Every action taken is like dropping a pebble in a pond, creating ripples that extend ever outward. Every choice has consequences, good and bad... Putting on a Crown may have changed Sunset Shimmer's life...but it also Changed two worlds...
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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I just love the sheer contempt that Sunset has for human "magic." As was evidenced by the Cranky interlude, there is magic in the world, if there are dedicated hunters like Cranky. It's just a matter of seperating the needle from the haystack of fake stuff.
So like how no one remembered Luna and there were almost no record of her, someone went through and quietly removed that Sunset had ever existed as well. How manipulative. The descriptive comparison of Confident Leader Sunset to Celestia was enjoyable and telling.
And Twilight better be ready to lose some sleep if she ever gets her fellow equine to talk about how horrible humans can be to one another.
Going by what we've seen so far, seems like Equestria possesses an entrenched aristocracy, who have all the positive qualities of Twilight's extended family, only with actual political power to back it up. If it's so toxic, though, wouldn't it be easier to do away with it entirely, and not have an entire class of people who are unjustly elevated above everyone else solely because of their birth?
10935935
Like real life, nothing has a single cause, but this is a well thought out, intelligent guess as to one of the contributing factors. :}
10936801
There might be a little of pony superiority there, lol. By there standards, what humans think of as 'magic' is often ridiculous, in the same way doctors of today look back at 'the four humours' and find it ridiculous.
10937066
Curiouser and curiouser, isn't it? Its like someone really didn't want people to remember Sunset Shimmer. How odd.
And yes, there's a definite through line of parallel traits in Celestia and Sunset. One of the things I noticed when I went through is not just how good Sunset has some of Celestia's traits, but how DAYBREAKER has dialogue that, in a lot of ways, mirrors Demon Sunset's, which suggests a lot of parallels in their real personalities. Adopted or not, Celestia is the only mother SUnset ever had, and she is very much her mother's daughter.
As for Twilight losing sleep, yeah, there's a reason Sunset doesn't explain human behavior that deeply to her. It still gives Sunset nightmares.
10937212
The problem there is the problem with a lot of government systems. If you wipe it out to start fresh, you destabalize the country in the process...and no matter how benign and benevolent the system, it often eventually degrades into powermongering, nepotism/cronyism, and toxicity because people that want power are the ones that will seek it. There's also a lot of heavy tradition in the aristocracy of Rubicon Equestria that I'll explain at some point....
10938235
*chuckles* Discord would have been a good guess, but no, it wasnt him. Does Discord even have a counterpart? Is also a good thought experiment. I am glad the identity of the perspective character caught you by surprise in that one. It was meant to.
10939094
*tilts head* and youre more than allowed to take that view of the show canon, though I will reiterate what I laid down in one of the author blogs: that I spread the events out over a much larger timeframe because it makes more sense to me.
10940090
It will be, but it will mostly be because she's a pony. And a unicorn.
>:}
10937271
It's true that nearly every institution gives power to group of people at the expense of everyone excluded, but they aren't equal. A government bureaucrat will behave differently if they were appointed to the position by the government instead of inheriting it, even if accrued wealth or family prestige made their appointment more likely. Nepotism is often looked down in modern society, but is at the very core of the aristocracy.
Princess Celestia is an alicorn, can raise the sun, functions as the head of state of Equestria, is popular among many ponies, and has reigned for at least a thousand years. Given this, it seems likely that she has had numerous opportunities to shape the government of Equestria. It's difficult to gauge exactly what her role and powers in Equestria's government are, but even if she's not immortal, she doesn't age quickly. She can afford to play the long game, making sacrifices for a strong position in 25 or 50 years.
It's conceivable that Princess Celestia isn't as great a manipulator I am making her out to be, or that she believes that only minor improvements to the system are likely to be successful. But I do think that if she tried, she could make major improvements to Equestria's government. Or it could just be my staunch republicanism talking.
Also, Sunset finds human religion confusing. What's more interesting is what her thoughts imply about what ponies believe. The way she describes human divinities as "incorporeal or imaginary" suggests that pony spirituality is tied to more observable things. This is understandable. Stories likely exist about Discord, the spirit of Chaos. Princess Celestia raises the sun every day, a task which takes 6 unicorns and is likely difficult even then. Even the appearance of cutie marks are grounded in physical and tangible contexts. Human spirituality is very diverse, so it would be a mistake to expect pony spirituality to be less so.
10940745
The situation with the pony aristocracy is an extremely complicated thing, one that is very much a case of 'boiling the frog by degrees.' Its also something I'm not going to go into here, because it will be actively explored as part of another story in the collection.
As for the pony religious thing...that I can discuss because its actually pretty basic.
In humans, religions and mythologies began among us as an attempt to explain phenomena we had no explanation for, no way to understand. Its why a lot of beliefs have stories to explain everything from weather events and natural disasters to mental disorders to where we come from to 'what happens when we die.'
The difference here is that for a very very long time, ponies don't HAVE unknown answers to a lot of those questions early humans asked. What makes the sun rise? At one time it was 'unicorn magic'. Now its 'Princess Celestia.' What makes lightning and thunder? Pegasi. Why do the seasons change? Ponies change them. With the answers to those things readily available, in a world where much of the events have discernable and understood cause and effect, there was simply no need to pay tribute or develop elaborate rituals to appease imaginary or unproven forces to prevent the volcano god from wrecking your day or whatever. And when you couple this with a handful of immortal, extremely powerful beings from various species who do have godlike power, there is very much a lack of need to make up stories like that. Instead, legends from Equestrian species tend to spring up from historical events and moral lessons. Tales like the Sirens and Windigo, myths like Gusty and Grogar, legends of the Elements, of previous Element-bearers, cautionary lessons and warnings and moral tales...
In the end, for Sunset (and other ponies) the term "god/goddess" has very different cultural connotations, usually to refer to an immortal of incredible power, often tied to a fundamental force that helps their world function (such as Celestia), but there's a lack of the WORSHIP aspect of it. Princess Celestia is 'the Goddess of the Sun' but she's not the target of a religion (in part because she actively discourages that and because she's very careful with her public persona.) Instead, she exists to the bulk of ponykind as an exemplar of what ponies should try to be: generous, kind, patient, wise, honorable, respectful, etc.
There's also the matter of something that doesn't get addressed directly in Rubicon, but the Warring Tribes Era was part of a larger problem for the world of Equestria. Each of the species has a similar period in history, the same thousand year stretch where Windigo--and possibly other emotiphages--were running amok and causing havok. Some call it things like 'The Hateful Winter,' or the 'Age of War,' or 'The Hungering Cold', but it was a thousand years of war, murder, nasty plots, and just devastation which was almost immediately followed by a second thousand year period the ponies call 'The Discordian Era.' That is, around a thousand years where Discord was an absolute menace. Those two periods, back to back, almost wiped out most of the sentient inhabitants of the world--in some cases it did drive species to extinction, especially Discord's era, when Chaos storms could hit anywhere, anytime, and wipe a village and its inhabitants off the map. (By the time Luna and Celestia sealed him away, for example, ponykind had lost several subspecies, completely lost track of at least two more, and had dwindled down to number in the vicinity of 75k-150K living members of the species....and ponies were actually one of the luckier species.) Most of the species became mobile and nomadic out of necessity, and places they settled usually only lasted a decade or two at best before they had to flee or risk dying. That meant prioritizing what you took with you. Food, water, supplies to keep you and your children alive and healthy took priority over heavy books and scrolls, over gold and gems, over statues and relics. Ponies in particular lost almost their entire history and culture over that time, and a great amount of magical knowledge as well. What survived was stuff passed through oral traditions, stories and legends, and things passed from mentor to students by rote and practice rather than from books.
What tomes exist from before that period were sealed up in vaults and hidden, and some of them are in incomprehensible languages over five millennia gone, some are in terrible tattered shape, and others just simply got lucky. So if there were older gods, myths, and beliefs, many of them have not survived into the modern era, lost in the terrible time before Celestia and her sister were even born, and even the best efforts of historians, archaeologists, and ponies like Daring Do will only ever be able to recover scraps.
...and that was the long winded way to explain why ponies don't have much in the way of what humans think of as religion....and that's not even touching on the deeper psychology of cutie marks and such, lol.
Twilight's gotta ramble like Twilight's gotta ramble.
Ah yes, human rocks. They certainly couldn't be as large and literally flawless as Equestrian gemstones. I mean, they seem to be so abundant and beautiful there, even in their most natural state. Silly human gems have nothing on those Equestrian rocks.
Well that entire last bit was a pleasure to read. I know I say it every time but dang it, I just really love reading your writing.
This entire interlude was one of the more interesting ones, I think. It gave us a lot to work with, while also giving us so little. The idea of kids giving random "magic" stuff to Sunset is really funny to me, especially considering how frustrated she must be. Also, Princess Twilight!
The slight differences in the narration (such as calling arms forelimbs and stuff like that) makes it really seem like a Princess Twilight POV. I dunno, maybe my standards really suck, but that's smart.
Anyway, I have more to say, but I don't know how to put it into words so I'll leave it here. As always, can't wait to read more!
Am I imagining things or is there some (Pony) Twilight x Sunset happening here?
And then someone gives Sunset yet another book...
TS: "What's that one?"
SS: "Well, at least it's one I don't have...but 'Book of Shadows' is a weird title. I'll put it in the pile..."