dwindling, starvation began to set in, and this impacted the imperfect alicorn queens far worse. None were so horribly affected as Cadance, who was by far the most glutenous of love consumers.
The princesses went insane. They began to ignore Chrysalis's instructions, and then to outright defy her. Before long they were fighting amongst themselves for any scrap of love. In the midst of their conflict, races were falling on the border of extinction. Chrysalis tried to stop them and was quickly overwhelmed. Faced with the ultimate destruction of the world, she did the one and only think she could think of: free the Mane Six from their virtual reality prisons and hope that they could put an end to the madness.
From this point onwards things get fuzzy. I don't know where the story would have ended up beyond the Mane Six trying to help but struggling with their own issues. Applejack and Rainbow Dash still see one another as enemies and try to get the others to take sides. Twilight is still of a stealth mindset, terrified that if they show their faces then they'll be annihilated in an instant, whereas Pinkie Pie is stuck in a "search and destroy" view of things, so used to having the superior firepower against an enemy focused on evasion. Rarity is mentally broken, half the time unable to form a coherent sentence and, when she is self-aware, falls into a severe depression. The only one with a semblance of self control left is Fluttershy, and she's got her hooves full just trying to keep the team from tearing itself apart.
There are a lot of things I'm not sure about with this final part. I strongly considered having Celestia, Luna, and Cadance mutate due to their over-consumption of love, even going so far as to consider turning them into sort of kaiju/lovecraftian hybrids. I was pretty sure that Cadance would become the top dog in this conflict, literally consuming Celestia and Luna in order to satiate her ever-worsening hunger. I absolutely wanted them to have lost all sentience, becoming little more than animals seeking sustenance.
I also know that Chrysalis would not survive. She'd already be on her deathbed when she finally manages to free the Mane Six, after all. One thing I seriously considered was having Rarity, in one of her more manic bouts, outright murder Chrysalis. And Chrysalis would let her, feeling such a punishment is justified.
Were would it end? Would the Mane Six beat Abomination Cadance? Would they mentally recover from their long periods in the virtual pods, or would they remain forever broken? Would they be the only creatures left alive, or would they eventually find patches of civilization in the world's hidden corners? Would they even bother to look? I have no answers. I never dug deep enough into the brainstorming to decide these things.
To be honest, this one feels too ambitious and tricky. If I had ever gotten around to writing it, I'm not sure it would have come out half as good as it used to sound in my head. Still, it's one of my oldest ideas and I figured it warranted sharing at the very least.
Other C&C's:
Runaway Train
The Gentle Nights: Silver Dreams
Histories: The Rise of Macromida
Histories: The Great Divide
As One Falls
Histories: One, Mother of Ponies
The Tale of Tom
Fleur-Verse: Agent Fleur
No Heroes: Nildean Roadtrip
No Heroes: Twelve Angry Ponies
No Heroes: The Changeling Incident
TvE: The Many Lives of Pinkie Pie
TvE: On Sunburned Wings
TvE: Pony at the Gates
TvE: Rise Against
TvE: Belle
TvE: At the Mausoleum of Twilight
Trixie vs. Equestria 2
The Silence
Needs of the Few
OoS: Little Surprise
OoS: The Good Mare
OoS: Trixie vs. Equestria
Dink
Flash in the Dark
Okay yeah, this one has problems. Why did Chrysalis bother with these crazy game prisons in the first place instead of just throwing them in pods? Why not also just do the same with the princesses either way to avoid sharing power? Why didn't Rarity resist turning into a homicidal maniac? Why didn't the princesses throw themselves in the game prison to avoid harming their ponies? I could go on.
Mmm, shiphorses.
The thing that sticks out to me the most about this concept is that it sounds like two largely unrelated stories that have been stapled together rather than one cohesive narrative. "Characters trapped in simulation" and "Changeling apocalypse with corrupted princesses" each have the potential to be a pretty hefty story on their own and I'm not sure how well they would blend together. I imagine there're some details being glossed over here in regard to the fallout from the Mane Six discovering that they've been stuck in a virtual world for who knows how long, but beyond that what does the videogame world have to do with the plot after they're done listening to Chrysalis? What does Twilight's time as a submarine captain or Rarity's time as a mecha pilot bring to this situation in which they are thrust back into reality and have to deal with the changeling princesses? I feel you could have either a story where the Mane Six go into these ultra VR videogames and get stuck inside for a while with all the .hack/Sword Art Online shenanigans that could entail, or you could have them go in and experience an abrupt SOMA timeskip to years later where the world is in upheaval, but doing both of them at the same time would require mixing up the setup in such a way that they can better mesh with each other.
I think the most pertinent matter that has need for clarification is what exactly causes the Mane Six to go into the video games in the first place. The backstory description given here makes it sound like they just...go in for the novelty of it and then coincidentally the changelings swoop in. Which I guess one could do, but it seems a little weak to me. If you're going to have the plot continue after their respective videogame plotlines end, it seems that the changeling apocalypse ought to be more directly tied to the plot point of the videogame(s) in the first place.
The most obvious idea that comes to mind is that it's a The Matrix-esque scenario; the changelings have taken over Equestria, they're going to put everyone in pods and harvest love from them, they put them in a trance to keep them placated, etcetera etcetera. Because of the corrupted princesses' excessive hunger, however, they gradually start burning through love faster than it can be produced and the world starts decaying. The changelings have to jack themselves into the simulation as well because the planet is becoming too inhospitable for life. Chrysalis, realizing that this is unsustainable, separates the Mane Six and starts putting them through simulations so they can be prepared to defeat the corrupted princesses. When they come out of their respective worlds, they're still within the larger simulation that all of Equestria has been put into, so that allows them to continue using what they have learned against the princesses.
There are definitely a lot of ways in which one could potentially approach a story like this, I think it just needs to be refined into a form that makes it more cohesive.
IJN Twilight Sparkle : I-4,000 class submarine.
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There are a lot of things I didn't know and never knew on account of lack of brainstorming, but I can answer a few of these topics.
Related: I forgot to mention that this was all originally conceived as having occurred pre-Twilicorn. Not that it necessarily matters for the context of the below, but I figure it warrants mention.
Chrysalis didn't invent the games, the ponies did. They were meant for recreation. Nor was the changeling attack by chance. It's not like you can invent virtual reality in a world like Equestria and have nobody notice, after all. Chrysalis saw the potential to specifically strike the Mane Six while they were mentally elsewhere and took it. This wouldn't have been a quick plan, because she'd first have to get some staff who were capable of manipulating the game appropriately to keep them trapped in there, which meant learning how it all worked first (or converting some technicians?). But heck, with this plan it would be easy to snatch ponies unawares while they're playing; just covertly take over one of the locations hosting these games. In short, the changeling invasion is directly tied to the games, but all this happened long, long before the story ever started, so at best it would have to be explained via flashback.
As to why Chrysalis wouldn't just pod/transform the Mane Six, who knows? I'm sure I would have given an explanation for this because not doing so is stupid. It probably would have been something along the lines of "the infinite torture loop entertained me more" or something of that sort.
It's important to note that while Chrysalis is trying to fix her blunder, at no point did she ever stop being a villain.
Who said anything about sharing power? When I talk about ponies getting converted to changelings, this is a physical and mental change. That means subservience. That means Chrysalis is the Big Cheese. This is a complete rewriting of the mind. It is, simply put, the greatest kind of evil. Chrysalis ain't sharing power with anyone.
The princesses become more akin to her lieutenants.
She never turned into a homicidal maniac, that would imply she's going around trying to kill a bunch of ponies.
Rarity spent years (possibly decades, I never set an exact time to their imprisonment) being mentally tortured. And then when finally freed she spends most of her time in a sort of depressive fugue state, and when she does have a rational thought it involves waking up to the fact that everything she knows and loves is dead and Chrysalis is responsible.
There is a logical end point to this, and this story was never meant to be anything but dark.
When I mentioned a complete mental rewrite earlier, I meant it. They're not their citizens anymore, they're food.
At least until starvation drives them mad.
The worlds directly? Not much beyond Chrysalis creating CMC avatars to interact and help the Mane Six get out. Bear in mind the story starts long after the Mane Six were trapped, essentially right when Chrysalis has started trying to free them. Once they get into the real world, they would of course have a great deal of psychological issues to deal with, so there's a definite link. I absolutely wouldn't want to do that Matrix-y thing, too derivative.
I suppose one possibility would be to have other ponies also trapped in the games in varying locations, and the Mane Six could go and free them in an attempt to rally more forces? But then that begs the question of why didn't the animalistic, mad princesses seeking food not already find them and consume them? For that matter, why didn't they do it to the Mane Six? Where they hidden in some private location? Did Chrysalis declare them dead for some reason?
Actually, my thought here was that Chrysalis doesn't have time (in terms of survival) to do something like that, and already has her hooves full trying to get them to merely exit the simulation. The main idea was for them to enter the post-apocalypse world completely unprepared for what they were going to encounter.
Having said all that, you both are absolutely right that there are a lot of issues with the overarching story, many of which I was always aware of. I'm not even sure how the Mane Six survive being trapped in virtual reality pods for years without starving, or at least waking up emaciated. At least one thing holding me back from writing it was the daunting task of just having it make sense. The dichotomy of the game worlds vs. the real world was certainly a big issue I wasn't sure how to tackle from a narrative standpoint, and I never did figure it out in a way I was satisfied with. I eventually wrote the whole thing off as a case of me being too ambitious for my own good.
This idea is fucking captivating, and I'll admit I'm sad not to see it in a fully realized fic form. If you're not going to write it, do I have your permission to try and do it justice?
Even if I do try writing the story or incorporating the ideas, I doubt anything will come to fruition for quite a while. My writing has been... slow. Very slow this past year.
Even so, if you think you're not going to get around to it, do you mind if someone else (like me) takes a stab at trying to bring this idea to life?
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That's at least partially why these blogs exist: to put the ideas out there and let others give them a go. If I've written a C&C blog about a story idea, that's more or less me giving up on it completely, so have at it! All I ask is credit for the idea.
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Cracks knuckles
With pleasure! You're a busy guy so I doubt you'd want to edit it or anything, but would you like access to it to read through it while it's being written or anything? or you just want to see what I come up with when I try writing about that?
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I'll just read it as it comes out, but thanks for the offer. If you'd like to shoot me messages to discuss ideas as you're writing, though, I wouldn't be opposed.