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// Foreword, by Princess Celestia 
// Story: Fulfilling 
// by PegasusMesa 
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	Greetings, dear reader and loyal subject.  It was with great pleasure that I accepted when asked to write the foreword to this wonderful work.  It is a joy for me to contribute to the success of any pony, and as I count the author as one of my dearest friends, I very much believe that—Okay, my advisers have informed me that nopony ever reads past the first two lines of these things, so if you're still with me, congratulations—you get to read the real foreword.

Being a princess can really grind on your nerves; it's just one PR moment after another.  It's all smiles, and grace, and kind words, and tolerance, and sometimes I get so bored I want to drill my horn into a wall.  However, since that would both take time to do and ruin a perfectly good wall (not to mention probably hurt, quite a bit), I'm going to instead take the opportunity to vent through this, one of the most passive-aggressive mediums available to me.

First of all, do you know how much the author is paying me to write this foreword?  Twenty bits!  Twenty!  Not two hundred, not two thousand—twenty.  That's a two followed by a single zero!  I know that artists are normally strapped for funds, but for pony's sake, come on!  Twenty bits can barely get you a good hooficure these days!  Trust me, our kingdom could really use a bit of pocket change right now.  Do you know what Equestria's tax laws are?  Of course you don't, because we don't have any.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Living here is duty-free!  Hooray!  The one source of income we have is through doing little side-jobs, like writing forewords for ungrateful, twenty-bit-paying authors.  The only reason our government isn't completely broke right now is because I have Twilight Sparkle and her friends to take care of the big problems—it really saves money, and she does it for free, every time.  I'm actually starting to feel a little bad about it, now that I mention it.  Anyway, my point is, the author—what a jerk, am I right?

Secondly—and here I'm going to be blunt—I personally think this work is awful.  When I accepted this job, the publisher sent me a manuscript that I could read as a "preparation".  Ha!  What a joke—nothing could prepare me for what was contained within those pages.  Now, I'll be fair—I've heard of "shipping" and I've seen a few examples of what it can produce, and some of them are just disgusting.  Like, bleach-your-eyeballs-to-cleanse-them levels of disgusting.  This one isn't, and for that, I must be thankful.  You know, credit where credit is due.  However, the rest of this horrendous, so-called "story" is melodramatic, poorly written, grammatically unsound, devoid of characterization, and all manner of simply terrible things.  It's like a laundry list of all the awful atrocities that would happen if King Sombra had been born as an irate editor with a grudge against the world of literature.  If I had ever written something this miserable, I would have burned it immediately upon completion, and then I would have summoned a priest to exorcise whatever demon would have inevitably spawned from the ashes.  I would even kiss Discord before I allowed a story like this to see the light of day.  By the way, if you tell Discord that I wrote that, I will personally hunt you down and end you (and probably loot your wallet, as well—remember, Equestria's poorer than a diamond dog in the desert).  And Discord, if you're reading this, no, that is not an invitation.  I'm serious.  Bring this up at your own risk.  You have been warned.

Thirdly and finally, I really have to question the author's source of information.  I'm not going to spoil anything important (not that it really matters, it's pretty "spoiled" already, if you get my drift), but Luna is presented as more powerful than I am, in terms of raw magical- and physical- strength.  To that I must say—what a load of crock!  I mean, sure, she could probably take me if she's having a good day, but it would be pretty darn close.  And it's not like I've been spending the last couple centuries embroiled in warfare—things have been pretty peaceful, so of course I'm going to be a little out of shape!  Send me to the moon for a thousand years and let me toughen myself up with a time-skip and a training montage, and I'll kick some epic flank when I get back, too.  Right now, Luna's reading this over my shoulder while I write it, and even she's nodding her head in agreement with me.  Unfortunately, I think she's also starting to get some ideas that I don't care for—she keeps flexing her muscles and throwing me challenging glances out of the corner of her eye.  I might have to take her out to the training yard and show her that the whole "Chrysalis beating me" thing was a fluke—you know, just so that her head doesn't get too big.

For the sake of any readers who have made it this far and would like all of my points to be presented in an easy-to-read list format (you know who you are, but mostly I'm looking at you, Twilight), here they are:

1.  I am being underpaid in an almost-criminal fashion
2.  I could sneeze on a piece of blank paper, and it would be a better story than this one
3.  The author is either very deluded or really, really dumb

Anyway, I'm currently being told that, every now and then, the editor will read the last sentence of a foreword, just to make sure that it's not sarcastically critical of the proceeding work, so I'll have to end the real thing right here.  Thank you all so very much for reading this fantastic piece of literature, and I hope that you enjoy it greatly—I know I did!

Yours Sincerely,
Princess Celestia