Twilight has just put a crack in the library's front door.
Twilight has damaged government property.
Twilight has been in Ponyville for less than a moon.
Twilight has to fix this before anypony of importance finds out and word gets back to the Princess, which means Twilight is going to be doing all the work herself in the name of desperate secrecy.
Twilight is screwed.
(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. )
Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.
Chapters (1)
Not quite perfect...but, it does cover all the neurosis and issues and comedy that Twilight Sparkle can get into. Especially in her first early days in Ponyville and her various psychological defense mechanisms.
And then a certain pair of con artists came to town not long after...and Twi noticed a VERY FAMILIAR LOGO on the side....and remembers where the last of the Spackle is buried....
I have written a review of this story. It can be found here.
A certain pair of con-ponies needs dunked in that stuff...
Hah! Early-season neurotic Twilight, AJ being her usual solid, honest, good self, F&F products causing havoc...
Lots of fun stuff here, but my favorite part is probably Filthy Rich. He's a money-making pony through and through, but he's also a decent, good pony, and you show both sides of him very well here. Of course he'd want to get an opportunity to sell Zecora's concoctions and Everfree exotics, his family fortune being founded on Zap Apples!
I dunno what's behind all the sensible Applejack stories all of a sudden, but I approve.
Ah, yes. Another reminder that Twilight has even less self-confidence than Fluttershy.
Honesly, a viscous fluid that solidifies instantly in contact with your field, capable of restraint?
Put it in water balloons or something so that The Guard can use it. Bam.
... Flim and Flam, while good at inventing, are rather pants at figuring out the proper market, aren't they.
Probably the most confusing thing I have ever read.
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You've been here two days. I promise it'll get a lot more confusing than this.
Just full of moments when poor Twilight just needs a hug, she's just such a mess sometimes, well at least she gets a bit better over time
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Yep, they've made the perfect way to temporarily disable troublesome unicorns and sold it as a useless way of fixing wood.
Oh, hey! It's here!
That was...
...Well worth the wait, for a start. It's nice to see a story set early on in the series again - one of the shortcomings of an ongoing series like this is that the older parts of the story tend to get neglected.
I enjoyed Applejack in this one - solid, practical, and not yet close with Rarity, with an acknowledgement that while she is Twilight's friend, she's not Rarity's friend... yet...
The quiet tragedy of a little unicorn who's only just learning how friends—and, indeed, people as a whole—work. An excellent look at where Twilight began and how far she progressed from there. At least, in some ways. I have to wonder if she ever did understand the lesson of the door... and whether she made the connection when a certain pair of entrepreneurs came riding into town on a horseless carriage.
Also, Applejack is best source of sanity.
A fine story, with the proper amount of the genuine kindness that underlies these characters. I particularly appreciated your characterization of Filthy Rich. If you start from the premise that our little ponies generally have good hearts you can't go far wrong.
It also made me nostalgic for the zeitgeist of the first season, before time and tide and ongoing seasons piled on so much baroque elaboration.
Like others have said, I loved the way you showed the progression of Twi and AJ's characters in how they aren't yet in this story. You do a good job with showing where each character is and getting it to fit into the timeframe.
Also the usual great humor and tender moments.
I think Twilight's OCD is going to gnaw at her until the door gets fixed.
Dunno why she couldn't restore it with her magic, up until Tirek, she could restore the rest of the tree without problems.
6166774 I'm not sure she did learn the lesson of the door because she's still focused on what's wrong and how it can hurt her. Also, I doubt that she can make the connection between "those two irritating hucksters selling malfunctioning crap messing with the Apple family all the time" with the malfunctioning crap she was warned not to buy because it's the product of side-of-the-mouth artists who promised Mr Rich far more than they could ever deliver.
This default negativity and worrying about the sky falling in on her seems to be a constant amongst all Twilight Sparkles. As the latest teaser for Friendship Games shows us, what'll drive her nuts is the fear that what Sunset Shimmer is in to will hurt the world. This is what they used to call a revenge effect and it's probably what you'll be talking about in Sideboard Of Harmony in three months or so.
I had the most awkward wingboner while reading this
Should I be worried?
Inane thought, but anyone here ever hear of poor-man's spackle? I used that to fill nail holes in my dorm room so I would get my deposit back.
d2ws0xxnnorfdo.cloudfront.net/character/meme/evil-plotting-raccoon.jpg
Crappy half baked product made by a company who used two Fs to spell fine? It was Flim and Flam wasn't it?
I've got a bad feeling about this.
... also, I can't tell if I'm just seeing things or there were Twijack hints in there. (With great reluctance, "That you'd care about them.")
Edit:
Nope, definitely not seeing things.
Grats on making the featured story box!
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No, because apparently you have wings.
Burn the library barkellner burn it all
6165964 There's times I pray we'll see a Triptych-style retelling of certain episodes
Plus, I'd love to see Ratchette meet the Flim-Flam siblings...
She'd probably flip put over their vehicle, much to their utter bafflement
Bravo! As always, exceptional work giving a depth of understanding to what i have always felt would be a facet of twilights character, one of the reaons i often identify with her as well, that feeling of fragility for everything good in your life.
I'm not sure I entirely understood it.
But I liked it.
I really like this (and most things in the Triptych Continuum), but it always give me a disquieting feeling. The entire world seems to be constructed to be a bit unsettling. It is not a very happy place I think.
When I read the blog post you made about this, I thought it would be a cute and funny story.
Then you went and made it one of the most heartwarming stories I've read in months...
Curse your genius!
I feel like Applejack's doesn't quite succeed in calming Twilight down. The bit about Rarity and their relationships seems to me like it reinforces Twilight's worst fear: their friendships are not some magical thing that can survive anything, and she might indeed lose them again if she doesn't get it right
Not that this is likely, but I suspect that's a possible message Twilight took away from it.
Loved the crossreferences to 100% Move, and congrats on hitting the feature box
Well, that's one way to write a Crack fic :D
Not quite what I was expecting due to the title, but that's really not a bad thing. Came in expecting comedy, got heartwarming instead!
...This part...
It ends when it ends, doesn't it?
Wow, that Twilight Sparkle sure is a wreck isn't she! I find your Twilight stories to be a welcome break from what is otherwise a rather depressing 'verse.
On a side note, the king and queen of your collection have demanded attention for some time now. Consider this not a nag, or a demand, but rather a beg. Triptych and a Mark of Appeal are the jewels in your crown, and I only wish you could find it in your big writer's brain to polish them once in a while
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BA DUM, PSSSHHH
That was a very good read--both funny, and a good look at Twilight's flaws. I think I'll be reading some of the other stories in this universe of yours now.
You get an upvote just because of Twilight Spackle.
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My personal favorite of Estee's stories is Five Hundred Little Murders, though it is a very serious story.
I've heard that A Total Eclipse of the Fun and Sonic Rainbigot are both quite good but, alas, I have yet to read either.
Perhaps I should fix that...
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You can spend a long afternoon or two reading through Estee's work without complaint, I've found. And Five Hundred... is one of my favorites for the sheer feels of it (don't think it's some kind of slasher fic or the like, as the pony idea of "murder" in the story is nothing of the sort).
This story was aggressively boring. Normally I like Slice of Life, especially ones that manage to describe mundane things in a pretty way.
This story doesn't use its word count well, though. It goes past meandering and into active evasion of plot. It takes a good 2,500 words just for Twilight to kick out a pony and get to (what I assume is) the actual plot. I gave up at the first horizontal rule, after it became clear the story was not concerned with actually telling a story.
Meandering narratives can be excused, of course, if the writing is evocative enough and pretty enough to keep the reader's attention. The way the story is written, however, is very haphazard. It really overdoes it on the long, meandering sentences. The first two sentences alone have three separate clauses each. Adverbs, intrusive parenthetical statements, stream-of-consciousness interjections, and an abundance of commas make each individual sentence a chore to parse/understand. It takes the already glacial pacing and amplifies it unpleasantly. Even if the sentences were arranged more clearly, there's many points where exposition is bluntly shoved in the middle of other imagery. There's also many spots where the imagery is worded bizarrely; any artistic effect is muddled by the inability to understand it easily.
As an example, this sentence stood out to me as an encapsulation of many of these problems;
Fours separate clauses, two pieces of blunt exposition, confusing tense use, and the last two clauses have multiple subjects and switch between them. I can understand what the sentence was trying to say, and there is some evocative imagery in there somewhere. Cramming all this information together, however, makes it a mess to understand. It's impossible to understand the action, to picture the motion, or to process the exposition. At least not without reading the sentence four times.
I suppose some of this might be intentional. Using a very detail-heavy narrative style could be a way to reflect Twilight's neurotic personality. In that case, though, it would've been better to put the story in first person. That would've better emphasized that the disjointed nature of Twilight's thoughts, and it would be able to present details and exposition more carefully and justifiably.
Downvote from me. The idea and the plot could be interesting. Pre-"Lesson Zero" Twilight is certainly neurotic and self-conscious enough to justify her characterization here. The execution, however, is a mess. It's hard to read, hard to understand, and it robs the story of any value or engagement it might've had.
6176515
I am the worst writer on this site. (I actually had that as my short bio for a while.) If I tripled my current amount of talent, it would place me at a total of zero. My characterizations have been described as having been born from a chtonic void beyond the realm of sanity, and that's pretty much a quote from one of the Comments sections (which I also used as a short bio for a separate while). I have no capacity to improve, because improvement would imply both a viable base to build on and something capable of learning. I am the proud owner of the only preemptive "Cease And Desist Submissions" letter EQD ever sent. I can get published any time I like, and so can anyone else who puts together the vanity fee. I have been called FIMFic's resident cynic, the creator of the most depressing 'verse ever (which apparently goes double for the comedies), and Piano Murdering Pony Hitler. If I were to be permanently banned tomorrow, there wouldn't be a single word of protest, but the celebration might just crash the site. The only way I could ever make money from my work is by putting up a Patreon and telling people they could bribe me to stop.
And I don't care.
Because I'm aware that I'm the worst writer on this site. Because I'm conscious about my inability to improve. Because if a handful of people only show up to laugh, then at least they still showed up.
As one of my heroes once said, you never want to have your home destroyed by the second-worst hurricane in history: there's a certain satisfaction in being connected to the record-breaker. So if you can't be Orson Wells, then be Ed Wood.
So I will continue to be the knuckleball pitcher breaking into the stadium after dark, not caring about the meandering nature of my efforts just as long as they occasionally get somewhere in the vicinity of home plate. Because as I've said before, if I knew what I was doing, I wouldn't do anything at all.
And I would still respect your opinion. Under normal circumstances, I really would. I appreciate it when people explain the downvotes which I, as the worst writer on this site, so richly deserve. Except for one thing:
There are a couple of ways to interpret that. In the locally-harshest, it means you walked out on the story at that point. And that's your right.
But if you want people to take you seriously as a critic, you don't get out of your seat until the credits finish rolling. You suffer through the entire movie so you can tell others exactly why they shouldn't. Not that it would have gotten any better before the end -- once again, worst writer on the site -- but it's about commitment to the job.
I would normally respect your opinion. But if that interpretation is the correct one, then I won't respect your effort.
Would anyone like to know the bribe necessary for getting me to leave? Here's a hint: it's four digits. Two of them are to the right of the decimal point.
Okay, now that this nightmarish weekend is over (plus I may have set up the windfall which will get me to hit the Revoke Submission button on my entire catalog -- you get what you bribe for and when I leave, I leave), I finally have a chance to answer some of this. (I'll also be tackling my mail today. And vice-versa.)
And before I start: I did originally have tentative thoughts of getting the library to host a weekly punning contest, and an earth pony named Stonebender. Just never came together.
Let's see...
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6166915
One of my keys for writing Mr. Rich is anypony who's aware of Diamond's habits before meeting him will, within minutes, be internally questioning if he's actually her father. And they'll mean it as a compliment.
I treat him as being almost utterly without prejudice. You're not judged on your species, but on your contribution to his economy...
And yes, it's nice to just hit Rewind sometimes. This story was always going to be early on the timeline, but the concept had a special complication: Twilight couldn't be aware that Rarity knew the wood sculpture spell, or the entire thing would have ended with a quick trot to the Boutique. That meant pre-slumber party.
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6166577
"Brother?"
"Yes, brother o'mine?"
"It would seem we have inadvertently created something which would aid the fine law enforcement personnel of our nation in their efforts to apprehend us."
*long moment of mutual silent thought*
"Cease production immediately?"
"Cease production immediately."
This is actually one of the reasons I gave it the consistency of half-dried cement: you have to pretty much jam anything into it, which takes a lot of effort. Kicking a glob of it at a horn would just leave the glob hanging off the tip of the horn (or hoof), and an impact with enough effort to coat the horn is probably going to have enough of the substance reach the skull at speed to knock the pony out. So it could be used as a field restraint, especially for a surprise attack -- but it's so difficult to make the shot work, you're probably just as well off going with the standard equipment.
6166729
If I had to guess, at least one of the downvotes is probably due to my saying that they didn't all love each other on first sight. But I was influenced early by a certain Admiral and his S1 words about the group: at the start, they're all friends with Twilight -- but not necessary with each other.
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The lesson of the door was always one of those things which was going to take a while.
As for putting together any connection between this product and the brothers... let's just say that shortly after the device trundled off beyond any hope of locating it again, the sound of a world-class facehoofing echoed through the settled zone...
6166965
I have her as leaving it there for two reasons: AJ seems to be advising it, and she's still trying to work out why.
Twilight's magical capabilities will always vary a bit by the writer. In this case, timeline placement is part of it.
6167574
'twas. The harvester wasn't exactly their first scam.
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posterpalace.com/images/ak/crackintheworldDM25hs.jpg
And sorry, but to date, the 'verse has been a no-shipping zone (which is probably part of why it's the most depressing thing ever written). Locally, AJ is also noted as only dating earth ponies -- and that her idea of a good date is to have them work alongside her for a full shift or twenty, testing compatibility through labor. Most of them don't even make it to lunch.
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I'm not even sure what this means. Everypony gets so depressed, they commit suicide?
Hmmm...
Of course, that would lead to all three committing suicide.
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Of course it's not a very happy place! It's the most depressing collection of work on the entire site! Geez, doesn't anyone pay attention any more?
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Fortunately, once you got her attention actually focused on something (which could be a chore in and of itself), Twilight was an excellent listener. Or at least, the words went in.
Strange things could happen to them after that.
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If I find that under an Arc Words entry on the trope page, I'm going to be a little shaken.
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How about instead, operating in deference to the reviewer's expertise, I just cancel all ongoing stories immediately and permanently?
I am the worst writer on this site.
(Barring a flare-up of computer issues, A Mark Of Appeal updates around July 16th. Unless, y'know, my go-away-forever bribe is in before that.)
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I wasn't the first to the pun: if you search, you'll actually find some artwork of Twilight doing repairs (which I didn't locate until after the story went up). But I did search FIMFic when the idea originally arose, and I was honestly surprised to be the first using it as a title.
For extra offensiveness, try reading it in a heavy Boston accent.
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And I look forward to both overwhelmingly negative reviews with interest. *peeks* Oh, look: you finished the first one already!
(In general, TD likes my writing, but not anything I actually write.)
And in for-now conclusion...
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Have you looked down lately?
6177625 This probably made the episode with the tonic interesting. Then again, knowing those two creeps, they have an interesting take on consumer satisfaction. Since they're satisfied with something, their victims have no kick coming.
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6177488 Your interpretation was correct. I rarely finish reading stories if they don't show they deserve it--there's too many other things to read to give undue attention to incompetent writing.
I don't feel that invalidates my advice, though. Just because I didn't experience the entirety of the plot (or perhaps "plot") doesn't mean the rest of my advice doesn't have merit. It is an author's responsibility to invest and hook the audience in their story. That is why my critique mostly focused on the way things were written rather than just the pacing/plot.
Since you spent ~400 words explaining why you are terrible writer and justifying your inability to improve, rather than responding to my criticisms, it seems to be a moot point. The self-deprecation act is all well and good; I use it myself, sometimes. But I would rather see a response to my critique or an explicit dismissal. Passive-aggressive deflection is hardly productive.
Thanks for illustrating your feelings about criticism; I'll be sure not to comment on any more of your stories in the future.
Great job. A Slice-of-life piece set after the first episode(s) but before any others, with all our material now to call forward to, is a great idea and needs to be used more. I can only hope it catches on and that everyone does it as well you did.
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Well, since you couldn't establish your counter by that point in the response, there's clearly no reason to read any further. Discussion closed.
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Heh, I know there's a lot there. Then again, I went through stuff like Life and Times of a Winning Pony in two days without pushing it. The joys of having a mutant speed-reading brain, 1400wpm is my -normal- reading rate. :)
(And yes, that overlooks the usual "OMG THIS STORY IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD" bits, which are universal to FimFiction. I've had a story literally downvoted five seconds after I hit the Submit key because we have folks that piss on writers simply for the lulz.)
6177625 Noooo, don't do that to poor Ratchette
Can we offer Caramel instead?