There are many things which Princess Luna is still trying to catch up with in the modern world, and entertainment is high on that list. She appreciates some of the current musicians, enjoys a few books, and sees the potential in cinema. But when she doesn't enjoy being at a play, she's going to say something about it.
And when a Princess talks, a lot of ponies listen.
Read it here
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Tropes found in this story include:
- A God I Am Not: Much like Celestia, Luna does not enjoy the worship of the common pony, as evidenced by her disdain when she thinks of Sound Bite - editor of the Palace Bugle - trying to steal one of her things as a "holy relic".
- At the Opera Tonight: The story opens with the Princesses attending a theater to watch a performance. Much to Luna's annoyance.
- Classical Music Is Boring: A rare female example; Luna hates opera, regarding it as a colossal waste of time and a huge sham. It's established in the beginning of the story that she pioneered the "ideal way to be brought into attendance of an opera" (kicking, screaming and clinging to any handy obstruction to delay the inevitable) and also mentioned is her outrage when she managed to translate one twenty minute aria that the rest of the audience were lapping up as actually being a flamboyant and tediously long complaint about the annoyance of tepid bath water.
- Good Is Not Nice: Whilst attending the theater together in the story's opening paragraphs, Luna observes the extremely overweight and unfit nature of their server and privately surmises that he would have been lucky to last 12 seconds during the harshness of the Discordian Age. After she learns about what she has done to the theatrical agencies of Canterlot, whilst making up with Celestia, she admits that there are times she finds it outright annoying how soft and weak the modern Equestrian has become, even though she admits that it is still preferable that they don't have to live in a Death World.
- Reviews Are the Gospel: The other major problem that develops from Luna becoming a theater critic; thanks to a combination of the respect she is given as one of Equestria's god-queens in all but name, and the herd instinct of ponies, she finds herself unintentionally causing huge upsets to the theater, as her reviews literally make or break the acts she reviews. If she gives something a good review, ponies flock to it; if she gives something a bad review, they refuse to attend it, with personal opinions cast aside because they cannot bear contradict the opinion of one half of the Diarchy.
- Shout-Out: In her first batch of reviews, Luna covers Equestrian versions of The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and You Can't Take It With You. She also covers a "musical comedy about Sombra's conquest of the Crystal Empire", whose origins are harder to spot; some thought will reveal it as Equestria's analogue to the Show Within a Show (and Trope Namer for "Springtime for Hitler") from The Producers. At the story's end, Luna's adopting a position in which she becomes a judge who is free to denounce the ponies who come before her for their own idiocy is clearly based on Judge Judy.
- Springtime for Hitler: The Show Within a Show from The Producers which was the Trope Namer appears in Equestrianized format as a musical comedy about Sombra's conquest of the Crystal Empire. Whether it was an actual attempt at this trope itself is unknown, as it's brought up only in passing by a confounded Luna.
- Strawman News Media: This story presents the Palace Bugle, the equally irrational Pro-Diarchy counterpart to the Murdochs News Corps. Where Murdochs will never admit that the Diarchy could do anything right, Sound Bite could never imagine the Diarchy doing anything wrong.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Luna's difficulty with the typewriter is a justified example; not only is it completely new technology to her, having been invented during her abeyance, but it also requires a pony to adopt some distinctly non-intuitive bodily postures to use. The fact that it was made to fit a standardized range of sizes, and Luna is well outside that size range, doesn't help.
- Trauma Button: Implied; unlike Celestia, Luna does not like the comic play "The Cocoanuts" that they attend in the opening segment of the story. Her reasoning is presented as calling what's on-stage "chaos" and declaring "chaos wasn't funny". Given she was just thinking about the Discordian Era a few paragraphs before, the implication that what she saw on stage reminded her too much of Discord's reign for her to see the humor in it is quite obvious.
- Undisclosed Funds: Intrigued by Sound Bite's offer of becoming a theater critic, Luna makes one of her demands for acceptance be that he pay her a standard wage. She then asks what that wage would actually be. She then dryly asks him that he tell her what he'd pay literally any other pony for this kind of work, as opposed to needing to sell off the Bugle in order to pay for one paragraph from her.
