Time Wounds All Heels - The Traveling Tutor and the Royal Exam is scheduled for Tuesday. · 8:21pm Mar 1st, 2015
Time:
Albert says Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. Time is also something that an author must struggle with in order to make a longer story hang together before it hangs him/her out to dry. Since I’ve had a few questions (including from myself), here’s my musings on the timeline of the Traveling Tutor series. (Spoilers included, The Traveling Tutor and the Royal Exam starts being posted on Twilight Tuesday and will run all Tues/Wed/Thurs in March, even though it’s not quite done yet. Hopefully I’ll get done before I run out of chapters to post.)
First, random thoughts:
The duration of The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian (T2L) is fixed at two months +/- a day or two. It ends three days after Hearth’s Warming, which I have mentally placed at December 22, therefore it would have started around October 18, with the Running of the Leaves around November 10 or so, in what I have dubbed Year 1.
The Traveling Tutor and the Diplomat’s Daughter (T2D2) happens during the three day period right after the Crystal Empire returned, which I have blocked in as Feb 10 of Year 3 (Snow in the Crystal Empire, Spring or at least flowers in Canterlot, but they have cheating unicorns so it really could be anytime.)
Since it takes time for the regular seasons to pass, I have T2D2 placed the year after they met, so their one-year anniversary of meeting is Oct. 18, Year 2.
Canon by the comic book is that the Ponyville Summer Wrap-Up is the same day as Princess Cadence and Shining Armor’s wedding, and since the holidays seem to be quarterly by the Solstice/Equinox, that puts their wedding around Sept 22 of Year 2.
I have The Traveling Tutor and the Royal Exam (T2RE) starting April 15 and wrapping up on June 22 of Year 3, which gives me the following timeline:
Year 1:
April - May - Green Grass’ first visit to Ponyville as a Unicorn Magic Youth Educational Specialist (student teacher)
June 1 - Ponyville librarian Miss Dewey retires and moves to Acapulcolt.
June 22 - Twilight Sparkle visits Ponyville, frees Princess Luna, and moves into the library.
June - October - Parts of Season 1 and Season 2 (because they’re obviously not in order)
October 10 - The Grand Galloping Gala
October 18 - Green Grass visits Ponyville on his second visit. TTATL starts
November 10 - Running of the Leaves
Dec 22 - Hearth’s Warming in Canterlot
Dec 25 - End of TTATL
Year 2:
Various visits for days or weeks in Ponyville, Canterlot, or wherever they can find time.
July sometime - Discord returns. GG buys a ring. Wisely decides that is not the time.
September 22 - Princess Cadenza’s Wedding (to that other stallion, Shining something or other)
October 9 - Sweetie Belle turns GG into a Gardenia during a tutoring session.
October 10 - The Grand Galloping Gala
October 19 - GG turns back, just in time to go to his next tutoring city. Bummer. Still has ring. Missed Gala. Missed one year anniversary. Jumps into fountain anyway.
November 10 - Running of the Leaves - Schedules keep them apart.
December 22 - Hearth’s Warming together. Flu season. ‘nuff said.
Year 3:
Feb. 1 - Discord’s reformation. (Note: Twilight’s still a unicorn, GG still has the ring)
Feb 10 - Crystal Empire Returns. T2D2. Teaspoons.
Feb 8-18 - The Royal Guard - Night Mares takes place
Feb 13-16 Diplomacy by Other Means takes place.
March 15 - Twilight becomes Princess Twilight. GG still has the ring.
April 1 - Equestria Girls
April 15 - T2RE starts. It has been exactly 18 months less three days since GG and Twilight met. GG has a very important ring-related question scheduled for their exact 18 month anniversary on the 18th. He really should have asked earlier.
June 22 - T2RE ends with a kiss. The honeymoon starts.
Year 4:
March 15 - Tirek imprisoned, Clover born
Note that this leaves out Luna Eclipsed, which I’m going to handwave, but it does bring up an interesting question.
What are the holidays of Equestria, and how do they work?
Well, we’ve got four quarterly holidays:
June 22 - Summer Sun Festival (Longest day of the year)
Sept. 22 - Summer Wrap-Up (Equinox)
Dec. 22 - Hearth’s Warming (Shortest day of the year)
Mar. 22 - Hearts and Hooves (Equineox)
And we’ve got a few odd ones like Running of the Leaves, Nightmare Night, and the ‘We think a holiday should go in here and haven’t mentioned it before but we’re making an episode out of it so hush’ kind of days. The Grand Galloping Gala was fitted very well into the series, and doesn’t fall into this category, but I’m suspecting we’ll see a number of them this season.
So how does that look and are you all excited for Tuesday when the first chapter gets published?
All sounds good to me
Looking forward to Tuesday (my day off), mostly because it was T2L was the story of your's that made me follow you and read your other stories, so it holds a special place in my heart.
Sounds goo to me. Looking forward to it.
Definitely looking forward to it, I've loved this pairing since the first story.
It feels like years since you first teased us with the teaspoon/tablespoon mixup.
2840977 (checks the datestamp) That's because it's been a year and a half since I did that. Can you imagine how much of a pain it would be to read T2RE if I had published about one chapter a month?
2840909 Careful. I'm still looking for editors to wade through my turgid prose and point out my worst mistakes.
2840990 Heh, some of the stories I follow have that sort of publishing schedule, and yeah it definitely is an exercise in patience.
Sounds good to me. One day I'm going to have to print out the timeline and reread your stories in chronological order. I read so many stories from so many authors (and a couple of them have their own universes like you do) that I tend to forget who everyone is and what exactly happened in each story...
2840990 Ya make that sound like a bad thing lol. But if ya want me to edit (which I have experience with), then just give me a holler!
So Twilight was pregnant when she was fighting Tirek (unless I remember T2D"2 wrongly)? Well I hope Twilight getting filled up with four princess's worth of magic didn't have an effect on the foal.
2841295 Keep looking at the timeline. Notice that Equestria Girls is in there too. Here's a snippit from a later chapter:
“Darling,” started Rarity, “I hadn’t really counted months, but does that mean you were with foal before you became an alicorn?”
“And before you went through that freaky mirror to the ‘human’ world?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“And before we first visited the Crystal Empire?” whispered Fluttershy.
“No!” said Twilight, still trying to pull Cadence’s reluctant tail over her face. “Well, yes. Kind-of. Princess Celestia says the foal is perfectly fine for this stage of development, that is as much as we know about alicorn pregnancy, which is nothing, but she says so. So she’s been turned into a human and an alicorn and who knows what over the next eight or nine months and what am I thinking! We’ll be fighting some giant evil monster and I’ll be huffing and puffing around behind you girls, as round as a barrel. The five Elements of Harmony, and Tubby Twilight, their leader.”
2841316
Well the others did occur to me it's just being extra super powered seemed important although in retrospect turning into an Alicorn might be a big thing as well.
Equestria girls would have been... interesting if Twilight had popped out as a x months pregnant school girl, if you fit Rainbow Rocks into there somethere then someone might think Flash has got a little explaining to do.
2841332 Heh, now there's a story I'd like to see done well. Twilight Sparkle returns from the human world just fine, but starts to have these weird cravings after several months, and begins to put on weight...
2841352
I was thinking more the other way around.
Human Flash has been asking about Twilight since she first appeared in Canterlot High, then she gets summoned back to help with the song writing and arrives looking six months pregnant. Someone's going to make some comment about just what the two of them got up to after the fall formal.
Save pizza money for Tuesday readings. Can do! This is gonna be good!
Can't wait until Tuesday!
Also nice Farscape shoutout, I really should get around to tracking down a box set sometime.
