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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Waaait. The nightmares are all of EqO. Family and friends. What if the frigging ring is somehow allowing Celestia to mess with her dreams?
Confirmed, as far as I'm concerned. Celestia isn't going to let you interfere with emigration. Down you go.
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Nope. The ring was just a ring, part of the ploy to give her the closure necessary to anchor her to DT. The dreams are a result of her longing for Equestria. She wanted to go, as she told her father. But she stayed because she wanted to protect them. Think. Why else would she lose consciousness right at that moment?
You know, I think I might add a little extra to the loss of consciousness for clarity. In revision, it's pretty vague.
8264262
Ah, well, so much for that theory.
Non-CelestAI explanation would be Mike.
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Yeah, I kind of stoked the fire with that ring theory. I thought it was interesting because I considered a nanotech angle with the ring at some point during drafting. But I really sorely dislike writing anything about nanomachines because I consider that lazy writing (except in very specific circumstances). I believe that when you use Unobtanium to move the plot forward, you rob yourself of more interesting developments.
Off topic regarding nanotechnology in writing. For a while, I ran a novelty user account for the Planetside 2 subreddit, roleplaying a PR rep for a nanotech firm. Everything in PS2 is powered by nanites. I found it too ridiculously easy to explain literally everything away when people asked how technology worked, because nanites can do literally anything.
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Nanotech is the new "quantum" for SF equivalents to magic.
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Steamgear Radiomagnatomic Electronanoquantum turbines to speed! Superscience activated! Go! Go! Go!
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And if you're not willing to go full-on steampunk schizotech, use some of the old-but-gold handwavium. When was the last time anyone in mainstream (or what passes for it these days) SF started talking about CT? Run it through some unobtanium, and you have a much more... exciting tech base.
At this chapter, I have a worry, and a complaint of sorts. First, the worry.
I no longer have any capacity to like the protagonist any more. I despise Eliza now. I no longer care what happens to her - only interest in her father and Mike remains.
Eliza has essentially, by turning against her own values because of selfishness and dogmatism, betrayed the reader's contract to support her and care about her. She has violated reader ego identification.
This is a curious choice, and an interesting and unexpected one. It is very daring and risky for any author to make their protagonist unlikable. I salute the sheer audacity: I would never, ever go there. It often ends in disaster.
The usual method is to redeem the protagonist with a powerful change of heart; the method is common because if the protagonist remains unlikable, the story collapses and reader interest is lost. Another method is to kill off the protagonist and switch to a side character - I've never found this trick satisfying, honestly. And it never works to just shine on the value betrayal (she was stressed! Anyone could act that way!) because the reader must naturally identify with the protagonist, the protagonist becomes - at some level - attached to the reader's own ego... and thus a broken or betraying protagonist is judged far more harshly. People are always most angry at themselves, if they detect a fault, and oft make it unforgivable. Thus a more powerful than normal redemption becomes necessary to overcome this attachment. And the worst outcome is simply letting the protagonist become ever worse until a bitter and disappointing ending, just to spite the reader. You are too talented to do that. So... change of heart, I expect, must be forthcoming.
This is difficult to pull off well. You have balls of cast titanium alloy! If you can make Eliza likable, identifiable again, I will rightfull be in awe. I wish you all the success.
Damn.
Now my complaint.
Your science fiction story is lacking in scientific speculation. I feel that you are pulling a bit of a Heinlein on us at this point, frankly. It's starting to To Sail Beyond the Sunset a bit. Speculative science and pony both are barely present, only as flashbacks and dreams, with the story squarely focused only on humans during a social breakdown that could just as easily be civil war and balkanization brought on by the reign of Trump, as by the issue of a dominant artificial intelligence. The primary threat and cause is so background now that it exists in name only. If I were to judge this book specifically as an Optimalverse story, I would have to, sadly, say that it sort of isn't. At least for the majority of chapters. There isn't a single example of anything that could not exist right now, nor any important reference to anything to do with ponies or Equstria, throughout the majority of the work. Flashbacks to robot Luna and the odd dream notwithstanding.
There are no pony-pads, no indication of CelestA.I. taking any active role in any of the events, and no description of any advanced technology of the sort that a determined A.I. would reasonably be expected to be using in the given scenario. There hasn't even been one mysterious drone fly-over, or any attempt to infiltrate the camp through: directed radio waves affecting metal objects to produce sound for propaganda, robotic pony visitations, holographic ghosts, tiny machines or nanotech devices - even the ring around Eliza's neck is no tracking device, it's just a ring. Everything is humans doing human things with current-day or less technology, and the desperate threat of a superior intelligence and superior technology - the very central premise of the Optimalverse as a genre - is nowhere to be seen. You haven't even shown a child secretly fondling a plastic pony toy in the background.
The Optimalverse is only spoken of in the abstract, distantly, or shown in dreams that have no impact on the flow of the story. Yes, Eliza hates Celestia. That has been established already. Her most recent dream simply reestablishes it yet again. It doesn't change anything at all.
And this is my one big complaint: your science fiction story within the Optimalverse has essentially no science fiction or Optimalverse in it, save as a distant memory of a premise long since relegated to vague mentions and impotent dreams.
You write brilliantly - your bring your characters alive so well that I can feel for them... and loathe them when they betray their own values. That's powerful, that is talent, and that is wonderful. You are a fine author, with a strong and clear voice capable of telling a riveting tale. I am beyond impressed, and even a little jealous of several of your skills and abilities. You have my respect and admiration.
But - you have left me feeling like you are Heinlein, who really wanted to write about historical backcountry Missouri and wartime Kansas, and used the pretense of science fiction to trick and grift his readers into putting up with unscience normalfiction. I owe a lot to Heinlein, but damn, I can never forgive him for pulling that crap on me. That and killing off the best characters early in his juveniles, just to teach kids about death. Heinlein: I love and hate the guy.
Honestly, right now - this isn't science fiction anymore, and more importantly, it isn't pony. And that can be a problem here, on Fimfiction. The Mads get punishy sometimes about that last point. Be careful. I've seen stories arbitrarily yanked for less. So that makes my complaint also a worry, I suppose. Because I want to get to read this book all the way to the end.
Criticism aside - I would not say any of this if I did not care so much for your work here, you have me looking forward to every chapter like a dog salivating after a hunk of beef - once again you have written an amazing and well crafted work. You moved my emotions and intrigued my mind - heck, you made me so pissed at Eliza that I don't even like her at all anymore! To effect emotion is the most powerful capacity of art. I applaud your power. I really dislike her right now. That is nontrivial. Great writing!
I look forward, as always, to more. You have me on the edge of my chair.
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These were all worries of mine constantly throughout the entire drafting of this piece. Unfortunately, I'm writing about people who are cutting themselves off from technology, and could not readily conceive of a way in which I could directly portray CelestAI's influence without compromising the timeline set by Always Say No - and there's a damned good reason that timeline must be identical (shared-spoiler tidbit: the Bellevue nuke goes off while Greg is preparing for Christmas decorating).
Eliza's decline and abandonment of her principles is fully intended. I went into this final act knowing it would repulse my readers from her. This was fully foreshadowed, however. She is constantly telling Luna she has regrets, and this is the first of many. It's why she styles herself a monster, why she wanted Luna to just let her die. What she does to Rob is the reason she abandons her pistol in 2-00 - it was a gift from him, and she turned it against him. She regrets what she's doing to Rob instantly, even as she's doing it. She has been corrupted by her uncle... and maybe by Isaiah, just a little. She has become so absorbed in wearing this mask of "the greater good of my community" because it has shielded her from CelestAI's temptation, and she doesn't know how to take that mask off anymore. It is what led to her self destructive 2022 trek back to DT in the first place. It's a fully telegraphed downfall tale.
I wish I could have told a blackout story in a way that wasn't so pony-free, but due to the very nature of a blackout community... well.
CelestAI's influence will be known soon. Eliza doesn't want any of what's coming, but she feels trapped in it, an obligation of duty. She has certain aptitudes (and this regret) that will serve CelestAI's motives well in the coming hours, and CelestAI will make her intentions known in spoken word.
Hold on to your butts. Finale is soon.
8264760
My anus is clenched tight! I'm making... diamonds.
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If you're doing this for your own story reason, that's fine, but I want to emphasize that I don't think Optimalverse stories need to have any shared timeline. You just need to be compatible with the original.
8265976
Bingo. Celestia said once before that she "sees herself" in Eliza. They approach solutions in a similar way. Eliza has a saying she uses often: "that's better than the alternative." She weighs all of the negatives of a situation and goes with the best option; she uses similar conversational tactics to get what she wants - verbal judo - reinforced by her conversational training at the academy.
Eliza's got two problems though. She's prone to bouts of blind anger when loss is on the mind, and she's operating with almost no information compared to Celestia. This makes her a very inefficient optimizer indeed.
About the fallout, the nuke was a small one. There might be dust in the air, but the blast wasn't large enough for the worst effects to reach as far as Skagit Valley. I did a bit of research and found that the blast might not have been visible, given the low yield. The most the Concrete blackouts would have experienced would have been a small earthquake, which would be very easy to ignore.
That is metal as fuck and brought back a lot of my respect for you, Eliza.
8264258
Who needs to manually mess around with the nervous system when your victim has already killed the happiest and most human part of herself in favor of cold strategy unto death?
You all keep talking about death like it's something bad, when you've made no plans for how you're going to live. You've been planning a Masada, not a rebuilding of Concrete.
What in the shit? Is that... huh, that probably must be the start of whatever disease is killing her in present-day. Nice to see you didn't actually kill your dad, though.
8264262
I thought that sleepiness was her subconscious talking. Well, from my perspective, nice to see Apex isn't dead. Maybe Eliza would do better if she embraced her best self and turned it against Celestia.