I had an idea about an adventure story where the endboss was an evil Twilight from an alternate dimension/timeline, but I didn't have any other events to stretch it out to be a full story. I also wanted to write something about Twilight's possibly-not-completely-platonic relationship towards Princess Celestia. So I bolted the two ideas together, and then the story practically wrote itself. This is my process for a lot of the things I write.

This is good. Very intense too and original.

Nifty as fuck, dude.

I like this. Rather thoughtful and melancholic. Good job.

Pretty neat.

Galactus Sparkle?

Typo? “I would love you return to you,” Twilight says, her face serious, “and be your student once more.”

Fantastic story!

Is that title a deliberate Pink Floyd reference?

>>846527846527

You know that feeling when you must have read a line in your story at least a dozen times while editing and then you're made aware that there's something wrong with it? Sigh. Thanks for catching that, there's always one that gets through.

>>847234847234

Absolutely. All my stories so far have titles taken from songs, though what they have to do with the subject matter of each song varies considerably.

Interesting read... I'm not even done yet, but the one thing killing my enjoyment is chronic present tense... read any paragraph out loud and tell me it sounds natural. Even my mind's "on the fly" word substitution is struggling to keep up with this story.

To your credit, I am enjoying the story, and am going to continue reading.

Just know that story telling functions most naturally in a past tense style.

***Finished***

Excellent story concept. I enjoyed this story. I started wondering how to repair the alt universe... till it was made obvious evil Twi obliterated it, and had moved on to ravage the original.

Read your story out loud... like not even just skim it, but use your mouth and read it out loud... you should catch the awkwardness of the present tense style if you do so. Other than that, it was a good story. I gave you a thumbs up, and faved it, for the interesting concept, but consider a re-write. It'll do WONDERS to your rating, making it climb. This story can totally get more stars!

Good luck!

>>848506848506

Using present tense was a deliberate choice to separate the tone of the flashbacks/forwards from the tone of the main narrative, much like putting a visual filter on a flashback in a film. I want a stylistic indicator that tells the reader it's time to switch gears from the main scene on the train to the scenes that lead up to/come after it, something that's more than just a visual cue like itallics. It also makes the scenes in present tense more... final, more immutable. They are things that definitely happened, unlike the main narrative which is still happening while the story unfolds and so is subject to change. Present tense is difficult to use, I agree, but that doesn't mean it should never be used.

That was a pretty damn good story. I liked the way that you had the two main arcs of the story; Twilight's relationship with Celestia and the emergence of the Magi, and how you merged them together so well. It was almost like reading two stories at once, yet at the same time only one story .

The only issue I had was the use of present tense. It made the story a little bit confusing at first, but that's probably just because i'm unused to reading in present tense XD.

All in all, it was a solid, enjoyable story, and i'm looking forwards to more

Well played. The tense changes didn't bother me at all, but the inverted italics took me a minute to adjust to. Italics are usually used for thoughts, flashbacks, and things of the sort, but you seemed to use them to denote the mostly present events. The last section, though, is done in standard text and present tense, like the "flashbacks" were. Clever use of mechanics to tell us the story has changed pace, so to speak, or over analysis/silliness/misunderstanding on my part?

>>849198849198

It wasn't intentional when I thought of how to write The Magi, but I did realise that merging the two text formats mirrors the way that the two timelines are encountering each other, so I kept it that way. Happy accident.

So... Twilestia destroys the universe?

>>933994933994

More or less, yeah.