driftfleet | 004 - If That Isn't Love

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004 - If That Isn't Love

Who: Cheese and YOU
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: The Bishop
When: Sometime before Belth's meltdown

[The video falls on the grinning-like-a-lunatic pony. Guess what time it is! It's pony holiday story time!!!]

Heya everypony! Happy Valentines day. Back where I come from, we call this Hearts and Hooves Day. Buuut that doesn't really work here given that I'm the only one with hooves. Hopefully everyone has a heart of some description though. ANYhoo. We celebrate this day pretty much the same as they do on Earth. Spending time with our special somepony, hearts, flowers, yadda yadda.

[He's forever alone, it's not important to him.]

The story of how it came to be is waaaay different though. OKAY so a loooong looong time ago a prince created a love potion to give to a princess he loved. He wanted her to love him back. Unfortunately it turned out to be a love poison and it made the two so lost in each others eyes that they couldn't perform their royal duties. There was a dragon and the kingdom fell, chaos reigned. It was the worst.

Luckily there was an antidote. The prince and princess had to be kept from looking into one another's eyes for a whole hour. Then the love curse broke and everything began to be restored once again. And from that day on everypony celebrated that day as one of love because-

[He taps his chin with a forehoof.]

...Actually I'm not sure. It's not really a romantic story when you think about it. I don't know what the moral is. Don't force love? Don't drink a suspicious drink that your stalker gave you? I dunno. We made a holiday with it anyway. So enjoy that, if you have a special somepony and be glad they didn't poison you? Yeah.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

_{[ He files that away in case it comes up again, though he's wondering
if those are the real terms or simply being translated that way by the
thing in his head. ]}

Are they all, ah, so interesting in terms of subject matter and plot?

_{[ Like, seriously, that was basically a story about why you don't try
to drug someone's drink. How was that historically relevant?! ]}

I guess so. Lots of them are about threats to our realm.

Well, that would make sense, I guess. Does that mean that attempts at drugging your princesses is a regular problem?

I'd be interested in hearing more, if you have time.

_{[ Because let's face it, this is just to fascinating to pass up.
]}

You know, no one's tried to drug the current ones. But the alicorns are...pretty powerful. Anypony who tries to depose them doesn't come out all that well at the end.

[YAY somepony who wants to know about his home!! ]

Sure! I'm happy to tell you just about anything.

Well, let's start with what an "alicorn" is.

_{[ And why no one comes out good from trying to depose them, that
doesn't sound nice when this little thing is so colorful and cheerful
maybe in a slightly creepy way. ]}

We got four of them back home. They're the rulers of the realm. They're a magical combination of the three pony races: earth, pegasai and unicorn.

[He raises a forehoof above his head, trying to show a sense of HEIGHT. ]

They're a whole lot bigger than us, got wings and a horn, and they have really powerful magic. Like of our four? Princess Celestia controls the sun, Princess Luna the moon, Princess Cadence has the power of love and guards the Crystal Empire, and Princess Twilight has all the friendship magic and her friends help protect our world. As a team? They're pretty unstoppable.

_{[ Well, okay Pony, he'll grant you three different races, but he
thinks the controlling the sun and magic friendship is a bit much. But he's
to polite to outright argue that point. Different races believed different
things, and even if you disagreed or thought it was foolish, it wasn't his
place to try and change that or force his own beliefs. But, you know, maybe
there's a kind of look that says he finds all this a touch unbelievable,
Cheese. ]}

So those four are essentially the rulers of your entire world, then?

[He's seen the look a thousand times already, and has already learned to politely ignore it. ]

Only of Equestria. The other countries have their own rulers and systems and...whatever. I never really go outside of Equestria, I'm not sure how it's done outside our borders. I think the Yaks have a king?

_{[ He'll learn to eventually keep it off his face. Maybe. ]}

There's a king of the Yaks?

_{[ Also, he's curious as to why he's hearing very earth-species type
words, or if that's just the translator in his head doing its best. ]}

That has to make politics interesting if you have four separate rulers.

I think so anyway? They've kept their borders closed for a really, really long time. Their country is called YakYakistan.

[No. Really. ]

Not for Equestria. The four princess rule in harmony.

...I mean there was a blip like a thousand years ago but everything's okay now.

_{[ He would almost say this pony is making it all up, but he's heard
stranger things believe it or not. And at this point he's talking to a
pony - a brightly colored pony - so why not accept that there's a
kingdom made up of Yaks called YakYakistan? ]}

A blip, huh? What kind of blip?

[Oh, balls, he asked. ]

Well. Uh. It's a long story but okay.

So the two eldest of the princesses are called Celestia and Luna, they're sisters. Celestia controls the sun and watches over the day, while Luna controls the moon and watches over the night.

_{[ He's reached the state of acceptance and rolling with it by now.
]}

Okay, sisters, rule together, one during the day and one during the night. Got it.

[That's the absolute best way to handle this. ]

Okay. So a thousand years ago, Luna became bitter. Ponies played in the daytime, but slept during the night. She began to feel that she wasn't as loved, as wanted as her older sister. The bitterness grew and grew until it turned her into something else. Nightmare Moon.

_{[ He wants to protest on the point of a pony living a thousand years,
but reminds himself that their year could be incredibly short compared to
an Earth year. Such measurements were relative, after all. ]}

Little sister feels unloved, so her jealousy turns her into a monster, got it.

[Sadly he really does mean an actual thousand years. Alicorns and their gosh darn immortality. ]

Nightmare Moon refused to lower the moon to make way for the sun. Celestia pleaded and begged, tried to get through to her sister, but Nightmare Moon had taken over everything Luna was. They battled, and Celestia ended up having to use an ancient magic in our world to defeat Nightmare Moon - imprisoning her on the moon for a thousand years.

A couple years back, she broke free, I was around for that. She plunged Equestria into an eternal night again. But who would become the new protectors of our realm stopped her, and brought Luna back from the clutches of Nightmare Moon.

_{[ Well, that sounds... like it came right out of a YA fantasy novel.
Not that Kirk has read any of those, of course not. It's just - well, how's
he really supposed to believe that? It sounds to fantastic to be real and
he's done some pretty fantastic things. But a man has to draw a line and it
had been crossed when Cheese said these alicorns controlled the sun and
moon. ]}

And the new protectors would be the little alicorn you named - Twilight, right? Or was it that prince?

_{[ He's got two names down, okay, the other two haven't been said as
much and you're kind of confusing him with the whole Luna became Nightmare
Moon. ]}

Well, Twilight is one of the protectors. She became an alicorn. She's the princess of...something. She hasn't figured it out yet. Sure rules with Celestia, Luna and Cadence - she's the princess of love and looks after the Crystal Empire.

[Equestrian history is literally the worst. ]

_{[ It really is. ]}

So wait, what's the Crystal Empire? I thought you came from Equestria. Or is Equestria inside of the Crystal Empire which also borders Yakistan?

_{[ He probably got that wrong, but literally this is the worst. ]}

The Crystal Empire is...it's part of Equestria, but it's at the very edge of our borders. Yakyakistan is near the Crystal Empire.

The Crystal Empire is where the Crystal Heart is, the Crystal Ponies power it and send waves of...goodness??? I guess across the land. I don't really know how it works. It's magic stuff.

Edited 2016-03-20 21:57 (UTC)

_{[ This... this all had to be a joke. Surely. How was this... none of this sounded possible, much less real. He kind of thought that the pony might need some therapy, honestly. ]}

Right, magic stuff. Sounds as good an explanation as any.

_{[ No, no it didn't, but frankly he didn't want to deal with the headache of trying to sort it out. Hopefully they had aspirin in stock in the med bay on his ship... ]}

[Imagine what it was like for Paradisa residents when they VISITED the place. ]

Yeah, it's a pretty cool place to be. Both metaphorically and literally.

_{[ Oh good lord. He'd probably have a mental break down if he was
forced to visit. ]}

I'll... have to take your word for it. At the least it sounds interesting.

_{[ Insane, Cheese. He really means insane. ]}

[It is ABSOLUTELY insane.]

It sure is, I can't wait to get back to it.

Well, I hope you return soon. It must be hard being so far from home for so long.

_{[ And you can stay there cause he will never plan to visit, no matter
how fascinating a talking horse may be. ]}

004 - If That Isn't Love

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