Backflipping through reality at ludicrous speeds. What does RB stand for, anyway? | Ko-Fi
While on a visit to Canterlot, Twilight has a brief encounter with an odd stallion in a cloak.
As it turns out, he's an old acquaintance of Princess Celestia's. A very old one.
If you liked this story, please tell me! If you thought this story was a load of hogwash, then please also tell me! I adore feedback of any kind.
Thanks to R5h for suggesting the title.
Edit: Oh, hello there Popular Stories! Nice to finally meet you.
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7933308 Probably because it's from Man Who Sold the World. Which is a wonderful song that I also happen to be listening to at this very moment.
I mean, 'Starswirl' is the most obvious guess here apart from the mismatching attire. Beyond that...some sort of cosmic force donning mortal form like God, Time, or Fate, but...I fear I am at a loss as to a way to confirm any of them.
Hmmm, pretty sure the stallion represents change.
Well, that was a bit of a fun ride. The easy answer would be Star Swirl the Bearded, especially since Celestia's description of when she and Luna were fillies means this already doesn't line up fully with canon. I suppose he could also be the ponysona of Destiny or Harmony, though most real-life deities related to Destiny or Fate are female, such as Clothos, Latresis and Atropos. Honestly? If I were Luna, I would be a mite disgruntled because that would mean her fall was preordained, not something out of her own free will. Realising you don't have full free agency over your actions always is a bit troubling, even in a world where destiny is a tangible thing.
But I bet he's really the Pony of Shadows. After all, ratty grey cloak like the Pony of Shadows teaser at the end of Castle-Mania, and he decides to stay out in the old castle as a meaningless F-U to Celestia after she kicked him out of there a thousand years ago
“I said hello,” Twilight continued, “and he greeted me by name, like he knew me.”
'And' should be capitalised. If you were to have:
Then 'continued' doesn't need to be capitalised. However, the start of actual speaking should always be capitalised.
The semi-colon doesn't belong there. Semi-colons in English are used for three things; for in the use of a list, such as this one; to take the place of coordinating conjuctions for two clauses that belong together 'but, or, so, and, yet, for, nor' such as 'I went to get mail; my mailbox was empty'; and a third use after dialogue tags that's complicated to explain. You're trying to use it in the second case, but the clauses don't fit together enough to alternatively use one of those coordinating conjunctions.
You need to close quotation marks here. In fact, you do this through the entire fic, where when Celestia is reciting the tale of the mysterious stallion, nearly every paragraph starts but does not close with quotation marks. I don't ever remember a single English class where this was remotely allowable, so if it is it would be an extremely obscure rule to me. Or did you import this from GDocs and it somehow stripped every trailing quotation mark?
Get rid of the 'a' in the last bit.
7933910 Hey Emp! Thanks for the comment.
A-hem.
Actually, it shouldn't. She's saying one sentence: "I said hello, and he greeted me by name, like he knew me." Thus, 'and' does not get capitalized in this case. Note the comma after 'continued'.
Leaving off closing quotations until the end of the quote like this is standard procedure for multi-paragraph quotations. It's primarily done to indicate that the same person is speaking without using unnecessary speech tags.
Can't argue the rest, though! Fixing now.
Hadn't thought of the Pony of Shadows, actually. That's good. I'm declaring it (secondary) cannon.
And in regards who/what the stallion is...
7933595 Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Yes, the cloaked stallion is, in fact, the personification (ponysonification?) of Change.
7933958 Equinification maybe?
7934062 That works about as well as anything else.
A nice little mystery you made here.
Death of a sort?..... Dammit, there's a Tarot Card that sums up what I'm thinking but I can't remember which it is...
I want to say it's the Tower.... Yup. The Tower= Disaster; upheaval; or drastic change.
I'm just going to throw my hat in the ring here. I think it makes far more sense for this mysterious stallion to represent Karma. Because there's always a balance. Discord no doubt brought the worst chaos Equestria had ever seen, but after his defeat the royal sisters brought about the greatest time of harmony Equestria had ever known. Losing her sister was the greatest personal lost Celestia had ever endured and yet it led to her greatest gain in the form of personal growth. Would she have been such a competent leader and held Equestria together for so long without that growth?
I know you already claimed that Change was the winner, but that answer just seems too vague and inadequate. Things can change for the worst in life without an upside and vice versa. But with this stallion there's always an equal and opposite effect. That sort of cosmic balance definitely sounds more like Karma to me.
But that's just my opinion on the matter. Either way it was an enjoyable read.
8077824 You are correct in that things can change for the better or worse overall. My intention in writing this was to portray change in a neutral light, and to show that a period of turmoil, of change, can eventually stabilize into something positive, should we make efforts to shape it that way. This is why I chose these specific events and their outcomes. Change was paying me a visit when I wrote this, so that may have had something to do with it.
In addition, I feel like Karma would take a more active role in things. Change is a rather passive fellow; I see Karma as nudging things in the right direction.
Still, I left the story itself open to interpretation for a reason, regardless of my intention.
7933308
I never knew Bowie covered Nirvana!
(I kid! I kid! Please put down your torches and pitchforks!)
7933595
If that is truly who the mysterious stallion is, I would imagine Twilight would have already encountered him quite frequently at Davenport's Quills and Sofas shop, especially behind all the sofas...
