Written by: Rainbow Double Dash
An accident involving teleportation and lightning inadvertently strands Trixie in a place very far from home, where Twilight Sparkle is the bearer of the Element of Magic, and Celestia rules Equestria.
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: Invoked by RDD, who musses up the order of episodes that have occurred in the Maneverse for the purposes of story. As a result, the incident with the Alicorn Amulet has already happened, but "A Canterlot Wedding" has not.
- Anti-Magic: Antithesis' whole powerset is based on this, to the point where she technically doesn't cast spells- she rips spell-shaped holes in reality, and lets ambient magic flow into the holes to make spells.
- Bad Liar: Applejack's total inability to tell a convincing lie scuppers the attempt to keep Trixie bed-bound.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Trixie meets the Maneverse Raindrops, the pegasus recognizes what M!Trixie did to Snails under the Alicorn Amulet's influence, and gets increasingly angry. Trixie, expecting some display of her Raindrops' anger, is surprised when all Raindrops can say is... "I'll sue!"
- Beyond the Impossible: Normally, the Element of Magic couldn't be broken by two ponies playing tug-of-war with it, but the situation is unique enough that, this once, it can.
- Born Unlucky: The narration notes just how bad Trixie's luck is to wind up getting struck by a lightning bolt in a thunderstorm..
- Brainwashed and Crazy: What Trixie thinks has happened to everyone in Ponyville, and then what she inadvertently does to the Maneverse versions of her friends.
- What actually happens when Antithesis finds the Ursa Major.
- Carnivore Confusion: The Twilights are horrified when the Trixies mention they once ate meat, M!Twilight repeatedly hissing "carnivore" at them and asking if they're going to try and eat her, even as both Trixies have to clarify they've never eaten anything sapient.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Lunaverse Twilight's spellbook, which she left behind in "Boast Busted", is responsible for the events of this story.
- Trixie's memory-sharing spell, and the fact it requires mouth-to-mouth contact for her to get it to work, introduced back in "Tales of Ponyville".
- Antithesis wants to kill all four of the Twilight-Trixie team at the same time. It turns out that there's a reason for this.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The Lunaverse Six-Minus-One tried to bring the Elements of Harmony with to the Maneverse, which could have solved the Antithesis problem in a few minutes. Unfortunately, the Elements of the Lunaverse stayed put.
- Freak Out: M!Twilight starts to have one pondering the implications of so many instances of In Spite of a Nail, getting as far as wondering whether free will is a lie before Spike jabs her with a claw, distracting her.Twilight: Spike! I was having an existential crisis!Spike: I know. I helped.
- It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The first lines of the fic, because Trixie actually is out in a storm at night. She lambasts her own imagination for coming up with the phrase.
- I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: The Princesses break the ice by comparing, among other things, the hideous fashions of the last thousand years. Celestia shows off her ridiculous powdered-wig phase, Luna shows off her Elizabeathan neck-ruff stage. Maneverse Luna comments that, compared to these, spending a thousand years in the Moon suddenly looks less painful.
- Large Ham: Antithesis spends most of her page time shrieking and yelling. In fairness, she is made of hate and rage.
- Made of Evil: Antithesis.
- The Multiverse: Even before her attempt a thousand years ago, Lunaverse Luna was aware that other worlds exist. When she hit the Despair Event Horizon in her world, she tried fleeing to another world... only to see Celestia there, and ran back to her world.
- My Greatest Failure: Lunaverse Luna says she has three- her inability to see that her Celestia was so far gone, a second one she does not mention, and her attempt to flee Equestria to another world, abandoning all her responsibilities.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever it was that the Lunaverse element bearers got up to while the Trixies and Twilights recovered.
- One-Steve Limit: Quickly becomes a problem with two Twilight Sparkles and two Trixies. Eventually they settle on addressing one by their second names.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Abounds.
- Lunaverse Twilight thinks her Maneverse counterpart is no better than her for the Want-It, Need-It incident. Trixie can't stand her counterpart, finding her an overblown and rude hack, while Maneverse Trixie thinks her counterpart is lazy and spoon-fed on convenience (and a little overweight). This bickering is what causes Antithesis to be born.
- Maneverse Luna is put out by her counterpart, since Lunaverse Luna on her arrival made it look like she had turned Nightmare Moon again.
- Point of Divergence: Understandably going to come up with alternate universes, beyond which sister went nuts.
- The Lunaverse element bearers lead different lives; Raindrops doesn't have anger issues, or her counterpart's Super-Strength; Carrot Top doesn't have her farm, having sold it to the Apples, and lives with Ditzy, though just as roommates; Lyra doesn't have a job, and more shockingly, has never worked up the courage to admit she loves BonBon.
- Celestia and the Lunas spend time talking about minor things that went different in their world, based on Celestia and Luna's different approach to politics (Celestia favouring a pan-equine soft hegemony ruled by bureaucracy, Luna favouring a more hooves-on system of aristocracy, with the occasional intervention in foreign affairs).
- Also, the time of year is different. It's summer in the Lunaverse, mid-winter in the Maneverse.
- Refuge in Audacity: Lunaverse Luna is horrified that Celestia keeps her world's version of Discord in the garden. As Celestia explains, if he wants out he'll get out. Keeping him there means she can keep an eye on him.
- Spotting the Thread: Trixie's already suspicious about things thanks to Dr. Stable, but Applejack's bad liar tendencies quickly allow her to see something is definitely up. And then she opens the window to Applejack's bedroom...
