• Member Since 25th Oct, 2016
  • offline last seen 1 hour ago

Huk


"Consequences… Give a person a situation with no consequences and you’ll see the real them… Every time."

T
Source

Twilight has everything going for her. She is an Element of Magic, has loyal friends, and now she's become the princess of the whole Equestria. It's like a dream come true. Too bad, all dreams must come to an end...


Meta:

Cover based on the image from: https://derpibooru.org/images/258193
Proofread by Ginger and Grammarly :duck:

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 27 )

Idea isn't that original (some have done it where MMC killed Twilight), but her on life support like this is. so you got that for sure.

Hope Celestia is rotting in Tartarus for murder. Because no matter what, this is 100% her fault.

Reminds me of the story Asylum where Twilight wakes up in an asylum and the story makes you think if all the adventures were real or was she crazy from the start

Huk
Huk #4 · May 4th, 2020 · · ·

Darn, I was hoping this one would generate some more interest :applejackunsure: Oh, well, back to the drawing board, I guess...

10215126

Yeah, I know the idea has been floating around ever since season 3, but you know... I wanted to write it to get off my head.

Hope Celestia is rotting in Tartarus for murder. Because no matter what, this is 100% her fault.

Hmm... Twilight was an adult, a top graduate of School for Gifted Unicorns, and someone who has been tinkering with magic ever since. All that sounds to me as if she was an expert, or at the very least, advanced magic researcher, not to mention that she was the Element of Magic.

Given all that, was Celestia really wrong to send her an advanced spell to work on? Or maybe Twilight simply made a tragical mistake? If a chemistry professor gives his certified student/assistant a task to work on some new - potentially hazardous - chemical formula, is it his fault if the student makes a mistake and positions himself?

Seems to me like a similar situation... :unsuresweetie:

10215147

I have that one on the list to read, but it wasn't updated since 2016 :applejackunsure:

May I ask - is that story currently ending with some conclusion, or does it stop at some cliffhanger?

10215313

Not good either, given the number of reads :twilightsheepish:

10216793
Don't know but the author said they mighy finish it one day. Wonder if there are more stories like these though

Huk
Huk #6 · May 4th, 2020 · · ·

10216801

Given the number of stories on the site, I bet there are.

Darn, too bad that one is not finished yet, I already have read a few remarkable stories that stopped just when they're about to get good... Now, I'm a bit afraid to invest time in another long, incomplete one, for that reason :applejackunsure:

10216793
Well some have better luck than others.

Huk
Huk #9 · May 4th, 2020 · · ·

10216875

Oh, I know, I just wish I knew what's the secret to success. I honestly thought that one would interest people some more...

Wow
I knew something was going to happen but not that. Nice work

Huk

10217639

You're welcome - I'm just glad someone enjoyed it :yay:

Not bad. Nicely written and their girl time from the happy half of the story was funny and refreshing.:twilightsmile: and interesting idea too!

Huk

10330058

Well thank you, I'm just glad you liked it :twilightsmile:

The ending felt a little abrupt and jarring. However, I admit skimming some parts since I'm currently working, and will need to re-read to see if I missed some details that better hinted at what was coming.

10216793

Given all that, was Celestia really wrong to send her an advanced spell to work on? Or maybe Twilight simply made a tragical mistake? If a chemistry professor gives his certified student/assistant a task to work on some new - potentially hazardous - chemical formula, is it his fault if the student makes a mistake and positions himself?

This comparison seems pretty sketchy. If it's a new formula that's potentially hazardous, I'd think this something that's communicated upfront. The teacher is the one with more experience and wisdom, so presumably they're the one who can best judge their student's skills, the potential for danger, and the extent to which precautions are necessary. If they omit or withhold information and their student is injured or killed, yes, absolutely the teacher should held accountable.

In this instance, assuming that for purposes of this story MMC starts out the same way, at no point does Celestia suggest that tinkering on this spell could have lethal consequences. Nor are their any precautionary measures--I don't know what exactly these might look like, dealing with magic, but I'd certainly imagine that just having, like, a couple other magic researcher people around to kind of scrutinize Twilight and second-guess every plan of hers that has to do with this thing would help catch any stupid mistakes, and maybe there's some kind of protective equipment or something--Twilight seems to be working on the spell by herself, with no particularly extreme level of care. If Celestia knew that Twilight working on this project could get her killed, and she neglected to mention that, I think that's pretty egregious negligence on her part.

Which begs the question of whether or not she did know that. Obviously in the show she didn't, since, well, it's MLP, a spell backfiring with lethal consequences just isn't a thing that's going to happen. But, from the note at the end of this story, this occurrence isn't treated as anything unprecedented. In fact, the recorder comes across to me as being of the mind that this type of thing happens too often. Or it's something they've seen before, at any rate.

And this is a spell that Celestia knows about. She was close friends with the spell's developer and she seemed to have a pretty good idea of what it was going to do. I don't have anything definitive to base this on, but between this and her experience, I think it's a pretty damn big leap to assert that she had no idea whatsoever there was any potential danger. And if she had even the slightest idea, I think it's terribly irresponsible of her to not stress to Twilight that things could go wrong and she needs to be careful.

Which to be fair, the story doesn't say she didn't do. Again, that note at the end suggests to me that this is a slight AU where magical mishaps can be more explosive, so it's a somewhat logical assumption that, sure, Celestia might have shown more care in this story's version of events (This isn't spelled out, though, so if I were writing this, my assumption would that everybody else's assumption is that MMC goes exactly like it does in the show, except Twilight explodes or whatever partway through). And since the nature of the mistake isn't spelled out... I don't think there's decisive evidence for Celestia being 100% at fault, but looking at the show I think there's reason to put some of the blame on her; if nothing else, it certainly seems like she misjudged her student's capability, and I'd say that's an error on her part. So if the intent with the story was to make it definitely not Celestia's fault, I think it needs a lot more context to make that clear.

I'm not saying the story needs that, just to be clear. I didn't really care to think about any of this until I saw it being discussed in the comments, and as the story's not really about Celestia dealing with this, I don't think it needs a lot on that front. Just thought it was an interesting question.

All right, I promised you feedback on why this story is getting so little attention, so here it is. To be frank, I believe it’s because the story is very different from what it says on the tin. In a way, anyway. The cover art, the description, the Death, Sad, and Tragedy tags indicate that this is going to be a serious story heavy with “the feelz”. However, once you open the story, it’s a light-hearted comedy about Twilight’s love life that goes on for some time. I’d bet that this discrepancy is turning off a lot of readers.

If I look past this problem of the story being advertised as something it isn’t, I can say I really enjoyed reading it. The characters mostly acted like themselves, the story flowed rather nicely, the transition to the ending was done well, and the idea behind it was quite original. You might want to revise the grammar and spelling a bit as there were some random typos, oddly placed commas, roughly worded sentences, and also some inconsistencies (Is it Firestreak or Firestream?). The only recurring issues that I noticed were some errors in direct speech and associated dialogue tags. (Might explain more if you want.) It may seem like a large amount of errors, but it’s not so bad. Still, most of these are likely to be noticed even by an ordinary reader, so you might consider getting them fixed.

Thank you for this read!

Huk

Thank you all for the feedback. I appreciate it :twilightsmile:

10457166

Those are all good points. I guess it would all depend on the details that are simply not there.

I always imagined that since Twilight was Celestia's best student, and a pony that was constantly studying more and more advanced magic, giving her that spell was nothing more than the next big step. For Celestia, all the signs pointed out that Twilight was ready, and should have known how to handle it. Obviously, that was not the case, but I still don't think Celestia is to blame :unsuresweetie:.

10456853
10456967

Hmm, interesting. The abrupt and unexpected ending was frankly done on purpose. As I said in the author's notes, this entire thing was inspired by this:

and this:

https://www.derpibooru.org/260248

Especially the first one. The idea was to show a sudden contrast between Twilight having her normal, happy life vs. the grim reality (in a similar way they've done it in the YT video). I guess that didn't work the way I intended :ajsleepy:.

10457285

Hmm, damn... Now that I think about it, you may be right about what people expected and what they got (at least, until the very end). Then again, that was supposed to be sort of a demonstration of contrast between Twilight's happy dreamland and the grim reality. Not sure what kind of tags would be appropriate here where the story is a mix of happiness and sadness... :unsuresweetie:

You might want to revise the grammar and spelling a bit as there were some random typos, oddly placed commas, roughly worded sentences[...]

I already put it through Ginger and Grammarly and read it a few times for typos, haven't spotted any... Could you point some out?

As for commas and the rest... I always try to use Ginger and Grammarly first for suggestions, and THEN listen to it with Word's text-to-speech and delete any commas that seem to break the flow. I'm afraid it's as good as it can get without outside editing.

Same with 'roughly worded sentences' - my vocabulary is, sadly, rather limited, so it is what it is :twilightblush: (although, given that the two latest stories made it to the feature box, I don't think that's that big of a deal).

[...] and also some inconsistencies (Is it Firestreak or Firestream?)

Oh, hell... That was supposed to be Firestreak everywhere. I need to fix that tomorrow. Ironically, I was berating the guy I proofread/edit for, for constantly misspelling the name of his OC :P

The only recurring issues that I noticed were some errors in direct speech and associated dialogue tags. (Might explain more if you want.)

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you can, please explain some more :twilightsheepish:.

10457617

Not sure what kind of tags would be appropriate here where the story is a mix of happiness and sadness... :unsuresweetie:

Honestly, I’d go with Slice of Life, Comedy, and Sad (since these can be finally combined without the site protesting). The story definitely doesn’t feel like a tragedy. Sure, the ending is sad, but also heartwarming in a way—it actually reminded me of the ending of Of Mice and Men. I may be a bad person to judge it, but the grim reality of the ending didn’t really affect me. It was just like ”Oh, she’s finally at peace, and she died happy. Good for her.” *shrug* But yeah, I might be perceiving this differently than most.

Also, adjusting the story’s description a little to better reflect both the happiness and sadness so that the readers aren’t taken by surprise might be a good idea.

As for the errors and direct speech issues, is it alright if I send them to you in a PM? I see no reason in them littering the comment section long after they’ve been fixed in the story itself.

Huk

10458073

Hmm, I'll need to think this through, but you may be right again. I always thought that character dying usually warrants the 'tragedy' tag, but, maybe this wasn't the case here...

As for this:

As for the errors and direct speech issues, is it alright if I send them to you in a PM? I see no reason in them littering the comment section long after they’ve been fixed in the story itself.

No problem :twilightsmile:

10458202

I always thought that character dying usually warrants the 'tragedy' tag, but, maybe this wasn't the case here...

I'd say that's what the Death tag is for as it basically serves as a trigger warning :twilightsheepish:

I'll send the PM shortly :twilightsmile:

10457617

Not sure what kind of tags would be appropriate here where the story is a mix of happiness and sadness... :unsuresweetie:

Probably "Slice Of Life" for Twilight's dream realm, and "Tragedy" for the reality. For me "Tragedy" denotes a event, whereas "Sad" refers to a mood, and there's not enough of the latter in the story to warrant a tag for it. Just my take on it though.

Huk

10460938

Yeah, now that I think about it, I think that both you and EverfreePony are right. Current tags are a bit overkill... :twilightsheepish:

Thanks for the feedback :twilightsmile:

Huk

10458212
10460938

After thinking it thought one more time, I decided to combine your suggestions on tags and go with:

Comedy + Slice of Life - the entire first part of the story is pretty much that
Tragedy - honestly I'm torn between Sad and tragedy, but... my heart is more with Wild Stallion on this one. To me 'Sad' seems to fit more if the mood of the entire story is sad, while 'Tragedy' points more to a singular tragic event. I bet a lot of people would disagree, but let's leave it like that.
Death - due to Twilight dying in the end

Once again, thank you both for all your suggestions and you, EverfreePony for some error corrections and explaining the basics of those darn 'beats' to me. This will help a lot to improve future stories :twilightsmile:.

10465359
Heh, once more, you are welcome!

I went with Sad mostly because of the ending twisting the story in hindsight quite a bit. I usually try to go by the site’s official tag information, and to be honest, their definition of Tragedy does not seem really fitting to me in case of this story:

The literary term “Tragedy” shouldn’t be confused with how the expression of something being “tragic” is used. A sad story is not necessarily a tragedy when in writing. Tragedy involves the downfall or failure of the main character. This again, does not mean that they die—the tragedy can lie in the failure to achieve something they have worked for through the whole story. The build-up to such a thing and the eventual failure is what the tragedy is.

Huk

10465367

Belvie me, the Tag FAQ is the first place I went to clear things up, but 'Sad' doesn't seem to fit here that well either:

Depressing themes generally designed to evoke sadness or other depressing emotions in the reader. Basically the opposite of what you might read if you’re trying to cheer yourself up.

On the one hand, the death of Twilight and learning her entire life was just a dream is definitely sad. On the other, the first part of the story is definitely happy to the point of a light comedy... Honestly, neither tag seems to fit this mix perfectly. What that story could use is a tag named 'Bittersweet' IMHO :twilightsheepish:.

10465401
Yep, that doesn’t really fit either—after all, I said it myself in my very first comment :rainbowlaugh: That’s mostly why I went for the combination of Comedy and Sad. That’s probably the closest you’ll get to ‘bittersweet’ :twistnerd:

On a semi-related note, I believe that Knighty stated one of the upcoming site updates will be more tag-focused. Hopefully they’ll keep this rather good system and add a few tags that seem to be missing at this moment.

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