• Member Since 22nd Dec, 2012
  • offline last seen Nov 8th, 2023

Ragnar


Black Lives Matter, this isn't hard

T

Maggie Wilson (26), on a smoke break from her dead end convenience store job in the California mountains, encounters the divine god-princess of a dead world. The princess asks for her help. Mag says yes.

So how do you resurrect a dead world?

Featured on EQD.
Edited by Arcanist Ascendant.

Chapters (26)
Comments ( 1070 )

I see where it could go. I wonder if mag will be one day known by a different name? :raritywink:

5474739
Preposterous, none of the FiM characters smoke.
Except that one guy with the pipe cutie mark. That guy probably smokes.
So I guess that must be Mag.

5474896 who's to say she didn't quit later.

5474905
Eh, I can probably just Joss this straight out.
Mag's a human and always will be.

5474917 oh, poo. Opprotunity lost.:twilightangry2:

But maybe I'll do one in the future with what i thought could have happened. :derpytongue2:

5474948
I'm comfortable with that!
Actually I considered making this a Luna origin story (I assume that's what you mean), but if I did then I'd feel the need to set up the enmity between her and Celestia, account for her archaic speech patterns, and set up a night/dreams/sleep motif for Mag. I would have started this very differently if that were the plan.

5474956 well when i read the title i first thought Human turned Celestia, then read the chapter and did think Luna.

5474970
Butts. That makes sense. Maybe I should change the name.

I like eet, but it feels a tad expedited. More narrative and spaces between passages. At the very least add the spaces, as text blocks aren't easy on the ol' attention span.

5476090
The latter is a straightforward fix and I just did it. The former is a more complicated issue; it could mean pacing issues, missing details, or both. For now I'm going to focus on applying that criticism to chapter 2, but I may have to come back to this one once I've nailed down the problem.

So glad I asked for critiques.

5477115

^^ You're off to a good start. Far better structure than I had when I started. Goodness, I didn't even know what a transitive sentence was, let alone how to make one, and you have several good examples with dialogue tags intact.

5477190
Okay well I don't know what a transitive sentence is but I'm sure they're very tasty if properly cooked, so that's cool :twilightsheepish:

I've read a couple of your works in the past and I remember liking what I saw, so I can attest that you word words good.

5477418

"This is a transitive sentence," Merlos answered jovially, "but keep in mind that term is entirely informal, and they're typically just referred to as 'dialogue interrupted by a dialogue tag.'"

5477418

Very interesting premise so far... Can't wait till Celestia starts to see the differences between our worlds.

I'd say our "regents" (Illuminati confirmed) hand is more than subtle. Just look throughout history and you see that if there ever was a such thing then they sure aren't the caring kind...

5477581
Oh yeah, I like doing those. In fact I'm trying not to do them too often. They're suspiciously easy, and I can just tell how cumbersome they could get if I use one in the wrong place.

Lovely beginning! You do a great job of building Mag's character, and introducing Princess Celestia into the human world. Some parts of their interaction actually remind me a lot of The Last Unicorn, and sometimes Mag makes me think of Meg from the same story. It's really pretty, and I look forward to reading more. :twilightsmile:

5492058
Do you mean Molly Grue? Yeah, that comparison occurred to me. Hopefully she's different enough to be somewhat fresh.

Also, hi.

5492850 Oops! Yeah, I completely meant Molly Grue--and Mag does feel fresh. It's just that I can tell what The Last Unicorn has influenced you as a writer, and that's wonderful. I'm looking forward to your update on Tuesday!

And hello to you too, WW. :heart:

Like mag i have Questions. among the big ones other than what happened to her world is why didn't Luna survive with her. what makes Celestia so special over her sister?

5494920
RAFO, basically, but I'll say right here that every princess has a different role and each role endowed/endows them with different powers and traits, so the end of the world affected each of them differently. Celestia's role is "regent." Each of the others is/was another thing.

Nov. 2015 edit: this is no longer completely true.

I love the whole interaction between Mag and Celestia, and them trying to come to more of an understanding as to the differences and similarities in their worlds. If or when Celestia reaches the United Nations, that is going to be a sight to behold!

Nice imagery on human Celestia as well! :pinkiehappy:

There's a combination of simplicity and complexity in this fic which interests me greatly. I'll be following along with bated breath.

Celestia is doing a lot of talking about Equestria's future. She's either amazingly optimistic or in heavy denial.

Also, dat ending. :pinkiegasp: Other mystical creatures slumming it on ol' Terra?

I love all the comparisons between how things are in Equestria versus our world. It's pretty interesting, and you have a wonderful way of writing Princess Celestia in this type of situation. She's very wise.

You know, I really enjoyed this chapter. It felt like a good balance between the three different characters and most especially it made for a fascinating couple of answers about this multiverse you've set up. I look forward to more, especially if/when Meg gets curious about what the eldest meant about Celestia's sister.

I don't like this chapter at all. Making Cain a god. NO THANKS

5555766
I could go either way on this one, personally. It establishes some things and this does mean I can move on now, but I have several problems with it on a critical level.
1. I didn't engage with the Cain story as much as I really should have. That piece of lore has a massive amount of cultural resonance, so anything from the original story that I don't address, either by incorporating it or subverting it, makes the character feel incomplete. Where's the mark of Cain? Nowhere, I never mentioned it. What about the original reason for Cain killing his brother? I came up with something completely different. Jealousy should have figured into my version somehow. Then there's the fact that I turned God, arguably the most important character in Western literature, into the impersonal and mostly undefined "aether." It's like I rewrote Hamlet, but replaced Hamlet himself with a potted plant.

2. I spent too much time on a character who, in hindsight, doesn't do all that much for the story except in tone. I have to bring him back one or two more times now if I want to justify his existence on a plotting level. I don't regret coming up with him, but you could argue he's extraneous as he currently is. This is also a rather hostile, uncomfortable chapter in a few different ways because of him, which I think is part of where Admiral Q's reaction is coming from.

3. This was my least favorite chapter to write so far. The eldest is alienating even to me. Luckily the next chapter is about the more sympathetic characters.

5556352 I thought I was the only one who noticed that :twilightblush:

5557091 yes. I personally rather not have this chapter at all

5557444 That's a legit opinion, but it's here to stay. All my problems with this chapter are in the execution of the idea, not the idea itself, and if I was going to take something out because it didn't meet my expectations then I'd be removing this entire fic. I will never be completely happy with anything I write.

e: And while it's not playing exactly the role I wanted, I can absolutely work with this.

5557091
Personally, I think you should just take a step back and not look at the eldest as Cain, but instead look at him as some kind of ur-example from which myth sprung. Personally, I'm not Christian, and the idea of a generally unspecific 'aether' is far more palatable than if you were to have made it into some kind of morality play wherein a specific mythology is the first. I have no problem seeing how something would be twisted into myth, and even within MLP itself we see something similar, what with Luna/Nightmare Moon being divorced from one another as characters in the eyes of ponies before her return.
I liked the underhandedness of the eldest's tale, because Meg would be able to pick up the references, and Celestia would need far more explanation to make it realistic if the eldest had just came out and said, "Hi, I'm Cain, the first murderer."
Obviously, if you prefer to write about sympathetic characters, all power to you, but I don't think that you should shy away from the eldest simply because he is alienating. I think his explanation for how humanity is the way it is works well both within the multiverse you've created and to resonate, on some level, with the human beings reading this fic.

5559315 This comment is so deliciously validating that it feels like such a shame I don't have a more substantive response.

Yeah, the eldest is supposed to be the origin of the Cain and Abel story rather than the actual Cain, but that's definitely where the idea of the eldest came from (well, also a little of Yaldabaoth and the Wandering Jew, but it doesn't really show), so I figured I'd get the most mileage out of this idea by making full use of the original folklore, which I didn't end up doing. But if it works for some readers then I'm extremely okay with that.

You did a pretty good job with this! The eldest is certainly someone you wouldn't want to cross even at the best of times, and the "Cain and Abel" angle makes this even more powerful. So is eldest himself going to be more of a central figure in this story? It almost feels like you are setting him up to be one of the more sinister characters in this tale, depending on what happens next.

5561021 He's a side character and a bit player for now, I'd say, though nothing is set in stone. He's got nearly nothing in common with any of the other characters so far, and probably about as much in common with the audience. When he shows up it's a little like finding a Melvins track in a Beatles mixtape.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. He's actively hateful and he does it on purpose, while The Melvins "strive to irritate."

e: My point is that a little of him goes a long way, in terms of screen time.

5561489 Ah. In any case, I look forward to seeing what the eldest does at different points throughout the rest of the story. But it's also going to be interesting to read how Princess Celestia and Mag interact after that encounter. ;3

Well you just lost me. NEVER go the NMM is parasite route.

Another enjoyable chapter. I enjoy the balance of action and dialogue that you manage to strike.

5583605
But it's practically canon, unless you completely discount the comics...

5584088 I discount the bulk of the comics. heckeven those who like the comics hate that arc. Parasite Weakens Luna as a character. It is far better that Luna created NMM without a parasite.

5584088
It's also something Lauren Faust said on her DA, and I think the show itself makes slightly more sense if Luna was being influenced by something--otherwise, this means Luna spent 1000 years on the moon plotting and biding her time, but completely changed her mind just because she got blasted with friendship magic and then Celestia reached out to her. It certainly wasn't that easy with Discord.

That said, once again I think I might empathize with AQPonyform. NMM as a Paradise Lost-style Satanic figure is way cooler to me than NMM as Patient Zero. Of course, then we've got the problem that Luna changed back to good, while the Satan of Paradise Lost is what he is because he never will. Flippin' look at this:

"So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good."

AWESOME. :pinkiecrazy: But yeah, I just don't think I can sell an idea like that for NMM. The canon is just a little too far away from that for my own comfort, at least for a story like this. But I still like the flavor of NMM as demonic figure, so I've decided she was possessed and is more or less personally responsible for everything she did anyway.

5584158 I love the comics to pieces and I enjoyed that arc overall.

I'm not treating the comics as canon because they contradict the show in a couple of places, but I do trust their interpretations of the characters.

But regardless, I'm surprised you stuck it out this long. I don't think I'm writing what you're looking for, judging by your reactions to the last few chapters. Fortunately this isn't the only fic on FiMFiction, your character interpretations aren't unpopular, and everyone loves Luna, so naturally she's everywhere. Happy hunting for good fics. :pinkiesmile:

This little piece deserves an awful lot more attention than it's getting.

The basic concept was attention-grabbing enough, Celestia's characterisation is very believable - both from the point of view of the ageless monarch with specific values, and the mother-figure who has just lost everything and is fighting with herself a little over trying to 'adopt', guide, and take care of both Mag and humanity as a whole.

The introduction of the Eldest was an interesting idea which I haven't seen in fimfiction before, and handled well - such characters are difficult to write for, and part of me is wondering whether his actions had a greater purpose. When one can see the inevitable result of every tiny action... the decision to treat them so rudely may only have been a move in a greater game - to their benefit or detriment. Or it could have just been lack of caring.

I love what I've read and recommend searching for some appropriate groups to add it to, so it gets a little more attention :) Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

5584349 I was okay till the last two chapters. the Eldest I think could have been scrapped but it wasn't story breaking to me. The Parasite route is because of what it does to Luna's character. It truly robs her of the meaning of her redemption. Thus THE story killer for me.

5584474 Fair enough! And I should have said it before, but thank you for the critiques. Like I said, happy hunting.

5584496 I do wish you luck with your stories. i wanted the story to succeed and would always suggest changes to the story to in my mind improve it. The parasite is the sole immediate story killer for me. see you around.

I'm really enjoying this story. I love philosophical and snarky conversations. It's the definition of slow though, but something tells me the setting is more an excuse to have these dialogues.

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