Story updates, and a contest · 3:13am Aug 12th, 2013
Yes, a contest! Read on for the details. But first, a quick life update …
It's been an interesting few weeks here at Casa de Horizon. After returning from my trip to Seattle (and Everfree Northwest, which was a blast), I stepped home to a backlog of chores and social events and e-mail and editing, and went into triage mode for a while. My birthday snuck on by — I've now officially lived as an adult longer than I did as a minor. Go ahead and laugh, you crazy kids, it'll happen to you soon enough.
Just as I was coming out of the far side of that, my father-in-law unexpectedly passed away. (I wrote most of this during a layover in the Las Vegas airport, on the way back to Kansas for the funeral.) Please don't feel obligated to clutter the comments with sympathy; we weren't close, so it hasn't hit particularly hard for me. However, I've been doing my best to be there for my wife, so ponyfic's been a secondary consideration.
Anyway:
This Last week, I posted a new (but previously written) story you probably didn't see — because it's in my Horizontal Lines short-fiction anthology. If you're curious about Princess Celestia's writing habits, give On Alicorn Fiction a read.
Yes, Aquillo, this does make five shorts in a row about pony princesses.
Somewhere in among all that, I also eked out the only actual writing I've been able to accomplish recently — the last few hundred words of an update to Princess Luna Picks Up Hitchhikers. Then I got a surprise: When Chapter 3 went live, Hitchhikers catapulted into the featurebox! In the 7 months since its last chapter, word of mouth had slowly pushed it up to a +66/-0 thumb ratio, which was good enough to hit one of the three "recently updated" slots. The flood of new readers has now made Hitchhikers my top-rated story (**update: or at least it was until someone else downvoted it tonight 
). I'll try to honor that by updating it faster. 
Speaking of Hitchhikers, I promised a
CONTEST!
It's a short and simple one: Just tell me a joke!
In the latest chapter of Hitchhikers, Luna gets to hear the setup for a joke about her Night Guardsponies, who [mild spoiler] are now the mocked and pitied dregs of the Guard, but she isn't able to hear the rest.
This is where you come in. Provide the punchline for the following gag:
How many Moonies does it take to screw in a lightbulb magelight?
(yes, it's a lightbulb joke, but that's the wording that's used in the story)
One (1) entrant, whose punchline is chosen by an all-star panel of judges (read: "a random selection of my brony friends who don't enter"), will receive the following fabulous prizes:
* Your punchline will appear in Hitchhikers!
* You'll get a credit and a link in the Author's Note!
And, most importantly,
* Your avatar/OC will get a cameo in the next chapter's Coda!
The fine print:
Winning entry must conform to the story's "Teen" rating — but if there are any hilarious mature ones, I'll give out an honorable mention. Multiple entries allowed, but if you spam me with more than 2 or 3, I will punch you through your Internet connection. You can pick any OC you like for the cameo, but if it's not yours I'll have to get permission from their owner. Satisfaction guaranteed, or your purchase price will be cheerfully refunded.
Somehow the main thing I got out of that is that you are in the Las Vegas airport. Which is odd to think about, as I live in Las Vegas, and I'm not really that far from the airport, though given that I take the bus, you'd be gone by the time I got there...
Just one, but it takes her thirty days.
Negative one; bright light offends Luna.
At least two, but you need a large lightbulb or small Moonies.
Just try to punch me through my internet connection! At this bandwidth, I'll receive it in about a month!
Actually, can I help judge? Can't think of a joke at the moment.
Was trying to go for how the moon gets its light from the sun, but I couldn't think of anything clever.
1278848
Eep — your comment made me realize that, given that the airport writing was done last week, there are a number of incorrect time references in the post. Went back and corrected them (as well as a few minor touch-ups).
If I ever make it back to the world's biggest infomercial, though, I'll try to let you know in advance! (I'm not too far away — I live near Sacramento — though it's far enough for a meeting to be impractical, unless you were planning on visiting the Sac Brony Expo maybe.)
1279001
I don't have a set deadline for contest entries — most likely next weekend sometime? — so chip one in later if you think of one. Otherwise, sure, I'll tentatively add you to the judging team.
1279030
I don't leave Las Vegas too much, to be honest. It's part of taking public transportation everywhere.
Things to note, incidentally.
a) Prostitution is actually illegal in Las Vegas. The fact is that whether prostitution is legal in Nevada depends on the population of the county, and Clark County's population went over at some point.
b) While your writing does describe the strip well, I rarely ever go there, and Las Vegas is actually a lot more normal away from it. I actually live near UNLV. Which is also where Alternate Reality Comics is, if you're ever in town and looking for comic books or graphic novels...
The funny thing, though, is that the Sacramento airport is actually the most likely one for me to end up in, since a lot of times, when I go out of town, it's to visit my mom, and Sacramento is the closest airport. Though it is a two or so hour drive from there. (She lives in the Nevada City/Grass Valley area.)
Seventeen. Five to complain that the bulb is being screwed in wrong, three to declare the new bulb to be a imposition on Night Eternal by Princess Celestia, and to call for a revolution, seven to write letters to Princess Luna demanding for her to return and fix the light properly, and one be assigned to guard the new bulb for a millenia, watching it for any evidence of Nightmare Moon's corruption. And, of course, one to screw it in backwards so it jams in the socket.
How many Moonies does it take to change a magelight?
None; because if Moonies could change, they would.
(Sorry, just had to say that; I know it's inadmissable inasmuch as the setup line is different.)
Okay, how abouts:
-Two, one to notice the problem and one to run screaming to the Solar Guard for help.
-Twelve, one to screw in the magelight and eleven to explain to their Princess what that glowing object doth be.
-Nine, one to screw in the magelight and the other eight because misery loves company.
1279465
How many Moonies does it take to screw in a magelight?
None; because Moonies can't get any more screwed.
(Doesn't quite capture the rhythm of the original, but it mostly duplicates the punchline.)
1280009
Assuming the language passes Horizon's filter, I think you might have the winner there.
Hm. (trying to top Benman)
One, but they don't screw in the new bulb, they screw it up.
1280109
I'm still proud of my own (negative one), with its implication that you can get horribly punished for petty offenses, but I don't have the rhythm down for this kind of joke.
Also, beware. You submitted four jokes!
1280545
Yes, but the first one didn't count! That was just a blog comment!
Okay, fine. If you want to punch me, Horizon, go ahead. Just do it lightly, please.
I'll throw in some commentary from the sidelines, secure in the knowledge that I won't need to be the one picking the winner.
1278884
Any significance to "30 days"? I keep wanting to fix it to "28" for some lunar cycle thing, but I'm not sure that makes any additional sense.
1279001
> Was trying to go for how the moon gets its light from the sun …
IMHO, this line of inquiry shows promise.
1279252
I'd love to see a slimmed down version of this one — it's got a grin-worthy zinger but feels like it takes a while to build up to it. As Shakespeare says, brevity is the, etc.
1279465 1280009 1280238
How many Moonies does it take to light a cigarette?
One — just tell them your jokes and wait for the burn.
1280653
It was originally going to be 28, but I've trained myself to look up numbers before I post them if I don't remember the source, and it turns out a lunar month is actually 29.5 days.
(In hindsight I should've gone with 28 anyway, since being understood as a lunar cycle is more important to the joke than literal accuracy.)
1278985
> but I don't have the rhythm down for this kind of joke.
Well, if you'll pardon some overanalysis in the interests of providing food for thought … I'll talk out loud a while, probably stuff you already know, but worth saying anyway. Maybe some of the other folks here, better-equipped for humor analysis, can chip in and/or argue my points?
The humor of short call-response jokes like this comes in setting up and then subverting a framework, giving the listener an answer that cleverly relates back to the setup and fulfills it in an unexpected way. (The baseline expectation is "One," because any minimally competent individual should be able to screw in a bulb without difficulty. Any other answer will call into question their competence, their bureaucracy, etc., but you don't know how until you hear it.)
It's possible to play with this framework — for instance, "How many Moonies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" "One, how many did you think?" subverts not the expectation of competence but the expectation of hearing a light-bulb joke — but you have to be careful, because if you subvert too much at once you lose your audience.
I like "negative one" myself, but when you make a mathematical statement that subverts the expectation of a reasonable answer (i.e., a non-integral number, negative number, etc.), then you've set yourself up for the punchline to be about that subverted expectation: i.e., you're telling a math joke. If that's not your goal, I think you have to evade math by answering the numeric question with a non-numeric answer — along the lines of "They don't" or "None" (or, alternatively and less iconoclastically, "one (X) to change the light and (Y) night guards to (do Z)". That signals an inversion without causing listeners' brains to break on math. (What does it mean to have "negative one" ponies changing a light bulb? Is that an imaginary number of imaginary ponies? [1])
So the crux of your punchline is "Bright light offends Luna": good observation, and definitely subversive, challenging the notion that Night Guards would be changing bulbs at all. The question is, how do you get there? You want to deny the notion of lightbulb-changing Night Guards, but as above, mathing draws attention to itself. "None, bright light offends Luna" is the direct way, although you lose the implication of a Guardsmare getting punished.
That does suggest another angle, though. It's not that Night Guards can't change light bulbs, it's that they'd have to be stupid to do it, due to
the itchweedthe fact they're offending Luna. So another (overlong) way to restate the same concept without mathplay would be "One, but you have to find a stupid one, because bright light offends Luna".Weak, but deliberately so, because there's potential here and I want to leave you free to explore it.
Draw attention to the parts that make a point or subvert expectations, and get through the rest as efficiently as you can while still flowing.
--
[1] I am not sorry for this even a little bit.
1280580
Okay, one punch-through-the-Internet coming up.
… There's some icon for that on the group moderator sidebar, right? How do I left-click that? My mouse is on the right side of my keyboard. I keep clicking the left side of the icon but it just opens up a little context menu and there's "Save As" and "Text-To-Speech" and "Launch Drone Swarm" and I don't even see your name.
1281122
Naw, you have to go through some third-party website to do that. It's called "PayPal" or something, and you enter a person's e-mail address and the the larger whole number you put in the box below it determines how hard they get punched.
Apropos of nothing, I changed my mind. Punch me hard.
One, if you've got a thousand years to wait.
Two: one to screw it in, the other to plug his ears for when Princess Luna thanks him. (Oh, that Royal Canterlot Voice....)
~alternately~
WE DECREE HENCEFORTH THAT THE ANSWER SHALL BE ONE!
Two, because the first one's hooves are slippery from sunblock lotion.
1281387
sIR YOU HAVE BEEN INTERNET PUNCHED IN THE INTERNET FACE
tHAT'LL EDUCATE YOU
1282162
That worked... surprisingly well.
EDIT: I mean, er, "Ow."
One if you give her a mirror.
Two if they're small.
Three if they're kinky.
Four if you actually want light, but it's gonna shine out of a funny place.
1281387 I believe you meant PainPal, friend.
1853065
I assure you, the exchange that resulted from this conversation was anything but painful.
How many moonies does it take to screw in a magelight? One to screw it up, two to screw it over, three to screw it sideways, and four to FIUBAR.
1853073 lol, good to hear.
So how many Moonies does it take to screw in a magelight?
None; by the time the Moonie gets there everything's already screwed.
2538948
Contest's long over, but that was still worth a grin!