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Trixie gets her friend and frenemy stuck with her in a miniature avant-garde poem containing very few available letters. :trixieshiftleft:

Content Note: (1) A profane word starting with an "F" and a "U" used a few times although the only letters available to our protagonists do not include "K" or "C". (2) A profane word referring to excrement although only the final two letters are available to use. :pinkiegasp: (3) A profane word in a "foreign" language. (4) Trixie makes a Freudian slip or an intentional allusion.... It's easily missed though, which is either a good thing for those with taste and decency, or it's the nucleus of a fun scavenger hunt.

Featured on 2022/05/19!
Winner of one of two Bronze Medal Awards in the "A Thousand Words" Contest's Experimental category

Trixie is Terrible Rating: She didn't want it to happen, but she's not helping make things better (3 :trixieshiftright: Out of 10).

Experimental Entry in the Thousand Words Contest.
- It is so experimental that the word counter on the description page disagreed with the word counter on the editor page(!) [The editor shows it as 1010 words. The site description shows as 1000 words].

Image: All mine, although the words are a parodic reference to this link, which itself is a bit of a philosophical parody... and the image probably contains some other cultural references. :pinkiecrazy: For those who want to be spoiled: SPOILER The image indicates that the story is about more than the story. It's about Friendship and Language. But the primary intent is for the story to be enjoyable on an obvious level as an amusing romp.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 12 )

That was a fun read :twilightsmile:

Very strange but compelling.

the cover image made me laugh lol

Delightfully bizarre, though I'd probably use a different adverb if it weren't for the footnotes. Still, most entertaining stuff, and you worked in a friendship lesson. Thank you for it and best of luck in the judging.

1. Haycartes Method. A particularly difficult method of inserting oneself magically into a book's text to learn it rapidly.
2. Starlight Glimmer. An accomplished mage attempting to teach her easily-distracted friend Trixie a useful spell for studying. Becoming more agitated by the minute at Trixie's antics and failures, she was preparing to stop for the day on good terms before her patience was exceeded.

aww, love how the juxtaposition of these two sets up characters, motives, conflict, and setting all in one!

3. Twilight Sparkle. Modern master of the Haycartes Method spell, meddling in Starlight's instruction while misguidedly attempting to befriend Trixie--Twilight's onetime rival. Oblivious to Starlight's gentle nudges and coded "ixnay" warning whisper to Trixie and oblivious also to Trixie's menacing shouldercuffs, Twilight provided unwanted pointers.

hehehe, Twilight is quite oblivious to such signals, isn't she?

4. Trixie Lulamoon. Incensed by know-it-all Twilight barging in all bushy-tailed and sparkling teeth into the midst of a grueling three-hour instruction session with a wink and a nod and a presumptuous foreleg draped over Trixie's shoulder,

augh, i can just picture Twilight doing this, as well as just how incensed Trixie would be at Twilight of all ponies giving her unwanted pointers like this!

Trixie grabbed a thin poetry book understanding that the simpler the source, the easier to successfully demonstrate that Twilight's assistance was most assuredly NOT needed. Neglecting Starlight's warnings, to make the casting extra-simple she rips out a single page... and succeeds.

hahaha, just how many times is Trixie going to Create Problems by rushing into spells she doesn't quite understand in a pique of needing to prove herself, while ignoring the warnings of all the ponies around her? well, that was a very strong character trait in "All Bottled Up", so that makes sense!

"..." Twilight Sparkle cogitated.

hehe, yeah, "..." would be what i would be cogitating too

"Fux."

gasp!

"Ret xeffefet?"1

augh, if only FimFic had hover-over popup hoofnotes as a feature somehow!

"TxiLLeite, fuxx U!"3

well, didn't need hoofnotes to translate that one!

"F!F!F!" She danced.5

aww, 2-D Twilight shouting "F" repeatedly while dancing is just adorable to imagine

"Fux F," Trixie glared.6

wtf, Trixie! wow! i must say that she is being very mean in this story to Twilight and i do not like it :(

"F fur F, ufe it. "

hahaha, yeah, that is a referential paradox that can only be resolved with context!

"U fee?"9

"I Fee!" Starlight nodded, enthusiastically.

aww, im starting to get the hang of it, too! it's like hearing Ponish as spoken by a very specific and heavy accent

"Fo fut? Xe lutf lf letter letx."10 Trixie followed no discernible rules to better interpret her gobbledygook.

10- "Fo fut. Xe lutf lf letter letx." = "So what? We lots of letter lack."

way to not be a team player, Trixie! and reading the hoofnotes, is their grammar being affected as well?

With a sigh, she postulated a solution to the rule-less madness of lexical development--one garnered from experience with crosswords and word jumbles. "Ufe _ fur letter _." She crossed her eyes, then brightened. "_! Fe ufe _!"11

aww, of course Twilight would be able to use her crossword experience for this!

"U _,_,t it!" Twilight smiled.14

Trixie rolled her eyes.

why is Trixie so dang mean :(

i mean, i know that if you hastily cast a spell to show up a pony you're insecure about, and it causes trouble, needing said pony's help to get out of the trouble you caused must be double extra humiliating, but still!

"E _ ,_ E!" Starlight nodded, also noting that Twilight had picked up on her idea of uttering replacement letters louder than standard nomenclature.16

ooh, clever! doubles the bandwidth of a single bit

"Trixie ri_,_t," Starlight nodded, eyes losing their luster.18

aww

Trixie frowned. And so did Starlight until she realized and responded in like, thrusting the hoof bangs and clicks of HoofCode.

hehehe, not gonna call it "Horse Code"?

Twilight ignored the two's excited chattering. Instead, she cast the spell she needed, completing missing letters with HoofCode.

aww, that makes sense! Twilight needed the use of language back in order to get out of the spell. but dang, it's easy to imagine being able to trap a pony forever in the Haycartes Method that way!

~?~
Fitful.
Flu!
Fell
Xir,
xxx.
~?~

an experimental poem as the basis of an experimental fic, nice! and yes, that is a very constrained letterstock, all the more impressive that the poem manages to tell a story with it. neat!

"It's a gender neutral term," she shrugged. "A performing pony must be aware of all xir audience and their various preferences."

aww, so true! and aww, it's always so nice to see Trixie be able to draw on her own unique experiences to know something Starlight and Twilight do not, i imagine those moments mean a lot for her

"Starlight and Twilight, sometimes you seem so smart and other times you're just cheugy. Get with the new generation."

a delightfully meta experience that i had never heard of "cheugy" before and had to learn everything i know of it through the helpfully provided link. dangit, why do i feel the urge to dismiss the cultural output of everyone in the generation younger than me all of a sudden?

"Trixie may not be a mistress of HoofCode or Old Ponish, but Trixie, who is well traveled and who has interacted with many cultures, has her own secret cunning linguistic knowledge." Smarmily, she grinned at Starlight, who swished her tail.

lewd! and haha, it's funny that "Modern master" is used earlier to describe Twilight, but Trixie is using the distaff form to mean the same thing for herself, which unfortunately due the patriarchy comes with other connotations when used here (ugh, i hate this world!).

but that might have been intentional on Trixie's part, given her innuendo right after!

i've thought of using "marester" as a substitute for "master", but ugh, the latter is such a common word, and it also has a verb form so it's not a title like "Mare'm" which would be easier to twist. so i think i'll be satisfied with thinking of both "master" and "mistress" as being and having always been gender-neutral terms, maybe even with the latter carrying sexual connotations that are again applicable to all genders. there, solved it!

Twilight, with a great sigh, attempted a different approach to bond with the prickly showmare: "Trixie... I'm sorry. Instead of approaching as a friend and meeting you where you were, I forced instruction on you and pushed too hard."

Starlight, tail tucked tight between her hindquarters, nodded.

"And then you did something I didn't think was possible--you found your own way in! I may have been too arrogant. Perhaps you have something to teach me?"

and augh, i love this! a friendship lesson for the Princess of Friendship herself! and that is so neat, the way this experimental madness is framed within a mini-story about interpersonal growth

Trixie inhaled deeply, and with a smirk, she let out her breath and winked. "Anklyfray ymay earday, iyay on'tday ivegay ayay amnday."

ahahaha that is so corny that it is absolutely perfect for Trixie, love it

Twilight blinked. "Some mysteries, I suppose, can never be completely understood... or appreciated." For about three seconds she accepted that ending... but then the meddlesome mare hurried to her library and pulled an all-nighter flitting across linguistic and cryptographic encyclopedias puzzling out what Trixie was using for her secret best-friends-code with Starlight. A few mornings later Twilight was found, teeth chattering in binary.

aww, and i can easily imagine this ending for Twilight! augh, Trixie winning against Twilight once more! and haha, i actually imagine that Twilight figured out how Pig Latin worked right away, but found Trixie's decrypted line so bizarre that she dismissed her initial solution as too simple, thus leading her on this goose-chase until going Twily-nanas

Trixie is Terrible Rating: :trixieshiftright: She didn't want it to happen, but she's not helping make things better (3 :trixieshiftright: Out of 10).

once more, i'm going to have to disagree with your rating here! a sub-5 rating, for almost trapping everypony forever within the confines of an experimental poem, then just being grouchy and mean to the one getting her out of her own mess? well, at least it was accidental, and what she did didn't threaten to actually end the world, so i guess i would personally rate this a 7, though i admit that i may be biased about this due to Trixie being so mean to Twilight here.

in any case, an excellent work of format-breaking, hoofnote-replete madness, thank you for it!

Linguistic madness.

Finely constructed li_xuifti_ _E_,_eff.

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Thank you for such a well-applied comment! :pinkiegasp:

Re: Bicyclette- I look forward to responding to your insightful comment. Much appreciated! It may take a few weeks though as I am in the middle of attempting to write another tale on a short deadline--thank you!

Hello! Have a review. I hope I've explained in there why I've rated it as I did and made clear how impressive it is. My ratings go on personal enjoyment, and I found this really hard work, a bit like some of those Joycean pieces the clever folks around here occasionally produce. However I still think it's wonderfully original and I'm not surprised it won a Bronze Medal in the Experimental category (well done for that!). As such, I'm still upvoting this despite my personal struggles, as I think it's a piece that makes Fimfiction a better place by its presence, even if I'm a little too dumb to manage it.

At first I was a bit upset that the reduced-letter language space seemed explicitly inconsistent and without any actual key. Perhaps it was when "__ u__er__re"1 became the catch-all replacement for every letter they lacked, or maybe it was when a whole sentence became an incomprehensible mass of bangs and tildes. But then I wanted to investigate if there was a key I just didn't notice, so I transcribed the footnotes, and re-read the story with translation in mind, and then realized what was actually going on...

So more fool me, I suppose. Evidently this is a story that works better the more it frustrates someone, and there's an actual story beneath the gibberish, too, though it is teeny-tiny. Good stuff.

~_!!!!_!~_~!_~!~_!!! !!~!_~~~_!~! !~~_!~!_!!_~_!!_~!_~~! !!_~_~!~!~~2

  1. "an underscore"
  2. Figure this one out yourself.

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Evidently this is a story that works better the more it frustrates someone, and there's an actual story...

Sort of like Trixie herself, :trixieshiftleft: heh-heh. :trixieshiftright:

Thank you for reading and puzzling it out. :derpytongue2:

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