This story is a sequel to Nightmares Are Tragic
The Great and Powerful Trixie is unhappy when her Summer Sun Festival night gig in Manehattan turns out to be a show at an open-air neighborhood festival in a seedy Lower East Side park. When the Sun refuses to rise on schedule, Trixie finds herself giving the greatest performance of her life to an increasingly-terrified crowd. But darker forces are moving events to an inescapable confrontation.
A side-story to Nightmares Are Tragic, hence takes place at the same time as The Elements of Harmony (the Season 1 two-part opener). Now has its own side-story, about Piercing Gaze, A Long Night at the Hippodrome
There is one flashback in which it is mentioned that there has been sex between two characters. There is also some violence.
Now has its own TVTropes Page!
The notion of pegasi as sailors makes a lot of sense when you put it that way-- Love your world-building as always, and I'm looking forward to some Trixie.
3857378
Thank you for the compliment. Yeah, I was thinking about the fact that the pegasi would do air transport anyway, even before there were airships -- and then I realized that to move heavy materials they could use sailing ships. Even rather basic sailing ships -- ancient roundships or galleys, let alone medieval longships or cogs -- work well if you can direct or at least predict the winds and control storms. Pegasi who became sailors would find a large island on a river mouth an ideal home. Hence, the post-Cataclysm Manehattan, probably funded originally by the treasure troves taken from the ruins of the titan towers, while they lasted.
3864062
I've long wondered what Celestia was thinking after she sent Twilight off in the hopes that she could defeat Nightmare Moon. First off, I wondered why she thought that Twilight could defeat Nightmare Moon, given the obvious mismatch in power there. I think I answered that first question adequately in Nightmares Are Tragic, and here I'm getting a little more explicit -- Ponyville and its residents were planted there, by Celestia around a hundred years ago, specifically to be an incubator for potential Element Bearers.
Secondly, I wondered about Celestia's "Plan B." Obviously, her next option was to fight Nightmare Moon itself. She wouldn't want to do this in downtown Canterlot, because if they both went all-out they would destroy much of the city, possibly bring down the mountain. In my headcanon, even as Alicorn Avatars, Celestia is essentially a living fusion bomb and Luna a generator of gravitic singularities. In actual canon, it took them under a minute of fighting to level much of what was designed as a fortress, and Celestia wasn't even trying to kill Luna.
Her War Room (which afaik I invented and introduced in All The Way Back) is not really intended or able to stand up to a direct attack by Nightmare Moon. It's intended to survive near-misses by her power, giving Celestia time to get the heck out of there and take the fight somewhere safer. It's also meant as protection against lesser threats -- for instance, it probably wasn't penetrated or even signficantly shaken up in the short time Chrysalis was attacking the city in A Canterlot Wedding, and any staff on hand could have organized a counterattack had the battle lasted longer.
It could also, for instance, ride out a Hiroshima-sized airburst against Canterlot with no harm to its occupants, though a larger groundburst targeted directly against the Palace would probably smash it. And, since Celly was once Sundreamer, and she knows that her Earth is within a century or less of nuclear technology, she's definitely thinking in such terms.
Assuming Celestia died or was otherwise permanently incapacitated in the fight against Nightmare Moon, she's given Cadance the succession, with Shining Armor essentially in the position of protecting her and leading the resistance. If Luna regains her sanity, she's left orders for Cadance to shift to supporting her. Celestia's willing to have this happen even if she herself died first -- she's not vindictive, and she doesn't want Equestria torn apart by a pointless civil war. And yes, Cadance's power is potentially terrible in war -- she could, for instance, give troops unbreakable morale, with all the horror that implies should the battle go against her side.
The food stores are to give her Ponies a chance of survival should Luna attempt to maintain Eternal Night long enough to kill the crops in the field. Of course, if Luna's insanity lasted long enough, most Earthlife is doomed anyway.
It's not so much a "Nightmare" cult as a Shadow cult, worshiping ultimately the Great Dark, essentially the Shadows' supreme deity, their equivalent of the Allfather and Fauna Luster put together as a nightmarish perversion of everything those two imply. Its purpose is to provide willing hosts for the Shadows, and tools for them to operate in our world.
Of course, the sorts of hosts that are available are usually pretty pathetic ones, and the Shadows willing to ride them the weaker ones of their own kind. The Shadow riding Luna is far more powerful than these, and the combination also far more powerful than any ordinary nightmares or nightstallions. Still, one makes do with the available material.
Celestia has long since figured out that the Shadows are real, though she's not entirely sure where they've come from. She suspects that the damage done to the continuum by the growth and sudden destruction of the World That Was Not, Discord's messing with her own makeshift Solar System, and various timeloops of differing degrees of stability, has weakened the local fabric of reality and let something in.
She knows that the Shadows found a willing and powerful host in King Sombra, and that Sombra somehow seduced and corrupted Luna so badly that -- even when Luna realized what he was doing and stood by Celestia to banish him -- Luna's sanity was severely shaken. She became de-attuned to her elements, because her personality was changing in some very bad directions.
This led Luna to a psychological Nightmare state: something to which alicorns and other powerful beings are vulnerable, which is essentially an imbalance in their expression of their governing Concept. This also made her a perfect host for the Shadows, because she was both powerful and psychologically weakened.
What Celestia didn't realize was that Sombra had taught her to contact the Shadows, and that Luna had actually gone mad enough to invite the Shadows to take her. Celestia had noticed that Luna's melancholy was so great that she had lost Laughter, but not that she had lost Honesty and Loyalty as well.
Celestia also most critically failed to realize that the Shadows had most strongly seeped through cracks in the continuum on the Moon. Had she known that, she would have attempted almost anything but what she actually did, which was to banish Luna to the one place where the Shadows had free access to her. As Celestia says about herself, she's fallible, and this was one of the worst mistakes of this whole incarnation.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons she wishes the Ponies wouldn't actually worship her.
3864062
Oh, and Celestia does wear shoes. Cute stylized golden versions of war-sabatons, complete with pointed tips. A bit too flimsy to be very-effective weapons in protracted battle -- but then if Celestia wants to really fight, kicking is the least of her abilities.
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Why, thank you.
I still have the denouement left to finish (1 chapter) which should be appearing today.
I'm glad you liked the climax, though!
I liked the concept of this story. It promises surprises and some character growth for Trixie, as well as a peak into the happenings of other parts of Equestria during the pilot. Trixie is really put to the test and it's refreshing to see her go about in her own unique way. No character assassination here!
However, what really drags this story down for me, is the excess exposition. There's a ton of it and not all of it is necessary for the story. The bits with Celestria going over all her plans, the parts with some of the villains such as Chrystallis and Sombra, and the bits where the focus changes to these groups that are fighting against the cult in towns other than Manehattan. All these are distracting from the main selling point: Trixie's struggle. They shouldn't be in this story; rather they should be their own story within this universe you've created.
Remove those, and this story will be stronger for it. I still enjoyed the Trixie parts, but it was a slog to get to them.
Till next time!
3888271
You've got a point about the cuts to other events. There are two reasons why I did this:
(1) - I wanted to establish that what Trixie faced was just her own piece of the larger fight. I wanted to directly reference the Season 1 Opener and Nightmares Are Tragic to connect directly with both my show and storyverse. I also picked Celestia and Mayor Orangetree to show the POV from the royal and municipal governments respectively.
(2) - The little views -- Chrysalis, Sombra, Granny Pie at Dunnich and the Deep Ponies of Hinnysmouth -- were either to tie to the show or to other stories I have planned in my own series (Chrysalis ties to Fluttershy Is Free and Sombra will tie to later parts of All the Way Back). I'm aiming for a very inter-connected set of stories, like a well-planned out comic book universe, though absent a huge national emergency I probably wouldn't have packed so many cross-references.
===
I went with the concept of Trixie as an abrasive, distrustful loner who has great difficulty forming and keeping meaningful social connections with other ponies to explain the Trixie we see on screen in her two canon appearances. Alex Warlorn's PonyPOVerse Trixie provided the fundamental motivation for her character: she wants to be special, unique, the antithesis of just one of the herd. RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse added a key element of her character: she has a weak sex drive and is afraid of emotional intimacy, which explains something important: why such a beautiful mare is alone.
I also got White-Beard the Grey from Alex Warlorn's stories. He wasn't used much and was obviously meant as an Expy of one of the most famous wizards in all Western fantasy, Gandalf. Since the Cosmic Concepts are essentially similar to Tolkien's Valar, as Ardashir at least once pointed out to me, I decided -- heck, why couldn't there also be "Maiar" in my universe? The conclusion was obvious: Trixie's mentor was the same entity who once walked Middle-Earth as Gandalf.
This is actually not unreasonable. Both Celestia and Wisedreamer (a direct translation of Olorin, the "true name" of Gandalf) are quite aware that Trixie is the Aspect of a larval (or fetal, depending on how one looks at it) Cosmic Concept. Why wouldn't a lesser Cosmic spirit be assigned to guide and protect Celestia's baby Alicorns, to make sure that they don't turn into Nightmares (namely, insane and unbalanced Alicorns, capable of great destruction)?
"Delver" is also taken directly from Tolkien, though you probably know him under a couple of other names. It's a direct translation of his true name. I intend to use him again, if he survives the mile-long planet-eating worms. But then, Delver's survived quite a bit, even being killed at least once!
Why, specifically, did I give Trixie a failed close friendship / love affair in her past? The real question should be, why didn't I give her multiple ones?
The reason is that Trixie generally doesn't let other ponies get all that close to her. She's had friendships which she didn't recognize as such, which her paranoia led her to dismiss as deliberate betrayals when something went wrong with them. The combination of her low sex drive and mistrust of others makes it pretty obvious why she's relatively sexually-inexperienced. In the Lunaverse, she's a virgin at this point; here, her life on the road made her lonelier so she -- once and once only -- let a stallion through her defenses. The reason is that she saw him as the first close friend she'd had since White-Beard died.
One way or another, we'll obviously be hearing more of Piercing Gaze again. Trixie may try to deny it, but it's obvious that he occupies her thoughts far too greatly to be purely part of her past. Whether he will want to see her again -- and if he ever loved her at all -- is an open question.
I see Trixie as a heroine, but a very flawed one -- almost an anti-heroine. The main thing that stops her from using her powers for evil (which she could, easily) is that White-Beard got to her at about the last moment for her character formation and instilled in her a rudimentary morality. It's not a very rational one, nor even necessarily a long-term stable one, because it's based on ego-centrism and she might as easily decide to become a villain based on her self-love. But for the moment, it tells her that she is too special a person to sink to base behavior, so it links her morality directly to her pride.
The fact that a character based on the concept of a Christian angel was forced to such a resort, as the only good third alternative to the unacceptable choices of letting her rampage across Equestria or killing her, tickles my sense of irony. Though Wisedreamer probably doesn't share my amusement on this matter.
Why do I assume that Trixie has a strong moral core? Because of what she did and didn't do in her two canon appearances. As herself, she only acted against hecklers, and only to the extent of publicly embarrassing them. Under the influence of the Alicorn Amulet -- an evil artifact which was corrupting her soul -- she did evil deeds against the more or less innocent, but she didn't kill or even try to kill anyponies. She clearly and in particular has a Code Against Killing. It's too bad that she didn't kill the black magicians, but then maybe it's a good thing that a new and only marginally-sane Alicorn has picked up such scruples from Her first Aspect!
3888271
One more thing. From the Ponies' point of view, Trixie is even more messed up than she is from ours. Trixie comes from a friendlier, more gregarious, and more trusting species than our own. As an acerbic loner whose mantra is "You can't trust other ponies," she's almost insane.
3890610
Well, she's presumably going some other places first, but -- yes -- she's doomed to lose her wagon and much of her self-respect in "Boast Busters."
After I wrote the last chapter, I realized that Trixie -- in direct consequence of her primary character flaw of overweening pride -- made three bad decisions in rapid sequence at the end of the story. Firstly, she not only left Bottom as an agent (which may have been a good decision, really) but (bad decision) did so in a way that burned her bridges and made it hard for her to work in Manehattan again. Secondly, she decided not to go to Canterlot (where she might have been able to find a mentor to help her develop her powers further). Thirdly, she decided not to go to Baltimare (where Piercing Gaze might have been willing to resume their friendship (romantic or not), so at least she wouldn't have had to face her future alone). Instead, she basically figured "Oh good, I have some kind of ill-defined goddess-like power which I totally don't understand and have no idea how to summon it again, so I can handle anything on my own now, whee!"
By this point I've come to love Trixie enough that I felt a little sad knowing some of the things in canon and out that she's doomed to suffer, but really this is totally in-character for Trixie. Before she summoned The Alicorn Illusion she was already arrogant, now she's even more arrogant. Pride goeth before ... well, you know the rest.
3890610
Ok.
Manehattan is important because -- like the New York City c. 1900 on which Manehattan is based in canon -- it's the main entry port on Equestria's East Coast and the center of much of the country's financial sector. The Shadow Coven may have over-estimated the power of their attack a bit -- it "only" would have produced a Hiroshima-sized explosion, and when the pegasi shifted the wind most of the city probably could have been saved from the resultant firestorm, because it's of heavier and better construction, and is a lot bigger, than were Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945. But the part of the city that would have been destroyed would have included one of the main oceanic transhipping merchant harbors and the business district -- including, incidentally, the offices of the insurance companies who would be contracted to pay for the damages (and who probably would either be forced to default on legal technicalities or go bankrupt). In addition to the direct damage, much commerce would have ground to a halt as companies desperately tried to reconstruct their financial records (much of which would have been reduced to ashes) and resume their operations from temporary offices (with whichever executives and other employees survived the destruction).
The losses to the economy in delayed business alone would have been immense. When our own version of the Shadow Cult did something similar on a smaller scale on 9-11-2001, it triggered a small recession despite the fact that the damage and loss of life was both far less and it took place in a country with a considerably larger population than Equestria. Other points of comparison in American history would be the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 (much less loss of life, and SF was never a national financial center on the scale of NY) and the Katrina Flood of 2005 (which destroyed a much lesser city than NY and with far less loss of life).
I didn't go into this too much because I wanted to write an epic adventure, not the Canterlot bureaucracy's report on "The Near-Catastrophic Manehattan Fire of 1000 and Lessons To Be Learned In Future Disaster Planning." I mean, Celestia actually wants to see that report, but you guys probably don't!
My point is that yes, Trixie was a true heroine in terms of her internal story (her determination that the show must go on and her successful struggle to overcome her own intense fear of the Night Stallion and his Disciples) and her external story (the Alicorn Illusion's defeat of the Shadow Coven and her healing of the minds of the Manehattanites from the fear and madness they'd spread); and it had major consequences: her courage saved a city and helped save a nation.
The ironic thing is that Trixie doesn't know most of what she's done. If she did, she might be even more arrogant.
This is an absolutely incredible story and I feel better for reading it.
I particularly appreciated the depiction of Trixie as a motivated and capable individual. Aside from the often overlooked fact that she's both good at magic (by regular, not-Twilight-Sparkle standards at least) and very good at her job (or she wouldn't have lasted long at it), there's the simple truth that Trixie is highly confident in herself, which translates as a certain kind of proud courage. She takes on challengers of any skill, and she stood up to a rampaging Ursa when she could easily have turned and run away. Here, she is refusing to end her show prematurely even though it's almost killing her because she won't admit defeat, and challenges an impossibly dangerous foe because she'd rather die with her head high.
In fact, much as the scene with Illusion was impressive and flashy, the events leading up to that was by far more epic. An invincible alicorn curbstomping shadowy foes? Pretty good. A mundane mortal unicorn facing down impossible odds? Awesome!
Trixie: Headstrong, confident, determined. Stubborn, arrogant, flawed. How can you not love her?
3901112
I'm so glad you caught that. The real dramatic moment is when Trixie decides to make her stand. The spirit of White-Beard helps her overcome the fear aura, but Trixie still could have bolted. She's not stupid, and was well aware she was seriously risking her life standing up to the manifestation of a force which she suspected was devastating the city. Also note that her resistance to the fear aura actually starts to build before White-Beard aids her: it comes from within Trixie herself.
The important point was that she chose to fight. She could have run. Indeed, she might have been able to escape, even given when they were planning (though she didn't know precisely what they were planning), provided that she'd chosen to run in a fortunate direction. This was incredibly brave of her -- she was staking her life on her ability to manipulate the Shadow Coven into challenging rather than simply killing her (she almost lost that bet, too) and her ability to match whatever they chose to do.
Trixie is a misfit, but she's a magnificent misfit. She has both courage and integrity -- not the exact same kind of integrity that any of the Mane Six have, but integrity nonetheless. She believes in herself, and she believes that she has both a destiny and a responsibility as an entertainer. She is stubborn and not easily intimidated away from her chosen course.
Exactly. And that's the spirit that makes the Ponies, in general, a great race. Trixie is a very atypical Pony, but in her courage and determination she simply expresses a classic trait for her kind to an unusual degree.
Exactly the reasons I love her.
Canon fluffles and seaponies? Loved it. Yes yes yes.
I'm glad you liked my story.
And then.. My brain exploded. This was awesome-- Sorry, not so great with words, but that standoff, and Trixie's (insert spoiler here) and-- GRANNY PIE!
Ahem. A bit incoherent, but yeah, I loved this. You're bleedin' phenomenal, I've said it before.
3903932
I liked doing Expies of Wizard Whateley (Granny Pie), Wilbur Whateley (Pinkie Pie) and Wilbur's Twin (the Least Noticeable Grand-Daughter) as heroines.
And thank you tremendously for your praise.
I really like your characterization of Trixie. Her arrogance and conceit comes across so very well here! The worldbuilding is good too. The bit about pegasi sailors reminds me of Anderson's 'War of the Wing-Men' with the wave-born fleet of flyers, though I greatly doubt that the old pegasi tribes ever met with an alien named van Rijn.
Good job on how you handled Trixie's one-night-stand; I don't think it can really be called a 'romance'. It manages to be both comical in its depiction of Trixie's reactions, and sad and very real-sounding in its depiction of how sometimes taking a friendly relationship 'to the next level' can ruin it rather than make it better.
Oh,, and let me add: Trixie's attitudes and reactions to everything that leads in to her show remind me an awful lot of what I've read about life in vaudeville from guys like Moe Howard in his autobiography. I strongly suspect that 'your' Trixie has occasionally quietly left a hotel by the fire escape or been forced to deal with the egos of other performers who tried things like stealing some of her act. Of course, knowing Trixie, she dealt with it in a truly epic and somewhat childish way.
3910936
The real "romance" was her friendship with Piercing. Whether it could have worked as something more if they both hadn't been drunk so that he would have had time to find and deal with her qualms over the very concept of sexual contact, over a more normally-extended courtship -- that's another matter.
Was Piercing just pretending to be her friend to get her into exactly that situation? If so, he was making a good pretense of it, since he seems to have behaved toward her up until then exactly like a good friend -- listening to her hopes and dreams, helping her work out ways of achieving them. I think it's at least safe to say that on some level he cared about her.
Trixie's mistake here was being so horrified at her own fall from her ideals of perfection (which, up until then, may have included marriage at some point, but not sex as the first stage of a romantic relationship) that she actually fled the city. What she should have done was talk to Piercing. He might well have remained her friend. Or maybe she would have found that under other circumstances they might have made good lovers. She didn't give either of them the chance to find out.
It's actually not Trixie's ideals which were at fault, either -- there's no reason why she should get drunk and have sex at random. It's her own colossal ego which wouldn't let her admit to herself that she made a mistake and needed to deal with it instead of running away.
Later, she did get the point, enough that she doesn't see Piercing as some sort of monster of male lust. But by then she'd acted so extremely that she felt she couldn't reach out and contact him. And he can't easily contact her, nor does he even know that she would even consider making up with him. Consider how the scene looked from his point of view, especially since he's twice her age.
Trixie messes up because not only is she sexually inexperienced (and still really is, getting drunk one night isn't much of an experience), she is also inexperienced at having long-term friendships. The only other one she's had was with her mentor, who loved her but not that way, and who was possibly the only person she's genuinely considered her "superior." In this she is again Twilight Sparkle's Shadow Archetype.
3910906
I'm glad you like the way I built up my fictional Manehattan. The geology is of course based on the real Island of Manhattan. The history is different because the island is bigger and Equestria's been inhabited by its current masters much longer than has been the continental United States of America.
I'm coming to love my Trixie. It's going to be hard to write the inevitable story in which she loses everything she owns.
3910948
Oh yes ... Equestria is in a pre-electronic mass media stage of cultural development. Performers essentially go from being itinerant shows (usually with partners rather than alone like the Anti-Social and Solitary Trixie) to getting gigs at theatres in various towns (playing a few weeks and then moving on to the next gig) to becoming a regular part of a troupe based at a friendly theatre (like Piercing's Hippodrome: this is essentially the non-personal part of what Piercing was trying to do, get her to become part of his troupe, because he felt she was that GOOD); finally to becoming so famous that theatres actually vie to get you to play them (the apotheosis attained by, for example, Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale in our 19th century). From that point on you may even be doing command performances for monarchs, you become accepted into high society, and the sky's the limit (hmm, actually in Equestria they have cloud cities, so ...).
Trixie's on the low end of this so she sometimes finds herself in embarassing, humiliating and even dangerous situations. Her usual pattern is that her great talent gets her admirers and then her great arrogance alienates them. She's not very honest with herself most of the time, so she rarely really understands what just happened.
This is one reason why she's far from Ascension. Right now, if Trixie tried to Ascend -- to merge with the Cosmic spirit to which she's linked -- she'd corrupt it. She'd become a Nightmare -- the self-generated kind. That was precisely what White-Beard feared.
3910906
War of the Wing-Men (aka The Man Who Counts) was a great novella / short novel, and I've been thinking about the possibilities of Pegasi as sailors. Historically, the greatest problem with oceanic sailing ships is their vulnerability to the weather, but enough Pegasi can control the local weather (though I suspect in the great reaches of the ocean this would more boil down to trying to mitigate the local weather than directly mastering it). Also, importantly, they can fly high and scout weather patterns, giving the captain the ability to steer around threatening weather systems. Finally, they could easily handle themselves aloft, flying from point to point in the rigging.
They would probably also carry some non-Pegasus crew as well: Unicorns for craft work and Earth Ponies for strength. Such a crew could sail a little medieval cog better than humans could sail a big modern 19th century iron-hulled sail freighter like the lovely one sitting in San Francisco Bay (I've been on her, and she's an impressive example of how far sailing ship technology got before it was totally outcompeted by steam).
Manehattan, as a super-Manhattan Island, would be an ideal port, or even island of ports, for sailing vessels. It would also have originally been big enough to be at least somewhat self-supporting in terms of food supplies, important if it ever had to face blockade.
That's the problem with applying the whole chess metaphor to a situation like this. Pawns promote. And in this game, they don't need to be on the other side of the board to do so.
Also they don't have to keep moving in one direction, but that is neither here nor there.
*extra period before the "was"
... Really, if everything else fails and Nightmare Moon takes over, the best chance of survival might just be convincing her to raise the Sun again.
Setting up someone in a situation where they would be close enough to her to accomplish that would be extraordinarily difficult, and they would have to deal with the Shadows' direct opposition, but the only other option would be to eliminate Luna quickly enough that some other power could take over the Sun and Moon. And that would only be harder after she has time to consolidate her forces. If Celestia herself couldn't get the job done, the outlook for anyone else is pretty bleak.
*of
Of course! The Shadows' secret weakness is the dark murmurings of eldritch beings with a thousand tongues.
Which, coincidentally, sound exactly like raspberries.
*double period
One exhausted little show-mare who learned from freaking Gandalf!
But yeah, okay, it doesn't look good.
... Looks can be deceiving~.
This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I so want to see when Trixie starts figuring out things about Illusion.
*missing quotation marks
*they're
... I have no idea who Delver is. Then again, I haven't actually read most of Tolkien's work, so if he's not in the Hobbit or a major LOtR character, I probably don't know him.
Sounds like an interesting guy, though.
4015113
Very true. Actually I was thinking of making up Equestrian chess. You could change the name of some of the pieces and add a few fairy-chess rules. It probably evolved from one of the books The Megan left at Paradise Estate, anyway, so the similarities would make sense.
4015149
Even under my concept of Nightmare Moon, that might even have been possible -- the sight of the planet dying around her might have enabled Luna to dominate her Shadow. It's a good thing that this never had to be put to the test.
(*nods*) As Celestia knows. Her plan is basically
(1) Champions try to purge Luna of the Shadow,
(2) If that fails, Celestia tries to kill or subdue Luna,
(3) If that fails, Cadance tries to kill or subdue Luna,
(4) If that fails, anypony else still able to fight fights her,
(5) If Luna regains her sanity at any point, stop the civil war and swear to her as the surviving Sister,
(6) If that fails, pray the Ponies can survive long enough for Celestia to reincarnate.
4015401
Heh, I'm glad you noticed. Incidentally, "Wisedreamer" is a translation of the meaning of "Olorin," the big G's name as a Maiar. And his role in Tolkien's universe basically was that of "troubleshooter," on a grand scale.
4015437
Poor Trixie ...
... you do realize that, as she's starting to realize that she somehow really did contact or summon some awesome and real supernatural force, her reaction to this is to become even more arrogant? And that this is propelling her headlong toward disaster?
Which makes me sad, because I rather like Trixie. I wouldn't have written this story if I hadn't.
She really should have either stayed in Manehattan, gone to Canterlot, or gone to Baltimare. Each of those choices would have helped her, in different ways.
What she especially doesn't realize is that she is very far from Ascending (she doesn't even know she has the potential to become an Alicorn, rather than merely contact one external to herself) and that Illusion, right now, is very weak -- Illusion's power, right now, is very slowly tapped and stored from Trixie herself, and Illusion used up years worth of it saving the city.
So Trixie is not as Great and Powerful, right now, as she imagines.
4015504
Delver is a very familiar character, but he's been stark raving mad every other time you've seen him. This is him, sane -- a sly, slightly shy adventurer, with some very unpleasant memories from a past incarnation.
4015504
Let's just say Delver is very unlikely to want the Alicorn Amulet. He's been through that before, and it wasn't fun.
4016146
Oh wait, that's him?
I totally did not catch that. Wow. Mind blown.
4016170
Most people don't get it ... I didn't get it the first time I read Lord of the Rings ... but Smeagol was one of the heroes. His adventures had just taken a very bad turn. He's actually very much a Shadow Archetype to Frodo himself: the main difference between them is that Smeagol was overcome so rapidly on first contact by the Ring's corruption that he killed Deagol -- his equivalent of "Sam" -- and without a loyal friend, the remainder of his sanity was soon eroded.
There are some very strong hints that Gandalf may have known Smeagol before Smeagol found the Ring, and that Gandalf might even have been grooming him as an adventurer. Gandalf knew suspiciously much about Smeagol's people, and he's always liked Hobbits.
The sea ponies as the Deep Ones? I love it! They don't worship G1's Squirk by any chance, do they?
And pardon my arrogance, but was this at all inspired by my 'Wolf in Pony's Clothing' story, which uses Fenris as well?
"Well," she drawled dramatically, "this is certainly an interesting turn of events on this fine Summer Sun Celebration morning! Perhaps it is the work of the legendary Fenris Wolf!"
The audience turned to her, eager to hear some explanation, any explanation for the impossibilities above.
Her tone grew confidential.
"Have you ever heard how the Grrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie once journeyed to the Northern Wastes, to save a town that was going to be devoured by Fenris?"
4210125
Oh, very much so In fact I hereby state explicitly that the version of the Fenris wolf legend to which Trixie refers came from the same source as Ardi's, and was inspired by A Wolf in Pony's Clothing.
4210125
One more thing -- IMO the moment right before that when Trixie decides to take the Longest Night as a personal challenge and take it on ...
... has to count as one of her finest hours, the moment at which she shows she's a heroine in reality instead of merely in her imagination. Even before she actually fights the Shadow Coven, she's standing up to the fear they represent, before she even understands what she's fighting.
4210487 Yes, I like how this story showed all of Trixie's flaws, as well as the parts of herself that are genuinely noble and decent -- even if she wouldn't ever care to admit as much to anypony, even herself.
4210294 Well, I imagine that there's a difference between the heroes and villains of the tale in Trixie's version. No 'noble Father Fenris was betrayed by Nightmare Moon and the Burning Queen' here!
4210725
Oh, of course -- Trixie's a Pony, and she is entertaining an audience of Ponies, and she probably heard the legend either from Northwestern or from Old Worlds sources. Trixie at this point in her life is also fairly naive -- it doesn't really occur to her that neither side of a conflict may be evil, or for that matter good.
This is actually one of the reasons she becomes obsessed with proving herself against Twilight Sparkle -- after "Boast Busters" she can't admit to herself that her suffering has all come from a combination of mutual misperceptions and bad luck. She needs to see a villain, and when she realizes that everypony who heckled her was actually a follower of Twilight Sparkle, she assumes that she was set up with the Ursa Minor, rather than it just being a big stupid accident.
She can't see herself as a villain, and in fact she only is a villain for one short episode in her life -- when she dons the Alicorn Amulet -- which she ironically does to fight Twilight Sparkle, whom she perceives as a Villain With Good Publicity. She doesn't get that there doesn't have to be a villain. She imagines herself very sophisticated, but at this point in her life (around 20-23) she's actually very innocent.
4210723
I regard Trixie as a heroine whose heart is in the right place, but whose attitude problems get her into one fix after another. I feel very sorry for everything she's going to go through, especially as I take her (in The Romance of the Open Road) to utter ruin at Ponyville. She in part makes her own fate, but does not entirely deserve it. Far worse characters in that universe get treated more nicely by fortune, and even by the Mane Six is particular (though note: they did not wreck her wagon).
Trixie's heroic virtue of determination is also her heroic flaw of stubbornness. She just can't ask for help from anypony, because doing so would imply that she wasn't the great heroine of the epic fantasy that constantly runs in her mind.
It is this ideal of herself which causes her to stand up to creatures out of nightmare (and note well, she could have run away on the Longest Night, and if she had just abandoned Snips and Snails to the Ursus at Ponyville she could have saved her own property). But it is this ideal of herself which prevents her from asking for help from Twilight afterward, or heading back to Baltimare where Piercing probably would have set her back up on her feet with a loan or outright gift (no strings attached), or to Canterlot where she would have been welcomed by Celestia (she dropped out of the School for Gifted Unicorns but never actually offended Celestia the way Sunset Shimmer did). And in a later chapter of All the Way Back she will reject Luna's assistance.
One of her biggest problems is that she won't admit to herself when she's getting in over her head, and she is too freakin' proud to ask for help when this happens. This is going to hurt her a lot in her future adventures, before she manages to realize that spitting in the face of or at best ignoring those who actually care about her isn't a viable life strategy.
Damn, go Trixie
Go!
"How bad could things possibly get?"
And now I'm disappointed I don't get to see the place Gandalf goes to have fun in.
4016190
I wasn't aware of the meaning of Sméagol’s name before. It’s interesting, given that “hobbit” (“kuduk”) means “hole dweller”.
(It also reminds me of the famous opening of The Hobbit:
It occurred to me some time ago that that paragraph could be interpreted as contrasting Bilbo’s home with Gollum’s (and thus foreshadowing the reveal of the true nature of Gollum/Sméagol.)
Damn tho world building and Trixie!
I am now fully and emotionally invested in this
5345899
Why, thank you! I hope you like my particular take on Trixie.