Celestia pays Twilight and her friends a visit.
It has been a very long time since she saw them last.
Chapters (1)
Obselescence
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if this is another "immortality as a curse" thing I'm downvoting this to oblivion
Ew gay
3833862 Oh, waaahhhh.
Read Tuck Everlasting for a less angsty and frivolous "Never Dying Sucks" story.
3833872 Much yeahs. Lots fuckity~
You, me?
Well I personally liked this one a lot.
I disagree with your opinions, although I'll note I was pleasantly surprised. Not enough to not down vote, but still.
You wrote a nice fic
Interesting concept, the twist was fun, but Celestia's solution was...out of sorts. There were so many other ways she could have broken the cycle without resorting to executing Twilight, so...I like the story, but I can't upvote it.
3833896
Thanks for reading at least.
Interesting read but that ending came out of nowhere. Celestia's saying that she can't handle Twilight on her own a few times and then she kills her in one hit?
And another thing that bothered me is the way how... A lightning spear through the chest while she was distracted? Sorry but you didn't save anyone Celestia...
But other than that, it's a well written story. That has to be said too. Can't be too negative, can we
3833876
I'm actually opposed to the genre in all its forms, regardless of their quality.
One thing that nobody I've met understands, is that aging and death aren't natural, hard coded laws of the universe.
Lobsters don't age; neither do some jellyfish, and neither do turtles. [1]
Aging is a subproduct of the fact that natural selection operates on how many offspring you leave in your wake...not how happy, successful or virtuous you are.
If a gene which makes you die by the time you're 30, but which makes you breed like a rabbit...then, hell yes it's gonna be passed on.
And if you're still not convinced; if we accept the logic of - once people reach their time...well then yes, we have to let them die - then why in THE FUCKING HELL ARE WE CURING CANCER PATIENTS?!?
Apologies. This is a topic which leaves me...incensed.
Anyways: please, please, to anyone reading this: debate me: tell me why you're not convinced.
I want to argue and to have a discussion, but not in a negative way; in a way that, hopefully, will leave us both with new information, because I just don't frigging understand this kind of thinking.
[1] Reference: http://www.cracked.com/article_20055_6-unassuming-animals-that-are-secretly-immortal.html
I like this. I like this a lot.
I'll be re-reading this, so that it impacts me better. I like to think of Twilight as partly insane with her immortality, and you've made it so heart-breakingly close to realization. I shudder to think how many cycles now, how many years of life she's forced these ponies to endure...and if their minds remain the same...
Just...Wow.
And she was even beginning to change their behaviors toward Celestia! How low she has fallen..
I shudder to imagine the possibility of the age spells reversing along with Twilight's passing. Her friends would age to dust. A beautifully tragic end.
A good take on how alicorn-hood has driven Twilight insane. Awesome job.
The ending is terrible. I want Twilight to continue raising the babies and end it with that sort of creepiness. That bittersweet ending didn't work out too well. I would've favorited, if not for that ending. She could always use her awesome magic to make a new Fluttershy and raise her. Twilight should continue raising the little main five. I did like the rest of the story, though.
3833922
The idea there was more or less that Celestia isn't really a match for Twilight on even grounds anymore. A surprise attack, on the other hand, is a bit harder to stop. You might not be able to fight an invincible knight in battle, but maybe if you ambush him while he's asleep. It's all she could hope for, I guess, without any other way to take Twilight down.
Interesting take on a tried-and-true premise. Excellent, as always.
Ha! That was a good one. Not super sad but very good nonetheless
3833950 That's true. I just didn't like it. Seemed a bit too underhanded for Celestia. And it makes me wonder if she was planning to kill Twilight or not
3833925 Honestly, I find the idea of immortality a daunting one, indeed. I mean, seriously. If I had to choose between watching my wife and kids all grow old and die, and dying before my kids reached the age of ten, I'd more than likely pick the latter. Sure, I could read every book ever in all of existence with an infinite amount of life, but I think that I'd just become so callous to others as a result. Especially since I wouldn't want to have wife after wife and kid after kid that grows old and dies while I stay in my mid twenties or thirties. That'd suck. As for why we're curing cancer patients, it's human nature to want to be the best, and to be the top of the food chain. Cancer is something that's trying to knock us down a peg, and as a race, we don't like that. It's how we're wired, and how war comes so naturally to us.
3833963
Fair enough. To a certain extent the story is sort of about Celestia's guilt for her part in what Twilight's become, and how her inaction has enabled Twilight to keep her friends timelocked. A lot of the moral is learning to let go, and to some extent that asks Celestia to do what she thinks best for Twilight's friends, even if she's guilty for what's happened to them in her own right.
It's... ambiguously moral, honestly, but it's the sort of question I wanted to ask with this story. I'd like to think I succeeded in posing it, but I guess that's up to the readers to decide.
Nicely done
3833980 That does make sense. And I do love a story that makes me think about morality
I like this for what it is: a disturbing foray into immortality and the trappings it may have. I can't fave it, though, because it's just too damn creepy.
Personally, I thought that until the last scene it was more about the importance of change than letting go proper. In fact, in the state they are in now, Twilight's friends aren't much better than zombies, condemned to simply repeat the actions of their past lives. Twilight's crime, if there is one, isn't making her friends live forever, but make them relive forever. They aren't free to become ponies in their own will, only in Twilight's - the mention of "tries" makes me imagine that a Rarity that wouldn't care for sewing, or even a more athleticism oriented Applejack would never be allowed in Twilight's vision for her friends - makes you wonder how she would react to the change in the group dynamics due to Fluttershy not being there.
Also, while I believe the ending was unwarranted in the way it happened, since it could have been better set-up, it made sense that things would go that way.
3834025
One thing I did try for here was to keep the set-up for the ending subtle, to make it surprising at first, but less so in retrospect. I'd suggest taking another look at things now that you know how it ends, with a closer reading on Celestia's dialogue, and see if that changes your perspective on things.
You know, killing Twilight seems a bit over the top. This is the land of magical ponies, there should have been another solution.
But a great story nevertheless.
3833966
...wouldn't it be a better option to try and make them immortal too?
Plus...I'm going to sound horribly callous, but...grief is something that people overcome.
I don't know if you've already had a death in the family, if your parents are still living or not, but...life goes on. Your children will probably have grandchildren you'll want to look after, you will make new friends, etc.
Which actually brings me to my next point: in option a (you live forever) you fell the pain and grief of your family passing. In option b, (you die in ten years) your wife and your children feel the pain and grief of YOU dying.
Which is the best option? Because...it seems a bit selfish to me wanting to die so that I don't have to deal with people around me dying.
I must say that this is another great story from your hands. you are very talented.
thats all i wanted to say.
3833925 \
Cancer patients don't want to die, they want to keep living longer, they want to live a happy normal life and die old, they don't want to die because of cancer. I will not have a debate with you, but I wanted to say why we are trying to cure them.
Just got done reading TER and jump straight to this.
My mind is in too much shock.
Just... This was twisted, dude...
...I'm off to curl into a ball in a corner. See you all in they asylum.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3834090
Haha thanks
3834103
See you there.
3834069
Besides all the problems like your brain simply not being able to handle immortality (your memories would be compressed until years seem like minutes), being old sucks not just because of dying.
I don't want to have a debate with you, but I don't think you actually know what you're talking about, or are very old yourself.
I've worked with a lot of seniors, and they all say the worst part is when everyone you know is dead. It's maddening, to belong to a different time period and have no one else to share it with. Yes, we get over grief, but eventually, when there's no one left that can understand and care for you like only someone your age can, it becomes hard to keep going. Believe it or not, that's why the rate of senior citizen suicides is fairly high if they don't have people to be around.
3834109
You're a strange one, Obsy. To glimpse the vast, colorful expanse of creativity your brain heralds is equivalent to gazing upon the Holy Grail covered in graffiti spelling, "I got swag."
3834069
It's not that you die to avoid people around you dying. You die because your body is old and frail and can't support you anymore. The grief might hurt for a time, but I would rather have die than be immortal, because when you're immortal, you don't just experience the loss of your family. You experience the loss of your friends, of the new friends and family you make after that, cycling constantly, a new period of grief and loss every 75 years or so. You see civilizations fall, the very civilizations you happily considered yourself part of. Perhaps you manage to witness an extinction level event or something. The entirety of Humanity gone before your eyes, a single person left grieving for an entire species. If you're immortal, you won't die out with them. I'll leave you to consider that thought.
3833925
Why are we curing cancer patients? Wow, you are a dick.
You wanna know why we're curing cancer patients? Because, while we don't want immortality, we wouldn't mind increasing our lifespans. Eradicating diseases like cancer is one means of doing this. Not only that, but cancer doesn't just hit old people who are going to die in a few years. It hits children, who have barely seen the world, young adults, mothers still raising children who can't do basic arithmetic. If we abandon trying to help those people... well then what's the point of living in the first place?
However, there's something called ethics. If someone doesn't want to have their lifespan extended, then you should honor their wishes. It appears in this story that Twilight was doing this to her friends against their will. That's absolutely unethical.
3834110
You are right, I'm not old, and I do acknowledge that yes, the brain does eventually get full (although a lifespan of two hundred years seems still like something much better to strive for than simply eighty years).
And I actually am in favour-or rather, I acknowledge that it's a right-of choosing when to die on one's own.
And yes, Twilight in this fic is a very morally reprehensible person.
But still!
I just don't understand why everybody seems so opposed to immortality when it's literally one of the main goals of the human race[1]!
[1] this is what lifespan extension-which has progressed incredibly far in the last two centuries, let's not forget- essentially is: a way to try and make everybody not die.
3834091
Dude, a century ago cancer WAS dying of old age.
3834069 Yeah, choosing option b is fairly selfish, not only would my wife have to raise x amount of preteens on her own, but they would all probably feel betrayed or angry with me for dying so early in their lifespans. But the alternative is to stand and watch as not only my wife, kids, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on and so forth all die, but everyone and everything else as well.
3834150 said it pretty damn well.
3834173
well now it isn't.
3834173
Actually no it wasn't. That being beside the point, honestly, there's something called "modern medicine". You may have heard of it? It has drastically improved our lifespans. Also see my above statement about how cancer hits ALL people, of all ages and walks of life. It's non-discriminate. Are you saying we shouldn't try to cure the three year old girl who has leukemia? The three year old girl who could possibly live a happy and full life, if we use medical science to help her? That's exactly what you're implying.
We don't want to live forever, but we do want to extend our healthy lives as long as possible.
I personally would not mind living until I'm 120-150. However, I don't want to live for thousands of years. Nope. No thanks. I'll pass.
3834168
For one, we've really only been trying to make people be able to die peacefully of old age, not live forever. That has been the goal of very few people. And for another, as I said, there are some impossibilities of being immortal, such as total memory. Not even to mention that the probability of getting killed in an accident goes close to 100% the longer you live.
Wow. Wow wow wow.
Your writing continues to impress me, Obs. The amount of emotion you pour into your words is unreal. This is one of the best stories I've read on Fimfiction.
Keep up the incredible work.
Guys, much as I like philosophical debates as to the inherent nature of immortality, I'm kind of hoping we can move that away from the comments section of this story. It's cool to discuss immortality within the context of the story, but if the argument's primarily about cancer patients and society at large, I think we've kind of stepped beyond the purview of a Fimfiction comment section.
Thanks.
3834065 She should have turned her to stone and set her up in the garden next to Discord, who probably went rogue again after Fluttershy died.
This earned its tags fairly.
On the core of the story:
It's not about immortality being a bad thing; it's about stasis, and how that is a bad thing. If Twilight had been content to give her friends a new leave of life with those age spells, letting them grow and change and explore new things, she would not have had to sequester them and herself in a faraway castle hidden by layers of defensive spells, nor Celestia would have had to stop her in such a final way. At least she managed to save one friend from herself: Twilight Sparkle.
3834054
I felt that there was plenty of set-up for her being ready to attack/fight Twilight. She paid a lot of attention to the smaller details of her magic, on how to get past her defenses, get close to her, etc. What I felt was lacking was in Celestia being in the mindset to do what she did. It felt like she was thinking more in the lines of "What should I do to make things right", than a "What should I do, I created a monster!". In a way, it felt strange that she would forget about Twilight's fate, instead deciding that nothing would become better while she lived. I think that would include much more resentment towards Twilight's actions than what she was showing here, where it seemed she was focused on her regret.
3833925 I kinda agree with you, although I don't see what's wrong with this genre. Sure, it's completely overdone, but that doesn't mean the story can't be nice (I know, you allready said this was a nice fic). And if the information in the story clashes with what you know, ignore the stuff you know! It makes reading fiction a lot more pleasant. But... I still kinda agree with you. Doesn't stop me from faving it and upvoting it.
Very good.
3834091 3834150 There's a principle for civilized discourse that says you take a few seconds before responding to consider the possibility that the person you're responding to isn't a complete moron, and what he might have meant in that case.
He knows why we cure cancer patients. His point is that if you don't want immortality, you shouldn't want to cure cancer patients. Aging is just the accumulation of many diseases--atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, arthritis, alopecia, neural plaques, demyelination, mitochondrial inefficiency, insulin resistance, sarcopenia, and cancer, just for starters. To say that you are in favor of curing each of those diseases by themselves, but don't want to cure the collection of all of them, is literally meaningless. It means you don't even know what you want.
3834234 3834223 3834219 3834091 3833925
I suggest you start a thread in the LessWrong group if you want to keep talking about it.