The Steed of Theseus
Celestia fretted around the tea set, making sure everything was in place.
“Good morning, Princess! How are you?” Twilight said happily.
Celestia tried to hide a start, and turned to face the pony who she still thought of as her faithful student.
“Ah! Hello, Twilight. Please, please, sit.” She gestured to to the low table and the tea she'd brewed herself. Twilight looked at her, puzzled, before taking place in front of her.
“So, is there a particular reason you went to so much trouble to arrange this meeting, Princess? I'm sure you're quite busy with the fallout of Tirek's attacks, and I actually had to postpone the delivery of some furniture. Not that I mind, of course!”
Celestia grimaced.
“It's...a final lesson I still have to impart. I know you're not my student anymore. But this lesson has become long overdue, and my,” she sighed, “dear sister has pointed out to me that it's better you learn the moral of my story now, while you can act on it, rather than later.”
The purple pony in front of her sipped from her cup. Celestia could tell she was trying not to show how eager she was to hear whatever she had to say.
Feeling like the world's biggest, clumsiest foal, she steeled herself for a moment and then started speaking again.
“Six hundred years ago, Equestria was a police state, and I was a despot.”
“But Princess, that's–”
“I know it seems impossible; you've read history books about that era, you've done reports on literature written during that time. But I assure you, it's true.”
“What you're not taking into account is the pony race's propensity for forgetfulness, and how much time can distort any perspective. If you look at the statistics from that time, at the particular wording that freedom of speech and privacy laws had in that era, you'll understand. Isn't it strange, for example, that the Royal Guard's records became available to the general public only four hundred years ago?”
Twilight was looking at her with her mouth open, her cup of tea forgotten in her hooves.
“But Princess, surely you weren't the one who-”
The elder Princess cut her off. “I was the one who had let things degrade to such a state. I was the one who took away civil liberty after civil liberty, thinking I was better than ordinary ponies, that I could make their decisions for them, that their security mattered more than their freedom.”
“It was such a...gradual process, if you can believe it. I started skimming the writings of those who disagreed with me, because being subject to what I felt was excessive and unwarranted criticism was irritating. Then I stopped reading them entirely; I just didn't have the time to busy myself with such unpleasant things. Somehow, during that time everypony at court always agreed with me. And when somepony disagreed...well, nopony else shared their opinion, so I felt quite justified in thinking them of weak mind and promoting others in their place.”
Celestia started grinning, but her eyes bounced around the room, never quite making eye contact.
“You see, it was all so...easy! I made the identities of the guards anonymous, so that evildoers wouldn't be able to take revenge on their families after an arrest. And then I thought: why not apply the same principle to investigations? Dangerous ponies wouldn't start associating with those they knew would report to me, right? And so everypony became a potential spy and informant.”
“It was around that time that I started hearing about grumblings among the populace. But everypony I knew always agreed with me! Surely, these ponies were slandering me just to sell some ridiculous stories. And so I ruled that nopony could or should criticize me without good reason.”
“Never mind the fact that I was the only public figure who benefited from this ruling. Or that “with good reason” is such a vague term everypony preferred to err on the side of caution. I didn't think of that at the time, and nopony brought it up with me.”
“Eventually, there was a revolution, which ended with me killing its leader in front of everypony. His last words...still resonate with me, even if at the time I ignored them. Because of those words, things...gradually became better. I became better.”
The purple pony princess in front of her now looked completely lost.
“W-why are you telling me all this?”
Celestia smiled ruefully. “It's not to make you lose faith in me, I can you tell you that. I know you've already noticed that I can make mistakes just as well as anypony else-I shouldn't have ordered you to hide away while you had the power of all the other princesses, for example.”
Twilight blushed.
“No, it's for a much more fundamental reason. Twilight; you, me, Luna, Discord and others are all immortals. And one thing that happens to immortals, whether they want it or not, is change.”
“Fifty years from now, you may find yourself holding positions you would have never considered today. A hundred years from now, you may have very little in common with who you are right now. And two hundred years from...you may be someone else entirely.”
“The lesson I want you to get from all this, is to always be mindful of who you may be turning into, and of whether your past self would approve of your actions. Otherwise...you may wind up hating who you've become. Or who you were.”
A couple of awkward seconds of silence passed, while both princesses thought things over. Twilight Sparkle looked outside the window, at the towers near the castle. One of them had a new roof, free of dirt and wear. It had probably been replaced recently.
“I-I hope your opinion of me isn't too damaged, I just...” pleaded Celestia.
“Don't worry, I'm still your friend.” muttered Twilight “I just...I just have to think things over.”
“Okay.”
“Actually, I have one last question: the leader of the...revolution; you mentioned that his last words stuck with you for a very long time...what did he say?”
Celestia gulped. She'd hoped she wouldn't have to answer that, and she hadn't volunteered them because...well, Honesty had always been her sister's domain anyway.
“I surrender.”
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A few errors here and there, but you did great.
A couple of tips:
*If you're giving an example of what somepony's muttering(like if somepony's repeating "I hate you" over and over), then I've always thought it was acceptable to use no ending punctuation, but if it's a full sentence that somepony says once, use either a period, comma, exclamation mark, etc., etc.
*When starting a new paragraph to continue one pony's dialogue, you don't have to put a quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph's sentence. But that's only if the speaker changes.
*Read it until you never want to read your story again. While it's tedious, it helps to keep silly little errors away. I forget to do that most of the time, and that's why I'm unpopular.
Anyways, MOAR. NAO.
4953914
Thanks!
So,
"rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb" vs "Rhubarbs are good."
I don't understand. You mean that if speakers change, then and only then a quotation mark should be put at the end of the paragraph?
Umm...this was actually originally written as a one-shot with a word cap of 700 words for a writing competition...I'm not sure there's much else to tell, actually, I thought it was pretty much self-contained.
I guess I could expand it to show what happens afterward, and how Celestia, Luna, Twilight and the other immortals change, to give a concrete example of what the fic is referring to, but I hadn't thought of that originally at the time, when I'd written this.
"How do I split up dialogue?"
"Well a lot of people have asked this question, and many more will try to lead you astray of what it considered stylistically correct. For a concrete rule of how to accomplish this you can hit up a manual of style, or take college composition courses.
Or cheaper and easier you can just listen to me."
4954171
I AM in college! But so far I'm just learning trivial things like how to design a chemical reactor so it won't explode
Could you tell me what's your opinion on how dialogue should be split up? Since I'm guessing there are differing opinions between different people.
Ooh, was the part about Celestia making the Royal Guard anonymous one of the ones that you added in editing? That's a marvelous little piece of worldbuilding.
4953914
It's the other way around — if a single speaker's quote continues over multiple paragraphs, you leave the trailing quote off of paragraphs, like this:
"Five hundred score and seven years ago," Celestia said, "my sister was born. (no ending quote, because her words immediately continue after the paragraph break)
"Fifty score and seven years ago, my sister was banished." (ending quote, because next paragraph is a new speaker)
"What about five score and seven years ago?" some pony interrupted before the guards shushed him.
"Seven years ago," Celestia continued, "she returned to us."
Honestly, this is a weird and generally confusing rule. It's easiest to avoid the whole situation by keeping a single speaker's dialogue all within the same paragraph, unless they're delivering a monologue that goes on for hundreds of words.
You did a great job of fixing up all the other paragraph spacing issues, though!
4954563
xD
That was a snarky example. I demonstrated the way what's his dick said to do it. If you kick into a new paragraph without changing speakers, the quotation mark gets attached to the end of the second paragraph.
4954610
4954604
I think that for now I'm just going to do this:
No sense in breaking my brain needlessly
4954604
YES! Along with her court slowly filling up with Yes-men. I'm glad you caught this!
The whole fic was actually inspired by the recent events in Ferguson, and one of the failure modes that I noticed the policemen there were engaged in was the ripping off of name tags, so as to make it harder to make them accountable for their action.
And given that the guards are indistinguishable from one other, going so far as to cover their own cutie marks (which has probably several disturbing connotations in pony culture), the connection was apparent.
Generally outside of speeches you won't need it.
Generally dialogue paragraphing follows normal rules - one paragraph until you change gears.
For instance, if I were to speak at length it would be rendered as one paragraph, until I sidetracked to ask after your sex life.
4954604 I made a mistake- I meant to say if the speaker stays the same.
I'm sorely disappointed.
4958514
In...what, exactly? I thought it was poor form to edit one's story after it has been published :-\
4958637
What? No...? I've known people to completely rewrite fics.
I'm disappointed. This fic was severely overhyped, and underwhelming.
4958665
...overhyped? O_o By WHO?!?!
I didn't do anything to promote this (aside from adding it to the write off folder since, well, it came from there).
I'm simultaneously flattered and scared. In its original incarnation it didn't do well ( I think it placed 37 out of 51) mainly due to editing problems in paragraph construction and dialogue attribution.
Glad to see this posted! I really liked the idea, and was hoping to see a cleaned-up version posted here. Incidentally, I have some editing-type notes, but I'll PM those to you.
Like Horizon, I liked the guards bit, but I actually preferred the original at the concept level. In the writeoff version, Celestia felt more like a product of a different time, like a moral slaveowner or compassionate (Spanish) Inquisitor from our own history; someone doing the right thing in a time and place where "the right thing" is so far removed from our modern understanding that the terms seem, in retrospect, oxymoronic. Here, it felt more like Celestia's actions were the product of her own bad decisions, rather than a natural outgrowth of the times she lived in.
It's still a good story, and the idea that an immortal needs to be open to change still comes through, but I thought the "immortals risk being caught in the morals of a past century" angle was much more interesting. Either way though, happy to see this one come up!
I honestly can't quite see Celestia as a despot. But then, that's sort of the point, isn't it?
The ending feels a bit flat -- that may just be abruptness -- and dialog like this is a lousy approach to teach this sort of lesson, but given the context of the writing I see why you went with it. There's a lot of idea to cram in.
4969198
Yeah, the original contest had a 750 word limit, so I had to make everything fit in a small space.
I could (and should) have expanded this more, but I don't have a lot of free time and I didn't want to deviate too much from the original-in fact, if it weren't for fimfiction's own word limit, I would have just edited the story and put it up as is
4959507
Thanks! :-)
And about Celestia's decisions-what I wanted (and failed) to show was that Celestia could no longer empathize with her own past self-that she was so far removed that she'd cast moral judgement on actions which at the time were business as usual.
Unfortunately, I overbalanced in that direction and made the story lose focus on the dissonance between time periods.
Still, this is all food for thought and quite interesting
Do you mean smirk?
Um wow.
4997922
No, I mean startle, which is what I'd originally written. It's been pointed out to me by several people, though, that that would have the sentence very awkward; even if the dictionary says startle can be used as a noun, I'm going to trust other people on this site over it; language is above all a product of usage, not just a collection of rules.
Anyway, what I wanted to convey was that Celestia was distracted, she was surprised by twilight saying hello, jumped or generally had a sudden muscular movement, and tried to hide it, badly.
Do you know where I can read all the entries in this contest? What made you decide on the cover art, and where did you get the picture? How did you come up with the story name?
This fanfic is really good! You should try submitting to Twilight's Library or some other site like it.
5398322
Most of the other entries (revised and expanded to fit the 1000 word limit of fimfiction) can be found at the writeoff group here at fimfic.
The actual site where the writeoffs are held, and which has all the other stories in their original forms is writeoff.me
I wanted a picture of a ship or ships for the cover art, and I did a google search to find one; the one I chose is the one I think was better.
The name of the story comes from a pun: the "ship of theseus" is an ancient greek philosophical question: if every single plank, sail, nail, if every part of Theseus' ship was replaced, is it still the same ship?
This bears on the story itself: Celestia has experienced so many new things, and forgotten so many others, that she's effectively a completely different pony from the one who subjugated her subjects under a police state hundreds of years ago; so why does she feel guilt, and why does Twilight hold her responsible?