In quite a few of my favorite stories on this site, I've seen that the 'plot/conspiracy to overthrow Celestia' pltline utilized, either as the primary threat or just something in the background. I decided to do my own take on it, taking a page out of "Winning, and the pitfalls therein" by RandomPC, found here
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Minor spelling errors aside (go fix those), this was an entertaining read. Always nice to see political-savvy Celestia.
Thank you for sharing this writing with us.
2176557
THanks. DO you think you could point out the errors? I can't seem to spot them in my editting run.
@Tatsurou…
Entertaining comedy story. Definitely an good lesson in the lack of political foresight of most self-proclaimed revolutionaries.
I also agree with bstreetninja, you just need to clean & polish your story of typos & spelling errors, and it will be fine as is (no revisions needed).
Post Edit Add: Actually, if you want to add a bit more knife-twisting into the revolutionary trio, you could have Celestia mention the potential international strife with the other races &/or nations of the MLP:FiM world too. Such as the griffon tribes, the dragon clans, or Saddle Arabia, etc.
THe captilization errors are almost comical in their frequency.
2176569
I'll point out what caught my eye. They were mostly things that could have been keyboard misstrokes. Like pendrake72 said, the story itself is fine. No revisions needed.
{Red Tape - a well connected pegasus beuracrat.}
[ought to be well-connected, a compound word] [misspelled 'bureaucrat']
{First Edition didn't like this, but he knew he'd ahve to keep the cool head.}
[transposed 'h' and 'a' in 'have']
{While he was very reliable as a source of information regarding the bureacracy and was easily able to tell what ponies in general would respond well to, when he got truely rattled - }
[misspelled 'bureaucracy' and 'truly']
{THe door opened. "Her Highness will see you now," the Royal Guard said}
[extra cap on 'h' of 'The']
{When they stopped at the steps up to the dias, she side.}
[misspelled 'dais']
{First Edition nodded. "Yes, your Highness," he said calmly. "What can we do for you?}
[capitalize 'y' of 'your']
{First Edition flinched. SIlver Sword pursed his lips.}
[extra cap on 'i' of 'Silver']
{"Remove me from power, relieve me of my royal duties, prerogatives, and priveleges? That sort of thing?"}
[',' ought to be ';' (kind of an aesthetic choice, ignore if you prefer)] [misspelled 'privileges']
{Interfering in such an important matter would raise serious questions about the viability of the new fledgling government." SHe tilted her head.}
[extra cap on 'h' of 'She']
{Red Tape blinked. "Y-your moon?" he asked increduously.}
[misspelled 'incredulously']
{She pulls out a magically crafted icnograph. "THis is visual evidence of my claiming the Moon in the name of the Lunar Empire, 1000 years ago when I was first banished there. THe flags still there, if you'd care to check."}
[misspelled 'iconograph'?] [extra cap on 'h' of 'This' and 'The'] [missing apostrophe on contraction 'flag's']
{"You'll cause untold damage and deathtoll to Equestria and the world at large! THe gravitational shifts alone will be catastrophic!"}
[change 'deathtoll' to 'death'] [extra cap on 'h' of 'The']
{"As the Lunar Empress, my ties with this kingdom and world officially severed, I fail to see how tha tis my problem."}
)]
[change 'tha tis' to 'that is' (unless Luna still speaks Ye Olde Equestriane
{First Edition nodded, trying to mantain his calm. "And...who might they be?"}
[misspelled 'maintain']
{All three stallions visibly shuddered. The idea of Pinkie Pie with any sort of political power made surrending to Discord seem prefferable. At least with Discord, you knew to expect total chaos.}
[misspelled 'surrendering' and 'preferable']
{Celestia smiled. "I'll have to elt them know about all this so they can come to Canterlot...}
[transposed 'l' and 'e' of 'let']
{"...but first I really must make an announcment to the press regarding what's happening, and who to thank for it."}
[misspelled 'announcement']
{Everypony knowing exactly who's fault it was this was happening...}
[misspelled 'whose']
{"Then how come we ended with promising to work towards giving the Princesses even more royal privelege and benefits?"}
[misspelled 'privilege']
{SHe then spoke to the curtain behind the throne.}
[extra cap on 'h' of 'She']
Great one-shot!
Kept me thoroughly engaged on the premise, but you could use an editor.
Just start asking people (myself included) and they'll be happy to lend you a hand.
Keep writing!
2176726
Thanks. I usually catch those myself, but I was pretty tired when I wrote this. They will be corrected by Monday afternoon. Most of them are typos, I'm afraid. Stupid buggy keyboard.
That story was hilarius.
It was awsome to see both Celestia and Luna trolling someone else instead of each other. But I am still for the New Lunar Republic as Luna can handle the kingdom just fine.
Gee, those guys don't actually have a bit of a clue about how politics, coup, or a government in general works, do they? I am reminded of those guys in Space Thunder Kids, who think the alien overlord needs to run it through the Space Immigration Office first before seizing control of the government.
2177244
But uh, 'republic'... 'kingdom'? What kind of a polity NLR actually is anyway?
2177823
Well, it was their intention to set up a new government - probably a democracy - without the Princesses, but they expected to have plenty of material by which to demonize them with first. They weren't expecting Celestia to take this approach.
And in this case, Luna's set up an Empire. Given her behavior here, it will likely be a benevolent dictatorship where her whim is law but she spends most of her time entertaining the young ones for her own joy. Kinda like that one Nightmare Night.
2176594
As far as knife-twisting, that would change the dynamic. THis is Celestia behaving as if everything will work out just fine so she can feel perfectly content in abandoning her post. How would you suggest I write that into this? Something like this?
Celestia: Oh, and I'll have to let the Ambassadors know they won't be dealing with me anymore, what with me being overthrown because my ponies want to try to take care of themselves now. The other country leaders are honorable, I'm sure they wouldn't DREAM of taking advantage of the situation; surely they'll give you a few years to get your hooves under you before implimenting any major international policy decisions.
*Like conquest,* Silver Sword thought to himself, suddenly terrified beyond all reason.
...Actually, that works pretty well. Any suggestions on where I should add that in?
This is the problem with most revolutionaries. Lack of foresight, and assumptions of what will be available at their disposal should they try to take charge. They believe that it's as easy as surgically cutting out and replacing skin, but it's much more embodied than that, so much (lol) Red Tape to go through. Never as simple as copy paste, especially for the kind of leaders they sought to supplant. Nice job. Though I wonder if there is a fic out there that takes all that was played as comedy in your story into account, because then it wouldn't be a comedic thing but rather a true threat to their rule, then they (the sisters) would actually have to do something rather than this laid back approach.
2178355...
I would probably suggest putting in any potential international strife after the part where Celestia mentions settling at The Crystal Empire for post-vacation retirement.
Always happy to provide constructive criticism &/or additional inspiration
.
2178143 Still, those guys are too, for a lack of better words, soft and rational (self-critical?) for a revolutionary. As we learn from history, revolutionaries usually won't occupy themselves with the practical details about how to run the country until they seize the power themselves.
'Things will turn out alright because we're in principle right'. And sometimes they aren't completely wrong in that regard, because a successful, serious revolution usually removes the olden privileges and rights, clearing up space for societal modification. A polity change with sufficient popular support and a vision of complete paradigm shift can negate most of the technical barriers offered by the Royal Sisters above (e.g. eminent-domain/seize the hell out of the moon if they have a force that can put up a fight. Treaties can be renegotiated; 'Suitability for circumstances', this is what treaties are for, right? And the unicorn tribe did raise the celestial bodies themselves before them right? I don't think finding a group of unicorns to do that again is prohibitively difficult unless the narrative really works against the putschers). But I don't think, from the look of it, they have the vision, support, tenacity, or preparedness to carry out any of it. As villains go, they are laughably ineffectual... which probably suits the story's categorization as a comedy anyway.
And no, I'm not saying all these because I'm a die-hard small-r republican. (eyes go shifty)
I'm a little curious about the apparent Blueblood/Derpy feud that would come to the fore ...
2180373
It's been a while, but I think I'm going to actually address your points.
'A policy change with sufficient popular support'
There's the main thing. They don't have sufficient popular support yet. They were still working on it. Their long term goal was to demonize the Princesses, causing the populace to demand their stepping down. Celestia pulled the rug out from under them way early in their plans, and was about to make them out as the stallions who caused Equestria's political collapse.
'eminent domain'
At the moment, Equestria lacks space travel. As such, Luna's the only one who can reach and survive on the Moon's surface. If she ever decided to terraform it, colonize it, and then take it off into space, the ponies of Equestria could do exactly diddly to stop her.
'treaties renegotiated'
Given how Equestria's government was formed, that's a bit like saying in America, "The President's been impeached, so let's rewrite the Constitution." Real popular decision there.
'finding a group of unicorns to move the sun and moon'
Oh, you mean a group of magically talented unicorns in the modern age like, say, those attending 'Celestia's school for Gifted Unicorns'? The ones who, practically by definition, will be loyal to Celestia?
As for your last statement as to what they lack, 'Confrontation with Celestia' was planned as stage 34 in their plans. She hauled them in at stage 7.
2719630 Wow, that's really been a while. I didn't even remember I typed a rambling treatise on, um, pony politics. Glad that you addressed this seriously, and you raise some good points too, it's really appreciated!
To the end, how a story goes is all up to the author (unless of course, you're making a living off it), I was saying all that simply as a reaction because I think this kind of plot can still be pulled off with certain build-up e.g. so and so, and under a sufficiently skillful hand (Actually, I think all kinds of plot can be pulled off under a 'sufficiently skillful hand', but I digress). It's by no means doubting the logic and flow of this story, which are very nice in themselves.
(And a belated fav!)
2730590
I agree that such a plot - to overthrow the monarchs - could work if done well and, most importantly, kept absolutely secret from Celestia and Luna before it comes to pass. Unfortunately, this means the primary plotters either have to never sleep or have such zen control of themselves as to never dream.
After all, Celestia learned who the primary plotters were because Luna helped Red Tape deal with a nightmare about the entire thing going horribly wrong.
2730943 Huh, that got me thinking: Celestia's sun (presumably?) shines on all the lands in Equestria and (presumably) the creatures therein. Here we have the 'Princess of Dreams', but can she monitor the dreams of creatures that are not ponies? If not, we may have a security defect here (that is, of course, presuming that Our Highness has the capability to run a dream-based PRISM from her throne room without any prerequisite and perturbation; while it seems to be considered as fanon by some, I still found it very unnerving.)
2731133
Actually, my idea is that - when she's out raising the moon - Luna taps her dreamwalking magic, and is then drawn to nightmares to correct them. In this case, though, since Red Tape was having a nightmare where he'd been caught and was about to face justice from Celestia and Luna, Luna just stepped into her dream manifestation and told him she would show mercy if he told her all he knew of the conspiracy. While she CAN look in on any dream she wants, she has to specifically enter a dream to see its nature, and she's crafted her magic so that a nightmare will summon her.
Someone should make a sequel with Blueblood, Derpy and Pinkie Pie ruling the Council.
2754996
Blueblood doesn't stop complaining.
Derpy accidentally breaks the palace, which chain reacts to the whole city.
Pinkie plays the fiddle while Canterlot burns, because she's hosting her "Destruction of Capital City Party", also called her "Anarchy Party".
Vetinari Job Security at its finest - staying in power by making sure that all of the other options will fail miserably.
3638604
That was the basis of this fic.
3638628 Tropers represent!
3638683
Not the trope. Vetinari. I'm a big fan of Discworld, and I often base any Celestia I write off him as far as how she handles problems, not her alignment.
...actually, I once toyed with the idea of a Discworld fanfic involving Havelock getting a visit on Mother's Day from his mother
. Unfortunately, I know I wouldn't write him very well.
3638707 I guess I just really like tropes, but that tactic is a very practical way to stay in power.
wow, I love this, thank you for writing it.
SO MUCH YES. If you think about it, if even half of this applied, anypony who took over after the princesses would have such a hard time of it...
Haha that was a delightful read.
3753722 THE SUN. Nuff said
Not as funny as I'd hoped, but still pretty funny. I'd say one more fanfic of yours that i like, an I'll end up following you.
4519747
I'm sure you'll find one or two.
*grins* Nicely done.
4519747 It's been bugging me and I have to ask: are you really naked or is it just the profile picture?
Pls no pics5131279 I'm naked when I'm naked, and at other times I'm naked under my clothes. So Yes.
5131313
Intensification of yes. You sir, are magnificent.
Oh, beautiful! I love it when there's this whole "Oh, you want to rule? Well, here's a list of everything you need to figure out."
Actually reminds of an MLP comic called "When Villains Win". It begins with Chrysalis successfully conquering Canterlot... Only it turns out she intended to lose the exact way she lost in the show, leaving Canterlot and taking the massive amounts of love they harvested with them. Since she won she now has to rule Equestria, and when Celestia explains how big the country is, she immediately surrenders because she couldn't possibly run the whole thing.
... And things get crazier from there.
I believe Silver, Red, and First just pooped themselves. <3
So gloriously funny!!! Gotta love when it all falls apart before it even gets started. Way to go guys
!!!
Now I really want to see what would have happened if Luna and Celestia hadn't taken back their crowns. Equestria under the rule of Prince Blueblood, Commander Ditzy
, and Chancellor Pinkie
, the rise of the New Lunar Empire, and Celestia catching up on untold millennia of vacations and vegging out.
2176569 I- I found a typo, "...'surrenerding' to Discord..."
Excellent story BTW.
2755019 *drops in Gaige from Borderlands 2 into Pinkie's party*
ANARCHY FOREVER!!! SMASH THE SYSTEM!!!
its not politics its blackmail
7416822 Isn't that the same thing?
Glorious!
10/10!