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FiM TNtMD - Page 78: Everything'll be Fine--Right?
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Follow me on twitter?
* * *
Yes. Everything's gonna be just fine.
I made the dive of despair that was the Fluttershy arc knowing full well it would be worth it, and so will this. All I ask is that you continue to do what you've managed to do all the way up to this page, and that is trust me.
See you on June 14th!
* * *
My Little Pony © Hasbro,
Friendship is Magic was created by Lauren Faust and assistants.
Follow me on twitter?
* * *
Yes. Everything's gonna be just fine.
I made the dive of despair that was the Fluttershy arc knowing full well it would be worth it, and so will this. All I ask is that you continue to do what you've managed to do all the way up to this page, and that is trust me.
See you on June 14th!
* * *
My Little Pony © Hasbro,
Friendship is Magic was created by Lauren Faust and assistants.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Comics
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 900 x 1200px
File Size 405.4 kB
Listed in Folders
This is a tremendously interesting story you have here. I found my thoughts preoccupied by it for hours. I even had trouble focusing on what I was doing. Now, me having trouble focusing is nothing new, but I reserve my preoccupations for exceptionally evocative works, like this one. You had me worried early on. Character-insertion fanfiction is subject to a number of nasty pitfalls, and you appeared to be headed for a number of them. Perfect or overpowered main character, played-out "different worlds" arc, ineffectual native characters, inflated significance of OCs, and more. I am truly glad I stuck with it though. Your very smooth and appealing art style and your well-paced storyline kept me hanging on plenty long enough for all my reservations to be quite thoroughly obliterated.
One of the reasons that I very much enjoy writing from a first person perspective is that a lot of filler and boring exposition comes from outlining the things that the characters know, but a great deal of the suspense and motivation, the excitement in a story comes from the things that a character doesn't know. Having a perspective that isn't omniscient puts the reader in the same place as the characters you're trying to get them to identify with. There are things they didn't see, facts they didn't learn, ideas they don't understand, languages they don't speak. The narrow window that a character looks at the world through is a big part of who they are, and the desire to learn the things they don't know is a very convincing motivation. Plus, your readers can't hold it against you that you're not telling them certain things, how can a character tell you what they themselves don't know? That desire to explore can become a central motivation for the characters, and more importantly, a motivation for your readers to keep reading. And in the end, all of that not knowing is what makes the dramatic reveals so... dramatic.
You've used this element to great effect, even with a third-person view where we know a great deal that the characters do not, but we're still missing just enough that things stay interesting. Instead of making light of the "different worlds" situation, it has become a very compelling driver of the plot. Everyone is missing critical information that they need in order to act in their own best interests, and the resulting complexity is beautiful. You may not have had to build this world, but I have great respect for your skill at character development. The economy-of-words that a comic demands often makes such deep character interactions and personal revelations very difficult to pull off. The show suffered greatly from that. The writers often spoke of how every episode storyboard ended up in the 25-30 minute range, and they had to chop it up and make many painful sacrifices to get it into the 22 minute slot they had. Yet you've really made some magic happen with these characters, operating under similar constraints.
I do hope you'll indulge me in waxing poetic about some of the assertions you've made regarding Canterlot royalty in the course of all this. I consider it a very weighty compliment that your work has prompted me to do so in any case. I've heard from some fans that I shouldn't refer to Celestia as a goddess. Well, that word specifically may be easy to... misinterpret my meaning. So... deity then. In any case, the assertion is common that she is just a monarch and a very powerful alicorn. Hogwash I say! She's immortal, a force of nature, practically worshiped by her subjects and she makes the bloody freaking SUN go up and down. She's half a pantheon just by herself. I think that fact explains a great many of her... idiosyncrasies, and I'd like to tell you why I think that since it seems to have become relevant all of a sudden.
Despite the generations of people that have sought it, immortality would suck. Life is painful, and life without end is pain without end. I think that's why Celestia seems so aloof and dispassionate towards the plight of others. She has no empathy because she has never existed the way that her contemporaries have. We've seen that alicorns can become such by ascending to the role, but the Equestria creation story makes it sound like the two royal sisters have always been such, and have indeed existed since the dawn of time, coming into being with the universe. Celestia is as different from the other ponies as Nahmat is. And yet Nahmat is forgiven for this, even given how spectacularly she got off on the wrong paw in this world. Celestia has no such benefit. She has always been in this world, and so it is assumed that she is a part of it and knows how to function within it and interact with its denizens. This is not the case, and the reason goes right back to immortality.
The elderly often remark about how time seems to pass so much faster as you age, and there's a reason for this perception. When you turn five, that year represents 20% of your life, a pretty significant fraction. A fraction that is reduced by half when you turn ten, and so on. Each time you gain a year, that year is less significant. If Celestia has been alive for say... 1200 years, and I've been alive for 23, then she would look at a year the way I look at a week. (And that's not just prose. I did run the numbers on that one and they came out almost perfectly; providence, I suppose. Turned out to be 6.9958 days.) It's the same reason that it would probably mean a lot if I gave $1,000 to you, but Bill Gates or Sir Richard Branson wouldn't bat an eye.
Time itself is a drop in the bucket to Princess Celestia. The very pace of existence accelerates every time she blinks an eye. Lifetime relationships become little passing flings. Entertainment becomes a dull blur, as she sees the same trends and ideas emerge, go out of style and then emerge again for a new generation who thinks they're brand new. The mortal ponies around her must seem to be like brief, brightly-colored glimmers of life, flashing into existence and burning out in an instant all around her. How could she possibly relate to something that she barely even perceives anymore? That's why she has such a good relationship with her sister despite their past... differences. Princess Luna is the only being in Equestria that can truly understand the way her sister exists and views the world. She is the only shoulder that Celestia can cry on that will not decay and crumble to dust before her eyes.
This is why she sought to apprentice Twilight to herself, and why she was so desperate that her heir learn about friendship. That concept has lost all meaning to Celestia in her utter isolation and ageless torment. She knows that a true leader has to understand those she rules, and that she herself is no longer capable of that. She, for once, overcame that fault I'll freely admit she has, the inability to realize her own limitations. She saw that she could no longer relate to her subjects, and sought out someone who could, sparing no expense and taking occasionally very reckless risks in order to prepare her for the job. The importance of the task set before Twilight in some ways justifies these risks. If she is to be the lynchpin for Celestia's plan to safeguard all of Equestria, then Celestia couldn't very well justify the risk of allowing an unfit heir to ascend in her pantheon because she was worried that her protégé might chip a hoof on the proving grounds.
Before you dismiss Princess Celestia as being detached and heartless, you had best consider what she does not know. Take a look through her ever-diminishing window into the world she is burdened with ruling, now but a tiny glimmer of light amidst a vast ocean of unfeeling eternity. She needs Twilight to know true friendship, because she has not known it herself in a hundred lifetimes.
One of the reasons that I very much enjoy writing from a first person perspective is that a lot of filler and boring exposition comes from outlining the things that the characters know, but a great deal of the suspense and motivation, the excitement in a story comes from the things that a character doesn't know. Having a perspective that isn't omniscient puts the reader in the same place as the characters you're trying to get them to identify with. There are things they didn't see, facts they didn't learn, ideas they don't understand, languages they don't speak. The narrow window that a character looks at the world through is a big part of who they are, and the desire to learn the things they don't know is a very convincing motivation. Plus, your readers can't hold it against you that you're not telling them certain things, how can a character tell you what they themselves don't know? That desire to explore can become a central motivation for the characters, and more importantly, a motivation for your readers to keep reading. And in the end, all of that not knowing is what makes the dramatic reveals so... dramatic.
You've used this element to great effect, even with a third-person view where we know a great deal that the characters do not, but we're still missing just enough that things stay interesting. Instead of making light of the "different worlds" situation, it has become a very compelling driver of the plot. Everyone is missing critical information that they need in order to act in their own best interests, and the resulting complexity is beautiful. You may not have had to build this world, but I have great respect for your skill at character development. The economy-of-words that a comic demands often makes such deep character interactions and personal revelations very difficult to pull off. The show suffered greatly from that. The writers often spoke of how every episode storyboard ended up in the 25-30 minute range, and they had to chop it up and make many painful sacrifices to get it into the 22 minute slot they had. Yet you've really made some magic happen with these characters, operating under similar constraints.
I do hope you'll indulge me in waxing poetic about some of the assertions you've made regarding Canterlot royalty in the course of all this. I consider it a very weighty compliment that your work has prompted me to do so in any case. I've heard from some fans that I shouldn't refer to Celestia as a goddess. Well, that word specifically may be easy to... misinterpret my meaning. So... deity then. In any case, the assertion is common that she is just a monarch and a very powerful alicorn. Hogwash I say! She's immortal, a force of nature, practically worshiped by her subjects and she makes the bloody freaking SUN go up and down. She's half a pantheon just by herself. I think that fact explains a great many of her... idiosyncrasies, and I'd like to tell you why I think that since it seems to have become relevant all of a sudden.
Despite the generations of people that have sought it, immortality would suck. Life is painful, and life without end is pain without end. I think that's why Celestia seems so aloof and dispassionate towards the plight of others. She has no empathy because she has never existed the way that her contemporaries have. We've seen that alicorns can become such by ascending to the role, but the Equestria creation story makes it sound like the two royal sisters have always been such, and have indeed existed since the dawn of time, coming into being with the universe. Celestia is as different from the other ponies as Nahmat is. And yet Nahmat is forgiven for this, even given how spectacularly she got off on the wrong paw in this world. Celestia has no such benefit. She has always been in this world, and so it is assumed that she is a part of it and knows how to function within it and interact with its denizens. This is not the case, and the reason goes right back to immortality.
The elderly often remark about how time seems to pass so much faster as you age, and there's a reason for this perception. When you turn five, that year represents 20% of your life, a pretty significant fraction. A fraction that is reduced by half when you turn ten, and so on. Each time you gain a year, that year is less significant. If Celestia has been alive for say... 1200 years, and I've been alive for 23, then she would look at a year the way I look at a week. (And that's not just prose. I did run the numbers on that one and they came out almost perfectly; providence, I suppose. Turned out to be 6.9958 days.) It's the same reason that it would probably mean a lot if I gave $1,000 to you, but Bill Gates or Sir Richard Branson wouldn't bat an eye.
Time itself is a drop in the bucket to Princess Celestia. The very pace of existence accelerates every time she blinks an eye. Lifetime relationships become little passing flings. Entertainment becomes a dull blur, as she sees the same trends and ideas emerge, go out of style and then emerge again for a new generation who thinks they're brand new. The mortal ponies around her must seem to be like brief, brightly-colored glimmers of life, flashing into existence and burning out in an instant all around her. How could she possibly relate to something that she barely even perceives anymore? That's why she has such a good relationship with her sister despite their past... differences. Princess Luna is the only being in Equestria that can truly understand the way her sister exists and views the world. She is the only shoulder that Celestia can cry on that will not decay and crumble to dust before her eyes.
This is why she sought to apprentice Twilight to herself, and why she was so desperate that her heir learn about friendship. That concept has lost all meaning to Celestia in her utter isolation and ageless torment. She knows that a true leader has to understand those she rules, and that she herself is no longer capable of that. She, for once, overcame that fault I'll freely admit she has, the inability to realize her own limitations. She saw that she could no longer relate to her subjects, and sought out someone who could, sparing no expense and taking occasionally very reckless risks in order to prepare her for the job. The importance of the task set before Twilight in some ways justifies these risks. If she is to be the lynchpin for Celestia's plan to safeguard all of Equestria, then Celestia couldn't very well justify the risk of allowing an unfit heir to ascend in her pantheon because she was worried that her protégé might chip a hoof on the proving grounds.
Before you dismiss Princess Celestia as being detached and heartless, you had best consider what she does not know. Take a look through her ever-diminishing window into the world she is burdened with ruling, now but a tiny glimmer of light amidst a vast ocean of unfeeling eternity. She needs Twilight to know true friendship, because she has not known it herself in a hundred lifetimes.
Wow, just wow, needless to say I understand the above statements and I've never contemplated the lack of empathy and world view that would occur from immortality or elongated age. Very great vocabulary usage and prose. I do not speak for the artist, but just seeing a response like the above moved me to respond in turn. Thank you for the information/perspective and have a great day.
You may well be right. Having never lived to be a thousand I can only speculate. I'll concede that the perception of time can differ widely from person to person, and that may indeed be how you perceive the world. I've found the idea that time accelerates as life moves on to be very prevalent, though. So I extrapolated based on that to construct my idea of what eternity is like. As to whether or not any of this is intentional on the part of the writers, well I suppose that is as much a spiritual matter as it is anything else. Just as in life, we can believe that it's all random and there's no conscious reason or meaning behind anything, but isn't it much more comforting, or in this case fun to believe everything happens for a reason? I fund it fun. Otherwise I never would've managed the effort needed to wax philosophical at such length about the underlying motivations of cartoon ponies.
Regardless, that was a very interesting read. Combined with where I jumped in on this comic (and look at the series' fan work) it adds an interesting twist to how this whole affair could be taken. And that, is what makes things fun to read/watch etc. So much being taken so differently, or at least with a deeper thought than the surface.
"Again, I pin all the issues with Celestia on very inconsistent writing of the character, the lack of a central story bible which the various episode writers should be intimately familiar with to avoid confusing lapses of consistency."
Yes! Thank you! Someone gets it! You, my friend, get a gold star.
Yes! Thank you! Someone gets it! You, my friend, get a gold star.
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