(A PoE story.) Additional Tags: (Slice Of Life)
All Twilight wanted was to give Spike a special gift for his birthday. Yes, it was a book, but it was a very special book. An Enchanted Book like that Power Ponies comic they had recently experienced.
Things went wrong when Spike startled Twilight as she was working the spell for his (secret) gift. Needless to say, startling Twilight while she's in the middle of a spell can be a bad idea - as certain frogs can tell you.
Twilight has every reason to believe that she is now trapped in a closed reality bubble fabricated out of her own magic, with no way out. She's lost in some made-up universe reflecting some random story line.
Mike, of course, has a different opinion about the matter.
WARNING: Both Twilight and Mike love talking technical and explaining things to each other.
Twilight's World now has an audio reading by No One and Nobody. Listen HERE.
This most excellent cover art was provided by Void Heart
FIRS... Dang it, second.
Good I like this more please.
4994152
Yes, I have several more chapters ready to go.
On the advice of a friend, I'm just waiting for some feedback in case I need to make adjustments.
She might have enjoyed stepping through the icy shell if she weren't busy trying to stay alive. That and stomping in a thin layer of fresh powder are guilty pleasures of mine.
4994152 4993772
I type my stuff up in G-docs, and I just insert the BBCode as I write.
You had fifty-three semicolons in this chapter, and most of them were used incorrectly. Putting quotation marks around internal dialogue that's also italicized is unnecessary. Several words were capitalized for no apparent reason, but thanks for spelling it "OK" instead of "ok." Movies and TV-show titles are italicized; individual scenes or episodes would have quotation marks instead.
Double quotes should never be used for emphasis—use italics for that. Scare quotes are quotation marks used to denote words that aren't said with their normal intent, like sarcasm, stuff accompanied by air quotes, or when the word itself is referred to; they're still double quotes though. Single quotes should only be used when double quotes would appear in the middle of dialogue. Keep in mind this doesn't mean you shouldn't use the appropriate punctuation for quoted material.
With how long it would have taken to remove the ice, Mike probably killed Twilight with the cold water. Warm water can cause vasodilation, but it is definitely the lesser of two evils. Hypothermia that bad would not have been treated so quickly either. Depending on how similar your ponies are to actual ones, he should have cleaned the packed snow out of her hooves and Twilight's coat might have been a bit more weather-resistant.
Instead of using a technique typically done in the field, use any of the many warming items present in every house that deals with actual winters. I know Twilight looks cuddly, but use your head, Mike.
Even if ponies don't look exactly like poison dart frogs, snuggling with a brightly colored critter you haven't seen before is a good way to get yourself poisoned.
4998853
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
Sigh. Punctuation. I swear I must have had my appendicitis right when that subject was being taught in school. I have NO recollection of half of that stuff.
I have absorbed some of the requisite knowledge through 40 years of avid reading. But apparently not enough.
Give me some time to absorb your comments, and to try to do some research on the terminology you are using. ('Scare quotes?', 'Air quotes?', etc.).
I actually did consider this. Actually, you can take it as a given that Mike does not quite know what he is doing and he did indeed put Twilight's life at risk. She survived because of her Alicorn constitution. Not knowing how quickly real hypothermia victims recover, I had to make something up. Again, chalking up any discrepancies to her Alicorn nature.
You did raise one subject I would like to quibble about.
Exactly what common warming items should Mike have in his home?
He is not going to throw a toaster under a blanket with her. Nor will he stuff Twilight into his kitchen oven
A handheld hair styling gun is not suitable. The air stream can get hot enough to burn you, and the spot heating effect is much too small to cover an entire body. Using it for several minutes to try and warm the air under a blanket would also trip its thermal overload breaker.
I did consider electric blankets but discounted them in my story, since I believe most people do not have them.
A very good point. Wish I had thought of that.
All I can say is that I was struggling with some writers block. But when I shoved Twilight under the covers with Mike, the words started to flow.
One more reply for Lab.
I am not sure yet. But I think you need a Google account to use G-docs.
My Answer: No way. No. Never.
I don't Face. I don't Twit. And I won't 'Goog'.
Let's just say that I am just shy about giving away all my personal information.
After researching the matter, I am looking into programs or scripts I can run on my computer which can convert an HTML file into BBcode, which is apparently the only document format that FIMFiction will accept.
5002489 Well, the last part was more of a joke since poisonous mammals are very rare.
I had a lot of trouble with grammar back in high school as well. It wasn't until I started doing research on my own that I learned more than the basics. Air quotes are the ones you do with your fingers, just like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. Not sure if you've seen them, but it's an excellent example.
As for stuff Mike could have had in his home a hair dryer and an electric blanket would have been bad ideas anyway. I was thinking more along the lines of a gel pack heated in the microwave and then wrapped in a few towels. Water bottles are less common than electric blankets in my experience, but they're still a possibility. Extra blankets would have made the most sense, especially if they were fleece or wool.
If she had been conscious and I'd been sure the sugar wouldn't have made her chemical composition explode, I would have had her drink something very sugary. All those calories would have been great for fueling the fire.
Yeah, that happened to me
4998853
Well. Time for another stupid newbie question.
If you would be so kind.
I worked up some corrections for several of those punctuation issues you mentiond.
1. Don't put internal dialog inside quotes.
2. Improper use of semicolons.
However - I find that I am unable to edit a chapter.
The 'edit' button is there. And I was able to put in an hour of editing activity on the text.
But - when I was all done - I found that there was NO SAVE/SUBMIT BUTTON.
All my edits were lost.
The FAQ does not cover the subject of 'editing a chapter'.
I suppose one could delete the chapter and insert a corrected one. But the FAQ has a warning that such activity is not acceptable. The warning was given under the subject of 'bump my story to the frontpage'
5004559 Yeah, because it'll be just like it attract attention from people thinking a new chapter came out, and there are plenty of people who would abuse it.
This is a screenshot of what I see when I edit something. The save button is the little floppy disc. It's the one between the green arrow for importing from G-docs and the capital B for boldface.
5005060
(Standard disclaimer that I'm sure it was not there last night. Yada, Yada, Yada).
Thanks.
The church seems thrown in there. Perhaps you could describe it in more detail, or more interaction with the people there. I mean, I'm sure everyone who goes to church without talking to anyone then walks out like some shell shocked war veteran won't get approached or anything. But for dramatic purposes it might be O.K.
It doesn't seem Twilight likely to conclude that she's learning something if she's in her own solipsistic dream bubble, but I don't know how that creature's mind works.
Mike's preparedness seems a little contrived. Do most residents of Toronto really have a holding tank for emergency water? And how can I get one of those?
I suppose as long as you're fulfilling the wish of catering to a purple pony princess, you might as well fulfill the wish of being a rugged survivalist who is practically prepared for any disaster.
First off. Mike's home is not in the city. He lives in an isolated farmhouse out in the country.
Nowhere do I describe a holding tank for emergency water. Out in the country, homes typically use a jet pump to bring water into their home's plumbing system. Such a pump has a 2 - 5 gallon tank, half filled with air, half with water, to keep the water pressurized.
During a power failure, all you have are the few gallons of water the residual pressure in the reservoir can squeeze out. With such a system you are lucky to refill your toilet tank after a single flush - so two flushes max?
This is very different from any city (like Toronto), where homes are connected directly to the city's water mains. City water mains never lose pressure during power outages and you never worry about running out of water.
I think that your dialogue is a little wooden. Mike sounds far more formal than the average dude. I'm not sure whether that's a deliberate thing because he's afraid of offending Twilight or not, but it just seems a bit funny when I read it.
Church??
Geeze,what a faggot.
5053861
I don't know about them, but I have a 550 gallon water tank in case my power goes out.
5054087
Yeah. Your probably right. It does sound stilted
I'll try to be more critical of my future dialog.
P.S. Mike does not swear. So I can't use that technique to 'remove the wood'.
okay, I really really like your story. i was going to poke at how non colloquial the dialogue was until we learned that mike definitely talks like that casually (which I do too to and extent, especially over comments like this)
anyway, I am completely content with going along for the ride as Twilight and Mike try to figure each other out. I keep imagining Twilight insisting that the whole world is inside an enchanted book as Mike calmly asserts that it's real by showing her that the world is far too complicated to exist within any form of physical information storage the size of a book. Probably using the internet to help.
yeah, I need more.
5072408
Alright! thats the kind of feedback I need. Gets me all enthused about writing another chapter.
PS: You poked a hole in my story bubble. Some of the plot is leaking out. But only just a little.
5076223 i am happy to know that some of the awesomeness that I imagined will come to pass.
Either this is a mistake or you made a mistake by not having Twilight respond with something like "But you just said..." She doesn't strike me as one to miss something like that, even in that state of mind.
5085793
Good catch. I do wish to faithfully express Twilight's character and behaviour. As much as I am able to figure it out.
I got caught up in the emotions of the scene I was writing and things like staying in character started slipping.
This chapter was difficult to write. I had to rewrite the entire scene of the meat confrontation. Thousands of words, ripped out and thrown away. After reviewing what I had first written I was horrified to see I had made Twilight into a sniveling coward.
So thank you - I take your comment seriously.
In the comics, Fluttershy thought predation was beautiful.
The rest of the cast thought she was nuts, though.
Last time we heard, she knew a grand total of... 26 or so? and that was after a lifetime of tutelage.
5085968
"spells"
5085968
My own headcannon. I was attempting to extrapolate.
I would disagree with your comment that Twilight was only at 26 spells "after a lifetime". At the time of that episode, yes. But now? A year or two and and ascension later?
Also - her age, late teens or 20 or so when she first came to Ponyville - is not really much of a lifetime.
Celestia obviously had plans for Twilight and probably had her heavily diverted into 'princessly' studies (such as history and science and economics) much of the time. Explaining Twilight's appetite for anything written.
Also - I could argue believe that Celestia would have had Twilight on a regime of Magical Strength Training in order to uncover the full potential of her abilities. Also her lessons probably also focussed on getting the basics working 'smooth as silk'.
My argument (and this is only my own headcannon) is that when Twilight came to Ponyville, her magical bag of tricks started growing rapidly. Quite a few episodes had passed since the one where we heard that number.
5086788
Yet it was heavily implied that 26 was a lot for a unicorn, so I would imagine that her repertoire would be bottlenecked, or at least until she became an alicorn.
5085793
Now corrected. Thanks for your input.
5085904
Sorry, have never seen the comics. Anybody know where I could get my hands on them?
An open question to my (few, but worthy) readers.
Does anybody know where the idea that some ponies (Pegasi) eat fish got started?
It certainly is not found anywhere in the MLP:FiM episodes. Except for a scene or two where Rarity's dad is obviously fishing. But that does not mean he eats the fish. Maybe he sells them to Flutteryshy to feed her animals.
Did some writer just put out some story, and then it went 'viral' as it were?
5086835
True, but Twilight is a most exceptional unicorn. It is implied that she is greater than Starswirl the Bearded.
Starswirl the Bearded (also a unicorn) was reputed to have created scores if not hundreds of spells.
another chapter? hells yes!
Next time, in Twilight's world: Let's take you to town where you'll be amazed by all the things before something goes wrong!
Still can't wait for le internet though.
5086319
Not sure what you are saying.
'spell' - noun. A magical action or effect.
Plural 'spells'.'
5087313
She doesn't know spells, she knows magic. In Boast Busters, it's specifically quantified as 25 different types of magic, not 25 different spells. Quoted from the transcript on the wiki:
She no doubt knows lots of actual spells—26 might even be the explicit number in canon—such as the time travel spell, the Want-It-Need-It enchantment, or the cloud-walking and gossamer wings she gave Rarity. However, it's an extremely common belief in the fandom and all but explicitly stated in canon that any unicorn can cast any spell, such as the time-travel or cloud-walking, but only have the I-do-what-I-want rules for things circling their talent. Trixie has amazing ability in illusory and show magic, Rarity has her unique affinity to gems, but Twilight's talent is in magic itself.
If I remember correctly, she turns a rock and a stick into a hat and cane, she give Spike (and later, Snips and Snails) a mustache, while attempting to turn an apple into an orange she changes different animals into orange-animal hybrids, and so on. She also causes a gust of wind to play a lullaby with cattails, shows a strong enough levitation to tear off a water tower and pour it out, a highly accurate and fast levitation to milk cows and fill the water tower, and more. I doubt all of that was a single spell.
She could very easily take evocation—the school of, say, conjuring a ball of fire and shooting it at someone—and make hundreds of specific spells out of it: fireballs, ice, streams of fire or heat or water or cold, bolts of lightning, and so on, and further, she could alter the spells—lesser, greater, masterful, hastened greater, and so on versions of "Fireball", that could also be specific spells.
In the show, Spike calls the mustache thing "growing magic" when it would really be more akin to conjuration, or at least something between that and transmutation, whereas changing the rock and stick would be only transmutation. Her shields and dispelling the changeling disguise later on would be abjuration, and so on.
Here's what I'm saying: Calling Twilight's talent "spells" is insulting. She doesn't cast spells, she uses magic.
5090237
Thank you for your detailed reply. You know... I knew that. But then I forgot about it.
I appreciate your reminder.
In response I have made a few small modifications to chapter 5. Mostly with this paragraph.
But I did clean up few (2 or 3) instances of the use of the word spell. But not all of them.
I chose 27 as the number of magics - because as an alicorn Twilight is surely now able to do 'aging magic' which she was unable to do in 'Magic Duel'. And she obviously invented a new magic (Don't know what exactly) in 'Magical Mystery Cure'.
As to the distinction between spells and magic, if you think carefully about it you will realize that the show's writers are getting pretty lax about it themselves.
In 'Magical Mystery Cure', Twilight receives a package from Celestia
Twilight corrects the spell, ascends, and later at the coronation Celestia announces
Again thank you for your input. I will endeavor to keep this in mind as I struggle to write future chapters.
5091329
Actually, in that specific scenario, the "new magic" she "created" was that of affecting destiny, and the spell would be the first example of it. What it actually does is beyond me, however. She goofed, she fixed her mistake, writes a
horrible, senselessrhyme and then she's suddenly an Alicorn.I mean, I get that she's got to advance in some way or another, and Princess Alicorn is an inevitability, but it just seems... extremely underwhelming for the buildup.
In fact, I think it's one of my least favorite episodes... If anything, the worst part about it is thinking about the could-have-beens.
When will Twilight learn that our world is not fictional?
When she does, I bet a million thoughts are going to run though her head
Footnotes are not recommended in prose, as the writing should make sense without it. In "Rarity Takes Manehattan," Suri orders Coco to get her some coffee. I understand "Plevlov" is probably a combination of "Plevan" and "Pavlov," but it still sounds a bit weird. Diacritical marks are very rare in English, and "morph" as a suffix has nothing to do with change and just means "shape" or "form." If you want to play with Greek roots, go with "metaesthetic."
"Starship" is one word.
"Three-Dee" is unacceptable and a weird choice when you'd just used numerals to describe age, which shouldn't have been done either. As a rule of thumb, spell out numbers if they're three words or less. Don't forget your hyphens if they're adjectives. Twenty-two years, not twenty two years. "3D" is an initialism, which are abbreviations where each letter is pronounced individually, like CIA or FBI, as compared to acronyms like SCUBA, LASER, or AIDS.
Hyphens should not be used for interruptions. Use an em dash(Alt+0151) or an en dash(Alt+0150) if the em dash is too wide for your tastes. The en dash would be technically incorrect, as it's supposed to be used to connect two points in time(1950s–1970s) but people are really lenient on that one. Also, when a sentence ends in a dash, the normal punctuation is not included.
Do not use periods with dialogue tags. Use a comma.
Sighed is an action tag, and a period would be used instead of a comma.
5118049
Again I thank you for your patience.
Thanks for that reference to coffee. I really appreciate it. Though I think I am going to stick with my headcanon, that coffee is relatively unknown. I mean, it was never even mentioned until season four?
I have cleaned up spellings for starship and spaceship. And also the awkward use of numbers in the text (e.g.: twenty-two instead of 22, etc.)
And my use of 'Three-Dee' in a sentence. I was trying to convey a verbal emphasis. But considering your comments, it was a really clumsy way to go about it. I corrected this and added a few expository words to indicate what Mike was attempting.
And lastly I cleaned up my use of hyphens. Your comments got me off my lazy duff to investigate how to make the 'em' things with my word processor.
Footnotes: I'll try and avoid using the note markings in future. I'll just have a Notes section at the bottom of the chapter
5118225 I never even considered you might use a Mac, so I just wrote the alt codes. The "canon" in "headcanon" only has two Ns.
5118507
I'm not using a Mac, or even Windows. I am a Unix weenie.
(Actually it's Linux - but that's just a local dialect as far as I'm concerned.)
Sorry - I'm afraid there is no spell checking when posting comments.
> microwaved bacon
UGH EW EW EW GOD NO GET AWAY FROM ME YOU MONSTER
5118672 Ah, I'm not sure how that works on Unix. Unicode maybe?
5119472
Funny, that's pretty much what Twilight said.
5119503
Not sure. I just write the story using LibreOffice Writer.
It's a word processor, a little different from Microsoft Word, but pretty much the same.
Though it's spell/grammer checker makes noises like a hole in a spaceship.
I have to transfer the story over to 'Word' to carry out those checks.
5119591 I never bother using a software spellchecker. They rarely catch any mistakes I wouldn't.
really really liking this and really really can't wait for more. There needs to be more space talk for the space nerd which is myself. though i suppose the big picture is well covered but more stuff on the moon landing would be snazzy. maybe just ask her why the moon landing was such a big deal over their meal.
I am going to enjoy the computer (and etc) parts. I think you are going to spend a lot of time on wikipedia and so will twilight though I also expect a cautionary introduction on internet safety along with the darker subjects that one may learn about in a painful manner on the internet such as war and nsfw things. also, is mlp real in your universe?
at some point I am going to expect a talk about 'how did you get here?' and then things go down hill for a while. then she will need to reevaluate everything. i suspect that I am repeating myself with some parts of these comments but i dont care enough to look.
Look this video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5vOU6-1yNZs
Watch is better than write many words for explain such Huge structure like the universe. You can use it for the fiction, made twi see it etc. The video dont use heavy scientific words, is breath-taking and the narrator is awsome.
Maybe you Will not use it for the FIC , but is just too awesome , it must be shared
All I got from this chapter was he's a space nerd boy version of Rarity.
