• Story: Dark Equestria

    [Grimdark] Some alternate universe stuff! The Pre-reader really liked it, but didn't give me an awesome quote, the slacker!

    Author: Lurks-no-More
    Description: In the magical land of Equestria, the night has lasted for a thousand years. But now, with the millennial anniversary of Queen Luna's victory over her rebellious sister approaching, the Queen's most faithful student learns about a disturbing old prophecy...
    Dark Equestria Part 1
    Dark Equestria Part 2

    Additional Tags: Queen Luna's Eternal Night ends

    29 comments:

    1. Well, I do believe I like it.

      The Alternate Reality Night names for the Mane cast are very similar to those I was wondering about just a few days ago.

      Luna <3

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    2. Ooh, looks interesting. Will give a read!

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    3. I'm a little ways into part 1. It's basically a gothic version of MLP:FiM. Pretty awesome :D

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    4. I approve of this re-imaging! This requires fan-art.

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    5. Nice work. Not sure I'd really describe it as grimdark... sure, in this ATL Equestria isn't the bright and colourful paradise of the show, but it still isn't some horrible hell hole either.

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    6. That was interesting.

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    7. Way way back in the day I thought of doing a story with this very concept.

      Now I don't have to.

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    8. Aurora Flash fanart. NOW.

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    9. I read the first few paragraphs and skimmed the rest of the first page. Page one felt like just a rewriting of episode one with slight name changes and everypony being darker/emo/tough/older.

      It gets better at page 2. Overall it's pretty good as far as short stories go.

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    10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    11. Agreed with above anon - first part is basically just a rewrite of EP1 but part 2 is pretty good! I liked the ending, too.

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    12. I really liked it, but I felt that the ending was sorely lacking with the route taken.I would have imagined that more impact could have been dealt by having Celestia return only to realize that life under her sisters rule was not exactly what anyone would consider a bad thing, and have the story go from there.

      Even better would have been if it changed to a Celestia centered piece after that.

      As is though the story is pretty awesome barring those last few paragraphs.

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    13. @Escrime

      While PONYVILLE wasn't a horrible hellhole, it's because Ponyville is well run. From all the off hand comments and expectations that the characters kept having though, it seems evident to me that other places were much worse off and that Luna's Equestria was very much the Evil Empire, otherwise there wouldn't have been rebellions going off everywhere and power struggles in Canterlot the instant Luna's power vanished.

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    14. Equinox the Twilight Princess We Need Fanart now!

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    15. ... this is fantastic. I can't believe I'm reading fanfiction. And liking it! This community is awesome. And this story? It is too.

      *highly recommended*

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    16. @ZettaLux
      Yes, the story begins as a more or less straight rewrite of the pilot. This was an intentional choice, and a way of showing off the differences and similarities between the universes.

      @Anonymous
      You have it right. This Equestria isn't exactly Mordor, but it's still quite a nasty place, with plenty of oppression, inequality and casual brutality going on.

      And if someone/anyone somehow ends up doing actual fanart based on this, I'm going to go "squee!" so hard you could hear it on the moon. :D

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    17. Damn, I really liked this. I hope you write some more in this storyverse; not straight episode rewrites, necessarily, but the world you've built here is phenomenally interesting and I'd like to see more of it.

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    18. I loved it.
      Altough it was partially based on the first two episodes,the way the story was modified was very good.This version of Equestria was...interesting.
      Good work.

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    19. Incoming fanart! -draw draw draw-

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    20. (copy/paste)

      Meh, I'm not entirely convinced... Don't get me wrong, it IS 'relatively' interesting, I especially like the somewhat ''Mirror-world'' concept, but...

      It seems you went for the Darkness=Evil-like instead of the Darkness=Well, we prefer the night ...Everything military-like, higher crime rates, assassination attemps... Carnivorous Pegasi, seriously ?

      Like I said, I like the ''Mirror-world'' concept... in general... It reminds me of those Final Fantasy games, where there's the Crystals and the Heroes of Light and then they discover that there's also another world simillar, BUT 'of Darkness'... The Crystals and Heroes of Darness weren't Evil, just dark and stuff.

      Celestia as Evil, ok... More evil than Luna was ? It's ok too. The whole world turning toward ''relatively evil tendencies'', not as interesting as it COULD be.
      Also... 1 (full?)day of sun per week ? Pretty sure it takes more than that for plants to live correctly, but I'm no Botanist... Also #2, why didn't Luna went for the same formula as Celestia; by that I mean Half-day / Half-Night ? ...yeah, Eternal Night and stuff, but isn't SHE supposed to be to good one in this Dimension ? (again, the darkness=evil-like tendencies)

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    21. @Nova25
      (Part 2)

      Well, it seems that this was much less inclined toward evil-like than anticipated by the previous Chapter...

      It was like : ''Hard stuff in the horizon, but with some work and big efforts, they will solve those problems and restore Equestria'' - Kinda ok, yeah.

      And even though I'm not sure about the 'fusion' of the 2 Alicorns, well... I guess after 1000 Years of almost-permanent Night, that it's pretty much the only viable solution to get back the ''2'' Alicorns into society.

      Also... Renaming Twilight Spakle : Moonlight Sparkle, then naming the new Alicorn : Princess Twilight... That was planed, no ? ;)

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    22. It reminded me of the "Mirror, Mirror" and related stories in Star Trek, complete with an analogue to goatee Spock. And I found it just as well done.

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    23. Very interesting read. Aurora flash was definitely a creepy character. We must have fanart nao! (preferably with her giving a toothy grin whIle chewing on some "jerky")

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    24. @Nova25
      Well, first off, it's not a direct opposite, but rather, a different series of events stemming from the same circumstances. In that case, this isn't one of those "evil Celestia" stories.

      The corruption doesn't directly stem from the darkness (as opposed to, say, in final fantasy crystal chronicles: rings of fate, in which the moon wants to kill the earth and drives people to madness), but from the imbalance.

      Because of the WAY Luna (or rather, Nightmare Moon) rules, with her corrupted spirit and her desire for dominance over the land rather than maintaining the balance like Celestia did in Luna's absence, her warped intentions worked their way into every aspect. You notice that Luna has formed a church, because she desires worship for her glory. And when she demanded that control of all things must shift towards her, everything else resulted as a consequence. The caste system, the struggle to survive in the unnatural darkness, the emptiness in the hearts of the pony, are all consequences of Luna's abuse of power in every way.

      Or maybe I'm looking too hard at it.

      Anyway, try to think of it from the author's point of view.

      Like the other readers say, I do take issue with how the second part ended. I would have favored an extended discussion between the others about where their feelings lay, since Celestia had exposed them during the bridge sequence. I wouldn't have expected them to agree with each other that easily, seeing as they did not have enough friendship to handle the elements of harmony...

      It could have led the story further, to set up that conflict now in order to give us some hint to the territory that following parts would explore.

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    25. Soapy5: If Aurora creeped you out a bit, then she worked the way I hoped!

      Anonymous: You're not looking too hard at it; that's a good way to put what I was going with, here.

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    26. whew, thank god it ended happily, the 1st Chapter did it's job, delivering the image of what Equestria would be if NNM have won and I admit that it creeped me out, also seems like unicorns and pegasi are more like.. nobilty? in this realm and earth ponies resent them, cause of their inability to live without light, thus the black apples being poisonous to Applejack. It's surely interestng and something I would recommend others to read.

      Some Thoughs: to be honest I was iritated with the whole "nobility" and "commoners" thing and I realy re-considered reading it to the end, but that's just me hating social classes based on power or in our case, magic. One thing that kept me going was trying to imagine what Aurora Flash would look like, it would be down right ridiculous and funny as hell xD.

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    27. I liked it. I thought it was good that even in this twisted and corrupted Equestria the mane six still managed to be pretty decent, considering. Even Aurora, the creepiest, seemed mostly like she was a product of her enviroment.

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    28. As I said on dA, good stuff! Want more.

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