- Location
- This miserable sphere of dirt and water
- Pronouns
- They/Them
'Twas a joke.
Illuminating Invitation (MLP: FiM AU)
- Thread starter Alivaril
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Thanks for the chapter!
I am actually starting to think Sunset is hopeless. She literally cannot be convinced even with what Celestia just did for her. She needs to experience loving someone to understand that Celestia loves her else she will remain beholden to her flawed thinking. That's where Twilight comes in.
It would probably also help if she found someone who loves her like Celestia does.
Never mind, she'd probably convince herself the warm feelings directed at her mean that her new lover is a secret Alicorn or Celestia in disguise or something.
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LunaMoth
Wings of Kynareth is my comfort song...
- Pronouns
- He/They
This sounds worse than it probably is, considering this is MLP, but...
My mind immediately conjured up the image of a mother blasting their foal with literal love beams or something.
My mind immediately conjured up the image of a mother blasting their foal with literal love beams or something.
- Location
- Canada
Sleep deprivation can make terrible ideas look rather tempting in the moment.
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
My mind immediately conjured up the image of a mother blasting their foal with literal love beams or something.
That may or may not have been another reason ponies switched to more stable magics rather than bridging gaps with emotion, yes.
Have you seen any serious chef in their own kitchen? Sunset attitude would be downright tame by their standards.
But that is the thing 'in their own kitchen', Sunset is like that everywhere all the time.
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I do want to briefly object to this stereotype. My family is friends with one such chef, but the only thing he gets "they're doing it wrong" huffy about is barbecue, and honestly, he's completely justified in that — one method he shared with us is both delicious and more importantly, easy, just time intensive. Skill at cooking and kindness are not mutually exclusive (although given the state of the restaurant industry in many places, there's a reason the stereotype is so well known).
That being said, this is Canterlot, and Sunset suspects that being chosen to work in Celestia's kitchens probably has its own share of vicious politics.
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Drkonecharlie
A person probably
No she has felt true love from the heart fire Candice made so she knows what that feels like the problem most likely comes from Celestia's magic being connected to the sun means Sunset's not getting a good read from her and there's no way for her to figure that out right now
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
Like, I get that a lot of the comedy comes from Sunset's misunderstanding field, but this made me tear up in sadness. Celestia isn't perfect. But once she realized her feelings weren't getting across she's wholeheartedly thrown her whole self into making sure her love is known, and Sunset is so untrusting of it that at this point I'm not certain that even Celestia taking a metaphorical bullet for Sunset (not that Celestia would even be able to now) would convince her.
Cadence. Therapy disguised as study sessions on love based magic (covering all the Greek words for love, not the crappy modern English version). ASAP.
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infinityDivided
Prince Of Doom
- Location
- USA
To be fair, it's not like Celestia knows she's unkillable, and Sunset has no intentions of telling her. If she sacrifices her life for Sunset in a manner that would have absolutely killed her if it weren't for Voice, then that might penetrate through Sunset's denial... assuming, anyway, that she doesn't rationalize it into something like "Celestia had somehow deduced Voice made her unkillable and knew she wasn't actually risking her life".
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- Location
- Cambridge MA
I wonder if she'll be able to push it beyond five dimensions, and how quickly it will drive an unprepared examiner insane.
I'm used to thinking of the term "high magic" as referring to conceptual magic, rather than emotional. Though I suspect Equestrian High Magic might just be a subset of conceptual magic that crimps off Harmony for power, leverage, stability, reliability, and ease, using emotion as a connection to Harmony, and perhaps using tinted Harmony as the concept?
I don't think this part was ever continued, as Celestia jumps next to "Emotion is the most powerful of all magics available to ponies"--I suppose the implication is that Sunset's necklace thing is not made to recharge, and will run down over time, but that will take centuries to make a dent with the amount of power Celestia's putting into it. That does seem sloppy, but Sunset's impending ascension does remove any concerns there.
(I suspect emotion is not the most powerful of all magics available to ponies (given the outsider stuff and Starswirl's time travel). Even if you interpret "emotion" as "summon bigger fish (i.e. Harmony)" I'm not sure it beats out "summon bigger fish [i.e. Outsider]" in power.)
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
I think that would depend on whether you mean powerful as in "amount of energy channeled/used" or powerful as in "scale of the resulting effect". Sunset pre-upgrade and the poor "so where did that Discord fella come from?" pony both had a mana bar large enough to cast the Planar Beacon spell, so it can't be that mana intensive compared to sealing Discord and Luna and whatever else the Elements have done, along with Crystal Heart stuff or even just Celestia's Love-powered amulet charging.
Also, keep in mind that these Outsiders can be effectively banished and have to actively fight against such things. They may be Discord-esque beings in their home planes where reality is their play thing, but their IRL avatars are semi-subject to the rules of the plane they are occupying without sufficient anchoring(which would then be their weak point).
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- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Clearly, her so-called Special Somepony was really a magical construct created by Celestia to keep Sunset under control! Finally, Sunset had an explanation for all those little oddities that she had been willing to overlook initially, but no longer!
(They're actually a changeling who was wondering where it all went wrong, and whether Queen Chrysalis previously offended more goddesses than just the one; why aren't changelings ever allowed happiness?)
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NHO
Dumb is a state of existence
- Location
- ᓚᘏᗢ
"Get the fuck to sleep" love-love beamThat may or may not have been another reason ponies switched to more stable magics rather than bridging gaps with emotion, yes.
- Location
- France
But what if you don't interpret it as "summon bigger fish"? For every magical effect done directly by ponies, emotions seems to act like a magic enhencer and not like a branch of magic in of itself like say, enchantments or laser beams. As such, any spell with a claim as most powerful magic isn't the most powerful magic unless improved by emotions. And it's not like there's anything else that can universally improve all magic at virtually no cost.
- Location
- Poland
Y'all haven't grown up in a neglectful household have you? Because I have and I think Sunset is just like me fr fr.
Once you internalize that your parents don't love you and have never loved you any sort of gift or gesture of affection comes of as suspicious rather than genuine. Sunset fits the personality of an individual who was emotionally neglected to a T.
Thief of Words
Trans lesbian librarian
- Location
- Best book girl
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Doesn't even require falling that far down the rabbit hole. That kind of wariness also comes from realizing that what you were told was unconditional love in fact does have conditionals upon it, or that the other party was keeping score at some point in time.
Higher dimensions are fairly easy to think about if you abandon common intuition and threat multidimensional objects as a collection of symbols together with some connectors and set of rules guarding allowed connections. Frankly speaking, some 2D tasks are easier to solve this way. The amount of paper spent, of course, is another matter.
Blooper Compilation I
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Special thanks to @saganatsu, @DB_Explorer, @fictionfan, @Adephagia, @Wordsmith, @Taut_Templar, Jamie Wahls, @Elfalpha, @BunnyLord, @Drcatspaw, @tinkerware, @Lonelywolf999, D'awwctor, @magicdownunder, @Mordred, @Nuew, @Greydrone, and my 16 other patrons not mentioned here. An extremely enthusiastic "Thank you" to @Torgamous for her patronage as well. Also, if you're not on here, you fit the tier, and you want to be added, please tell me.
AN: Some of these were originally single posts in the thread, but the last few at the end are new.
Chapter 15 Bloopers: Not Safe At Work
"Honestly, my skill with ropes is much more basic in comparison," Silver admitted. "It works, but that's just understanding body mechanics, force propagation, tension, and material tolerances. Rope is another way I can apply my Special Talent, but it's not one of the reasons wire is my Talent, you know? It's just something I'm good at rather than what I truly love."
At that, it seemed like the guard who had whispered earlier was now intent on being included in the ongoing conversation rather than silently eavesdropping as normal.
"I'm sure that's not how you felt about the mare you brought home during the Celebration, Miss Silvertongue!" called the far guard, her words slightly muffled by virtue of needing to take the long way around Celestia's privacy bubble.
Silver Needle twitched, and she colored with understandable rage at having her lecture interrupted by inane commentary. What did some random mare have to do with this? Silver soon glared over my shoulder, apparently not caring that the far side of the room was blurred so much as to be unrecognizable.
"Celestia help me, I will slice your mattress to shreds, Garden!"
"What, and make me sleep on the floor?" came the answering call from 'Garden.' "I was under the impression that would be a bit extreme even for you."
Silver produced a screech of rage akin to the whistling of winds through a small space. Behind her, the guard she'd summoned as her replacement only halfway managed to cover his snickering. I couldn't help but feel a little irked by the presence of amusement rather than disapproval. So it was fine when other ponies reacted with anger upon provocation, but not when I did it?
I knew why, of course. As Celestia's student, it was understood that I would be held to a higher standard, unfair or not. At least I was able to see that Silver wasn't one of those ponies who would disguise their displeasure behind a forgiving act they didn't actually feel.
Although, now that I was thinking about it, there might be additional reasons that Silver's rage was better received than my own. Her choice of threats, for example: Silver threatened to destroy Garden's property, but did not threaten Garden or any objects that she was likely to be emotionally attached to. Additionally, a mattress would be expensive to replace and therefore something that Silver wasn't truly willing to destroy, possibly making it clear that the displeasure underlying her threat should be noted but not taken literally.
Corporal Silver Needle finally huffed and turned her attention back to me rather than trying to engage further.
"Please ignore my horrible pixie of a roommate," Silver grumbled. "She doesn't understand that there is a time and a place for her brand of humor, and it isn't here."
Garden wisely remained silent.
Chapter 16 Bloopers: Foreshadowing
"Truthfully, I had already intended to turn at least the first few days into lessons," Celestia claimed. "Your presence will make matters significantly easier."
Celestia paused and lit her horn to resummon a world-blurring privacy bubble.
"As will cuddling," she said with a completely straight face.
Cadance choked and slammed her mug of apple cider down hard enough to rattle the table. Fortunately, the dishes had long since been reinforced to survive possible alicorn mishaps.
Which was to say, this set was reinforced. Cadance broke or warped a good number of dishes and silverware in her first days at the castle.
"Auntie, please don't turn physical displays of affection into a joke," Cadance pleaded once she'd recovered.
"I am being honest," Celestia blatantly lied.
Chapter 18 Bloopers
"You love me like a little sister?" Twilight questioned.
Cadance didn't even have to think about it before affectionately nuzzling Twilight.
"Of course!"
Twilight was not deterred.
"How would you know since you're an only child?" Twilight asked reasonably.
I would have expected that one to at least slow Cadance down. Instead, her eyes narrowed.
"If your brother doesn't intend to turn me into your sister-in-law even after all that kissing, we will have words. Very loud, shouty, unhappy ones."
Alternate Timeline Bloopers: Totally Accidental Contrast
Having two royal tutors was proving to be much more exhausting than I had anticipated. Dream-walking still required expenditures of magic, yet I never knew whether I would need that magic during the day; gaps in Celestia's schedule remained as unpredictable as always. I wouldn't complain, of course, especially since Nightmare Moon actually cared rather than just wearing a mask of affection. Still, it was proving difficult.
Not that Celestia ever noticed my struggling — or at least, not until today.
"You have been arriving to lessons more and more exhausted," she observed. "I do not say this to judge, but out of worry. What troubles you? Are you having a recurring nightmare?"
I froze. Technically...
"Yes, I have been seeing the same Nightmare fairly often," I 'admitted' with a completely straight face.
Celestia didn't know how or where Sunset had learned about the prophecy warning of Nightmare Moon's return, but it was obvious that Sunset had indeed found it. Ongoing practice with combat spells, perpetual stress and exhaustion, an increasing inability to look at Celestia without worry — all reasons that Celestia had wished for the prophecy to be forgotten. It did no good for ponies to agonize over that which could not be changed, and Celestia would prefer that their last few years together for centuries were not filled with fear and pointless struggling against crushing inevitability.
Sunset Shimmer
I hadn't believed it given the prior army-breaking, but I was starting to see what Nightmare meant about her sister being too much of a pacifist to keep Equestria safe. For goodness sake, Celestia was growing even unhappier as I continued to practice combat magics rather than approving like she should be! I wasn't even using lethal spells anymore!
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- Location
- Argentina
Harmony can totally beat Outsiders cause is what the entire universe runs on. It is basically the Pony Universe Antivirals.
- Location
- Elsewhere
"Aww, but all the other ponies at school hate their sisters. I hoped I was your friend."
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Reminds me that french comedy movie about two prehistoric tribes warring over shampoo in which two of the characters end up discovering they are related."Aww, but all the other ponies at school hate their sisters. I hoped I was your friend."
"So that's why we hate each other! We were brother and sister all along!"