Notes for the Prologue of "Giving Yourself Advice"

This is the first of several blogs explaining various ideas in the story On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice. Read the chapter first so you don't get spoiled.

The character headings, and why they’re in the chapter names

Unlike most uses of character headings I’ve seen on this site, they are not used to delineate multiple first-person perspectives, because I’m not really much of a first-person writer. Instead, I’m using a third-person limited perspective, where we look over the shoulder of the named character, and are privy to their thoughts and their thoughts alone.

Perhaps more for my own amusement than for any other reason, I color each section with the personality of the named character: the “P. Celestia” section should feel like something (Princess) Celestia the pony might write about herself if she used the third person, while the “Sunset Shimmer” section is colored with Sunset’s characteristic snark and her anger. The way I think about it is this: It’s decades into the future, and somebody is writing a book (this book) about the fateful events of these three days. He (me) interviews all of the characters to get their stories, and even gets to borrow some diaries. He then makes the character sections read like they had been written by each character in the third person.

Why are the character headings in the chapter titles? Because this is a complicated story. There are more than a dozen main characters, and the plot intercuts between all of them. I don’t know about you, but if I were reading this story instead of writing it, I would be guaranteed to start reading about a character who hadn’t done anything in the past five chapters, and find myself completely blanking on what this character was doing. If you’re like me, those character headings in the chapter titles will help you go back to catch up on characters you’ve forgotten about. Just be warned that some of these character sections are ludicrously short.

What’s with the “P.” in “P. Celestia”?

It’s not “Princess”. “P.” in this case means “Pony”. We’re dealing with pony and human versions of most characters, and you’ll need to keep track of which one is which. You’ve read the story description, so you know they are going to start getting switched. Just keep this in mind: The initial is going to follow the mind around, not the body. So “P. Applejack” would refer to the pony Applejack. Even when she’s a pony mind in a human body, she is still going to be called “P. Applejack” in her character headings.

That’s another reason I’m using character headings, to keep track of which counterpart we’re dealing with at any particular moment.

Day Zero

The mirror portal will only be open for three days. This is the day before the portal opens.

Whinnyfield and Vinny

These are the two ponies in My Little Pony The Movie who were guarding Songbird Serenade—I’m imagining that they were royal guards before they became private bodyguards and that Whinnyfield in particular was the guard captain before Shining Armor. (Or maybe there was somepony between Whinnyfield and Shining Armor. I haven’t decided yet.) The two characters were inspired by the characters played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega. Vinny is also a little bit Travolta’s character from Welcome Back, Kotter, Vinnie Barbarino, because I sort of see Vinnie Barbarino in all of Travolta’s characters.

Kolbe

Hermann Kolbe (1818–1884) is one of my primary arguments against immortality.

Before his thirtieth birthday, Kolbe was one of the principal founders of the science of organic chemistry, pulling it out of the Dark Ages and establishing the basic rules for how to build organic molecules from scratch.

After his thirtieth birthday and for the rest of his long life, Kolbe used the position of power he had been granted to fight tooth and nail against the advances of the younger generation, such as Kekulé’s theory on the structure of benzene or van’t Hoff’s theory about asymmetrical compounds. He was the editor of one of the leading journals, and not only refused to publish their work, he also put columns in the journal violently denouncing these ideas and personally insulting the authors. Kolbe had to die before these advances could be accepted by the academic community.

Kolbe sucks.

Prince Blueblood the Diplomat

Twilight’s contemporary Prince Blueblood was made into a diplomat in the comics.

My general rule on the canonicity of comic material: I’ll accept it if a) it’s not directly contradicted by broadcast or theatrical material and b) it doesn’t mess up the neat idea I just had for the story.

I’ve used the idea of Blueblood’s male ancestors all being named Blueblood in multiple places, including Equestrian Business.

Baré

Jeanne Baré (1740–1807) was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She did it by disguising herself as a man in order to accompany her lover and employer Philibert Commerçon, the naturalist for Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s 1766–69 voyage.

On the subject of teleportation, it seems to be a strong fan-held opinion that only the strongest of magic users can do it: Celestia, Luna, Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. I’m dealing with that theory by having this character limited to line-of-sight teleports, with long rests in between.

Sunset Shimmer

I like to properly set expectations. I know that there are some readers out there who will only read fanfics where Sunset is the main character. Sunset Shimmer is not the main character of this story. She’s a supporting character and this story wouldn’t have happened without her, but she’s not the main character.

Sunset’s title

I’m not sure if Sunset had a canonical title with Princess Celestia corresponding to Twilight’s “most-faithful student” moniker. I decided to go with “most-remarkable student” here, but I’ve seen plenty of other candidates in fanfiction.

Raven as Celestia’s confidant

Hey, I needed sompony for Celestia to exposit to.

Raven is a background character in the series and even when she shows up in the comics, her personality is dictated by whatever the writer of that issue needs her to be.

The chronology

This story makes four assumptions: 1. Time passes differently in the pony and human realms when they aren’t connected by the mirror portal: 30 months between openings on Equus, and 6 months between openings on Earth. 2. The future Mane Six were ten years old when they got their cutie marks. 3. Their human counterparts were 15-year old freshmen in high school at the same moment, which is the moment they first met. 4. Sunset crossed over to Earth in the fall of her freshman year.

These assumptions are based on a chain of logic that has some very weak links. If I was going for the most-likely chronology, I likely would have ended up with different assumptions, but these four give me the story I wanted to tell, so I’ll go with them. I will now waste your time by listing these links:

• Sunset left Equestria for Earth on the same day that Twilight became the Princess’ student. This is based on the line in Equestria Girls when Twilight claims to have no knowledge of Sunset’s existence before the start of the movie. The “Fall of Sunset Shimmer” comic story showed a filly Twilight in the background of a scene, about the same age as when she got her mark. Anything more accurate than that is an exercise in artistic license. Logically, Sunset must have used the portal on the last possible moment of the third day in canon, so that there would be no way she could be pursued by the Princess or a guard volunteer. This is an alternate universe, based on having her go on the first day instead.
• Sunset arrived on Earth and immediately became a freshman at Canterlot High. The final panel of “The Fall of Sunset Shimmer” shows her arriving at the school looking about the same way as she did in Equestria Girls. So therefore she went straight to school at Canterlot High, as opposed to poking around for a few years first as an adult in a child’s body. I’m going to guess that Sunset isn’t ageless as a human, and teenagers age rapidly. Also, she’s in three separate Fall Formal Princess photographs, so I’m going to assume she won in her freshman, sophomore and junior years—there’s no way she would let herself repeat a grade. I figure she needs at least a month after arriving to become enough of an object of pity to earn the Fall Formal crown. So let’s say she arrived in September, and the Formal is in October.
• The Mane Six got their cutie marks when they were ten years old. This is a pure guess on my part.
• Fifteen years passed between Twilight Sparkle getting her mark and her first visit to Earth. This is not backed in canon so again, I’m just making an assertion that makes the math work out easily.
• The human counterparts of the Mane Six (minus Twilight) all met on the same day that the ponies got their cutie marks. This is documented in another comic story with the confusing title of “Equestria Girls”. This the Freshman Fair. That the two events happened on the same day is of course my assumption rather than anything explicitly stated in canon.
• 30 months pass between every opening of the mirror portal on Equus. The span is stated to be “thirty moons”, with the writers declaring that a “moon” is a deliberately undefined timespan. I’m deciding to make it a month anyway, like everybody else does. Combined with the “15 years” assumption above, this means that the mirror opened six times after the one covered in this story, and the sixth opening is when Equestria Girls takes place.
• A little over 6 months pass between every opening of the mirror portal on Earth. Many authors have had to deal with dating discrepancies when trying to match up events in the two worlds. This is what I’m stuck with in order to line up six mirror openings in fifteen years in Equestria with three years (and a month) on Earth. This is absolutely not supported anywhere in canon.

Now if you’ve read Equestrian Business, you will have an objection: if time is passing five times faster on Earth compared to Equestria, why did the marking meteorite land one thousand years ago instead of two hundred? I’m going to say that the relative flow of time between the two realms varies. It’s five times faster on Earth now, but at some time in the past time passed faster in Equestria to keep the two worlds from drifting too far apart, so overall 985/997 years have passed in the two worlds since Nightmare Moon was banished.

Comments

[PiMan]

Now if you’ve read Equestrian Business, you will have an objection

I was indeed about to raise this objection.