I'm a long time science fiction and animation fan who stumbled into My Little Pony fandom and got caught -- I guess I'm a Brony Forever now.
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YOH 1505 (soon after "Amending Fences"): Moon Dancer has resumed her former friendships, especially with Twilight Sparkle. But during her long alienation from other Ponies, she has drifted toward Lone-Madness. Is the Magic of Friendship enough to save her from those she imagined her friends? Or will she fall into darkness?
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Good story, look forward to reading more.
Short on time atm, but I'll come back to read this tonight!
As opposed to "Dancing with Herself," which would be a rather different story.
Moondancer recognizes the conflict between compassion and dispassionate slate-clearing, but I wonder if she recognizes how the Old Order has been supporting her efforts to overthrow it, and how she holds herself to its standards at times. She's never had to work for a living. I can't imagine many of the downtrodden masses would be very impressed with her. Of course, she isn't impressed with herself, either. Believing oneself to be fundamentally unlovable is a very bad place to be.
Of course. It wasn't that Moondancer had become strange, it was everything else. Insanity isn't the sort of thing one recognizes in oneself.
It should be very interesting to see Bookhorse 2: Book Horsier work her way back up to sanity. Or not. The end result remains to be seen.
Memetic plundervines. Plant the seeds in fertile soil, let the power of Harmony wane, and watch what sprouts. and just like the plundervines, Discord mostly forgot about this particular prank. Good thing his long-term plans know to look after themselves. Or a very bad thing, depending on your perspective.
Heh. I see Celestia was planning for the Empire's return when ponies were putting in rail depots. There are very few coincidences when it comes to that mare...
Moondancer finds herself faced with a mind-heart conflict that she doesn't know how to resolve. Little surprise there; all the books in the world can't offer the emotional wisdom a few friends easily provide. But, of course, Moondancer isn't going to find that out on her own. She's alone in a crowd, and it's only going to get worse from here...
Also, berserk lunacy as a family trait? Wow. That incident with the piñata-whacking stick could've gone a lot worse. Probably a good thing Pinkie was there.
It's very nice to see Moondancer in her element, as happy as she can be. But with a name like Penumbra, this new fellow is most likely the one who will set her sledding down the spiral into radicalism. That's sure to be tragic...
And given my track record, I'm going to find out in a few minutes.
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Communism, which is basically the philosophy Moon Dancer is espousing, has in America been at most times a philosophy of dissatisfied members of the upper-middle to upper classes, who are generally dissatisfied for reasons which have very little to do with social justice or injustice. Moon Dancer, for all that I love her, is most definitely an emotionally-unbalanced Pony, who feels betrayed by her parents' inability to continue loving each other, and by her peers due to her own inability to make and keep friends.
What Discord did wouldn't have lasted past his re-petrification if he hadn't hit her with ideas which struck at weak points in her own psychology. He basically introduced a virulent meme into her mind, and it's destroying her from the inside by tempting her to do bad and dangerous things.
There are obvious analogies between Moon Dancer and two other Ponies: Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer. Twilight Sparkle was alienated much like Moon Dancer, but was psychologically much stronger to begin with because she came from a happier family. Though the old Twilight tried to deny it, she understood Love and Friendship because she'd experienced them as her normal condition growing up; she just had to learn to generalize such emotions beyond her family.
For Moon Dancer, unconditional love is something she only felt as a little filly, and it's something she lost when her parents drifted apart and increasingly found her inconvenient. Her younger sister, Teacup, has her own problems, and Moon Dancer has been drifting apart from her as well. Moon Dancer lost the few friends she made in school (she has begun to regain them, of course, at the start of the framing story, which takes place soon after "Amending Fences") and never made any new ones.
When one fails personally to connect with society, one tends to blame society rather than oneself. This is especially true when one is a smart but naive person, as is Moon Dancer. She is tempted to think in terms of grand schemes for changing the world, because they are less upsetting (and less frighteningly real) than the ways she would have to change herself in order to fit in better (which she could do, contrary to her fears, without abandoning her own uniqueness or code of honor).
One of the reasons why Celestia thought it so important for Twilight Sparkle to make friends was that Celestia knows all about the memetic dangers that can befall the intelligent, arrogant and naive. She knew that Twilight had the potential for greatness -- and that, if she attained power without learning to love and understand other Ponies -- that power could so terribly turn to great evil.
Which gets us to Starlight Glimmer. Starlight Glimmer is, in my current fanon, an earlier product of Celestia's potato garden -- in particular, Celestia was hoping for her to attune with Magic, and play the key role in pulling Luna out of her Nightmare. She was an attempt before Sunset Shimmer, who was an attempt before Twilight Sparkle.
Starlight Glimmer, unlike the young Twilight Sparkle, did value other Ponies. Unfortunately, Starlight was afraid to make real emotional connections with them, and convinced herself that manipulating them was the same as making real emotional connections. Marksism, with its concept of "vanguard intellectuals," was pure memetic poison to Starlight Glimmer, as it showed her how she might be the leader of a Utopia in which she could make other Ponies be good by forcing them onto the paths of what she deemed virtue -- by destroying the differences between Ponies which might lead to conflict.
Celestia noted with alarm the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of Starlight's thoughts. Celestia is an autocrat, but she is an enlightened despot, who rules well by ruling as little as possible. A Pony who regarded herself as the one true fount of wisdom and rode roughshod over the most fundamental liberties of her subjects would make an absolutely terrible Princess -- she would instead be a tyrant-queen! The influence on Luna would also be very bad, as Luna has displayed and serious tendencies toward miitary coup and dictatorship.
When Celestia finally rejected Starlight Glimmer, kind as the Princess tried to be, Starlight Glimmer still knew that this was a rejection, made worse by the very lack of animosity. Starlight Glimmer, of course, concluded that Celestia feared her and feared teaching her deeper lore (which was in some ways even true).
Unfortunately, the point at which Celestia made her decision was after she had shown Starlight Glimmer the unfinished last spell of Star-Swirl the Bearded. The spell from which Twilight developed the Destiny Restoration Ritual -- and from which Starlight developed the Spell of Sameness.
The Spell of Sameness utterly-horrified Celestia. It would destroy the most special thing about Ponykind as a species, one of the attributes which had led Cosmic Fusion to fall in love with the Ponies in the first place. Its use by a tyrant was obvious -- if put into effect before countermeasures could be developed, it could create an almost-unbreakable tyranny, because it would rob Ponies of the very courage and talents which alone would make rebellion possible.
Celestia seriously considered killing or imprisoning Starlight simply because this spell, in the wrong hooves (and Starlight had already shown tyrannical tendencies) was so very dangerous. She decided not to do this because to do so would be so very, very horribly against the Harmony -- and besides, she still loved and cherished Starlight, and hoped that she would calm down after some time spent in the real world outside Celestia's school.
When Twilight and the Element Bearers were nearly twisted to Starlight's purposes, Celestia wondered again if she had made the right decision. She's issued orders to find and arrest Starlight (what she did at Our Town was highly-illegal), but unfortunately, Starlight is a powerful and gifted mage. And powerful and gifted mages can mask their presence.
She doesn't know yet that Starlight is hiding in plain sight, right under her muzzle in Canterlot. And recruiting.
And that's where matters currently stand.
Having just completed history courses on Imperial and Soviet Russia, I watch this with extreme interest.
Only a recording... but so is the tape that summons Samara. And given the recording capacity of nanomanipulated crystal, that recording is very close to the real thing. Now beings from an undead universe have Moondancer in their sights. I'd say there's no way this is going to end well, but Twilight allows for the possibility. Still, it's going to get much worse before it gets better. At least she doesn't seem to have summoned anything umbral... as far as I can tell.
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I see you understood what Penumbra was better than Moon Dancer did. But then you know I'm interested in issues of personality backup, editing and transcendence. It makes me wonder if I should tag the story "Sombra" -- because Penumbra in one sense is, but in another sense isn't. I haven't yet shown Starlight Glimmer, yet she has a tag. Most annoyingly, Moon Dancer, who is the main character, has to be tagged merely as "Other Character."
I thought about tagging this "Dark," but it's not really Dark, not on the course I think this is going. Not for Moon Dancer, anyway.
Of course, she still has a book to read, now doesn't she? And we know she loves books ...''
EDIT: Thinking about it, I tagged it "Dark" anyway.
I love your world building and your mentions of theGreat Offscreen War that was started in one of your other unfinished works
When you talked about a kiss sealing a pact, I was afraid that Moon Dancer would actually be possessed by the Shadows. At least she escaped free.
Now, to see if she can recognize that some knowledge is dangerous. I wonder what the Marksist movement would think of the Shadows?
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Oh, nothing that simple. Captivation can be more complex than direct possession. As Moon Dancer might know was already the case with her, if she realized that this wasn't the first time that something of this sort happened to her.
Discord didn't kiss her, though. Nor did he Discord her, directly. He immediately recognized her as someone with whom it would be fun to play a more complex sort of game.
She does. Alas, her curiosity is stronger than her very reasonable fear.
That's actually an interesting question, and one relevant to the future story. I'm guessing that they wouldn't trust them -- but might think that they could make use of them -- which, really, was both Crimson's and Luna's mistake, now wasn't it?
Ah yes the tasty exploitation that you only get in a properly cosmopolitan city. Trust me when I say that small town exploitation isn't nearly as tasty. Sure there's imaigrants for days performing cheap labor, but not a restaurant one showing off their delicious food. It's sad really. Can't have foreigners over-shadowing our own deep-fried and overly salted culinary abortions. "Welcome to the South". Le Sigh. Oh well, that's why I moved to Atlanta. Well that and to escape the rednaecks. And the strip-mined hell-scape, But I digress.
Back on topic, since you brought up Spike, Ima throw in some of my own head-cannon. Note that while Twilight couldn't even remember Moon Dancer's name, spike had actually got her a gift for her first party. A teddy bear no less. Giving a teddy bear to a girl who's not 4 years old is pretty much a way to say, "Hey, I have a crush on you." So, yeah, I've head-cannoned Moon Dancer as Spikes pre-Rarity crush, who was apparently slightly less aware of his existence than his current crush. At least Rarity leads him on and gives him cutesy nick-names. I kinda see Moon Dancer (had she gotten the original gift) as asking, "Why is your fax machine giving me a teddy bear, because that's weird?"
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Spike is very clearly sexually-oriented toward Pony mares. By my chronology, he was 10 at the time of Luna's Return, so his attraction toward Moon Dancer may have been more a matter of his "practicing" romantic emotions than anything very serious. In contrast, his attraction toward Rarity has lasted during the whole run of the show -- by my chronology, when Spike was 10-15 years old -- and it is demonstrably more serious on both their sides, because each of them has been able to reach the other and help the other recover from mind-controlling magic. "Secret of My Excess" and "Inspiration Manifestation" are vanilla canon, and Nightmare Rarity was one of the major comic book story arcs.
This does not necessarily indicate that Rarity wants to have sex with Spike, and even in the Shadow Wars Storyverse, they're not at this point in time (YOH 1505) lovers. On the other hand, it does indicate that the mutual affection between Spike and Rarity is very strong, and this -- coupled with the evidence from many episodes that they spend a lot of time together -- very much means that they must be close friends.
Rarity is perfectly aware of Spike's crush on her, and has been at least since "Secret of My Excess" (Spring 1502 by my chronology). Whatever she wants to do with Spike, it's extremely obvious that she doesn't want to push him away from her, which implies either that she returns his love (holding herself back from becoming his lover largely because even by 1505 he's only 15, and she's 23 at that point; or that if she doesn't return his love at all, she returns his friendship so strongly that she would feel very very sad if he stopped coming around to see her. In other words, if Rarity said "We should just be friends," she would really means "friends" rather than "avoid each other."
Remember that Rarity is no awkward innocent. She's a naturally talented and skilled social manipulator, and she routinely deals with beings far more hostile and less trusting of her than is Spike. She could push Spike away if she really wanted to do so. The obvious conclusion to draw from her behavior is that she DOESN'T want to do so.
Now, as to Moon Dancer.
First of all, Spike's crush on her was never that strong, in part because his sexuality was just having its very first stirrings at 10; it's not the same as being 11-15 even granted that he's emotionally following the development of a Pony colt rather than the biological programming of a young Dragon. Also, he never knew Moon Dancer as well as he knows Rarity. Rarity is also his best friend; while Moon Dancer was someone he found himself liking and to whom he wanted to be nice.
Moon Dancer is superficially-similar to Rarity in that she is a white-coated bluish-eyed Unicorn with a multi-hued mane who is around Rarity's age (both are 23 now by my chronology). One way she's different is that she was really born into the upper class to which Rarity aspires.
This gets into the fact that Moon Dancer (as you probably noticed from the episode) was very similar to a young Twilight Sparkle. They looked very much alike as fillies, and were are both bibliophiles. When they were very young (pre-teen) their emotional affect and speech patterns were very similar (in their flatness); I'm guessing that part of the reason why Twilight became better at expressing her emotions naturally was that she had to raise Spike as a foster younger brother.
The single most important emotional bond Spike has, even now, is with Twilight Sparkle. We know this because his deepest fear is of being rejected by Twilight, rather than by Rarity (even though rejection by Rarity would doubtless also hurt him). From this it stands to reason that he would be very likely to be romantically attracted to somepony who reminded him strongly of Twilight Sparkle. Of Twilight's original group of friends, Moon Dancer would have reminded him the most of Twilight Sparkle.
Spike might also have noticed that Moon Dancer was lonely and in general need of friendship, and he may have wanted to help her feel less alone. In "Amending Fences," he seems to have a very good grasp of Moon Dancer's emotional situation and of what to do to help her. Perhaps, in the past, part of the reason why he was engaging in courtship-like behavior toward her was that he wanted to help her the way he does Twilight.
Even now, a lot of his behavior toward Rarity essentially consists of being helpful toward her. Because of the way he was raised, Spike probably sees "act as an assistant" as the main way to behave toward a female he loves or strongly likes. (This is actually not a bad strategy in real life; one must, of course, make sure not to keep on doing it if the woman involved fails to display affection or at least gratitude for one's assistance).
I don't know how Moon Dancer would have reacted had she gotten the gift. She knew that Spike was more to Twilight than just a living "fax machine" -- however, she may not have taken much notice of him. As should be obvious from this story, my Moon Dancer is neither evil nor stupid, but she neither notices nor fully understands the nuances of social interaction around her. In theory she would have considered Spike the moral equal of a Pony, but in practice she might have failed to realize that he was capable of the same range of emotions as herself.
Rarity understood (and appreciated) Spike better after knowing him a year than Moon Dancer did after knowing Spike for several years. Among the differences are that Rarity is good at social interaction, while Moon Dancer is poor at it; also, Rarity has some experience of the wickedness of the world, and hence treasures Spike all the more for the contrast. Moon Dancer has elaborate theories about how life works, but is fundamentally an innocent, and was even more so in her teens.
Innocents can be very dangerous.
Going to be giving a point-by-point reaction to this one, as there's a lot to comment on:
Someone who reads as much as Moondancer should use narrative thinking. Granted, it won't work as well in Equestria as on the Discworld, but it should still work well when dealing with the
UmbranomiconCodex of Shades.Also, hi, Moondancer.
I'm reminded of the Dark Lord Sassaflash and Mad Abdul before her. ("There is no such thing as a shoggoth! There should not be such a thing as a shoggoth!")
Food as a means of defying the darkness? That makes High Queen Hunger's future depredations look all the worse...
It is fun to see Moondancer's externally applied beliefs contrast with her inner nature. If the ideals of the capital-R Revolution can't even change one of its staunch followers at heart, what does that say about its effect on the masses? (Contrast that with one meeting with Penumbra, for example...)
Says the mare who took down two changeling warriors in a berserker rage.
And so, warded as best she can be against memeomancy, Moondancer pronounces the worst words any Call of Cthulhu player can: "I read the book." I both dread and eagerly anticipate seeing where this takes her.
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I love your comments!
I sometimes have her thoughts rendered as italics, but if you mean Law of Narrative Causality, there are signs all through the story that Moondancer is aware of the parallel between her (real) situation and various (fictional) situations. She's Genre Savvy, all right. Unfortunately for her, she's sometimes Wrong Genre Savvy. She is, however, intellectually sophisticated enough to realize that she can't be sure that she's the heroine, or that her story will have a happy ending. But she's also capable of Genre Blindness when it contradicts something she really, really, REALLY wants to do ...
... like read the mysterious book.
"Umbranomicon" ...
Moon Dancer is experienced with eating alone in restaurants. She has a lot of money and is not into cooking; she also doesn't have a Spike to cook for her. She's not (at this point) experienced with dealing with creatures from the Shadowverse. (Or being kissed, for that matter).
So she seeks normalcy.
And she was pretty hungry. Note that before this she hadn't eaten since the early morning.
I model her (at this point) in this on the many intellectually-earnest upper-class Socialists of the 1910's, who were entirely clueless about the working classes they claimed to be championing or what the likely effects of their Revolution (or for that matter revolutions in general) would be in real life. Moon Dancer's real motivation here is pained rejection of her parents for betraying her ideals of what parents should be like, expressed as the desire to smash their whole world. She doesn't realize it, but she's a very angry Pony, and it's telling that when she is literally moved to tears by real pity and sorrow (because the part of Penumbra that had been Crimson Quartz made a real emotional connection with her), she can only make herself feel okay with this by conceptualizing them as tears of rage.
Radicalism, plus anger, of course, makes her potentially very dangerous. Especially given her magical lore and power, and the opportunity offered her by the Shadows.
I see you can tell that I have run a lot of Call of Cthulhu, and that this part of the story is following the model of "Hero(ine) goes to exotic place, finds mysterious book under strange circumstances, reads it ..." which goes all the way back, of course, to Lovecraft himself.
And by "the strangest people", you mean the damned ghost of King Motherfucking Sombra...that was an excellent way to end this chapter.
Before before I say anything else, I must say that everything about Penumbra leaves me with a deep sense of melancholy. The fact that he's a being of memory, someone who likely doesn't believe he is exists, means he understands just how much Crimson Quartz lost to his transformation into Sombra, how completely and utterly he's betrayed everyone he ever loved, and that he will never, ever, be able to say he's sorry...Almost everything you write makes me sad Jordan179, and I wish I knew how to express my gratitude.
In an other topic, the first half of this chapter shows just how easily manipulated, book obsessed, and straight-up naive Moon Dancer is, despite her delusions of wisdom. She is redeemed in the second half, however, for the virtue of simply surviving her vision of the Night Shadows, something few can lay claim to. She has great potential, all she needs is the kick in the ass to reach it.
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I'm glad -- it's meant to be sad. Your reaction means that I made Moon Dancer's reactions believable -- her complex Mood Whiplash from fear to arousal to repulsion to utter terror and then to sorrow. I was a little worried that I might not succeed at this, since it's a fairly complex piece of emotional presentation.
Crimson Quartz's story, which I have realized to my horror needs to be done as a 200 thousand word plus epic science fantasy trilogy to be done properly, is meant to be tragic. He was a true hero, who conceived the most noble and laudable project (restoration of the Crystal Empire and the science of the Age of Wonders); who went slightly mad after he and Tourmaline were hurt by his brother Morion; and then went even madder as he realized that even victorious he couldn't arrest the decay of his nation acting alone with the help of a few friends. It was the desire to achieve his brightest dreams that led him to turn to the darkness of the Shadows, and in the process he destroyed or badly-marred everypony and everything he ever loved: himself, Tourmaline and Princess Luna. The story of his fall is also the story of the start of Luna's fall into darkness,
And the surviving part of Sombra that is still equine, Penumbra, no longer precisely Crimson Quartz, knows how badly he's betrayed himself and what he loved, how badly he's failed, and that he's in thrall to Cosmic evil.
And there's not much he can do about it, from the inside -- he's not as psychically-powerful as was Princess Luna, so he can't try to control Sombra the way Luna could try to control Nightmare Moon. His only real hope would be for a gifted Unicorn mage, who understood his situation (which means probably one who has read the Codex of Shades and yet retained her sanity) and cared enough to make the effort (which would be both difficult and dangerous) to extract him from the Sombra gestalt and thus either liberate or re-house his spirit. Not something easily done, and trying it would draw the attention of the Shadows and their minions.
Yes. Moon Dancer is very naïve, and about far more than her own sexuality. She doesn't realize how superficial and ultimately personal is her desire for revolution, and she's so alienated that she doesn't fully grasp why this means she really shouldn't attempt radical deeds. She doesn't realize that Discord actually did unbalance her, but in a subtle memetic way rather than the obvious methods of emotion or mind control or physical transformation. And she is wandering, naive as she is, into a very dangerous situation.
And knowing that the universe is not what she was taught it was is going to do things to her.
This was a fascinating read. I love how you have portrayed Sombra and his liar's tricks; he speaks enough truth, truth his assumed audience already knows, to trick his readers into believing his lies are also true. A well known technique. He uses flattery to lower his audiences defences, leaving them more susceptible to his arguments. All told, a thoroughly unreliable narrator.
And poor young Moon Dancer who, were she as wise and experienced as she believes herself to be, would be well weary of such tactics, is falling for it hook, line and sinker. All told, an excellent job my good Sir
Technically, I see Sombra hasn't lied at all here. Everything he says is correct - Celestia and Luna are vastly older beings; they did design their alicorn forms with hypercharisma; they did tear down the Age of Wonders in what could be called betrayal.
It's just everything else he leaves out.
Looking forward to more.
Oh, Crimson. Was there some grave misunderstanding between you and Luna, or did the Shadows simply twist that brilliant mind to see horror where there was only love?
There's a wonderfully surreal feeling in seeing cosmology and particle physics in the style of ancient manuscripts, and the idea of Einstein as an ancient philosopher is downright bizarre. Still, such are the possibilities offered by your Equestria, and they're a delight to read.
Somewhat less of a delight is Moondancer's continued drinking from this poisoned well. This will get much worse before it gets better...
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Celestia does not let Ponies know that she's actually an incarnation of a Cosmic Concept, for a number of reasons.
FIrst of all, she doesn't want to be worshipped as a goddess. Or feared as a demoness, for that matter. And if Ponies knew that she was in truth a manifestation of a fundamental force of the Universe, both outcomes would be likely. Crusades would be fought for or against her, whether she wanted this or no. And absolutely nopony would be able to relate to her as a Pony. It's bad enough being beautiful and super-powerful, and lest you think this purely Cursed With Awesome, consider that she can never be sure if somepony claiming to want to befriend or love her is sincere or social-climbing. Imagine the distance between herself and her subjects if they knew she was, essentially, the Avatar of something Divine.
Secondly, she actually IS a Pony -- partially out of malice and partially out of misunderstanding, Crimson Quartz is quite wrong to claim she is an inequine alien. Yes, the Concept of Fusion isn't a Pony, but when Fusion split off a tiny part of herself to be incarnated as an Alicorn Pony, that Alicorn Pony became quite real. Celestia has more in common with Ponies than she does with Cosmic Concepts; she can sometimes access and use a very limited set of the memories and powers of her Cosmic Overself, but she doesn't really understand it. She does understand Ponies, though.
How does Celestia conceal the truth, then? No, she doesn't send death squads around to kill anypony who claims that she is a Cosmic Concept. She's far too decent to do this -- and besides, she doesn't need to do so.
To begin with, the very idea of the Cosmic Concepts sounds like something out of a weird tale or comic book. There's no actual evidence of Celestia's origins other than what she has told others or chooses to tell others. Most Ponies would consider the notion absurd: while Celestia is immortal and super-powerful, she's immortal and super-powerful on a Pony scale, not on the scale of an entity the age of the Universe which can coordinate fusion everywhere in the Universe.
Secondly, while there are those out there who have deduced or divined Celestia's true origins, it's hardly easy to find these speculations. Celestia isn't willing to murder to protect her secret, but she is willing to conceal certain books and prohibit their dissemination, and where she can't do this, to use her considerable social skills to make the theory seem silly. Celestia's mostly an ethical and moral being (far more so than most Ponies), but she's not perfectly ethical and moral.
Thirdly, as Celestia is generally loved in Equestria, if anypony did guess what she was they would be impelled to worship her. As I mentioned, she doesn't want to be worshipped, but this means that all she would need to get them to not tell other Ponies would be to ask them not to do so. They would gladly do so to please their Goddess. And if they didn't, they would look more like deluded sycophants than discoverers of a hidden truth.
As for her enemies -- like the main worldline's Sombra himself -- why would anypony believe them? It would look purely like malicious calumny ("My enemy is actually an alien demon!") Do you or I believe the claims that, say, the Bushes or the Clintons are actually Alien Space Lizard People? Of course not. The same problem occurs with regard to Ponies believing that Celestia is actually an ultra-powerful extraterrestrial.
How did Crimson Quartz find out (part of) the truth? Well, to begin with, he had access to the Great Library of the Crystal Empire, the most complete research collection of his world. Then, he was befriended by Princess Luna from an early age, and (as we see with her behavior toward Twilight) when Luna really likes somepony, she can be indiscreet. She's nowhere near as naturally-cunning and socially-manipulative as is her Sister. Finally, the Shadows know what the Concepts are (namely, their greatest obstacles to taking our world) and Crimson Quartz merged with a Shadow to become Sombra.
The real question is probably "Why does Moon Dancer believe the Codex of Shades in this claim?" There are several reasons. To begin with, she likes and wants to believe Penumbra. Secondly, she has a tendency to overestimate the claims made by books, in general. Thirdly, she's a radical revolutionary, and thus open to any claim which would delegitimize Celestia.
She's shocked, anyway, because it's so much more than she expected. And fundamentally, she was raised by Ponies loyal to the regime, and even as a revolutionary, she sort of assumes that the regime will survive forever, just become something she likes more. That's a very common delusion among naive intellectuals who want to overthrow authority, but assume that said authority will always be there to protect them. And Moon Dancer is very naive.
6466217 So,,,,,,living in the world of the Twelfth Equestriad would be something of a problem. A world with no Celestia to blame for everything and with all the problems seemingly addressed would be horrible because she'd have nothing to complain about.
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Well, it might for Moon Dancer, were it not for the fact that she matured and stopped trying to blame the imperfections of her life on everypony else. Plus, in the meantime she made friends, fell in love and generally improved her life. A lot can happen in some 45 years; Moon Dancer at 65-66 is not the same naive Angry Young Soul that she was at 20; she's a much happier and saner mare.
6466639 All the while shaking her head ruefully at those are who where she was.
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In regards to this: none of the facts Sombra wrote in the sections I've shown of the Codex of Shades was an outright lie. It's all in the interpretation of these facts, and what he left out. In part on purpose, in part because Sombra doesn't know everything.
Moon Dancer clearly doesn't understand how horrific King Sombra was.
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Correct. She doesn't. But then she's never met the full Night Stallion form of King Sombra. Only the edge of his shadow.
... I see what you did there
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Yep. And "Einstein's" name actually means "A Stone" or "One Stone."
6469513 even a first year Deutsch studenten should know that and figuring out the Chemistry and physics was a great little mental exercise. Keep up the good work
I'm actually feeling sorry for Starlight Angel and her friends. They get left out of all the history books. Even Starlight's only current legacy is a mad woman using her name which is all ponies will think of.
I hope Moon Dancer realizes she's reading a bias account.
Wouldn't All-Chaos be 'All-Instinct' or 'All-Fear'?
Then again, nothing to say that everything Sombra wrote here was 100% correct.
a Charisma which few Ponies can resist, even though it is an Armament She devised so that She and Her Sister might do as they willed among Ponies without Restraint.
And I seriously doubt Sombra is right about this one.
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I've actually mentioned her in at least one of my stories, just not by name. Sombra doesn't know her name, and he believes that the Cosmic Concepts were merely using the threat of Paradox as an excuse to smash the civilization of the Age of Wonders. He's, of course, wrong about that, as is obvious from Luna's recollections all the way back in Nightmares Are Tragic. But he now assumes Luna was lying to him when he was Crimson Quartz.
She doesn't quite yet, but Penumbra told her something that isn't in the Codex of Shades which contradicts something in the Codex, at least by implication. Which is why he told it to her, and only after his knowledge had been burst-transmitted back to the master copy of Sombra.
That line is a good example of how a Big Lie works. It's founded in truth (Alicorn Charisma is quite real) but includes at least one malicious misinterpretation (partially because, by the time he became Sombra, Crimson Quartz believed it).
Have you ever read If This Goes On -- (Robert A. Heinlein, 1940)? It contains an excellent discussion of how to speak something literally true but shade it so that it's a lie. The example given was a statement equivalent to "Your mother conceived you with your father in wedlock," only said in slang so that it sounded like an incredible insult (the fact that the line the character speaks is never rendered, only described by implication, gives one a good idea of what is actually said.
It is true that Celestia crafted the Alicorn form to be hyper-attractive and hyper-dominant. It is not true that she did this for abusive purposes. It is true that this capability can be abused. Ironically, one of the clear examples of this is Nightmare Moon, and Sombra's own machinations were partially to blame for her madness.
Another good example of this, of course, was Nazi propaganda. There was enough truth in it that it was effective. And, of course, much of it was believed by its authors.
¿Have ponies figured out the equivalent of ISO-216 with paper having the aspect-ratio of 1:√2?:
ISO-216
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Probably de facto, as the octavo, quarto, etc. desginations date back centuries in our world, even though they were less standardized before the 20th century. I could easily see some very specialized Pony genius with a Talent for paper-making or printing making the intellectual effort required to devise a standard and get it accepted throughout the Realm, at least.
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A 4-year-old bug which Knighty keeps saying he will fix, but never does, prevents replies from showing in the notifications, unless they are in the original chapter.
The thing about the ratio 1:√2 is that if one cuts the paper in half across its width, the new ratio is 1:((√2)/2). That is √2:1. This video explains it more elegantly than I could:
I have a blog about pony-mathematics:
Why ponies might use Balanced Ternary.
Maybe, you can do a blog about Pony-Mathematics in your 'Verse.
Poor, poor Moon Dancer. Here's this mare who is a reclusive shut in obsessed with magic and books, but she's written off any hope of companionship because she looks slightly scruffy. And now she's in the Crystal Empire, tracking down texts and wishing for a stallion. If only there was a stallion in the Crystal Empire who was a graduate of the CSfGU, and also a reclusive shut-in obsessed with magic and books, and maybe a little scruffy, with a goatee or something. But alas, Moon Dancer shall be forever alone.
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Had I written any of this after I saw the Season 6 Opener, I might have shipped them. Of course, the Season 6 Opener more rather obviously ships Starlight Glimmer with Sunburst.
To make matters even more amusing, Moon Dancer shares key elements of Starlight Glimmer's political philosophy.
Good Lord, she's being seduced by evil Carl Sagan...
There's a Transformers joke to be made with the kybertronoi, but I'm too enraptured by the darkly fascinating cosmic horror to do more than observe the potential.
Do brains count as Turing-capable machines for Minymon's purposes?
Yes, Moonie, your father's marital infidelity is proof that literally everything he ever taught you was a lie. Truly, you are a pillar of rationality and reason.
Don't mind me, just washing the dread out of my brain with snark. Seriously, great work with establishing the terror of the Shadows' universe.
For a moment there, I was worried that Moondancer was going to try to gather primary sources on Sombra's rule. Specifically, by asking for personal testimonies. Thank goodness even she could detect how that's kind of a touchy subject.
Still, this is probably one of the worst reasons I have ever heard to put one's soul at risk. At least when Homer Simpson sold his soul for a doughnut, he didn't try to dismantle a benign government. It takes a genius to do something really stupid.
In all, an excellent chapter, full of dark revelations and the sorrow that comes from seeing a brilliant mind going down a dangerous road. I look forward to more. (Also, most of your author's note got cut off.)
What a dark and fearsome tome. Still not sure why the alicorn sisters had to blow up the age of wonders though. Poor Moondancer. Karl Marx would never have had the courage to look God in the eye and tell him he's an opiate of the masses, but that's what she's planning.
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All thrugh this story I characterize Moon Dancer as an incredibly brave mare with a tendency toward outright berserk rage. And I think this is solidly grounded in vanilla canon.
Now, Moon Dancer doesn't get much screen time anywhere but in her single main episode, but she spends a lot of that episde rejecting Twilight Sparkle's attempts to renew their friendship. Which does not speak of either insane courage or berserk rage, except for this ...
... in most of these scenes, Moon Dancer is angry. And in ne scene, she starts to menace Twilight Sparkle with a club (the bat that was going to be used to break a pinata).
Full stop.
Moon Dancer -- who we know to be highly intelligent, and who is perfectly aware of what Twilight Sparkle is capable (this is after Twilight has fought Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, King Sombra, and Tirek ... let me say that last part again ... and TIREK (!!!)
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-- Moon Dancer is about to attack her with a length of wood.
That is a brave mare. Perhaps in insanely brave mare. And with definite violent tendencies, the more so because the Ponies in general are not a violent species compared to Humans.
I have absolutely no difficulty imagining her as killing two unfortunate Changeling Warriors who damaged her books, or encountering genuine cosmic horror and focusing on the "was that my first kiss?" aspect of the situation. Moon Dancer has her own sense of h0nor and propriety, and if something violates it she is quite willing to get all Time of Thrones on the unfortunate violator.
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In general I think that capacity for extreme courage and violence is a family trait of the Light Clan, which in my fanon includes notable pacifists such as Sunset Shimmer
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and Starlight Glimmer.
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In general, just as the Apples are a [url= http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassFamily]Badass Family, the Lights are a family of Badass Bookworms.
They also, in my fanon, tend toward intellectual radicalism. Both Moon Dancer and Starlight Glimmer are or were radical revolutionaries, and Twilight might have been if she hadn't been hoof-raised by the Ruling Princess herself.
Dangerous mares, one and all.
Moon Dancer is a heck of a lot braver -- and more admirable -- than ever was Marx.
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Pretty much, yes. And she's also pretty much gotten her first kiss from his ghost, too. Together with cosmically-horrific revelations.
More than a joke, even. Did you notice how the Night Shadows had enslaved them, and that there was an Ancient Prophecy that a goddess from beyond would come to liberate them?
Oh yes. It's getting the killer meme in that's the problem with an organic brain (it's easier with the machine minds of the automekanergoi), but it can be done.
Moon Dancer, in her early twenties, is very much a romantic idealist, for all her claims to be an unsentimental radical. Also, despite her intelligence, she has a tendenc toward emotionalism. And she feels almost personally betrayed by Night Dancer's infidelity (because he's her model of masculinity -- before this she was a definite Daddy's Girl).
Plus, she hasn't really asked herself -- or Night Dancer -- how or why Honey Moon lost Night Dancer's loyalty. She wouldn't like the answer.
I'm glad you liked it. My direct model was the various scenes in Lovecraft (and his followers) where some unfortunate researcher stumbles across either the Necronomicon or one of its primary sources.
I'm also glad you grasp the danger into which Moon Dancer is wandering.
A fascinating chapter. Poor Moondancer, she hasn't seen the second layer of the trap, has she? Allow me to expain: the first level, which Moondancer spotted, is the faulty binding spells. This will snare the most arrogant, impulsive or foolish.
The second is the summoning itself; even with perfect bindings, she is giving the Shadow what it wants: access to the universe and a potential victim to begin working on currupting. If that takes years, so what?
As for the shadows themselves, I know your influences were lovecraften literature, but I can't help but think of Bill Cipher (from Gravity Falls) and his court of monsters.
They themselves, of course, likely have a lot of Lovecraft in them, but still.
7365492 Now I love the Light clan. Still makes me want to read an alt-history piece where Marx got his hands on dark magic though.
So Sombra is an evil Patrick Swayze too? I'll buy it.
To wit, somehow Moon Dancer has seen Evil with a capital E, and thinks she can use it for good. Which is a violation of common sense, good sense, and maybe decency. Seriously if the part about destroying their own cosmic concepts and raping their version of entropy to the point of making the whole of the shadow verse un-dead; she thinks that letting them into her own is a good idea for any reason. And because the book is flawed, there is no way to test if any containment protocols it high lights will work, cause all of the Night Shadow come from a universe that has broken, they may not follow any rules of that one.
It's like seeing a video on radiation damage and then deciding to use radon toothpaste or something. I'm kinda questioning her sanity at this point. The only thing the Codex of Shadows should be used for is to see if the Night Shadows have any weakness to be used to stop them.
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Unfortunately Moon Dancer -- despite her intelligence and intellectualism -- is fundamentally impulsive and passionate. And she sees an avenue to power. And she doesn't realize that she can be corrupted slowly -- she's thinking totally and only in terms of blatant possession and mind control.
And Crimson Quartz and Princess Luna both thought they could control their contact with the Night Shadows. Both of them were wrong. And they were more powerful by far than Moon Dancer.
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Moon Dancer is way out of her depth here in dealing with Peumbra and the Codex. And she would be even more out of her depth if she summoned a Night Shadow.
Like many smart but naive people, including the Author when he was her age, she overestimates her ability to think her way out of a trap. Though I never worked my way into one that bad.
And Moon Dancer assumes she can control how she uses and is used by the Night Shadows. That is a very dangerous assumption to make -- and the exact same assumption Luna was making in the throneroom transformation scene. (You can see the moment Luna gets the "Oh shit" expression when she realizes she's losing control to the Nightmare in the throneroom transformation flashback in Twilight's Kingdom).
I can point to analagous mistakes in real human history. The Weimar Republic Conservatives assuming they could make use of the Nazis. The various Third World independence movements of 1945-1990 assuming they could make use of the Communists. And the European Union's assumption that it could make use of the Muslim immigrants. Some very smart people have made mistakes of this sort.
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Oh yes -- I'm very inspired by Lovecraft, and when I watched the last four episodes of Gravity Falls, I realized that Bill Cipher and his court were not only very much like something out of Lovecraft (specifically, Nyarlathotep and Azathoth's court) but also very much like my Night Shadows in fundamental concept.