Webcomic / Star Mares

It's not about these ponies.

Star Mares is a Fusion Fic webcomic that overlays the milieu of Star Wars on the distant future of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

In the future, Equestria has become a galaxy-spanning stellar empire which has recently fallen into tyranny after the fall of the Alicorn Princesses in an unspecified catastrophe. A young trueborn alicorn, Princess Lace Organza, leads a rebellion against the Empire hoping to restore the old order, aided by a pegasus farm pony named Skywalker, the earth pony smuggler Can Soda, his griffon partner Growlbeakka, two poids named S-PK3 and 4N-6L, and the last known surviving Princess of Equestria, Twilight Sparkle. Opposing them are the forces of the Empress Dark Side and her chief enforcer, the evil Dark Feather.

However, the comic actually follows the misadventures of a motley assortment of background ponies who observe, and occasionally enable, canon events while desperately trying to stay out of trouble. Interactions with the main storyline are minimal at most, with the characters retreating into the background of the panels whenever a canon character appears.

Now expanding into other eras with a prequel series, The Pone Wars

---

This comic contains examples of:

• Adaptational Early Appearance: Cookiecutter and Spring Clean are both based on existing Star Wars characters, but their storylines are somewhat displaced in time (especially Spring Clean/Crix Madine, who defects well before the start of the Dark Trooper project).
• Air-Vent Passageway: Theoretically justified in that the scale of the ships is unchanged despite the occupants being generally smaller (they're designed to accommodate the larger ponies and pegasi), but vents are still described as dirty and cramped when the characters have to hide in them.
• Appropriate Animal Attire: Justified in that for the most part, the characters are either military personnel or are impersonating military personnel, so uniforms are appropriate. When not in uniform, they don't bother with clothes.
  • Unless they're Rarity.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Cited by name in the title of this page. Despite living in a universe where magic is a part of everyday life, where the effects of vacuum exposure don't affect ponies whose identities need to be clearly visible to the reader, and where there is sound in space, Moontear doesn't believe in the Elements of Harmony.
  • She also dismisses Ghost!Applejack as a concussion-induced hallucination.
• Arc Words: "A certain point of view." While in the source material this is a trite and unconvincing explanation for Obi-wan's pants-on-fire attitude toward the truth, in the comic it's quite pertinent, since the (mostly) familiar story is being told from another point of view.
• Art Evolution: Surprisingly little, due to the fact that the comic is made from a panel of body parts traced from screenshots, which are assembled into libraries of pre-built poses to be reused as needed. Nevertheless, there have been a few updates: the eye reflections used to be narrower, the shape of the unicorn horns has changed, the ear style has been replaced more than once, and between the introduction of two major characters, the default body shape also changed.
  • The frame style of The Pone Wars is completely different from the original series, the backgrounds are a lot more detailed, and a lot of minor changes to the character models have been made as a result of the artist switching vector graphics programs.
• Art Shift: Any time Rarity goes into exposition mode, the style becomes either simpler or more detailed.
  • Flashbacks and visions are given a more artistic appearance than the usual clean-lined vectors.
  • Particularly significant events get better art, although this is usually do to the artist actually thinking of them in terms of art pieces rather than the run-of-the-mill panels, which are usually put together like paper doll dioramas.
• Artistic License – Biology: The explanation for why Dark Feather doesn't realize that she has two living offspring: Skywishes and Flurry Heart each carried one of the twins, and Skywishes thought that hers was terminated when she fought Twilight Sparkle on Mustafarrier, when in actuality Twilight teleported the baby into the nearest convenient receptacle, namely herself.
• As You Know: Half averted, in that exposition is almost always delivered to somepony who doesn't know it, but is usually phrased in such a way as to make it obvious that it's for the benefit of the audience. Particularly noticeable when introducing new characters whose traits are known to one another but not the audience.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: While most pegasi space fighters can survive exposure to space, they still need to breathe, and have masks over their muzzles; other ponies require full space suits. Rainbow Dash doesn't need any of that, though.
  "I've taken everything... the galaxy's thrown at me for... over a thousand years. Lack of air? That's nothing."
• Battle Couple: Rex and Ginger Snap.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite being chained up in the targeting section of the Nightmare Moon for decades with a distinctly minimal beauty regimen, Rarity's appearance doesn't suffer much more than a few split ends.
  • Other ponies don't seem to have the same advantages: Moontear, in particular, is subject to both bedhead and crash-landing-induced lacerations.
• Beneath Notice: Nopony takes any notice of Gracenote when she's disguised as a maintenance worker. This broadly applies to unicorns in general (since maintenance is the only job they're allowed to do in the Imperial military), or for that matter, ponies who tape toilet paper rolls to their foreheads and hang a sign saying 'unicorn' around their necks.
• BFG: Maple Leaf's party cannon is a refitted concussion rifle.
• Breaking the Fellowship: In volume 2, paralleling the movie, the Five Mare Band splits up, with Wind Whistler going off on her own (later to be reunited with Moontear), Cookiecutter and Spring Clean being sent off on a secret mission together, and Maple Leaf and Gracenote being temporarily Put on a Bus.
• Broad Strokes: The comic mostly veers away from main plot events in any case, but when they do occur they are usually subject to abridgement and time dilation. By Word of God, the 'prequel era' timeline is also completely different than the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
• Broken Faceplate: Moontear's polarized goggles conveniently get blown off her face when her eyes need to be visible for a reaction shot.
• Call-Forward: Moontear uses Yoda's line "Do, or do not: there is no try" to inspire Wind Whistler to perform a hyperboom, allowing the Millennium Phoenix to escape. The Pone Wars issue #2 reveals that this is actually the motto of House Moon, and is therefore a line that Moontear would have heard frequently (in a much more discouraging context) throughout her life.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Becoming a Nightmare turns a pony into one of these, complete with thematic name change.
  • Harvest Moon initially looks like one of these, but the only evidence seen for it comes from Moon Moth, who as an extremely rebellious teenager is not the most reliable source of information on her mother.
  • The Nightsister changelings are mostly of the Punch-Clock Villain sort, but both Maxilla and Queen Vespa take the job a bit more seriously.
• Chekhov's Gun: Bronco Cowrustler's yacht, first referred to in issue 2.2 and finally making a triumphant appearance two issues later.
• Chekhov's Skill: Cookiecutter bellyaching about the obligatory 'moving rocks' portion of the training montage. Guess how she defeats the Huntress...
• Clothing Damage: Usually in the form of its non-fanservice subtropes (unless you're into that kind of thing), the most common form of battle damage to characters wearing armor or flight suits is to the area right over the pony's cutie mark.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Maxilla, sneaking into Doughnut Dex's diner while still under the effect of formaldehyde and unable to transform properly.
• The Corruption: The Nightmare Force, which waits patiently for a powerful pony to reach a moment of weakness and then offers the power to make the problem go away.
• Costume-Test Montage: Rarity takes advantage of being able to change her clothes just by thinking about it to try on several of Padme's more elaborate outfits from the film in rapid succession.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Equestrian Empire is about as dark as the Galactic Empire, but it's hard to take magical pastel ponies that seriously, especially when they're getting into comic hijinks.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Maple Leaf is a shrinking violet who seems to have no practical survival skills... until she pulls out the party cannon.
  • As the entire officer corps of the Nightmare Moon learned after trying her pancakes, you underestimate Maple Leaf at your peril.
• Cryptic Background Reference: The relationship between Moon Moth and Sirocco Song is set up with a vague mention of Sirocco 'covering for' some indiscretion of Moon Moth's that was apparently so heinous that Sirocco got banished from Cloudsdale as a result.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Spring Clean correctly predicted that Applejack and Rarity would come back as ghosts. To be fair, Ghost!Twilight had just talked to them, so it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.
• Damsel out of Distress: Used by the Rebels to convince Moontear to listen to them by showing that they can escape from their cells any time they like.
• The Dark Side: The Nightmare Force. More actively malevolent than the Star Wars equivalent, its ultimate goal is unknown, but its modus operandi is to corrupt Equestria's greatest heroes. It plays the long game, and the immortality of the Element Bearers actually works to its favor as a result: it only has to win once, while they have to keep winning.
• Deadpan Snarker: Every character gets moments of this, usually when called on to deliver a punchline.
  • Twilight Sparkle gets a lot of these moments, especially in the omake.
  Twilight Sparkle: A parsec is a unit of distance, not time. I expect you were hoping I didn't know that.
• Didn't Think This Through: Maple Leaf discovers after the fact that Imperial garbage mashers don't open from the inside.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: The events of The Phantom Menace are recounted as disjointed flashbacks when Gracenote touches the Triptych, in order to convey the important parts of the story without having to tell the whole thing.
• Elsewhere Fic: Not only are the events of the comic several centuries removed from the show's time, but the few surviving characters are relegated to secondary roles in the Star Wars films' plot, AND the comic's action mostly runs parallel to the film storyline, with the POV characters enabling critical elements of the films largely accidentally.
• Engineered Public Confession: Cookie Cutter and Spring Clean pull this off on the Huntress with a holographic relay, revealing to the Flutterponies that she's been siphoning off their excess energy to power a giant brainwashing ray.
• Everyone Can See It: While they may not necessarily be romantically interested in each other (it's up to the reader), Wind Whistler and Moontear are clearly more than just rivals, as even ponies who've only met one of them can tell right away. Moontear, of course, denies that they're even friends, and Wind Whistler finds a logical explanation for why her behavior suddenly becomes more irrational when Moontear is around.
  Bronco Cowrustler: I'm wasting my time trying to flirt with you. You've got too much of that foemance thing going on.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Although in Applejack's and Dark Feather's cases, they had a little help. Not Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie, though - they had a ready-made Nightmarish look.
• Face–Heel Turn: To be expected in a Star Wars story: in this case, half the Mane Six, with the stars on Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark changing color as they fall (and back again when they're redeemed.
  • One of the themes of the comic is the danger in relying on heroes, as long enough exposure to the stresses of heroism will inevitably send them over the edge.
• Faceless Goons: The Imperial stormhoofers. Possibly literally, as the helmets don't seem ideally suited to equine faces. (Incidentally, despite the comic still containing a joke about someone being too short to be one, the stormhoofers are actually visibly shorter than most of the major characters).
• Fake Loud: The Royal Canterlot Voice takes the place of Yoda's backward grammar, with the expected effect on Skywalker.
• Fantastic Racism: The Imperial military blatantly favors earth ponies over pegasi, and doesn't admit unicorns at all except as support staff. Considering the source material, non-ponies would be third-class citizens at best.
• Flashback Effects: The visions that retell bits of the Phantom Menace storyline have psychedelic backgrounds and frame edges.
  • Half of the interquel special The Admiral is told in flashback, using a 'silent movie' look (since the POV character doesn't speak).
• Flat "What": Moontear's reaction to Maple Leaf's 'disguise' which consisted of a technician's uniform, a toilet paper roll taped to her forehead, and a sign around her neck saying "unicorn".
• Frame Break: After spending the entire comic telling everypony not to break the fourth wall, Maple Leaf uses her party cannon to bust through the frame to get out of a dead end and into the Empresss tower.
• Fusion Fic: "Star Wars meets ponies." Or "ponies meet Star Wars," depending on which you consider the primary canon.
• Gender Flip: Many (but not all) of the canon Star Wars characters who were originally male are now female, and most of the comic characters based on expanded universe sources are mares.
• Genre Savvy: All six of the POV characters consciously behave as though they are characters in a story, but what kind of story varies by personal preference (Moontear, for instance, acts as though she's a tragic heroine in a bad fanfic, while Cookiecutter behaves like a videogame protagonist).
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: In deliberate contrast to Star Wars, the moral stance of the two sides of the civil war is not clear-cut - for starters, the Empire is the democracy and the Rebellion is the one trying to impose an autocratic government. Furthermore, the leader of the Rebellion is one of the most morally bankrupt characters in the whole comic, while the leader of the Empire only became a Nightmare because she went crazy trying to make everypony happy.
• Haunted Fetter: The Element Seeds. While not actually bound to the Seeds, the ghosts of Element Bearers normally can't be seen except by somepony who has one.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: For the most part, the ponies' cutie mark talents have little obvious heroic value, but display surprising versatility in a pinch.
  • Gracenote breaking into an impromptu musical number when their cover is about to be blown distracts the Imperials long enough to get away.
  • Maple Leaf's cutie mark could refer either to her skill at making pancakes or her tendency to quiver like a leaf at the slightest provocation. Her pancakes incapacitated most of the Nightmare Moon's officer corps, and her shivers are actually a sixth sense warning her when somepony is going to put her in imminent danger.
  • Wind Whistler claims her ability is not very useful, but combined with her knowledge of computer language, she can communicate easily with poids and reprogram machines by whistling at them.
• Heel–Face Turn: Nearly always combined with Death Equals Redemption - as the Element Bearers are immortal, and the Nightmare Force only possesses their bodies and subsumes their minds, destroying the body automatically frees the trapped spirit (which can then manifest as a helpful ghost, linked to the physical realm through their equivalent Seed).
• Homosexual Reproduction: Skywalker and Lace are the daughters of Dark Feather and Flurry Heart, which is not presented as being anything abnormal in the high-tech, high-magic setting. Unlike the movie, they are not technically twins, both parents having carried one of them. This is due to the author's personal disbelief that a sentient magical horse would be unaware that she was carrying twins, as the plot still requires that Dark Feather not be aware that she has two surviving foals.
• I'm Taking Him Home With Me!: Fluttershy didn't mean to kidnap Jabba the Mutt's son, but just look at that widdle face.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: All of Jade's disguises have a bit of red in them (presumably a personal preference), regardless of her target's actual colors.
  • The Nightsisters have this problem as well, particularly with eyes.
• Improbably Female Cast: It's right there in the title, although My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has this trope in spades to begin with. Stallions do appear, but are implied to be subject to a glass ceiling in the military (Admirals Ostler and Pie Tin being the exception rather than the rule). The given reason for this is that the author just doesn't like drawing stallions.
• Informed Attribute: Spring Clean's kleptomania is often referred to by other characters, but she's only actually seen stealing things twice (though admittedly, one of those things was Dark Feather's shuttle).
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Has appeared as an alternate campaign setting in guest strips on Friendship is Dragons, with the regular players taking on the characters they most resemble (although not necessarily most obviously: for instance, Twilight Sparkle's player controls Cookiecutter, and Applejack's plays Wind Whistler).
• Invincibility Power-Up: The Apple of Honesty heals Moontear's wounds, boosts her already prodigious speed, and also makes her even more stubborn than she already was.
  • It also let her shrug off Dark Feather's attempt to disintegrate her, although her flight suit was not similarly protected.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Unicorns are absolutely essential to the continued functioning of the Empire, as all Equestrian technology is ultimately powered by unicorn magic. However, largely due to the Secessionist faction being led by and consisting mostly of unicorns, they are banned from the Imperial military except as support staff and are generally given the dirtiest jobs, on the grounds that they don't actually have to touch anything icky so it's all right. Pegasi are similarly stigmatized, but since they control the most lucrative trade routes, they are not affected nearly as badly.
• Lack of Empathy: Cookiecutter has none for the Imperial officers she knocks out to steal their keycards, even when the poor ponies are obviously no threat to anyone.
• Large Ham: When informed that unabashed glee is not an appropriate response to being tackled to the floor by one's rival, Wind Whistler tries melodrama instead.
  Wind Whistler: Ahem: "Unhoof me, Imperial tyrant, and a thousand-year curse upon your wicked empress." Is that better?
• Lovely Angels: The cast splits into two-pony teams starting in volume 2: Wind Whistler and Moontear, Cookiecutter and Spring Clean, and Gracenote and Maple Leaf. Bonus points for a cameo appearance from the actual Lovely Angels.
• Lower-Deck Episode: The second interquel special focuses on Redshift and her efforts to serve the Empire faithfully despite the universe itself being against her.
  • In a manner of speaking, the entire comic is a lower deck episode.
• Magic Versus Science: Completely averted - as in the parent show, magic is a scientific discipline. Even mundane technology relies on magic as a power source, and unlike many other series that mix magic and technology (such as Star Wars itself) even poids can use magic if they've been programmed to (the most visible example being medical poids, which are designed to resemble unicorns).
• Magitek: All Equestria's high technology is based on magical principles, adapted so that non-unicorns can use it.
• Medium Awareness: Most of the ponies (except Wind Whistler) exhibit at least a token level of medium awareness, despite Maple Leaf's efforts to make them stop.
• MegaCorp: The Ten Houses of Cloudsdale are family-run corporations with galaxy-wide monopolies on essential products (such as starships, weapons, and rain). Because they are so vital to the galactic economy, they consider themselves above Equestrian law.
• Memetic Badflank: Fettlock's in-universe popularity mimics his Star Wars counterpart's, but even his fans are hard-pressed to come up with a reason for it.
  He's so cool.
• Missed Him by That Much: This tends to be the way the background ponies interact with the mane plot.
  • The three initial ponies end up in the escape pod bay just as 4N-6L and S-PK3 are about to launch a pod, conveniently distracting the stormhoofer that might otherwise have stopped them.
  • Gracenote almost runs into the mane cast multiple times while wandering lost around the Nightmare Moon.
• Mook–Face Turn: Spring Clean was an otherwise unremarkable Imperial cadet who changed sides just because she happened to like the ponies she'd found herself involved with.
• Mythology Gag: Apart from the numerous references to various Star Wars stories and G4 My Little Pony, there are numerous ties with G1 and G3 as well.
  • Of course, the name 'Nightmare Moon' instead of the 'Death Star'.
  • Wind Whistler is a G1 pony, with most of her original personality unchanged. As a semi-retcon, 'Wind Whistler' is a traditional name in her family, after Rainbow Dash's mother Windy Whistles.
  • Despite being its G4 color and having a taste for shiny things, the Smooze is basically a throwback to the original My Little Pony movie (and the unicorn technicians feeding it are directly based on Reeka and Draggle).
  • The Flutterponies have their G1 names and cutie marks, but are modeled on the G3 Breezies.
  • Bronco Cowrustler gives Wind Whistler the codename Lady Luck, after Lando's favorite yacht.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Dark Feather, Dark Side, General Jackboot, the Huntress.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Moontear can conveniently slice Fettlock's flight computer, having apparently learned the skill during the time skip to keep up with Wind Whistler.
  • Edelweiss's weaponized party pony tricks generally come out of nowhere. Justified, in that all party ponies have access to Hammerspace.
• No Animals Were Harmed: The Nightmare Moon doesn't destroy planets, just covers them in Smooze (which consumes shiny things but leaves living beings alive, albeit either in suspended animation or with an extreme case of the grumps).
  • Subverted: Except when the shiny things ARE living beings, such as when the otherwise-less-harmful Nightmare Moon is fired at a homeworld of crystal ponies. This prompts one otherwise staunchly loyal officer to complain to the general that they just committed a war crime (not caring about any consequent court martial), among other morale problems.
• No OSHA Compliance: The 'Pit' on the Nightmare Moon is an area of weird gravity, perilously steep platforms, and no railings of any sort. The ponies who work there have requested more safety measures and are told that it isn't in the budget (and that said measures would just be eaten anyway).
• Noodle Incident: A prank Pinkie Pie pulled at Rainbow Dash's quincentennial rendered Twilight Sparkle unable to look at mayonnaise for weeks.
  • More seriously, at some point Moon Moth committed some act so heinous that her foalsitter Sirocco Song got banished from Cloudsdale for covering it up, and only narrowly escaped being sent to the Salt Mines of Keroussel.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Several, although some of them eventually are shown onscreen.
  • Cookiecutter's role in originally securing the Nightmare Moon plans is mentioned and then dismissed. It's finally shown on-screen (at least in part) in the second special, 'The Admiral' (an unlikely mashup of Rogue One and Buster Keaton's The General).
  • Approximately a hundred years before the 'present day,' the Crystal Pony capital was destroyed in a massive battle. Little is known of the exact sequence of events, because the only remaining evidence of what happened is a trio of crystal statues of Rainbow Dash and Princess Celestia, with Princess Cadance interposed between them. Finally revealed in issue #3.3.
  • After her fall to darkness, Fluttershy single-hoofedly wiped out the alicorn princesses, breaking the horns of nearly a hundred, including Princess Luna.
• Oh, My Gods!: Lots of swearing by the princesses or body parts thereof.
• Pietà Plagiarism: The shot of Dark Feather standing over a defeated and broken Skywalker has shades of this.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Over the past thousand years, the pressures of time and distance have put stress lines in the Mane Six's friendships, which aren't immediately obvious until the Pone Wars when they suddenly reach a shatterpoint.
• Power Gives You Wings: Cookiecutter, by virtue of being an earth pony who partially ascended to alicorn-hood, but didn't get the unicorn horn.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Generally from the least expected quarters.
  • "I will finish what you started." From Cadance.
  • "And my name isn't 'Yellow!'"
• President Evil: Dark Side/Pinkie Pie. The elected ruler of the Equestrian Empire, who keeps winning elections because ponies are herd animals and usually vote for the incumbent.
• Princesses Are Useless: When Moon Moth tries to tell Twilight Sparkle about her mother's involvement in the conspiracy, Twilight stops listening after hearing 'Rainbow Dash' - presumably because she's heard the same things over and over again from multiple generations of the Rainbow Dash Fan Club over the past fifty years.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Gracenote experiences the final battle between Rainbow Dash and Celestia from several different perspectives when she touches the Triptych.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Invoked almost by name on this page.
• Red Herring: Literally - Spring Clean has a red herring in her hoard, eventually revealed to be distracting from the bass cannon. Lampshaded by a literal lampshade.
• Remembered I Could Fly: The changelings have to be reminded they have wings after their lair is sprayed with slippery whipped cream.
  • Conversely, Edelweiss sometimes has to be reminded that she can't fly.
• Rent-a-Zilla: A take on the Clone Wars episode The Zillo Beast substitutes the Smooze for the original Kaiju.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: A throwaway line in an Omake about suns not needing princesses to raise them turned into a side-story in which the Great and Powerful Trixie invents the concept of orbits.
• Running Gag: Several notable ones.
  • Redshift the Bonk Pony (and to a lesser extent, her sister Blueshift).
  • Fettlock is so cool, unless you're one of those ponies who don't buy the hype. Applejack is his biggest fan.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit: The second Nightmare Night special has Moontear being forced to wear a Sexy Rainbow Dash costume.
• Side-Story Bonus Art: For Nightmare Night and Hearth's Warming.
• Slipping a Mickey: Even cyborgs aren't immune to Maple Leaf's 'special' pancakes.
• Space Cadet Academy: Cookiecutter, Moontear, and Spring Clean are graduates (Spring Clean is at least legitimately a space cadet...)
• Spider-Sense: All party ponies have a unique sense (like Pinkie Sense and Cheese Sense from the show). Maple Leaf's detects when something is about to endanger her.
• Spirit Advisor: Element Bearers whose bodies have been destroyed tend to haunt whoever holds their Element Seed.
• Stereotype Reaction Gag: Maple Leaf's response to anyone asking her if she has a party cannon, or stashes random things in random places 'just in case.'
• Succession Crisis: The plot was kicked off a hundred years ago by the loss of Princesses Celestia and Cadance and the refusal of Princesses Luna and Flurry Heart to fill the vacancy, eventually leading to a civil war between the supporters of the (democratically-elected) Empress and those who believe that Princess Lace (as Celestia's ultimate heir) should rule the galaxy.
• Talking Is a Free Action: During the space battle finale of Episode IV (which in the film has a constantly running countdown until the battle station is within firing range) Rarity takes the time to explain a sizable chunk of the series' backstory and metaphysics, complete with flashback panels and diagrams.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Like its source material, the story is mostly family-friendly comedy, but the forces of evil that the 'main' character face are anything but: in keeping with its other source material, most of them are fallen heroes, and although their schemes are less deadly than their Star Wars equivalents, they are no less villainous.
• The Voiceless: The unfortunate red earth pony officer who seems to be on the receiving end of every blunt force trauma in the galaxy.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Half the Mane Six so far. Rarity started a war because she was trying to end the mistreatment of Rim pegasi. Fluttershy destroyed the alicorns to end the war. Applejack smoozed Halteraan because at the time she believed it was necessary in order to preserve galactic law and order. Pinkie Pie was so overwhelmed by taking over from Celestia that she tried to use the Nightmare's power to force everyone to be happy.
• Wham Shot: Usually corresponds with a mane plot intersection, such as the first appearance of Dark Feather.
  • The first view of the Nightmare Moon
  • Any time one of the Mane Six appears: Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie.
  • Dramatic cliffhangers in general get this treatment, as do some of the covers.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Played with. While the basic storyline follows the canon events of Star Wars as closely as possible, the events are filtered through the perspective of the background characters.
  • There's also a significant number of references to the My Little Pony movie (volume 2 devotes the entire B-plot to it).
• The Worf Effect: Cookiecutter (whose special talent is 'invulnerability') gets beat up by Nightmare Flutterbat and loses her cutie mark as a means of establishing that this villain is a lot scarier than the last one.
  • The defeat of Princess Luna goes a lot farther in establishing just how tough the Huntress is, but the fact that (according to this page) Luna was completely terrified of her during the fight makes it even Worfier.

---