As far as I could tell, we were as good as dead. Not right now, but in a matter of hours, sure as sunshine. As long as there is any, cause there might not be any sunshine anymore. Not that I was about to say it, mind, but that would be the honest thing to say. Which was why I was keeping my mouth shut.
“What the HADES happened, Twilight?” Rainbow yelled, knocking a diving changeling out of the way. The poor thing twirled around and landed into the crystal pavement. The glowing green shield that was meant to protect him on contact ended up covering the wrong end. It was rather nasty to look at.
The other one was aiming at me. I dodged out of the way, and he landed shield first, leaving a running crack in the crystal. He was back on his hooves in an instant, snarling right into my face.
One solid buck took care of that, sending him careening into the wall of a nearby house.
Twilight didn’t answer.
“Mind your language, Rainbow Dash!” Rarity admonished, punching the two changelings that landed next to her right into the glowing blue eyes, a single graceful motion. Their shrieking made it clear they won’t be a problem for a while.
“Who cares about language? This is worse than Nightmare Moon!” Rainbow countered, swooping down and knocking another changeling away.
“Precisely!” Rarity exclaimed. “A lady doesn’t want her friends to remember her swearing like a soldier in her final moments!”
“This is not my final moment! I’m going to be a Wonderbolt!” Rainbow declared, knocking yet another changeling out. “And Wonderbolts are soldiers! So I will swear a–”
She was about to say something else, but the blast of Pinkie’s cannon drowned it out, whatever it was, blowing a group of changelings away with a cloud of confetti.
I don’t see this sort of smile on Pinkie’s face often. I prefer not to think of the other times when I did. And confetti isn’t supposed to work like that. Maybe. Where’s Fluttershy? I know she’s okay, with this Element on my neck I can feel her heart beating, but I can’t see her. Right, she’s right behind me. Did she just scare off seven changelings that were about to jump me?…
After the Elements didn’t work, and when that giant dragon suddenly appeared out of nowhere and joined the battle, we retreated towards the castle. Or tried to. The swarm descending on us made it mighty difficult. We had to fight our way through, and I still wasn’t sure what the plan is now, or if there even is one, but it rightly resembled a panicked escape.
Let’s not mince words, it was. Nothing of the sort happened before.
Suddenly, everything stopped. It took me a second to notice we were now standing under a milky white shield bubble. Scanning around, I noticed Moondancer’s blazing horn and Mary standing next to her – damned ghostly dresses, but I guess they kept them safe, so I shouldn’t complain. All around us, changelings were bouncing against the newly erected shield like moths against a window.
That was when a squad of Royal Guard finally got to us, and the battle was joined in earnest, but for a time, we were safe. As safe as could be expected, at least.
“Where’s Spike?” was Twilight’s first question to Moondancer. “I left him with you two, where is Spike?!”
Moondancer gritted her teeth, straining to keep the magic running, so the answer came from Mary. “You can see him just fine from here,” she pointed at the horizon.
I knew that purple was familiar. Well, what do you know.
“What is he doing?!” Twilight blurted out, her eyes widening in realization. “…How is he doing it?! Who’s that standing on his head?! Where is the mass–”
“Later,” Mary cut her off. “Your brothers are buying you time. Everypony else is helping. Use the time well.”
“You still didn’t answer,” Rainbow insisted. “What the hay happened?”
“It’s a lesson,” Twilight replied in a shocked tone as she sunk to sit on the crystal street. “It’s another damned lesson. It’s got to be!”
When she’s started talking like that, it’s time for me to step in. “Now what did I tell you about treating everything as homework?”
Twilight ignored me. “Could she have planned this?…” she babbled on, “I can’t be sure, right? Maybe she didn’t? She can’t plan everything, that would be just impossible!”
I grabbed her shoulder and shook it a bit. “You’re not making sense, Twilight. Start by saying all the obvious things. They aren’t so obvious to us.”
That, at least, got her to look at me. “Princess Celestia,” she finally said after taking a deep breath. “I’m wondering if she can plan so far ahead, endanger so many ponies, just to arrange a teachable moment.”
“Not unless she’s into quantum suicide,” Mary tossed at Twilight over her shoulder, looking at the clash of the titans above.
“She can’t be, can she?” Twilight pleaded. “Or maybe she can. Or maybe she can’t. What am I thinking?!…” My hoof tingled, as every hair in her mane, still tangled after bed, started curling up simultaneously.
“Twilight,” came a soft voice from next to me. Fluttershy.
“What?”
“Twilight, why do you think Princess Celestia had anything to do with it?” Fluttershy asked.
I threw a glance at Moondancer, who was obviously not used to having her shields being employed as an anvil for smashing changelings. Which was what the Royal Guards outside were doing. Is that really the right time to ask that?…
No, wait. It is. If we’re going to get out of this mess, Twilight needs to be sane. Talking is how you get a pony sane, and Fluttershy is better at it than me. When she isn’t fretting about and hiding behind things, but we all have our faults.
“Because…” Twilight took a deep breath. “Because she does this. I was just a little filly, but eventually, I noticed. She is always so busy, she never had as much time for me as she wanted. So she would give me tasks. And it’s always like she knows in advance, how I will try to solve the problem, what I will do, what stumbles me, how I will fail. It’s like the one pony I’m always sure to confront is myself. I don’t know how she does this, but… She means well, I know she does, but… This…” Twilight looked up and stared at Fluttershy. “This was how I met you, girls. You can’t say that was a bad thing, can you?”
“Did you try to talk to her about it?” Fluttershy pressed on.
Twilight almost visibly shriveled. It took me a moment to realize it’s just the hairs that were standing on ends settling down. “I did. Sort of. You were there.”
I sighed. Oh boy. That scene at the wedding had to be the first time Twilight ever insisted her Princess was wrong. She did, and the Princess still turned it around and made it look like that was what she wanted all along. And then we stumble into this mess, and I’m sure Twilight blames herself. Not a mental image I wanted to have. Not a mental image Twilight deserves, either. If we ever get out alive, my next letter to Princess Celestia is sure to contain a few nasty words.
“I could never imagine a genius being so stupid,” Fluttershy said, barely above a whisper, and yet the ice in these words was enough to make me shiver.
Twilight folded her ears. She clearly didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect that. I heard that while I was out delivering pies and chasing Apple Bloom around, Fluttershy went to some kind of assertiveness seminar, run by a passing minotaur, of all people, and scared Pinkie and Rarity out of their coats. Apologies were involved. I kind of knew she can be downright terrifying, but this… It feels like I’m a little filly caught with my hoof in the cookie jar, and I’m not even the one Flutters is looking at!
“Who do you think Celestia is, that she would do such a thing? What kind of monster have you imagined?! Who do you think you are, Twilight?” Fluttershy pressed on. “Who are you, that ponies die, that empires fall, that monsters rampage and destroy, all just to teach you a lesson?!”
There was no reply. Just tears welling up in the corners of Twilight’s eyes.
“Princess Celestia is not here,” Fluttershy added.
Twilight jerked an ear.
“You had it right, at the wedding. She has been here, a thousand years ago. Right now, you are. Moondancer is here. Lyra is here, somewhere. The ponies that Princess Celestia knew nothing about. We are here. And I don’t think she knows all that much about us, either. Stop imagining her shadow behind every corner!”
This green glow of that dress of hers is hurting my eyes.
“She doesn’t know all that much about you, full stop!” Pinkie grinned, suddenly peeking out from behind Twilight. Trust Pinkie to break the tension, I’m pretty sure Twilight was about to break down and cry. “She just does this because you surprise her so much. When you’re older than Equestria, being surprised is hard! So wake up and surprise her! You can do it! Group hug!”
She wrapped around Twilight like only Pinkie can, and with that, even the scary Fluttershy was suddenly gone, and the nice, sweet one was back in her place, in the pile of smiling ponies, hidden somewhere between Rarity and Rainbow.
But before joining them, I threw a glance at Moondancer. “C’mon.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m not into hugs,” Moondancer grunted. That didn’t help her, because Pinkie grabbed at her and pulled her into the pile anyway.
The shield wobbled. “Damn it, Pinkie Pie!” Moondancer hissed, but shut up immediately once Twilight wrapped a foreleg around her. The human chose to politely turn away.
“Thanks, girls. I needed that,” Twilight breathed out.
We don’t really have the time to keep this tender moment going on longer than absolutely necessary. Let’s get back on track here. “So tell me, Twilight,” I said, once I felt the pause dragged on for long enough. “You did learn something, set up or no. What was it?”
“What did I learn?…” Twilight mumbled, crawling out of the pile. “It’s… It’s simple, really. I know what happened. I know what happened, and it’s all my fault.”
Everypony dispersed and were now standing huddled around Twilight. Rainbow, ever disdainful of the ground, hovered right above my head, listening attentively for once.
“We’ve been treating the Elements of Harmony as a weapon,” Twilight said. “Point and shoot, fix everything. We always thought they are, on some level. They aren’t. Moondancer is right, they’re a miracle engine. Together. Each fills a specific function, has power in its own right, but together, they break the laws of magic in the name of harmony. They directly transmute the power of friendship into energy. Into magic. As much magic as you need to restore harmony.”
“So why didn’t they work?!” Rainbow exclaimed. Sheesh, right into my ear.
“They did,” Twilight insisted. “That’s the problem! The default form is a dark magic neutralizer. That’s what they do if you don’t tell them what to do, they purify everything!”
“What about Discord?” Mary wondered. “That bit has always been weird.”
“With Discord, I knew it wouldn’t work on him,” Twilight explained. “I asked for a chaos magic neutralizer, and that’s what they did. I’m pretty sure that’s how they turned him to stone the first time, too. I don’t know what Discord really is, but no matter how twisted, he has never been a corrupted being.”
Moondancer gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Rarity facehoofed. Mary sighed. Sounds like even the human got it. “I feel like I’m the only one who still didn’t understand,” I commented.
“You and me both,” Rainbow agreed.
“It’s technical,” Twilight said. “To put it short, there’s no counterspell for dark magic, it’s mathematically impossible. You can’t just cancel parts out and let the oscillation destabilize.”
“So you have to apply brute force!” Pinkie piped up. “My least favorite kind of force. It’s big, it’s mean, and nopony likes when it comes to party, it’s actually kind of sad.”
“Yes,” Twilight nodded, not even bothering to wonder why Pinkie understood her better than I did. “You need a broad-spectrum anti-phase wave of equivalent amplitude. And this was what the Elements gave us. But that’s magic, too, and Tirek isn’t a corrupted being, either. We tried to douse the fire with a cartload of black powder. It was my call, I did it. And I doomed everything.”
I kind of expected that would be it. I expected it and didn’t want to believe it.
“So how did their Highnesses deal with him originally?” Mary inquired. “Tirek has been beaten before, hasn’t he.”
“Not sure.” Twilight folded her ears and stared at her reflection in the crystal street. “I don’t understand how his ability works exactly, but it’s not really universal, not entirely. He has to adjust for what he wants to consume, he resonates. And the bigger he gets, the wider his range is, the more kinds of magic he can eat. We might have simply been too late. Right now, I don’t think any magic the Elements can throw at him will work, he will just absorb it.”
“So that’s it, then?” Rainbow asked. “Really? We’re gonna give up, just like that?”
“No,” Twilight shook her head, looking towards where the two giants were still wrestling and crushing the crystal beneath. “I have an idea. I’m sure I can freeze him for at least a few hours. Maybe days. He still can’t absorb dark magic.”
“That sounds even worse,” I said. “Weren’t you afraid of going Nightmare Twilight on us?”
“I was…” she sighed. “Well, yes, I am. Dark magic is ultimately a method of using free energy in a spell. Most of that is fast thaums from the Moon… Anyway, that’s not important. The important part is that doing it that way screws with your brain. It’s stupidly easy, it’s very efficient, but it directly disables your moral restraint and makes you think any ends justify all means. With dark magic, I can hurt Tirek myself. But if I try to push that much power through, I’m definitely getting affected.”
“And you want us to use the Elements on you after you do that, right?” I guessed. “Not gonna work, we can’t do that without you.”
“Not after,” she shook her head. “While I’m doing that. We’re just going to ask the Elements to stabilize me while I’m casting the spell. But there’s still a problem with that.”
“Eggheads and their egghead problems,” Rainbow grumbled.
“Well, it might not work, and then we’re going to have a Nightmare Rainbow. Plus Nightmare Pinkie, Nightmare Applejack, Nightmare Rarity and Nightmare Fluttershy. This connection,” Twilight said, wiggling her ears to adjust the crown on her head. “It works both ways.”
“I always wanted to try designing a dark sorceress costume,” Rarity tapped a hoof thoughtfully. “That’s just about the only excuse you get for a cape this season, and I’m sure I can totally pull off the cape look.”
“Yeah, Nightmare Rainbow sounds kinda awesome,” Rainbow agreed, pretending that the crystal street somewhere under Twilight’s hooves suddenly got a lot more interesting. “I’m down with that.”
“You never know until you try!” Pinkie grinned nervously. “I need to brush up on dark humor!”
“I think I’m about as Nightmare as I get already,” Fluttershy mumbled, folding her ears.
“Girls, you don’t know what you’re saying!” Twilight exclaimed. “Dark magic corruption is not some pretentious strain of equine flu, it’s a big deal!”
“We kinda know it’s a big deal,” I replied. “We’re just pretending it isn’t, because we don’t want you to worry about us, too.”
“Applejack!” Rarity frowned at me.
“Well, pardon me for being honest, we haven’t got all night!” I tossed back at her. “Do your thing, Twilight.”
Moondancer shook her head, and stared into the crystal pavement, the reflection of her blazing horn lighting us all up.
Twilight glanced at her questioningly. “Moondancer? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have an Element,” Moondancer replied, without looking up. “I don’t even have a dark magic clearance. I’m useless, aren’t I? I don’t have that… p-power of friendship, whatever it is.”
“You might not have an Element,” Twilight said, “but you’re still my friend. The only friend I can trust to disrupt the spell if anything goes wrong. If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t even have the courage to try. That’s power of friendship, too. Will you help?”
Moondancer took a deep breath. “Yes,” she replied, finally looking up with the weakest of smiles on her face.
Twilight looked around, and I did the same. Most of the changelings in the immediate vicinity were out of action, and even some of the Royal Guard, instead of frantically trying to keep them away, were standing at attention, anxiously looking at the skies. “Girls… Take your places,” Twilight said calmly. “Mary, can I count on you covering us?”
Instead of answering, Mary switched something on her death machine, and I heard a high pitched whine.
“Drop the shield.”
The shield dissolved, and that was the moment I heard that horrible sound again.
“O-o-o-o-o-o-ho-ho-ho-ho!”
Right above our heads, the ghostly shape of a huge bird full of stars was flapping its wings.
8078160 The comic itself has an out. Apparently the storytelling devise is a book written by Starswirl in which he collected stories and legends. Not 100% historical fact.
You're going to have to do some quick tap dancing to convince me that Rainbow Power is anything other than the miracle engine of the Elements without their tangible bling physicality. The showrunners' general disinterest in being an action adventure fantasy has been the only thing keeping us from diving into the deep end of all that, though.
Is that Rita or Chrysalis laughing at the end there? Big Star-Bird I'm pretty sure is Rita but it sounds like Chrysalis.
Plus why would Rita have just shown up and start doing a "O-ho-ho" laugh immediately? That laugh is for gloating upon your superiority and inevitable victory and the pathetic efforts of your opponents to resist that, aka Chrysalis at this moment.
8100382 But are magical systems inherently mystical? Many of them seem to be deliberate attempts to technologize magical phenomena, to literally wring 'mysticism' out of the apparently miraculous and leave nothing but dry mechanics where magic once was. Although any magical system which leaves a space for the miraculous seems biased towards the mystical. And how is the display of 'Rainbow Power' substantially distinct from any other display of Elements deployment? All six are present, there is a moment of synergy and apotheosis, and then the 'magicks' happen - anti-gravity effect, glowing eyes and all.
You used the pointed shield thing they generate from their horns, awesome!
Not sure if that level of harshness was needed, but it got the job done.
I notice that in this story, Moondancer has kind of become the 6th Ranger in a way that Trixie usually does in these types of stories.
Do they? Can you actually do anything with the other elements of harmony? I mean, you can with the Element of Magic, but that is clearly slightly different from the other 5.
So is that energy unlimited if you are good enough friends with others?
Dunno if I can agree on "default." To me it seems pretty likely the Tree created the Elements primarily as an anti-Discord weapon, so I'm not sure why the dark magic neutralizer should be the "default" option, rather than the "petrify" setting.
I would point out that Twilight doesn't need to think about "chaos magic neutralizer," she would have known the Sisters turned Discord to stone last time, so she could have just asked for the same effect. Although this doesn't cover why Celestia's use banished Luna to the moon instead of reforming her. (Luna kind of was petrified though....)
Very awesome, including hints at a good explanation for Nightmare Moon.
I dunno, Rarity has recovered from 3 different bouts with minimal side-effects.
More delicious Trixie! BTW, last chapter Trixie's memory erasure spell was a good explanation for her behavior in the past.
Dang it, I wish the Crystal Ponis had enough uranium for one more bomb, that seems simpler than their current plan.
Also, if Twilight becomes an alicorn because of this, she'll be the alicorn of dark magic, no matter what euphemistic title Celestia comes up with. Good luck with that Twily!
8100382
8100426
The theory of magic I ended up deciding on serves dramatic purposes here: It is a technologization of magic phenomena. It hasn’t always been.
To put it very short, as further and further understanding of nature was attained, more materialistic ideas of what actually happens when a unicorn casts a spell were developed, to the point where mathematics and quantum physics are the backbone of modern magical theory, and Twilight can compute square root approximations in her head. The efforts to explain, and on occasion, replicate the feats of the ancients using a solid framework based in repeatable evidence for the most part succeeded. Figuratively speaking, these days you can summon Death with 4 cc of mouse blood and three small sticks. Nobody does it, cause he won’t tell you anything useful and good ponies don’t kill mice just to waste Death’s time, but the mechanics of the process are understood.
But now Moondancer sees “love energy” being used to move mountains and struggles to reconcile observed evidence with the theory she was taught, Twilight has intimate mystical experiences centered on the power of friendship which somehow coexist with the same materialistic views without conflict, Luna talks of ignorance as a valuable resource, and Lyra does things explicitly because she believes they are dramatically appropriate…
Someone will have to peek into the mysticism and see if anything stares back.
8100422
There has only been one character in here so far who:
Spells their laughter out so hard that everyone else hears it quoted.
Is consistently associated with star-beasts.
It’s neither Rika nor Chrysalis. Of course it can only be the Great and Powerful Trixie.
8101151
There is no canonical indication anywhere that individual Elements have any specific function, except the very tangential behavior of the geode shards in Legends of Everfree. Which do each come with their own power. Whether they are in any way related to the Elements is a matter of argument, however, the idea that individual Elements have their individual function, and the heroines just never get an appropriate moment to use this function or to even understand what it is – I think that’s a perfectly natural idea to have. Fandom has often ascribed specific abilities which would be associated with the Elements to the Mane 6 themselves – for example, it’s a very common fanon that Applejack is able to instantly discern if anyone is lying because of her association with the element of Honesty.
In canon, Applejack never does anything of the sort. But she also never gets to wear her Element for more than an hour at a time.
For the specific purpose of restoring harmony – yes, or very close.
I think this one is an argument we’d best postpone until a later date and a blog post…
Because Celestia was, at the moment, alone. How exactly can she be friends with herself? Banishing Luna to
her roomthe Moon was the best she could pull under the circumstances, and since then, every single touch weakened the seal – the time until the return of the Nightmare Moon is expressed in years, rather than moons, because moons do not contain a well-defined number of sunrise/sunset cycles.Most of the events you are referring to haven’t happened yet here, but, she’s also the least nervous about the potential results.
(bites back a spoiler)
You’ll see what they actually end up doing in the next chapter, and by the looks of it, it will be a surprise. :)
8101211
Ahh, of course. Derp.
The bird threw me off, seemed somewhat eldritch/alien so I got Rika in my head, plus the laugh was presented as not a good thing so I didn't think of friendly parties as the source.
8100321 Well one big difference is that the EoH seems to channel energy from inside the ponies, wheras Rainbow Power the energy comes from the tree. If you watch the sequence, when the magical chest/seed is opened, it releases its power into the tree, that then pours its energy into the Mane 6 until they overflow with it. All the other effects of the Rainbow Power (depowering Tirek, imprisoning him, restoring everyone's magic and freeing the princesses) don't have nearly as bright a burst of magic as the last effect, where the Tree of Harmony shoots its seed into the ground and sprouts a castle. Rainbow Power appears to be part of the reproductive cycle of the Tree of Harmony, and lucky for the girls they were able to harness it at just the right time and aim its secondary effects at the right targets before the seed was planted.
8101242
Fair enough. And if the Element of Magic can do all that stuff on its own, there should probably be some kind of magical powers the other five can have.
Ok, but then how did she activate it at all?
Interesting. You're saying it wasn't the stars that let Luna escape or the spell simply wasn't strong enough to hold her forever, but rather Celestia pouring magic into the moon twice a day let Nightmare Moon gather up a smidge of ambient magic every day until she had enough to break the spell.
I'd love to see a comic where Rarity is hopped up on magic and meets up with the Canterlot Elite, and they barely notice a difference, except to comment on her new style.
8103443
By using all the individual powers of the Elements at once as a power source, for example. I.e. instead of the true shot of the Elements, she cobbled up a last-moment combination of six invocations of separate elements without true friendship to fuel the real deal. This was good enough to overpower Nightmare Moon and banish her, but not good enough to actually cleanse her.
Notice how when the Mane 6 fire the elements, their eyes glow. When Celestia banishes Nightmare Moon, her eyes don’t glow. Also notice that the beam she produces is nothing at all like the rainbow sheet resulting from what the Mane 6 do.
Something like that. It’s not like Celestia could avoid it, exactly, the Moon seems to be no less important for the ecosystem than the Sun. My guess is, the Moon is the primary source of raw magical energy, and not raising it would be just as bad as not raising the Sun, even if a bit slower.
Oh my. Flechette rounds? XL Glitterbombs, energetically delivered?
That concept only works with a
n anthropo-sapiocentric misreading of quantum-mechanical "observe". Besides, it leads to quantum torment, were it meaningful, simply because it requires Herculean feats of probability engineering to make the death-adjacent options non-maiming.Their Highnesses should be capitalized.
Oh, I want to hear the rest of that. (What's a fast thaum?)
Guess I'll have to wait for the blag.
8105428
Which is why one can be “into” it like some kind of morbid cult hobby. :)
Would you care to write out a complete rule set on when and where these titles should be capitalized and when they should not be? I do plan on going through the entire text with all your corrections in hand when I’m done with this arc, such a rule set would be a big help.
A thaum is an elementary particle of magic, and has the properties of a particle and a wave. A fast thaum is, obviously, one such particle that moves faster than the rest of them…
8105981
The most important thing I can probably give you is that the more specific keyword here is style, not title.
I have proficiency in programming, foreign languages, and philosophy, among other things. I'm kind of learning it as I go; I have had only peripheral instruction in the
nicetiesvagaries of English as I write on philosophy. (Also, "a complete set of rules"…Gödel has a little something to say about that.) Also, I'm handicapped by accident of birth in this field, being from a country that escaped and then prevented nobility. The UK's system of nobility is said to be "more neat" than the Continent by Heraldica, and their system is already rather beyond me.The shortest rule I have read, is that a noble title is to be capitalized when it is acting as a name. (This, in addition to the much more elementary rule that we should already have ingrained where titles are capitalized when adjoining a name: Mister Oliver, Esquire; Her Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle.) I have yet to find a good, singular, online reference for the rules, and I can't find my copy of Strunk&White with a cursory search, either… One bit I just read said that "Technically, […] in the third person, it should not be initial-capped unless it precedes the person’s name, but such courtesies for monarchs are often excepted from this rule.", which is opaque and contradictory… and, given that Equestria has di- or triarchs, which I've not heard of on Earth…
As there have not yet been, in canon, nobles who are not royals, and there are only Princes and Princesses in Equestria, I feel confident in saying you'll be capitalizing all of them. (Kings and Queens are styled 'His/Her Majesty instead of 'His/Her Highness', I believe. Certainly Chrysalis would have the same motive as Charles V of "wanting a style higher than ‘Highness’".)
But, to fabricate some examples:
I am uncertain which of these is preferred, though, if being formal, we might add in a "Their Highnesses" which might capitalize the intervening 'the', I haven't yet found a codification…
I feel like I'm reading a magical text in the Golden Oaks Library and someone has stuck the remainder of the pages together!
Or perhaps this reply is a fast reply, much as "fast-talk" is to "talk".
ed: checked my copy of Basic Heraldry; it has no chapters on styles.
(much-edited)
You'd never meet someone that was "into quantum suicide" because in all but the tiniest of probabilities, you'd only meet their corpse. From their point of view it'd work so long as they were thorough enough to ensure death without accidental survival in some horrible crippled state. Quantum suicide is a game that can only be played by the subjective "you". I suggest only playing it when you're old and about at the end of your time anyhow. Suddenly life would get really weird and interesting!
8109386
Incidentally, Celestia is at least 1200 years old…
I'm happy to try. My knowledge is intuitive rather than rigourous, so I may resort to another expert if it gets hairy.
8105981 It'd probably be bad to comment that this sounds like the kind of cult/hobby I'd be willing to become invested in.
But technically, via the infinite-multiverse theory, we, all of us, have a version of ourselves that is, in fact, a part of such a cult.
Which we should never talk about in polite company; "Hello, did you know there's a better than even chance that I just committed quantum suicide?" doesn't strike me as the type of conversation topic that leads anywhere but a padded cell.
8159928
Rephrase the question in some way that permits a reasonable answer beyond “yes, I knew, so what” and “no, I didn’t, and I don’t care,” and it might stop sounding so crazy. :)
Well, I'm caught up.
Still don't understand why it's tagged mystery.
8208829
And here I have been leaving clues all around…
Well, here are a few:
1. What is the real origin of the sandwich?
2. Who wrote the Journal?
3. Where did the ponies actually come from?
4. Would you believe that these questions are actually connected?
8209774 Okay, maybe it's just the fact that I don't care about any of those questions, and am more focused on the fun character interactions and the different approach to canon events.
Congratulations. In the process of writing a compelling mystery, you made the characters, setting, and day-to-day activities more engaging and interesting than the central conflict.
Also, still don't know what aspect of this you ultimately expected me to not be fond of.
8209829
Isn’t it the characters who are supposed to make mysterious things happen, anyway? :)
8212260
If it is, you failed in that.
Pretty much all those questions you cited as mysteries? The characters didn’t make those happen. The origin of the sandwich, the writer of the journal, and the origin of the species are questions that the original show created. The closest your characters come to ‘making mysterious things happen’ are asking questions, and a philosopher is not the source of the great mysteries of the universe.
8212347
Actually, they did, but… Oh well, I’ll shut up. :)
8212830
How? How did they make the mysteries happen? Do we just have different reasoning on this subject?
And why are you ending the sentence with a smile as though you’re glad to be shutting up? I’m just trying to have a conversation and understand a creative choice.
8212839
Well, none of the characters who narrated so far were directly involved in making anything particularly interesting happen. But some things did happen, and they were done by characters, and I’m hardly introducing any new ones here, am I?
Because I don’t exactly want to spoil everything in a single comment, you’ve already mentioned that I effectively kill dramatic tension.
Dramatic tension will be mad at me.
8212853
Ah. My apologies, I took it to mean you were expressing contempt for my disapproval.
In any case, you have just spoiled the entire story for anyone with a sense of context. In your defense, it’s rather obvious in retrospect.
So if I understand you correctly, Tirek's gimmick is that he acclimates to and then absorbs any kind of magic thrown at him. I remember reading a Touhou fanfic where the villain had a gimmick like that -- they stopped her (at least initially) by quickly cycling the most exotic attacks they had to put her on the floor before she could adjust back and forth.
That's a neat way of categorizing the Elements and the Rainbow Power. The Elements (at least as they've been used) are a very specific type of magic designed to overpower a very specific kind of corruption. The Rainbow Power was literally just mainlining the Tree itself, manifesting as a massive, raw, unfiltered magical sledgehammer (presumably with just enough precision to not vaporize the ponies using it) that slammed him with a riotous mess of pretty much everything possible before he could even begin to identify any of it.
1) >Desperate speech with dark forces
>Trixie's Dynamic Entry
"Dammit Trixie"
2) Damn, you put a fuckheug amount of thought into the EoH. My solution was to keep far away from it and let it happen off screen. Now I feel compelled to work out my own theories of magic