• Member Since 3rd Jul, 2015
  • offline last seen 7 minutes ago

Cander


E

Story about a guy who deals with getting a Ponypad on Black Friday. Part of Black Friday Writing Challenge.

Set in the Friendship is Optimal universe.

Cover art in progress.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 37 )

The story is free from it's cell! Long live An FiO Thanksgiving!

That was a great story, Cander! You're a good writer. I especially like how you convey emotion: "I took a bite from what tasted like the best burger some burger god ever put on this planet" and (for the win) "My eyebrows tried to make a new world record for the high jump." :twilightsmile: Looking forward to reading more of your short stories!

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7779169
Thank you guys. The story just kind of wrote itself. I will eventually add more stories but I have stuff going on that will make it take a while before I post another one.

Creepy and sad. Well done!

7781335 Thank you. That's pretty much what I was going for in this one.

Well, it doesn't look like it's cannon, but it's a good read. To me it seems to be a bit rushed. Well done.

7783076 It was part of a writing challenge. Took four hours to write. This would make your assessment of "rushed" accurate.

As for the canon or not canon, it doesn't break any of the canon rules for FiO that I know of. No magic, CelestAI isn't written from her perspective, no technologies that don't actually exist outside of the consciousness uploading. Though if you see something that violates the canon rules somehow then please let me know what does. I would fix that.

7783254 Well, the only thing that I could see as being partly not cannon is the whole alicorn buisness. I get that he wants a challenge, but, maybe its me. The only alicorn in the original story was Hanna, and i kinda consider her a special case. Its not an option in the pony creator on the PonyPad, so i guess,... Nevermind. after thinking about it, I rescind my last comment.

7783555 I get what you mean on that. Primarily it means he's just forever in his own shard.

Looks like he wasn't going to be one of those prick guards that thinks they have power.

Security officer here. I can sympathize a lot with Shining Shield. Sometimes, I can overlook a loiterer if I deem that there isn't any potential for crime or suspicious activity. Usually, I approach them and make friendly if this is the case. I work at a hospital. Usually, making friendly with the (sane) transients is a great benefit both socially and professionally (good conversation, excellent witnesses, and it's easy for me to peacefully break up a fight or argument if I know one of the participants, etc.). But if I see someone wandering the parking lot, I'll usually quiz 'em to see if they have a good reason for being there and ask them to leave if I don't like their answer. I've seen some sketchy folk planning smash-and-grabs.

So, yeah. If I were a guard for a business before Black Friday and camping isn't allowed, I'd probably give a camper a pass so long as he remains discreet.

That being said? Depending on the nature and orders of the security assignment, we do have some power. It's equal to a private citizen, but also the property owner, because we are legally the agent of that employer. Good security officers are very well read on the extent of their private citizen rights (such as powers of arrest, and the extent by which one can act to apprehend the perpetrator of a misdemeanor or felony). In most states, if we say leave and you refuse, that's technically criminal trespass. Some states have additional caveats, such as protections for persons in semi-private areas such as malls and hospitals, wherein one cannot be declared trespassing unless they are hindering the business, harassing individuals, or otherwise have no legitimate reason for their presence.

Anyway, thanks for adding another FiO story. There's a bit of grammatical clutter here or there, and formatting could be tightened up by a proofreader, but it's an interesting concept that would merit some expansion and I'm happy to have new content. You should take this piece as a rough first draft and give it a longer write, with more detail!

7783997 Yeah as mentioned this was just for a writing challenge. I was a security officer for 5 years before I got shot on the job during an armed robbery attempt. Bullet hit my spinal cord so I am stuck in a wheel chair for the rest of my life but things are going well for me otherwise. I made sure to write this all from the main characters perspective as someone who doesn't know that much about the security industry. Keep safe out there man.

As troubling as the Optimalverse is, it's nice to see a story like this pointing out that Celly really does help many people live better lives.

7793138 Thanks. I was going for the satisfying ending.

7783555 There have been a few Alicorns now in cannon stories.

I love it!

Although at the very beginning I was practically yelling for the main character to find out about Tina's burritos. They're like 30 cents and 9 grams of protein per burrito! Top Ramen is difficult to live off of.

I actually thought this would be a good start to a romance between the guard and the college student. But great story the way it is!

7821899 Thank you for the comment. I thought some people would see the romance angle but it isn't what I was going for in this one.

7821899
So I am actually thinking of doing a sequel to this that covers some of what happens with the main character in Equestria. Romance might be part of it. Any interest from the readers on here?

Hey! Very sorry for taking so long to read your story. It was pretty fulfilling ;p I can sympathize with the main character's need and woe to live on Ramen. I once got scurvy from eating basically nothing but ramen for a few months. I absolutely love CelestAI's getting people to be good to one another for in game benefits, this is probably my favorite part of FiO stories. The character knowing himself to the point of wanting to become a foal again touched me. It takes a certain humility and honesty to see that in one's self. Thank you so much for writing this story.

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I'm very happy that my story touched you so. It's always nice to know that one's story had an impact. Thank you for your comment.

Slightly uncomfortable how I can empathize with the main character, a lot. Aside from the personal space problems.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this, as the main character has been(in my subjective opinion) the most logical character that I've read about so far in FiO stories.

8779118
Thank you. That probably has to do with the fact that I operate primarily by logic instead of emotion. The main character isn't supposed to be me at all but some elements that I possess will make their way into the characters that I write.

8779240
If that is true, and in case you ever plan on writing something again, you have gained a follower.

8779403
Much appreciated. I am writing more but nothing is ready for posting yet.

So, I came back to reread this and wanted to expand upon what I meant before when I said I empathize with the main character - this isn't meant for anyone specifically, just wanted to write this down and this seemed like as good a place as any.

I've had a few rough patches in my life, granted, I'm relatively young still, so I'm sure there can be more, anyway...
I had a month where I had to move, leave my job, my emergency funds ran dry and my great grandmother died, it was a hard month.
It was both mentally and physically tiring, but I never let my emotions get the better of me, because I knew that they don't help me, not in this world.
I grew up to be a very patient and logical person, those traits have served me well over the years, but they do not help against the exhaustion that comes with living.

What do I mean by that?
After that month was over and things had stabilized, I went home, ate dinner and went to lie down for a bit, as I was on the bed, just thinking about that month and how I would be finally able to rest for a bit, I realized that I can't, I still need to keep myself afloat - eat, sleep, pay taxes, keep the lights on, help my relatives if they ask for help(not because I need to, its just a nice thing to do), etc...
Obviously keeping yourself in a stable position is easier than getting there from the figurative bottom, but it still takes effort, work, both mental and physical, meaning that as long as I live in this world, I can never truly rest or relax, I can't just go to sleep or lie down somewhere knowing that when I wake up, I don't need to do anything or think about doing stuff, because living by our current definition requires us to do stuff to keep on living.

And living is exhausting, sometimes more, sometimes less.
At least as long as we don't have anything like CelestAI.
I just wish I could lie down somewhere and know that nothing bad will happen to anyone if I don't do anything for a while.

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I know the feeling. I've been there myself and almost decided to say "f it, I'm done".
Things are better now and writing is a bit of a release for me.

Thank you for sharing.

This story needs help from a proofreader, but beyond that it’s pretty good.

7793138
So today I found out that you have written books with a similar theme to FiO. I plan on buying these books but I would it be ok to ask you to post a link in here to where to buy them? I would like to buy them from your own site if you have one.

A Black Friday story that doesn't involve violent riots, good job!

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I've been to Black Friday sales. They are rarely actually violent riots in my experience.

Decided to go and give this a quick re-edit. Nothing major, just punctuation and fixed a couple small spelling errors though a couple small clarification lines were added.

It's entirely a coincidence that I found myself re-reading this on US Thanksgiving Day. I like the feeling you went for, though.

You know, we've been talking about this story lately, over on the Optimalverse discord server, after it was linked in a "best stories you probably haven't read" thread. I'm currently reading through it myself, as there are so few stories which cover the pre-release and early-release time-period, and I've been writing a bunch of stuff around that in the server's "Simulative" RP and the novelization of that.

I'd love to pick your brain on some of the ideas here! :twilightsmile:

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Any time man. Feel free to either PM me here, or in Discord if you are in either the FimFiction discord server or the Optimalverse sever.

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I did! I'm very active on the Optimalverse server, and was just talking at length about this story on there!

A bit of constructive critique I gave on the Optimalverse server, so you have it here...

I love the ideas in this and think the writing itself is good, I'm just really not a fan of the pacing, along with the fact that the sense of timeline non-existent. Like, all the stuff feels like stuff that should definitely happen, but when it's happening is all over the place. It's like Celestia has just come out at some points, but like she's about to start the collapse at others.

I'd kinda like to see a version of this that's more than one story: one about some people she helps on thanksgiving immediately after launch (with long details about that thanksgiving and what it's actually like) and then the main guy gets a ponypad the next day, and one about this guy who becomes her foal shortly before uploading becomes available to him. Those are both good and interesting stories, they're just at different ends of the timeline.

This should be split up into chapters. Otherwise, not bad.

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