I prefer thinking it was something Luna chose to do that got out of hand. Then again I hate emo woobie Luna.

Woobie!Luna makes for good fanart, but she's not a good character. I like the thought of a power grabbing Luna.

WE THINK THAT VERSION TOO IS CUTE IN ITS OWN WAYS. WE LOVE EVERYONE.

Did I mention she has sharp features?

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:12:04 PM by PacificState

you kiddin'? Dabbling with powers beyond her comprehension and getting overwhelmed by them seems like JUST the sort of thing Ham!Luna would do

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:12:03 PM by gingerninja666

Well, it's not like she wasn't mind-blowingly powerful herself...

Luna was a fine vegetarian pony, but one day she decided to take a bite out of some ham. Then she was turned into a ham.

I always hated Woobie Luna fanart. It really turned the character into some sort of fandom Scrappy to me.

but that's just it. She's JUST as powerful as her sister. If she wanted to take over, she'd need to make herself STRONGER than her sister

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:14:33 PM by gingerninja666

STRONGER, THAN YESTERDAY!

I don't think Dis Qord is responsible NM. He may planted some doubts in her but nothing more. And just casting one giga spell not turned her, it was long process not result of ultimate spell going horribly wrong.

Well, it's clear to some degree she wasn't herself. Perhaps its simply a case of With Grea T Power Comes Great Insanity? With all that power she thought she could just push and push, take what she wanted for just a little while. Then when Celestia had to banish her, she felt wronged, because she only wanted a little respect and she was banished for 1000 years. So by the time she came back she really was evil, and Twi and the Mane 6 just knocked her down to size, and gave her a little bit of a timeout to think about it. Or maybe she took it from a nasty source that kept whispering in her ear, egging her on to make some really bad decisions and clouded her mind so she couldn't really understand what she was doing until she was free.

Personally, I'm trying to forgo theories; I just want to see a flashback episode of the whole thing. It's highly unlikely to happen unless something did corrupt Luna, in which case it's likely to be a season finale thing, but still. It would be nice to not have the different sections of the fanbase sniping at each other over their various fanons, completely regardless of the fact that they all have the exact smae amount of merit, since they're all fanon.

Luna does have a hell of a temper, though.

Yeah, that's true. I can genuinely imagine the whole nightmare Moon incident as a fight that just got waaaaaaaaaaaay out of hand. These are two immensely powerful ponies, if not goddesses, who live for likely thousands of years. We have no idea how long they've been around before all this - since the dawn of time? The birth of the planet? The birth of ponykind? We have no sense of scale, here.

Could someone convert this◊ to avatar form? That would be so awesome.

I imagine that the process went something like this:

• One day Luna refuses to lower the moon
• Celestia confronts her
• Celestia and Luna argue but eventually Celestia is able to wrestle the moon down
• Luna storms off in anger
• Luna finds some ancient forbidden power up spell and in a fit of rage casts it on herself
• Come the following night, Luna refuses to lower the moon again
• Celestia intervenes again but is overwhelmed by Luna's new power. It's at this point she morphs into NM
• Celestia EOH her

Refusing to lower moon is point where she was transforming into NM. At this moment she was already evil or mad. She whanted night all the time, and Word Of God confirm that this mean slow death of everything.

I don't like idea of some ancient spell, what it add to Luna/NM stuff?

Luna needs to somehow become STRONGER than Celestia, otherwise, what's to stop Celestia from kicking her ass and lowering the moon herself

the initial refusal could just be a move made in desperation "Please, let me keep it up a few more hours" that kinda thing

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:28:12 PM by gingerninja666

^^The evil force that Word Of God says helped with her transformation? Justification for why Luna wasn't left on the moon forever, given that without some extra evil thrown in there, it means that she looked at the death of the entire planet with clear eyes, as Luna, and said "Yes, this is an acceptable cost for them praising us"?

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:30:24 PM by RedSavant

I could imagine Luna INITIALLY not even wanting the night to last forever, just for a few more hours. Enough for her subjects to get a better look at it.

Then the dark side made her forget

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:34:16 PM by gingerninja666

That spell is unnecessary, at that point when she whanted win for any cost she was allready on parth to the Dark Side, anything what finnaly corupted her was statred doing it.

Not mention that opening narration don't say anything about this.

the opening narration also failed to mention the outside force that apparently corrupted her.

Bridle speculation this is.forget about it, you should

^^The opening narration also failed to mention Discord. Or the holiday that keeps Nightmare Moon's memory alive (if only in folk legend).

^A fair point. We didn't really get any new information on the topic from "Luna, Eclipsed", so there's no real point in rehashing the same debates.

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:42:17 PM by RedSavant

I feel I should point out, did Luna ever even consider the ultimate cost of her actions? She didn't want the ponies to die - that's the opposite of what she wanted. As soon as she saw them suffering, if she was in her right mind at least, she would have stopped. All she wanted was a little bit of love. The exact same thing she wanted in Luna Eclipsed, in fact.

Amusing how I could ALMOST see Luna Eclipsed serving as yet another Start of Darkness for Luna

...

had the mane cast not been there

Why is there never enough Pony to stop the cravings!?