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Oh, Mr. Groban… The things I would let you do to me.

… Are you done, fangirl?

You are simply jealous because you were not born with the voice of an angel.

Pfft, I could sing like that if I want to. … I just don’t want to.

That is the same excuse you give for not raising the sun every morning.

Well, I could, if Celestia gave me a chance.

And taking over Equestria?

Obviously, I could do that to.

And being a successful writer?

Shut up!

Hello, everyone. I am the Critique. It’s Hearth’s Warming time still!

The holiday that everypony loves. Celestia loves it, Computer loves it, Discord enjoys it, every pony seems to enjoy the festivities of giving to one another through the magic of friendship. Hell, even Luna finds a way to make the holidays work for her. And what better way to show that then in Merry Hearth’s Warming Luna by Foals Errand

Why spend more time on this holiday than I want to with an overly long introduction, let’s take a look at it.

Our story starts with Luna waking up from a long nap. Well, at least the story wasn’t rude and slept to us walking in.

There it hung in the sky; her gorgeous white orb drooping against the red and yellow dawn. Luna had always slept during the day,

Well, that explains this scene…

And bronies wondered why she never appeared in anything before that.

Luna prepares for the day, since she is trying to transition from a nocturnal creature to a creature of daylight. A transition that is proving difficult for her. However, she claims that she and Tia are closer than ever.

Not to mention that she actually gets to appear in more than just a quick cameo in the season 2 finale.

After shaking the water all over her bathroom, Luna beamed at herself in the mirror. Much better. Now that I’m clean, I’ll go and join Tia for breakfast before lowering the moon.

Yes, Luna, let’s tell ourselves what we’re going to do and then do it.

Luna goes down to breakfast while passing a few of the guards. Luna questions the purpose of her guards, since they are completely invulnerable.

Luna wanted to roll her eyes at the displays. She had heard Celestia’s reasoning for this several times over, but in Luna’s mind it boiled down to one thing: These mortals felt that her sister and herself were vulnerable.

Clearly it’s impossible to defeat Luna and Celestia in any situation. I mean, look at this scene where Celestia is clearly able to outdo her opponent.

Clearly Celestia is a master strategist.

She wondered idly how the guards would react if they were ever to see Celestia in battle. The thought made her snort back a giggle with a delicate sniff before she opened the door and stepped inside.

They would probably get their asses kicked by an entity that feeds off love and her little minions. But that could never happen. Also, this story only takes place after the episode ‘Hearth’s Warming Eve.’ Chrysalis hasn’t technically happened yet. Which still makes her disappearing act in the finale a tad off, but whatever.

Celestia explains that her guards are preparing their Hearth’s Warming tree in the other room and has invited Luna to hang up decorations with her. At first, Luna is enthralled with the idea. But then Luna hears the word ‘gift’ and she starts to panic. Ugh, another one of these ‘I forgot your gift’ stories. Yawn.

Okay, okay, these types of stories can be good, but honestly they’ve been done to death. They need to add something new in order to get much from me. Hopefully, this story can fulfill that promise.

After Celestia leaves, not without trying to persuade her sister to join the festivities, Luna follows her to see why Celestia is all about the holiday.

While Luna is spying on Celestia, we get this brief scene…

The guards nodded to each other and the tree stopped moving. They bowed their heads to Celestia, who grinned. “Oh come now! For just today can we not be equals? After all, Hearth Warming celebrates the three tribes coming together in friendship! Does it not?”

One unicorn glanced at the other who shrugged,  before both of them removed their helmets, dismissing the enchantment upon them which revealed them to be two mares. One of a lemon yellow coat with a sky blue mane, and the other a dark blue with a silver mane. “As you wish, your highness.”

Celestia took the helmets in her magic, setting them aside. “I take it that calling me Celestia is out of the question?” She chuckled at the horrified looks she received and shook her head. “I thought so. After all, I can’t even get Twilight Sparkle to call me Celestia. Well, the tree is up, but there is still much to be done!”

I’m trying to find something wrong with this scene… Not because I think that the story is bad… at this point, but because I don’t believe the writers can capture Celestia’s personality. After all the stories I’ve read where she’s either an idiot or a sex tool, can you really blame me?

First, Pinkie Pie is written well and now Celestia? Truly, it is a Hearth’s Warming miracle!

Don’t get too used to those!

And then we … um… cut to Celestia’s point of view… with no indication of doing so? What?!

Luna watched, still safely hidden, as several boxes were discerned. Celestia opened the first one, revealing a green plant of some kind. It was a circle with what seemed to be small balls growing within it. So engrossed in this new plant was she that she failed to notice Celestia approach her hiding spot until it was too late.

Celestia hung up the wreath and smiled down at Luna who was her normal self once more. She had hoped Luna would follow to sate her own curiosity. Perhaps she could even entice her into helping. How best to do it though? Luna is still so nervous around other ponies. Think, Celestia! Think! Ah yes! Slowly she backed away seeing Luna’s attention on the boxes.

So, wait, is this story taking place from Luna’s point of view or Celestia’s? I know it’s third person, so there’s probably no rule that technically says you can’t do this, but it sure would make things easier if you did! I honestly got lost during this scene because I thought that Luna had snapped and talking about herself in the first person, but it's actually Celestia.

If you’re going to jump perspective in a third person story, fine. But could you at least give us a heads up?

Also, there is no other point in the story that it jumps from Luna to Celestia and then back to Luna again. It is just there to serve this one line. Could we not find another way of doing this without jumping heads? Describing Celestia’s face as Luna looks into her eyes. Like windows into her brain that is pumping a new idea into the white alicorn’s head.

Celestia spots Luna and asks her to help with the decorations. Luna helps rigging up the lights and helps hang up wreaths. How much fun can we have decorating the place?

You would not know, you have never done it.

And I don’t plan to.

After decorating, Celestia … somehow, convinces Luna to dress up as Rudolph with Celestia as Santa Clause.

Celestia opened her mouth to correct Luna but shook her head with a smile. “Say Luna? Would you be willing to do something silly with me?”

Luna cocked her head. She wasn’t certain what this ‘silly’ meant but if it was something Celestia wanted to do, it couldn’t be so bad. “Of course, ‘Tia. We would be overjoyed to perform this silly with thee.”

“We take it back, we art not overjoyed to do this silly!” Luna frowned, putting a hoof to her chin as the picture was taken. Celestia had convinced her to put on fake antlers and a red nose. While Celestia herself had tied on a white beard and placed a red stocking hat on her head. It had white fluff around the brim and a ball of white fluff at the very top.

Pfft… Okay, I admit… That was pretty funny.

And I hope you enjoyed that scene, because that’s all we get of it. I would say it was rushed, but it had to be there to be rushed first.

Luna spends the whole day trying to decide what the best gift would be to get her sister, but doesn’t manage to come up with anything. Except in a young girl’s dream… That we never see or even mentioned until this point, so…. here you go.

Luna goes down to their private quarters to spend Hearth’s Warming with Celestia. Luna says that she wants Celestia to be happy and thus that’s why she’s spending the holidays with her. Celestia is happy to be with her and hopes that she can enjoy the festivities as well.

*Ahem*

… I think this is supposed to mean something to me, but I don’t care enough to say it.

Celestia’s gift to Luna is actually a journal that Luna had been keeping before she became Nightmare Moon. Apparently, because I guess Celestia cares about her sister and wants her to have the best life she can have. Pfft, what a fucking loser!

Luna gives Tia the photo they took from earlier, only with a few additional arts and crafts touch.

Yeah, unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the modified image, but just imagine some seven year old arts and crafts around the project and you’ll get the idea.

And so our story ends with Luna and Celestia spending the season together as sisters.

This story is… average. I guess. But that’s just it… It’s not something left an impact on me.

The reason why I say it’s ‘just okay’ is because there’s not really that much substance to it. It’s cute, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just not a lot in the way of plot. And I’m not saying that every single story has to have a ‘fate of the world’ plot. But at least something would have been better than nothing.

I get the feeling that the story was supposed to focus more on Luna’s gift for Celestia, but it never really followed through on it very well. It just kind of glances over it with a single sentence and never really gives it a chance to develop into something causing intrigue.

The plot is a bit too simple in my opinion and doesn’t provide much suspense or even worry.

In a strange way, it has similar and yet different problems to last week’s review. Their Hearth’s Warming had the problem of not focusing on Applejack, but having an interesting idea for a plot that is never really built up.

This story has the focus properly on Luna and Celestia, but doesn’t have anything besides that. No plot, no intrigue, no dilemma or lesson to be reached by the end. Which makes me wonder what the point of all this was.

So, is there anything good?

Well, a lot of it came from the characters themselves. Luna and Celestia. They are both portrayed very well in this. To the point where you almost don’t notice the lack of plot to begin with.

If someone were to ask me what I think of Celestia and Luna and their relationship as sisters, this is kind of what I think. This is the best portrayal of the two as sisters I’ve read in a long time. I know that’s not exactly saying much because I purposely read bad fics, but trust me when I say, it’s really close to how I think of them in my own stories.

They’re very different, with Luna being more reserved, more out of fear of herself than anything, while Celestia is more outgoing, taking more risks because she’s seen the longer lifespan and lost many. She knows how to live for the moment.

That being said, they are very similar as well. They both want what is best for their ponies and for each other. And it shows when Celestia wants Luna to be more involved and Luna wants to not let her sister down. The two complement each other well as sisters and this story does a good job at showing why.

The strength of the story comes from these two characters, not because of a conflict. With that said, there’s not much to this story without it either. The characters are all it has. And as much as I love the characters, they aren’t interesting if nothing is happening.

It’s like watching home movies about a party where absolutely nothing goes wrong. You only watch them for the memories and while this story is adorable at doing that, as escapist fiction, it doesn’t have much to offer.

It’s funny because I was almost considering giving a thumbs up, despite that. And then I thought about it some more and decided that there wasn’t anything there that I haven’t seen in holiday stories. Now, sometimes that can be just fine, but this seems like the bare minimum of effort went into the story parts of it.

If you are okay with not much substance and just want to see Celestia and Luna be cute, there is that. But for the rest of us, I’d like a little something more.

Have a good day, guys.