Things that happen in the course of the creative process.

So the other day I found myself rereading Frankenstein for research purposes, for a chapter of the Seven Trials. Because that story is just like that, I guess.

But I was struck by the earliest chapters. Frankenstein doesn't only open with a Lovecraftian monologue about what wonders and terrors might lie hidden in the unexplored territory ahead. It also begins with a long letter about friendship, and how valuable it is to have a good friend to talk to and share your hopes and dreams. And of course the desire for companionship, and the joys and pains that follow, is kinda the most central theme of the whole book.

Twilight really needs to get down with this book, is what I'm saying. What would an introduction to Frankenstein penned by the Princess of Friendship look like?

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

"When your teacher tells you to make some friends, this is not how to go about doing it."

[Daedalus Aegle]

5109400
"Marey Shimmy wrote one of the all-time great horror stories, not only because of the macabre imagery of the Creature, but because it is the very desire for friendship that leads the ponies in the book to do great harm to each other. It shows how easily our best impulses can be subverted by simple mistakes. Although a pivotal work of early Science Friendship Fiction, the book strays far from the Scientific Friendship Method."

[Georg]

5109400 I have to admit a little bit of the inspiration for Twilight Sparkle Makes a Coltfriend.... Literally came from that.

(FYI: from what I understand, the letter he refers to is linked here, in a style that would be... interesting to reproduce in MLP.)

To Mrs. SAVILLE, England.

St. Petersburgh, December 11, 17--.

YOU will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour.

To Ms. Moondancer, Canterlot.
Ponyville, EQ, June 28, 947 M.E.

YOU may have heard that my teacher, Princess Celestia, has assigned me a new task, and despite your tendency to consider every move that I make to be the harbinger of some dire plage or catastrophe, put your mind at ease. The full details of Princess Luna's return have been classified, but with joy in my heart, I must pass along that I had a part, no a pivotal role in that achievement. At the earliest opportunity, I shall endeavor to bring you up to speed, but for now, I shall focus on this town, and my place within.

It is a small place, nestled at the foot of the great mountain upon which we both have lived our lives...

[Daedalus Aegle]

5109408
That's chapter 1. Look at chapter 2:

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution, and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common, and read nothing but our uncle Thomas's books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction, that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping ; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

His sister surely deserves credit for putting up with this for all those years

[Georg]

5109574 You know, that's Rarity. I can't help but read it in her voice.

[Daedalus Aegle]

5109585
You're not wrong. Really, we can probably draw a pretty straight line from Lord Byron himself through the Romantic Hero archetype to Rarity.

I guess that makes Twilight Frankenstein, and Sweetie Belle the sister. That... checks out, really.

[Georg]

5109587 "Live!" cackled Rarity as she yanked on the ropes, causing the elaborate mechanism to clatter and creak. "Live, my creation! Let the power of nature give it... LIFE!!"

"Uhhmm..." groaned the thing under the covers until a purple hoof emerged and groped for the nearby pillow. "UHHH!!" it moaned more energetically, eventually getting a grip on its prize and heaving it at the cackling unicorn who was standing by the open window with the curtains flung wide. "Rarity!" groaned Twilight, who found herself without anything to cover her head from the unyielding beam of sunlight pouring in through the open crystalline window of her castle. "I said I'd help you this afternoon!"

"It is afternoon, Darling," purred Rarity. She produced Twilight's Extra Large Princess-Sized Coffee Mug (on sale at the castle giftshop for 25 bits, free refills) and waved it near the edge of the bed so the tempting aroma of Bittern's Bitter Biting Brew wafted in the direction of the petulant princess. "And if you don't get out of bed soon, it will be evening, and I shall be forced to see if Rainbow Dash can bring me some thunderclouds for a proper awakening. Tell me, when I attach the electrodes, are you AC or DC?"

[iisaw]

5109400
See Appendix C: Inappropriate and Possibly Dangerous Techniques for Making New Friends, page 291, The Compendium of Friendship, fourth edition.

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

5109400
It is in the Gaslamp Fantasy Researcher Twilight universe.