Thanks for the Forking! Also, Some Thematic Discussion · 7:32am Oct 16th, 2015
Wow, what a ride! Can I just take a moment to thank each and every one of you for being wonderful? Two weeks ago, I was curled up on the floor clutching my stomach while Jaxie calmly talked me through my anxiety attack, assuring me that I wasn't a shit writer and that Fork could absolutely be cleaned up and published. A week ago, I got off my ass and published. After holding the top of the Featured Box for four days straight, and racking up 6k views[1] and 1k upvotes, only today is it finally dropping off the charts.
A boring writer would simply say that he was floored, moved, speechless, etc. But I'm not boring, apparently! So instead I'll share the anecdote that, on the evening of hitting the Featured Box, I was on Skype babbling nonsense and spamming giddy RP emotes to the extent that a number of my friends are now convinced that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Seriously though, thank you for enjoying my story. It really warmed my heart to see all the comments of people who laughed, who dawwed, who got their Twilestia fix, and even a few who started shipping it.
But there were a few commenters who caught my eye, who I'd been anticipating while I wrote this story. They were the readers who said that they really wanted to enjoy this story, but... they felt uncomfortable. I'd like to devote a blogpost to that now, since they deserve some explanation.
As nuch as i was laughing while reading, the way older twi plays both celestia and twilight like a damn fiddle is disquieting.
Twilight says celestia still has choice but doesn't give her time to think before the dinner and she even sets up younger twis prank in motion.
I guess i just felt as if neither celestia or young twi had any agency to choose a path that wasn't what old twi planned. It just kind of ruined the romance of it for me.
You know the thing that bugs me about the whole story?
The question of "stable time loops/matters of the heart/paradox" was never viably answered.
If at some point Glitter-Flanks had stated she was from a possible future flat out, the entire thing would not only have flowed much better for me, but also not bugged me at all. I could easily believe that as a distant future Twilight who's learned to enjoy herself more. But the idea of a stable time loop setting a heart matter in stone was disquieting.
Now, the idea of a possible future going back to influence the past to cause that future to come to pass I can easily accept and embrace. But as long as it says that Glitter-Flanks is from the future instead of a future...it feels wrong.
Other than all that, I loved the story.
This is the point where I steeple my fingers and confirm that this is working as intended.
On the question of using closed time loops versus "a future that may yet come to pass", the episode It's About Time had already established the mechanics of time travel in the MLP universe and that closed time loops are "in". Now absolutely, I could have ignored canon here, especially since this story has Twitwi as a very powerful sorceress who circumvented that episode's "you can only use this spell once" rule and who manipulated time in a number of ways in this story. But ultimately I stuck to canon since it forced a more interesting question, which was part of what motivated me to write this in the first place.
Yes, the argument does deliberately get drowned out in butt wiggles and bodice ripping. Sure, Glitter-Flanks is allegedly the wiser (or at a minimum, the older) of the two. And of course, the narrative insinuates that the relationship is going to be happy and healthy in due time. Yet...
Princess Celestia offered a smirk. “It sounds like you’re just brushing over the issue.”
The light came back to Glitter-Flanks’s eyes, and she glanced up. “As are you.”
...they never truly reach a conclusion on the issue.
Early on, Celestia certainly shares in the discomfort of some of my readers. She was poised ("Checkmate in four, three, two") to nip this in the bud due to the uncomfortable implications of a predestined relationship. Glitter-Flanks's presumptuous attitude wore away at her quickly, until the point where Celestia snapped at her and asked her to leave.
Meanwhile, Glitter-Flanks sums up her argument succinctly and early: who cares if this is predestined? If you're happy, you're happy. She stuck to her guns there, and after showing some tantalizing images of the future, Glitter-Flanks persuaded Celestia that there was little to be lost from trying for an evening. Celestia relented, learned something about herself and about Twilight in the process, and ultimately by the end of the fic, she's enjoyed herself. The ends justify the means.
...right?
It is absolutely valid to point out that Glitter-Flanks's arrival was responsible for accelerating this romance by years, centuries, or possibly ever. A few readers commented that, even though reversing the power dynamic was The Point of the Story, it still felt disquieting how much control Glitter-Flanks had in the conversation. Now sure, Glitter-Flanks would argue that this is all moot because the two happy lovebirds ended up together, and that fretting over destiny and time loops and such is just missing the point.
If your destiny is to be happy, to be fully and truly content in your place in the universe, but as a result of that destiny, you forfeit the free will to choose a different destiny, does it matter? If your destiny is what would make you happiest, why would you leverage your free will to make a suboptimal choice? These are questions that have been asked and answered many times over with destiny's influence over cutie marks. Does it feel different when the subject is romance instead of cutie marks? Should it feel different?
And that's why I didn't have Celestia deliver a definitive resolution about whether or not Glitter-Flanks was justified in the end. As the author of the fic, I'm not sure if I know the answer yet.
Anyway, feel free to hash it out in the comments. For those of you who sadistically like them, I have not forgotten about a 300 follower blogpost; I simply wasn't ready for the rush of followers from Fork, so I still need time to put something together. Expect to see that blogpost in the next few days.
[1] This makes Fork my highest viewed story, dethroning MLCT from that place of honor. Don't get me wrong! I'm super excited that Fork was the massive success that it was. At the same time, that's a little weird, isn't it? That my most viewed fic for the past several years is now second. But long-running fics aren't going to gain additional views for no reason. If I want to attract more views back to MLCT, I'd have to update it, won't I?
Huh.
Hmm...
So the entire point of the story was to pose the question about fate vs free will regarding a happy 'fate'...and then not answer it?
Well, I must say that in that vein, you succeeded beyond the wildest imaginings. You posed the question, presented all the points...and then left it up to interpretation for everyone, readers and characters alike. Bravo, Pav...Bravo.
...and dare I hope that footnote means a MLCT update might be in the works?
I'd like to point out that starswirl already fixed this in amy keating rogers book the journal of the two sisters and invents a time travel spell that is unlimited but also as a consequence travels in age as well so using it makes him younger. it is also implied that he meets twilight in the future.
Completely ignoring the subject of this post, congrats on this story. Thanks to the "length" component of the mystery algorithm that powers the feature box, a 13k story generates a lot of heat, but only if people read it. The real miracle of this story is that it is a 13k story that everyone just sat down and read instead of resigning it to the functionally feature-irrelevant "Read Later" folder. That's sorcery, man. Total Alicorn Magic.
Hey Pav,
While I have yet to read Fork, I wanted to let you know that MLCT is one of my favourite fics in the fandom and you are absolutely a great writer.
Just thought you should know! Ta!
Good on you, PF! Now use the Twilestia momentum to go finish Thesis.
Let me just add one more thing to my list of "reasons why Twilight has the potential for being a super villain".
Let me start with: I fecking loved this story. Works on all the levels for me. :V
Stable Time Loops? Sure, nothing in the story broke and of the rules at all.
Stable, or self stabilizing, time loops are my personal preference for time-alterations. (Although if they are stable, are they really alterations?)
But that doesn't seem to be what the comic is about, it's free-will here isn't it?
Free-will is an issue to start with, as any universe with fully deterministic laws is demonstratively directly opposed to free-will.
As all choice is based upon the present and past interactions with calculable results, and made through deterministic processes.
And seeing as stable time-loops are stable, the original series of events would never occur if the time-loop didn't exist.
This particular viewpoint was already established in ponydom too, so it's easier to work with.
Now of course the ponyverse could be non-deterministic, Pinkie Pie is a good argument for this. But in this case, a stable time-loop cannot form, as each iteration could provide a different result, seeing as the world isn't deterministic, thus choices can change, and thus results can change from loop to loop.
Basically, either the loop is stable, but the free will question is already moot, as the universe itself determines that there is no free will.
Or the time-loop is unstable, and the question will be forgotten, as the events would eventually shift on their own.
It is a really interesting situation, but i don't see it quite as clear cut. Future Twi, for all her power and knowledge isn't omniscient nor unbiased. Shes travelled with a distinct agenda that she's going to pull out all the stops to sell.
For all that we know she may well be glossing over the future of cel and young twi. What happens when they come to disagree on little things, or bigger issues?
Do their pranks ever get out of hand? Are others hurt in the process of two alicorns one upping each other?
What costs do each pay as they live in the relationship? Does twi gradually lose touch with her other friends? Do her family feel the relationship is too unbalanced given the influence celestia has had over twilights formative years?
There's so many things that twi and cel need to think or plan for before they start. Including some critical stuff like what they want to do long term, how their values fit and what they think of foals.
By just going by old twis plan they might not put some thought into these kinds of issues assuming that old twi knows best and things will resolve themselves. That's not a great precedent. Cooperative problem solving suffers if they see the effort unnecessary.
Basically I think the way they got together could seed some problems for how they interact.
Let's have a look from a different angle.
Let's say they solve all these or figure everything out and set the relationship in a solid foundation for them and their friends and family. How much happiness comes from where? Are they happy because everything works so well, yes in this case right?
Would they also get happiness from knowing it's all set in stone re the time line. Or would that make them uneasy. That they are very locked into old twis path.
I wonder if that thought might suck some of the satisfaction of jobs well done. Would they feel that plans they make and actions they take are dulled by the inevitability.
The one above might not be a problem for young twi, given older twis opinion on it.
As yet all these are just possible but may not come to pass.
The one thing that will is the loop. Would celestia really be ok with twi going back and rail roading their past selves and not offering them any chance to choose for themselves? I don't think so. Celestia as little as we see her seems to support the autonomy of her ponies. She's happy to advise, assist and fight for them but she doesn't order them around. She was happy to give leadership of an empire to her neice, let ponies take up leadership of their own towns such as mayor abd encourage their harmonious diversity of ideas at that summit twi helped with.
Perhaps one of the best examples is her freeing of discord, an insanely powerful enemy but she thought he deserved a chance to choose a different path.
Even if the years pass by well till the point of the loop, the very event which sets the relationship in motion might be the one thing that will start or bring about it's end.
That's my thoughts on it anyway, while thinking in the early morning.
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Workin' on it!
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Many thanks! 13k was just sort of a happy accident in terms of fleshing this out, and indeed I was worried about the tl;dr response. If I had to guess, I think part of what helped was the lack of a proper breaking point. The bit between Twilight receiving the dress and Twilight arriving for dinner would be the logical point to add a chapter break, but I didn't really wanna give Celestia that much time to stew things over. So I just didn't have a gap there, and that didn't allow readers a breaking point to set it down and walk away. Which, for 13k, was a gamble I was worried about, but it seemed to work out in the end.
Though of course, the coverart was fantastic too, and the tiny epilogue chapter generated a bit more heat than a one-shot would.
Oh and I guess the story itself was neat too.
So...when're ya gonna give me another chapter of MLCT to edit? *begs cutely*
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That is a very clever argument, but it is possible to have a stable time loop in a nondeterministic universe. Your potentially-incorrect assumption is that causality is always forward-propagating in time and never backwards-propagating. A stable time loop only requires two points on a timeline to be fixed. The path between those two can be nondeterministic, even when the two points are fixed. In other words, the future from which Glitter Flanks came may be fixed, and the present to which she arrived may be fixed, but anything goes for all of the events between the two, other than whatever tiny amount of information Glitter brought back with her.
Incidentally, our universe seems to behave like this. "Causality" in the above paragraph is used in the intuitive sense. In the quantum mechanical sense, it's not so clear-cut. The short version is that the universe doesn't make a "decision" until it has to, and "later" events can affect a set of "earlier" possibilities without fully specifying them.
Congrats on writing a complete 13,000 word story, something I've never been able to do
You should meet some people from the Middle East.
They really seem to be bound on "doing it their way", ready to burn their own homes down just so that nobody would impose their fire safety standards on them. Any solution to any problem they have, no matter how right, is wrong if it's not *their* solution. And with hundreds of factions, each with own set of solutions... we have the Middle East.
Frankly, I've never understood people who would make a suboptimal choice just to express their freedom to choose. Headcanon and fanfics that present cutie marks or the Elements of Harmony as evil because they take away freedom always come off as odd to me for that reason, because the ponies are clearly quite happy with the way things are. If they truly don't have freedom, well... they don't seem to miss it very much.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I really would much rather live under a benevolent dictatorship than a corrupt democracy.
I know exactly how you feel when an Anxiety attack kicks in, for me it completely disables me and i convince myself i can't do anything, which then also causes panic attacks plus then put my depression on the top then i have a living nightmare and it takes a lot to put me straight again, but i haven't had such a major attack in a few mouths so i spend most of my time supporting others and proof reading stories, so if your anxiety starts to play up just PM or Skype me
Now i loved your story, i needed something like that to fuel the Twilestia shipper in me, which is now very happy (which in fact i might start mine). You probably now own my favorite Twilestia story which i was surprised, this will be a boost for you to make a very success writer in the coming future.
Although when i did a story and it got very popular in Fanfiction, i hoped off my computer went straight out the door and ran for 3 miles before getting hit by a car, but i was so happy i didn't care.
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Let me know when you publish it!
Awesome! I mean, that you're writing a fic, not that you got hit by a car.