“Immortal princesses,” Starlight Glimmer said. “It really works, I’m telling you.” Sol 354, The Maretian
When Twilight was younger, she would sometimes be privately tutored when Celestia was occupied. Once a professor attempted to teach Twilight Military Strategy. It didn't go well.
-Made it into the Feature box for a few short days in November 2016. Thanks all!-
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Argg Argg it Burns Treaty... well, it sounds like Celestia's enemies got burned
7692088
Smokin'!
This was fun to picture in my head.
Sounds like the Princess's enemies rapidly warmed to the idea of peace.
Yes, they saw the light...
Also, filly Twilight Sparkle is a modern Major-General?
Wait, Shining Armor only made Captain. Filly Twilight outranks him?
I wonder what Celestia's solution was, since the scenario didn't say the defenders had an alicorn on a two week cooldown. Of course, one could point out that while the other three tribes were mentioned and limits on their numbers were given, alicorn numbers were not. Thus, using one could be technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
7692436 There is Captain in the guard, and Captain OF the Guard. Shining armor is probably holding the highest peace time ranking possible.
At least that is my guess, I really doubt that the show animators understand military ranks at all.
Dies of laughter!!
*reads almost to the end, blinks* did celestia just, kill him?! *finishes reading* cadence, you are second best princess. sorry, luna is still best.
7692673
I agree with this.
7692436
Spock once said something to the effect of plasma just being ionized gas. I will state that the decomposition of biological matter can result in gas, and that Princess Celestia's special talent involves a giant ball of plasma. The rest I leave up to your imagination.
7693141 What, the fact that the creators don't understand military rank, or the idea that there are two captainnranks.
7693152
Both seem likely.
I like the battle idea, but I'd place the Pegasi as a quick response unit, and probably have them orchestrated with that explosives idea. Overall awesome idea tho!!!!!!
7692436 a really bad case of sun burn that or helios one style solar death beam from orbit
7693283
I thought about that, but I had the idea in the back of my head that the Pegasi were manipulating the winds to keep the smoke from clearing too quickly.
They'd probably be awesome as a quick response unit, though.
7693299 nice point, maybe we could try a colab sometime!!!!! ^_^
If only I could get away with such wishful thinking on exercise...damned army reserve exes being hyper realistic!
7693334
Sounds fun.
Bleh. One of these stories.
A guy gets angry at a student not taking their lessons seriously and raises his voice. In response, his boss assaults him by shoving his desk hard enough to embed it in the wall and crumple it, with him trapped underneath. The boss is treated as heroic for this action.
Also, the student only comes up with an actually implementable plan once she needs to look good in front of the boss. This plan is equated to the "we'll just rely on deus ex machina" plans she was delivering earlier and used to justify her earlier behavior.
7694351 While Celestia may have gone overboard trapping him under the desk, this was not an issue of simply raising his voice at a student. It is clearly stated that he was in the habit of losing his temper and screaming at students, which is well worth getting reprimanded and fired for.
I'm genuinely curious to know the specifics of Twilight's "military wishful thinking" strategies at the beginning. I wouldn't put it past her to have worked out a way to make them plausible.
7694351
Top administrator of the school gives teacher one last chance to prove he can teach while keeping his temper in check without prior warning while being observed during his lesson.
Teacher fails to follow approved curriculum (is actually teaching pet theory involving a fictional novel series Ala Star Trot), teacher is openly dismissive of student's ideas -which more accurately reflect magical world they live in than what the limited mindset of the teacher can envision- and then uses profanity in front of a minor, teacher ultimately fails in his royal charge to watch over the ruling Monarch's personal student and abandons his post (he literally cannot stand his worldview -which is wrong- from being challenged) by hiding under his desk. Cowardice and the resulting deriliction of duty is probably the final nails in the coffin for him.
True, his ultimate boss did hold him against his will, trapped underneath a desk telekinetically shoved against a wall hard enough to wedge it into the wall, but he wasn't actually hurt. Not Celestia's best moment, but I can imagine an extremely old and powerful member of the royal family doing far worse for far less. In the end, she only humiliated and fired him and arranged full severance pay for after his dismissal.
Celestia then manipulated her niece, who is one of his students (and another member of royalty) into deciding to play a trick on him for his lousy treatment of his students and of her favorite foal, thus ensuring he was "ok" in the cruelest of ways. He wasn't cut out to be a teacher.
Another valid interpretation.
Sorry it wasn't to your liking.
7694548
Yes. Exactly as you said. Eagles rescues were from The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings, artifacts were Elements of Harmony and the traitor was a certain changeling. All fantastical things that seem unusual to us in the real world but are apparently par for the course in the magical land of Equestria, if Celestia is to be believed. Plus, it seems the odds of these sorts of situations happening go up immensely if you've got an important destiny ahead of you (Twilight and Celestia come to mind).
7694589 Nice to include a little more backstory, but do try to ignore the penut gallery. They cant stand the thought of their "Right to abuse others rights" being punished.
Much like the difference between a feminist and a womans rights activist. A womans rights activist want women to have all the same rights and opportunities as somone else. A feminist wants to put women above men. And before somekne gets snippy about this, google it. When you compare the two you will see that I hit the nail on the head.
Basically one has a cause and another takes the cause to an extreame.
I like the way the composition of the enemy forces is completely glossed over beyond 'two to one' so that Twilight's plans don't get blown out of the water by enemy unicorns and pegasi.
This, this little bit is what makes Celestia truly great, as a pony, ruler or diplomat. In every particular problem she can and does apply the most appropriate solution. He's military, so - not 'I'm an alicorn', not 'I have reasons', not 'You're wrong', not 'You're out of line', not even trying to use her imposing physique. 'I'm your superior; obey', if a little bit softer in execution. Beautiful.
7693151 Actually this and all the other 'Apocalypse via Sun' combat spell ideas ignore the fact that if one would actually try that, (s)he could end up making things much, much worse. Burning a hole through the atmosphere and all that. You'd be better off detonating a nuke within arrow's reach of your fortress, or at least the rest of the world would be anyway. That said, the sun is a power source, more than anything. I'd think it promotes subtle/long term effects - endurance approach, rather than spellpower one.
How would the smoke screen work? If they are too far away to hit with arrows/catapults how will they make a smokescreen that actually confuses the enemy as they are A) too far away for troops or artillery to reach, B) an explosion will announce the location of there arrival and C) enemy pegasi could disperse it quite quickly in theory.
This plan would fall apart if for example the opponent had dug a second/first moat around the castle (preventing the earth pony cavalry charge), the siege weapons were spread around and surrounding the garrison (cavalry unable to reach/destroy all of them in time), or even too many siege weapons under construction exceeding the amount of satchel charges. There is also the question of troops being on standby and prepared to deal with a breakout, which they should know given the situation is inevitable so they would have troops surrounding the castle to prevent that.
There are a lot of variables we as a reader have not been told, such as what the enemy is capable of which decides whether this plan could succeed or fail as if they have mages they could create a shield to lock them in and starve them to death, a sort of reversal of Shining Amours forcefield. If they have Arial units they could possibly bomb the inside of the castle using satchel charges as well if they have them or use them to blow up the castle walls with them, especially since there will be a new weakened recently destroyed wall section if she attempts the plan. Never mind the term low on resources, how much food do they have left? They could run out of food in a few days or a few weeks meaning they may be too weak to carry out or enforce a breakout plan.
Twilight is lucky this is only theoretical as so many factors could have led to complete failure, or very costly success as it relys on many assumptions on troop composition and layout. The tornado plan seems completely ridiculous in my eyes as the pegasi could be shot down or dispersed by enemy pegasi and the tornado turned on themselves and destroy the garrisons interior.
I am not a military tactician though, so I may have got a lot of factors ideas and concepts completely incorrect and if they are I am deeply sorry for wasting your time, just explain why and how I am wrong so I know.
I was actually liking this story as I read along. Now, the professor does have some reason for his anger at Twilight in the beginning-he'd apparently asked her to operate within the conditions he gave her and she immediately tried to use factors that are generally situational and, even in a world where this frequently happens because destiny says so, should not be depended on. However, Twilight repeatedly brought these up in a scenario all about not having those available. This is like being told to design a pulley system to lift a car, but then asking to have a helicopter to pull the car up instead. It's not the point of the activity-it's about the scenario presented.
Hell, from the series we've seen that if Twilight solely followed the advice of waiting for the local macgruffin to solve everything she would have failed. Take the fight against Tirek. They only discovered their rainbow powers after Twilight fought against Tirek, and if she had not fought against him he might not have even released them or by the act of not fighting might have created a rift between them-I can't imagine Rainbow would have been happy with Twilight in the slightest if she didn't resist Triek to start off.
Granted,that doesn't excuse his anger at Twilight or the insults, but his anger does have a reason-most teachers get irritated if they present a scenario to you and you immediately try to shoehorn in outside factors.
But, I noticed some issues.
Now, with the scenario presented, not enough information is presented for Twilight's plan to work and it assumes that the enemy does not react have its own capability to fight back or counter Twilight's plan. For instance, fortifications such as secondary moats and the like could have stopped the calvary charge, enemy pegusi could have countered the fortress's pegusi, and the explosive satchels would have been useless if the enemy had bothered to space out their siege equipment all around the keep rather than group it in one place.
So, right off the bat with this scenario, we have issues everywhere-Twilight not asking more questions on specific factors (granted, she is younger here-might not have occurred to her), the professor didn't give enough specific information on the capability of the attackers or even what species they're composed of, and Celestia should damn well have asked for more specific information on the relatively vague scenario.
But, ultimately this isn't the real issue with this story. Sure it's glossed over, but the real problem comes up shortly after the lesson.
However, here is where the story went downhill for me so damn fast.
Celestia is supposed to be speaking from a moral high ground, yet how does she get her point across? She embeds the professor's damn desk in a wall and and pins Brace Girdle undeaneath it.
So, the moral of this story is, if you encounter someone who is unprofessional and rude to others, if you outrank them it is perfectly fine to use violence and aggression to get your point across and teach them a lesson about being aggressive and mean to to others.
I found this personally to be out of character on Celestia's part-her words to Girdle were fine and would have done perfectly well on their own, but the fact that she did this just to execute a prank makes it all the worse. She chose to do this just so she could humiliate Girdle that much more when his immediate rejection from the school after tutoring Twilight would likely have alienated him from other schools.
So ultimately? I don't think this is deserving of a like and I'm leaning towards a dislike. It has its moments and is kind of funny, but at the same time it fails on several fronts. Particularly the theoretical scenario presented and of course Celestia's spit in the face of the moral lesson by what she did to the professor.
Now, if you intentionally wanted Celestia portrayed as being overprotective of Twilight to the extent that she'll use violence where it is not even close to necessary, than kudos. You have a conflicted and three dimensional portrayal of Celestia. If you didn't mean that, well you screwed up, because that's what Celestia comes along as.
7695497 No no, you're not off in voicing your opinion of the matter, this actually paints the Celestia in this universe as a quiet tyrant. Your counter plans for foreseeable moves from Twilight are sound and choices even a seasoned strategist would use for such maneuvers. On a technical standpoint, the time needed to forge those razor discs in the fort may not even be feasible if the fort's logistical capabilities are outlined, meaning they probable don't have the materials or enough equipment to manufacture the discs en mass, not to mention in time to enact such a maneuver before the siege weapons are ready.
Even while the enemy is twice in number and potentially split evenly to all four sides, troop composition potentially includes mages, that more than make up for troop reduction in consideration of distance between the fort and reaching the enemy lines. The whole story was self-serving about not quashing innovative and imaginative thinking through logical and strict teachers but it just shows that Celestia would rather crush a teacher that threatened her precious snowflake of a student from thinking outside the box, and that is the true "No win" scenario.
Mister Booth Bee ?
And good one-shot all round. Faved.
7695759 Just a quick nitpick-No. The Bible says nothing of the sort. As someone who hha read the dadgum thing cover-to-cover several times, trust me on this. The saying is a 'Beam me up Scotty" and originates from Greek polytheism and flies in the face of both Hebrew and Christian theology.
The teacher wasn't at fault here, and while it was clearly meant to be humorous, all this did was irritate me.
7695843 Ah, my mistake then. I'll edit my comment then.
This is the kind of story I like to see Celestia being used to, to explicitly illustrate a philosophy along a matching plot, that being in this case that creativity and confidence are better qualities to nurture over being humble, skeptic, or submissive.
In addition, there is no need to compromise either one to nurture the other, the fact his teaching methods were ones that disregarded and hinder the former qualities made the value of the teaching the latter ones somewhat controversial.
Good show!
~Leonzilla
Twilight learning military strategy.... Celestia have mercy on our souls o_O
7694351 Teach got what he deserved, I personally woulda had Celestia be harsher to the bastard for what he was doing to Twi That Red ink, Wouldn't be Ink. I aint never seen a Teacher, not even my ROTC Sargent Major like that Teacher did, and he was a former Marine and a Drill Sargent.
7693071 That was my Thought As well
7692088
It warms my heart to see children so skilled at developing methods to slaughter hundreds of enemies in a particularly gruesome manner from a disadvantaged position.
Nice.
But, both instances of "lead" in this should be "led", the spelling of the past tense.
Is it odd that Twilight’s original response…
…is vastly different than the response to the one she gives in Celestia’s presence? The huge contrast between her foalish answer (the last part of which happens to be similar to how the show itself resolved the Season 6 finale
) and the shrewd reply she gives later on is surprising. Honestly, if it were one or the other, as opposed to both, I wouldn’t be fazed—I presume that Twilight’s a foal in this story, so the first reponse would be expected by itself; and if the story only had the second response, I’d simply attribute it to her being a child prodigy.
Is she trying to look good in front of Celestia, while returning to her foalish imagination when her immortal mentor’s not there? Does she not treat her lessons with Brace Girdle with the same seriousness as she does with Celestia?
Sorry, what the fuck? While I recover from the utter shock upon reading this, I’ll say that with Celestia being an immortal who has “hundreds if not thousands of years of experience upon which to draw”, I’d expect Celestia to be more forgiving than that. Violence in this situation is incredibly inappropriate, especially when Celestia is meant to be, as 7695759 describes it, the moral high ground. Compare this to how she treats Twilight: a kind, caring mentor who says this to her right before trapping the professor (rather painfully) under a desk.
I wonder how Twilight would feel if she found out what Celestia did to Brace Girdle. Is Celestia really teaching a good moral in this story?
All in all, I couldn’t enjoy this story, and honestly, how I feel about this story is the opposite of what the Comedy tag suggests. Sorry.
7694632 granted, although it's probably not a good habit to rely on forces outside yourself in compromising situations, even when something happens to be available on every occasion, there is the issue that if you were to know that you would probably have a harder time feeling like your achievements are significant when it wasn't ultimately your actions that made the difference even if they contributed?
I would expect Celestia to be teaching Twilight about self reliance if all she could think of in a comprimizing situation like that involved actual Deus ex Machinas.
But that wasn't the case and to that perhaps I should comment the following:
The way you decided to only include plans at the beginning that would sound like Deus ex Machinas to us was helpful in misleading my expectations of the story and as such kept me engaged as the story went in a different direction than I expected it.
A few readers seem to have had a harder time reshaping their expectations and interpretation of what was happening in that scene. If you wish to help avoid that one way you can do that is to simply include some of the things you have been writing in your comments so far into the story to make it more explicit and better illustrated.
Just make sure it doesn't slow down the reading too much.
~Leonzilla
7696609
Thanks. Fixed.
7696670
Just checking. You realize it wasn't actually blood, right? Our Princess of Love is messing with the former professor. It's red ink just like Brace Girdle thought it was.
Oh, and the reason the responses from the beginning and from post Celestia's arrival is how Brace Girdle explained the objective. In short, he didn't. He setup an impossible scenario and asked Twilight, "What do you do?" Celestia knows her student better and told her, "Find me how we win this."
7695759
Moral? What is this moral you speak of? Moral High Ground? Absolute Solar God Princess Pony. She don't need no moral high ground.
J/K. This Celestia isn't quite as squeaky clean as the one in the TV show is. She appears soft and kind, but she's much harder inside. There wasn't a lot of time for development to show that, but this is part of a bigger universe I've been working on fleshing out. She's very old and her patience isn't what it used to be.
Additionally, while it's only hinted at, Brace Girdle has been reprimanded several times for his temper and verbal abuse of much older children (Shining Armor's age). He's dabbled in corporal punishment even though it isn't allowed and Celestia has given him all the chances he's going to get. The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were.
And it just occurred to me that if he had actually laid a hand on Twilight, then Celestia probably would have put him clear through the wall and not just pinned to it.
......I kinnda got to agree with the other guys Tia is a dick but the story is fun. If anyone I will be rereading Nobunaga's and other Sengoku era badasses history
7695497
The details were intentionally left vague. I am in no way an actual military strategist. Each battle was an example of how things seem to just fall into place.
But if I were to take a stab at actual planning...
I'd mention that I always had some other four hooved species in mind as the opposing force. Burros come to mind. Famous archers they are not. Trebuchets and Catapults still under construction.
Keep in mind that this is a hypothetical situation designed by Brace Girdle specifically to make it unwinnable. A Kobayashi Maru scenario is a fictional command exercise in Star Trek aka Star Trot forcing a cadet to experience an unwinnable scenario. The cadet is judged by how he/she handles it. Brace Girdle doesn't react well to learning from his Princess that Twilight's plan had worked in an actual situation in the past that closely resembled the scenario he created.
7694632 This shouldn't actually be the case, be mindful that throughout the series, if you're not part of the main cast or someone who'll even have a brief interaction with them, then logic of reality asserts itself. The whole of the MLP series is the main cast flying in the winds of serendipity, wherein wishful thinking can actually apply because the universe said so.
This whole story became a farce when comparing the logic and mindset of normalcy to present a "No win" scenario against someone predestined for godhood. You created an OC just to hurt him, humiliate him and crush any proper means of procuring a livelihood. Just so you could have a bully to shape this story and justify his treatment afterwards.
*Edit*
To properly word my issue here, Celestia is the only one in the room privy to Twilight's destiny. In the face of a teacher not in the know, and who's firmly rooted in the mindset of the common citizen's idea of normalcy. No wishful thinking and such, just doing what they can within the realm of reality. And while failing on his part to place specific parameters to set Twilight in, that led her to be "frustrating". The whole point of the exercise was to plan in a scenario where no miracles can happen.
I, too, don't believe in no-win scenarios. For example, a small force of soldiers has to hold a fortified position against a large attacking force. There is no way the small force can survive in their entirety, but they can stall the large force. they make take heavy casualties, but, being entrenched and fortified, they can bleed the attackers for a while while the main force behind them gets dug in. at the right time, the small force will retreat with whatever is left of the force, but leave behind decoys like the Gallipoli "Water drip guns". when the attacking force discovers the ruse, they will rush past the abandoned fortifications and into the larger, friendly force. At this point, the attacking force should be weak enough to be defeated. The first skirmish is techinally a defeat for the entrenched soldiers, but it is a victory overall down the road.
7697215 I’ll admit I got confused about the red ink because of the quote below, which led me to believe that it actually was blood, as opposed to ink.
Thanks for clarifying. I noticed a little mention of ink here, which I missed:
And so, returning to this quote.
Without any context, it’s hard to know what Girdle said before the story starts. Still, even without any context to the first paragraph of the story, and without any context to how Girdle first explained the situation to Twilight (in Celestia’s absence), it’s hard to believe that Twilight would respond with such levity with a professor. As I’ve said, she’s either a child prodigy who’s far too mature for her biological age, or a foal who doesn’t understand the seriousness she is meant to have and instead replies with inappropriate attempts of vivid imagination. I can’t imagine her as being able to be both.
Seems like Twilight heard the mysterious voice suggesting to go get ice cream.
Like seriously *Repeat sound effect* are you talking to?
7695759 Think about the pony your are defending first of all. Too make this nice and clear I will use ages for an example. Twilight is a child who is obsessed with magic, stories, and the Princess. I include stories because there is no reason she should have made the leap that Nightmare Moon was returning unless she loved fables a greate deal. So at present I would say Twilight is between the ages of 8-10. Have you ever tried to explain strategy to a 10 year old. Games don't count as one was not included in the original discussion.
The teacher, likely in his 30's-40's, is obsessed with pushing his ideals onto a child and getting angry when said child provides a childish answer. If I were going to do this I would at least have something to show an example of troops and the layout of the battle field. A child cannot envision a battlefield from nothing. Most don't even know what those are. The only reason I would at that age is the field trips to 1812 re-enactment and even then, I would be hard pressed to comprehend it.
So we have a middle aged stallion taking out the fact that he cannot adequately explain the rules of his own challenge to a child, and getting angry about it. Yes the part with the desk was a bit much when a simple "Your Fired" would have worked but you need to remember something. This is "CELESTIA's SCHOOL for Gifted Unicorns" and I doubt she attaches her name to something she doesn't take part in.
Now you are the Principle of the school, and you hear rumors about a teacher trying to push his own agenda, that has nothing to do with the curriculum, and yelling at the students who do not meet his expectations, which is all of them, cause they are children. What are you going to do? In the real world most call the police to escort said teacher off the school grounds, and that is if they do not personally give them the boot. What was done to him was rather expected.