Comments ( 75 )
Eakin #1 · Apr 4th, 2014 · · ·

Let's just get this out of the way:

Monoraiiiiiiiiiill!
Monoraiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!
Monoraiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!

Mono- :facehoof: D'OH!

This can only go one way:

4180725

You obviously ride polyrails

Wow, I didn't realize my thumbs up was worth ten. Yay for lag.

I don't get it. Twilight slept all morning all the way until the evening this iteration, so why is she still tired?

They'll work it out somehow. They've got all the time in the world...

Alright....after reading through that whole thing.......I still have no idea what the FUCK just happened....mind explaining anypony?:derpyderp2:

Why is it that monorails are portrayed as decrepit and falling apart?

also, in case anyone didn't get it, this is a reference to the Langoliers.

I don't get any of this... mah brain is becoming confuzzlinated

:applejackunsure: I hear those things are awfully loud...

I liked it...

It's like a cross between the Langoliers and Source Code, with some third element I can't quite place.

I absolutely love it.

This is featured already.

k then.

So, I'm most likely on board with everypony else here, not quite getting this and all, but it kind of seems like that when she used Starswirl's underlying spell, she created a time-paradox that trapped her in a single day, which in turn causes her to not age ever is what it seems like from what she says to them. It's very confusing, but I honestly enjoyed this story. It was a great read, albeit different from what I usually read.

This is some seriously Twilight Zone shit right here.

Shame you didn't release this on April 1st...

Would have been a hell of a mind fuck seeing it under RainbowBob's name...

~Skeeter The Lurker

4180750 the best in the nation

Aaand into the Time Loop group we go. This story is SO GOOD (although we could see the pony sleeping there having a role in this from a mile away. Still, great job) :rainbowkiss:

4180945
While I haven't the firmest grasp, here is what I believe I have gathered from this. Note that I am currently in the beginning stages of sleep deprivation and this may be entirely incorrect.

Twilight completed a spell created by Starswirl the Bearded. In completing and casting the spell, she was turned into an Alicorn. Fearing immortality and outlasting those she loved, she cast another spell which Starswirl had made, sending her back in time to some allotted time before she casts the spell. She cannot even remember how long she has been doing this (days, weeks, months, years even), but she has discovered a flaw in the time travel spell: the present refuses to allow the past to exist. Obviously undesired results of the time-travel spell.

So, in an attempt to keep herself from becoming immortal, she has come to face her own mortality sooner than she had imagined, and thus keeps casting the spell in between the few times she can sleep to avoid the world of the past caving in on itself as the present continues. However, as she has discovered, the spell has an aura which can envelop the ponies around her.

So she tries to find secluded places where there will be the least effect of living things. She had thought that the monorail car in this story, where she was resting, was empty, but, as she cast the spell, it ensnares the other ponies in the same car. As the past begins to implode, the present begins to fill in the newly cleared space (thus the disappearance of the newspaper articles from "today" and the appearance of "tomorrow's" train). Though she is reluctant to cast the spell again, the past iterations of the ponies on the train beg Twilight to save them, pushing her to continue the loop before they are effectively crushed by the imploding universe.

And so the three "yesterday" ponies are caught in the loop with Twilight, likely destined to keep doing the same thing for eternity unless Twilight can find a way to fix the balance between past and present.



So, all in all, a massive mind-f*ck.

4181492 this post is also a massive mind-f*ck

Anyone gone bowling with a pupmkin? Its great fun till you have to pay the Bill for to fix the ball return machine

4181510
I had noticed. It's legitimately hard to summarize this story without it coming out as such.

How many times have we all lived today? Or is it yesterday?

This was good, but there's a reason I don't intentionally read time loop stories. They fuck with my head too much.

I was hoping the monorail would demand a riddling contest. Let-down. :unsuresweetie:

You can't fight fate. Well, you can, you just can't win. The past is another country, one with very strict immigration procedures.

Hauntingly fascinating story, skirts. Thank you for it. :twilightsmile:

Time loops are certainly 'cooly crispies' and not to mention UTTERLY HORRIFYING. Seriously, time loops scare me to no end.

A riff off of The Langoliers? This is just what I needed.

Once again, you do not disappoint.

holy shit! this was FUCKING AMAZING i cannot begin to describe the amount of suspense and mystery i felt in this as more and more plot twists came in, it went from the twilight zone to something from an episode of doctor who! you handled it perfectly and the big reveal was actually easy to understand! which is something that i don't really see in plot twists. and the ending OH THE ENDING

so nice job!

I honestly think Twilight should've seen this coming, time lewps are scurry bro!

I don't read your stories very often, but I'm noticing a trend: the first parts spend a great deal of time on character interactions, then it's followed by something insane happening, kind of like the baseball one or whatever it was. Still a cool story, though. I grew up watching the Langoilers and managed to read the novella in high school. Both are pretty good but the book is way less silly.

Should have rode The People Mover... :rainbowwild:

You had to fuck up my mind before I take a test. Dammit now I'm going to think about this all day, trying to figure how timeloop works. DAMMIT

10/10 would mind fuck again.

Hmm...

Well, Skirts, you probably know by now that I'm not a fan of most of your darker works, mainly due to them always ending in "Then they all died" or "Then they were trapped in eternal suffering." Obviously, this story falls into... one of those two categories. Honestly not sure. I mean yeah, like 4181492 said, Vinyl, Noteworthy, and Cloud Kicker were all zapped back to the beginning, so it would appear they were trapped. However, Noteworthy sees that Twilight is not there this time right before it starts again, meaning that once shit winds down this time, they have no way to escape.

Even still, I really liked this. As per usual, you do a great job of making the characters feel real and the interactions natural. The slow buildup was very well done—I especially loved the repeating door gag—and the reveal was... er, revealed at the perfect pace. Also liked the refreshingly new take on the Twimortal thingy. My only real criticism would be that you left what would happen to them a bit too vague, and the whole "tomorrow reasserting itself" was a bit hazy, as well.

Still, very creepy, and I could totally see this as an episode of the Twilight Zone. Great job, Grorious Reader! :ajsmug:



Also, Cloud Kicker trapped in eternal suffering? I am okay with this!

Wow, that was amazing. Really interesting idea.

Everyone is a particle. Existing in both space and time simultaneously, this group of ponies become caught in a spell that tries to reverse time. Unfortunately, you can not simply eradicate time from space and not wind up blowing the entire universe into nothing.

*Spoilers*



Basically, to me, when Twilight did her little trick it caused a massive hole to open in the fabric of space-time. Twilight had essentially created a point in which time was nonexistent and has to repeatedly create that same hole to avoid being consumed by the universe.

Like a percolator with only a slight bit of coffee left, Twilight and gang just keep cycling through their inescapable paradox.

This explains why, when Vinyl opened the door, the group fell into a continuous paradox. They had tried to artificially let time back into their own space, their own new reality. But their space had extinguished time thanks to Twilight, so it subsequently rid itself of the new time. The group still had some semblance of time at the point before opening the doors, but now their space was losing all time. Even if they had already experienced an event, they wound up experiencing it again.

This can be explained by quantum mechanics. The ponies, like particles, both exist and do not exist at any given moment. Remember though that time has been destroyed in their space. So the ponies both exist, have existed, and will exist at the SAME TIME. (Or what could be best described as time)

Their reality had become universally the same at any point in their experience. Time had no place in their space, so when time finally came crashing back into their little percolator, the whole system fell in upon itself. Until Twilight recast the time-travel spell and the whole situation began again, but with the ponies (particles) still having been in that situation, even while they were being in the now of the situation, and will be in the future.

That should be somewhat close to what I thought of the whole reading. Great stuff. I'm favoring this, liking it, and leaving this somewhat comprehensive explanation behind for the future to (hopefully) see. Then again, haven't I already posted this?

/)(\ Amazing. Best timeloop story I've read yet.

"Most ponies don't understand time," Twilight said, her face suddenly long and sad. "I know I didn't. The reality is that... time is simply a veil... an easily deformed and torn fabric that hides what's actually behind it. And it is something far older than time... and yet younger, as well. It dominates matter and energy, and consumes the meat and bones of what's left lying in the shadow of the next day. I had meant to jump back to a time when I could rewrite my own future. But unlike Starswirl's older time travel spell, this one didn't have an anchor to where I was when I first did the jump. Turns out it's a one-way trip. And now I am stuck here in the shadow of tomorrow while a thing that thinks it's me prances around as a Princess in some far-off place. I keep repeating and repeating the spell, but I can never find my friends again—or at least the ponies that are really them, and not just their reflections... their hallow shells." She shuddered, running a hoof through her mane once again. "I don't know how long I've been doing this anymore. I can barely sleep without running out of time. All I can do is go backwards by a day. And tomorrow always comes... looking... searching... hungering..."

Hollow?

4180951

Man, I loved The Langoliers when I was a kid. Damn things were so creepy.

That was horrifyingly delightful.

Comment posted by triplethetaco deleted Apr 5th, 2014

Absolutely brilliant! This is EXACTLY the kind of writing I love. Thank you for the read, and I hope to be able to write like this someday!

I'm just gonna assume Twilight fixed everything to make myself feel better about Vinyl. Kthxbai.

Son of a -- I hate it when stories don't have proper endings.

Comment posted by nerevars deleted Apr 5th, 2014

4183924 I think the whole car's with Twilight loop will be solved like when they tried to open the car's door as they realize the deja vu. But, what if the whole car's loop is inside another loop which is in another loop in another loop....
:pinkiesick: my head hurts
Hey, ShortSkirtandExplosion, have you watch Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi?

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