Let The New Realms Era Begin · 10:57am Oct 10th, 2020
Sing it from the streets, and shout it from the rooftops! Let the net catch fire, and the presses race like never before! For this is a date that shall live in glory, the most important in human history! The day we first make contact with an alien World!
...But only in an alternate timeline. Well dangit.
So, why 2020-10-10?
An excellent question, hopefully-not-hypothetical reader! In fact, it even gets you two answers for the price of one – now that's what I call a bargain!
From the plausibility side, it essentially came down to an extrapolation based on the state of technology when I first started developing the Slipup setting (better-name suggestions most definitely welcome), of which Autumnfall Change is a part. Due to the particular mechanics of the original portal spell, events in Equestria and the greater World put basically no contraint on the date at all: in radically-oversimplified essence, the portal was created so as to automatically target the closest magically-interesting event in reachable spacetime, which just so happened to be the initial return of astronauts to the Moon. Since I wanted to minimize the amount of future technology I'd have to presciently predict for stories set later in the timeline, I wanted to have that return happen as early on as possible. Therefore, I took a look at the progress of rocketry and spaceflight in our own timeline since the point of divergence (roughly 2008), estimated what it would've looked like if everything had gone as well as would be reasonably plausible, and extrapolated the earliest year that wouldn't start to strain suspension of disbelief, which ended up being 2020. Since I concluded the Slipup setting should be about three years ahead of us, give or take a year-ish, we'll get to see how right or wrong I was relatively soon: if we're not back on the Moon by the end of 2024, that would suggest I made a mistake somewhere along the line.
As for why that specific date in 2020, that's obviously because it's just so aesthetic. I mean, just look at it! 2020-10-10. I could wax eloquent on all the ways it's beautiful for hours (or at least that's how long my hypothetical audience assures me it feels), but really, to what point? It's axiomatically elegant, and what more needs to be said?
...Oh, and it's also the date that in our timeline marks the tenth anniversary of FIM's first episode, which I guess some people might consider more important. I normally prefer to avoid picking dates just because they happen to have some sort of preexisting significance – if there's some unrelated logical reason for it or I happen to randomly select one with an RNG, I'll gladly run with it, but otherwise it tends to feel somewhat forced. However, this case is in enough of a grey area that I can let it slide, since the date doesn't have that significance in the Slipup setting: its equivalent of FIM is only created post-contact as a dramatized adaptation of Equestrian history, and thus the date would have been unremarkable if the new Moon landing hadn't happened to take place when it did. Given that the setting already ended up with a couple of accidental nods to our timeline's FIM by pure chance, I figure indulging myself with a single intentional one is probably alright.
And for purposes of full disclosure, I probably ought to add that it's also my [#]th birthday, but that is legitimately a complete coincidence! I can't outright say that it wasn't on my mind at all, since I did already know that would have to be the case, but it really was just an incidental bonus. I mean, if my estimate for the earliest reasonably-plausible year to return to the Moon had been 2019 I probably would have gone with 2019-10-12 instead, and I was still briefly tempted to change it to that anyway even though I knew doing so would really be pushing it. So basically, chalk it up to some additional serendipitous self-indulgence: as is normally the case with dates that have preexisting significance, the fact that it's my birthday was not a reason for the choice, but I'm absolutely willing to roll with having lucked out on it.
Okay, that's nice and all, but what about some actual stories? We want to see what happens on that day, not just read about its backstory in a blog post! Seriously, it's been nine months!
So, uh, yeah. About that. I was originally hoping to have a story to release today, But Then Scootaloo Stuff happened and the upshot is that I did make that story's worth of total writing progress but it ended up spread out over like half a dozen others instead and not a single one of them is actually ready yet as a result.
So alright, that's fine, no really. After all, it's an important date for the setting as a whole, so honestly wouldn't it make more sense to showcase a little of each story anyway? Maybe it feels a bit lamer than an actual complete story would, but on the plus side, all I have to do is go over the stuff I've written so far and decide which scenes from each would make the best teasers! Nice and easy, right?
...Right?
...Oh. Well then. Apparently I'm going to need to have some words with my past self, because it turns out that across a dozen candidate stories in this setting, I somehow managed to write a grand total of two scenes that actually fit the bill. Every single other scene that's actually complete either requires setup from earlier in its story or horribly spoils something key, and every single one that needs no setup and doesn't spoil anything is in no way adequately complete.
So at this point "lamer" is definitely feeling like the right word, but "two" is still technically better than "none". And on the plus side (surely that'll work out this time!), at least I could probably fill in some of those incomplete scenes for future teasers with only moderate effort. Call it a useful reserve for next time I take too long to release something?
So with that all said, have some teasers, such as they are!
Some Teasers, Such As They Are
[Thirty-seven Stars]:
I was halfway through my second mug of firebrine when an accented voice to my right pulled me from my musing. "Hey there, I'm pretty beautiful. What's your name?"
As far as good flirtations went, that wasn't one, even by the lax standards warranted outlanders. But if any pony stood a chance of making it work, she was them. The softness of her face and body bespoke a life of luxury with nary a missed meal, and her every hair and feather so gleamed with health as would bring even an earth mare to envy. Strangely, she was shod in the way of a common skirmisher, but the metal shone like finest steel, and I could little doubt her hooves were as fine as the boots that left them hid. Despite the ill-wrought start, she looked well worth my time.
"Ay and greetings, I'm known as Far Cry. How are you known?"
"Like I said, Pretty Beautiful."
Oh.
Showoff Of The Moon And Sun:
"Ahem."
As one, the band screeched to a discordant halt, as if somepony had bottled the essence of a cat falling off a bookshelf onto a gramophone arm and waited until that moment to douse them. Astonishingly, the Wonderbolts screeched to a halt in time with the music mid-stunt, including several who were left hovering upside-down. Skirr goggled at them for a moment before looking to her right towards the source of the voice, where she found an amused-looking Princess Celestia and a distinctly unamused Princess Luna.
"We shall be requiring those returned, forthwith."
"Aw come on!" Skirr flicked an ear back toward the center of the coliseum at Lieutenant Dash's shout, but her eyes stayed locked on the Princesses. "You've got to be kidding me! This is the best part!"
Princess Luna stomped her hoof. "We care not! The moon and sun are not playthings for you to toy with at a whim!"
"But the crowd's loving it!" The audience around her roared with cheers and applause, and Skirr found herself whistling and stamping along as she got caught up in the moment. After a few seconds, a rather smug Dash called for silence, and the coliseum fell quiet once more. "Surely you don't want to disappoint them?"
Princess Celestia leaned over as though to whisper to her sister, but her voice carried throughout the coliseum as effortlessly as Princess Luna's had. "It does look like fun, does it not? Perhaps we could indulge them for a time."
Princess Luna scowled, but before she had a chance to respond she was beset by a small herd of foals from the nearby stands, all fixing her with their best pleading gazes. Skirr snickered when she saw several of the closer Wonderbolts join in – somehow, the begging-puppy eyes just lost something in translation when they tried.
After several long seconds of assessing the forces arrayed against her, Princess Luna snorted. "Very well. Against our better judgment, we shall permit this absurd merriment." The audience instantly burst into cheers once more, and she hastily raised her voice over the noise. "Once."
And as a bonus for the curious, here's a compare and contrast of two different parts of a long scene that ended up at dramatically different levels of completion – one half's almost good enough to send off for prereading, and the other's not even close. See if you can figure out which example is from which.
Slipup:
[MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE MENTION OF TALKING BEING QUIET]
[desc of IC arrival + walk up, SA sit up? + narration trail off...] "Sandy? What are you doing up? I didn't wake you up, did I?""Not exactly, no." [IC take seat next to SA (visual: on right = south side about even with him)] "Apparently you kind of half-woke Rose, and while she was shifting around to get comfy again she whacked me pretty good in the throat." [IC] angled her head towards the sky above [SA] and gestured to a spot a bit below her jaw, almost dead-center on her trachea.
[SA] sucked in a breath with a pained hiss, then let it out in a puff of laughter. "Ouch. Sorry about that."
"I can tell." [IC] rolled her eyes, but a faint smile tugged at her mouth as she did. "Anyway, that got me awake right nicely, so once I got Rose to stop feeling terrible about it, I decided to come see what you were up to."
"Gotcha."
[sit in silence for a bit, narrative desc of surroundings in some detail]
[(have as part of prev paragraph?) finally IC broke the quiet]
"So, what brings you here?"
Perhaps a minute later, [IC] shook off enough of the night's enthralling wonder to put an end to the lull. "That's not what I meant, though. What did you come here to do?"
"Ah." It took [SA] a long moment to tear himself away. "Just watch the moon, think about tomorrow. Leaving everything I've ever known behind... again, but for real this time." He chuckled softly. "It's—"
[IC] interjected with a sideways glance and a hurt tone. "So what, you're saying you've never even met me?"
"Indeed. What did you say your name was again, miss?"
[IC] let out a brief giggle. [SA] allowed a quick smile to break apart his deadpan mien, then turned his gaze back to the [sky/heavens].
After a moment of cozy quiescence, he continued his [earlier/diverted/interrupted] thought. "So yeah, it's what you're supposed to do the night before a trip like this, right? Sit and stare at the moon while overwrought poetry pretentiousnesses its way through your head? I figured I had to give it a try."
What a coincidence! It's also my [#] birthday! (Though possibly a different #.) Looking forward to more from this worldline. And hey, there's plenty of the day left. 2020 may pleasantly surprise us this time.