It’s my turn to fly / Watch as we all fly away.
Chapter published 11th Dec’14
***************
August 1217
Wonderbolts Academy
Final Test Flight - Advanced Course
Tucking a pencil behind his ear, Master Chief Iron Eagle readied his clipboard. Carefully smoothing out the pages with a forehoof he ran through his mental checklist one more time.
By now, what with all the years he’d held the rank of ‘Chief of the Flight’, it felt like he’d run through this same list at least a few hundred times now. But, to him, it didn’t matter if today was the first time, the third time or the thousandth time- each item would be checked, doubled checked and triple checked without fail; every tally would be confirmed, every reponse would be acknowledged, every ‘i’ would be dotted, every ‘t’ would be crossed.
Every single mare and stallion that passed through his hooves was his responsibility, every single one of them owed a duty of care. Each one would be afforded exactly the same level of professionalism and dedication as the next, and the next, and the next. All of them. No deviations, no exceptions- until the day finally came for that one last student to pass before his watchful eyes.
He’d worked hard to get where he was today. Years of hard graft and even harder flying. Years of blood, sweat and tears... most of it his own. He was hard, but he was fair. He accepted no mistakes, brooked no excuses, suffered no fools. He expected every pony in his care to give him one hundred percent dedication, and he believed that they deserved one hundred percent perfection in return... and by the creator that’s what they were going to get.
Sunglasses lowered, eyes cast to the sky, Iron Eagle took one last chance to check on his NSOs - his 'Non-Soaring-Officials' - confirming that they were all in position, ready and waiting for today’s test flight to begin.
Every one of his team were professionals, every one of them ready to perform to his exacting standards. From their identical uniforms of vertical black and white striped flight jackets, to their equally identical expressions filled with both concentration and confidence, to the skills and abilities he knew that each of them possessed- he expected the best, and they had never failed to deliver.
Timekeepers? Check and check.
Linesmares? Ready for action.
Spotters? Reporting in.
Air-Marshalls? In the pipe... five by five.
Today’s candidate trainee?
Up on the starting cloud, a young mare was poised and ready, chomping at the figurative bit for the moment she was allowed over that line. Head down, hooves spread, shoulders squared- her wings flared, furled, then flared again. From where he hovered Iron Eagle could make out the muscles tensing under her coat, the sheer determination in her eyes. She wanted to go... needed to go, to fly, the soar, to show them all what she was made of. A bundle of pure energy and boundless potential all tied up in a cage of flesh and feathers.
After checking the timepiece around his neck, the Chief motioned to his senior NSO, letting her know that she was cleared to start the test whenever she was ready.
Nodding back, the NSO lifted a wing as she carefully placed her whistle between her lips.
At the raised wing, the trainee buckled down; nostrils flaring, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
First came the first whistle- short and sharp. Hooves dug their way into the cloud as leg muscles tensed and knees bent. Condensed flight magic ran along the candidate’s body, causing fur all along her barrel to stand on end while numerous hairs in her mane and tail began to rise and curl.
Next came the second shortwhistle. Limbs stretched, barrel pushed backwards, wings twitching with anticipation. Had anypony been foolhardy enough to get close enough they may well have heard a low hum coming from the young mare’s body as she pulsed wave upon wave of magic into her flight muscles.
Then the third, longer, whistle... and she was gone.
******************
Before the third blast had even had time to fade away, Rainbow Dash
was more than a dozen body-lengths away, powering fast towards the
first checkpoint. The first part of the test was the five mile horizontal
sprint- a distance designed to burn off any candidate’s initial burst of
energy and leave them at the mercy of the more... ‘troublesome’
maneuvers soon to follow. Five miles? Ha! She was Rainbow Dash!
Five miles was nothing.Banking hard, Scootaloo shot past the five mile marker, angling herself
towards the next section of the test. Up next was the high speed
three-dimensional slalom. By this point most trainees would have burned
a big chunk of their energy and sloughed off at least some of their initial burst
of speed, but not Scootaloo- years of training with her big sis meant that a
five mile sprint was nothing but a warm up, something to get the heart
pumping and the magic flowing.Wings spread wide, Rainbow trimmed her left wing ready for a roll.
Arcing around the first slalom marker, she was already in the optimum
position for the second and was swiftly on her way to setting
herself up for the third.Tipped up on one wing, zigzagging between the closely spaced
fourth, fifth and sixth markers, Scoot brought herself back into level flight
before pulling both wings in tight against her body, letting gravity take hold
of her. Using just her momentum to carry her forward, she released the last of
her flight magic. With her body no longer negating most of her weight,
she dropped like a stone through the ring shaped seventh marker.Wings spread wide once more, Rainbow arrested her downward fall,
her control feathers coupled with the positioning of her body turning most
of the downward momentum into horizontal velocity. Most trainees would
have performed some kind of loop in order to be able to pull off the sudden
change from flying horizontally to powering straight downwards - wasting
precious seconds in the process - but not Rainbow. She’d perfected
that little trick years ago.Gritting her teeth, Scoot set herself up for the next part of the course.
Rainbow’s ‘cannonball’ trick had got her through the vertical drop but now
came the tricky part. The next half dozen marker rings weren't stationary,
but instead floated around in a seemingly random pattern. But she’d been
watching them from the corner of her eye. Like Auntie Twilight always said,
patterns were everywhere if only you knew where to look.Twilight was right, these things were spinning in a pattern, Rainbow just
had to know where to look. Picking an approach path, she put herself into
a slow spin, like an arrow shot from a bow. Choosing her moment carefully,
she committed herself to passing though the first ring, clearing it just in time
for the second to roll into position directly in front of her.Through the third ring, twisting herself so she flowed through the fourth
like water through a spout, the fifth came into view.The sixth ring presented itself slightly left of where she’d expected it to be but,
by pulling her wings and legs tight against her body, Rainbow hurtled through
it without incident or contact.That was it, she was through! Now it was just the obstacle course to clear
and the first part the test would be over.
*****************
Reports from his NSOs were coming in thick and fast. The spotters were relaying their scores, the linesmares were all reporting no collision or contact issues. All was looking good so far.
While there had been some concern that this particular trainee’s... connections may have given rise to some kind of favourable view in the grading of their performance, Iron Eagle was confident that this was not the case. Not only were his team too well trained for any personal bias to slip through but, from what he knew of the mare herself, he was sure she’d be offended by even the slightest suggestion that she hadn’t earned every merit that came her way with her own two wings. Heck, she'd probably insist on doing the whole course again just to prove a point.
Over the top of his clipboard, the Chief took the chance to watch for himself as the candidate dove directly into the obstacle course. She was a sight to behold as she fearlessly ducked and weaved her way around everything that the course threw at her.
Lightning clouds flashed, letting loose great bolts of electricity that could down even the most hardy of flyers - but she jinked her way around each one like a pro.
Localised gale force winds battered her again and again, pulling at her goggles, pushing at her wings - but she powered through without so much as a wobble.
Hailstones the size of a pony’s eye filled the skies, each packing enough of a punch to knock a pegasus right out of the sky - but they found no target to hit.
Specially prepared stormclouds dropped their payloads, unleashing in less than a minute a unstopable deluge comprised of more water than a decent sized village could use up in a whole week - and all the while the lone flyer pressed on, her path never wavering.
Signals came to him from the left and from the right- she’d made it past each obstacle without even a minor penalty to be reported.
Suppressing a smile, Iron Eagle made the relevant notes on his paperwork.
********************
Shaking water from her body, the pegasus began to climb, letting the warm midday sun beat
down on her wings, the bracing wind drying her mane and tail.Next came the required maneuvers. She had twelve to choose from, and
she only needed to perform six of them to pass.But, heck, she was Rainbow Dash, the greatest flyer in Equestria-
She was Scootaloo, the world’s best stunt-mare! She was going to-
-do all twelve. Yeah, she was gunna rock this thing!
So she dove-
-and rolled-
-and soared-
-and span-
-from Tailslide to Imma-mane Turn-
-from Barrel Roll to Hesitation Roll-
-from Hammerhead Stall Turn to Reverse Half Cuba-mane Eight-
-across the sky she soared, banking and rolling and diving-
-and through it all, she revelled in the fact-
-that she was having-
-the time of her life!
**********************
The reports just kept on coming. Turns taken without a hitch, rolls performed to perfection, dives taken with perfect form. As pencil moved across paper, the smile was becoming harder and harder to suppress. So, today’s candidate'd done the full dozen, and without a single penalty too. That wasn't something you saw everyday.
Up next was the freestyle, the last section of the test. This was where they separated the mares from the fillies, this was where reputations were made or lost. It was time for the kid to show them the difference between being great, and being the greatest
As the NSOs watched, the testee pulled into a hard ascent, pushing herself higher and higher. Wings beating, lungs and muscles screaming. Mile after mile she ascended. Pretty soon the Air-Marshalls had to break off their pursuit, the trainee pushing on so far above them that she was well above their operational ceiling.
Even with pegasus vision, all the NSOs could see was a speck high above them, still pushing herself harder and faster. By the looks of it, the kid was going for an ‘Icarus Sun Salutation’, one of the most difficult of maneuvers to perform unaided. If she managed to pull it off... well, this would be one for the books.
*******************
Further, higher, ever upwards. The air was so thin, so hard to-
-breathe. As she pushed further and further from the ground, even the planet’s magical field-
-loosened its grip. Gravity itself became weaker. Just a-
-few more body-lengths- two more, one more-
-and there it was- the prize-
-the sweet spot, the lofty heights-
-where few brave souls would ever reach...
...The edge of the world!
For that moment - those scant few seconds where her remaining upward momentum exactly matched gravity’s waning pull, that beautiful moment of perfect equilibrium - she let herself float.
Wings held still, eyes closed, she let herself tumble, ever so slowly, end over end. With mane and tail splayed out around her, limbs left loose, she slowly rolled herself into a ball, enjoying the momentary feeling of weightlessness.
For those few seconds, there was no test, no worries, no quest for greatness, no desire to impress. In that moment she felt no burning fire of ambition- no cares, no worries, no troubles at all. Up there - the point where the magical world of Equestria met the eternity of the heavens - there were neither lovers nor liars, herds nor hierarchy, shame nor glory.
No future.
No past.
Nothing at all.
Just peace.
***********************
Far, far below the slowly spinning figure, even the most professional of NSOs were left with jaws hanging loose as they watched. Up at the very outermost reaches of Equestria’s atmosphere, the young mare floated, curled into a ball like a sleeping foal, her mane flowing freely in the near vacuum all around her.
A lone flyer, completely unaided, touching the edge of forever.
Up high, far out, far beyond the planet’s boundaries, watching over the world as it had since time immemorial, the sun itself laid witness to one of its children’s salutations.
It saw that this child was good, and just, and honest. And that this child was worthy.
At the beckoning of its mistress, the fiery ball responded to this lone mare’s greeting, letting rip with a mighty solar flare, tendrils of flaming gasses rolling out from the celestial body’s immense surface.
Through the vacuum of space the solar winds ran and span and jostled and raced as they sped towards the planet far below.
The first waves hit the upper atmosphere, ionised particles bathing the pegasus pony with raw energy which rippled and writhed and bounced all around her, causing a halo of light to spread across the sky, with her at its centre. Brightly coloured aurora radiated away in all directions from this tiny ball of flesh and bone, spreading out from the slowly spinning form, like ripples in a pond.
With wave after wave of solar energy gently pushing at her body - nudging her back towards the world below - gravity reasserted its claim on its recent escapee. The mare began to fall, slowly at first but quickly gathering speed, leaving waves of greens and pinks and blues spread throughout the sky behind her.
As the pony plummeted away - downwards, ever downwards - vast swathes of atmosphere's upper reaches lit up like the mane of the solar princess herself.
*************
Gravity pulling her downwards, she opened her wings, focusing all of her magic into her
flight muscles, pushing herself towards the ground, gaining speed with every second that passed-
the wind pushing at her face, pulling at her wings, ripping at her feathers.For all those that had believed in her, to all those that had doubted her.
She pushed back, forehooves thrust out in front of her, a bow wave forming around her hooftips.
With teeth clenched, the wind whistling in her ears, she forced every last ounce of energy
she possessed into her wings.For the mother that had left her behind, for the father she had hardly known.
Down and down, faster and faster- the pressure on her wings was almost
unbearable, but there was no way she was going to give up now.For the friends and family that she had found, that had taken her in.
Magic arced along the leading edge of her wings, friction from the pressing wind
charging each arc, adding more and more energy to her last few remaining strains of magic.For all those who had supported her and loved her, even when all seemed at its worst.
Pushing herself further, just that bit further, small multi-coloured sparks started to form around her wings, compressed rainbows winding their way around her feathers. Reaching deep inside, pulling everything she had, she reached the limit... reached it and pushed right through it.
For those that had made it okay to believe in herself, to follow her dreams wherever they might take her.
All around her, rainbow fragments formed all over her body before exploding outwards, a multicoloured ring of every colour imaginable expanding away from her, filling the sky with a Sonic Rainboom, rolling its way across the land. From its core shot a glowing figure, leveling out less than a mile from the ground before arcing back up and over the academy, a vibrant rainbow trail left hanging in the air behind her.
This was for them... this was for all of them.
***********************
Still checking, double-checking and triple-checking his notes as he touched down, Iron Eagle passed through the large double doors into the Academy’s main administrative block. Doors were held open for him as he walked, respectful salutes snapped off left and right as he passed by.
Reaching the Academy Commandant’s office he rapped on the door, waiting for permission to enter before letting himself in.
Stepping into the office, he found Commander Spitfire seated behind the large and imposing desk. At her side stood a nervous Captain, staring out of window, trying their best not to let their nerves show through. Anxiety about their protege’s results aside, the captain really believed in this kid, that was for sure.
“So?”
Captain Rapidfire turned from the window, fixing the Master Chief with a level gaze.
To the uninitiated he would have appeared completely calm and collected- only those who knew him well would see the anxiety and excitement in his eyes.
Unfortunately every pony in the room did know him extremely well.
“Don’t keep it your yourself, man. How did she do?”
Taking the time to carefully remove his sunglasses, Iron Eagle let the captain stew for a few extra seconds as he hooked one arm of his eyewear over the collar of his flightsuit.
Okay, that was long enough.
“It’s official. She’s done it- a perfect score.”
Holding out his clipboard, turning it so that the results could be clearly seen, he graced the room with one of his rare beaming smiles. If ever there was a time to let his facade slip, just a little, this was it. The kid, she certainly had what it took. She was going to make a fine Wonderbolt.
“She’s in.“
I feel sorry for anyone scootaloo decides to train. two wonderbolts entrants with perfect scores? Dang that is one heck of a lot of pressure.
Good chapter though, I quite liked it.
Meh couldn't you have just put it all in one thing so it be easier to read?
This was thoroughly awesome. Both for its sense of high speed from both Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash, and its innovative use of format to enhance that sense of speed and simultaneous action taking place. This is like the prose author's answer to a split-screen.
Wow, that use of format!
I could really see each of them going through it, flicking from Rainbow to Scoots, the sense of energy and power!
I think this is one of the best chapters of anything I've ever read.
I think, for Iron Eagle, all the faces over the years start to meld together. All those crazy, brave stallions and mares who throw themselves at the world and dare it to stop them in its tracks. Some were failures, most were average, some were superb and some were legends aborning. There were two, however, just two, a mother and a daughter, whom he would never mistake for anypony else.
That was a fascinating bit of work, made all the more interesting by the way you formatted it, putting Rainbow and Scootaloo's perceptions in parallel to each other.
I seriously have no words about this - it was amazing from the start until the end, had the shivers all the time.
Just wow. Great job on this chapter
Beautiful.
I believe you mean 'watchful'.
Why I can´t favorite chapters !!!????
5369792
I love the way you pointed out the double 'l' in watchfull, but missed the same erroneous double 'l' in untill.
I was afraid someone was gonna die!
That was an amazing parallel. Bravo!
I so want to extra-like this chapter. It's awesome.
I like the format, nice way to roll two similar tales together and emphasize just how close these two really are.
Also, this song entered my mind as I read and I could not get it out.
Creative use of format, well done. You can almost see this done in a visual format with both performances visible on a split screen, or with a ghost image like in Mario Kart.
5369479
I guess I'll be the one to take the hit and disagree. I didn't like the chapter at all. I have nothing against the format or the fact that Rainbow Dash does amazingly. I dislike the Rainbow Dash 2.0, I mean adult Scootaloo. Scootaloo in show canon is disabled and that made her a far more interesting character than tomboy that idolizes older tomboy. Now some may like the idea of a weak flyer as a filly through hard work and persistence becoming an equal to one of the most naturally talented fliers alive, but I just don't find it engaging. Not everyone is amazing or can do a so difficult that it was believe technique that it was thought to be a myth just because they really wanted it.
I like Scootaloo more as an inspiring character that comes to terms with her unfortunate physical limitations and lives a happy and fulfilling life in spite of them. Instead we get 'believe in yourself and you too can equal someone that also believes in themselves but is also better in every conceivable way'. It kinda shorts Rainbow that her ultimate ability is just replicated by a some random filly because 'heart'. If heart and hard work was all it took to be able to do a rainboom why is Rainbow Dash the first one to do it in centuries? Some people are just naturally gifted and some people aren't. Learning to love yourself regardless of your shortcomings is a more inspiring and healthy moral.
5371354 Is *currently* disabled. I recall a short dumpy little kid, barely 4 foot something that got teased all the way through high school. I later heard from a friend who ran into him that he's well over 6 and a half feet tall. Sometimes things just take time. It's rather up to Hasbro where it goes, although I expect, rather like their cutie marks, we're likely to see perpetual youth and never know the answer to this question; which leaves fanfiction to go in either direction for as long as it likes.
You're entitled to your opinion on what you feel about the direction the story took; but the writing itself is as good as ever.
Dancing on the stratosphere.
9/10 on the chapter. Mainly because Fireboom sounds silly. Flameboom would've been closer to Rainboom, and Flareboom is also alright, but throwing fire in there just makes it sound silly.
5374398
Personally I like sonic flareboom but yeah. Fireboom just sounded silly to me.
I really enjoyed this story, but it punched my inner editor in the arm too many times and he came out swinging.
You usually dot ‘i’ not ‘I’ (unless you are Turkish).
The last student gets a free "A+"!
(Consider, "until the day his final student had passed before his watchful eyes" or "until finally his last student had passed before his watchful eyes": no double final/ly and the condition is not true until after the last student is evaluated.)
Graft usually means getting money dishonestly. Put a lot of effort into embezzling, taking bribes, and getting kick backs, did he? I didn't even know that in British English "graft" can mean "work" until I looked it up. Technically correct, but I would recommend using a different word.
I would suggest "work" but you used it in the previous sentence. However, I haven't come up with an alternative that fits after "hard" so you can maintain the parallel construction. Maybe "duty"?
That's swapped! (Hi Mike!) She was changing from downwards back to horizontal.
Pro-a-bab-ly -- interesting word.
Confirmed, en_GB.
Obviously that's informal, but I've always seen that spelled "gonna", such that is starts the same way is its proper spelling "going to". Interestingly enough, Dictionary has gonna but not gunna.
That should be spun. Not even en_GB will save you; Dictionary lists that as archaic!
Funny thing: first time I saw this, I read it as magnetic field. NERD.
+ Period.
Hmm. Large dark patches? How about "swathes"? Since we're having fun with this, (you're having as much fun with this as I am, right?) did you know that a "swath" is a strip like that cut by a mowing machine (connotation: long and narrow), while a "swathe" is a strip like a bandage (connotation: enveloping wrapping)? Yeah, me neither till I just looked it up.
Capitalization.
Ooo, one final indignity - the trailing quote is curved the wrong way.
One last consideration:
Since you like using em dashes (and hey, who doesn't?), you should at least use them consistently, if not correctly. Be consistent about how much space you use on each side of an em dash. Sometimes you leave a space on the left and sometimes you don't. If you are using a single hyphen as an em dash, I think space on each side looks best. Correctly, you use a real em dash with no space around it: "pushing at her body—nudging her back".
Know Your Dashesfc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/030/7/e/know_your_dashes__an_infographic_guide_by_dm29-d4o3a0c.jpg
5376557
Couple of good spots there, I'm not gunna deny it, so I've corrected those- well done.
However- a couple of things that I disagree with.
Re. Span, Graft, Gunna and other words that Americans don't seem to like.
I'm English (as you've already figured out), and most of us use 'span' in common usage and don't consider it archaic*. We also use words like 'learnt' where Americans use 'learned' as 1: we already use 'learned' in sentences like 'My learned colleague is obviously mistaken**', and 2: using 'learned' in place of 'learnt' makes any speaker with a British accent sound like a five year old.
*same for 'sat' as the past participle of 'sit'. Also 'got' for 'get', but never 'hung' for 'hang'- unless a process has stalled of course.
**this is a very polite way for solicitors (British lawyers) and members of parliament to call each other 'fucking morons' without causing offense.
Also, Brits can use either 'gunna' or 'gonna'... but 'gonna' in a British accent sounds like 'goner' so it seems to be used less and less these days.
On the 'graft' thing... I'm English, not American. Much of the audience are also not American. When I write I assume that the audience are going to mentally convert what I'm writing into what works for them in their own area and not need me to write 'color' instead or 'colour' or 'freeway' instead of 'motorway'. I don't know where each reader is based and what conventions they find most convenient, but I do know what works for me so that's what I write.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
Dashes- em dashes vs en dashes.
Again, I'm English, so I use en* dashes, not em dashes. We're taught (or at least used to be until the British education system kinda gave up on itself in the early 90s) that the en dash is very much a multipurpose tool that, in a pinch, can fill in for other types of punctuation- much like the way that you can use apostrophes as emergency quotation marks if the quote in question is already inside another quotation.
*you can tell the difference as en dashes are the width of a lower case 'n' while em dashes are the width of a lower case 'm'. Old-school Brits tend to use en dashes, Yanks (and Brits who follow American conventions) tend to use em dashes.
Unlike the US heavy em dash, the en dash is used with spacing on each side when used in place of a pair of commas that are denoting the opening and closing of a single and separate clause not connected to any clauses otherwise present in the sentence- i.e, if the sentence has a pair of en dashes and they're being used like a pair of commas or brackets then they're going to be spaced.
However, should the en dash be used to denote that a sentence has moved to a new clause and the sentence will be ending with that new clause (even if the new clause itself has subclauses) and will not be returning to the original clause, then the dash is abutted to the end of the preceding word and spaced from the following word- i.e, if the sentence only has one en dash then it's gunna have a single space and it'll be after the dash.
That's not to say that Brits never use em dashes... we do, quite a lot actually. Usually you'll find them marking off who some historical quote is from, to denote dialogue being interrupted or resumed, or used instead of ellipses... by god, I love ellipses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
Now, to make it even more confusing, not only has the teaching of dashes changed over time, it also varies from place to place. Americans use different conventions to Brits, US northern states don't always agree with the southern ones, Wales and the south of England don't always match up with Scotland and the north of England- blah blah blah.
In summation.
So, yeah... I use dashes a particular way, you like them a different way- I'm not going to change, you may not be happy with this. C'est la vie.
In the meantime I'll keep on writing and posting and plodding along, and if you'd like to come join me for the rest of XFT then that'd be quite nice too.
tl;dr? I'm English, and old-school with it, so I use a lot of old-school English words, phrasings* and punctuations. This ain't gunna change any time soon.
*and I ain't gonna use oxford commas if I don't feel like it neither.
5377229
Ha ha! Excellent! Thank you for setting me straight. I appreciate it. You can't be a good pedant if you don't know the rules.
There's only one thing that frustrates me. I don't mind that there are dialect variations or that people prefer to use their own; after all, I'm rather comfortable with my own too. I don't mind variant spellings (colour and color, gunna and gonna are all pretty much the same) or even words that are unique to a dialect (a spanner is a wrench; a boot is a trunk; a solicitor is a lawyer; I got it). Heck, "gonna" sounding bad in your accent is intriguing, as I never would have thought of that. However, story telling is an attempt to communicate through a rich connection with your audience, and unintentional language gotchas that completely break the rapport are very frustrating. On this side of the pond, "graft" only means bad behavior. I literally had to go back and read that a time or two to figure out what you were trying to say (whether Iron Eagle was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy), which is just not the kind of author-reader relationship anyone wants to have. Similarly, to an American reader, saying "I span in a circle" sounds just as uncouth and negligent as saying "I runned very fast." Around here, a torch involves open flame, not a light bulb, and it could matter which one Daring Do is carrying. Again, I have no objection that these work for you, it's just disappointing that there isn't something that works for both of us since that is nominally the intent.
Well, at least I know now so it won't trip me up in the future.
I was surprised to hear you claim that. I have no idea what the actual ratio of British to American readers is, but I would think that even just the relative populations would skew the ratio pretty heavily. However, I think the cause of my surprise is more of a difference in interpretation. I surmise that you mean "an important part of the audience" and not "a majority of the audience", and I'll agree with that. (And, yes, I know that there are lots of other English speakers who are not British or American, but I don't think most of those nationalities have much of a claim in defining "correct English". Except maybe the Aussies, but Phucknuckle and his snakes and spiders and dropbears and poisonous egg-laying mammals can do whatever the heck they want while I go hide in the corner.)
(I do know what an en dash is, but in the sources I had previously read, it was only used for a few specific things like date ranges, and certainly not the way you use it.) Interestingly, in the Wikipedia article on dashes that you indicated, I don't see any support for an en dash with a space only on one side. Are you suuuure about that?
Ellipses! Let's not even get started on spacing for ellipses!
Do you seriously think I would put this much effort into it and not read your response?
I've read and enjoyed every chapter of XFT you've published, and I will indubitably be here the rest of it! For the record, I'm not unhappy! This is the first time I strongly noticed editing issues, which is why I brought it up. I believe that people who do high quality work care about getting the details correct. I thought these might have been mistakes or a lack of information. Clearly, this is not the case, so I'm satisfied. Heck, I learned something--even better!
gunna
Innovative format, touching tale. Very nicely done.
That is one amazing split perspective chapter. You did an amazing job with the pacing between the two and giving both versions each with their own split in times, it was like watching two scenes switching between each other in an excellent movie. This was the first time I've read a split chapter that melded together so well with each other, Amazing job.
I dream of standing on the roof of the world. Good show, this took me there for a moment.
5411560
I'm right there with ya. Star Trek: First Contact is my dream... to power away from Earth at speeds never before attained... to slow and turn and see naught but a tiny blue speck in the distance...
This story was beautiful... simply beautiful.
I hoped it'll be something conected to this song, but well... it was still awsome.
This. Was. So. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!
This sentence ... I do not think it means what you think it means. *reads down comments* ... Huh. Never mind.
*sniffle*
Looking at this story in hindsight, I will confess some surprise that teamwork activities didn't have a place in the Wonderbolt's entrance exam. Unless that kind of stuff is intended to be worked on after acceptance into the Wonderbolt organization.