Post-Update Blog For Sun and Hearth Chapter 9 (The Late Party) · 3:17am Mar 29th, 2017
Sun and Hearth chapter 9, "The Late Party," is up just under the wire tonight! Check it out first, spoilers below the cut.
Ending credits:
Random Trivia:
Sorry to those who have read Respect and Respectability if you were bored during the rundown of Clover’s story. This chapter was written months ago, but the idea I had for the contest prompt made it important to go into that. There are a few things I wanted to note about this version, though:
First, Cookie explicitly lays the blame for Clover’s position (or lack thereof) on Clover, or at least on Clover being the wrong pony for the situation she was in. While she wasn’t as bitter at the beginning, she was always snarky and oblivious to how she came off to other ponies.
Second, this little history was from Cookie’s perspective, and… well, I didn’t really intend it, and it might be shipping goggles, but at some point after I started writing I get the distinct impression that Cookie had some totally resolved deeper-than-friendship feelings for Clover at some point. (bats agreed with me when I asked him about it, but bats and I have the same brand of shipping goggles.) This is just my headcanon currently, but I do think that colors Cookie’s empathy here.
Anyway, moving on, personally I think the racist “stick heads” joke is hilarious, and it was a big part of the reason for that part of the conversation. The other part of the reason for the conversation was that I wanted to make it clear that Cookie was a part of that culture himself.
The reason for the conversation about how Twilight might govern Equestria was because I wanted to give Twilight a chance to talk. Cookie can run on if you give him an audience. (There are some other parts to that conversation too, but that’s for later.)
While comically strong, culturally specific drinks are a trope, I actually based raindew on a real drink. Not one I’ve had, I don’t drink anything that doesn’t taste like dessert, but my husband once has a Prairie Fire on a dare. Considering that rainbow is spicy and not known for its taste, Raindew tastes like how he described that to me.
World Building:
To start off, let me build a little on what Hurricane said, in more explicit terms for a real-world audience. As I see it, the founding of Equestria was somewhat analogous to the start of the pony Enlightenment. When Hurricane was talking about Cookie and Clover and Pansy being the ones who built Equestria, it was because they were the ones pushing radical new ideals of philosophy and magic. The leaders of the tribes were actually better leaders of ponies, but the three who enacted the spell were visionaries.
...which is another reason why everypony hated them before they saved their lives, of course.
Clover, in particular, is worth making note of here. Nopony in Equestria, except for maybe Celestia and Luna, realizes how important she actually was. Obviously the school she founded, which Celestia took over after her death, would eventually become Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns (this isn’t intended as a slight from Celestia; the school didn’t really have a name at the time, it was just referred to by whoever ponies were studying under. By the time naming schools in memoriam came into fashion everypony knew the school as Princess Celestia’s. But I can assure you there is a building on the Canterlot campus named for Clover.)
But in addition to that, she was the pony who started laying out the tools that ponies like Twilight would eventually use to understand magic. Clover wasn’t a flashy inventor of spells like Star Swirl, but she defined terms, set standards of notation, and started picking magic apart so that other ponies could eventually figure out what in the blessed darkness Star Swirl was doing.
Questions to answer:
This fic is way longer and way more casually paced than anything I’ve written before. So, everyone doing okay out there? Hangin’ on?
Have you ever been to one of those dinky little museums that have random stuff that other museums won’t take? Where was it, and what were you killing time waiting for?
The Molly Brown House, and it wasn't to kill time, we were basking in the deep, cultural heritage of Colorado. By which I mean we had a movie to catch in two hours.
...I'd answer the first question, but you already know my answer.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how I feel about the pacing, because I read every chapter twice and reading it on Docs does weird things to my headspace. Trying to emulate how I'd feel if both of those things weren't true, I expect I'd enjoy the combination of the slow-moving and relatively non-urgent main plot with the almost oneshotty nature of the history bits. So, exactly what I'm doing now.
Also, the stick head joke was totally hilarious. Like, I actually laughed out loud, and then was all like "c'monnnnn, Twilight" in my head. Though honestly I'm not sure how to feel about that.
Pacing is fine to me. Keep it up. As long as there's more story I'll be reading.
As for the second thing, once waaaay back in Cub Scouts (or maybe the first year or so of Boy Scouts, those bits kind of blur together). My town had a local history museum which we visited for some history related pin or badge or something. It was a nice little place, with a nice old man for a curator. I think I'm the only one who had fun though. I grew up around janky old antiques and hearing about the stories behind them since that was an interest both my parents shared. The house I grew up in is basically a repository of objectively worthless antiques. Like, my dad likes antiques so much he invented a machine for cleaning cast iron pans and other knick-knacks that were rusting. I'm amazed said machine hasn't killed him yet given that it's obviously unsafe.
I actually have been thinking about the pace of the fic on the last chapters.. and my answer is... I'm not sure XD. I've got to love Cookie and his interactions, as well as to read about the headcanon you made about past Equestria, so I'm grateful for each new chapter that gives more of that. But at the same time, I've been feeling that, after so many chapters, there isn't yet any conflict to spark more my interest. Yes, we had the whole topic of Cookie immortality, but it's really a conflict so far? Everyone from Discord to Cadence have been mature and reasonable enough that it hasn't really been a problem for anyone. In fact, the more chapters we advance, (Cadance and Twilight encounter with Cookie, Discord talk with Celestia, talk between Twilight and Cookie) the less problematic it seems. So, I wonder if either the story it's gonna be very long and there's gonna be a really gradual build up to a conflict (with maybe a resolution as long as it), or if we are actually reaching the end of the fic with some kind of disruptive event and a quick and powerful resolution.
So, I guess I'm happy for now, but already the last two chapters had have me a little antsy about what (if something) it’s gonna happen.
Maybe part of this it's because you have already reached a point int which in another story you would be already wrapping things up, In comparison, with 48.000 words we would be getting close to the end of Lost Time your larger story so far (btw damn, was that a YEAR ago already?!?)
Maybe it would be good to know at which length you're actually aiming with this.
But again, if I could read a 500.000 words fic written by you I’ll be happy because the dialogues and the headcanon are still so interesting… so… I still don’t know : P
And for dinky museum, mmm, I don’t know, I think one that’s called “Museum of the city” and just has old stuff (like old toys or old gadgets) but while some of them would be interesting cool stuff from the past five centuries, most of it it’s like “a walkie talkie from 1986” a “can of tomato soup of a extinct brand from 1978”.I don’t know if would fit in the category.
Anyway, great chapter, lots of lore, really well done! I would love to see Cookie with the mane 6, specially considering that even with the unique personality that you gave them, they are still pretty similar to their past counterparts (Maybe Pinkie and puddinhead would be the most different? But we all can see Rarity, RD, Twilight and Applejack in your Platinium, Hurricane, etc etc). It would be specially fun to see AJ with cookie.
Really enjoying the fic so far. It seems well paced, there's not a massive conflict to drive the plot, and the characters and their interactions are interesting to explore, and there's a lot of worldbuilding, which I really enjoy anyway.
As for the second question, I've been to quite a lot of small museums. Often little town museums but sometimes in bigger cities as well. They're interesting for themselves, and if Mum's tracked down somewhere with baskets (she's a basket weaver and interested in the history), it can be tricky to say 'no'. They're not so much something to kill time for my family, but just part of going on holiday.
The pacing's fine. This isn't a race against time to save the world, it's an intellectual exploration of the morality of immortality blended with historical vignettes. As long as you're going somewhere with it, I'm happy.
The dinkiest museum I've been to was the Mutter Museum (pronounced "mooter") in Philadelphia, a repurposed house full of antique medical devices and various horrible things that can happen to the human body. Syphilitic organs, tumors with teeth, all kinds of neat stuff.
Pacing seems fine. Your protagonist isn't Indiana Jones, who loots ancient temples armed with bullwhip and revolver. He's a bright, eloquent observer of life who's observed close to two millennia of it.
So his big scenes won't be fights or chases but long talks in a museum or garden. That seems about what it says on the label.
And I really like that S. J. Tucker song. The imagery seems a variation on a theme by W. B. Yeats: the ravens of unresting thought...
But the sense of it is more akin to another of his poems:
Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.
Horace there by Homer stands,
Plato stands below,
And here is Tully's open page.
How many years ago
Were you and I unlettered lads
Mad as the mist and snow?
You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
What makes me shudder so?
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow.
I can imagine Celestia saying something like this to Cookie, or vice-versa, at some particularly despondent moment in their history. Maybe the first winter after Luna's exile.
And just for the fun of it...a musical arrangement:
I'd give my left nut to hear Flogging Molly cover that.
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I have to admit that was somewhat intentional, just because... well, I think Pinkie Pie is a thoroughly unique entity in Equestria's history.
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...did someone tell you how much I love musical arrangements of poetry?
Thank you for pointing this out to me!
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I'm told the same duo also does an arrangement of Yeats' "The Dream-Song of Wandering Angus," the one that ends The silver apples of the moon/ The golden apples of the sun.
That last line inspired a Ray Bradbury science fiction story, about a manned mission to sample the Sun's atmosphere. The science isn't so good anymore--it was written in the fifties--but I remember reading it as a ten-year-old kid and being blown away.
EDIT: and here it is--
(Oh wow--Donovan set it to music too. Yeah, that Donovan, apparently)
EDIT: this picture seems to want to go here. Maybe it's the song they're playing on the stereo as they talk about, like, metaphor and mysticism and all that really heavy stuff man
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