Chapter 22
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Chapter 22
“Ambassador Noir?”
“Ah, Councilor Voltaire,” the Diamond Dog said, turning to face the approaching human. “Was wondering where you were.” He was wearing an actual black suit and tie.
“Come with me,” Voltaire said, reaching out a hand, “I’ll take you to the Council’s private box.” He was wearing a dark blue version of his usual dress suit, somewhat heavy on the frills.
The two bipeds had met in front of the Canterlot Concert Hall. Today’s performance was not musical, but instead magical in nature. Woofston, the legendary Diamond Dog illusionist, was giving a series of farewell performances, paired with his chosen successor, the earth pony Hoofdini. Voltaire brought with him Eveningstar and Cog, while Noir was unaccompanied. Eveningstar was wearing a simple purple dress, while Cog’s suit rather resembled Noir’s, accented by an orange bow tie. A flat box as wide as Cog was balanced on his back.
Voltaire had been trying to find a time and place to speak with Noir ever since they had first been introduced, but for one reason or another they had never been able to find free time away from their obligations and personal pursuits to schedule a meeting. This matinee was the first opportunity that presented itself.
~ ~ ~
A few minutes later they were sitting comfortably in their box. Noir leaned out to see the audience (mostly earth ponies) taking their places in the arena seats below. He grunted lightly in disapproval.
“What’s wrong?” asked Voltaire, leaning out to see what Noir was seeing. “You aren’t by any chance afraid of heights?”
“There no need for us to be this high,” Noir explained. “You can see plenty good from down there.”
“Well,” Voltaire laughed, “there has to be some reward for the rich and powerful.”
“Does there?” Noir said darkly. He turned and used his enormous paw to gesture at the crowd below. “This...place, is for looking down on other ponies, yes? Diamond Dogs’ oppressors looked down on us because they were towering beasts of greed and cruelty—what’s your excuse?”
“Well!” Voltaire exclaimed in shock, standing up from his seat. He took a few moments to calm himself down. “I...can certainly see your point of view.”
Noir gestured at Voltaire’s seat with a gentle smile. “Sit, Councilor Voltaire. Sit. Don’t need to fear me. Noir is lawyer, so bark worse than bite.”
Voltaire laughed loudly and sat back down. “‘Your bark is worse than your bite!’ That was funny! ...err, that was a joke, yes?”
“That was joke, yes,” replied Noir with another smile.
“Yes, I was thinking about that manner of your speech,” Voltaire said with delicacy. “I know you were part of the committee that wrote the Diamond Dog constitution, so I suspect you must be eloquent in your own language. Unfortunately, your Equine sounds...
“...little rough ‘round edges?” volunteered Noir.
“Exactly! That is why I asked Eveningstar here to manufacture one of her magical caps, specially adopted to Diamond Dogs!”
As he said this, Cog stepped forward and, from the box on his back, Voltaire removed a woolen skullcap, its color the same charcoal gray as Noir’s head. He leaned over towards the ambassador, the cap held in his hands.
Noir leaned back, one brow raised in suspicion.
“Is there a problem?” Voltaire asked.
Noir shook his head. “Is a good gift, a good good gift, but Noir must say no. Like Noir said, Noir is lawyer. His words save the innocent from the wicked. That cap,” he said pointing at it, “choose your words. It would chose Noir’s voice. Noir only study pony tongue for few years. In more years, Noir get better, sound more like native. ‘Till then, don’t mind sounding dumb.”
Voltaire sighed and put the gray cap back in its box. “You’re putting me at an advantage, and I wanted to speak with you about your political philosophy, a sophisticated conversation requiring complex vocabularies. You leave me no other choice.” With this, he removed his wig and stripped off his white cap, putting it with the gray one in the box.
The others in the room were speechless. The human who used words as his weapon...had just disarmed himself. Voltaire looked at them haughtily as he adjusted the periwig.
“Could...could Voltaire keep that off, too?” Noir asked, pointing at the wig.
“My...wig?” Voltaire replied. Speaking in Equine unaided was a lot harder than he thought.
Noir nodded. “Never liked that wig thing. Dead hair on top of real hair. Looked unnatural.”
Voltaire sighed, placed the wig with the two caps, and did his best to get the strands of his scant gray hair as organized as possible. “Voltaire do it,” he said, then sighed inwardly. My Equine is atrocious! he scolded himself. “But only because we in box, and nopony see in.”
He turned to the two ponies in the room. “Voltaire...” He wanted to say “I suppose I don’t need your services tonight”, but he couldn’t remember the Equine for half of the words, and many of the words he could remember he realized he couldn’t pronounce, including, most infuriatingly, any of the pronouns for referring to himself. He closed his eyes and mentally searched through his vocabulary. “Voltaire...don’t need you ponies.” He opened his eyes to see two hurt pairs of eyes. “Tonight,” he quickly added. “Don’t need ponies tonight. Wanted be less rude saying that, but forgot the words. Agreeable?” Voltaire frowned. That last word didn’t sound right at all.
“That was fine,” Eveningstar said. To the slightly confused Noir, she explained about her link to Voltaire through the White Cap, and the fact that Cog had volunteered for the same duty in regards to the Gray Cap. “We’d still like to stay.”
“I’m here for the show, actually,” said Cog.
“And I tend to find that you are the most-entertaining show in Canterlot,” Eveningstar said with a smile, pointing a hoof at Voltaire.
“Show? Like Court Jester?” Voltaire asked ruefully after a second’s thought. “And talk slower.”
“Like Court Philosopher,” Eveningstar replied. “And yes, I can talk slower if you’d like.”
“That just Court Jester for pointy-heads,” said Voltaire. “Like Gordon, Voltaire not taken seriously. Voltaire is just voltige, a pony-rider of words.”
“So is Woofston,” said Noir, gesturing at the closed curtains below. “He not only pony-rider, but also dragon-rider of words and tricks. Most famous dragon-rider of all time.”
“Woofston was the first Diamond Dog I had ever heard of,” said Eveningstar. “He visited Canterlot with his dragon handler when I was just a filly. All of us unicorns attended the show, convinced we could figure out how he faked his magic, but he tricked all of us.”
Voltaire rubbed his chin in thought. “Voltaire thought these two had fake magic, but wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to look foalish saying it.”
“No, they are fakes, and quite proud of it,” said Cogs. “Diamond Dogs have no magic, and earth pony magic relates to nature, the manipulation of earth or, in my case, metal. Hoofdini could use earth pony magic to perform his escapes, but he deliberately refrains, and the more talented earth ponies can sense that he performs his tricks without magic.”
“Why?” asked Voltaire. “This world has magic, lots of magic. Human world has little. Our magic humans are fakes, but...pretend to be real, to get rich. Human magickers” (that word was definitely wrong!) “like a type of thief, only the people know they are being robbed, and clap at the cleverness.”
“We’re not that different from you,” said Eveningstar. “Ponies like a good show, whether it be a meteor shower or a card raising itself from a deck. For unicorns, especially the magical specialists like the Sparkles or the Bluebloods, so much of what we do with our horns has become mundane. To see somepony that should not be able to do what we do, but yet do it, easier than us, and to go on and do what we cannot...it’s an intellectual game, but also...wonderful.”
“Talking too fast again,” complained Voltaire.
“Sorry.”
“It way to get around rules they tell us,” said Noir. “‘Earth pony never good as unicorn,’ they say. ‘Diamond Dog never good as dragon.’ Dragons liked our magicians so much that every noble had to have one. Treated them better than pets. Better than most of their subjects. Diamond Dog magicians were taught to read and write, so they could study each other’s tricks, so they could be even better magicians. They smuggled dragon political books to rest of us, and we learned what we could be.”
“Interesting!” exclaimed Voltaire. He looked longingly over at the box with the White Cap in it. This would be so much easier if I hadn’t given into to my cursed desire for fair play! he thought. “So does that mean...”
“Shh!” interrupted Noir, pointing at the stage. “Show starting.”
Woofston was standing on the stage. He was a light gray Diamond Dog with darker gray spots on his face and joints and a thinning head of hair, all of which indicated his extreme age. He was dressed in a suit and tails, and looked every bit the gentleman. He had begun his show by juggling. In fact, he had begun his show with no fanfare, no dimming of the lights. He just had the curtain open to him juggling three brightly colored balls. Seeing as he was performing for ponies, he soon had the riveted attention of his audience. “Juggling is easy,” he said. His Equine was flawless, but accented oddly, containing equal parts of Diamond Dog and Draconic. “Let’s try something a bit more challenging.” He tossed each ball high in the air, and as they fell they burst open into miniature bouquets of flowers. He easily caught each bouquet and tossed it out to three mares in the audience. Without allowing his viewers a chance to recover, he started pulling large bouquets out of thin air and tossing those to the sides of the stage, dozens, perhaps as much as a hundred times, in quick succession. The thundering hoof applause of the stunned audience grew and grew. A change in the lighting, and suddenly those tossed bouquets now looked like the foliage of an outdoor garden.
“The dragons have a story,” Woofston told the audience, “about a maiden in a garden. Well, here is the garden, and here,” with a gesture at the demure earth pony who walked upon the stage, “is the maiden. You’ll have to use your imaginations, as this stage is a little small for an actual dragon maiden.” The audience laughed, changed instantly to a gasp of surprise as the mare blew a small stream of fire. “Well, perhaps not so much imagination will be required, after all.”
The story continued on, with good and bad dragons, and good and bad spirits testing them. To Voltaire it sounded like something out of the Thousand and One Nights. This was a thoroughly new way of performing a magic show. The ones he had seen had been rather clinical, a series of effects presented with the same air as a scientist would present his latest discovery to his peers. In that case the goal was to, under no circumstances, look like an actual miracle-worker, as those had a bad habit of being burned at the stake. But here, where magic was commonplace, magicians could move on to the next stage of entertainment, using their illusions to tell stories. And judging from the enthusiastic reactions of the crowd, these ponies had most definitely come here to be entertained by fake magic. Voltaire wondered how much of this he could get into A Citizen of Canterlot, assuming he ever got to stage it for the Parisians. Assuming I’m ever allowed back into France, he thought glumly. Assuming I ever manage to return to Earth! That made him really depressed, so he turned his thoughts to the central question he wanted to pose to Noir, of how his people could survive without a nobility. He carefully began to phrase his arguments, to cobble some semblance of intelligent thought out of the thoroughly alien pony language he was forced to work with.
“...and they lived happily ever after!” Woofston exclaimed from the top of a magically constructed tower. The audience applauded uproariously as the lights on the stage cut out. A split second later they came back up, and the canine magician was suddenly at the front of the stage, seemingly teleported from his last location, with the elaborate tower nowhere to be seen. There he received the cheers of the crowd.
A placard placed at the side of the stage announced a half-hour intermission before Hoofdini’s show would start.
There was a knock on the door of the Council’s private box. Eveningstar used her magic to open it. On the other side was a well-dressed unicorn servant. “Shall I get you anything for the intermission?” he asked. “We have a full kitchen in the basement for the exclusive use of our upper-tier guests. Free of charge, of course.”
Voltaire would have liked to have ordered something, but he saw the disapproving look upon Ambassador Noir’s face. After all, the use of the phrase “upper-tier guests, free of charge” assumed the existence of its opposite, “the riff-raff we have to let in to keep them from burning the place into ashes. They get the used champagne, and we make them pay for it.” He shook his head.
Seeing this, Cog supplied the words that the human would have struggled to supply: “Sorry, but no. Thank you for the offer, however.”
The servant bowed at the front knees. “You have only to ring this bell,” he said, pointing at a pull rope, “and we will be quick to serve you in any means you desire.”
The obsequiousness by this point was too much for Voltaire, and he wrinkled his nose as he gestured for the pony to leave, which he did.
Noir sighed. “That what is wrong with ponies and dragons. Why does one pony have to be better than another pony?”
This was the opening Voltaire had been waiting for. “The way inequality is shown is sad,” he said. “But inequality itself is needed. Some must rule, while others follow.”
“Diamond Dogs have rulers and followers,” replied Noir, “but any of us could be ruler. You split yourselves up. Under Celestia, there are rulers of towns and regions, but they are picked only from some of you. Only noble can be leader, not peasant. Why noble? Why peasant? Why not all be peasants like Diamond Dogs?”
“Division of labor,” answered Voltaire. “Takes time to be worthy to lead. Takes learning. But life is hard. Takes work to live. So most work harder, so few can have free time. But poor have to be kept happy, or they rebel against more work. ‘Bread and Circuses’, the Romans called it.”
As far as Voltaire knew, the Equestrian government had neither “bread” nor “circuses”. But that was because any income that came into the coffers was immediately spent on the unicorn nobility. This was a problem that required some thought—he put it aside for later.
“Diamond Dog not have to divide labor. All Diamond Dogs are equal.”
“Excuse me,” said Eveningstar, “but my sister told me that Diamond Dogs, before their revolution, didn’t have to take care of themselves. The dragons fed and protected them, and they did this for all, even those that were not currently needed on a digging project. It seems to me that this gave you the free time you needed to plan your rebellion.”
“That...true,” Noir said reluctantly, not wanting to give any credit to the creatures he had fought against.
“A-ha!” Voltaire exclaimed. “Diamond Dogs are not all peasants—Diamond Dogs are all nobles!” Then he quickly sobered. “But you not have dragons helping now.”
“Yes,” said the ambassador. “Now we starve. We work lands, never enough time to work and take care of ourselves. We are peasants now.”
“And as peasants you will perish,” Cog said, standing up from his cushion. He began to pace around the room. “But suppose you had new peasants?”
“New peasants?” Noir asked in confusion.
“Mechanical peasants!” Cog exclaimed.
“You...but...” Voltaire put his hands to his head and concentrated to summon up the right words. “You...don’t know...how to do that. Do you?”
“I don’t mean literal peasants,” Cog explained. “I mean, take the time-consuming part of being a peasant, and mechanize that!”
“Slower,” Voltaire commanded. After Cog repeated himself, Voltaire thought about the suggestion. “So...harvesting?”
“Mechanical harvester.”
“Transportation?”
“Mechanical horsepower.”
Eveningstar gasped. “That violates everything that ponies stand for! You’re proposing the replacement of earth pony magic...”
“...for a race that has no magic!” exclaimed Cog. “Look, Auntie, no pony wants anything to do with my inventions, and for good reason: because magic can do it better. This is what my talent is meant for. To improve lives, not for the ponies—for the Diamond Dogs!”
“...and for the griffons,” said Noir.
“For the griffons?” asked Voltaire. “I thought griffons had...magicians.”
“Exactly,” explained Noir with a big grin. “Griffons have magicians exactly like Diamond Dogs have magicians. They fought beside us, so we know. They’re really good at the faking, but still...fake magic.”
“I guess they did it to try and be more like the ponies,” Eveningstar said. “They definitely have pegasus magic, though. They can fly in ways that would be impossible in a non-magical flying creature that size, and they can manipulate the weather. They are much better than pegasi when it comes to creating violent weather like tornadoes and blizzards.”
The conversation sort of died at this point. Cog’s suggestion had given Voltaire much food for thought. On Earth, the British were masters of the machine, and they had so much free time to waste as a result that they had a reputation for foolishness among the French. Their government, although less corrupt than the French, had a good deal of room for improvement, but nevertheless it was the most-representative government in Europe. Voltaire concluded that France needed to get into machines, fast, or Great Britain could quickly rise to become the dominant political power on the planet.
Hoofdini began his performance before Voltaire returned from his reverie. The magical pony’s performance was mostly based around escaping from a variety of devices used against criminal ponies. The political metaphor of this was more than obvious.
Once these were done, Hoofdini launched into the story of his childhood as the son of a poor woodspony. Unlike Woofston, Hoofdini’s story was not punctuated by magic tricks—it was simply a tale, told masterfully, of the rural life that the urban dwellers of Canterlot had never known, and wished dearly to experience.
Voltaire looked around him, and saw with surprise that the walls of the theater were turning into trees, and a bubbling brook had appeared between the aisles of the seats below. As he looked closer, he saw that both of these were phantoms, and by concentrating he could see the walls and floor behind them. The details of this illusion varied from one spot to another of the theater. An area occupied by a knot of earth pony fillies had nearly completely transformed into forest, while up in the box opposite to Voltaire’s, a group of snooty unicorns too busy chatting with each other to pay any attention to the performance was completely devoid of illusory vegetation.
What is going on? he asked himself in panic. Looking around, he saw the others with him, as well as the ponies below, were simply accepting, as if this were an expected part of the show.
Is...is this it, then? he pondered. The basis of magic, the fundamental way that our two worlds differ? These ponies act as if reality can be shifted purely by force of will, while on my world we call such individuals ‘insane’, and have abundant proof that they are wrong. But they are actually doing it, aren’t they? He saw that Hoofdini’s stage was also unaffected by the spell. For this part of the show, he isn’t the magician—they are. What in the world are they not capable of doing doing through the power of belief? As he surveyed the crowd of earth ponies, he saw how many of them had his signature blue scrolls visible on them.
Merde! is the word my translator has told the author he was probably thinking at this point.
He refuses to translate it, and this author probably doesn’t want to know in any case.
Stats
Page generated in 0.037 seconds
Total duration
769 users online
1,169,523 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
The idea for this chapter just popped into my head at the last minute.
I set myself a bit of a challenge this time, by taking away Voltaire's "weapon", and by putting the big idea in the mouth of a character other than the human (or the unicorn filly). Writing bad Equine is a pain, and I doubt I was very consistent with it. In fact, if anybody out there is fluent in Hungarian (the language I randomly selected to have the same grammar as Equine) and is capable of conveying in English what it would sound like to a native Hungarian to hear a Frenchman speak who knows just enough Hungarian to thoroughly mangle his language, please let me know, and we can get to work converting this mish-mash into something believable. [Reviews what I just wrote...] Also, if you actually understand that last sentence, give yourself a No-Prize (tm). I really need to post these things earlier in the evening...
If I had thought of the idea for this chapter last week, I would have inserted it into the middle of Chapter 21. Just imagine that this is all taking place after Celestia's collapse, after the government stabilized, but before her recovery, OK?
I'll try to get the actual chapter I was supposed to post today written later this week.
I knew staying up until 4:16 in the morning would reward me!
1329886
Just rewatched Dog and Pony Show to see if I could come up with some suggestions re: Equine and Diamond Dog linguistics. It appears that they mostly fail to use self-identifiers ("I", "me", "myself", and the like). On several occasions they use the Luna-esque "we" and "our" in cases where they appear to be describing themselves. A few times they just flat-out drop the identifier entirely, creating holes in their sentences where who they're referring to must be inferred from context.
I'd have to watch the episode another two times or so to be sure, but it appears that the self-identifying words are in some manner particularly hard to use. The collective ones are easier but an imperfect substitution, and where the collective would be too inappropriate the general tendency is is just to leave the statement without an object.
That's the only grammatical advice I can offer, and I'm not confident of it. The word "I" was recognizably used a few too many times for me to be confident. The bad dialect of the Diamond Dogs seems to have mostly been composed of their awful accent, rather than grammatical peculiarities.
Does this mean Celestia's power will weaken because ponies start believing she is weaker?
1330862 Now there's an interesting idea...
1330862 Yesssssss... and the only creature immune is Discord, because he, as a spirit of chaos, gives himself power simply by managing to exist as a physical impossibility: a living thing composed of chaos magic.
Equestria is doomed!
She seemed awfully convinced that a popular uprising could not dethrone her though...
Now that was a brilliant chapter! I would like to see more of Noir and Voltaire talking together.
I guess earth ponies will become more important in society now that they believe themselves to not be that much further than Celestia and unicorns. Thanks to Voltaire's words parity between the three races will be achieved to the point we see in modern Equestria. Plus Celestia will probably find herself more aproachable, much to her delight.
Really enjoy all your back-and-forths Voltaire has with everyone, especially Noir. Keep up the excellent work on this story!
This fic, or rather Equestria, just took a turn towards an interesting direction. The upcoming sociopolitical and socioeconomic changes in Equestria will be delicious to read and witness.
1331360
Hmmm. Thinking about that, she might not be worried about it because Discord draws power from chaos...
If things got bad enough for the mere *idea* of a popular uprising against Celestia to form, chances are discord has already broken free, giving celestia exactly what she needs to reunite the lands: a common, destructive enemy that requires all of ponydom to rally against.
That is merely an outside and very HUMAN perception of the situation though: In this story Celestia doesn't seem like the kind of ruler to really consider such tactics plausible or acceptable.
Right. and now a comment on the actual chapter.
Not only does this continue to be the deep, philosophical human in equestria that highlights the fundamental problems with absolute monarchy, without loosing the idealism of the show or belivability of the characters, NOW we finally GET that conversation with Noir!
I'm not a politically minded person, nor am I a socialogist, but again, the author shows us here a incredibly complex social environment and history. The current position of the Diamond dogs, their ideals, how they got there, what problems they're having... all these things are presented in an easy to understand manner that doesn't talk down to the reader! Brilliant writing! Absolutely Brilliant!
At the same time, once again Voltaire is shown just how different Equestria is from earth. while he gained some footing, even an advantage with his endeavors in the political arena, everything he has experienced so far has been of the court or politics: Familiar actions and fields even if on four legs rather than two. working with his wit and words is something voltaire obviously is good and experienced with.
But now, he has to realize just how incredible the magic of Equestria is: he hadn't really accepted magic as anything more than a vauge reality until this point, a science he didn't understand. He certainly didn't think about how magic would factor into the political and social environment of Equestria: its a whole new and different kinda of Power, one that is just as important and vital as steel and riches were on earth.
Quite ironically, he only realizes this both after he stops using his magical speech handicap, and the realization comes not from a unicorn, but an earth pony performer, Hoofdini: both the least 'magical' of the pony races and what he had considered the technical equivalent of commoners... an assumption he's realized after his massive change to Pony society. His previous well intended actions might have even MORE unexpected and far reaching consequences than he realized.
EXCELLENT STORYTELLING. I just CAN'T stop rereading this story because there's something more to it! AND it's got humor!
Aaaaah!
I don't have enough time to review all the awesome things about fanfiction for ponies ALONE! WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE FANDOMS AND FANFICS I HAVE FAVED FOR AWESOMENESS?!?
(I love how Celestia is able to be a clever, absolute ruler yet still remaining intrinsically good: she hates being a goddess and wishes things were better. Not Scheming Tryant Celestia here! She even makes mistakes and it tortures her! It's hard to write beliveable heroic characters, good job!)
I was planning to comment on things, but the above poster said everything I wanted to in far more detail and better than I ever could have, so...
Damn.
1333000
I am continually floored by the incredibly-generous comments I have been receiving on this fic, especially when, as in this case, the best-received chapters are the ones that I spend the least amount of time agonizing over. It's like I'm being possessed to write this or something.
I honestly wrote this chapter to plug a plot hole that would have appeared three chapters from now (and to meet the demand for a Voltaire-Noir conversation) but looking back on it, yeah, I guess it did work out pretty well.
Thank you all once again for your continued support. I would have been writing a chapter a week even if nobody was reading, but this sure makes writing that chapter a week a lot easier.
I just can't get over how much better and different your writing in this fic is compared to your Vinyl Scratch one.
1335121
"better"? Well, thanks for that complement on my ability to write for Vinyl Scratch!
Just kidding. I did think I was writing something good over there, I guess I just made the plot too convoluted to follow. And to think I was hoping to make a series out of it.
1335183
Actually, most of my mindfuck comments were hyperbolic.
I think that fic suffers from too much explanation, actually. It comes off as lecturey. So much of the entertainment from this story is figuring out things for yourself. Vinyl's tale is too.... Wordy, without saying anything. The best part about that fic is the occasional aside from the narrator. In this fic, every sentence could hold some hidden meaning.
Plus I love politics and intrigue.
1330037
Well, I'm going to take that suggestion and run with it. All use of "I" or "my" has been banished from the poor speakers in this chapter. A big edit, but nothing of consequence has been changed.
And thank you for your research.
It's official. I love you.
This is one of the most intelligent fic's I've ever read, and one I have personally always wanted to see, a fic that explores the political side of Equestria. This has managed to not only do that, but create a believable and brilliant explanation of a shift in political culture. In summary, I love you.
1330037 ....Which actually reminds me of Japanese or a Slavic language more than anything else.
...Speaking of which, why choose the grammar of a Uralic language over a similar Latinate one?
(Also, to my particular experience, there's no real indicator other than vocal accents that give away a botched language's origins.)
At least Voltaire can be certain that, in his particular idiolect, he's speaking correctly.
1329886
Hmm. But how would you transfer mistakes made in Hungarian to English which has quite a different grammar? For example, Hungarian has cases, so a beginner speaker would probably get them wrong quite a lot, but how can one express it it English?
(I don't speak a single word in Hungarian myself.)
1380606
Deliberately get past and present tenses mixed up? Clearly I didn't think this thing through very thoroughly. I just knew how different Hungarian was from Western European languages, but didn't bother to look into exactly how it was different.
1383977
Well, I don't speak either Hungarian or French. I am a native Russian speaker, though, so I can suggest some mistakes a Russian beginner student of English could make. Of course, Russian and English are probably not as different as French and Equestrian, or even as French and Hungarian - they are both Indo-European languages. Still, maybe it will help.
A bit similar to what PrettyPartyPony suggested above, dropping subject when it's a pronoun. It's often OK to do so in Russian since you can deduce subject's number and person from verb's ending, at least in present tense (like in Early Modern English "dost" means 2nd person singular, "doth" means 3rd person singular etc).
Droppin the verb "to be", unless it's in infinitive. It's normal in Russian.
Dropping or mixing up articles. There are no articles in Russian. (I'm pretty sure I still get them wrong quite often.)
Mixing up simple and continuous tenses. Also, mixing up present perfect and past simple. There are only 3 tenses in Russian - past, present and future.
All kinds of wrong word order. Word order is much more free in Russian since you can usually still deduce sentence's structure from word endings (noun/pronoun/adjective declination and verb conjugation). Also, if a question does not have a question word, it only differs from a statement by intonation, not word order.
Also, I could think of mistakes a foreigner could make in Russian - for example, wrong noun declination and verb conjugation, but again, how would you transfer them to English which has no noun declination and almost no verb conjugation? (Unlike German, for example.)
1385230
Thank you. I'll keep those in mind.
Ah yes, capital accumulation, both human and mechanical. The only true path to prosperity and real economic growth
So is that how the Hearth Warmings Eve play went from a stage show to reality? Would certainly explain a lot.
If that was true, he would be unbeatable in an argument
Of course it is
You have only had a month to learn it
More interesting stuff in this chapter. It is nice to see Voltaire as a flawed character and intellectually... biased based on the fact he is still very much a noble and believes a aristocracy is necessary for a properly functioning society.
I take it the author is like me and thinks Twilight Sparkle is probably nobility also? It would certainly help explain a number of things...
1896165
Why of course Twilight is nobility--she is descended from Morningstar or Eveningstar after all.
Her family's just not as powerful as they were back then--an Author's Note in Chapter 7 covers what happened, and considering who the "author" is supposed to be in this story, that's certainly something to pay attention to.
So far snarky and clever. I am sure that this is what is meant to be perceived. However as Gary Stu as it would be to have a protagonist that is fantastically skilled in the martial or scientific arts this story in and of it self has none of that! Instead this tale only highlights the fact that the main character uses only his wit, omniscience and prose to guide him! How ridiculous is that!
A story where the character growth has to do with secondary characters giving the story arc meaning and momentum! This sounds like a fantasy tale of which few may be able to stomach.
Be that as it may good show. Also Lyra is best pony even if she has centuries to be borne.
Post Script Critique.... Maybe show a little more fallibility for the most clever man of Europe? If that is ok with you I mean.
2360459
I think your wish might be granted--keep reading.
I used to argue a lot with a monarchist on an Internet forum. He once asked a bunch of liberals what it would take for us to be happy enough with a society that we would oppose further changes to it. None of us were able to come up with a coherent answer.
You've given me the answer I wish I'd said then--that as technology changes, society will always change with it--and I'd like to thank you for that.
Conservatives dream of a past that never existed, while liberals dream of a future that will never exist.
We humans love abstractions (like the idea that we can make history stop), but I've found that actually living one is pretty painful. The Twentieth Century provides examples of the nightmares that result when extremists of either the conservative or liberal persuasion are allowed to bring their "dreams" to life.
We need conservatives to keep us from going insane. And we need liberals to keep us from becoming monsters.
OK, I'm done with the soapbox now.
2417935 got a reply from 2421193
Don't mind me, just connecting the comments.
2457771 As of this chapter I see what you mean by "which one in particular", and I like it.
And wow, that was a very effective way to end the chapter.
I really really really really like this story.
2421193 I see now how you are able to capture the persona of Voltaire so well. A keen observation about the nature of politics; I applaud you.
my grandfather knew someone who would always sign notes with 'Merde, my friend!' I found this out when I found a liquor bottle with a note signed with it. I was quite confused, until I asked about it.