• Member Since 11th Oct, 2011
  • offline last seen 2 hours ago

Pascoite


I'm older than your average brony, but then I've always enjoyed cartoons. I'm an experienced reviewer, EqD pre-reader, and occasional author.

E

Odd how some things stick in one's memory—certain places, personalities, sounds, even smells. Touching on one of these elements can cause a lifetime of experiences to come flooding back.

And just as quickly, they're gone.

First-place winner in The Write-Off Association's contest "Lonely Happiness."

Reading by The Living Library Player Society.
Another reading by DRWolf.

Featured on Equestria Daily!

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 66 )

Oh, my. This is nice....in a sucker punch to the solar plexus sort of way.

Is there any particular reason this story hasn't been published yet?

EDIT: Never mind, it is now. New question: you sent it in to EqD before you even published it?

Wow.. I got to the end and found my tears coming. That was so sad. :( I know what it's like, my grandmother and my mother both went through this.

That story was so sad, but towards the end when I found out that it was Sweetie Belle, not Apple Bloom, talking to Rarity... I almost lost it.

Featured on Equestria Daily!

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How is this keep happening! Good story btw as usual:twilightsmile:

Such feels. <3 Wonderful job.

Amazing, and far too realistic for me to not be hit by this. I think now I'll have to do something else for a while to help get this out of my head. Beautifully done.

Very beautifully done.

A really impressive story. The twist hurt at the end.

I don't have any experience being around people with this disease, but I can tell you have and it's really poured all over this story. Great work.

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A story does not have to be published or visible on fimfic to be moderated and approved by Equestria Daily. Publishing it only upon EqD approval (and knowing roughly when the story will be featured on there—pre-reader's privilege) is sort of a surefire way to get a story featured on Fimfic.
I personally feel like it's cheating the system, but it's the optimal way to gain the most exposure.

4339462 Sorry, I probably should have articulated myself better. I was more of a question why than how, but you answered that question too. :twilightsheepish:

Oh this was....this was....wow.

I have trouble finding the words. Beautiful, heartbreaking, and devastating.

This hits far too close to home. You, of course, write like someone who's watched as a loved one mentally slipped away. I'm going through it with my grandfather at the moment. As terrible as it sounds, I think it'll be something of a mercy when he finally passes on. It's hard to watch him suffer and decline because of his Parkinson's disease. And losing my mental faculties is one of my greatest fears when old age hits. More than anything, I think that'd be the worst.....let alone it happening to someone like poor Rarity here, who's still relatively young. She would be what, early 40's? And poor Sweetie Belle....well. I had suspected that it might actually have been Sweetie Belle, since I didn't think Apple Bloom would visit Rarity. It's funny what sticks in one's head when they're otherwise fallen victim to the clutches of dementia.

Damn Pascoite....you are the grand master of an emotional kick in the gut.

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4337736
I can't tell when the story's going up. Only people with posting privileges can do that. I leave it unpublished in case it gets rejected and needs revision, since I don't want it visible until it's good enough. Then I publish it once I see it appear on the blog. Sometimes I notice quickly, and sometimes it takes me hours to notice. It's not an unusual thing to do. We get plenty of story submissions that are unpublished or even password protected.

Fantastic work. One of the most well-written short stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

You know I was curious about how she was able to stir her tea and talk so casually, I just assumed it was magnetic hooves like in the show. That was a beautiful bit of subtly.

This story. Man this story was a thing of beauty. Fave and thumb! :twilightsmile:

I was a bit suspicious because it seemed odd that Apple Bloom of all ponies would visit Rarity, and how she didn't seem to have any accent.
Then the ending came. :raritycry:

I think the word I'm looking for is sublime.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

It was sad enough as it was, but that reveal at the end...that sucked all the air out of me. Hit really close to home.

Dang, right in the heart.

OH MY GOSH..! :fluttercry: How can you do this to me, man? I can't take the feels..! :raritycry:

This is sad. ¿What happened to her brain at such a young age? ¿How did the staff stop the deterioration? It is too bad that one cannot backup memories. In the end, our brains stop working and the structures encoding our memories deteriorate. This reminds me about something from high school:

Ms. Tower had an human brain in jar on her desk. Back then, I wondered whether the donator might have accidentally cheated death. I figgured that in a few decades, we might have the technology to scan the brain and extract the memories. I imagined the donator regaining consciousness, a century after dying, in a computer. What we now know makes that unlikely:

The process of dying and the harsh chemicals used for preservation severely damaged the memory-holding structures. It probably is not possible to extract memories from that brain.

That was a trip down memory-lane. This story makes me think, remember, and feel. It is well done.

I read this story last night...and...my God....
I have an aunt who has the exact same thing Rarity's going through (she's in England so it doesn't affect me as much but it still makes me sad. She's not doing too well.) :fluttercry:

...anyways...This is a masterpiece, well done! :heart:

I read this a few days ago, and it's taken this long for me to mull it over and craft a response. There's no denying that it's well written, and there's no denying the impact of the story. I have to admit I saw the twist coming, but that didn't lessen the experience at all. It hurt so much to see the characters in this situation, which of course was the point. Well done.

Oh, wow... you got me good with this one. At first I thought the visitor was Rarity, but then it started to make sense, kind of... then it made more sense, then more sense and then the tears came. Crap, well written story :unsuresweetie:

Having had a grandmother who was (both fortunately and unfortunately) quite a bit aged when this condition afflicted her, this really got to me. You did a good job describing the pain one might feel during a time like this, but not exploiting that. It's a very bitter-sweet story and clearly comes from the heart.

I noticed one error. It's either an error or a stylistic choice:

Rarity nearly bursts out laughing, but she settles for dabbing a napkin at the trickle of tea on her chin. And folding her ears back, at the indignity of being caught in such an unladylike moment, I’d guess, but when she checks, I’m conveniently looking the other way.

Perhaps that should be a comma there rather than a period. If it's a stylistic choice, then I dig :eeyup:

Good job :)

Ung...these kind of stories always hit me right in the feels...:ajsleepy:

What is the condition Rarity is in called?

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Typically, dementia.

4346067 Memories are stored via an electrochemical potentiation of various neutotrasmitter-gated ion channels. Chemical fixation destroys the potentials, erasing all information stored there. There are quite a few other things fixation does to the tissue; but simply put, once a tissue is fixed, its irrevocably biologically inert.

This is such an accurate portrayal of dementia, it's quite heart-rending.

I've seen the diseases of the mind run their courses quite a number of times.

The most recent has been my mother, though her case is different as its onset was sudden and has severely damaged cognition and gait centers while leaving long-term memory almost totally intact. Exactly what caused it is still unknown; testing has revealed nothing even suggestive of the etiology.

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Although it is probably too late to extract memories from the Brain of Miss Tower, if one had a fresh brain, one, hypothetically, could destructively scan it —— ¡one only gets 1 chance for each brain!

Although each brain only has about 10^14 synapses, scanning it at sufficiently high resolution to image the synapses and determine the wiring diagram probably would generate an greater than an exabyte-file. After figuring out the synapses and their wiring, one can reduce the file-size to a a few petabytes for simulating the brain. If we can extract the memories and store them as files and emulate cognition, we can reduce the file-size to less than a petabyte, so we can store an whole human in a petabyte-disk-image.

This is very hypothetical and we are nowhere near the ability to do so. When we die, our data probably will go to the metaphorical bitbucket, although the digits in memories seem to be multivalued, so the more generic digitbucket is more accurate, but does not role off of the tongue.

In Friendship Is Optimal, a videogamecompany creates an AI (CelestAI) to run MMO-type game called EquestriaOnLine. The CelestAI determines that the best way to immerse the humans in the game is to upload them (they awaken as ponies in the game) and convert the entire crust of the Earth into a supercomputer. This leads the complete destruction of the biosphere and renders physical humans, and every other species, physically extinct:

Friendship Is Optimal

4482790 The other big issue remains even if we can store the raw data: does the personality necessarily go along with it?

We can't be sure if a person's character is simply a sum of memories and information or something more obscure and tenuous.

We do know that small regions of damage in the prefrontal cortex radically change a person's behavior, while leaving memory intact... so does that imply that personality is segregated from memory and it's possible to retain a personality without the memories? Or is there a subtle interplay between the two involving neural physiologic mechanisms that simply cannot be replicated in an inorganic system?

Quantum computing may come closer to the nebulous state of synaptic potentiation, but even than it's not a perfect functional replication.

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We would need to emulate cognition (preferably with extensions for logic, fixed-point mathematics, and floating-point mathematics). I imagine that creatards would not want the logic-extension because then they could not be creatarded anymore. The emulated cognition, along with the memory, would recreate an approximation of the mind.

4486100 And then there's a 404 error... :trollestia:

4486272

We need copy-on-write and hashes of everything so we can catch bitflips.

Further to my comments on Chris's blog, I wanted to elucidate my experience here:

It could be a side effect of having certain expectations about your writing ability, but during the first half it felt blindingly obvious that you were actively avoiding saying anything that might imply who the character in question was. These are the kinds of things that I felt were necessary to feel engaged with the story, and not having them left me feeling extremely disconnected, sort of, 'if he can't be bothered to write about it then I can't be bothered to invest in it'. Understanding why this is the case doesn't really justify it, for me. The construction, almost be definition, compelled me to remain unattached to the main character, and, perhaps merely because I can't not analyse as I read, it made the switcheroo at the end feel belaboured and obvious when it seemed like it was supposed to be a surprise.

I'm sure, given that experience, that you can appreciate why this one missed me by quite so much.

4531008
For as long as this has been going on, you'd actually want to have her state this issue up front? I don't understand this opinion in the least. It's become the norm for her, so it doesn't even register with her until something else happens to make it a problem. The narrator doesn't try the same tactics every day, and she's already said it doesn't always work. For all she knows, the conversation might not even go that way today, and implying that this sort of determinism should be incorporated into the narration is completely opposite how a present-tense narration should operate. She could say that she planned something, but plans don't always work out, so she's going by the spur of the moment, and laying out her agenda beforehand would be hugely out of sorts with her mindset.

As to what Rarity keeps saying to the narrator, why would she react to it? She's learned to roll with it, and she's not going to deal with that until she's felt out the situation first and decided if it has a chance of working that day. Why cause her that pain if it's doomed to fail? So she just lets it slide by and remarking on it at all suggests a self-awareness that someone's listening to her thoughts, but they're hers alone. Having her say something like that to herself completely changes the tone.

It's fine if you didn't like the story. But this is one time I'm completely comfortable with not worrying about it.

Should probably get around to favoriting this story, since I couldn't do that when I read it in the write-off. A great piece here.

Would you be so kind as to let me and my friend Sweeite-Bot-Error do a reading/review of this amazing story? Please? :pinkiesmile::raritycry::fluttershysad::pinkiesmile:

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I appreciate your asking, but you're free to read and review whatever you like around here. Have at it.

4566831 Awesomesauce!! :D I will tell my friend ASAP! :rainbowkiss:

4533825 Dammit, I knew I'd forgotten something.

Okay, if I gave you the impression that I thought you should have revealed the main character at the beginning, then I apologise. That wasn't what I meant at all.

Rather, it is common practice that a story in limited third person will – if not outright say – at least hint at who the focus character is through the little things: turn of phrase, opinions, physical characteristics – pretty much show vs tell at work. For this story, there was a noteable lack of that, obscuring the main character and causing me to wonder who it was. Essentially, this was my 'hook'.

The problem with that comes when the distraction crops up. It made no sense to assume it was correct, otherwise obfuscating the focus character would have been pointless, and therefore what turned out to be the 'twist' was, in fact, by far the most obvious option available, reducing much of what transpires afterwards to simply 'going through the motions'.

If, on the other hand, the introduction had used some points of reference applicable to both characters I might not have had reason to assume that the diversion was exactly that, at which point I can really see the story working. Yet, I can't really see why anyone would assume the diversion is true – short of being a zombie – and that's really what my issue is. It's like you didn't even give me a chance to enjoy it as intended.

But like I said before, maybe that's literally just me.

I have Alzheimare's, but at least I don't have Alzheimare's.

As someone whose 78 year old grandfather's mind is slowly starting to go (not quite to this level; he's still 95% there, he just forgets words every now and again, like he'll call me his nephew, but it's slowly getting worse) this really hit close to home. Very well done.

This was really hard to read. I remember my grandmother slowly disappearing like this. Even I lose words, events, directions. and I'm only 30. Beautiful piece. 10/10 would cry again.

Oh my gosh, S...Sweetie Belle? :fluttercry:
...
I love and hate that rug-pull maneuver. Just... awh!
I thank Dr. Wolf for leading me here and I thank you for writing this.

Jeezus Christ.

You're a saint, with chops.

4809577 I wish I cried. Does that mean I'm heartless, or I'm just made of sterner stuff? :applejackunsure:

4946630
Just means you're a different person with different experiences who experiences their emotions in a different way. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. :twilightsmile:

Another touching story from Pascoite. Issue is handled well, great work. Greenthumbed.

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