Shard #204,531 (The Storyteller)
SHARD #204,531 (THE STORYTELLER)
It was a perfect world.
The stallion stepped out of his front door and looked over his neatly-trimmed lawn. He frowned. This wouldn’t do at all. The symbolism was completely wrong. He’d been crushing on the mare he was going to ask out today for several weeks, which had driven him to distraction. That mental state had in turn fueled a number of useful interactions, of course. Being caught daydreaming about her at work had flustered him to the point where his thick glasses had tumbled off his desk and been stepped on by the rival who was constantly trying to show him up and steal that big promotion.
That was good. It characterized the rival as mean and unsympathetic, which would make his comeuppance next month at the office party all the more cathartic. Plus, it galvanized his desire to ask the mare on a date instead of hiding in his home every night, and a physical change makes an excellent marker of character development. By the same token, the lawn needed work. A few patches turned a sickly shade of brown, and a few others grew upwards until the whole thing took on a ragged, dishevelled look. He smiled. That was a much better reflection of his current state of mind.
Trotting into town, he passed by a number of vaguely pony-shaped individuals, none with any distinctive features. They were unimportant to the narrative, so in the interest of conserving detail and keeping everything flowing they didn’t need to be rendered individually. One unicorn, however, was. The stallion stopped and waved to her, and with a smile she returned his greeting. Not a happy smile, though, one with a little sadness around the eyes. Obviously she would be important later, and the stallion pondered how best to make use of her. Something in her past, perhaps. Yes, that would do nicely. An estranged parent. No, a sibling. He shuddered ever so slightly as inspiration struck. Not just any sibling, an identical twin sibling. Her blonde mane shifted as she walked past, darker green roots appearing at the line of her scalp. Her previously natural mane color was a dye job now, a way she emphasized the difference between the two of them. Once he’d helped her reconcile things and reunited the family, it would be ever so meaningful when she washed it out. Or perhaps the other twin would dye her mane the same color; he hadn’t decided yet.
He continued towards the little coffee store where his crush worked as a barista, removing the knowledge of the change he’d just made from his own mind. He needed to be appropriately surprised when she made her tearful confession, after all. A little bell above the shop’s door jingled as he stepped inside, pausing to take a deep whiff of the delicious aroma radiating off the sack of ground beans beneath the counter. The barista, a cute little purple pegasus, had her back to him. She hadn’t always been purple. In fact she’d been just another indistinct background pony until three days ago when the stallion had decided that he’d had a crush on her for the last month, and she’d retroactively changed to fit the part.
The bell hadn’t alerted her to his presence, drowned out by the hissing of the cappuccino machine she was working at. He’d calculated the night before exactly when he needed to step into the store to catch her off-guard so he could be surprised by the way she was swaying her hips in time to a song she was humming. The display chased all the eloquent things he’d planned to say to her right out of his head. The sort of things a pony like him would think were flirty pick up lines but were actually cringe-inducingly lame. Earlier confidence shattered, all he could do was stare and blush until she turned around and caught him in the act of admiring her flanks. The stallion made sure his mind didn’t register the true significance of just how hard she was blushing in return, or of the way she swept a hoof across her forehead to tuck an errant strand of her mane back behind her ear.
Realizing that he needed to say something, the stallion stammered out an order for his usual cup of decaf coffee. The equally flustered mare, who the stallion had decided three days ago had been crushing on him for even longer, accidentally poured his mug from the wrong pot. It was the perfect setup; the stallion would stay at the counter ordering refills while he tried to work up the nerve to ask her to dinner, setting the stage for a wacky caffeine-induced confession of his feelings. The stallion figured forty, maybe forty-five minutes and three cups would just about do it. Then, after five increasingly desperate paragraphs laced with strategically placed ‘um’s and ‘er’s and a long, pointless anecdote about one time when his father took him fishing, he would finally manage to get the question out.
Nopony would be more surprised than he was when she said yes. Every good romance story needed a happy ending, after all.
And maybe some clop a few chapters down the line for good measure.
It was a perfect world.
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Wow, this is so reflective of how I as an author shape the world and characters it is scary. Except for the clop.
This felt like drinking bleach and eating ash.
I am envious of your skill: you are a very, very good writer
Self insertion writing to the extremes that only CelestAI can deliver!
4900886
Nah, I just write myself that way
4900960
....does this mean you write the whole universe? :-P
I just love the concept for these stories!
So, just as I'm re-reading a story about a computer-turning-human, and laughing at all the humans-stand-above-logic stuff in the story, a new chapter for AtMW gets uploaded. Funny coincidence~ ({For a breath I tarry}, if anyone's curious)
I've never actually forced myself to forget anything.
OR HAVE I!?
Eakin you bastard you've done it again
.
I can only hope that this guy really is in a universe inhabited only by himself and A-not-quite-I beings.
4903909
Ha. Ha. Ha.
I'm reminded of the Fair Folk from the RPG Exalted. Their lives are narratives, play acting used to give them some semblance of significance over their reality as ravenous, unfeeling, soul-eating eldritch abominations inimical to the fabric of reality itself. This constant editing of the world, its inhabitants, and even the storyteller's own diegetic mindset to tell a better story is just the sort of thing they'd do.
Of course, the story's still great on its own merits. It's just that one of my character foibles is a tendency to interrelate different works of fiction.
Alternate title: Abed Nadir Emigrates to Equestria.
As someone who regulalry, David Boring-like, walks around thinking these kinds of thoughts about my own life (other favorites include pretending I'm explaining everything I do and see to an alien or caveman), I definitely appreciated this one.
I wonder what other genres this guy gets up to, or is that just for visiting other shards?
Me in second grade.
4904324
Yeah, I've thought about that portrayal of the Fair Folk in the context of the Optimalverse too. So long as the ponies in FiO scenarios are either non-intelligent/conscious/other-term, or are designed to like whatever horrible situation they're in, it's tough to say there's anything evil happening. The difference is that the Fair Folk are usually destructive and have absolutely no problem with seducing humans, only to drain their souls and sell the "empties" back to the Guild as slaves. For an even weirder crossover, see the game "Mystic Empyrean", which says that the deadly, ragged border of reality might secretly be another universe with different physics, and which has PCs similar to the Fair Folk.
Do you suppose most of this pony's background ponies are unintelligent NPCs, or is there some disturbing thing going on where they're intelligent but have a personality that wants to be rewritten?
Eakin, nice chapter! Think we'll see more of "FiO: the Movie" soon?
Lonely world.
Oh dear, this might be my favorite one.
4903909
Could be they all really enjoy playing out roles and changeable natures! A reality of perfect actors.
He writes the narrative and rewrites the world and his memories in the process. When he writes the world, he must become aware of rewriting the world and his previous revisions.
"help! i'm trapped in a bad clopfic!"
Twilight actually said that in a chapter of that crazy "MLP time loops" collab!
This chapter was surprisingly creative