"Oh, well, you see," Celestia said, punctuating the statement with a sip of tea, "alicorns don't write novels."
Twilight Sparkle — who had been nattering about the editing she was doing for the Daring Do fanfic that Rainbow Dash was so proud of, and how Dash's enthusiasm was inspiring her to pen some adventure stories of her own that were thinly fictionalized versions of their exploits, because they say that you should write what you know, and now that Ponyville had multiple aspiring authors she was thinking of starting up a writer's group, and given that there was an entire bookshelf devoted to Celestia in the library she figured that the princess would have some outstanding advice to pass along, and would Celestia consider being a guest speaker even though it might not be quite her area of expertise because Twilight was having a strangely difficult time finding any works of fiction attributed to Equestria's solar diarch — blinked, her brain slamming to a halt.
Then the unicorn simply stared, as if Celestia had sprouted a second horn.
"That's not to say that you shouldn't," Celestia added. "I quite enjoy reading fiction, in fact."
"But."
"Come now," Celestia teased. "Surely this can't be a surprise. You run a library, and you've searched quite hard for my works. The political discourses you stocked my bookshelf with are horrible, by the way. I can't imagine anyone would willingly read them."
"But," Twilight tried again. "Why?"
"They outline hypothetical benefits of a maddeningly vague theory of governance mediated through several levels of bureaucracy that if genuinely implemented would result —"
"I meant —" Twilight blurted out, then snapped her mouth shut, unwilling to interrupt.
"— in institutional paralysis and the complete collapse of …" Celestia trailed off, giggling in that delicate way that always made Twilight feel like she was somehow in on the joke. "Oh, Twilight. I know what you meant. The answer is, we don't need to."
"But," Twilight repeated, as if the word were jammed in the gears of her brain. Her muzzle curled into an unfocused intensity, and the jam worked itself loose with an almost physical crunch. "You're literary. You spend at least an hour each day writing letters. You love puns and wordplay. You gave me amazing worldbuilding advice when I was writing that fantasy history about the Diamond Dog Kingdom. You even made up a lullaby for me, once. I've still got it memorized. How can you not write novels?" She stared earnestly into Celestia's eyes, and added, "Not need to write novels?"
"To write a novel is to be born out of time," Celestia said. "An author can't be satisfied with the world as it is, and must fight with words to describe the world as it could be."
"That's true of all art. You've just described creativity. Surely you're not saying that alicorns aren't creative?"
"But it's not true of all art equally," Celestia said, staring at her teacup in a manner that promised elaboration. Twilight waited patiently as her teacher took a long sip, swirling the liquid around in her muzzle and downing it in first a dainty swallow then a deep one. "Music is a product of its time; I'd be rather surprised if you've ever heard a song older than a few hundred years. Visual art is fragile; it survives despite the ages, not because of them. But words? Stories? They're for those who seek immortality. When you live long enough, Twilight, you learn to take joy in creating as a response to the life that unfolds in front of you. Creating as an act of celebration, not as an act of escape."
"But you've never written a novel?" Twilight sounded horrified. "I refuse to believe it. Refuse!"
Celestia laughed, sweet and throaty. "Such confidence you have in me, my faithful student. May I share a deep and private secret, which you must never repeat to anypony else?"
Twilight's fire sputtered away all at once, a torch carried out into a blizzard of sudden emotion. "O-of course," she said, voice hushed, eyes wide.
Celestia glanced around, then leaned in and whispered conspiratorially: "1837."
Twilight blinked several times. "You … wrote a novel that year?" Her face lit up. "Wait, don't tell me the title! I bet I can discover it on my own." Her smile spread. "I can cross-reference the Royal Canterlot Archive annual publication records with the compiled bibliographies by author to find ponies with only one novel. This is going to be so exciting!" Her eyes flicked around animatedly as she ran her tongue around the inside of her teeth, lost in thought. "Of course, since it was written under a pseudonym —"
"They were."
Twilight's tongue halted mid-lick.
"Every last one," Celestia added, struggling to keep her expression level.
"Every …" Twilight said. "Every." She swallowed. "One thousand eight hundred novels?!"
"And thirty-seven. Under a total of 152 names." Celestia took a measured sip of tea and recomposed herself. "Partially to help me keep straight the various writing styles I've toyed with over the millennia, but mostly for the guilty pleasure of hearing academics hold passionate arguments over which of me wrote the best book of all time." She smiled immodestly. "Depending on the fashions of the age, I'm usually around half of the top ten."
"How … how could you hide that from everyone? Ponykind should know."
"No, Twilight, they really shouldn't," Celestia said with gentle reproach. "Wholly aside from the undesirable effects it would have on my ego, it would be a disservice to them. I am not only ponykind's princess, but their sun; my role must not be to outshine them, but to illuminate them. What would happen if it were to be revealed that I had written several thousand books, and many of Equestria's best-known? At a single stroke, I would destroy the discipline of literature. It would deter many ponies from writing, as they concluded that even a full lifetime's worth of the most magnificent work would only ever be a pale shadow of my own. Then there would be the ponies who would feel obligated to waste their best decades in reading and analyzing my corpus, searching for wisdom they could better find in living their lives. In truth, I ought not dare write at all."
Twilight nodded numbly. "Oh. I … I'm sorry."
Celestia sighed, looking wryly down into her teacup. "But you're right. I'm afflicted with the curse of the literary soul. Each and every one of those novels was a guilty pleasure — a release not unlike a colt exploring himself at night before sleep, hoping his sire and dam don't walk in. At least the ponies whose identities I overtook got some profit and fame out of it — an escape out of a destroyed life." Her face fell. "Though I wonder, often, how much of a blessing it really was. As much as they thanked me, as glad as they were for our deal, to have to go to sleep every night knowing that none of their success was their own, and knowing that they couldn't ever write anything of their own without exposing the scheme …"
Twilight gave Celestia a hopeful smile. "I'd do that. For you, I mean."
"One hundred and fifty-two ponies did." Celestia sipped her tea. "I'd rather you not be one of them."
"I'm serious," Twilight said, stung. "It would be worth it, to see something I knew you'd written. And I can't think of a greater honor than to have such amazing stories written in my name."
"I have never offered my deal to anypony with either literary talent or ambition. I would much rather burn manuscript #1838 than deny the world a single Twilight Sparkle novel." Celestia grinned. "Even if her hero's mentor is so perfect as to make all her scenes excruciating."
Twilight blushed. "Well, I'm hardly going to start inventing flaws."
Celestia gave Twilight a laugh that she didn't quite know how to interpret, and said, "Then I look forward to you finding some."
A few bonus lines cut from this chapter:
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It's funny; "Canterbury" is a perfectly acceptable pony place name unaltered, so you were forced to alter it anyway.
All deference to Twilight Sparkle Micro Series #1 aside, I don't believe for a second that a ponified version of The Catcher in the Rye is Twilight's favorite book of all time. I would much sooner believe that The Canterbury Tales is.
A lovely short, as usual.
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With all due respect to the Micro Series' canon status … you've got to be kidding me. Element of Friendship Twilight Sparkle's favorite book being the manifesto of misunderstood and alienated teenagers?
… okay, on further consideration, that actually makes sense, but clearly she read it way back before being sent to Ponyville.
Present-day Twilight I see as more of a genre fiction reader, enjoying the Equestrian equivalent of transhumanist sci-fi. Though she might enjoy romance novels as a guilty pleasure, a fantasy escape into a world in which she has little direct experience and diminished (though improving) prospects. I'll agree with you on Canterberry (yeah, it didn't feel right to use a pre-existing pun as written) given her repeatedly demonstrated interest in Equestrian history.
Thanks!
There is nothing unjust in taking pride in 145 uninterrupted thoughts.
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The Catcher in the Rye was a truly awful book, wasn't it?
I only vaguely remember Canterbury Tales boring the tar out of me, so I assume it was pretty bad too.
I hate books we study only because they're "classics."
Also, I like the phrase, "her brain slammef shut."
Mostly because I know exactly what that feels like.
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I'm not Skywriter, but I didn't think Catcher was bad, it just seemed completely out of character for Twilight. Canterbury Tales, on the other hand, I suspect is wasted on high schoolers. Reading it in its original Middle English means it's nigh incomprehensible without exhaustive annotations, and reading it in translation ruins a lot of the point of studying the classics. I think it's better saved for college, and a chance to dig further into the story. I know I got a whole lot more out of The Odyssey (college, with lots of discussions about ancient Greek culture from scholars who knew their stuff) than I ever did out of Canterbury (high school, with an English teacher who made us memorize and recite a few lines from the opening as we hurried through it on the way to something else). Whan that Aprille, with its shoures sote, the droghte of March hath percèd to the rote …
Well, lots of people have talked about the psychological effects of immortality, but I've never seen someone tackle this angle before. Thumbs up.
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"Catcher in the Rye" is one of those books which are very well-crafted and genuinely important and meaningful in their context. To an alienated teenager in 1951, reading it must have been a life-changing experience.
But now it's 2014, and the past is a different country. I remember, back when I was in high school in late '90s, that I wanted to give Holden Caulfield a swift kick in the behind because his world and mine were so different that to fully relate to him required more maturity and perspective and experience than a teenager, alienated or not, of the modern day would have.
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Heh.
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I consider them fanfiction, because they don't have any bearing on what is or isn't canon in the show, and the show is free to contradict them.
Badly written fanfiction. I mean seriously, shipping Celestia x Sombra? No taste at all.
Admittedly, I've thought about this myself, but really, I'm not sure that this stops people in real life - we all know Celestia is a damn hack anyway, gotta write our AWESOME STORIES.
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Yeah, The Canterbury Tales are not for people who don't already have a great deal of life experience, can deal with a foreign cultural perspective, and are willing to wade through the odd structure. Asking High School students to appreciate it is pure insanity.
That said, it's a masterful example of how to write clearly delineated characters, and tell stories from those character's various POVs. Some of them are pretty dull for the modern reader, as you might expect a story told by a medieval nun to be, but others are absolute treasures.
And frankly, The Miller's Tale is hilarious! If you're not down with Middle English, try this version: The Miller's Tale. Scroll down to the "Here begins the Miller's Tale" heading if you want to skip the prologue.
I want to listen to this conversation. Repeatedly.
welp, I clicked a bunch of buttons and I have no idea what I'm doing.
Anyway, this was a fun and interesting take on Celestia's character and background.
I read this on Present Perfect's recommendation, and was not disappointed. It was interesting. Though I don't think it makes sense. Celestia says:
1. "An author can't be satisfied with the world as it is, and must fight with words to describe the world as it could be."
2. "Stories? They're for those who seek immortality. "
3. "When you live long enough, Twilight, you learn to take joy in creating as a response to the life that unfolds in front of you. Creating as an act of celebration, not as an act of escape." [Implying that authors write as an act of escape, and never as an act of celebration.]
4. "What would happen if it were to be revealed that I had written several thousand books, and many of Equestria's best-known? At a single stroke, I would destroy the discipline of literature."
These are all different arguments, with no connections drawn between them. The first three are wrong.
Hi, everyone! Clearly I need to get Present Perfect to give me Conditional recommendations more often.
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For further Chaucer bonus points, Thou Goddess quotes from a ponified version of the Wife of Bath's tale.
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You and me both. I really like how this version of Celestia came out.
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Thanks for the kind words, and the bookshelving!
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Kudos for being the first to specifically question those. It may help to examine the arguments in the context of the overall story.
We learn by the end that the first line of the piece —
— is a lie. The first three arguments are delivered while she's still trying to defend that statement.
I think #1 and #3 are, if not identical, at least similar, and Twilight rips #1 apart:
#2 is self-refuted by the fact that Celestia does write novels.
Using #4 to explain her lack of novels would require admitting that she wrote some.
Hopefully that puts a new spin on it.