• Member Since 17th Jan, 2012
  • offline last seen 6 hours ago

Skywriter


loves tiaras.

E
Source

The stand-alone prologue to "Contraptionology!" In a world where forest fires (well, a forest fire) run(s) rampant, the fate of Ponyville – this week, at least – lies in the capable hooves of the greatest scientific genius ever to walk the surface of Equestria...

...Pinkie Pie.

Now with a Spanish translation by Spaniard Kiwi!

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 102 )

I just wanted to say thanks. I was worrying whether I had a chance to win, but then I read your story and thought 'damn, this is good stuff!' So, I might not win, but I'm glad someone with a better story is gonna win (if it's not gonna be yours, it better be awesome)

That was glorious. I've read approximately 40-some stories in this competition so far, and yours is the third one I've run into that doesn't have glaring spelling and grammatical errors. Plus, it's a great story and your dialogue is superb.

A little restraint with the dialogue tags wouldn't hurt, though. :twilightsheepish:

Out of the couple dozen entries that I've (tried to) read, yours is the first one that I not only got all the way through, but was thoroughly entertained by. My only complaint, and I'm going to guess you simply ran out of either time and/or word count cap space, was the lack of seeing the crisis being averted.

Needless to say, this story earned my vote, and I would love to see a continuation of what you've written here, as Twilight, Pinkie, and Spike head off to the college to investigate what happened. Again, great job!

I haven't read too many stories so far, but I actually finished and enjoyed this one, so VERY nice job! So far, it's definitely my favourite. Good luck!

246801
"A little restraint with the dialogue tags wouldn't hurt, though."

Working in comics has completely killed any capacity I ever had to produce dialogue without visual augmentations. Guilty as charged.

295079 Unrelated to my prior comment, just moments ago I was patting myself on the back for my consistent taste in stories--this story was one of the bare few I tracked during the competition to find out who the authors were, and Observatory Hill is one of my favorite fics in the fandom. :heart:

295099
I guess that means my style is consistent enough, as well!

Glad I'm two for two with you. :twilightsmile:

Skywriter, I think you are now one of my top... 5 or so... favorite authors in this fandom.


328832
Yay! Thanks so much! (Awesome, rock on, hoof-bump, etc.)

Scientific progress goes SKRONK, apparently. :pinkiehappy:

Awesome! 'You distract the troops with those pies while Pinkie and I go off and do something titanically stupid' has to be one of the best lines from any fic I've read :)

That was an enjoyable read. Thank you. :heart:

Haha! What a hilarious read! Well done, good sir!

... wait, Jeffrey C. Wells? Channing? :twilightoops: Is that really you?

456153
You know Twi is pretty far gone when she's throwing herself wholeheartedly into plans even she can't figure out how to make sound good.

457098
Thanks for reading and responding!

459816
In the pixels, as it were. Small Internet, no? PM incoming.

it's buddy mark II *giggles*

(note, the previous statement will only make sense to a relatively small group of people, if even them because it's been a long time and I might be confused. Though right now I swear it was buddy and not the lemur that made that sound.)

As usual love the story, can't really think of anything else to say.

460818
Lemurs say "Frink", "Wheeooo", "Cheep", and very occasionally, under duress, "Ptang". Gender-confused dinosaurs say "Rawr".

Ah, the good old days.

598260
DV remembers a very old story I wrote when I was learning how to write fiction. It's an in-joke from that.

What i look for in a story is if its fun to read. This was definitely fun to read.

I don't even know how, but it makes so much sense, Pinkie being genius engineer and stuff... :pinkiegasp:
Now to read Contraptionology... :pinkiehappy:

Mad scientist Pinkie Pie is ridiculously entertaining. It just makes sense, for some odd reason. Then again, Pinkie Pie is kinda like a nexus of strange nonsense (at least in fanon) so I guess it not making sense makes perfect sense.
.
.
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Does that even make sense?

"All very fascinating and simultaneously confusing and distressing,"

One of the best lines I've read for some time and a perfect sum of this fic. I loved it! :twilightsmile:

707568
I think it does!

717947
I like this line when I hear it delivered in Twilight's voice in my head. It kind of has the same inflection as "Very efficient, and a little bit gross!" from "Lesson Zero"

That was brilliant. Have a :twilightsmile:.

This was a beautiful story. The characters were dead-on, and Pinkie's non-chalant dismissal of her P.H.D. (!) in contraptionalogy was exactly the kind of thing she would do.

A wonderful piece of work, I'm really looking forward to reading Contraptionology!
:eeyup:

1343761, 1305976
Thanks, guys! Aardwolf, hope I keep it going for you in the next work!

the fate of Ponyville – this week, at least – lies in the capable hooves of the greatest scientific genius ever to walk the surface of Equestria... pinkie pie

Without even READING this....... were doomed

1523436
Yes, but not in the way you think!

Also, stupid question, but what's the UBB code for a blockquote like that?

1527114 Erm... i just clicked the quote button besides the youtube one and copied/pasted

1573265
Holy crap! I should really learn some of the functionality of this site one day. Thank you; a test click has now given me the UBB code I need.

Humiliatingly, it is "quote".

One more step down the road to having nine-year-olds program my DVD player, I guess. Le sigh.

Hye you know Andrea Libman, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy's voice actor has a degree in engineering, now you know that Pinkie Pie really IS a genuis. :eeyup:

1598395
I did not know that! My enjoyment has been doubled!

1573281
No worries, I'm right there with ya. I swear, I know nothing of computers despite being a 21-year-old college student. It never fails to be shocking to others and humiliating to me. :ajsleepy:
Also, I've not read Contraptionology since I swore off incomplete fics awhile back; does it tell how the party cannon works?!? I'm extremely curious now. My guess is that it has an internal battery that can somehow draw energy from Pinkie Pie herself. That'd explain how she gobbles sweets without gaining weight while rectifying the issue with conservation of energy. She swallows cakes, her naturally speedy and extremely efficient metabolism converts them to raw energy with practically 100% efficiency, and said energy is added to the cannon until enough is gathered for party creation. Am I close? :derpytongue2:

1614944
It's as good an explanation as any! Truth to tell, the Party Cannon plays almost no role in "Contraptionology!"; without too many spoilers, Twilight swears Pinkie to silence on the topic of the cannon, and it is never mentioned again. There are bigger issues at stake. :pinkiehappy:

I think we're on track to finish "Contraptionology!" by the end of the year. Keep watching!

1600283
As someone who also has a degree in engineering, my enjoyment too has been lots-tupled! :pinkiehappy:

Waaaitaminute waitaminute wait a minute...

That story image... is that a mare-portable fusion pie in the blueprint there?:facehoof::rainbowlaugh:

2330187
Ha, I wish! It appears to be a rock pie, instead.

"Duke of Geld "
[](/raritywut) so he is like the duke of chopping people's nuts off?

2492392
More or less! It was a pun, meant to evoke both the word "gelid" (extremely cold) and the equine, ah, surgical practice. Taken as a whole, I wanted readers to come away with "So Cold It Will Freeze Your Wossnames Off".

I really do want to move on to reading some new stuff, so I think I'll just skim this to remind myself what I wanted to say comment-wise. This makes me feel a little lame, but hopefully you won't feel fleeced.

Sometimes, I swear, reading these stories makes for as good a writing lesson as anything I'm going to get out of my listening tour of Brandon Sanderson. It starts like this.

Here's the first thing you need to know:

I almost feel like I could stop critiquing right here. Eight words in, and this story has me fully committed. It is unfair.

Well, no, that's a poor way to characterize it. It's eminently fair. It's fantastic writing, and it's a learned skill. And I need to improve it, if I want to be able to deliver like this. It's eight words, sure, and I'm spending closer to 60 talking about them, but those eight words tell a story.

Moving on.

Dah! I'm not really sure how to handle this "only having positive things to say" situation. I mean, I could try to pick it apart and be all, "I see what you did there," but it's not like attempting to analyze something you constructed is helpful to you (except possibly in the sense of getting kicks out of what your readers notice in your stories). And frankly, your stories are too tight for me to have a very easy time picking them apart. I hardly have time to dwell on the ideas you plant before you shuffle me along to the next awesome thing you have in store. There are two things I think are probably worth mentioning about this story, though.

First of all, I never picked up on the reasoning behind the name Iggy in "Contraptionology" for whatever reason. It finally hit me when I read this the first time. It was, of course, a wonderful choice.

Second, I do believe this is the best Pinkie Pie characterization I've read anywhere so far. Now yes, you're bending her character a little for story purposes and to make her your own, but the thing that so consistently impresses me here is how she'll just drift off into "WoooOOOOooo", or... well, really, I could pick just about any sentence involving Pinkie. I think I consider a solid majority of them pitch-perfect – the others merely being excellent. Her reaction to thinking of Iggy lost in the forest, burning it down. Her description of the uses of salamanders in geologic agriculture. The way in which everything seems either perfectly intuitive or perfectly obtuse to her. ...I like the Rainbow Dash photo bit, but I think that's probably the weakest point in her characterization for me in this story. And I suspect that many, many of your readers would consider that, too, to be a triumph of characterization. For me, as I said above, it's merely "excellent". Y'know, like, "about as good as I'd possibly expect in a non-Skywriter story".

It's embarrasing, how few chinks I can find in your armor.

Oh, incidentally, did you see the EqD Lauren Faust twitter report where she effectively gave Word of God support to the portrayal of Nightmare in Contraptionology? I was told you've met her in person. Did you have a leg up on this one, or was your foresight just that good? Either way, I continue to be impressed.

2519773
Lauren has made some oblique public comments to this effect in the past, and that's what this portrayal rests on. That Q&A was I believe the first time it's been said so concisely, however. No insider info here!

Yay! You might be surprised by how few people actually know what a 'spinel' is...

2898682
I was running out of semiprecious pink stones! :pinkiesmile:

A good enough story by itself, but it becomes a lot more interesting read in the context of the sequel. The roots of Contraptionology are very clear here, not only on a thematic or world-building level, but also in the writing style, the pacing, and so on. Still, it is kinda half-baked, and seeing the growth between both is a pleasure.

3025438
While advertised as "stand-alone," it was more or less clear to me from the beginning that this was only a fragment of a larger narrative. Thanks for reading!

This is insane.

How did you write this? Really, I wish to know!

3410039
I dunno. I got a writing prompt ("forest fire") and the entire rest of "Contraptionology!" just sort of happened.

"And you see," repeated Pinkie, pointedly, "what happened there."

Well played, Pinkie. Why, I almost expect you to start talking about the nuclear reactor in your basement next.

contraptionological

More like contraptionillogical.

while Pinkie and I go off and do something titanically stupid."

Sounds like a plan!

the financial security of our entire village is assured for all eternity and everypony can have anything they want, whenever they want, in whatever quantity that they want, from now until the end of time,

Um, Twilight, perhaps some friendly human might want to share with you why the Spanish Empire fell. Quick hint: overabundance and subsequent devaluation of resources like gold and gems.

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