A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction written by Jordan179
, this chronicles the recovery of Princess Luna's sanity and adaptation to modern Equestria, as she tries to do good to make up for her past sins. Available here. Started in 2014, and as yet incomplete.
Contains examples of
- A God I Am Not: Luna discovers to her horror that the Night Pegasi — a race that she herself modified from normal Pegasi long ago to be her most loyal retainers — have come to worship her both as their Creator and as The Sacred Darkness. This makes her ashamed — not because she considers the Night Pegasi unworthy followers, but because she considers herself undeserving of such adulation, considering that she made a Face–Heel Turn and then abandoned them for her thousand years of exile. This is despite the fact that she is, in point of fact, a Physical Goddess.
- The Atoner: One of Princess Luna's main motivations. Not only did she rebel against her sister, but she did great damage to Celestia's plans to unify all Earth under Equestrian rule. She wants to make it up to her sister, and to all Equestria.
- Big Bad: The Night Shadows, aliens from a dying Cosmos, who corrupted and possessed Princess Luna in the first place, and who seem to be behind many of the threats now appearing at an unusual rate to beset Equestria.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: Luna can generate and receive signal returns from electromagnetic radar, gravitic radar, and sub-spatial signals. It is implied that her sister Celestia has at least the first and last ability as well.
- Blood Knight: Luna has definite tendencies of this sort: she's happy to learn of a dragon invasion, because it means that she can make herself useful to Equestria as the War Princess. It snaps her out of her initial depression after her return.
- Breath Weapon: Dragons have these. Two examples encountered:
- Fischfootur spits lava from his throat.
- Blue Blaze casts lightning from his mouth.
- Dark Secret: Luna is unhappy to discover that Prince Blueblood is probably her own direct descendant. She despises Blueblood, so she does not want this generally known.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Within a minute of defeating Fischfootur, Luna is addressing him as "dear foe" and complimenting him on his tactical fighting style. Within a few more minutes, Fischfootur voluntarily shows her his hoard (a very friendly gesture among his kind). Within an hour, they are kicking it back and chatting like old friends, trading gifts. He even gets romantic advice from Luna regarding his crush on an Earth Pony.
- Dream Walker: As in canon, Luna has this power. One important stage in her recovery comes when she starts again patrolling the dreams of the Equestrians.
- The Dung Ages: Luna is well aware that the Time of Thrones was this, compared to modern Equestria. She's happy to see the ponies become so healthy, peaceful and prosperous. She often misses many things about the past, though.
- Dying Town: Dounika used to be a thriving community of refugees from the Crystal Empire. Now the town of Dunnich, many of its shops are boarded up and it is slowly drying up, because it was bypassed by the railroad.
- Emotion Eater: Neither needs to do this, but both Celestia and Luna can draw strength from the love of others. This is interesting, considering that this is canonically a Changeling power, and the explanation in-story is that the Alicorns have the powers of every kind of Pony! What does this imply about the history of the Changelings?
- Evil Former Friend: It is revealed that Prince Crimson Quartz was this to Princess Luna over a thousand years ago. Crimson Quartz was the Pony who became King Sombra.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Crystal Empire, to the Byzantine Empire. Made obvious because Dunnich was founded by Crystal-Imperial refugees, and it's old name "Dounika" is very obviously Greek. Luna also uses the "-os" masculine ending in referring to King Sombra in her own thoughts, calling him "Sombros," which is probably the actual reign-name.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Luna, in modern Equestria. It makes her feel very alienated, sometimes.Luna: I am ... lost ... in this time.
- Good Bad Girl: Luna attempts this at her nadir of depression and loneliness. She fails completely: she has one affair with a Night Pegasus which never gets beyond some stolen kisses and having someone to hold when the bad dreams come. In the end she winds up thinking of him more as a friend: she sets him up with a Night Pegasus mare and becomes his loyal patroness. Luna later reflects that she enjoyed doing him a good turn much more than she would have enjoyed taking advantage of him.
- More directly, Luna suspects Lieutenant Summer Lightning to be nymphomaniac through Lone Madness, but finds her to be a brave and loyal officer in the Rangers, and decides that she wants to have her seconded to the Night Guard.
That gave her far greater joy than could have any conceivable debauchery. And besides, she had always found debauchery rather repulsive, especially as a way of life for royalty. - Good Old Ways: Luna comes off as this to most modern Equestrians. This is ironic, as in her day she was a social and technological revolutionary.
- Gunboat Diplomacy: Luna's basic approach when asked to be diplomatic to those attempting to intimidate Equestria. (And by the way, Celestia wrote the script, she just knows how good her sister is in this sort of role)."INTRUDING DRAGON!" she cried out in the Royal Canterlot Voice, full volume, as her chariot descended. "KNOW THAT WE ARE PRINCESS LUNA SELENE NOCTIS, PRINCESS OF THE MOON, AND HIGH LADY OF WAR OF THE REALM OF EQUESTRIA, WITHIN WHOSE BORDERS THOU TRESPASSETH! WE DEMANDETH THAT THOU IMMEDIATELY VACATEST OUR REALM, TAKING WITH THYSELF THY HOARD COMPLETE ..." that was a very important point, and phrasing it as part of a demand made it sound less conciliatory. "...ON PAIN OF OTHERWISE BEING CONSIDERED TO HAVE DECLARED PERSONAL WAR AGAINST OUR REALM, AND BEING TREATED BY US AS OUR ENEMY!"
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: The phrase "lying doggo" is explained as originating from the fact that Diamond Dogs dwell underground and use stealth to avoid more powerful beings.
- Interspecies Romance: Fischfootur (a young male Lava Dragon) and Meatpacker (an Earth Pony mare). Fischfootur is not sure if Meatpacker romantically reciprocates, but the two are definitely friends.
- Lady of War: Princess Luna, in fact and explicitly in one of her titles. Her main role in the past was to be the iron fist in Celestia's velvet glove, and she wants to be this again.
- The Lost Lenore: Dusk Skyshine, the husband of her earlier incarnation as Moondreamer. Dusk was Luna's One True Love. Now reincarnated as Twilight Sparkle, who knows nothing of all this.
- Loving a Shadow: What Luna may be feeling for Twilight Sparkle, loving her as the reincarnation of Dusk Skyshine, rather than the pony she truly is now. Luna's somewhat aware of this possibility, too.
- Lust: The obvious flaw of Ranger Lieutenant Summer Lightning. This is a common manifestation in Pegasi who go Lone Mad. Luna doesn't reciprocate the sexual attraction, but winds up liking Lt. Lightning anyway.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Most of Luna's loves, whether romantic or friendly, amount to this because she is immortal and normal Ponies are not. This bothers her a lot.
- A Mother to Her Men: Luna is like this toward the Ponies under her command, being very careful of their lives in battle. This is in part because she tends to find most of her friends from among her comrades.
- Multi-Melee Master: Luna is an expert at using a wide variety of close-in weapons, including some which are foreign or have gone out of style. She relies mostly on her magic for ranged fighting.
- Non-Idle Rich: Luna is happy to discover that at least some of the old aristocracy and gentry still serve Equestria loyally; they have not all become UpperClassTwits.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: Now that Equestria has attained an Industrial-Era level of technology, Princess Luna wants to push it farther and faster — even faster than does her sister Princess Celestia. Especially where aerospace and weapons technology is concerned.
- Pet the Dog: Her mostly-chaste relationship with the young Night Guardsman illustrates Luna's basically-benevolent nature, even when in the depths of depression and emotional need.
- Photographic Memory: A standard Alicorn ability in this fanon. Luna uses it, among other things, to aid her mapping and navigation skills when rescuing Trixie from the Lightning Dragon.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Fischfootur wants to be respected as a warrior, which is why he challenges Princess Luna to a duel. Luckily for him, Luna is a merciful victor.
- Recurring Dreams: Luna is tormented by terrifying dreams of the Night Shadows. What makes this worse is that she can't control the dreams, which is unusual for a Dream Walker such as herself. She sometimes wakes up screaming or actualy falls out of bed. She can't always remember them clearly, which frustrates her as she suspects they contain vital clues about the nature and capabilities of the Shadows.
- Shapeshifting: Celestia and Luna both have this power.
- Shout-Out:
- One of Luna's dreams is in part based on Forbidden Planet.
- Dunnich is named after H. P. Lovecraft's fictional town from "The Dunwich Horror".
- The strange fluffy pony was inspired by Ask Fluffle Puff. We know from An Extended Performance that there are more of them, and they are called the Daughters of Paradise.
- The subplot with Luna seducing but not really taking advantage of a young Night Guardspony, then setting him up with one of her hoofmaidens, is taken straight from Georg's tales of Pumpernickel and Laminia.
- Stronger with Age: Luna explicitly points out to the dragon Fischfootur that he will get stronger as he gets older, so that he should pick his fights carefully so that he lives to get older.`
- Super-Intelligence: Like all Alicorns, Luna is super-intelligent. She uses this for several purposes in-story, including integrating her Photographic Memory and X-Ray Vision to map out an underground cave complex.
- Too Important to Walk: Luna can fly or teleport, but she prefers to ride her Midnight Chariot. Justified in that she wants to arrive at a possible fight as fresh as possible. Unless, of course, Luna is simply being hedonistic (both Luna and her sister have been known to wallow in luxury just because they can).Not much point in riding to possible war in an uncomfortable chariot: that might reduce my battle-prowess, which would be bad for the Realm.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Dunnich, which is the home of the Paradise Cult. Luna manages to miss this despite having meta-pony senses and actually meeting one of the Daughters of Paradise. To give the Princess her due, she was kind of distracted by a dragon hunt at the time.
- Travel Cool: Luna's Midnight Chariot. Justified, in that Princess Luna is explicitly aware of the value of making the proper impression in any negotiation.The Midnight Chariot was very diplomatic. Back in the day, some pony lords had been so terrified by the mere appearance of the Midnight Chariot, which implied that its owner tortured puppies and ate foals for dessert, that they surrendered the moment she rode it into the scene. One can't get much more diplomatic than that, Luna reasoned, with some satisfaction.
- Upper-Class Twit: Luna is saddened to see how decayed has become much of Equestria's aristocracy. Prince Blueblood is her prime example.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: One of the old now-dead friends Luna misses is Prince Crimson Quartz of the Crystal Empire. His reign-name? Sombros. This is the pony who became King Sombra
- Winged Unicorn: Like all Alicorns (and Pegasi) Luna has wings. Unlike most winged Ponies, Luna fully understands the physics of her own powers and is hence capable of supersonic and even hypersonic flight.Supersonic flight was beyond the capability of most Pegasi. It took both raw power, and fine control over one's flightfield. One's wings were important only as paramagnetic radiators, to generate the thruster fields which stood in the place of engines; any attempt to flap would have resulted in tumbling out of control. One steered by warping one's flightfield. It helped that Luna had been Moondreamer, who had designed supersonic and hypersonic aircraft — though Moondreamer had never expected to in a future life be one.
- Warrior Princess: All the Princesses, as they are both meta-ponies and the Avatars of immensely more powerful Cosmic beings. Their duties are explicitly guarding their realm from invaders and maintaining its internal peace.
- X-Ray Vision: Luna can use her graviton generation powers to density-scan a mountain and map its cavern systems.
- Ye Olde Nuclear Silo: An ancient ICBM base provides access from the main cavern system to the lair of Blue Blaze.
