Sun and Hearth post-update blog: chapter 12 - The Castle of the Two Sisters · 4:57pm Apr 18th, 2017
Not only on time, but early! Here’s the post-update blog for Sun and Hearth chapter 12 -- The Castle of the Two Sisters. Spoilers below the cut as usual.
Ending credits:
Random trivia:
This fic is now officially the longest thing I've published on the site.
So, a few days after I finished this chapter, I got really excited and bothered all my prereaders because I’m a dork, and I realized that this chapter is, like, the textbook definition of Gothic literature. Gothic is a weird literary genre, being more about certain markers of tone, theme, and use of symbolism than the typical genre distinctions based on plot points or trappings. One of the major markers for it is setting as an overarching symbol of both the tone and themes of the story (“Gothic” refers to a school of architecture which helpfully produced plenty of creepy castles in Europe that made for good settings.) Other things I managed to hit on include the decay of civilization and return to nature -- usually characterized as violence and madness, intrusion of the supernatural, and family secrets. Not being a horror fan, my closest reading of Gothic literature was the Brontes (I’m especially a fan of Jane Eyre) and Luna here makes a fine combination of Bertha Rochester and Heathcliff.
I almost wish I’d written this as a stand alone story.
Celestia drew herself up. “Understanding ponies is hardly a frivolous pursuit. Do you forget the most powerful—” She looked over at the sound of hoofsteps on the other side of the hall.
Cookie stood in doorway that led in the direction of Celestia’s chambers. He looked between the sisters. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” His attention turned to Celestia. “I saw the chariot land, and I came to check on you.”
This is the closest Cookie ever came to directly saving Equestria.
World building:
So, what happened to the Everfree? A triple whammy. Discord threw things off, removing the EoH from the tree kept things from becoming stable again, and then somepony started messing with dark magic.
What happened to Luna is a bit more complicated. She was naturally insecure, thrown into Equestria at a disadvantage compared to Celestia (being younger and less experienced,) and she wasn’t naturally gifted at politics. Celestia and the founders formed something of a clique, with Luna at best being seen as the tag-along kid sister. Luna responded by trying to be super-serious and throwing the weight of her crown around, which combine with her lack of experience just made matters worse. Luna withdrew to her studies, so Celestia just got more praise and respect.
By the time Luna started looking at dark magic, with no intention to use it, she already had a simmering mix of jealousy, resentment, and arrogance that was somewhat reasonable. Unfortunately, the subjects of her studies turned it into a driving force. She created Nightmare Moon in dreams, originally as a secret defense against her sister or subjects trying to depose her, but having that power that close at hoof turned out to be too much temptation for a pony who kept a mental checklist of every slight, real and imagined.
My story of Nightmare Moon is the story of dozens of ponies making the wrong decision, saying the wrong thing, offering the wrong help (or the right help at the wrong time,) and revealing their hubris a piece at a time.
Questions to answer:
If you had siblings, how likely would you be to go insane and try to overthrow them? (I have three, and my answers are highly, not at all, and moderately.)
What’s the dorkiest thing you’ve ever been proud of?
Of my stepsiblings, I would say there are two options: either it would be insane to not overthrow them, or they would be excellent and I would never try it.
As for the second question... I've been proud of an awful lot of dorky things, so this question is a hard one. I spent some time looking at my blog to see if I could find anything especially good but no dice. Let's just go with the fact that I actually completed my pre-Season 5 MLP hiatus project back in 2014-2015.
Another vote for "I'd be insane not to overthrow her".
I know more about designing and building static iron farms in Minecraft than docm77 (one of the better known pioneers of that kind of farm), even if I don't know as much about dynamic designs as TangoTek. Mine are much simpler to build and more efficient than doc's. We're talking "scavenged entirely from the first village you find, before your first mining expedition, probably without breeding more villagers" simple.
I'd be cool with my brother ruling stuff. Overthrow would be highly unlikely without some stuff seriously changing between now and his national/global conquest.
This. My novel sized work about druid optimization in dungeons and dragons 3.5. So dorky. So beautiful.
Such is the downfall of many great beings and civilizations.
My sister made sure to instill in me a great fear and respect for her from the moment she realized that one day, I'd be bigger than her. To this day I still hesitate to go into her old bedroom. If anything, she could probably overthrow me just by asking, sane or not.
As for dorkiest pride, it definitely has to be making up more pony-based Magic cards than the rest of the fandom put together.
"Robespierre's last monument! He planned on having statues built to himself. All he leaves behind--is stale bread."
"The end is always being put to some use in France, citizen. The art of being a Frenchman is knowing what comes next."
"Have you any idea?"
"I am neither a Frenchman nor a politician. I'm merely a soldier."
"Hm. Well my friend, I must be off. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime--Oh by the way, I don't believe I got your name..."
You might enjoy this: there's some rather clever dialog, and the camerawork, though static, is very painterly (it's like a 1930's movie that was made in 1949). Also I think Ronald Coleman has an uncredited bit part:
I have one sister. She shares traits with this pony:
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She used to have even more. Her entire time at school was a textbook example of bullying. And by textbook example, I mean you could open a book about bullying on a random page and you'd probably find something that happened to her. She's shy, smart, beautiful, and I'm deeply grateful she's still alive.
Me, deep down, I'm more like this guy:
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/6/4/1170357__safe_screencap_animated_loop_flutter+brutter_spoiler-colon-s06e11_zephyr+breeze.gif
Well, without all the casanova-wannabe and extrovert airs he puts on. It's really strange how that worked out, isn't it?
As for the second question... Sad to say, but I've already been in a dark place before. I would cut off my own arm before I'd harm my sister.
My brothers go from sharing a brain to being completely bratty towards each other, so to overthrow them I think I'd just slip into the throne room while they're arguing over who stole who's shirt, yell out "Shotgun!" and sit down. No insanity necessary! Or, if that doesn't work, I'll just fall back on the old "I'm the oldest so I get the front seat" ploy and claim the throne that way. Because obviously there's a throne. There's no point ruling the world otherwise.
As to dorky things...? Uh...I legit don't know. Oh! I was bored in class once and so naturally I resorted to doing quizzes on sporcle and found one where I had to list the title of every Avatar: the Last Airbender episode from memory in order under the time limit, and I completed it on the first go. I shouted "Yes!" and everything. Luckily the prof just kind of raised an eyebrow and sassed me a bit: "glad you're so passionate about blah-de-blah (I really don't know what he was talking about) but please contain yourself in future."
Ha. Good times.
Launch a coup against my sister? Absolutely not. 1) She's far smarter than me, and would probably recognize it coming. (And parceled with that is the fact that she would also be a better leader because again, she's smarter than me.) 2) Most of the people I know who I could turn to for this endeavor are people she introduced me to. 3) I actually happen to quite like my sister.
Seriously though, this right here...
...is something I can absolutely relate to. Basically everyone I currently hang out with are people who my sister met in college and introduced me to, or is a direct extension of that social circle. I'd be downright pathetically lonely without her help, even if I'm not sure she intended it. I'd still be living with my parents because I would have never met my roommates who make my current living space affordable. I wouldn't have a driver's license because I'd have no people I desired the ability to go and see, and my parents were totally willing to get me to and from work as needed. I wouldn't have any of the hobbies I do today (including being here, on this site, talking about this) because she's always been the one who goes out and finds the new thing to do. I owe her more than I can even attempt to quantify.
Enough gushing, time for the other thing. Dorkiest thing I've ever been proud of. Well this week it'd be a tie between reaching rank 10 in Hearthstone (and am currently sitting at 8), and coming up with a Magic: The Gathering combo so obnoxious that my most powergamey friend told me I was a terrible person. (For those that play that would be Archmage Ascension and Spirit of the Labyrinth in a Zur the Enchanter commander deck. Get your Ascension charged up, then use Zur to pull the Spirit and you don't really care about only drawing one card per turn because it's a 100% chance to be the card you need and it doesn't stop Zur from grabbing more things.) I don't have any grand accomplishments on the nerd front, just a lot of little ones. Closest to it would be I one time I almost beat the #3 Malifaux player in the country. Lost by a single point.
I wouldn't need to, because as the eldest and the most politically deft of the three of us, I'd be the Princess from the start. Now, my sister probably would go mad and try to Todd me off. And yes, I mean Todd, because that is a Todd kind of thing to do
There is another story that I highly recommend you look into titled: "The World is Filled with Monsters" by Cold in Gardez https://www.fimfiction.net/story/355395/the-world-is-filled-with-monsters
Like your story here, we get to watch Luna's gradual decline into madness, which adds a certain eerie element to the narrative.
As to your questions, I have two half-brothers and one younger stepbrother, the older two I've seen around five or six times in my entire life, so it difficult to say, as to my younger brother, there are days where I would happily banish him into the moon (albeit not for an entire millennium) but other days where I think he would make a great leader as he is certainly the more outspoken of the two of us. As to dorky stuff...do you want the list to have annotations and footnotes?