Glossary
Archaic terms used by Luna.
(Throwing this up quickly so people can start to use it. I’ll clean it up later, maybe, or just delete this sentence and hope no one notices.)
Please note that while I am the sort of person who reads Shakespeare for pleasure, I am no expert on Elizabethian English, and I am often playing it by ear or by quick bouts of web research. Luna’s speech in this story should not be considered historically accurate to any great degree, and it is certainly interlarded with many modern terms and instances of modern usage.
Words that merely have ‘st’ or ‘th’ (or ‘est’ and ‘eth’) appended and which are otherwise unaltered (such as ‘wouldst’ or ‘mayest’) are not included in this glossary.
Aegis - shield, protection.
An - sometimes used for ‘if’.
Albeit - although, though.
Certes - certainly.
Demesne - domain.
Doth, dost - does.
E’en - contraction of ‘even’.
Enow - enough.
Forsooth, in sooth - Truly. ‘Sooth’ means truth, as in ‘soothsayer.’
Garderobe - A room in a castle where cloaks are hung, and where there is a hole in the floor (usually overhanging the moat) which serves as a toilet. Garderobes in Canterlot castle usually overhang a small enchanted cloud which is changed out daily by pegasus chambermaids, but some are located over discreet areas of the Royal Gardens.
Hath - has.
Joinder - joining together.
Mayhap - perhaps. Short for ‘It may happen.’
Perchance - perhaps.
Privy - private. As a noun, can mean an outhouse.
Sate - satisfy.
Seemly - appropriate, socially acceptable.
‘tis - contraction of ‘it is.’
Trow - true. ‘I trow’ = ‘I trust’ or ‘I believe to be true’
Thou, Thee - You.
Thou’rt - contraction of thou art = you are.
Thou’lt - contraction of ‘thou shalt’ or ‘thou wilt’ = ‘you shall’ / ‘you will’
‘twould - contraction of ‘it would.’
Thy, Thine - Your.
Wert - were
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Going by comments so far, it seems to me that there are about as many people who are okay with Luna's speech as those who would like it turned down a notch.
I'm going to leave things as they are for now, but I have added a glossary which I hope might tip the balance further.
(Luna's presence in the next chapter should be minimal, so I'll have some time to think things over.)
Aww
So long as you do not have people saying "I am going to stop reading this unless you tone her down" then you are harming no one keeping the style you like. Light preferences by people who will read the story anyway should be insufficient to really kick a style to the curb. At any rate I like formal talk Luna.
I'm enjoying Luna's archaic speech. As long as it's kept consistent, I don't see why it would be a problem. Issues mostly come up when it's a plot hole or the English equivalent of dog-Latin. Neither applies here - it's a deliberate style choice in character design on the part of CelestAI, not the result of Luna being incapable of learning modern speech.
(Favourite fanfic interpretation of Luna's dialect: It's something she started doing as a teenager because she thought it sounded cool, not because it was the language of her time, and she's been doing it long enough that it's become an ingrained verbal tic.)
ObPedant: "thee"/"thou" doesn't necessarily imply intimacy. It's just the less-respectful/singular form (as with "tu"/"vous" in French). She'd say "you" if addressing a crowd or someone she wanted to be formally respectful towards (ambassadors or high-ranking nobles). "Thee" would be appropriate for a close friend among the nobility that she'd otherwise use "you" for... and also appropriate for staff who are far beneath her station, as calling them "you" would be implying that they were her social equals or superiors. Consider "you (singular)" the equivalent of "sir" in modern English, and "thee" the equivalent of being allowed to use someone's first name.
ObDisclaimer that this will be language-dependant, so it's entirely possible that Ye Olde Equestrian kept "thee"/"thou" for close friends only.
Anyone who has read a bunch of Pratchett novels can easily work their way through your Luna's archaicisms.
Also, if you're intending something really dark in the Optimalverse, please tell me that you have read Pratchett and intend some kind of allusion to the sheer sociopathic nastiness of his Queen of the Elves.
3262911
Thank you for your correction and explanation. I shall revise the glossary when I have more brains than I often do at this time of night.
As you suggest, I intend to make a reasonable attempt at consistency and let the rest fall where it may, particularly as this is a fanfic and not The Great Equestrian Novel. If one were striving for a strict historical mapping for Luna's speech, one should be using English as it was a thousand years ago, and I think that trying to mimic the same would do neither my sanity nor that of my readers any good.
3264090
Can't I just be allowed to go to hell in my own way?
3264950
.
Well yes, of course
3264871
I saw an interesting proposal (by DA:Catspaw, I think, as part of their "Pony Tales" setting) that flagged Luna's dialect as being closer to 500 years old than 1000. Having it literally be that gives an amusing baseline for relative rates of language drift in show-Equestria vs. in our world.
Regarding modern works that use consistent-ish archaic language, my own formative experience was the "Warlock" series of books (by Christopher Stasheff). The one word they used a fair bit that I haven't seen (yet) in this fic was "sin" (since; "sin that" = "since that" = "because", near as I could tell). Props for using "an", though (that was another one frequently used in the series).
So far quite intriguing and I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes, though I have a few quibbles.
As others have mentioned: Lunaspeak. It went from okay to being rather intrusive as the chapter went on, and could do with being dialled back quite a bit. I can tolerate it, but I find it does interfere with my reading and so it detracts from the story.
There's also this exchange:
In the canon original story, all these tedious functions are eliminated; only functions such as eating/drinking and sex are kept since most people enjoy them (though these could also be eliminated if someone wanted; CelestAI mentions to Lars that she could remove his sex drive completely if it was what he truly desired). While it's satisfying to return to a normal state, it would be far more so to permanently be able to gorge oneself without leaving this state.
I guess you could change this (it's marked non-canon), but the question why springs to mind?
The other thing...
3256977
There's an interesting loophole which gets brought up of affecting someone's mood indirectly through smell (though is that really any different than doing so through a pattern of virtual photons called 'sunset'?), but it's a pretty integral part of the canon that she can only make any direct modifications to the mind with a person's consent, and that includes moods. If I were depressed, she couldn't magically zap me and make me happy without me saying the magic words.
And while you have marked this as non-canon, it seems particularly strange to disregard a fairly intrinsic part of the setting, and that any commentary you may have on the FiO universe is undermined by you breaking from canon, especially when so far there doesn't appear to be any real need to do so.
For me that's also rather frustrating because I've wanted to see a really intelligent protagonist realising some of the horrible implications of the FiO universe (since I lack any form of writing ability to do the subject justice myself), and so you changing the rules strikes me as a missed opportunity.
3264976
Just for that... I promise everyone that this story will have a happy ending.
3265411
The Warlock books may well have influenced me; I did read them as a lad, but the years have effaced my memory of them. Perhaps it's time for another visit.
3265928
When I placed this story in the non-canon folder, I definitely did not have that passage in mind and I wasn't expecting this reaction. If my conception of Optimalverse canon is out of true in this regard, I have no great objection to modifying the passage. I'd like to take some time to review it, then continue discussion of this topic in the forum if appropriate.
3268682
I look forward to seeing what you try to convince us is a happy ending!
(I've had the same plan for my own fic all along. The ending will be proper FiO material: appalling and horrifying, but happy.)
It's really honestly not that big a deal. This is one of those things that can be handwaved easily by talk of "blah blah blah satisfy values". Perhaps your pony just values having a realistic version of his pet more than having an optimized version of his pet.
3268744
Oops. The passage I mean to review is the one that refers to LunAI modifying moods. I should have specified that, and I have revised the comment accordingly.
3265928
As I mention in the story, some find these functions less tedious than others, and in fact some fetishize them and would like them enhanced. It would be important enough to the values of enough people that I can't see CelestAI/LunAI eliminating such functions for all of her little ponies. Even among those who have no fetish for these functions, some take general satisfaction in performing maintenance tasks if not in the acts themselves, and some would find it bizarre to eat constantly without excreting, or regard a world without as being too bowdlerized / pollyannafied to be worth living in. The protagonist is a member of the last two categories.
Another reason has been implied in the first chapter, and I don't care to make it explicit here. If you can't figure it out for yourself, you probably shouldn't.
3269002
Actually, I find the "ponies use pheremones" thing to be such a great Optimalverse idea I wish I'd come up with it myself.
Like, she changes you enough to make you a pony. Ponies get a lot of mood from pheremones. By perfect little coincidence, your initial consent to emigrate implies a method for her to arbitrarily drug you.
3268682
How well they age is... debatable. The space opera aspects are par for the course (and a fun genre in themselves), but now that I no longer consider myself religious, it's really hard not to notice the fact that the author strongly _is_ (the Church as an organization is a prominent and always-helpful supporting character in the books).
The tone also changes a bit over the course of the sequels and multiple spinoff series, so your mileage may vary. That said, I'd happily re-read the first half dozen or so again myself.
3269002
That's fair enough reasoning, and you won't get any complaints from me there. The reason I brought it up in the first place however was because the protagonist himself questions why it should be so, thus seeming to be something of a contradiction, particularly since his little world revolves around him. To put it simply, I feel like I'm being told one thing and shown another.
To be sure, you could simply argue that CelestAI knows something about his mind that he doesn't, but when it comes to basic drives I don't think such an excuse would hold up and I think people tend to be fairly self-aware about such things; I enjoy eating and I want that chocolate bar because I'm hungry and it tastes delicious. It's when you start looking at the reasons behind those various drives (such as our extensive fondness for sweet, energy-dense foods), or getting deeper into human psychology that we can miss stuff or be unaware of what's going on.
3264871
The true manuscript of Beowulf.
3269377
The only thing I have against utopias is the usual plaint—that by writing excessively of fictional ones, we may relieve the social pressures that might otherwise result in the building of real ones.
3270750
The protagonist, as mentioned in the story, is the sort of person who loves to explain things, and he also likes to hear things being explained. He will occasionally ask LunAI a question to which he already knows the answer, and one reason for this is that he's testing her, checking what she says about her reasons against what he knows to be true. He's got another reason that he may not have fully self-realized yet.
On a higher level, of course, he's airing the question because it permits LunAI's discourse on the matter, and thereby informs the reader. I have edited his question, and I hope it reads more consistently now.
It's true that he is often disconcerted or kept off balance by his interactions with LunAI, which does not seem to jive with this being a paradise built for his enjoyment. There's a reason for this as well, but I'd rather that the answer appear in the story than in the comments.
3689570
All of which may pale in comparison to the plight of Prince Albert in a Can.
3689834
I fear that you're living in a foal's paradise
3690940
Challenge accepted.
He'll figure it out. When he does, he will likely find a way to bonk himself.
3691178
I agree. We fill our world with meaning, even if we have to make it up in spots. Even so, some people never quite find a place in the world where they feel like they belong, and the protagonist was one of these, so the connection hit him particularly hard.
3689735
3693321
Thank you very much for your compliments and encouragement!
3696818
Will said bonking be him hitting himself on the head with a hoof, or will it be with a mallet or some other comedic implement? Or something more metaphorical instead?
Also: reading the chapter again, it strikes me just how poetic a way you managed to describe how "Pen and Snow totally did it on the floor of the library".
Another aside: I'd like to add yet another page to the FIO list by making a TV Tropes page for this story, but at the moment I don't think there's enough there. But it's something I've got planned for the future.
3698505
His struggle on a lower and a higher plane must be—or what's the meta for?
I intend to have fun writing this story; it's the reason I keep packing it with literary references that many readers of this site may not get. (As Joel Hodgson said, the right people will get them.) Trying to keep that scene at a suitably genteel level while still making it clear what was happening was another fun challenge.
Wow. Yes, it's too soon for that, but thanks for considering it!
3696818
That too, but I meant in the sense of "we don't have to sift through the vast amounts of nothingness between the stars to find the rest of the life that's already pre-concentrated on this planet".
In the true Library of Babel, meaningful information is uniformly distributed amongst non-meaningful. At that point it's just as fast to run a random number generator and use your "meaningfulness" oracle to sift the output as to go looking for existing meaningful works (which is pretty much a capsule summary of the Library itself).
3706118
We have each other, that's true. Let's hope that we really mean something.
"The meaning of the transmitter is the transmission."
Indeed, Borges mentioned a religious sect that shuffled disks with letters on them to 'search' the library without having to travel around and read the books. The authorities felt it necessary to ban these activities.
The human mind being what it is, I'm sure that such people would be fully convinced that they had found real meaning in the output (cf. Numerology, et al.).
Salutations!
I just finished reading Mismatching Wits. Wow. Seriously, wow.
I. Love. The way. You write. The clever turns of phrase. The sensual, descriptive prose. The realistic introspection and character examination. The obvious Heinlein influence to your writing technique. The many references to all my favorite things, writers, and concepts. Like I said, wow.
I don't like your Lunaspeak entirely. Some of the introspections, however 'true', go on overlong, I feel. I wish you had broken the story into three chapters, instead of a short and immense one. I felt that you wasted some of the potential of this story by not showing us around, and letting the reader develop real affection for the characters through shared experience - more show, less tell. What you did provide was so good, it demanded more activity and action than was provided. Too much of an 'idea' story without enough 'sugar' to make the medicine go down. I wish you had worked for full Optimalverse compatibility.
These are my only complaints. Just those.
Which is to say... everything else was magnificent. More than flawless. Golden.
I am following you, and I intend to dig into your Chickenman story next. I know Chickenman - one of my spouses is a radio engineer, she's run stations, she's a friend of Chuck Blore. I have to tell her about your Chickenman story.
Do I know you? Have we met? You are too familiar.
I salute you, brilliant one.
- Chatoyance
4309941
I agree with most of these. I am rather more an idea person than a social person, and often it shows. I'll try to address them in future installments.
I am here to crush crime with one blow from my mighty fics.
I don't believe that we've met. I apologize for my familiarity.
High praise from a creator of your talent and skill. Thank you very much!
A fun story so far, partly because I enjoy the description of things like the space-bending house, a possibility hinted at by Light Sparks' story in the original FiO. (I think that the calculation for the falling book is wrong, though, because while Vf = Vo + (1/2)gT^2, that assumes no terminal velocity. And terminal velocity is probably unnaturally low in Equestria.)
I'm not sure where the story can go from here, though, since he's pretty much reconciled to his new life. Challenge him by having him wonder whether his work is popular because it's good, or because Celestia/Luna is surrounding him with ideal fans?
I confess I put off reading this story for a while because it didn't feel right to read it when my brain wasn't in a state to appreciate the fractal regress of references. Oh man, was this a joy to return to.
You have accomplished something wondrous and magical, and I mean this entirely as a compliment: you have made me feel stupid. That sense of CelestAI being transcendent, of there being depth in everything examined far beyond your ability to examine it, of the audience stand-in (who himself is a remarkably bright character) being out-brighted so effortlessly … this might just be the quintessential Optimalverse story. (No, better make that sestessential. Elements of Harmony and all that.)
I can already see where the dark tag is going to come from. That little inner skeptic (oh, how I know it) is part of him — an essential part. If she considered it to have been hampering satisfying his values, LunAI would have removed it (as she did with the physical ailments). It being there is satisfying his values, and it is not okay with paradise.
And Flowersnark … Flowersnark. Sweet stars and fishes, what a glorious pony name. I tell you three times, it's like I've found something I never knew I was hunting.
I am so behind on replying to comments; my apologies. And this story isn't dead yet.
4485668
Thanks!
He's in a computer simulation. He may actually be able to fall forever at increasing velocity.
See above. And below.
4584819
I suppose that's fair; your stories often make me feel the same way. Frankly, my brain is still not in a state to appreciate the fractal regress of time loops in HR2: RH.
Oh, my. I am not comfortable with accepting that mantle; for one thing I'd have to try henceforth to live up to it, and writing this story is daunting enough already. Also, it's in the non-canon folder for a specific reason. But thanks for the praise!
Removing the Inner Voice would be a major brain edit, and LunAI would be constrained from doing so unless Pen were to specifically request it. It's more than a simple neurological defect.
We know from Lars's example in FiO that LunAI will satisfy your basic values while letting you work out for yourself what's keeping you from being really content (or steering you towards making the choice she considers optimal). What Pen may decide concerning his Inner Voice (and to what degree "decide" should have quotes around it) will be addressed in later chapters.
The character's name in the first few drafts was Mobius Canter. Flowersnark was a serendipitous find. It was just the place for it.
4587649
Too bad. You manage to cover everything beautifully.
4611949
Thank you for your praise as well!
4898971
Eh, go get your own shard.
FWIW, that part of the story was conceived long before I ever played LoE.
This. Is. Fantastic. The way you've made the environment conscious is this subtle bit of freakyness that I absolutely love. I very much am looking forward to the Dark tag showing up.
4951516
Thank you. The story updates are moving with galaxial slowness, but nonetheless they do move.
4951846
* holds out an empty bowl *
May I have another chapter please?
5435421
Yes. If I can't get one up in the next month or so, I will at least have another teaser ready.
5435553 Then it's a race: which of the ridiculously slow authors will release first! I've got almost 4900 words ready for my next chapter. You?
5440657
As mentioned in my blog post, I have plenty of words written; they just have to be arranged in good form.
But you go first. My time is not my own this week.
5576054
Aber Ich spreche nicht Sie Deutsch!
I'm glad that you didn't find the story just a little bit funnier.
I presume that the second part of Principia was accidentally released as a draft? We do get to see it eventually, right?
6218281
You are correct on both counts. If the winds steer fair, I may have it done this weekend and be ready to resume work on the main story.
Pjabrony was a prophet, but spoke too soon.
6219039 oh man, and here we had it on the top priority list to read as soon as time permitted... Oh well, back to eagerly patiently waiting! ;)
But... But,,, where is the chapter? Accidental published a draft again?
6867009
Yeah. My apologies. It will be out soon.
6867057
My, I've just binged the whole thing, and I certainly hope this holds.
7001142
It will. It takes me a while to polish things to my satisfaction, but I am close.
7088865
Well, you could read “Part 1" as meaning “One Part,” that is to say, this is all there is…
But that’s me being japish. This chapter and the story will continue, though updates do tend to come very slowly.
The downside of slowly updating stories:
"Hey that story's updated? Uh... what was happening again? Who the hell is this character and what's his deal? Oh that was mentioned in the fourth chapter which I read about 2 years ago"
I've had a few stories in the past where I've stopped following them because they update so slowly that I had no idea what was going on (and rereading hundreds of thousands of words is a no no).
7089288
I do know how that goes. I’m sorry that it has to be this way for MW; even if I didn’t have to work for a living, updates would still likely be slow. I hope the summary helped a bit.
7089382
Thankfully with MW it's easy enough to remember the gist of things, particularly if you're already familiar with the Optimalverse (which I am, having coincidentally re-read several stories in the setting).
I do wish there were more (good) stories written on the subject, seeing as I lack any semblance of writing skill to put one to paper myself.