"My name is Crystal Faire, but your reality knows me as Flurry Heart. You may call me that if you wish.
"In some places, I am a monarch all of my own in my prime, I am aged and retired in other places, and I am deceased in others still. I go by many names in each of those realities. I have been to them.
"My mission is to travel the multiverse and save it one timeline at a time. But the multiverse is breaking down and timelines are collapsing and I do not know why. I have always been a master of time and I have always been on my own, but the past has a habit of catching up and I fear that my lonesome may no longer be enough..."
Digital pdf version here
Print book version here
Crystal Faire vector art by Little Tigress / moonlightfan (dA)
Edited by PoisonClaw
Preread by Onyx Archer
Featured on 4/26/17!
Featured on Equestria Daily! 7/26/17
Goodreads entry~
Damn, this is a good story. I look forward to seeing more! Have a like and a follow.
And so it begins, and with a bang! This is looking fantastic so far!
Very intriguing beginning. Looking forward to more!
As long as Shining Armor didn't assemble the troops just to show off a 20-foot tall picture of his daughter, he can't be as obsessed as a certain Colonel from an anime.
And so their family tree just got even more complicated, with an extradimensional relative.
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Nice start. I am interested.
Can't wait for the next chapter.
Interesting...
...well, as good as it is to know one issue's resolved, I'm sorta wanting details. Just saying.
Constants and variables? Looks like someone's been playing BioShock Infinite.
This is looking interesting. I'll be keeping my eye on this.
8091272 Patience, for the game is still young!
8091274 Actually, I think it's because of RQK's recent work on Sunlight Sliders that inspired that. And the idea of constants and variables has existed prior to Bioshock Infinite, though not explained in the same way. It's a big part of the "many worlds" theory, among other things.
8092224 Still a possibility though.
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Actually, both are true! That said, I more-or-less introduced infinities to Sunlight Sliders but those who have read my stories will know that I've been playing with multiverses and infinities from the get-go. And Bioshock: Infinite was good game.
I'll offer a third thing here which encompasses and subsequently supersedes those two possibilities: I'm a physicist. This stuff is my jam.
8092469 True enough! And Yes, it was a good game.
There's a reason I came to you for assistance in coming up with the mechanical ideas behind my current project after all XD
Will evil/opposite versions of the Mane Six appear?
but the multiverse is infinite. how could she save all of the dimensions then?
cool story though.
Nice work in cranking up the tension here. Can't wait for the next chapter.
8121771 Ah, indeed, the multiverse is infinite. You'll just have to wait and see~
Starring Tim Curry as the voice of Miasmus.
...holy crap.
Miasmus must DIE.
So... she knows how to fix them, but she decides not to because... reasons?
And instead she tries to talk sense into them even though she knows that can't possibly have any effect because they literally cannot hear her.
Umm... Why is Golden Oaks in Ponyville.
It was quite irreversibly blown up in the said same episode Twilight got her Castle.
8139980 Yes, hence why I referred to it as a "blasted out tree" in the text. ...Actually, the actual problem is that while the library was destroyed during the fight with Tirek, it was later excavated during Castle Sweet Castle to make that ornament for Twilight's new home. So... it shouldn't even exist, period!
This has been fixed. Oversight on my part.
8138314 I dunno. Twilight seems like the type to cling to those ideals of friendship and I want to think she'd be a little reserved on using magic if it could possibly hurt them. Hmmmm, I'll have to think on this.
8140194 Maybe the 'it could possibly hurt them' needed to be more obvious, I guess. I mean, it sounded like she just had to hit them with a stun blast.
It seems The Nothing from The Never Ending Story has found it's way to Equestria. If anyone sees an amulet that looks like it's made of snakes and has the power to grant wishes, give it to Crystal Faire.
Come on, Twilight! I know you don't want to hurt your friends, but Miasmus will kill them if you don't! Use your common sense, girl!
Oh, well. At least, things are starting to pick up.
I think this is my favorite chapter yet.
Oh, yeah, I'm definitely getting to like Crystal Faire. When she gets in there, crap gets done.
Wow.
Although the content is fun, I am much more impressed with the writing. You write so well!!!
The transitions were so smooth! And I feel that I can learn from your writing. :)
You are awesome!
DUN DUN DUN :P
Hm.
I wonder what you'll do now.c
:o
Eh, it's better written than most multiverse fics... but still... multiverse continuity issues. Too much remains the same despite the radical differences in causality. It's the failing cliché of nearly every story/movie of this theme. Even "Sliders" eventually fell into that trap after sticking carefully to just being in worlds with a tiny initial change here and there, then moving on to the effects of more radical shifts in history.
Butterfly Effect, people. It's a thing. Alternate realities are much the same as going back in time and changing something in the past, and would end up much the same and thus need to be handled the same way.
Things in many universes just happening to be the same despite radical departures from the initial timeline starting point are a case of 'Contrived Coincidence' and is one of the more universally negative writing tropes. In fact, many comedies and movies... including the "Lego Movie" poked fun at this sort of thing. It's akin to using 'Because Destiny Says So' as a writing crutch to explain away overwhelming implausibility in the narrative.
For instance, one might be able to give a pass to a reality-hopper coming across a couple worlds with the same people living in different places after making different choices... but if in one reality a guy named Bob is a shipping clerk in Canada, and in the other Bob is a cyborg battling vampire-demons who'd invaded the world a century earlier... yeah, that's a bit tough to take seriously. In almost any scenario of playing out the causality changes, Bob simply wouldn't exist at all.
We're talking about chances of trillions-to-one against these circumstances playing out just right for 'Bob' to exist again. And to then repeat Bob's existence in world after world after world where events in the past were significantly different... the statistics are so dead-set again it you'd have a better chance of winning every lottery on earth every time you played them every day for the rest of your life. It invites the dreaded literary notion of ABSOLUTE FATE or SUPREME GOD directing every single event... in which case, if there's a Divine Puppetmaster making sure everything goes how it wants without telling anyone why or how, do the characters actually need to do anything?
See TV tropes: "Contrived Coincidence is one of the driving forces of Farce, decreed by the Rule of Funny. This is a major reason why wariness is needed in other genres; too much of it will make the story farcical." And its related to the almost always badly used trope of the "Theory of Narrative Causality" in which things only happen because the plot says they should. Every aspiring writer should try very very hard to avoid making glaring use of this UNLESS there is a very good reason it MUST be used: for instance being the existence of some central force guiding everything... and then you must be wary of bad God-mode character and Fate tropes.
In other words, mask the implausibility of the events in a strong enough narrative that they are no longer noticeable unless someone is looking specifically for them.
Or just write a silly over-the-top story where it just doesn't matter and people accept the absurdity BECAUSE they're expecting it (this explains both the "Transformers" and "Fast and the Furious" franchises. They're both just too ridiculous to take seriously.)
Ugh, it's one of THOSE characters.
You know, the fact that every other character immediately jumps up and falls in line with these omniscient world-jumpers... it'd be nice to see a story in which this trope is inverted and the world-jumper turns out to be the bad guy all along... given that there is NO WAY IN HELL that the other characters can even know if they're telling the truth about anything and don't have evil plans all their own. But, said side characters/protagonists are usually battered to death by Idiot Balls and cannot think rationally or question anything sensibly.
You don't know that! You have no solid evidence!
And HOW CAN YOU KNOW? What tests can you give? What if she's from an Evil Universe and just shaved off her goatee? What if she's a shape-shifting alien psychic or a demon with immense powers worming its way into your life? You've done absolutely NOTHING to be sure she is who she says she is when you already have experience with reality-warping spirits, shape-shifting mind-reading bug ponies, magic-sucking centaurs, alt-world mirrors... all of this and you're ready to just throw all caution to the wind! GAHHHH!! This is all the bad tropes!
Authors need to keep in mind how the OTHER CHARACTERS would naturally react to such a surreal situation. In most cases, EXTREME SUSPICION is the most likely result. Just consider how YOU would react to someone looking like an older you showing up and claiming to want to help save you from a future disaster... SOUTH PARK DID AN EPISODE ON THAT with the parents hiring actors to trick the kids into believing if they didn't stay away from drugs they'd turn into fat criminal unemployed losers.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. THAT is how these situations should always be framed, with a very ample dose of doubt and suspicion on the part of a character supposedly of reasonably average or higher intelligence expected to believe such a far-fetched scenario out of the blue.
So in other words in Flurry Twit had told them all the fact a short time earlier, they could have just played the "Why Don't We Just Shoot Them?" card and ended this side-plot in an instant.
And this, my friends, is Narrative Contrivance.
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Woah, slow down there! Don't jump the gun!
All of the above are things I have considered and am still considering. But I also have to consider pacing. That's always important. Besides, remember It's About Time? Twilight was pretty ecstatic about meeting her future self. Additionally, Time travel shenanigans have canonically happened twice now. In the world of pony, these events are not as strange as they would be in ours.
The game is still young. You'll see how this actually works later on.
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Glad to hear!
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I've glad to hear that! Here's hoping everything that comes after this continues to entertain and (I guess) teach!
8154019 "It's About Time" was also a moral-centered comedy about not getting obsessed over what might happen in the future, and allowing paranoid fears lead you to make a mess of things.
It wasn't about the time travel. That was merely a one-shot story device. I liked the limits put onto it: it could only be used once a lifetime per pony, and it only lasted a few seconds.
And then Starlight Sue got a hold of it and ruined it.
Slightly confused... But still, yush.
Wow, when did this become a Fallout Equestria crossover?: rainbowlaugh:
So... the Twilight from this timeline went to the Everfree Forest and got eaten by a hydra or something. Got it.
Well that just got dark. Gotta wonder what caused that timeline to collapse, though.
Understatement of the year, folks.
And now I have a feeling that Twilight will go to drastic measures to find her own timeline again, collapsed or not.
I also really like how some things remained constant in the timeline while other points changed.
As the Doctor says, "Time is always in flux" and that "There are fixed points in time."
Poor Twilight. She's in a reality that's so much like her own, and yet with so many subtle differences that she can just tell that things are off. Not bad, not in the slightest, but still, off.
And now the prequel to "Sparkle Census" ends.
There's something very uncanny about being in a world so similar, but has so many subtle differences. It's legit disturbing to read and you successfully convey it through Twilight. And I am really concerned with what Twilight might do.
But there is one question that has stayed in my mind: What happened to this timeline's Twilight? I take that she died in the Everfree Forest, but how?
Anyway, I'm loving this story.
So Crystal pulled a Rick and Morty for Twilight. Go to a universe where that world's version of her just happens to die, bury her in the backyard, and then slip into her place and continue on like nothing happened.
Where is the native Twilight of this world?
That's a pretty large plot hole you're just ignoring so far.
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IIRC, in the chapter when Crystal Faire brought Twilight to this world, it was mentioned that the native Twilight had gone into the Everfree forest alone, and her death was implied. Since our Twilight arrived around the time native Twilight was supposed to return, none of the natives know any different.
I'm guessing that Crystal Faire chose to leave Twilight here, because it would allow her to pick up her life more or less where she left off, without displacing some other Twilight, or otherwise causing problems with the locals...