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Related to >>477650 or source: http://ponymarillion.referata.com
 
>mfw
 
I’ve been working on this fic since 2011 and just recently started in earnest  
This outline was written in late 2011… As I pointed out in /oat/ –
 
>The idea I was playing with in the past two weeks was that:
 
>There were actually 9 Elements… three were lost, one in the heavens,  
>one in the sea, one in the earth. this is such a great conceit from the  
>end of the book that I didn’t want to lose it
 
>I was originally gonna handwave it in 2011 by saying “well naturally they were recovered later”
 
>the other three were split apart into six less-powerful jewels in an attempt to re-heal the Tree(s).
 
>however, the attempt was destined to fail (as in the Silm, the Tree(s) could not be revived except if all the jewels were unlocked, and given up by their owners)
 
>and so the Goddess of the Stars (ruler of the Undying Lands where the Elves er Alicorns are from) throws the six elements up in the sky as a ward against evil.
 
>in addition to a pre-existing constellation shaped like Pinkie Pie in the form of Orion, which is also a Silm reference.
 
>So there are seven stars as in Tolkien’s symbolism, one “master” element which is the Evening Star (actually an airship captained by Twilight Sparkle’s ancestor)
 
>and the six Elements of Harmony from the show which are later used by Celestia and Luna to defeat Discord.
 
Suggestions I’ve gotten so far are to proceed in earnest with the fic, with the One Tree of Harmony; Or else the Tree of Harmony in the Everfree Forest is the sapling of their predecessors from the 2011 draft; Or to attempt to reconcile the plot of the Ponymarillion with canon, which might be a bit difficult given the bloody war over them in the book and what not.

safe2210509 derpy hooves58215 tree of harmony845 pegasus513184 pony1640934 g42065075 princess twilight sparkle (episode)3068 2011635 canon147 fanfic11441 fanon126 fantasy634 female1844402 hilarious in hindsight3854 mare767411 meta18711 ponymarillion6 shoe on head11 solo1456077 text92325 the silmarillion24 tolkien44

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Ponyweed

@HorsesandMuchMOAR
 
Sorry I didn’t see your question earlier. Generally the Vala (angelic beings) characters and the hero characters have been separately ponified to resemble FiM characters, as you noticed. There could be symbolic links between them, since they don’t often interact directly (the hero characters all grew up in Little-Equestria whereas the Alicorns grew up in Paradise with the Valar, so to speak.) But it is true that Flutteren goes to the Undying Lands in spirit form to sing before the Vala of Death, so… (cue stage fright episode :)
 
Oh, but Rarity’s alternate character (one of Luna’s younger sisters) grew up in Alinor and presumably learned at the feet of the Vala Gemlï (goddess of gems and the earth, clothing, armament, and hooficraft) who is also loosely inspired by Rarity. Hmmm. :)
Ponyweed

@ExOttoyuhr
 
I didn’t think it sounded like trolling :) but some Tolkien fans can be literal and think that alternate character interpretations are sacrilege. ;) Those people probably won’t like to see it turned into ponies, lol! Especially because the “theme” is similar to your theory: Tolkien mistranslated the text and the ancient precursor race was actually unicorns, not elves. :P
 
The high-tech hypothesis fit into the sympathy for Saruman hypothesis because I think you and me were arguing at the time that the Ring actually had mostly symbolic powers, at least that was my theory… if it was all realpolitik and the myth of the Ring was constructed after the fact to explain the war, like in the Iliad, lol.
ExOttoyuhr

@Ponyweed  
To be honest, I didn’t know that it sounded like trolling when I posted that. I was young and a bad debater, and tried to make some pretty stupid arguments, but I still say that Saruman had a reasonably good idea: if you can’t beat Sauron on quantity, find a way to beat him on quality…
 
As for the high-tech-Middle-Earth hypothesis, I think that (outside the cellphones bit) it’s really, really plausible. Mithril has almost exactly the same characteristics as titanium, Morgoth apparently brought tanks to Gondolin, and many societies misremember the technology of foreign peoples as magic. Just look at medieval legends about Virgil as a wizard, Merlin laying the foundations of castles, etc. – and consider that towards the end of his life, Tolkien envisioned The Silmarillion as a human thing, filtered through an unreliable narrator or two…
 
Definitely checking this project out.
Ponyweed

@ExOttoyuhr
 
I think I helped come up with that… or at least I was one of the only people who didn’t think it was trolling to say that Saruman was a misunderstood industrialist, but merely an interesting interpretation of the text :)
 
You should totally chat with me about the Ponymarillion project. Message me on here!
 
And yes Tulkas character is modeled after Rainbow Dash :P
ExOttoyuhr

Nice job calling the Tree of Harmony. :)
 
If I were to attempt this, I’d toy with setting the Ponymarillion in the foreseeable future of the show, perhaps just breaking continuity at the end of Season 4 (The Mane Six in the narrative role of the Valar, even? :P Rainbow Dash would make a good Tulkas, and Twilight is no better at intrigue than Manwe was…), and possibly even running with the odd but fascinating high-technology hypothesis from the old Tolkien Sarcasm Page.
 
I love that this place has a Silmarillion tag, but also that it has a “shoe on head” tag and there’s an image that has both…
HorsesandMuchMOAR
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I like to see Shyavanna’s rage.
 
Oh, and she appears again as Flutteren/Luthien. What kinds of stuff will usually happen between the two ’Shys, the Vala and the Elf?
Ponyweed

Heh, the image link expired on my “map”.  
source: 1280x1024, 1000 hours in mspaint.jpg  
full  
Not sure it’s “art” since I haven’t done a “real” version yet. :P
Ponyweed

ok this version of the notes was written in 2011 but I added Cadance at the end of season 2. there’s a number of drafts going back to Hearths Warming Eve which is when the mane characters were cast (inspired by that premise). I posted a more current version of this in a doc on the fic this summer when I started work on it in earnest.
EmeraldArcher

Stuff like this should come with a ‘Nerd Alert’ warning.
 
As in, ‘ALERT for all Tolkien Nerds: reading this will inextricably link MLP lore to Middle Earth in your brains FOREVER.’
 
I mean, I’ve seen wiccans and actual practitioners of Magick point-out interesting parallels to certain real-world cosmologies… But this seems genuinely cosmic. Speaking as someone whose collaborated on DnD campaigns for over a decade, I can absolutely see how this would create a plot-bunny farm in your mind.
 
Keep breeding ’em.
Ponyweed

@Mayojar77  
Yeah I know I was just explaining the origin of this. I was literally just working on the origin of the elements part this week, and trying to figure out whether they should be lost or used to heal the Two Trees of Harmony or not. :) In the book the Trees don’t get healed and the jewels are lost for, well, an extended period of time.
 
Now I feel like the guy from Monty Python who has been spending two years trying to organize an expedition to climb the Twin Peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro, lol.
Ponyweed

@Mayojar77  
In the book, I mean. :) The above referenced fic is heavily based on the book, it’s basically the Silmarillion ponified, with the Elements of Harmony being created from the (up until yesterday) Two Trees of Harmony. It’s also not published yet (save for the first two chapters) so this is a case of herdmind.
Ponyweed

Caveat, I didn’t publicize the fic until early this summer but this outline dates to 2011, before Fluttershy defeated Cerberus on the show, which also caused me mixed feels since I hadn’t even started writing the tale of Apple and Flutteren yet.
 
And one reason she was chosen for that part is because of the  
scene where she sings the Hound of the Underworld to sleep
Mayojar77
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@Ponyweed  
I hope not. LoTR references are all well and good, but ideas from a fanfic never go over well. Just look at the shitstorm Danny Phantom had when SamXDanny became canon.
Ponyweed

@Mayojar77  
That’s what I said. I mean, I figured, how hard could it be to ponify JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion given the unlikelihood that it would be superseded by actual canon? Now I’ll be looking for FoE references in Season 4.