• Member Since 11th May, 2012
  • offline last seen Sunday

Emeral Bookwise


A lonely pony amidst the darkness, ever longing for companions to share the night with.

E

No story is ever truly whole unto only itself, there are always details and events that go untold. This is one such tale. While searching through the Everfree forest, Twilight Sparkle encounters a musical aquatic trio, but are they really what the claim to be? Not if this unicorn has anything to say on the matter.

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-- This story is set in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse, and details an off-screen encounter that took place during the events of Boast Busted.
-- Art elements modified from source material by DeviantTy and my own shoddy screen cap work.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 57 )

Edit: A whole bunch of proofing that should have gone in a PM. Also, just to be a douche, First!

Really, from reading through your stories, your biggest issues seem to be wording, dropped letters, and quotes. I notice that a lot of your dialogue ends up being as follows:

"I am the best pony." Bestpony said with a mocking tone in her voice, before continuing, "also you are very clearly not the best pony." :trixieshiftleft:

Keep in mind that the sentences in the quote are connected to each other, not to the break. A good guideline is to check how it would be written if it were not broken, for example:

"I am the best pony. also you are very clearly not the best pony." Bestpony said with a mocking tone in her voice. :trixieshiftright:

You'll catch a lot of the unnecessary commas, and the missing capitals. And you'll make my job (as well as that of anyone who proofs) much easier. Not that I mind helping, but I figure one of the best forms of proofreading on my part is helping to prevent the same errors in the future. But then, that could just be the teacher part of me. *Insert Cheerilee emoticon here as there appears to not be one*

Other than the issues, it is an enjoyable read. I'm not sure if you'll keep the red: I enjoyed it because I am a nerd about such things, but I can see why you might drop it. Assuming that Twilight is heading backwards along the path of the Luna Six in the direction of Ponyville? Or is she in fact heading to the palace, to investigate? If so, it might be interesting to see some of her other dealings with the various challenges of the Forest that the six had to deal with.

So here it is a brief side story for your enjoyment. Sorry for the delay. I know I promised to have it up by Monday, but well technical difficulties and all.

Anyway, personally, I'm mostly on Twilight's side in this matter, pretty much my whole reason for writing this in the first place, though the girl seriously needs to learn to chill and not be so pushy. Ultimately though, I tried to leave everything vague enough for each reader to make their own decisions. Are Twilight's sources accurate, or do the "sirens" themselves really know best, or does any of it even matter?

I'm also quite aware that I took a few liberties with some of the more common kelpie myths, which I was only loosely familiar with when I first came up with this idea. That said, a monster that adheres its rider in a world full of equinoid races just doesn't make much sense to me. So I'm happy to leave it at horse-like river monster that lures victims to a watery grave.


Special thanks go out to RainbowDoubleDash, not just for creating and opening up the Lunaverse, but for basically commanding me to write this particular story. Without that this might have never gotten past being a one off joke on the message boards. Also, I would like to thank Blackbelt who helped give me the courage to actually go through with publishing this silly little thing, as well as major help punching up one particular spot and suggesting the chapter sub-title. Finally, a big round of thanks goes out to Mally for proofing the heck out of this. Being the finicky self-indulgent artist I am, I sort of ignored a good chunk of that advice, but he was still a big help. Give that little penguin a few more cigars.

737400
Well, it wasn't meant as an imperial command, but if this is the standard result then I'm going to have to start handing those out more often. This was hilarious!

In hindsight I probably should have made the sirens kelpies, but then we wouldn't have this gem. So in the end: worth it. :twilightsmile:

Hell yeah, it's finally up!!!!!


Awesome.

737728
Well my apologies if I've feed that African sized ego of yours too much. It's not like you made me do anything I didn't already want to do, just helped push me over that line from idea into reality.

It also pleases me so much to hear you pay my story the double compliment of being both a hilarious gem while also sorta providing a passive agreement to its founding conceit. Careful with that kinda of flattery though, or yours won't be the only geographically sized ego.

Ah, Twilight. Her delusions and smug superiority are always fun.

I liked this a lot. Twilight does seem a bit Flanderized -- I don't think the reimagined Twilight would get that flustered/irate in response to a single 'books are silly', instead she'd probably just think whoever said that was dumb -- but it works well within the story. I also like this other take on the kelpie myths.

I did think that the digression on reproduction went on a little bit long (and perhaps could have been excised entirely), but other than that, no big complaints. Nice job!

737895
Well, don't forget that this is following close on the heels of some two-bit stage magician telling her she doesn't know anything about magic *and* goading her into making her look like an idiot in front of Ponyville.

She's not the best right now.

737895
Always interesting to see differences of opinion. The internal rage following the 'books can be wrong' line was originally more subdued, almost not there at all. That's the part Blackbelt had me punch up. I didn't go near as extreme as he suggested, but I thought I'd found a happy medium. I have her lose her cool mentally, but it barely shows through in her actual words or actions. Had she only randomly encountered these three on any other day, she probably would have more easily blown it off, but as is, it's sort of compiling on top of the stress she's already dealing with in regards to Trixie (which 737917 seems to have already pointed out). Plus, while it was the first time they insulted her books directly, they had already been basically mocking both her and her knowledge for pretty much the entire conversation, with that last part basically just being the straw that broke the camel's back such as it were.

Glad you enjoyed my take on kelpies, also hoped you appreciated my little shout-out to yours.

Sorry if the reproduction tangent seemed a bit long to you, and yeah it probably could have been left out, but personally I think the story is funnier for having it. Not like any of it goes into explicit detail, keeping things fairly textbook level.

Heck yeah, I woulda had Twilight blow something up.

Ah, Lunaverse Twilight. Such a dork. :twilightoops: I gave a number of chuckles to her lecture, there. So pedantic and so... her, even canon-Twilight would do that, methinks. Wonderful!

737400

Like I said earlier, I quite enjoyed reading this, and would be happy to work with you in the future. A younger me might have taken umbrage with you not using all of my advice, but I've since learned the difference between 'advice' and 'commands'.

I hope to see more from you in the future.

739797
If it helps lessen any lingering "umbrage", you did help push me over the edge on including the red part. I also never flat out ignored you, I weighed each decision to do so very carefully first. I might be something of a self-entitled artistic snob, but I try not to be overly arrogant about it. :duck:

739871
Shoosh. Like I said, a younger me.

A younger me was also severely in need of getting his ass kicked.

738589
Plus the disparaging remarks about their parents, don't forget that. My final take is almost :twilightsmile: compared to the :twilightangry2: you suggested.


739540
Yes, yes she is. Also a bit rude, even beyond having the nerve to lecture a trio of innocent river dwellers on their own true nature.

Unsolicited Author's Note: She makes a big deal about insisting to the sirens that she has a name, but never bothers asking theirs. That was one reason I had for ignoring a piece of Mally's advices, and left all instances of "red/teal/yellow eyes" uncapitalized (other than being too lazy to Ctrl-H it all). Where as Lyra used those as more proper nicknames, even if only internally, Twilight just never bothers coming up with any way to specifically address them and the narration just sort of has to make do.

I actually did consider giving them real names at one point, but felt that if even RDD hadn't bothered, who was I to be so presumptuous in doing so (plus the afore mentioned laziness). Heck for all I know they're like medieval Scottish gargoyles and don't have individual names amongst themselves. So maybe, just maybe, Twilight was being culturally sensitive rather than inconsiderately rude, probably mostly inconsiderate though. Bah, I'll leave it to some other author to decide.


739890
Most of us needed our asses kicked when we were younger, some of us might still be in that phase too, though the concept of younger is all relative (RvB 10 year idiot rule and such). Besides, older usses are just younger usses with more layers built up on top. No reason to risk anything trickling down into the basement.

That was a charming little add-on to Boast Busted! It was delightfully fun! Well done Emeral! :twilightsmile: Gotta love that dorky Twilight!

This was very funny. And it's great to see L!Twilight used as a protagonist.

741636
I'm not so sure this story actually had a proper protagonist, and I'm even less sure it would be Twilight (maybe as some kind of ineffectual villain protagonist). She's the one making all the trouble here. The "sirens" where just minding there own business and trying to grab a bite to eat. Granted they eat ponies, but they are never any real threat in this story.

741662 I struggled in my decision with how to word that, but the story is told from her point of view. So, even if she's not the "Hero" of the story (there's not really a right side here) she's still the protagonist.

I'd noticed that she dismissed sight-unseen the possibility that there's a village loaded with the other sort of kelpie; that's news to Dinky and the L!Six.

740162
Incidentally, while I never gave them names, I have taken to at least mentally calling the sirens/kelpies/cannibal sea ponies Krazny, Zhelty, and Chirok.

There's a joke there if you can find it.

746789 747269
Well considering DatB is a non-canon story Twilight may well have good reason to be skeptical. Besides after seeing the 'sirens' argue about hippopotamus and hippogriffs when she spoke of hippocampus, and also having one of them mistake kelpie for kelp I'm not sure she has much reason at all to trust the accuracy of anything they are speaking about. After all they're just ignorant forest hicks, she's the one who's educated and well read here. :twilightsmile:


747811
Other than that they are all Russian names, or at least that's what Google is telling me, I'm not getting the connection. Could maybe be the meaning of the names, but I can't find them in any of the typical resources I use for that. Probably thinking to hard on this and overlooking something simple. (pre-edit: yes it was simple, those are just Russian for the colors, I think. Finding an auto-translate that doesn't insist on spitting out Russian letters was difficult. As best I can tell, they even match perfectly with the ones I was already just starting to associate them with.)

I am liking the names though. In a future revision I could conceivably have the narrative pick them up after Twilight leaves and the perspective shifts to follow the trio as the blow-off everything she said.

748609
Yup, they're just the Russian words for their colors. Though technically Krazny and Zhelty should actually be spelled Kraznyj and Zheltyj, but when transliterating we normally drop the J since it's superfluous to an English pronounceantion.

For those who don't speak Russian (and don't feel like translating), kraznyj, zheltyj, and chirok translate as red, yellow, and teal, respectively.

Twilight is WAY too obsessed with books! But this fic is awesome!:pinkiehappy:

Wait, how have I not seen this fic yet? :pinkiegasp: I must read it now!

Okay, now I've read it; and RDD was right, it's hilarious. :pinkiehappy: definitely worth reading. Your other stuff is better, though that's to be expected. :twilightsmile:

830061
True.

This one really was little more than a silly little rant. It's hardly even a proper story as there is never any real tension, just characters talking at each other and never reaching any particular conclusion. I'll take moderate refuge in the fact that it's just an aside to the larger tale that is Boast Busted, but that's still mostly just an excuse.

Though this fic did help get me into Twilight's head, so EoI might not exist without it.

830094 Well there is the technical conclusion in Twi running off and the kelpies disregarding her and swimming away. Sorry, my infrequent pickiness required me to point that out. :twilightsheepish:
And :yay: for it leading to EoI, I guess. :trixieshiftleft: I'm going to stop pestering you here and let you get back to that, or whatever else you were doing.

737400
That penguin is a Piplup from Pokémon. Anyway, nice story. That is, Lunaverse story.

1077554
Yes, yes it is, still a penguin Pokémon though, so my originally statement stands; I was internationally being generic. :ajbemused:

Thanks for trying though. :twilightsmile:

⸘Steven‽ ¿Who is this Steven? ¡I shall go play with my Magnets!

I'm disappointed in you, Twi. You were wrong. A species which is asexual is indeed incapable of sex, and either goes extinct quickly or reproduces asexually. The word you seem to be looking for is "hermaphroditic," and if we want to be more precise it sounds like sirens are simultaneous hermaphrodites.

An odd word, "hermaphrodite." What is it that's so quintessentially masculine about Hermes? Seriously, Aphrodite makes sense, but Hermes seems so arbitrary.

And really, asexual? It's not exactly a popular form of reproduction among complex organisms; I'm not sure off the top of my head if there's any members of the animal kingdom that primarily reproduce asexually (and if there are, they're probably on the simple side of Cnidaria at the most complex). Hermaphroditism, on the other hand, is rather common.

2191405
Well the "true" sirens did indeed supposedly go extinct, so you might have a point.

Still though, in a world with functional magic there could be methods of reproduction beyond our limited scientific understanding. Actually, even in our own world their exist some reasonably complex mono-gender species, like the New Mexico whiptail, which while it can breed by hybridizing with certain other lizard species, they are also full capable of doing so without via parthenogenesis.

Plus there is always the possibility of bizarre alien biologies, like say the Namekians of Dragon Ball Z, or the Assari of Mass Effect.

2191533 The New Mexico whiptail is certainly something I didn't know about; thank you for alerting me to its existence. It's a pretty interesting species.

Nevertheless, no matter what biology sirens may have, the point stands that Twilight was unambiguously wrong when she said that asexual does not mean they don't have sex (and don't tell me she meant "doesn't mean they don't reproduce" because the whole story is about Twilight insisting on being precisely correct). And I'm not going to apologize for using Occam's Razor to conclude sirens are hermaphrodites either, even if it's probably not as reliable as finding Twilight and bugging her to change her answer to something less obviously wrong.

2191906
Well it's kind of the point that Twilight has got her facts less than perfect. Marine biology isn't her area of expertise, same as with earlier in the chapter when she tries applying her limited understanding of music to critique the trio's song. She's more or less supposed to come across as something of a presumptuously insufferable know-it-all, who acts like she knows more than she really does.

2192063 She shouldn't be saying anything I can verify as wrong, though. I know nothing about fantastic marine biology (and presume the same applies to most people reading this story), so I can't check anything she says from her knowledge of that subject. All I can check is things that any human or pony with a fraction of her education should know, like the definition of "asexual." She comes off as pompous, and as trusting too absolutely in books over more direct sources of information, sure, but to me she doesn't come off as wrong to me outside her flagrant misuse of "asexual" and her misinformation about kelpie populations, and with her debating fantastic marine biological classifications, I don't see any way to plausibly show her as wrong except by bringing up topics where we would be inclined to trust anecdotal evidence over her, and it doesn't seem likely for the conversation to drift so far towards the practically more than a few times, if that.

And when she's talking about music she just sounds like she's being persnickety about definitions; I have no doubt that under a definition of "song" that does not include chants, which I would consider a valid definition (though obviously not the only valid definition), the kelpies were not singing, they were chanting.

2192101

I have no doubt that under a definition of "song" that does not include chants, which I would consider a valid definition

That's sort of the the trick of it now isn't it, because it's not so much a matter of Twilight's -- flagrant misuse of "asexual" -- so much as her just using a specific definition of the term, and while perhaps not your preferred choice, the term can be accurately used to describe a species that lacks sexual dimorphism and/or that reproduces without the need for any kind of sexual intercourse.

a•sex•u•al [ey-sek-shoo-uhl]
adjective

a. having no sex or sexual organs.
b. independent of sexual processes, especially not involving the union of male and female germ cells.

2192114 And that's what I said. "Lacking sexual organs and/or independent of sexual processes" is exactly what the kelpies correctly took "asexual" to mean. "Having sexual organs and making use of them in sexual processes" is something Twilight implicitly said describes sirens, thus contradicting all valid definitions of "asexual." Even the one where it is a sexual orientation.

It helps that the variety of valid definitions for words is more or less inversely proportional to word length.

2195030
Actually, no. You seem to have somewhat missed the point. The trio here (or at least red) initially misinterpret the term; assuming it means, "something that has sex a lot."

Whereas what twilight says basically amounts to a statement that while oceanic sirens had physical characteristics that other species identify as making them look female, that such was a misconception.

To go back to something I mentioned previously, as a gendered species we humans might try to identify Nameks as male or Asari as female because that is what they look like to us, but as neither of those two species actually possess gender differentiation our attempts to ascribe them with such qualities would be inaccurate. Nor would it be accurate to call either species hermaphroditic, as they don't possess both male and female sexual organs, but rather have a completely different manner of reproduction; Nameks need no partner to reproduce, they just spit up eggs, and while Asari do engage in a form of psychic mating, the actual biological process is wholly self-contained to a singular parent with no genetic contributions from the partner.

2196692 Firstly, this doesn't change the fact that Twilight said the term does not indicate how much sirens have sex, when it by definition does.
Secondly, I want to call a debate foul on you because I suspect you were deliberately withholding the information that I has misinterpreted Red's statement.
Thirdly, your examples seem to both be asexual (a bit debatable with the Asari, but that's not really the point), so of course they're not hermaphroditic.
Fourthly, all Twilight told me about sirens is that they do engage in sex and do not have separate genders, which is enough to conclude that they fit "hermaphrodite" better than any other category I have a word for, and not enough to even remotely justify theorizing beyond that.
Fifthly, Twilight can try to use "asexual" to mean "does not have separate genders" all she wants; it won't make it a correct definition unless she can get a lot of other ponies to use "asexual" in the same way.

2201255
1) Actually that was more or less exactly the point Twilight was trying to make, that the term "asexual" does not mean "has lots of sex".

2) I did not intentionally withhold the information, I was simply unaware you had made such a misinterpretation until that last post.

3) Again, that is basically my point, Nameks and Asari possess secondary characteristics that make them look male/female to human eyes, but in truth they both have a wholly asexual biology.

4) If that's how you interpreted the scene, well I guess I'm sorry, but that was not the intent. It is only Red-eyes who ever says anything about "having lots of sex", due to her own ignorance, while Twilight is only attempting to disavow her of that misconception.

5) Accept that really is already a fully valid definition of the term.

is it just me, or did twilight sound more like doctor who in that whole gambit

2654989
Twilight got a bit absent-minded... kinda funny really!.Then again, the Kelpies were of inconsequential threat to her.

Twilight you just trolled them. Love it.

Twilight's so close to canon in this that I can imagine this happening in the canon-verse.
:twilightsmile:

4809787
Thank you. I certainly tried to be true to who Twilight is regardless of verse. After all, L!Twi is basically still supposed to be mostly the same pony, just one who didn't learn the lessons in friendship from the first episode.

4809858
You're quite welcome, it's great to see AU characters who seem in character for the main universe.

Must resist the urge to call these Sirens: Sonata,Adagio, and Aria. I won't do it, no!

5319653
Wouldn't work anyway, since one of them is a guy.

...and if it helps, their meta-narative names are Krazny, Zhelty, and Chirok.

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