On The Natural Rise And Fall of Celestial Bodies - Royal Exam Sneak Peek · 5:05pm Nov 19th, 2015
Writeoff Confession Time: I wrote On The Natural Rise And Fall of Celestial Bodies which has now been published on FimFiction. I have said before that I cannot write a deep, thoughtful feeling fic about a funeral without having a whoopie cushion somewhere in it. This only goes to prove my point.
My original idea was a deep and thoughtful fic about the passing of the Sun and Moon to Cadence and Twilight, but the longer I typed, the more I realized that was not going to happen. Still, the punch line requires as much dramatic buildup as possible, so I took it right up to that point and saved it into the writeoff site, thinking I’d finish it up later on Fimfiction. That way the humorous part would be a second optional chapter with possibly a note that would say “If you like the story so far, STOP!”
So I had a nice, short dramatic fic on the Writeoff site… and I had to add the second part anyway because I’m a cruel bastard. And I *didn’t* put the second part as a second chapter because some people would have just skipped it, thinking it was more of the same. Read, enjoy, and comment.
So, moving on to Royal Exam...
* ✹ ☽ *
It has now taken me eight months to write 48 hours. Seriously. The last scene to be published was the poisoning attempt at the griffon diplomatic dinner, which is 48 Hours and 20 minutes until Zero Hour. Ye gads. It’s also around 60k words.
I’d like to take this moment to pass on a special thanks to Tek, who has been tireless in his efforts to keep me on track and sounding somewhat coherent. I think he’s commented and corrected the document every day I’ve added something for the last eight months. If I ever get to a pony convention that he’s at, I’m buying stuff for him. Food, at the very least.
So starting next week when I have a little time, I’ll start releasing the chapters one per day until the end. The Gdocs source document is broken down into three halves and cross-linked, so anybody who wants to sort through my deathly prose and edit/proofread/critique/correct, drop me a line and I’ll drop you a link so you can comment freely.
My intent is to start at Chapter 1 and make needed updates (yes, I’ll correct fiancé) through the document, clean up comments, and upload to FimFiction as I go… and then go back and fix even more stuff that gets found and repeat the process. It’s amazing how the upload process shows typos that have evaded my every effort to eradicate. As an example, there’s a rather funky issue with “☽” that showed up recently. That’s a First Quarter Moon which is a little different than ‘Crescent Moon 1F319’ which I found inside Gdocs “Insert Special Characters” menu. FimFiction and even Gdocs got really weird when I tried to use the second character. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it truncated the copied/pasted document at that point. Computers is weird.
Anywho, here’s a sneak peek at the poor stallion and his situation:
* * * ♥ * * *
One at a time, Twilight’s friends had come down the aisle, paired off with their groomstallions, and ascended up the ramp to what Green Grass could not help but think of as the stage where the main event was about to happen. The Cutie Mark Crusaders (plus one) had managed their blossom scattering path without major bloodshed first, of course, stopping in front of the two princesses where Apple Bloom had announced in a loud voice, “Which way do we go again, Princess Luna?” The rest of the more adult members of the wedding party had been much more subdued, with Frost and Spike both blushing brilliantly during their walk as more than a few ‘Dawww’s’ drifted up from the attentive crowd.
They really do make a cute couple.
“Nervous?” asked Shining Armor out of the side of his mouth without moving his lips as they watched Cadence proceed slowly and majestically down the aisle towards them. She was the last and tallest bridlemaid, leaving only one mare still in the pavilion.
“Terribly,” admitted Green Grass in much the same fashion.
“Wait about a minute,” whispered Shining Armor. “It will all go away, and you’ll be fine. Just wait.”
And then Shining Armor was gone, stepping forward to escort his own alicorn bride up to the tallest point in the yard where all of their friends were waiting for two last ponies. His nerves could have been used as harp strings as Lyra and the rest of the musical group finished their processional, but fortunately the only muscle movements Green Grass needed to do was respiration and… there was something else, but he could not remember what. He was frozen in place with the entire rest of the wedding audience in the red and gold rays of the setting sun, painting the entire castle yard with a cosmic paintbrush that would have bankrupted their hefty budget.
Fluttershy led her brightly-colored birds into the wedding march, with trills and chirps that could be heard all around the perfect silence of the outdoor theatre. Eyes closed, mane flowing in the breeze with the conductor’s baton in her teeth, the yellow pegasus fairly glowed with life in the setting rays of sunlight as she bobbed her head along with the music.
...and Princess Twilight Sparkle stepped out of the pavilion.
It was the exact moment that Shining Armor had mentioned. The paralysis that had gripped him faded away as if it had been blown away by the breeze. At that moment, he could have been stark naked, painted in ice cream and doing a Morris dance and nopony would have noticed. He knew the rest of the attendees were still there, as well as Night Light striding along slowly at her side, but all he could see was the backs of heads. He stole a look at Shining Armor, who was concealing a sly grin, and then turned back to stare at the beautiful alicorn that everypony was there to see.
It was wonderful. And he couldn’t remember a single line he was supposed to say.
(Courtesty of Wall-art.com)
Awesome!
yay!
(I got this peculiar feeling that little note was put in there specifically for me. How odd
)
I'm so psyched! I'd help preread, if I had any time =__= Good luck anyways, and I'm looking forward to reading chapters!
3553799 Would I do that? Me?
3565289
Don't forget it's "fiancée" when applied to Twilight. Because French, and gender-adapting words. Her fiancé, his fiancée
(And if you think that's bad, in actual French "her" and "his" would be switched in that, because possessive determiners in French aren't gendered according to who/what they refer to, but are, like all articles, adjusted to the gender of the following word. That took some time to wrap my head around in French class
)