Old Truths
It was five to noon, and by the Town Hall on Two Sisters Plaza, the crowd was already gathering, as Discord snapped his fingers right in front of Twilight’s face.
"What?"
The Princess shook her head, trying to chase away both the ghosts of the past and heavy thoughts of the future and looked at the spirit of disharmony. His snakelike body coiled about, conforming to impossible shapes as he looked at her with a perpetual sly little smirk. The only true constant in her life – Discord, the eternal spirit of chaos. Irony so thick it actually hurt.
He was always there, and he was always Discord, whether he was her worst enemy or a shaky ally but hundred of years ago, now or thousand years since he would always be there, to deliver another blow. To plant seeds of doubt, to make her question her friendship, to sow discord and mistrust – in short, to ensure that everything goes as wrong as possible. Or “to make things more fun” as she assumed he would put it.
At least for now, it seemed, it was not the time for his sudden, yet inevitable betrayal… but, she guessed, it was as good a time as ever if he would so choose.
Princess sighed.
"What do you want, Discord? Whatever it is that you wanted to say – speak your piece and leave. I’m in no mood to amuse you."
She walked right through him, not bothering to walk around, and his form turned to smoke to let her through, coalescing back behind her.
"Well, well, well. My little Princess, watching you is all the entertainment I could possibly need. This Byronic visage, the stern look you give me over your spectacles (very sharp by the way, these glasses are so totally you), the solemn gait that just speaks of all the duties and obligations you carry. Priceless, I tell you!"
Twilight just kept walking. She knew that the only reason Discord was with her here and now, was the opportunity to make her hurt. Ignoring him was her best defence.
"So, no snappy comebacks today? Such a pity. I am sure, Pinkie would find something to say."
This was almost too much. Twilight stopped, and turned around, and peered at the draconequus coiled around her. If he expected her to break down, he would be sorely disappointed. Perhaps some time ago that would be exactly what she would do, bawling like a foal, or shouting at him to go away. Now, all she did was shrug, and resume trotting along.
"I have never bothered to spare enough energy to despise you as much as you deserve, Discord. I know that you don’t care about me, but Pinkie was Fluttershy’s friend too. You could at least respect her memory today."
"Respect?!" Discord was almost pleased by this slip of her tongue, "Moi? My little princess, you like none other should know that my very nature makes it impossible to respect anything. Dear sweet Celestia, I’d probably lose my job I ever did."
"Precisely. Just like I always told Fluttershy. Only she would always ask to give you one second chance after another. But you – you never cared about her."
"But that is a lie. Tsk, tsk, and you call yourself a Princess. For shame." His voice suddenly lost all of its mad cheer, "I loved my only friend dearly. But she is gone now. And I am not. And I will always be, and I will never be anything but me."
"That’s exactly what I am talking about." finally losing her temper, Twilight struck the path with such a force that paving stones cracked, "'Me, me, me'– that is all you are capable of thinking about. Nothing but yourself!"
"Such hurtful accusations, eh? But may I then ask, how are you wallowing in self-pity all the way over here? When all of the Pinkie’s friends are gathering over there." he pointed towards the plaza, Ponyville, the clock that was not two minutes away from striking noon. "Your precious Pinkie Pie had family and friends you know. So why then, when they need their Princess, the one, that mind you, has known Pinkie longer and better than anyone alive, you are not there to console and support them?"
"Because… " another sigh escaped Twilight’s lips. Talking with Discord always felt like treading across quicksand - no matter how you tried to avoid it, it would inevitably drag you down and suffocate you. "Because I have lost too many of them. I thought… I was afraid, I even hoped that it would become easier with time, but it just doesn’t. Every time it hurts more and more… I can’t..."
“Me, me, me,” Discord interrupted her, his tone even more poisonous than usual. "Well, I’ve done this thing for quite a bit longer than you, or your precious Celestia for that matter, and believe you me, nobody cares about your swollen ego or your incessant self-pitying. Do you really think it is you who got the short end of the stick? Eternal youth, incredible magical powers, adoration of thousands upon thousands of ponies all across Equestria… your friends did not get that option, you big crybaby. All they got is a great big eternal nothing and a nice stone to mark where their bodies lie."
Twilight ground her teeth in frustration, and her horn caught aflame when she called on her magic.
"You know, Discord, I have hypothesised for some time now that I don’t even need the Elements of Harmony to turn you to stone. And you really, really tempt me to test that theory now.”
"What?" Discord finally took notice of Twilight words. "Ooh, well isn’t someone testy!", he tried her horn with his clawed finger and immediately pulled it back, burned by the magical aura. "Well, my little Princess, if you do believe you drew the short straw here, why don’t you use that spell on yourself, hm? Just picture it – a nice small statue in some garden somewhere – by the Fluttershy’s cottage, maybe? I might even come visit, dust off the cobwebs from time to time. No duties, no obligations. No friends that leave you. Just peace and quiet… forever."
Even if threatened by Princess' magic, he just smiled a mirthless smile and looked at her, waiting.
Twilight released the magic, dousing her aura. The conversation had suddenly left her numb and exhausted – as expected from Discord.
"Just say what you’ve wanted to say, Discord, and be gone."
"Oh my, we are already here. Well, I guess it really is time for me to go."
The Princess looked ahead at the Ponyville spread at the foot of the hill they were standing on, the distant clock tower was preparing to strike noon. Discord was already disappearing into the thin air, with only his hand and mouth staying behind.
"By the way, besides the pleasant small talk, I came here to give this to you.” With a snap of his disembodied fingers, a small object fell towards the grass.
Grasping it in her magic, she had examined a small brass mechanism
"And this is…?"
"Oh, just a small little something I’ve borrowed from your lab, hope you don’t mind. I’m sure you’ll figure it out in a jiffy."
Before she could answer, the sound of the bell rang from the clock tower answered by the shot of the party cannon, and the spirit of chaos disappeared completely before Twilight momentarily distracted by the fireworks and the confetti, could ask him anything.
She looked at the mechanism again, all cogwheels and bolts and pieces of springs… she almost remembered what it was that she held in her magic, when she heard the familiar bouncing sound behind her…
***
…clock tower behind her whole again, the edges of the chronovore filling the sky above, seeking hungrily. Barely fitting now into the three dimensions of space they stretched towards her, Pinkie, the party cannon, houses around and all of the town.
Half-remembering, half-guessing, Twilight figured out what she had to do and before the needles touched the clocktower again, she closed her eyes in concentrating on what little magic she had left. She pulled out the piece of the mechanism from her gown – its brass a perfect match for the mechanism of the clock tower as it would be in hundreds of years from now when the tower would have fallen apart under its own weight. The same tower that was still standing now, making the shard she was holding impossible, yet existing.
Putting everything she had left in the last spell, she channelled her magic through the brass of the mechanism and sent a wave of pure space-time paradox, sparkling like a firework rocket, to pierce the side of the monster.
In the moment of silence that followed, Twilight had almost thought that she was mistaken, that epiphany she had was nothing but a mirage born of her desperation. But then she noticed that for the first time since skies have broken apart, the chronovore's edges were receding. The whole volume of its monstrous body was folding into itself, collapsing into a dimension orthogonal to the normal world, and within a second that lasted an eternity, with a ringing shriek that ripped the silence apart, it was finally gone.
It took Twilight several attempts to get up on her hooves as she tried in vain to put the events of the day back into a chronological order. No matter how hard she struggled to figure out what was supposed to follow what, somehow causes and effects kept switching places in her memories.
At least she could be almost sure that now was actually the present, and that things would proceed in a more orderly manner in the future. Or so she hoped.
Time was piecing itself back together, a straight arrow from “before” to the “after”.
"Whee! Best party EVER!"
Pinkie propped her up as the legs were about to give up from underneath a tired Princess, distracting her from her existential contemplation. “But what happened? How did you done it?”
"Well, it’s really simple once you figure it out. You see, chronovores don’t really control the temporal flow, they merely create a local superposition of time-space continuum entanglements that … let me draw you a graph, it’s just basic differential calculus, really."
"Nononono!” Pinkie grabbed her head in mock-agony. “TMI, TMI!"
Twilight poked her friend in her pink side and laughed at her antics.
"Alright, alright. Doesn't really matter anymore, anyway. Come on, we have to find something."
"Wait, wait. We came to a party, so we cannot leave without actually partying. Look, everypony is coming back here!"
Looking around, she knew that Pinkie was right. The first ponies she had teleported away were slowly coming back, confused and afraid.
She looked herself over. Her gown was in tatters, one of her horseshoes cracked, another - lost altogether, her glasses barely holding on her face on a bent and cracked frame, but it really did not matter. She had almost teleported on the stage (that somehow was intact again), to try to tell everypony what had happened and that the danger had passed, but Pinkie was already there.
"Come on everypony, don't be shy! What is it, a funeral? It's time to par-tay!"
The crowd buzzed in surprise. Some of the older ponies were trying to explain something to the younger ones, but no one listened to anyone, too surprised by the recent events.
She completed her teleportation spell, appearing by Pinkie's side on the stage in a lavender flash, and everyone immediately fell into silence, letting their Princess speak.
"Friends. Too much has happened today for me to explain now. Please let's set it aside for the time being. We know why we are all here, and we all remember how our miss mayor wanted her farewell party. So LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!"
"Huzzah!" Pinkie jumped at least three yards into the air, falling on the fuse of the party cannon.
As the wave of confetti and streamers covered the plaza and the one-pony orchestra started to play, the crowd fell back in confusion. But soon the first of the guests began to move with the music, and then some more joined it, and soon everypony and mule and griffon and other creature of every shape and size was mixing together, dancing, singing, drinking, all the way to dawn.
And Twilight was with them. She laughed, sang silly songs, and played the games and ate the sweet cake. She shot magical fireworks and told tall tales of their adventures and life.
And was merely happy.
***
But time was back to its inexorable march forwards, and thus it inevitably came to the moment when they had to go. The first colours of dawn lit Equestria's sky, as far away in Canterlot, Celestia raised the sun and started the new day.
It was the glint of the first rays of the morning off the brass that allowed Twilight to find the very thing she was hoping to spot for the most of the night - not that she had a lot of attention to spare from the party. She really had no doubts that when the time would come, she would inevitably find the piece of the old clockwork lying in the grass.
She took Pinkie aside, prying her out of a group of her new friends, and took her back up the hill where she had met her yesterday.
They kept up the inconsequential small talk until Twilight recognised the place.
"Pinkie," she stopped the barrage of her friend's chattering.
"Hmm?" Pinkie used a pause to finish up another milkshake, despite probably eating and drinking at least twice her own weight within the last few hours.
"Pinkie, you cannot imagine how happy I was to see you again. I should’ve told you that… that this wasn't just a party.. it was... well it was your..."
"What, you thought my funeral would be some sombre bore-fest? Hah! No way!"
"And it doesn’t bother you?!"
"Duh, of course not. I am not a silly-filly like you. It was exactly as I wanted it in my will. And it was amazing - with the party cannon, and the giant cake, and the chronovore attack..."
"Huh. I..."
"What?"
"I didn't want you to know when we came. I thought it would be really hard on you."
"But why, Twilley? We all get what we get. Me, and the girls, and even you, silly. Whatever happened here, I have a whole life ahead of me to live, and that's what will always stay with me. That itself would be more than enough, BUT..." she raised her hoof in the air dramatically, "it also will stay with you. And all of those who came here today. And everyone who knows them. While you are all here, it was worth it."
Twilight just hugged her friend, unable to say another word, and they stood there in the light of the dawn until Twilight knew that the time had come. Reluctantly releasing Pinkie from her embrace, she levitated the bit of the mechanism from her gown and gave it to her friend.
“Souvenirs, neat-o." she grabbed it in her mouth and in a single flick of her neck hid it somewhere in the depth of her mane. “Thanks a bunch Twilley, but what is it?”
"Just give it to the other me. When the time comes, she will know."
"What? This whole time there was another you, and you never introduced me? Twy?"
Pinkie looked around trying to find her friend, but Twilight was already veiled behind the Invisibility spell, and at the top of the hill, by the edge of the Everfree Forest, Pinkie was alone.
As she was about to call out to her friend again, a lavender flash lit up the dim morning, and from outside time and space, a slightly singed and much younger Princess Twilight Sparkle had appeared, falling on the grass.
Younger Twilight stood up unsteadily, looking around, and instantly spotted a confused Pinkie Pie.
"Thank Celestia you are here! Come on, Pinkie, we have to go. You have no idea how much time I spent to... Just tell me you didn't touch anything! The smallest change in the time can lead to a cascade of effects..."
Never pausing her speech, she grabbed Pinkie and with a final flash of lavender, both of them were gone.
***
Twilight - the old and tired Twilight - was walking slowly downhill. She half-expected to see Discord again - perhaps he would appear to demand his praise for saving her, or maybe for an "I told you so" he seemed to enjoy, or perhaps to try to aggravate her again…
But the spirit of chaos remained unpredictable and so she stayed alone for now.
She looked down at the town below. Celestia had raised the sun high enough, and the dawn surely had now turned into mid-morning, but the party just kept on going. If anyone knew how to get the party started it was Pinkie Pie after all....
It was then that she realised with surprise, that she no longer felt the familiar dull heartache when she remembered her friend. All her friends, all that they've shared, all the moments they had - both happy and sad, all that was in the past and that she could never get back - all of it was as close to her heart at it had ever been, and yet she felt not the pain of regret and mourning, but a steady feeling of warmth.
She could have returned to the party below. Keep celebrating, maybe even attempt to dance again, and just keep being another guest at the gathering. Maybe meet someone new, or learn something about those beings that came from outside this world to give their farewells to Pinkie or places they came from…
But no, her problems would not be resolved as easily. She still was a Princess, and still a heavy burden of eternity and obligation weighted her down. She was not yet ready to get close to somepony, to make new friends, nor could she afford the time for that.
However... she was the Dean of the University of Magic. Even if now her position mostly involved administrative and research duties with an occasional lecture... she could probably find the time to get some students of her own.
She smiled to herself. She had finally understood why, so long ago, Celestia had chosen her and Princess Cadence, and probably many others as well, from the incalculable numbers of her subjects, to be her personal student.
Accepting all of today's events, all the craziness and fear and excitement, from the first second to the last, whatever order they came in, she took in the last gaze of Ponyville below, of green grass and morning sunlight, the clock tower that stood high above the town, and belated fireworks in the blue sky, she closed her eyes and cast a Teleportation spell.
***
Everything may change, yet nothing is truly lost.
***
FIN.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Moonlit Path · 1.7k words · 74 8 · 3.3k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.169 seconds
Total duration
599 users online
776,676 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Hey sorry to bother you... But I see grammar mistake on this front page. It is not "firends" it is "friends" Hope it helps.
Sorry, I found another one. "perhaps nothing is truly lost ." There is a space between that period. It should be like this. "perhaps nothing is truly lost."
7327910
Thanks for pointing it out.
Fixed both.
7327964 No problem.
Alright. We did a review exchange; this is mine.
Let me clarify right away that I did not like this story. At all. Everything I have to say about it is negative - just as a warning.
The biggest problem is of course the packaging. This story is flooded with grammar errors that make it neigh-unreadable, the most frequent of which involving different times.
I was unsure how to explain this best, since there are too many to point out all of them. I decided to take a small section and do that one thoroughly. Here goes (this is from the second chapter). I put little blue notes at the corresponding places in the quote and explained them below. This covers grammar and writing style, and is in-part subjective.
[1]: It should probably he 'had never lost'. The way you wrote it is not grammatically incorrect, but it has a different meaning. She never lost... phrases it as a recurring thing, i.e. "that never happens". She had never lost would mean that it has never happened so far, which is clearly the intended meaning in this case.
[2] this is the exact grammar error that is so frequent, particularly in chapter 1.
Think of it like this: you start by writing in the present or in the past. If you write in the present you say "Twilight's brother is having a concert, Twilight is jealous and blows the thing up". If you're writing in the past, you say "Twilight's brother was having a concert. Twilight was jealous and blew the thing up."
Then, you can write about things that have already happened in your time line. If you do that, you use the past version of whatever time line you're in; you use "has XX" for past in present, and "had XX" for past in past. So if, in our example, you tell the story about how Twilight has been sent to Ponyville, which happened in the past of your time line, it is either.
"Twilight's brother has been having a concert. Twilight has been jealous and has blown the thing up"
or
"Twilight's brother had been having a concert. Twiligth had been jealous and had blown the thing up".
It's not that complicated. Stick to those and you should almost always get it right.
In this case, you're obviously writing in the past, so if you're talking about things that have happened in the past of your current timeline, it is "had XX". Here: it had been almost a hudnred years ...
[3]: The sentence construction is off-putting. There are two issues. The first is that 'since' has to reference a certain event, so it would make more sense to say "since she had become Celestia's equal;" otherwise you could use for, and say something like "she had been Celestia's equal for a hundred years". The second issue is that "she had been her equal as a princess" sounds odd, probably because the framing implies correlation when it is actually causation. Something like "It had been almost a hundred years since she had become a princess, and, as such, an equal to her former teacher." would have read more smoothly to me.
[4]: The ' after years is incorrect. There is no reason for it to be there.
[5]: [Subjective]: The repetition of the word 'teacher' is off-putting. The sentence would read more smoothly if it was just 'she had already started to see her differently'. It'd be clear whom you're talking about
[6]: [Subjective]: "powerful and wise and graceful beyond measure" sounds fine, but then with "and most of all, almost infinitely kind," it no longer does. I think it is because I am expecting an end to the sentence; so it could either have ended there, or you could have cut the second quoted pat -> "powerful and wise and graceful beyond measure, but she no longer ...". Also, semiclons before a 'but' part of a sentence are eh.
[7]: Back to what I said above. You're talking about something in the past of your timeline, and you're telling a story in the past. It has to be "she had once been to her student". Also the 'she' is simply missing. Also the 'faithful' kills the flow in that sentence.
[8]: Same thing, a bit more tricky packaged. "She had to deal with it" implies that she sometimes has to, as in occasionally, maybe once per decade. "She had had to" would be a specific instance, which is what you meant here. Since you added the "once or twice" thing you close the door to alternative one. It has to be "had had" here.
[9]: Same thing. It has to be 'had seen'. "Has seen" never correct during narration in the past tense. It could only appear in direct speech or as a quote.
[10]: You are missing a 'the'
[11] Though I have never used the word 'privy', I'm still pretty sure that it is meant to reference her presence at those moments, not the moments themselves, as it does here
[12]: [Subjective]: "had turned almost imperceptibly" reads strange if it is not the end of a sentence. At the very least, there should be commas around 'almost imperceptibly; better yet it should be after had, like: "when fatigue or despair had, almost imperceptibly, turned a ..."
[13]: into
[14]: That is a hyphen. You previously used en-dashes for those err things, which I much prefer, but keep it consistent. You can find them all with CTRL + F before publishing a chapter.
------------------------------------------------------
Alright. I initially corrected further grammar erorrs while reading, skipping those that occur too frequently. I got drained after chapter 1 and did it less thoroughly for 2 and 3. I put the section in red if it's a grammar error, blue if it's a formatting error and green if it's a logical error, and the correct version below. If I don't just correct but make a comment, I put it in [].
##Chapter 1
it's rays glinting
its rays glinting
an unexpected, yet familiar, sight of Pinkie Pie
an unexpected yet familiar sight of Pinkie Pie
of Princess of Celestia: Once, a long
of Princess Celestia: once, a long
Taking her eyes off the window, she has turned to look in the silver mirror.
Her once lavender coat
[Avoid line breaks without paragraph breaks. This is too frequent, so I won't point out further instances]
As a Princess of Equestria
As a princess of Equsetria
[You can write Princess with a capital 'P' when it is used as a title, but not if you say 'a princess']
and it’s destination.
and its destination
The sound of the cannon fired was still echoing through Ponyville,
[I don't think this is possible. The sound would last for about a second.]
"Wht, whft?", stepping back to free her muzzle Twilight repeated herself, "what?"
"Wht, whft?" Stepping back to free her muzzle, Twilight repeated herself, "what?"
[there is no such thing as ?",]
ain't’ I?
ain't I? [Though I don't think Pinkie says ain't at all]
cutie marks?”, she drew a huge breath, “and I
cutie marks?" She drew a huge breath. "And I
[aside from the ?", thing, you also should start sentences within two parts of speech capital if they are full sentences - which they are in this case. Won't point out further instances of this.]
the thrill of the flight
the thrill of flight
They spent a lot of effort – she and Fluttershy, back then, to save
They spent a lot of effort – she and Fluttershy, back then – to save
it’s sides barren
its sides barren
covering it’s bare rock, and a rare tree, that once stood proudly, with it’s branches
[Same thing again (twice). This is also getting too frequent (although there are also a couple of instances where you got it right), so I'll stop pointing out every case. It's pretty simple of a rule: replace It()s with it is or it has. If either makes sense, it is it's, otherwise, it is its.]
noticed.Some
noticed. Some
## Chapter 2
eighty nine years,
eighty-nine years [all numbers are spelled with hyphoes between digits]
hair's’ breadth
hair's breath
of the Dreaming
[I'm not sure what this is meant as, but if it's as 'the ponies who dream' then it has to be non-capital. Otherwise you could say 'dreamscape' or something to that effect]
## Chapter 3
"“Me, me, me”
"Me, me, me"
by the Fluttershy’s
by Fluttershy's
Princess looked ahead
[not sure what you meant to say here, but simply 'princess' is not a valid abbreviation, like 'she' or 'Twilight'. If anything, it has to be "the Princess," though that would sound rather weird too in that context]
Pinkie, the party
[Too many white spaces here]
“Souvenirs, neat-o.”
[There is no such thing as a dot at the end of direct speech. You can have , ! ? but never.]## Edit: not true the way I said it. Correction: there is no dot at the end of speech if it is followed by a partial sentence, e.g. Twilight said. It can be a dot if it is followed by a full sentence which only implicitly states who has been speaking.---------------------------------
Okay. For the rest of the review, I will try to forget packaging as best as I can and focus solely on story and plot construction.
The premise of this story is ... not interesting, to say the least. That could be due to having been in the fandom and generally being someone who has refined views about philosophy, but Twilight dealing with her immortality is probably the single most overdone idea on fimfiction. Which does not mean that it can't still be great. It absolutely can. Premise is a negligible compared to most other things.
Unfortunately, the story did nothing to spark my interest. It starts with 100-year old Twilight going to Ponyville and you already broke my suspension of disbelief.
- Twilight is at the emotional level of, let's say, a 25 year old person. She is a hundred years old. She's had a hundred years to contemplate life, death, mortality, and all of that stuff. One of the ways this could have been interesting is if she actually deals with it just fine. And what about Celestia and Luna? They are way older. They must have figured it out.
- If you don't want your friends to die, then there is an obvious solution to that.
Try to stop them from dying.
This is very likely to be possible given what kind of world MLP is, although one could have made up reasons why she didn't do it. First one I can think of is that Celestia/Luna have forbidden it. However, not mentioning it leaves a giant hole.
In a way, attempting to write a fictional story is inherently an incredibly arrogant thing, because you are claiming to know how numerous characters would act. Why? This is a prevelant position, and often I find that authors fail (again, not restricted to fimfiction). Particularly when you try to write about a character who is smarter than yourself, which is almost a given with a hundred-year old Twilight. Which is why it is so hard to do just that.
That said, I think the portrayal of Celestia in the show (barring some plot holes) is surprisingly good. Wise, calm, very practical, that is how I could imagine a really old person being. Twilight is not remotely like that. And it stands out so much more because of all the internal stuff that's portrayed here. She should already be done with all of that! The fact that she is thinking about any of it is just dumb. And her back and forth with Discord... the only way I could have been sold on that is if it was implied that they're keeping this up as a sort of game. But it's not like that. Twilight just thinks "I probably shouldn't be putting up with this" and then she puts up with it.
Then time travel happens.
I think a general principle for how I approach stories intuitively is that there is a degree of respect I have for it and a degree of respect I need to buy into certain things. it is sort of like suspension of disbelief but not quite the same. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example. If Game of Thrones does something like ressurection, it's friggin awesome, because why wouldn't it be. I'm so invested in the story that such a concept can unfold its full potential.
When they did time travel, it was a stretch, even for that show. Becuse time travel is easily the most problematic concept (that's somehwat common) one can attempt. There is barely any way to establish mechanics which do not cause paradoxes, and it's just such a huge thing that a lot of thought needs to be put into it to do it somewhat acceptably.
Of course, in this case, the mechanics weren't established at all, and as a result, I was not remotely able to take it seriously.
There is another issue... probably the most common criticism I have in written art is that author's tend to make their characters be idiots-- and what I mean by that is that they just stumble through the story without every halting and going ... okay, what is the best thing to do now? I should probably do that. Why yes! You should!
If you want to make me hate something, have a character try to tell something to another character and be unable to get a word in. This does not happen. You simply go "HOLD ON I have to tell you something" and then you say it. The sensible reaction to seeing Pinkie be there from the past is probably to call off the event, contact the princesses, and figure things out immediately. You wanted to keep your friends from dying, right? Here is a way to do that.
This all makes the characters feel like written characters and not like real characters, and this story is enormously guilty of that.
Then there'S the twist. Which, I don't know if you were supposed to see it coming, but I did. And... it's about as cliché as you can have.
Like, come on! Were we really supposed to be shocked? Really?
There is also this particular sentence that I have to comment on:
Because it frankly feels like the story isn't taking itself seriously anymore.
I have little to say about the rest, because it was more time travel shenanigans which is just so very far exceeding the story's reach. The moral is likewise exactly what I thought it would be, and I can only repeat that Twilight is 100 years old. Young Pinkie Pie would have nothing to teach to her. It doesn't compute.
And then DIscord... that's yet another highly problematic inclusion, because you're having someone who, for all we know, is close to being omnipotent. It immediately raises more problems, such as why is Fluttershy even dead.
So... yup!
7540408
Ouch. That physically hurt.
Still, few counterpoints. To the more factual statements, at least:
"Dreaming" is, like the ending to the story itself, a reference to The Sandman.
That was mentioned and explained in the fic.
They were rather clearly implied, I believe.
Also, thanks for the grammar pointers, even if not all of them actually correct. Everything that needed fixing is now fixed.
Since this fic is apparently an acceptable target for blunt criticism, I'll just go ahead. My apologies to ChudoJogurt, but this story's most obvious issue is that the translator isn't a writer. ChudoJogurt lacks the ability to do this story justice.
However many blatant errors others have pointed out and had corrected, a wrongness still pervades every sentence. There are subtle problems with word choice, flow, and dialogue, mixed in with poetic sentiments here and there.
Perhaps it simply can't be done. Every language is different on a fundamental level. When I listen to a Mandarin Chinese speaker, I hear a logic and order of thought that differs entirely from English. Perhaps only those who can read Russian will ever know what this story was meant to be.
7892906
All my fics are acceptable targets of blunt criticism.
Could you perhaps give an example of sentences that seemed wrong to you?
7893051
My apologies. When reading that this story was written by a friend, and after seeing all the errors pointed out in the comments, I assumed you didn't write anything yourself. If you want to know what threw me off, I'll gladly provide.
You may find me overly picky, however.
The very first two paragraphs. Someone else has already noted all the verb tense errors, so I'll autocorrect those.
The way certain objects are referred to.
I made four edits here, but refrained from removing the highlighted "the". I still want to. I think repeating "the" within three words breaks up the flow this sentence should have.
...
What should we be focusing on? What am I supposed to imagine? Brass and copper cogs and wheels? Or cogs and wheels in clockwork? What old clockwork is this? Is it a clock, or are we talking about the more general use of clockwork?
This revised sentence feels slightly less vivid to me, but I can't be bothered to improve that as well.
...
I can't help you here. This shouldn't be one sentence, or it needs to re-proportioned, because Pinkie Pie's appearance is weighted far too lightly by the pacing here. No dramatic pause, no slowing down. There may be translation issues here—I dunno. But for now, just remove the modifiers and read it again.
I haven't changed the meaning of this sentence. You see the problem?
...
The logic here is alien to me. Did she take two small jumps and stop? Did she cover the distance between them? There are three halves to this sentence.
...
I did take a quick look at the fics you wrote yourself. I see the same problems.
Holy cow, this is vicious, but I don't know how to phrase it politely.
7895517
This is rather polite, so no need for apologies. I will most definitely look into the things you mentioned.
However are you sure about
?
Does this not need the "has" for the past perfect?
P.S.
Could I interest you in editing my next fic by qny chance?
7895539
Oh. You'll want 'had', in that case. I assumed a transition from the recent past to the present. The difference between past and present gets wonky when writing fiction, so I don't think too hard about things like that.
7895539
Oh right. A response to your request.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough free time for dedicated editing. I spent long enough thinking about a short paragraph's worth of writing, and I'm still in college. In fact, I should be writing an essay right now. I'll have to turn you down, sorry.
8510355
lol I’m getting there!
I see all these comments criticizing this fic, and I am sitting here dumbfounded because I thought this was half-decent. I’m not adding it to my favorites, this story had a good concept, but I think it’d work better as a one-shot with no time-travel.
I’m just not a guy that hates things... so yeah.
That was a good story.