Hi. It's gapty. Read a fic today. Or don't. They're both the same to me. Just don't tell knighty I said that.
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After repeated incidents of "overpowering", Twilight Sparkle writes a program to find the cause of the recuring problem.
Written for the Science Fiction Contest II. Check out the other entries here.
Huge thanks to The Sleepless Beholder for prereading and PseudoBob Delightus for proofreading it!
Please be aware that the chapters with codes may have weird formatting on mobile view.
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Well, this leads to a number of fascinating and concerning questions. Nice emphasis on the science part of things; I do appreciate a good bit of arcanology. Best of luck in the judging.
Trying so hard not to code review this XD I love it!
The most impressive part of this is that she documented her code.
One detail of the story bothered me enough to lead to recursive fiction:
“Hey, Twilight.”
In another context, hearing that from a girl in a leather jacket might be terrifying. In this case, Twilight just turned from her locker and smiled. “Yes, Sunset?”
“Had a question about this. Call it professional interest.” Sunset held out her phone, open to her texts.
Twilight furrowed her brow as she tried to find the issue. “The test message from the geode scanner? I thought I told you about that.”
“You did, but a hundred eighty what?”
That got an owlish blink as Twilight turned her attention back to Sunset. “What?”
“Units, Twilight.” Sunset spared one last frown at her phone before putting it back in a jacket pocket. “A bare number doesn’t tell me much, and I don’t think you’re using thaums.”
“Thaums being?”
“One is the amount of magic needed to exert a telekinetic force that can lift one hoofweight one ponylength in one second.” Sunset rattled that off at a familiar, rapid cadence that spoke of memorizing it years ago.
“Ah. A fair assumption.” Twilight looked away as she thought about the kludge behind the numbers. “I admit, I took the High Farrier route and just used previous data to set a baseline.”
“What previous data?”
“The spectrocapacitor I had at the Friendship Games saved its readings to the cloud. Up until Midnight Sparkle, anyway.” Twilight cleared her throat, staring at her shoes. “Turns out getting consumed by my own unfettered curiosity didn’t do any favors to the wireless connection.”
A hand on her shoulder got her to look back up to Sunset’s understanding smile. “Yeah, my phone was fried after the Fall Formal.”
They both just grinned for a moment, ignoring any demonic cackling in the backs of their heads. “Anyway, I used the energy readings from the others—I didn’t know enough to know how to separate the portal’s energy from yours—averaged them out, and used that as one hundred.” Twilight shrugged. “Not terribly scientific, but we’re on the frontier here.”
“Good enough for me. One hundred eighty Sparkles it is.”
After a few Rarity-like sputters, Twilight got out, “I-I mean, I was just thinking of them as arbitrary magic units. Sure, I’ve always wanted a unit named after me, but this felt a little self-congratulatory.”
Sunset smirked. “You’re not just getting useful data about energy that shouldn’t exist in this world, you’re doing better than the mare who majored in it. I’d say you’ve earned it.”
“That’s… nice of you to say.” Going by how her face was heating up, Twilight wasn’t many more bits of praise away from bursting into flames.
“I mean it.” Sunset shrugged. “But hey, if you’re worried about them falling out of use when something better comes along, we can call them Shimmers.”
Twilight just stared at her, mood thoroughly killed.
After a moment, Sunset cleared her throat and looked away. “Or not. AMUs work.”
“This is far from the first time you’ve made that kind of self-deprecating joke,” said Twilight. “I know I’m not anyone’s first choice for this kind of conversation, but… do you want to talk about your feelings regarding my counterpart?”
“Um… Well…” Sunset backed away a step, eyes darting about the hallway. "Hey, look at my wrist! Good talk!” She didn’t quite run away, but she certainly walked with considerable vigor.
Twilight sighed. “Right, going to bump that one up the priority queue…”
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Please don't. I already changed several parts, fixed issues where it wouldn't work as intented, caught syntax errors…
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We're talking about Twilight. It's a wonder not every line goes into detail why it does what it does
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Huh, I didn't expect that at all. Tbh, I gave a short thought about making a unit, but then I thought: "At the end, the sensors give out a voltage, the voltage gets quantised and digitalised and at the end the unit doesn't matter then—as the unit is still voltage the sensors gives, which just gets translated."
Granted, I could excuse it weirdly with some fantasy about magnetic field manipulations, inductions and at the end the units would be mathematically shortened to no units, and the result should have been zero, but the "non-zero" value given is then the magic force etc, but I didn't give any further thoughts about it until you did.
Nonetheless, it was a great read
Thanks to everyone for the comments, I really appreciate them
I admit, my eyes glazed over somewhat in the code, but that's mostly because my brain is tired. Will look again when I am more awake.
Good story, if brief. It is always a bit of a risk to write--is there a term for this?--implied stories, tracked only by internal records rather than actual prose. But I enjoy such works when they're done well. It exercises the mind, and more often than not, the details in one's imagination are better than any offered in the text.
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Damn! You take creative writing to a whole new level. I'm more in awe with the time you put in to write the code for this.
What? Discord?
Came to this story from https://www.fimfiction.net/story/387377/204/never-the-final-word-vol-2/fomes-quantifiably-mad-gaptys-overpowered
This is a nice, cool, and short story! I really should pay more attention to word count. Might skip less stories that way.
And these recommendations remind me of Oversatuation's 'avoid the catalyzing behavior'. Very miserable.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/269241/2/oversaturation/tones
Micro Chips's is involved? Hmm.
Woah, a day-long incident.
Negative power level means it seeks out more energy. mmm.
These aren't good-for-protagonist comments in the code, but funny ones! Nice!
This is Twilight Sparkle we're talking about. I'd be surprised if the code wasn't documented.
The answer is harmonic chaos. 🖖
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First critique: why is the log data not CSV? 😇
Also also: the notification framework does not glom responses into matching events? Also also also...... 😘
Rule of thumb: engage in balanced antisocial behavior to avoid being too friendly!
😦 you can have negative power?!
What a load of delicious nonsense!
interesting start! every repo does need an about.txt
magic strings? boooooo!
using this instead of with open? boooooo!
(in all seriousness, love that you actually are using code in a fic, it is quite a trip to read as someone who does both)
oh so you just have to get into your thirties, because then you will no longer have to worry about this. simple!
dangit, i was hoping it wasn’t Twilight who wrote that one! but i guess if she is supposed to be a self-taught academic programmer it actually makes a lot of sense
oh wow, that is hardcoding! really makes a very firm assumption that Fluttershy is and will always be the Element of Kindness’s bearer
i feel like these very hardcoded instructions will quite easily lead to Problems
aww, the predictable result of Twilight’s unfortunate anti-ladybug bias
well that certainly is ominous. i guess this hints at just why Twilight would want to prevent “overpowering”
less than twenty-four hours to develop from scratch and deploy, oof, wouldn’t want to take that ticket!
well, that must be quite a life for the Rainbooms to lead, having to always be on alert for those notifications
oh yes, that is exactly what i would expect from a Discord servitor!
ahaha, there is something great about ending it with this.
i must, above all, applaud you for one of the most unique stories i have ever read on this site. i do wish that more writers would take such risks. thank you for writing!
Already an interesting start.
I’m actually liking how this is written. Sure it’s confusing but it actually fits with the story.
So they are at their strongest when they accidentally pony up?
Interesting how micro chip is helping.
So something happened to fluttershy?
I didn’t think it was possible for fluttershy to get corrupted. Looks like she gets to join the club with sunset and twilight.
This actually makes me wonder who’s stronger.
All this is teaching me is that the rainbooms are less experienced in magic than first thought.
For the coding illiterate amongst us, would someone kindly explain what this epilogue was about?