The Third Part
Apple Bloom started the day as a pegasus. The sun was already high in the sky by the time she finally awoke. She let her eyes flutter open, yawned, stretched, and promptly tried to go back to sleep. Her seventeenth birthday had been last night, and while she had no regrets about the extent to which she had enjoyed herself, her pounding headache persuaded her that perhaps it was not time to get up just yet. Sadly, that same pounding also prevented her from getting back to sleep, and after a fitful half hour, she surrendered to inevitability and let her eyes open.
Before her lay spread the wonders of Equestria—her high perch atop her cloud letting her see all of Ponyville and the surrounding valley clearly. It was a bright and sunny fall day, just warm enough to be pleasant. The apples on the farm trees were bright and red, the town was lively and full of air traffic, and the birds’ tweeting was so sweet she hardly minded the things it did to her headache.
Grunting as she lifted her head, Apple Bloom saw a few other ponies scattered on the cloud near her: Featherweight, Silver Spoon, and Target Time. Opposite her, Sweetie Belle and Button Mash lay curled up together, Button’s wings spread over their heads to block out the harsh sunlight. That made Apple Bloom laugh, but she quickly regretted it, clutching her head with one hoof.
Deciding she needed water, Apple Bloom crawled towards the edge of the cloud, blearily scanning the area below her for a well. She could see the cloud actually wasn’t far from the farm. There was the edge of the property, the second barn, and...
Applejack.
“Apple Bloom! Is that you!?” she shouted from the ground, galloping up to the space directly under the cloud. Apple Bloom groaned, rolling backwards in the hope she hadn’t been seen, but it was too late. “You get down here right now, young mare! The one thing I ask of you is that you be home by midnight, and you go on and give me a scare drinking half the town! What if you’d wandered into the Everfree, huh?”
“I’m seventeen, Applejack! Get over it!” Apple Bloom shouted, but she flinched as soon as she did, the yelling producing further ringing in her ears.
“You think that’s going to stop me from plucking every feather right out of those wings of yours, you got another thing coming!” Applejack stomped her hoof down into the earth.
“Eh, come up here and say that,” Apple Bloom grumbled. Tuning out Applejack’s distant shouting, she rolled over, put a wing over her eyes, and focused on getting some rest.
It took another twenty minutes, but eventually, she got back to sleep.
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That was powerful.
I don't know what else I can say.
I feel my heart going out still, but, I feel good about it.
I don't know if this blows you out of a typecast or not. But I really enjoyed it.
I only regret not being able to see the discussion and final verdict being given.
Well written, well presented, and well done.
5947898
You were foolish to trust me.
5947931
...but thank you.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it. I left the final discussion ambiguous because, in the end, does it really matter? It's fun to see how Dust and the M6 feel about this issue, but ultimately, it's not the M6's story and it's not Dust's story. They're just the actors who made it happen. And it did happen.
5947937 It was still fantastic.
I still feel that tiny void of wanting to know.
I still feel the need to hear Twilight's final approval.
I...
I still feel the need to know how they could all afford it....
5947965
The same way you can afford to carry a computer 10,000x more powerful than the Apollo mission. In your pocket.
5948004
My editors made the same mistake. Decided to leave it in there because I thought it was hilarious.
It's "heads" because she's talking to both Rarity and Fluttershy.
5948039
Thank you!
5948022 I thought the 'heads' thing seemed perfectly in character for Dust. Correct, but misunderstood.
5948047
You're very welcome.
Honestly, I think that your tone simply tends to be dark or sad. It doesn't change the fact that your writing tends to be exquisite, but I usually feel a sort of pall hanging over your writing. And you know, that's perfectly fine, because it doesn't keep you from writing happy, slice of life stories like this one. It still had a heartwarming ending.
But I felt that this story was a bit grey or sad, until the third part.
I suppose that I view you as having a +1 bonus to both [Dark] and [Sad], but not having negative modifiers to any other genre/type/thing that you write.
Does any of that make sense?
Alternate Title: A Tour of Logical Fallacies in Five Parts
Since you were nice enough to give one to each of Twilight's advisers.
Appeal to Tradition
Appeal to Consequences
Nirvana Fallacy
Ad Hominem
Argument from Incredulity
Given the blog post you made and the cover image I was expecting something bleaker. I was pleasantly surprised.
If people are saying you write dark, depressing stories, they're wrong. What you write are stories about ideas. Maybe they can be distressing in one light or another, but they're just that: ideas. Be it life-changing science, the way people manipulate each other, or what have you, your stories are working with some tough stuff.
There's a quote from the Bible one of my pastors really likes: after a particularly dense parable, the disciples opine to Jesus, "These are hard words." In a sense, that's how I feel about your stories. I'm not sure I agree or disagree with future!Twilight in "Modern Medicine;" I'm not sure I agree or disagree with Dust in this story. But I do feel challenged to think more about life and the way things should be. These are hard words, GaPJaxie. Thanks for writing them.
5948076
Oh thank goodness. I'm not the only one who imagines people as having RPG character sheets and then tries to assign stats to them.
I'm not crazy.
It does! And I'm glad you feel that way. This was, in fact, meant to be a story with a happy ending. Progress is good. :)
5948093
Double fakeout!
Yup! As an allegory for technological progress, I thought those were the big five "arguments against" I see cycle around a lot.
Interesting little slice, Gappie. Nicely done. I'd think Twilight would've been keener to monitor a series of long-term case studies before approving the research in case it cut a pony's lifespan by 2/3rds or something, especially given Dust's lackadaisical attitude towards safety.
Or maybe she is?
The Fourth Part: All the test subjects develop inoperable thaumaturgic lymphomas and GaPJ earns back the [Dark][Sad] Trophy.
5948115
Awwww.
This is one of the most flattering summaries of my writing I've ever gotten. Thank you! My biggest ambition as a writer is to create something that inspires thought -- something meaningful. It's good to know I'm making steps that way.
5948256
That was my happy ending.
How did you turn my happy ending into an evil laugh?
5948269
Defamed is a strong word I would say. Certainly, she's not friends with AJ or RD. But Fluttershy and Rarity like her perfectly well! And Twilight respects her work, as we saw. That's three potential friends. :)
5948299
Ahem.
Winter Wrap-Up.
It's a good story, but I feel that the "solution" to the money problem aspect both came out of nowhere, and was only mentioned in a comment by the author, and not in the story itself.
The way it reads now (at least, to me), the money problem is insurmountable; both the ingredients are incredibly rare, and as it is a magical ritual using strange objects (clouds from a specific city? A golden apple?), it is very easy to construe that there are few ways of making it cheaper other than maybe something like more active mining for platinum. The fact that Dust never argues that further research and development would make it cheaper, and only that the monarchy find some way to subsidize it furthers that thought. Thus, the solution is not only not mentioned (as it is written now, it reads like a lot of ponies in Ponyville somehow got access to a million bits), but is out of nowhere.
If you put in a section discussing the possibility for advancement making it cheaper, either in chapter one or two, this would be completely fixed, as the mere suggestion of it being possible/plausible would let the reader connect the dots when they read chapter 3.
I... I have no words. Never before have I found something that so perfectly encapsulates the way I personally feel about things. Bravo good sir, this was beautiful.
Dust, you're amazing, and don't let anypony tell you otherwise.
5948314
That's more "locking it away." I think of "covering it up" as making it so most people flat up don't know it exists.
Like, ponies may not get to go to the restricted section of Canterlot's library, but they know there is a restricted section. Compare that to burying Dust's research in a vault somewhere and erasing her memory.
5948303
She is, in fact, awesome.
Also, highly anti-social. But Twilight can help with that.
5948302
That's intentional. With this story being an allegory for technological progress, Dust is meant to be a university researcher. She's out of touch with the common people, highly focused on her work, and has a few of the more negative stereotypes of nerds/geeks. She's not really concerned with practical implementation, but she believes the work itself is valuable. Researchers in such a position often pay little attention to money. It falls to engineers to dramatically reduce the cost so everyone can use it.
The other reason I didn't have her bring it up is that we often don't see such things coming. Sure, people know that computers are getting cheaper fast, but few people really appreciate just how fast.
5948302 All groundbreaking research and new inventions start out expensive. Ball point pens once went for $10 each. In 1945.
But as more people bought them, the creators had more money to invest in making a better, less expensive product--- now you get them in bags of 10 for a buck.
5948301 And that makes no difference. They still use their magically enhanced strength, stamina and natural gift with plants to get spring started...
errors aside, damngood story. And I like the ending, obviously, as I am very pro-progress. We didn't claw our way up ten thousand years of human development to sit around an animal dung campfire in homespun loincloths picking fleas out of each others' hair.
5948349
Yes, but the show (including AJ) refers to doing it the earth pony way as: "Not using magic."
Basically, while we know earth ponies have magic, and it's just as powerful as unicorn magic (just different), Equestrian's seem to use "magic" as a shorthand for "unicorn magic." We've ever had characters in the show acknowledge that the term isn't being used correctly.
5947983
And here is the major argument (to cover ONE of the objections) that I feel was missing from the last chapter. Sure it is expensive NOW, but the best way to make it LESS expensive is to allow it so that there will be a drive to find a more efficient way.
5948256 Syndrome was wrong. If everyone's super, then the bar for being truly great is just set higher.
Of course he was a spoiled man-child who thought that being famous and having flashy battles with flashy powers was what made someone a hero.... so you can pretty well assume he was full of horseapples.
Coincidentally on a quick re-read I realized that Applejack's explanation of how one was a "proper" earth pony was meant to be Applejack's, and not necessarily correct. Likewise Twilight's naive idea that putting a revolutionary discovery on "restricted" status was just as good as revealing it to the world freely. Apologies and kudos.
5948344
Real life doesn't have magical rituals that might not be ABLE to be simplified, as is extremely common in fantasy stories like this one. Computers would not have ever gotten cheap enough for every day consumers if they were absolutely required to be made out of diamonds and built over a magical leyline that only exists under a volcano.
Simplifying magical rituals isn't the same thing as simplifying technology.
5948336
Even if you planned to have Dust completely miss the possibility of making it cheaper, the final chapter makes zero reference to it becoming any cheaper at all. If you aren't going to have Dust bring it up, you should at least make a reference to it becoming more affordable.
5948365
data2.whicdn.com/images/121373048/original.jpg
Or, if you prefer.
i.imgur.com/msI2fOq.png
5948359
It was meant to be implicit. But I see your point.
5948371
farm3.staticflickr.com/2132/2448539617_7a5389f56e.jpg
5948380
So now you're calling me a child for reaching an entirely plausible conclusion, and coming to a wrong idea as to how the final chapter worked because there's no evidence that the conclusion was wrong had I not read an author's comment?
5948410
No, sorry. It's a meme. The last line has been changed from: "Warning, explicit content," to "Warning, implicit content." Meaning, implied.
I was trying to find a funny way to say: "I thought the story was better if what you're talking about was implied by the end, instead of my explicitly saying it."
5948427
I see. Well, I don't see any implications that everyone could afford it because it got cheaper. Ambiguousness is not a good quality when there are other possible options. I asked a friend to read the story shortly after I posted my first comment, and he had the same reaction Hyari and I did: "how the heck did they afford it?" I don't think the "elegance" of leaving it implicit is worth confusing a noticeable portion of readers.
Had you not put that comment about it being available because it became much cheaper, I would have assumed that either the government spent hundreds of millions/billions of bits subsidizing it, or they used an inferior version that only gave a horn or wings, but not both, and thus I would have completely missed part of the metaphor.
Was it ever implied that the resources were completely consumed by the spell? I just assumed that enough “sets” were made available to slowly fix up everybody with the enhancements, said treatment probably being administered by trained professionals to prevent inadvertently turning your lungs into bone or some such.
5948522
Intentionally left ambiguous for that very reason.
I really enjoyed this story. A nice take on the 'everypony becomes an alicorn spell is discovered' story, without the massive hike in power most of those stories have to deal with.
Well done.
And I did really like the touch with the epilogue being from Applebloom's POW. It really drove home what a life-changing discovery this had been even for a 'random' bystander.
Oh, and the implication that AJ is being stubborn was rather funny.
One thing, though. Right now, the name, the description AND the anatomy based cover made at least me think this would be a story where an researched accidentally turns themselves into an undead and have to deal with the consequences of frightening the whole town like that.
Wasn't actually disappointed with what I got instead —far from it, but I thought I'd mention it at least that I thought the story would be vastly different than what I actually got.
5948577
I regret nothing.
5948522
5948448
A great comment from Sunset Flash via PM that I totally didn't think of when I was writing the story.
And he's totally right. It is entirely possible, as written, that the process doesn't get any cheaper -- they just haul Dust's generator out into the middle of the badlands where there are no ponies to get migraines. That even works with the story being a metaphor for technological progress, since that's exactly what we do with certain technologies like heavy chemical fabrication, or nuclear power.
So yeah, the ambiguity works on multiple levels.
I really enjoyed this story. Dust really deserved better than she got from her peers, but at least the Princesses were reasonable enough to appreciate and share her hard work.
I liked the speech about culture. Yeah, traditions and cultures die, people really do need to realize that's not a bad thing sometimes. Not everything your parents did is worth keeping.
An interesting story. I really enjoyed it and the talking with Twilight was probably my favorite part. Seeing Dust defend her work like that, powerful stuff, even if I may not agree with her.
Thoughts on the issue itself.
That said I'm not sure how I feel on the issue itself if I was in their position. I'm kind of with Pinkie on this. Would there really be a good reason for this other than, it would be a cool toy? The biggest defense I think, would be destiny or just research in general. An earth pony that wants to be a weather pony or a Pegasus that wishes to be a gifted mage.
These ponies are no doubt rare. Most ponies are happy with being who they are, not tradition wise but just generally being themselves. It's like humans who want to fly or breathe underwater. It's something that would be awesome to do but it's not a big need. We don't need gills or wings. We have technology that can do this for us if we want.
Which is the big point here. It's been shown that they have spells that can help normal ponies do things outside their abilities. If Apple Bloom wants to be a weather pony, then have someone cast a cloud-walking spell and the wing spell. Now Apple Bloom can be a weather pony. It's true these are temporary but that is all that's important here. With more work on those two spells, they could find easier ways to cast them instead of a permanent transformation that could possibly have dangerous unknown side effects.
As far as magic goes, Dust herself is a perfect example you don't have to be a Unicorn to create spells. Yes, she was rich and not a normal example but I'm sure there are other means for races to cast or learn spells. Potions being an example or even staffs. From what we've seen in the show, many unicorns only know basic telekinesis and maybe something revolving around their talent anyway. Having a transformation into a unicorn would probably only allow just that, basics.
So again, my argument is why is this necessary outside of it just being a cool toy for others to play with and just because you can?
Don't get me wrong though. If we humans could have gills and wings, I would be all over that. Permanent or not and even if was just a toy. Just personal wants aside here, is there a logical reason for it when the majority are happy as is, those that aren't, already have safe alternatives that could be further developed, and there are not as many huge risks involved.
I see this kind of a, Invent your own way to do something VS Improve someone elses way to do it.
Got that out of my system. I really enjoyed this story GaPjaxie. Well written and it gave me something to debate over with some friends of mine. I look forward to reading more of your work. ^_^
EDIT:
Do spoilers not work? I tried spoilering most of that. Or do I just not see it because it's my comment?Never mind. The spoilers just don't work the way I thought they did. I thought it would be minimized like on some forums. :/I likey likey gimme a sequel
5948657
mslk.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/coming-soon-never-coming-mslk1.gif
Okay, that's only half-true. While the story will never get a direct sequel, I do have a "spiritual sequel" planned that explores some of the same themes.
And I really like Dust as a character. I may reuse her.
5948662 soo sidequels?
5948665
No. Maybe. Shut up.
*grump*
5948671 someone's grumpy.....Who want a cookie?
5948648
First, let me say that I'm really glad my story made you think. My biggest goal in writing is to write stories that make people mull over the important ideas in life, and while I may hope they agree with me, that's not the important part. Seeing comments like this that make it clear my readers are not just passively absorbing the story but actively thinking about the implications let me know I'm close to the mark, and that feels good. So, thank you!
That said, I super disagree with your argument. (You knew that was coming!)
Basically, to paraphrase Dust, I don't think you're incorrect, but I do think you're wrong. Yes, right now, there's not a huge demand for the power to breathe underwater. Why would there be? Once you get over the "cool toy" aspect, there's nothing to do underwater but look at pretty fish. But I would say that's a reinforcing loop. If everyone had the power to breathe underwater, there would probably be a lot of things to do down there. The only reason there's no demand is there's no ability to fill the demand, and people don't spend all their time pining after impossibilities. As Dust said, they forget their dreams, and learn to be happy without them.
One day, I'll build that underwater city. One day.
Another interesting and good story from you, I think. :)
Unfortunately, I don't currently have time to jump into the discussion (nor do I at the moment have any particular ideas for things to add), but the story definitely gets and upvote and favourite.