Part Three and Credits
Secret Histories
Part Three and Credits
The Roman once told the Princesses a story: The king of the gods, Jupiter, had a horrific headache, so bad that he felt like he had somebody else stuffed into his head. The god Vulcan, taking this complaint literally, split open Jupiter’s head with an axe, and out of the wound sprang the goddess Minerva, fully adult and armed with shield and spear!
Lying in her bed and facing the rising sun, Princess Celestia felt like Twilight Sparkle was trying to burst out of her forehead.
She tried to sit up from her bed.
This was a mistake.
With a moan, the Princess lowered her head back down, only for it to crumple a scroll that had been lying next to her head all this time.
With her eyes still closed, she called out for her steward. “Snowy? Are you there?”
“Yes, I am here!” a unicorn mare called out as she raced to the side of the royal bed.
“Quieter,” Celestia said, nearly begging.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Snowy Slopes said apologetically. “Are you alright? I have never seen you like this.”
Celestia sighed, her eyes still shut. “That is because you are unacquainted with my sister’s penchant for intoxicating beverages, and how very persuasive she can be. Where is she?”
Without being instructed, Snowy immediately walked over to the drapes, which she shut. Unfortunately, Princess Celestia normally liked sunlight in her room, and so the thin drapes were not very effective. “Princess Luna is currently ‘bar-hopping’ with a human,” she reported on her return. “The guards are still trying to find them.”
“Well at least she remembered to raise the sun for me,” said Celestia. “It’s a pity that my hangover cure can’t work on the one who casts it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that spell,” said Snowy. “Shall I retrieve a unicorn mage who can cast it for you?”
“Don’t bother,” replied Celestia. “The spell is merely the ability that makes earth ponies so resistant to getting drunk in the first place, channeled through a horn. And with Cadence running her own kingdom...”
“I’ll send some more guards after Princess Luna.”
“No...ow,” said Princess Celestia, as she first shook her head, and then found that this made the pain even worse. “I was foalish enough to do this to myself, so I shall take the punishment like a mare.” Slowly she forced her eyes to open. It felt like they had been coated in sand like one of Pinkie Pie’s sugar cookies. She looked upon the concerned face of the middle-aged unicorn before her. “Postpone my pre-lunch meetings and cut out all meals today to compensate,” she said.
“All meals!” the white unicorn gasped.
“You do know that I don’t really need to eat, right?” the Princess asked playfully.
“Yes, of course,” the steward said abashedly.
Slowly, the alicorn rose to her haunches and passed the rolled up scroll to Snowy by hoof. “Now,” she said, “while I am waiting for the throbbing behind my eyeballs to diminish, could you please read me the letter that my student has sent me? I’ll just make the headache worse if I read it myself. Oh, and I trust that you will remain discreet about any personal details that might be contained within?”
“Of...course, Your Highness,” Snowy Slopes said, as she used her telekinesis to unroll the several sheets of paper before her. With a clearing of her throat, she began to read out loud:
Dear
PrincessCelestia,
“She crossed out the ‘princess’!” Snowy exclaimed. “And then added the note, ‘(Sorry, force of habit)’!”
Celestia chuckled slightly. “Yes, we are trying out a change in our professional relationship. Strictly in private, of course. Twilight would never fail to use the correct salutation in public.”
“Of...of course,” Snowy said once again, before resuming her reading:
In an earlier letter, I informed you of how I learned that the bond I had with my friends in Ponyville dated back to far before we had met each other, to the moment when we all gained our cutie marks.
Well now I have learned that not just ourselves, but our six families, have been linked together by at least as much as a quarter of a millennium! This news will of course come as a complete surprise to you. Coincidentally, “a quarter of a millennium” is the exact span of time since Eveningstar’s pioneering work on star migration.
Celestia burst out laughing at that point, which confused her steward to no end. “Ha-ha-ha-ha...ow.” She gently rubbed one temple with a hoof. “Someday I will learn to stop underestimating my students. Continue on.”
Snowy Slopes had meanwhile been reading ahead, and what she saw made her feel weak to her knees. She had always suspected that her mistress played the “Long Game”, but to see it spelled out so explicitly...
“Snowy,” the Princess addressed her, suddenly serious. “I told you I trust you. I see no reason why I should keep these sort of things from you. Please, keep reading.”
Snowy nodded silently before continuing.
Now that everything’s out in the open—and believe me, the safe parts of this will become public knowledge—I feel that it’s time to take care of a matter I have avoided for too long. Namely, my family. Celestia, you know that I would share everything in my heart with you, but for once, this is a private matter. I just wanted you to know before I begin writing to Prince Shining Armor. With his support, I hope to begin instituting some changes.
“Good for her!” exclaimed the Princess.
I have asked the others affected by these revelations to provide their own friendship reports after my own, starting with the one among us who hasn’t written one before, so with that I will sign off.
Your Friend,
Twilight Sparkle
“Oh!” exclaimed Snowy. “She has a P.S.:”
P.S. I have recently learned that some humans have a governmental agency in place with the purpose of testing new inventions and drugs to make sure that they do not have unintended side effects. This sounds like something that can be effectively applied to our government as well. If this idea appeals to you, might I suggest that Full Immersion be the first item to be studied by this agency? I of course have full faith in the technique which I myself convinced you to release to the public, but I wouldn’t mind having a second opinion.
“Make a note to have that notion raised in the Senate,” Celestia said with a frown. “I have learned to recognize Twilight Sparkle’s ‘damage control mode’ when I hear it, and never to ignore it.”
Once that was done, Snowy continued with the second part of the letter:
Dear Celestia, Princess of Equestria and Raiser of the Sun,
The Princess and her steward shared a look of understanding. Only one species regularly used that particular greeting.
Snowy scanned down to the end of the section. “It’s from ‘Grizelda V of the Emerald Sky Pride’,” she told Celestia.
“Ah, Gilda,” the alicorn said with a nod. “The others have encountered her before, although not under the best of circumstances. Wait,” she suddenly realized, “if that group is all suddenly sharing their family histories...”
From the pale look on her mistress’ face, Snowy decided that she needed to get through this letter as fast as possible.
To answer your first, last and only question: No, they don’t know. I’d never tell them something like that, no matter what any pony might say about me.
Since I had no other secrets worth sharing, let me instead tell you about a business proposition that you would consider yourself lucky to get in on the ground floor.
“Th...the nerve of that griffon!” Snowy exclaimed. “There’s a note by Twilight afterwards—shall I skip ahead to that?”
“No, I think not,” said Celestia. “The letters are all in the same script, yes?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” confirmed Snowy Fields.
“That means that they were all dictated to Twilight’s assistant, who I trust to have cut out anything that would be a waste of my time. In addition, Twilight herself probably heard the letter being dictated as well. At the very least, they thought it would amuse me.”
“Very well,” said Snowy.
What I would like to offer is the services of me and my fellow griffons as official bodyguards of the Cross-Worlds Portal. My team will be trained in both human and pony customs. For ponies, we will offer protection in the dangerous habitats of Earth. And for humans, we will offer our expertise in pony politics and the fact that they can talk to us about sports, movies, food, or a thousand other subjects that put those namby-pamby ponies into full-on panic mode.
Snowy rolled her eyes as she continued:
Think about it, Princess. You know full well what we griffons are really like, but do you ever see us acting like that in Equestria? Well, even if you do, my griffons won’t be like that. We’re the closest thing this world had to humans before the real things showed their flat little faces, and I think that makes us the perfect beings to go between you, and them.
What do you think? If you’d like to shower me with a million bits, I can be found at the Sparkle Family Museum in Canterlot.
Later,
Gilda
“Have the Bureau bring up to date the file I ordered back when Gilda crossed the Bearers’ paths the last time,” Celestia ordered. “I don’t want to commit one way or the other on this rather intriguing offer until I’m sure that Grizelda’s truly done her homework on this matter.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Snowy, already writing out the missive.
~ ~ ~
“So, what did Twilight write after Gilda’s letter?” asked the Princess.
“‘Sorry about that’,” Snowy read, “‘but I had no idea that Gilda was going to pull a trick like sneaking a sales pitch into her letter to you. I’ll leave it in anyway, since it actually appears to have some merit, but I am imposing a strict five minute time limit on each letter from now on. They will be written by Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack and Pinkie Pie, in that order, and as soon as Pinkie’s time is up, Spike will send the letter to you, regardless of what anypony says. In this way I hope to prevent any other sorts of funny business,’ Signed, Twilight Sparkle.”
~ ~ ~
Dear Princess Celestia,
I’ll get this done real quick: I’m a Firefly, and I moved to Ponyville from Cloudsdale to keep the rest of my busybody family out of my mane.
I suppose I should go and visit them sometime.
I am only going to write this once, and then it’s back to “Rainbow Dash”, OK?
Sincerely Yours,
Fire Boom IV, Seventh Daughter of Firefly VI
~ ~ ~
Dear Princess Celestia,
All my life I have sought for a proper ending to strive for, a “happily ever after” to follow my struggle to be recognized.
Tonight I discovered that the ending I sought was mine all along. I am a noblepony, but the name that I have inherited is tainted with shame.
You see, I am a Nightingale, and the Nightingales have never atoned for the shameful acts that led them to abandon that name two centuries ago.
I accept the name with pride, regardless of stigma. If anypony asks, I will not deny what I am. If you choose to proclaim my identity, I will accept it humbly. But, if I were allowed to arrange events to my liking, then I would much prefer to wipe the stain upon my escutcheon before I would deign to reveal said escutcheon for the world to comment upon.
[At this point, Rarity convinced me to extend her allotted time. After all, the revelations affected her more than anypony, so I only thought it right. — Twilight]
[Also, it took five minutes just figuring out how to spell ‘escutcheon’. — Spike]
My fame as a designer is based upon my use of jewels in my designs, and those jewels nearly exclusively have come from the Lesser Badlands to the north of Ponyville, an area occupied by Diamond Dog squatters, squatters that I am convinced are the descendants of the Diamond Dogs my ancestors wronged making their fortune.
Technically, they are on that land illegally, doubly so as that territory is crown property. But in every decent sense, a home of some sort is their right, a right my ancestors stole from them. If you will give me the time, I would like to make them legal citizens of Equestria. I am currently looking to find private lands to their liking that I will purchase and give to them, so I beg of you, please do not prosecute or expel them from their current burrows until I can do this. I hope you do not feel that I am imposing upon you with these requests, but I feel that this is a debt that I must repay.
I realize that with a name as long-abandoned as “Nightingale” that I would have a place on the social ladder perhaps even lower than that granted to me as a designer for the aristocracy. That is no matter to me. I have been given a new mission in life, and I will not rest until the name of “Nightingale” has earned the right to be treated as well as any other noble name.
Most Humbly Yours,
Rarity, Nightingale in Deed if Not Yet in Fact
“I don’t think that plan will work out the way she thinks,” Snowy cautiously stated. “Just because her attitude towards some vagrants has changed, does not mean that theirs has changed commensurately.”
“Probably not,” answered the Princess. “But it will make for a good learning experience for a would-be noble.”
“Your Highness...” the steward added hesitantly.
“Yes, Snowy?” Celestia replied.
“The rumors are rather vague, but there is a tale in my family that I too am a Nightingale.”
“Well!” Celestia exclaimed with a smile. “In that case, I suggest you get in contact with your long-lost relative, and only afterwards offer your advice on the Diamond Dog issue.”
“Yes,” Snowy said with a small smile, “I just might do that. What should I do about Rarity’s unstated request?”
“‘Unstated’?” Celestia asked, before figuring it out. “Oh yes. Have Professor Stein draft a measure to put the Lesser Badlands up for a public auction, with a preference given to a purchaser willing to buy the entire territory as a single unit. I’m sure he’ll tell me if I’m showing any undue favoritism by including that request, and how best to fix things so that I can get what I want without looking like I’m bashing any hooves.
“Next letter!”
~ ~ ~
Dear. Princess. Celestia.
Um.
I’ll ask my mother about my ancestor Butterbold, and see what else she knows about my forebears.
Sincerely,
Fluttershy...Fluffykins?
“‘Wheatstraw’,” the Princess corrected. “Legally, their name is Wheatstraw.”
~ ~ ~
Dear Celestia,
“Another one without ‘Princess’,” noted Snowy.
“Oh Applejack went for ‘The Frog Princess’ like a tadpole takes to a swimming pool,” Celestia said with a grin.
When her steward gave her a look of utter incomprehension at her choice of simile, she quickly waved a hoof at her. “Carry on, carry on.”
We Apples have always kept a close eye on our history. In a way, it’s sort of like my Element: we take the good and the bad.
So I didn’t learn anything tonight from Blue Belle that I didn’t already know—
“Blue Belle!” Celestia interrupted. “So that’s how they learned.”
“I don’t recall any Blue Belles,” said Snowy. “At least, none in the current generation.”
“She’s a spirit, several centuries old,” the Princess explained. “I haven’t spoken with her in...oh I’d say at least seventy years. In fact, request an appointment with Prince Blueblood—I simply must have a chat with her at his convenience. Perhaps between the two of us, we can finally talk some sense into her descendant. He’s taking the ‘family burden’ far too seriously.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Snowy said as she made the note, pretending to understand what her mistress was talking about. She then continued from where she left off in Applejack’s letter:
—but I was reminded that my friends are part of my family, and I shouldn’t be so nervous about letting them look through the Apple Family Photo Album.
In fact, I sort of consider you part of the family, seeing as you were nice enough to grant my great-grandparents the deed to the spot you had picked out for your own eventual family reunion—
Snowy looked up from the letter at her sovereign.
“Never underestimate the talents of an Apple,” Celestia told her solemnly, before breaking into a smile. “Not even their diplomacy.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Snowy.
—so if you could find a spot in your schedule for the fifth of next month, perhaps I could show you all the kind of ancestors I had over a traditional Apple Family lunch.
Your grateful subject,
Applejack
“If Princess Luna is willing to cover for you, I think I can arrange for you to attend that get-together,” Snowy reported after checking the datebook that never left her side.
“Oh, Luna will have to come with me, I’m afraid,” said Celestia with mock seriousness. “It’s a ‘family reunion’, after all.”
“Of course,” Snowy said with a sigh. “I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you, Snowy,” Celestia said with a slight dip of her head.
~ ~ ~
So anyway—
“‘So anyway’?!” Snowy exclaimed. “Now here I must draw the line. What kind of—”
“It’s Pinkie Pie,” Celestia said with a shrug. “As near as I can figure, she considers everything she’s ever sent to me to be just parts of one big long letter. I received precisely one ‘Dear Princess Celestia’ from her, and I don’t expect a ‘Sincerely Yours’ until she’s on her deathbed, which I hope is a very, very long time from now.”
“I...see,” said Snowy, before returning to the beginning of Pinkie’s message with some trepidation.
So anyway, Blue Belle’s a friend of mine from my days with Madame Fortuna, and she’s told me all sorts of things about me and my family that I never knew before, and that’s why everypony (and Gilda, and Spike) went to my séance, because nobody believed me when I told them something Blue Belle told me, and you know what, I wasn’t actually supposed to tell that thing to anypony, so forget that I told you that, OK?
“I think Pinkie Pie’s words are giving me a hangover just by reading them,” Snowy declared before resuming her narration.
It turns out that spirits eat yelling for breakfast—not very nutritious if you ask me—and that’s when all the family secrets Blue Belle had been hoarding all spilled out, but Applejack turned the secrets on her like a boss and, hold on, Spike just got a cramp in his claw from writing too fast.
As I was saying—what was I saying? Twilight says my time’s running out. I didn’t tell any of them that I was actually a [REDACTED] and [REDACTED! REDACTED! OH SWEET CELESTIA SO VERY REDACTED!!!] Wait, no, Spike, don’t sent tha
~ ~ ~
And that’s how the letter ended, cut off in mid-sentence. Most of that last paragraph was not read out loud by Snowy, whose brain had froze up at the very first [REDACTED], but by Celestia, who had snatched away the letter with her magic, headache or no headache.
“Ugh! Pinkie Pie!” the Princess yelled out in frustration. This was not to say that the Princess had not harbored certain suspicions. There was a reason after all why she had not requested that Twilight’s unsatisfying friendship report about her friend’s possible powers of precognition have a follow up. But now that she knew, there were certain procedures that had to be followed. Poor Snowy would need to have the last five minutes of her memory wiped. And the Bearers (other than Pinkie) would have to lose practically a whole day by this point, assuming they were all within a twenty-ponylength radius of Pinkie at her typical volume level; closed doors had proved completely useless in the past at blocking that voice when she wasn’t trying to keep a secret. And then she’d have to blast herself, after leaving a suitably convoluted explanation to her sister to block herself from investigating when she realized what had happened to her...
And then the logical part of Celestia’s mind—which more and more over the centuries came to resemble the voice of the human philosopher Voltaire—reminded her not only that dragon brains were notoriously hard to influence magically, but also that the Elements, and therefore their bearers, were enchanted against memory-rewriting spells because of that one time when Discord had tried to turn Luna against her while still frozen in stone.
With a sigh, Celestia lightly tapped her hooves together right next to Snowy Slopes’ ear.
“I’ll never tell another pony for as long as I live, I swear by your nonexistent beard!” the unicorn suddenly exclaimed.
“Alright, very big to-do list,” Celestia told her after pointedly ignoring her outburst. “First, get Pr. Stein in here to start the process of getting a certain no-longer applicable order overturned. I predict he’ll tell me it’s not going to happen. We’re going to make it happen anyway, but I predict it will take about a year to pull off.
“Second, get me a copy of Royal Order 1895 so I can send it to Pinkie Pie so she knows precisely what she did wrong, while I draft a letter instructing her to reduce the damage and emphasizing that I trust her to do the right thing. I hope I’m not making a mistake.
“And third, cancel everything else for today and tell Luna that she’s in charge, by magic bullhorn if necessary. May the Fates pity anypony foalish enough to interrupt me before tomorrow.”
“What will you be doing?” asked Snowy fearfully.
“I,” Princess Celestia announced, for the first time in living memory, “am going back to bed. Today is officially shot.”
T H E _ E N D
Credits & Acknowledgements
First and foremost, a big thank you to GBScientist, whose comment in Chapter 32 of “The Best of All Possible Worlds” inspired this whole story. Also a shout-out to my editor, EricKilla.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is property of Hasbro, and the artistic creation of Mrs. Lauren Faust and the team at Studio B. The characters of Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Queen Chrysalis, Prince Blueblood, Opal, Star Swirl and the Viscous Smooze (First Generation), Princesses Celestia and Luna (fka Nightmare Moon), Gilda, Daring Do, Scootaloo, Spike, the Cakes, Sweetie Belle, Shining Armor and Princess Cadence, The Diamond Dogs and Firefly (also First Generation) are all the creations of that august company, as well as the locations of Equestria, Canterlot, Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, Appleloosa, Manehattan, Ponyville, Sugarcube Corner, Carousel Boutique and Trottingham, the concepts of the Elements of Harmony and Poison Joke, and the occasions of Hearth’s Warming Eve, the Grand Galloping Gala and Nightmare Night, and all of them are being used without their permission. All that belongs to me are Blue Belle, Morningstar, Eveningstar, Fellstaff, Cogs and Zody Sparkle, Sky Shock, Grizelda (the First), Duke Thunderwing, Butterbold, Mallus, Princess Fisby, the Nightingales and the Orange Clan of dragons, Royal Order 1895, and the events of the Diamond Dog and Griffish Revolutions from my earlier story “The Best of All Possible Worlds”, plus Spot the Wonder Changeling, Stirling the White, Nebulosity, Noffony I [modeled after Napoleon I], Pr. Valerian, the technique/machine known as Full Immersion, Sir Purse Strings (who may or may not be the same as the “Best of All Possible Worlds” character Cut Strings), the Delegation Operation (although half of the fandom already had the idea before me), Gilda’s full name in this fic and her placement in the Emerald Sky Pride. And Baaarney’s Scarf Emporium—you can have control of that concept when you pull it out of my rigor-morted fingers.
“Essential Saltes” is from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft (1927).
The fan characterization of Lyra Heartstrings is in this story, if you know where to look.
The unauthorized biography of Twilight Sparkle was called Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of a Unicorn and Her Friends in Equestria (Foal Free Press, 2010). The independent web animation series that was adapted from that book is called simply Friendship Is Magic, and is currently building up to its third season. I hear we might even get to see Princess Luna again!
The term “Melonie” is derived from “Camel” in the same way as “Gypsy” is derived from “Egypt”. Gypsies refer to themselves as “Romani”, and the Romani word for horse is “grasnari”. “Opre” is their word for “arise”.
Momma Fortuna is from the novel The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle (1968).
The demonic character of Thrakkorzog, voiced by the immortal Jim Cummings, first appeared in The Tick animated series in the episode “The Tick vs. the Uncommon Cold” (1994, written by Henry Gilroy and directed by Art Vitello), although I hear the name more recently showed up in a work of parody. “But McPoodle,” you ask, “why are you telling us about Thrakkorzog, when s/he wasn’t even mentioned in this story?” Are you sure about that?
Ballyfore is a town in Northern Ireland, and therefore a good place to find a baneful banshee.
Raise the Red Lantern is a 1991 film in Mandarin Chinese directed by Zhang Yimou.
And finally, Princess Celestia’s steward Snowy Slopes was borrowed from Abelidoth’s story “Celestia’s Teeth”.
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i think that [REDACTED]......crap
but you said that blue belle would never tell....
That's it? No! I want more! I want to know who this mystery pony is!
2607259
That's right. She never told the others at the seance. She did tell Pinkie, though.
2607307
ah
How exactly did you create a box around portions of the text? I wish I had known about that when I wrote Chapter One of my story.
Where's Pr. Stein from?
Also, I assume the fictional McPoodle enjoyed barhopping with Luna?
2607265
Read "The Best of All Possible Worlds". Or just skim Chapters 23, 24 and the Afterward.
2606900
edited my comment but i dont KNOW if thats the right story...
the one im thinking of is nightmare moon is to luna as pinkie pie is to twilight...
2607351
It's a tag called "quote". You get it with the last button at the top of the edit window.
2607365
Pr. Stein is a sort of utility character of mine, that shows up in multiple places. He's the head of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns (in name only), the chief magical adviser for Princess Celestia, and the head of the Loyalist party in the Equestrian Senate. Here's the passage where I first introduced him, in one of my blog-only stories:
He's named after his voice actor.
P.S. And the fictional version of myself has no memory of what happened that night, just that it involved a case of peppermint Schnapps on McPoodle's part and a tureen of tomato bisque on the part of the Princess. Nothing improper occurred, and the two language lovers ended the night the best of friends.
2607525
That's the sequel.
2607567
but if you go here it continues onto Avocation and then to π but i did read inscape
I got so excited by the Pinkie letter thing that I went and checked the transcripts for her episodes, but all her friendship reports begin with 'dear princess Celestia'. I made SUCH a sadfaec.
Oh those coincidences, they just come out of nowhere.
Alright Twilight, time to kick some familial flank.
I really truly love the direction that the Blueblood family took in these stories. I mean, I already liked him based on some other fics, but this explanation for his behavior is just so novel.
Oh Pinkie. Oh Pinkie!
2607527
I had been wondering whether he was a character from Ghost of Heraclitus's bureaucracy stories that I had forgotten about.
Pinkie Pie remembers to start her morning with Special K.
It's not what you think.
Why does it say Needlepoint in the letter? Wasn't Rarity a Nightingale?
Encore?
Gilda's was pretty awesome. You have achieved the previously-thought-impossible and got me to LIKE her.
I like Pinkie Pie having it all as part of one letter.
[REDACTED]? Heheheheheh.
I hope there's going to be another story in this continuity, it's good.
Celestia needs to drink a whole lot of water. It aids in flushing the ketones resulting from excessive ethanol metabolism from the blood.
SCIENCE!!!
>>>And for humans, we will offer our expertise in pony politics and the fact that they can talk to us about sports, movies, food, or a thousand other subjects that put those namby-pamby ponies into full-on panic mode.>>>
Gilda conveniently left out the part about her learning about certain non-panicky ponies, namely Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the growing vore cult in Ponyville... some of whom had gleefully volunteered to provide sustenance for a number of griffons and several dragons...
(Yep, this is now a running gag... dark humor, gotta love it!)
>>>Momma Fortuna is from the novel The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle >>>
Yah. I have that book. Autographed by Mr. Beagle. We had a long chat a few years back. (U SO JELLY!)
Anyway, so Pinkie is actually a Time Lord x Vorlon hybrid. Who'd a thunk it. Seems legit.
2610964
I watched the movie, unawares of a book.
Yeah, I jelly.
I do rather enjoy laid-back, hungover Celestia.
2608720
Yeah, I screwed that up. Fixed.
2610964
Yeah, mine's autographed, too. I was at Comic-Con, he was at Comic-Con...
Grumpy, hungover Celestia is teh adorbs.
Nice wrap-up; now, as usual…
Nitpicks ahoy!
Typo.
It’s clear what that means, but it still needs to be reworded—as is, it sounds like Pinkie is the one doing the reading. I’m not sure how to say it while still keeping some agency with Pinkie, though—possibly something like “I think I’m getting a Pinkie-Pie hangover just by reading this”.
Technically speaking, “twenty ponylength” should be hyphenated in this context (“twenty-ponylength radius”).
I’m not clear on this one. My first thought was that “Celestia” was a typo for “Luna”; my second was that it was originally “her”, and this was an attempt to disambiguate it. If the second is true, I’d go with “herself” instead, though I’m not entirely sure what’s going on there. Is the idea that Celestia gives Luna an explanation, Celestia wipes her own memory, Celestia realizes she’s been mindwiped, Luna gives her the explanation, and Celestia is satisfied and stops investigating? (Now I think I’m getting a hangover!)
Parallelism failure. Should be either “not only that” in the first clause or just “but also” in the second—preferably the former.
BTW, I noticed your careful use throughout of alternating single and double quotes in nested contexts (both properly curly). Well done! (Such things bring a smile to a nitpicker’s face—soft touches, the lot of us…)
2613210
Thanks for taking the time to find these mistakes. All of them have been fixed.
For the Pinkie Pie-induced hangover, I ended up with this:
"Herself" is correct for "Celestia". The scenario Celestia feared was that she'd wipe her memory, realize eventually that she had wiped her own memory, and in investigating the matter discover why she had wiped her memory, which would require wiping her memory again. To prevent this scenario, she'd have to tell Luna not to allow her sister to investigate. But without mentioning to her sister why she needed to do this, because if she did, then Luna would have to have her memory wiped as well, so the explanation has to be so good that Luna won't investigate the reason why Celestia told her not to allow Celestia to investigate why there's a hole in her memory.
Did anybody follow all that?
2613248
Ah, OK. Was that an episode of Futurama? Or was it Red Dwarf? It sounds familiar…
(I wish I had a canned phrase like “time travel will have given me a headache”/“I hate temporal mechanics!” to bust out for situations like this.)
2613259
Ah, I get it now. I’ll ask around, I know some SCAdians.
2613267
I've read and seen a lot of time-travel related science fiction, some of it involving memory manipulation. The scenario is somewhat familiar, but I don't think I'm quoting any source specifically.
2598977 2600730 2602510 2603418 2604569 2604780
Time for a few more. Nobody asked for more this time, so I'll only toss out a few, in case you guys are getting tired of them.
"Parasprites used to be just called 'Sprites', but the name changed over time thanks to a saying. 'See that Sprite? Feed it something. Now look away. Now look back. Now you got a pair'a Sprites.' It just caught on."
"Big Mac is only Applejack and Apple Bloom's half brother. Before she met their father, their mother had a brief relationship with a buffalo."
"Trixie really did fight and beat an Ursa Major. She lost against the Ursa Minor because before they grow up, Ursa Minor's don't have the specific weakness she took advantage of the last time."
"When Princess Luna was purified, the Nightmare wasn't destroyed. It was just banished to the moon again. It has been sentenced to yet another thousand years imprisonment, with the added torture of having to endure the company of Skippy the Moon Rock once more for the length of her sentence."
"Celestia isn't threatening anyone when she asks if they like bananas. She just can't stand them personally, and is trying to get rid of the ones she already has."
Nicely done.
More support here for my "Pinkie Pie is part Eldritch Abomination" theory.
2612559 I met him at Anthrocon several years ago. Less crowded, more time to talk person-to-person.
Anywho, so poor Gilda has to somehow recall every mental image, and likely sensation, of the gruesome betrayal and death of her young ancestor by her own mother in the Soylent Griffin factory, channeling her restless spirit or being the reincarnation thereof.
That is one F'd up universe they live in. And testament to Gilda's strength that the repeated memories and dreams of such a despicable and horrendously traumatic act haven't driven her into sheer insanity and made her a serial killer of griffin politicians.
Eh, mma blow it up the universe because it offends me. I AM GOD AND U CANOT STOP ME SO THERE NYAH!!
Now, if Grizelda had just be sacrificed to a hydra, that'd be ok. Cannibalism, not! IT'S IN DA RULZ!!
2615261
No, that's my Thought Experiments series. This one is "Pinkie is a Deep One with the power of Doctor Manhattan". (And I'm only half-joking.) Aren't you glad she has a sense of humor, no interest in power, and (most of the time) the ability to shrug off insults?
2615763
This reminds me of my continual amazement at authors who write ponies as if they were identical with human beings in their character flaws. No world that has Windigoes could possibly operate on the same level of casual cruelty as humanity--ponies are nice to each other or else. Also, they are herbivores and herd animals.
I'm not saying that Equestrians aren't flawed. Just that they have their own unique set of flaws, to work around the moral constraints their magical world puts on them. The whole sequence in "The Best of All Possible Worlds" about the Alternate Canterlot is a demonstration of this.
So on Earth, the idea that once every couple of generations somebody is forced to become a living reminder of her family's past mistake is considered monstrous, while on Equestria, it's just the kind of garbage you have to deal with, like being born with a heart defect.
2616934
Is that on your blog?
Seaponies?
Dr. Manhattan never misinterprets a surprise party that badly, unless high-energy tachyons are involved.
So she was only pretending to be discorded by Discord, or does that not happen in your continuity? Because "cynical, easily angered" Pie sounds like she would be dangerous.
2617282
Thought Experiments is the name of the series that started with "Perfect Little Village of Ponyville".
And Discord (similar to Pinkie herself) tends to be the exception to every rule.
2616934 Wellll, it's kinda the psychology of it. Something like that, playing over and over in the mind... kinda sounds like certain schizophrenic hallucinations...
And we know how that turns out.
Only a very strong mind could deal with something so traumatizing.
2620875
Well in my mind griffons are in a psychological bind even when they aren't haunted by their past.
They live between the dragons and the ponies. The dragons' favorite joke is that griffons and ponies are indistinguishable, because both are small, short-lived, and squishy.
And on the other side are ponies. A natural prey species, yet the penalty for doing what comes naturally to them is so overwhelmingly negative that griffons have to constantly perform an act of mental emasculation when around them.
And so they have to walk between these two extremes to be respected/survive, exaggerating their aggressiveness around dragons and dampening it around ponies.
It's a wonder that Gilda wasn't less of an insincere jerk in her episode.
Compensating for this is their sense of destiny, born from the Revolution. To the griffons, the past belonged to the dragons, the present belongs to the ponies, but the future will belong to them.
2607660
Well, chalk that up to another innocent mistake made by the animators of Friendship Is Magic. After all, they only had Twilight Sparkle's very unauthorized biography to work from, and therefore they ended up getting Pinkie about as wrong as everypony else does.
2621306
Hehe, I suppose I could do that...
Great. Now I want Pinkie to write an autobiography. Can you imagine it? Half of all the sentences would be run-on, and the topic of any given chapter would be in such a state of flux you'd never be able to guess which was which!
2621289 Little do the griffins know that the Chinese will invade and slaughter them all for aphrodisiacs...
2621357 I know a certain ongoing bureaucracy that seems to be surpassing the Celestial one in number and scope of scandal...
I'm really mad that Celestia's first instinct is to erase all memory of the incident. That's just a horrible way of dealing with things, and I'm happy that she can't get away with it in this circumstance.
This story makes me feel like you wrote an entire 46 chapter prequel to this story just so you could explain why Blueblood is such an boorish jerkwad, because my god, that section with Spot the changeling was masterfully crafted and executed.
Actually it's probably just your own little headcanon, but it is one I fully intend to steal for my own, despite the fact that in my headcanon Celestia really isn't in need of it, because darnit, that just works too well. Maybe its just your beautiful execution though. I think mine might work better as Blueblood being the backup royalty line for in case anything happens to Celestia, and the reason why he was such a prick during the gala was lashing out over being supplanted by Luna (sure Cadance was there, but she had her own kingdom she was getting groomed for)
Only complaint in this story set was Gilda's straightforward and mostly unprovoked apology to Fluttershy. Nothing about Gilda struck me as not being able to justify it in her head, and thus I wouldn't have even expected her to really remember yelling at Fluttershy in the first place.
2647203
One of the advantages of having an immortal ruler is that "tradition" is no longer a valid reason for holding on to something that's bad for the people--you can spend decades shaping public opinion, and none will be the wiser. With that in mind, why is Blueblood a prince, given that puts him in the same category as the Diarchs? Sure, he's probably holding a remnant of the old unicorn monarchical title, but it's definitely in Celestia's best interest to make most of the reminders of that era go away. After all, if you dwell on the period long enough, you realize that the Diarchs are, in fact, usurpers to a united throne that did not exist before Discord's reign of terror.
So I figure there's only two possible reasons: either he served a purpose by being a jerk, or he was the back-up plan in case Twilight sucked at making friends in the Everfree. For the continuity of "Best of All Possible Worlds", I decided to stick with Option A.
By the way, who says that Blueblood is not being groomed for a kingdom? I don't remember hearing anything about the Crystal Empire during "A Canterlot Wedding". The Princess plays the long game very close to her chest.
Oh, it was probably the result of of the months of never-remembered nightmares, each of them magically generated whenever a Fluttershy fan-boy submits another Gilda revenge fic to this site. (
) (And if that's the only fault you found with Gilda's characterization in this fic, then I did a lot better job than I thought I did when I submitted this, because I was afraid I completely botched her.)
2650398
Oh god, I so want to share my headcanon with you now, but I still haven't cleaned it up since I started reworking it to fit with that silly "Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart" storybook that came out recently and provides more backstory on Cadance.
Well, it is entirely possible that I was just so flabbergasted by Gilda's out-of-the-blue apology that I never gave myself a chance to notice everything else. Most of the other things with Gilda I just attributed to your headcanon on her, and gave you a pass unless they seemed o specifically conflict with something she demonstrated in the show.
I could always point out that Twilight mentioned, in the show, that there is pretty much no written information(or even remembered by the princess aparantly) on Dragons known to ponykind. If Griffons were allies to Ponies, and had absorbed a dragon clan or two, you'd have thought there would be SOME information made available, if not to the public, then at least to the personal student of the princess who was currently responsible for raising said dragon through his formative years.
After seeing all the troubles Celestia's own griffon prodigy caused with griffons trying to conform to pony social structures,(which judging by Gilda still reverberate even this far into the future) I would doubt she'd want to see Twilight make the same mistake with Spike.
2651776
Ah, but the key is that the dragons were absorbed by relinquishing their identity as dragons. They live their lives as if they were griffons, and are treated as griffons by the actual griffons.
Therefore, nobody in Griffonica knows or cares how dragon society operates.
P.S. As for getting your internal continuity straight, my advice is to pick a point in the history of the series, and stick with it. I started writing "The Best of All Possible Worlds" right after "Hearth's Warming Eve" aired, so assuming I didn't screw up somewhere, nothing that happened after that episode "counts" in my story or its sequels. That's the reason why the Captain of the Guard in "Parade Coverage" was not explicitly identified as Shining Armor--because, as of the point in canon when I stopped, Shining Armor didn't exist yet. (Of course, if I had actually given the captain a different name, or described him as being obviously different than Shining Armor, then a portion of my readers would have rejected the story as violating canon, so obviously I'm walking a fine line here: he's both Shining Armor, and not Shining Armor, at the same time.)
P.P.S. I think Twilight is making the exact same mistake with Spike as Celestia did with Thunderwing. Which is not to say that it will have the exact same results. Actually, the relationship between Celestia and Thunderwing was entirely positive: he got the skills he needed to liberate his people, and there were no complaints during his lifetime about his method of rule, because the griffons of the time only had the negative example of dragon tyranny to compare it with. Matters in the following generations worsened in stages, until the last generation before the Revolution, which was dominated by conspiracies, covert interference by the dragons, and the adoption of slaughter and cannibalism as official acts of the State. Everything before this point was "unnatural", but entirely endurable, and it was only the academics who complained.
Returning to Spike, he was quite obviously raised to be a pony, with only the slightest concessions made to his dragon nature. This is because dragons are considered by ponies to be untrustworthy at their best and mindless rampaging beasts at their worst. Celestia decided to be "hooves off" in this, as she so often does (and, as always, you are free to second guess her wisdom in this--I'd say that Twilight fundamentally doesn't want her assistant to be someone she could no longer relate to, which is what she fears if she makes him too "dragon"). Given some of the amazing achievements of the series, I fully expect that this issue will be thoughtfully addressed again in the next season or two, so I hesitate to speculate as to what kind of pony or dragon Spike will end up becoming.
awwww
i wanted to start up a Baaarney’s Scarf Emporium
Two for One Scarfs for All!
Well, this was a fun read. Quirky in your usual style, interesting conceptually, plenty of low key humour and interesting headcanon... but oh God, do I ever miss Voltaire.
2703154
Well, I'm gratified to see that I've induced withdrawal-like symptoms from the fictional representation of an historical figure, but I honestly don't have anything else that I can do with Voltaire, and I thought I was being quite indulgent as it is with how many times I had he and Celestia verbally spar with each other. As far as this continuity goes, my main interest now is in developing Ambassador Luna's character, which is probably not the lighthearted direction you were hoping for.
All I can say to that is that I do have a comedy on my plate...just not a comedy set in the BoAPW continuity.
Unless I'm forgetting certain critical information, it seems to me that this could have been a standalone story. It may support your continuity, but it doesn't rely on it, and the two or three mentions of humans had no importance at all.
Here's what I missed: why was it so tremendously important that no one know of Pinkie's ancestry?