//------------------------------// // Chapter 27: Search for Succession – Six Fated by Choice // Story: Equestria: A History Revealed // by Hoofry_Poneigher //------------------------------// The opening of Celestia’s prissy-ass school. You might think that wouldn’t be worth all the hoopla,[387] but there was more to its opening than you may think. At least to some ponies. Ah yes, I remember now.                  Back in the days when I was still young and innocent to this world’s evils, I would attend school while my mother would lay on our couch/bed (we had only the one at the time) in her drunken hazes. My thoughtful unicorn schoolteacher would wax poetic to us, inspiring us of an advanced school that Celestia herself instructed, only for the best of the best. And my eyes were lit aflame with the possibilities. To learn from Celestia, the goddess of the sun and the protector of Equestria herself; to have her teach a pony like me! I still remember, ponies would laugh, crudely in their whispers, thinking I wouldn’t hear. But I heard their words as clear as day. That they said I was doomed to a life of nothingness as soon as I was born to parents like mine. Born to a dead lunatic and a drunk. But I would prove myself. No, I wanted to prove myself, not just to those Canterlot folk, but to the world! And maybe, just to myself. I would escape the drudgery. I would make something of myself. Of the Loose name.                  I worked harder than I had ever worked before. I could hear the jeers of the others, laughing as they played while I stayed at home and studied. But I persisted. My hard work would pay off. It had to. Perhaps it was due to the dreams of youth, but I had thought in my heart of hearts that I could do it.                  My mother, in her perpetual drunken stupors, would always encourage me. She once told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be; I could do whatever I set my mind to do. And with shaking knees, yet a steady heart, I sent in my application to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.                  And my dreams were promptly crushed in a single rejection letter. A form letter too, to further add to my shame. It described my failure in great detail, filling the page with my anguish in just a few words, scattered with flourish prose and large-sounding words in an attempt to make me feel better about myself. But the truth stood there, uncaring and cruel in its candour. Saying I needed to be gifted as well as a unicorn to be accepted. And there that fool of a pony stood, silently sobbing those bitter tears into the page.                  You said I could be whatever I wanted to be. You said I could do whatever I set my mind to. So why, mama?                  It was at that moment I learned of the blatant racism present in our society. Celestia the dream-crusher. Celestia the monster. This oppression that we are forced to bend our knees to, a crushing weight lingering on our backs for all time! That one day, a day that would live in infamy. I vowed to myself. That one day, I would change the world. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hm. I usually don’t like sharing that kind of stuff with other people. Did I get into Larry’s pills again? You would think I would learn my lesson after the last time. Well anyways, if that story got you a little down or something, I’m totally over all that crap. Cuz I learned about the magic of history instead. And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Wait a sec, what the heck was I talking about before all that? No, yes.[388] Celestia’s School for Shitty Unicorns. I mean stupid. I mean slutty. Sigh. Let’s just get on with it. The school was important for one major factor. It was to provide the appearance of Celestia’s graciousness in teaching magic to these young unicorns as the very goddess of Equestria herself.[389] But in truth, there was an ulterior motive. There’s always one when it comes to Celestia. All the good talk involving its opening in Canterlot. The best of the best! The true magically elite! Celestia herself! It sounded too good to be true. Most dreams are. Unicorn families everywhere (notice a distinct lack of earth pony families, and pegasi too I suppose, in that phrase. Fuckin’ racism I tell ya) applied their children to such a prestigious school.[390] This of course, gave Celestia quite the pool of unicorns to choose from. For as I said, at this moment, Celestia began to think to the future. She knew she probably could not maintain this façade and her regime forever; she had to think for a post-Celestia Equestria. Sorry, was I drooling just now? Ah, whatever, not like you can tell through a page. She would (unfortunately) continue to rule as she saw fit, but she knew one day her time would come and somepony else would have to take her place. So she set up this school, to choose a unicorn pupil (because of course, as I said before, the regime did depend on unicorn superiority after all), and groom her to be the future princess of Equestria. Of course, this agenda was kept private to herself. If word got out regarding this, it would create quite a cacophony of events, ranging from reactions to Celestia’s future retirement, to thousands of unicorns vouching their children to become Equestria’s successor. And that’s not even mentioning the whole “Equestria built upon unicorn superiority” thing. If you ask how I might have found this out, well, the proof is in the pudding. I was rummaging through the dumpster a few weeks ago to find something that might make Larry love me, when I found some week old pudding. And somepony had clearly written all of this in there. Thank youuuu, divine will.[391] Celestia went through a few “star” pupils throughout the decades. They haven’t really been mentioned in history, but a few, rare pictures of them exist. All the old favorites. Titty lips, bacon hair, crappy Twilight recolor, you know the rest. It would be years before she came across a pony with the, in her words, “true magical prowess” she was looking for.[392] k. Twilight Sparkle. A very special pony. Ms. Future princess pants. I’m not mad or anything.[393] Apparently her magic power impressed Celestia greatly. Her outbursts were recorded to be high unicorn level, even when she was just a young filly, and she was able to hatch a dragon’s egg with great success.[394] I can hatch a dragon’s egg too y’know. Give or take a few years. And I’d need to find a dragon to hatch one for me. Or I could just skip the middlepony. Do any of you know where I can get me some jewels, perchance?[395] Twilight Sparkle.[396] Certainly a pony whose played a very role in present history. One of, if not the most important pony in these recent-most years, jumping in with her friends to face on some of Equestria’s greatest dangers. A pony, one could say, who was responsible for changing the course of history. A name to be remembered in the annals of history.[397] k. Twilight Sparkle was obviously chosen well-beforehand to be Celestia’s successor, perhaps even before her acceptance into Celestia’s School. Because Celestia, the eternal puppetmaster she was, spinning her webs of lies and deceit, had to always be prepared. And prepared she was. She would construct a plan, one so devious, yet would simultaneously ensure the “protection” of Equestria for years to come. The greatest lie ever told. The “strength” and the “magic” of friendship. Celestia was always a real stickler on the whole “friendship” and “no hatred among all living folk; love and tolerance” thing throughout her years. And now, with Twilight Sparkle, she could enact her beliefs, and shove ‘em down our throats as she saw fit. The Elements of Harmony. Practically unused since the confrontation with Luna, Celestia wanted to use its dark power again. No, she needed its dark power to spread her control across Equestria once more. But she could not use it without purpose. So she had thought of a devious plan. A plan so brilliant that it would even make Discord, Sombra, and Nightmare Moon take pause and applaud, if it wasn’t for the fact that they were the good guys. A plan that would intertwine friendship and the Elements into a bond so close that it would fool everypony under the sun. Everypony except for me. And Larry. Cuz we don’t go out that often, and when we do, we try to wear these cool tinfoil hats. They reflect the sun’s rays you see. And I’ve got other some personal reasons too for keeping mine on. So back to the plan. What was it? It was simple. Celestia would pass on the Elements of Harmony to Twilight, and her later friends. !!! !!! !!! Let that sink in for ya, I’ll wait. You got it yet? Okay, moving on. Passing on the Elements to new ponies. These tools of dark power, whose very essence and truth behind its power could flip Equestria upon its head, out Celestia from her position as ruler, and return the world to a greater chaos than under Discord. And she was passing them on to new ponies. It still blows my mind to this day! But once you see the methods she used to ensure her plan’s success, you can see Celestia’s (it pains me excessively to say this) geniu-BLARGHHHHHH Sorry, threw up there for a bit. Mighta been all the alcohol from before. But most likely the utter distaste I had in saying that line. Intertwining dark magic and friendship. Has there ever been such a greater deception? You should have already known this, as the truth behind the Elements’ real power has already been covered; heck, so have the truths behind the first defeats of Discord and Nightmare Moon, so you might think there wouldn’t be much to talk about. WRONGGG! There is still much to be learned.[398] The Elements are expansive, like the universe, and the secrets behind the methods of it all; what Celestia did to ensure the strong belief in the power of friendship to power her regime, still reveal so much more to us historians.[399] So join me. As we take a journey through space and time (mostly just in time, to the recent past) and explore the cosmos together. And by cosmos I mean all of Celestia’s shit. Let’s go! Celestia could not of course, choose any ol’ pony off the street to wield the Elements. She had molded Twilight into one of her own, fiercely loyal to her every beck and whim. To respect her as a teacher, to fear disappointing her, and to love her like a mother. And it was this trickery! that allowed Celestia to practically assume full control over Twilight’s life. To know what she would do, how she would think, and more importantly, ensuring her total subservience to Celestia for life. She would be made into a “Celestia2”, so to speak. Twilight’s eternal loyalty, and the fact that she was easy to predict in her devotion, never once thinking to betray the princess, allowed her to be granted the great responsibility of wielding the strongest element of them all and uniter of the others, the Element of Magic. So that was pretty easy, Twilight would be chosen as Celestia’s future successor and wielder of the Element of Magic. But the real difficulty came in deciding the other five. To ensure the success of her friendship plan, Celestia needed five other ponies to wield the Elements as well; five ponies who needed to believe in their friendship with Twilight. Sure, she could’ve just had Twilight and one friend wield them, like she did with Discord,[400] or have Twilight wield them all herself, like she did with Nightmare Moon.[401] But it would be better to have this six, to fully encapsulate the necessity of friendship. Obviously, while Celestia was very trusting of her new (let’s just call a spade a spade) “slave”, she could not trust in her skills in making friends, especially as she seemed to be quite an antisocial bookworm to start with.[402] Sure, she had a “friend” in her dragon assistant, Spike (who also “coincidentally” served the Princess, as well as served as a private hotline for Celestia to send out urgent texts to her purple-colored student[403]), but a dragon? Wielding an Element of Harmony? Have you been getting into the cough syrup again? And yeah, she technically had another friend, her earliest friend, her BBBFF, Shining Armor.[404] But that’s more of a family thing, and Celestia’s here to promote the whole friendship thing. So that wouldn’t work out either. Thus, to fully complete the illusion of friendship, Celestia had to formulate these friendships herself. Using strict criteria as her selection basis, she had to choose ponies still young enough to be molded into her tools and similar in age to Twilight, who would not only “fit the group dynamic”,[405] but could easily form friendships with her, and more importantly, unknowingly serve Celestia’s ploys as she so pleased. And so these “mane six” were decided upon, years before any of them had actually met each other. In fact, the selection of these mane six may have even been finalized before Celestia even came into contact with Twilight. Who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes? Only those who dare to venture and take a Leap of Faith. This mane six. Huh. I just realized I’ve been using this word, but I have no blazin’ idea what it means. There’s no context or anything behind this wording that I can think of; it’s never been so much as used in history. Alright, I’ll come up with something real quick. “Mostly Annoying, Nausea-inducing E-diots-who-are-literally-all-worst-pones 6.” That E in the beginning of that last one is for extra emphasis.[406] So obviously Celestia pre-picked the other five ponies to fill in the spots of the elements. But how did she choose such a random assortment of ponies? What exactly were the criteria? After all, she had all of Equestria as a potential selection. Why did she choose five ponies from specifically one town? How did she ensure that the Elements would be in the best possible hooves? Let me take you on a journey. A rollercoaster, full of crazy twists and revelations, not for the faint of heart. For everything before this, all of the chapters preceding this one, were merely filly’s play, this is the big pony’s leagues now. Lucky you, I happen to be one of the few in this world who possess a method to discover the secrets behind Celestia’s selection process. I shall be using secret techniques passed down from generations, in the honor of my deceased father, famed conspiracy theorist, Foil Hat,[407] to do my (other) family’s name proud, and more importantly, reveal this truth in a way that will force you to scrape your brains off the goddamn walls once I’m done. With flawless logic and impeccable intelligence, this method is one which it is rumored that its user becomes one with the universe, gains knowledge far beyond any pony could ever dream of, and identify the truth. I should warn you, it is extremely difficult to pull off, and in recorded history, can only be accomplished a few times per lifetime. So don’t let my efforts go to waste, try to keep up. HYPER! CONSPIRACY! ANALYSIS! TECHNIQUE! ULTRA! EX!! The known order of which Twilight met these five ponies is obviously one of grave significance, and as such, will be used accordingly in this method. When it comes to the introduction of the friend, “Pinkie Pie”, her true introduction (simultaneously the first pony Twilight met in Ponyville, but the last of the five to be formally introduced), shall be treated as the latter, for it was then that the two truly got to know each other. The gloves are off,[408] so let’s begin. Starting by using Twilight as a jumping point (as the pony initiator, and principal chosen one by Celestia, this only serves to make sense). Twilight is purple. Purple is a color. Green is a color. Green vegetables are a good source of calcium. Vegetables. My grandmother is a vegetable. On the subject of relations, my uncle is rather flamboyant. Fruits. Apples. Applejack. BAM! There’s one right off the bat, the first friend Twilight made. Let’s keep going on from there. Next!   Applejack has hooves.                  Who else has hooves? Bon-bon.                  Bon-bon sounds like bonnet.                  Bonnet.                  Bonnet has six letters.                  Six Elements of Harmony.                  You might think that I’ve just reached the jackpot with this when it comes to relating this to the other ponies, but no. This is just something I wanted to bring up. Returning back to bonnet,                  Bonnet.                  The word has a letter that is repeated twice, the letter n.                  N.                  The fourteenth letter of the Alphabet. Twilight’s fourteenth friendship lesson to Celestia (including the unwritten lessons given in person to Celestia herself), is on the consequences of the events of the 76th Best Young Flyer’s competition. Where did this competition take place? Cloudsdale. Known to be the birth place of one certain famous flyer, who proudly boasts their self-title of fastest flyer in Equestria. I am obviously referring to KevinHoops the pegasus. Examining Hoops’s birth records, one can see he was born on the twelfth of February, in 1994.[409] 02/12/1994. Using math here,[410] 0 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 28 Using another method, multiplying the previously obtained “14” by 2 (as this was to be the second pony that Twilight would befriend) would obtain a result of 28. This is obviously no coincidence. Coincidence starts with “coin”. Coins are associated with wealth, prosperity, and luck. Luck? Sounds like a certain pony already referenced in this essay. Lucky Foot, the famed Discord historian and spreader of lies.[411] What else spreads easy? Butter. A six lettered word again! Not only that, as like before, it has a letter that’s repeated twice. The letter t, the twentieth letter of the alphabet. 14 + 6 + 20 = 40 And 40 = 0 + 4 + 14 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 4. Or, if you would, 04/14/1984. A date? But what is its significance? The popular book series “My Small Horse” had its first book, “Rescue at Midnight Castle”, be released on April 14, 1984.[412] CONNECTION! A character feature in this book was a petite, baby purple dragon named Spike (no relation to another certain purple dragon in history).[413] But that’s not gonna stop me from making that link anyways. You might say the name, “Spike the Dragon”, is more commonly known as the often forgotten assistant to Twilight Sparkle, and you would be right. Spike the Dragon. Known most infamously, not for that “saving of the Crystal Empire” stuff (that was practically superfluous and will be addressed later on), but for his one minute role as the replacement of the holder of the Element of Loyalty, during Discord’s return. Finally allowing us to create a link to that cyan pegasus, Rainbow Dash.   No breaks! Keep on chuggin’ along! Rainbow Dash is most known for her rabid fanaticism to the “Daring Do” book series. Again, going off the first book of the series, “Quest for the Sapphire Stone”. What fashion oriented pony is known for her obsession of sapphires and other precious gems? A certain famous pony called Sapphire Shores. Sapphire Shores wears a lot of jewelry. She shares this in common with the current member of the Power Ponies since her joining in issue #4, the superhero, Radiance.™[414] She has the power to create attack constructs with her magical jewelry. What else is constructed? Buildings. Or maybe a boutique? Who owns a boutique? Hoity Toity owns a vast chain of fashion boutiques across Equestria. Who has connections with Hoity Toity and a majority of the Canterlot elite? Spike. Again. Judging from his easy pulling of strings in making Hoity Toity attend a dinkly little fashion show in Ponyville.[415] Spike has an obvious crush that everypony with a brain and a working set of adorably large eyes can see. A crush on a pony named Sweetie Belle. I’ve met her before (and in all honesty, I have no idea what anypony could see in her, but I digress), and she seems just as oblivious to this as most idiot children, but Spike’s well-known crush can be easily discerned through my arduous and careful research.[416] Notice how Spike lingers around this, “Carousel Boutique”, a location in which Sweetie Belle is known to frequent for some unknown reason. Not only this, Spike is known to do things that Sweetie Belle enjoys to do. (eg. Spike takes out the trash and becomes filthy as a result of this. And this fits in with a certain letter in Celestia’s friendship archives in which Sweetie Belle is recorded to have said she enjoys getting “a lot dirty”.[417]) In fact, recently, Spike was seen bringing an apple pie to the boutique. And Sweetie Belle loves sweet things; it’s in her freakin’ name. She likes bells too apparently, but I haven’t been able to find anything regarding this in the “Spikey Belle” pairing. I probably could’ve gotten all the data I needed to further prove this relationship if it wasn’t for the Royal Guards thinking I was planning a kidnapping. God, I hate those guards. And by default, Celestia. Anyways, upon my (might I add, highly illegal) brief questioning in the Ponyville confinement building and subsequent release, I had learned that apparently Sweetie Belle’s sister is Rarity. Which makes things even easier for me. So with this, we have reached Rarity. And it is at this point in which we can start to realize why Celestia specifically gave ownership of Spike to Twilight, when all other “hatching dragon egg” tests of this nature had no such reward (or else every student of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns would have a dragon of their own). It is because Spike plays an instrumental role in deciding Twilight’s friends. I mean, technically only 2/6th of the six were decided upon using Spike as a jumping off point. But just as I had said before, that’s math that you just can’t ignore.[418]   Continuing on now, The Author of Power Ponies is widely suspected of plagiarism from some more classic comic works. Comparisons have been drawn between Radiance, and Green Maretern, another famed comic superhero who preceded Radiance, yet has practically the exact same powers.[419] But Green Maretern is known to possess a significant difference, his weakness to the color yellow, and as seen with his affliction with the terrifying parasite, Parallax[420]; a problem with fear. Yellow and fear. Sounds a lot like our friend (friend used purely in the perjorative sense only), Fluttershy.                  And from Fluttershy, we shall reach the last pony of them all.   Fluttershy was decided upon through her connection with Parallax. Parallax; the fictional alien parasite, was an ancient entity that embodied the yellow light of fear.[421] Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. And do you know what I hate? Immigrants. Immigration has the word “ration”. Rations are what you need when you have a lack of food. A type of food is carrots. Golden Harvest won ninth place in the 42nd Equestrian carrot growing competition.[422] Prizes are often made from gold. Gold can be stolen by thieves. Thieves often suffer from kleptomania (or why else would they feel the need to steal?) Kleptomania. Castle Mania! A famous film from the 1980’s in which two groups of two ponies go into a haunted castle and hilarious, yet scary hijinks ensue.[423] It starred hilarious comedy star, Hard Candy, who also had a bit part in the critically panned movie, “It Came from Applewood”.[424] What else came from Applewood? Hard Candy. But more significantly, Influenza. More specifically, the Applewood Fevers.[425] Do you know what else rose fevers? The coming of Photo Finish’s new fashion line.[426] Or at least it rose my apathy towards it to a fever pitch. Apathy? An antonym of Empathy. Path. Telepath. Psychics. PsyCHIC. Chick-Fil-Aid is a well-known subsidiary of Equestrian nationalized animal health care, providing sandwiches to chickens in need.[427] i.e. A waste of our tax money. Where am I going with this? You might think I was going with the psychic/Pinkie Pie route, but everyone knows psychics don’t exist. They’re just trickster ponies who live in the realm of pseudoscience, with no real supporting evidence to back up any of their claims. So instead, let’s put it together. Parallax. Immigrants. Ninth place. Kleptomania. Influenza. Empathy. Psychic. I.E. a waste   P.I.N.K.I.E. P.IE. Completing the pentfecta. And that’s how Celestia decided upon Twilight’s friends. Of course, Celestia had to shift life events around, and provide the perfect set-up to appropriate Twilight’s befriending of these ponies. Like paying off ponies in Ponyville to never be “part of the foreground”, so to speak, when it came to Twilight; ensuring that they always stayed away from mane events in order not to complicate matters. And let’s not even get to the supposed belief that the six had some special bond with each other regarding their cutie marks in their fillyhood. Can anyone else say, Celestia’s manipulations? However, most of this dirty work and planning was not done by Celestia herself, but rather by her upper aristocracy echelon, established during the Millennial Stagnation, titled “The Echelon”. It seemed that creativity is another one of Celestia’s weaknesses (among many). The Echelon was another secret government organization that not many knew of, and is suspected to have a hand in many of Equestria’s conspiracies and world events. You can expect them to be the ones behind things like market values, the strength of the bit, and orchestrating international crises. To put it simply, when Celestia wanted to manipulate something, they would be the ones to actually organize everything and do all the work for her. It seems even when it comes to secret manipulations, Celestia just comes up with the plan and delegates the rest to others. Our glorious leader, fillies and gentlecolts! What do you princesses even do besides smile and wave? Moving on, while she did not mention the reasons behind her actions, nor her plans to pass down the Elements (or the Elements’ power at all), she did tell them that she expected great things from these six ponies, and that they needed to build a strong friendship with each other. This briefing was taken accordingly by The Echelon, and with their own socio-political powers (they’re the cabal that pulls the strings behind the world’s events after all, but they still have to work under their own puppetmaster Celestia of course), created convenient “story” opportunities throughout Equestria to arise to set up their eventual meetings (eg. making sure that these five ponies would all be living in Ponyville by 2010, paying off the Ponyville mayor to give them important roles in the upcoming Summer Sun Celebration of ’10 in which Twilight was set up to be the inspector of, etc). And under Celestia’s continued supervision, The Echelon would continue to create new setups every week to continue to build their friendship over the years. For this reason (and the many others, such as their prominent role in manipulating the world), The Echelon was forever shrouded in mystery. You might ask how I would know of their existence then, and to that I say, it’s a secret. Suckz to be you. And following that satisfying non-answer, you might then ask how the heck Celestia could have used events that haven’t even happened yet (Spike’s short-lived role as Rainbow Dash, Twilight’s friendship letters, the Spikey Belle relationship) as a method to decide Twilight’s friends. And there is a very good answer to that, one I believe I have used before in this essay. A)     Because shut up. 2)      It’s magic, I don’t have to explain shit. With all that now out of the way, one can see how this “mane six” group was fully established. And with the formation of these so-to-speak, “future would-be-friends”, all Celestia had to do now was to put her plan into motion. The pieces were in play, the chips were already down. But these six weren’t friends just yet. Celestia just needed one last piece to complete her wicked puzzle,[428] an event that would force these six pre-picked ponies into friendship under extreme adversity, and in doing so, allow her “Passing Down of the Elements” plan to succeed. And isn’t it just lucky that Nightmare Moon was scheduled to return after her thousand year hiatus on that one certain day? Conveniently giving Twilight the book detailing Nightmare Moon’s eventual return as a reading assignment a day beforehand, Celestia began to prepare. The wheels of history were now once again in motion. And no matter how I try to resist, or make a wheel of my own, they just won’t stop turning. Join me next time as we begin a whole new chapter in this book we call history.[429] Literally. Chapter 28.