Quorum of Canon
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So here is another one for our consideration. The Voice of the Sun.
It's not complete but so far seems to be a solid entry. I know Vazak is gonna bristle at the implication of Raindrops getting a crush on Kindle, but I can't see it lasting longer than this fic. By the end she'll see him as being pretty insane. There's a few details I'd like to see adjusted, but I think on the whole it works quite well.
I'm really enjoying it too. I made a few quibbles in the story (I'm 'gstq1730' on the gdoc), but overall I really like it. It works well in canon.
From what I've read of it when Lev was asking if he got Gilda right, it's got my support and approval. A minor quible or two maybe, but over allI liked what I saw.
Although I guess I really should go back and read the WIP in full, since I was focused on Gilda's scenes the first time around.
Also enjoying it. It's also likely to be one of the first "World Tour" fics.
2568913 Then we should tell him that, barring something showing up in future chapters he can expect the 'Episode' label huh?
2569235
Well, attach it as an official webisode to Crisis, I think.
2569279 Wrong thread. Anyway, despite our 'admin' status we can't actual edit post, so you'll have to be the one to edit the listing of 'Movies & Tie-ins'.
2569308
Oops, right, wrong thread. There's a surprisingly large amount active right now...
You can't edit posts? Actually in hindsight, that should have been obvious, since I can't edit yours...huh. I just think of that as natural "admin" power...
...wait...secretly this is all a lie! Our power is nothing more than the faint scraps handed out by the true masters - the Admins of FiMFiction.net!
...it's 2:40 AM where I am, folks, can you tell?
2569329 It's 2:40 AM here too and I still make sense! So no excuse!
anyway I asked for a rough outline of his fic from Lev, just as a precaution, but I don't think there's gonna be anything that would jeopardize the fic's status.
2569337
You guy are living in the futrue, I feel so last hour.
Anyway, Lev is also a pretty reasonable guy who doesn't get easily offended, and despite his chaotic reverence he also understands the value cohesion of intent that is a shared setting. If something did come up he seems the type to either edit in accordance or shrug his shoulders and be fine not getting the canon stamp.
Well, I got Lev's PM; did everyone else?
The outline seems good. The suggestion that Bootheel might be a changeling is a good one, too, but it's sufficiently vague that he doesn't have to be if we don't want that.
2575508 : I didn't get it.
2575517
Here it is:
2575529 : I like most of that. Few things:
What happens to Lightning and the Shadows? Do they survive the solatic attack? (I'm fine with some of the Shadows doing Heroic Sacrifices, but I think it'd be nice if Lightning survived).
Really don't like the Chief siding with the Elements because of a one-liner. He's supposed to be an intelligent and capable ruler; Raindrops should have to make a reasonable case.
Additionally, that bit where the Chief is all 'we always get screwed by Equestria': I think that's a problem. We want to be careful about the insinuation that Equestria is oppressing the griffons, especially in their own sovereign territory. It was implied early on that Equestria keeps the griffon kingdoms in a Balkanized state of low-grade fighting, or at least hatred, so that they can't unify, and while I think that's been backed off of towards a more 'Holy Roman Empire' kind of federation, we don't want to imply that Luna still puts her hoof down on the griffons whenever she thinks they're unifying or getting stronger. Also, if Luna really does mess with the griffons, they don't have much reason to choose her over Celestia. (Celestia is nuts, but they don't know that; they've never met her).
I'm cool with Bootheel being a changeling.
2575613
Well, you know I'm not in favor of killing anypony, personally.
Agreed. Raindrops doesn't have to be the one to make it, though - Lyra's there too.
I do want to downplay Luna manipulating the Kingdoms too much, but on the other hand I don't mind implying that she has played the Kingdoms against one another in the past.
2575751 : It's a war story, though, and this fic takes place relatively close to when Corona launches her final strike --in the back half of the season, IIRC. It could be a good way to show threat escalation that a couple of the Shadowbolts get taken out by Terry or some cultists. Plus, IIRC Kindle isn't slated for redemption, so we don't need to worry about him doing something too dark to make us want him redeemed anymore.
As for Luna, I think that starts to inch us into darkness we probably don't want to deal with. Messing with the Kingdoms like that is something she probably doesn't have the moral right to do--who is she to tell the griffins how to run their kingdom? And if she's doing it anyway, she looks like a bully.
2575764
I guess...just, I don't want Luna to be all starlight and roses, either. If she sees a potential threat to Equestria rising, she should deal with it, not sit around and let the Kims run roughshod over millions of innocent people for forty plus years...
...sorry, channeled my annoyance with North Korea there for a moment.
2575844 : But Luna's a millenia old alicorn, with all the accordant wisdom. She should be able to 'deal with it' in some other way besides destabilizing one of the griffin states so another can take it over, or arranging for several of the states to hate each other so much they will never unify, or whatnot. That would cause harm to innocent civilians who had nothing to do with anything.
Luna should be able to come up with a third option such that the griffin kingdom doesn't invade Equestria and Equestria also doesn't oppress the griffins.
2575874
If wishes were fishes...
Luna doesn't have all the answers just because she's millennia old; I've been working hard to make that clear. She's quite intelligent and learned, but she has her own foibles and won't always be able to make the best decisions.
She could also just have a reputation for it, too, even if it's not (fully) deserved.
2575613
As I see it there case is being pleaded gradually over the events of the whole fic, the one-liner, is just the straw on the proverbial camel's back, or even more so just icing on a cake after the decision has already more or less been reached. We don't really need long drawn out speach or anything here, when actions can speak louder than words.
Maybe it is something of a "war" story, but our setting still isn't usually supposed to be that grim. This is lighthearted heroic fantasy, not the gritty tales of tragic sacrifice.
2576001
I agree in full.
2576001 : At the least, it should be presented as such, then. A suboptimal decision that Luna is making because she can't come up with a better option. (In the fic, then, it should be clear that the griffin chief has a legitimate beef with Luna.)
2575764 I don't have a problem with Luna having countered the griffons in the past. Besides, it's been stated that Luna only strike out against THREATS to Equestria, usually by placing Equestria friendly regimes in place, implying the griffons WERE threatening at some point. I think the griffons are better off playing to their warrior heritage against one another rather than being lead by some puppet dictator Luna could have put there. Also Luna doesn't involve herself in conflicts between other nations, hence why Zaldia and Cavallia are said to often butt heads over teritory disputes without Luna's intervention since they are both allies of Equestria.
I for one LOVE the idea of the Chief being clever enough to edge his bet like that, so maybe the way he and Luna discuss it could be reworded instead.
I'm also against having casualties. I don't mind some good old head bashing with a chair or something though.
2575529 I don't mind the subtle foreshadowing of Changelings. It could be something to use later on!
2576001 : Actually, how about this: the Thane insists that, as a condition for him helping, Luna is to stop messing with/weakening the griffin nations from then on. If she wants them as real allies against Corona, he wants her to treat them as such, and let them live their lives without Equestrian agents exercising a 'CIA veto' on whatever governmental officials, internal political objectives, or industrial initiatives the griffins pursue. That I think could work well.
2591267
I didn't think the goal of the world tour was supposed to be about gathering allies or such. Luna's & the L6's goal here isn't really to win the Griffins to their own side, but rather to make sure that they don't ally with Corona. Plus you suggestion might just be delving too much into the kinds of politics that might just be better left unmentioned.
2591373 : I would assume the Equestrians would at least like to know things like, "Hey, we detected Corona heading through our territory. Heads up."
Like, I suppose the Equestrians could just be asking for pure neutrality, but I would find that really unlikely. I think they'd want at least knowledge sharing, and maybe advantage of any special skills griffins have (maybe some scouts to help with looking for her?)
2591267
That also isn't really a promise Luna could make. It'd be like the USA needing the Soviet's help to deal with something, and the Soviets agree to help only if the USA promises to stop spying on the Soviets.
2591416 : But this is a lighter setting than reality. The griffins shouldn't be doing what the Soviets did (making warheads to use in the Cubit Missile Crisis? I dunno).
I think this is getting into realpoltik again, which didn't work out so well when the Night Court did it either. Sure, in a perfectly realistic setting Luna might think it important to have a subtle hoof in all of her allied nations so she could steer them along, keeping them friendly but also weaker than her. But in happy funtime pony land, it should be workable for Luna to be a good ruler without also guaranteeing that any sufficiently independent or able griffin leaders suffer mysterious accidents/mysterious scandals which keep them from gaining power/get relocated to Nowhere by a friendly griffin spy/whatever.
2591470
I agree, but it's not all "happy funtime pony land."
I'm not saying we should dive headfirst into realpolitick again. Just a small acknowledgment that things are always a little tense between the griffins and ponies.
2591470
The problem with the night court was different, because it related to internal government corruption, wherein certain members of the very nobility that were supposed to be leading the country instead acted as enemies of the state. Anything involving diplomatic tensions between Equestria and the griffins (or any other foreign power) is more so just the stuff far more viable political intrigue motif, which we should keep open just in case we ever want to run any James Bond type scenarios.
2591605
Agreed.
2591605 : But there's a difference between "a little tense" and "if your states begin to unify into a cohesive political group, I will sabotage that and select new leaders for you that care more about standing up to each other than acting for the good of all griffins." And it sounds like we're closer to the second one now.
That's dark for Luna. Plus, it makes Luna (meddler) appear worse for the griffins than Celestia (isolationist). What's the motivation of the Thane to choose Luna if he knows that Luna will keep intervening in his nation, while the last griffin-y thing Celestia did was try to evacuate the Equestria side of the front so the two nations wouldn't have to interact anymore? (If Celestia has done anything hostile to the griffins ever, we haven't seen it, and the griffins can hardly be asked to care about Celestia attacking ponies when the ponies screw with the griffins at Luna's command.)
2591674
Luna might meddle, but at the end of the day it's still the griffins running their own country, and I get the impression that mostly it amounts to giving some under the table financial backing (or shadowbolt intel on a rival) to a griffin warlord she finds amicable. I do not think she's overtly staged any coups to prop up mere puppets dictators who answer only to her. Besides in blocking any would be new emperor from uniting the kingdoms she keeps all the other individual provincial warlords in a position greater power. Which gives that same lesser leadership plenty of reason to at least tolerate her meddling.
By contrast Corona is far more overtly militant and pronr to the potentially to decide that the best way to "protect" Equestria is to expand its borders and or just rain fire on the opposition. If nothing else though even if the griffin leader doesn't have a reason to like either alicorn, there is the old adage of better the devil you know than the one you don't. Luna has been in power for centuries, so at least the griffins know what to expect of her meddling, whereas Corona is an unpredictable and
unstable wildcard.
2591674
Wow, um...I think you've got a vastly wrong idea of what it is I think Luna generally does with regards to the Kingdoms.
Keep in mind that no small number of the Kingdoms like being independent states in a loose confederation. Her beef with Svyatopolk, for example, from Crisis:
I remember him. He did try to re-form the Griffin Empire…whether or not each of the individual kingdoms wanted to join with him. I had signed mutual defense treaties with some of them, but he thought that I wouldn’t go to war over them. He was mistaken.
Luna not getting involved in the affairs of Kingdoms she's allied with in order to leave griffin affairs to griffins and not meddle, is just a pro-unification way of spinning saying that Luna should abandon her allies and let them be absorbed by the more powerful griffin kingdoms.
Sort of like saying that America shouldn't have helped Kuwait when Iraq invaded because it was a Middle Eastern affair and none of our business, nevermind that the Kuwaiti asked for our aid.
(Yes, Kuwait and Iraq are two separate, sovereign nations...and so are the Kingdoms. Hence, Kingdoms).
2591846 : I wouldn't really consider helping allied kingdoms overtly to be meddling, in that sense, since they asked for it... if that's all she does, I don't have a problem with it. My issue is what she's doing with kingdoms that aren't overtly allied to Equestria.
But maybe I don't understand what you mean by meddling. Do you mind if I ask a few questions:
1. If Luna becomes aware that a griffin kingdom is about to make a technological advance in, say, armor or swords, that puts that kingdom on part with (or even ahead of) Equestria in that one area, will she sabotage it? Will she try to steal the design for the Equestrian army? Or will she let them be? (As real world context, the NSA has apparently been working for USA commercial interests, according to some of Snowden's files).
2. If one of the allied griffin states gets a new leader (old guy died, child inherited), and the new leader proves less inclined to work with Equestria, will Luna work to have the new leader ousted and a more amenable one instantiated? If so, how--overt coup, financial backing to an opponent, manufacturing a scandal? Or will she let them be?
3. Similarly, if two or more states decide it would be useful to unify, will Luna move to block that, or is she okay with that? If she moves to block it, how?
4. How much independence to the allied states have? If Luna wants to work out, say, a trade arrangement with one, is refusing an actual option?
Basically, what I'm wondering is how much control the griffins have over their own government, and how much Luna has a CIA veto over.
2591947
Industrial Theft/Sabotage
She'd probably make it a priority to acquire. If she was worried that the Kingdoms might be planning to use them directly against Equestria or her allies, then there might be sabotage involved; otherwise she'd simply want to acquire the tech for Equestria.
Obstinate Leader
Gonna have to ask for a clarification of "less inclined to work with Equestria." If they're just gonna raise some tariffs or something, then no, Luna isn't going to work to get the leader replaced.
Unification
I actually imagine that stats merge and break apart all the time in the Kingdoms, so she probably largely doesn't get involved unless asked by one side or another. She only gets worried if it looks like there's significant movement towards total unification and a second Empire.
Independence
Totally independent. They're just allied nations, not vassal states.
2592024
What if the leader just isn't interested in continuing the alliance? Not hostile to Equestria, but just doesn't place a priority on maintaining that alliance as opposed to other affairs?
What would she do then?
(The rest of it looks okay to me so far.)
2592126
As long as it's not doing anything to actively harm Equestria or her allies, Luna probably wouldn't get involved.
Work against it by shoring up any opposing kingdoms (after all, the only way the Kingdoms will ever unify is if one dominates the rest, and there's plenty of reasons why other kingdoms would oppose that on principle alone and so would be eager for money and political backing to remain sovereign).
2592184 :
If the ones unifying were all willing and didn't show any sign of trying to absorb unwilling ones (so the end result would be one fairly large state and some leftover smaller ones) would Luna try to destabilize the big one or would she just focus on making sure the little ones didn't get absorbed against their will?
(If it's the latter, I think I'm okay with Luna re: the griffins. I had thought she was much more of an overt manipulator, with puppet rulers and so on. If it's like what you said above, I'm cool with it.))
2592264
Probably the latter, but it depends upon a lot. The mere existence of a unified Griffin state, regardless of its intentions, would drastically alter the balance of power on the continent. So it depends on if the result is a net positive for Equestria and the continent as a whole.
No griffin nation is going to unify and then proceed with the status quo, I know that much.
2592264
2593877
In light of this new perspective, what if we made Lev change the Thane's line to something along the line of "Off course, I will gracefully accept any reward you might find appropriate in helping your knight. Maybe some of those new defensive sigil towers your mages are developing? In addition to the supply of canons we were in the middle of negotiating before your dear sister came to us with her ever so tempting Boon."
Anything that shows that the Thane isn't doing stuff out of the goodness of his heart and is using it as leverage to get more stuff out of Luna. We could have some talk peppered in of another clan, not allied with Equestria, making a move on the Gilded Wing holdings. Could add another layer that would make Terry's empowerment all the more attractive.