Jan
17th
2021
Blog: Hey What If We Did Cloud Atlas, But With Ponies · 6:41am Jan 17th, 2021
It will be called Pony Atlas except it won't be because that's a stupid name. The six time periods will be Pre-Equestrian (Founders of Equestria), Pre-Classical (Pillars of Harmony), Classical (Diarchy), Industrial (A Hearth's Warming Tail), Late Celestian (G4 pre-S9E26), Post-Celestian (G4 S9E26). Except that there really needs to be a sense of decay towards the end or else the overarching themes don't really work hmm.
Nah maybe this is a dumb idea.
You can always make it an AU.
You could break it up into different stories and have each focus on a different timeline.
...Hm.
...No, I don't seem to be having any good ideas for you at the moment here, sorry.
(Though I'm also pretty unfamiliar with Cloud Atlas and in fact had to look it up for details just to understand this blog post.)
If you do decide to write something like this, though, good luck!
I see a way to make this work. Drop Late Celestian, have Post-Celestian be the shiny future full of mass-produced cashiers with identical hayburger cutie marks, then bring in Post-Twilit for the pidgin-speaking ponies scraping out a living on the Haywaiian Islands.
Alternatively, focus on nonpony species near the end as Twilight approaches her Cultural Victory. Have the Post-Celestian be the last days of Klugetown in a world that no longer tolerates ramshackle hives of scum and villainy.
"Cloudsdale Atlas", surely.
Hey I did a chapter like this in Songs of the Spheres. 'Cept, the history was the multiverse and such.
However, if we wished to do it the pony way, we could take the most common eras shown in fanfics and such--in a way, creating a conglomeration timeline. Just off the top of my head, we have...
Since we can go back really far, we can set up the "Era of Creation." Everyone loves a good creation myth.
Possibly then we have the "Ancient Era" which focuses on the ancient societies, such as whatever Daring Do is messing with and the Egyptian analog. Ill-defined eras are a chance to have creative fun.
Possibly combined with the above, the "Tribal Era" is the time of warring ponies and wendigos.
The "Discordian Era" of course. (One might wonder if there should be an "Era of the Two Sisters" but that's actually rather short. There COULD be one, though...)
The "Celestial Era" which lasts for about 1000 years.
The Era of the Show, "Era of the Four Princesses" you might call it.
The Era of the Show's Epilogue, the "Reign of Twilight" if you will.
The Space Age (everyone likes some good ol' ponies in space.)
The Apocalypse Age (everyone also likes some good Fallout Equestria) (Could easily swap positions with the former depending on how you want to portray the themes.)
This is notably more than Cloud Atlas manages (since it only manages six) but it provides plenty of opportunities. (My version in SotS used 8 separate stories) The question becomes then what kind of story you want to tell, since you can pick and choose eras based on that. (Who says you have to match the themes of Cloud Atlas?)
One thing you do have to decide is if you're going to model the story after the book or the movie. The movie continually jumped between all the stories, while the book told most of the stories to their completion, except it cut off before the final moments and jumped to the next story.
And after re-reading your lists it appears you focused a lot more on "small" history while I thought of "big" history. Wha-whoops. Oh well, hope this gives you some ideas or an excuse to be overly creative.
-GM, master of inspiration.
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Post-apoc Haywaïi actually works pretty well! And as for the second paragraph, I already had that idea in the back of my mind, and hopefully you will see the results in two weeks or so
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Stealing this if I ever do make it
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Wouldn't have it any other way. Kiss kiss.