All the castle staff of Canterlot know that when seven-year-old Twilight Sparkle has a problem, the correct answer is always "Let Celestia handle it." But this time? Celestia's student has come up with a theory that she wasn't quite expecting.
Yeah, this needs fixing.
Just a short little something that hit me out of the blue and demanded to be written. Not my usual cup of tea; criticism welcome.
This is absolutely adorable, and exactly what you should read if you're looking for something sweet and cute that won't test your brain or stomach, but will test your smile muscles.
—Louder Yay
Check Ichabod Creep's Audio Reading!
Special thanks to Super Trampoline for pre-reading!
Cover art used with permission from mysticalpha.
Chapters (1)
So, Twilight. You like books, and the only way to get books to keep is to buy them, right? And to buy a book, you need... money, correct. So if Friendship = Money2 and you have friendship, you can turn the money into books (Money = Books), and you have Friendship = Books2, right? And since books can't be evil, it only makes sense to turn as much of that evil money into books as possible, so it won't rub off on you.
And then you can make your own book fort with your own books and invite your friends over to play.
This is actually not that bad. I noticed a few minor grammar error but that's about it.
Cute! I liked how you captured the speech errors of Twilight.
One word: ye.
Hilarious. That is all.
Cute and also a bit sad too. I too worried about young Twilight's mindset given how she came up with this equation.
... I worried for all of 3 seconds, then I remembered she is the epitome of Friendship... and thus by filly Twi's equation would mean that grownup Twilight is the greatest evil of them all! Bwahahaha!!!
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Also, this is TOTALLY your fault I am here.
You had me at 'hair loom.'
I've seen that 'equation' myself and shown it to others. As soon as she said ‘Relationships require time and money’ I knew exactly where it was going. Nice way to integrate it into a story!
This was super cute and completely hilarious! Great work!
It's wonderful, but even the "correct" quote is still wrong: Love of power is the root of all evil. Money just happens to be a really convenient way to get power.
Which, you know, is kind of off-topic and all.
I still think it's wonderful, so there!
apply this to the thought that harmony in the way celestia tries to implement it, is tyranny.
Something squared is also lack of that same thing squared. I can't wait for the sequel when twilight learns how to square negative numbers.
Well now we know why Starlight Glimmer thought that Cutie Marks where evil, unicorn foals suck at math and apply the wrong principles everywhere. Heck it is also what probably did in Sunset Shimmer as well!
I found a problem.
Time and Money = Time + Money
Time and Money =/= Time*Money
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I mean, to be fair, she is seven.
Also this story is ridiculously cute.
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In boolean algebra the word 'and' is actually multiplication ( 1 * 1 = 1 | 1 * 0 = 0 | 0 * 1 = 0 | 0 * 0 = 0 ). "Or" is addition. So she was using 'and' in the logical sense instead of the algebraic sense.
If Friendship= Evil , mean that Knowledge = Power and Power = Evil so it would seem Friendship = Knowledge.It that were true so that mean I didn't waste my time with friendship then.Huraah XD.
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Study hard, be evil.
Knowledge is power, power corrupts, corruption is a crime, and crime doesn't pay. Twilight, if you keep reading, you'll go broke!
Oh Twilight, you would come up with that in a library. It reads like The Discworld's L-Space formula,
QED, large numbers of books distort space and time, thus a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
Friendship = Money2 | Money = √(Evil)
Friendship = √(Evil)2 | Evil < 0
Friendship = (i√(-Evil))2
Friendship = i2√(-Evil)2 | √(x)2 = x, x >= 0
Friendship = i2(-Evil) | i2 = -1
Friendship = Evil
"Well..." Twilight wrinkled her muzzle. "I kind of already told Mr. Darkseid."
In any case, an adorable moment with a wonderfully precocious Twilight. Thank you for it.
I saw where Twilight was going when we got to "money squared" and I was like "clever girl..." (I'd not seen the "equation" before, so it was new to me.) The mis-attribution of the "love of money" quote also makes a lot of sense for young Twilight... And further, you can see how this incident might lead her to always being pedantic about getting her quotations right!
Nicely done.
The discovery of the century... Too bad Celestia ignored it.
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Do be careful going down that path: That way leads to dividing by zero, WHICH SHE WILL FIND A WAY TO DO! Thus creating a Negative Space Wedgie, undoing all of creation. Discord would be so proud!
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Pocket dimensions, dude.
The joy of emotionally naiive, socially immature, self-confident overthinkers. Known more than a few.
A couple of corrections:
Ignroing the drool
Ignoring
Crossing her arms, twilight
Twilight
i.warosu.org/data/g/img/0459/19/1420343895535.png
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You can always steal them.
So it wasn't Cadence and Shining's Friendship that's evil... It's Cadence, the Princess of LOVE that's evil! :O
Plot twist :3
i.ytimg.com/vi/cONmzaT4x10/maxresdefault.jpg
That was just so cute i love it
Twilight using Insane Troll Logic? Hllarious!
So... damn... CUTE!
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The result of an even root is assumes to be positive as a matter of convention. She probably does know negative numbers, they just don't factor in.
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And here I thought you were going to claim that all that knowledge was going to make her fat.
If only there was some sort of book pacifier to keep Twilight happy and occupied before she builds a book city or something. And nice to have another reminder of the true purpose of Spike- keep Twilight in check. Its sad the dragon that's half her age is more mature than she is.
At least she didn't try to destroy the time-space continuum to try to destroy the evil that is money = time. Then again, maybe that's why she's interested in Star Swirl's time travel spells.
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But you need money to buy thief clothes in order to steal them.
This is probably why every Math major I know says proofs are fucking stupid
You can "prove" literally anything with the right "interpretation."
I do rather approve of the math pun this proof requires though
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Ponies don't usually wear clothes.
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EXACTLY.
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You don't need special clothes to steal a book. Suspicious clothing + suspicious activity + clumsy filly = higher chance of being caught.
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Twi would still do it. Because she is a clumsy filly.
Well. If it can be mathematically proven, it must be right!
And this is the filly you're relying upon to reactivate the Elements of Harmony and free Luna, Celestia? As far as I can tell, you need friendship for the Elements to work; if you cannot manage to make Twilight see friendship is good, then the Elements will remain useless rocks, and Nightmare Moon will be all set to defeat you - along with Discord and Sombra, and possibly Chrysalis.
Tirek, however, would still remain trapped in Tartarus, because it was adult-Twilight's usage of a time-travel spell that had Cerberus stop guarding the entrance. With no usage of the time-travel spell, there would be no opportunity for the mutated minotaur to escape. Hurray for you, Celestia - you'd either be banished to the Sun, made into a toy for Chao's enjoyment, or made into a slave. But hey, at least your magic didn't get drained!
So...an astronomy book? Biographies about Celestia and Luna?
Doubt it's the second one; Celestia's done her best to turn Nightmare into a mere legend, and Luna with her.
Why is this marked as complete? The conflict just started!
I didn't know what a harlequin romance was, so I looked it up on TV Tropes and wound up going for a Wiki Walk. I have probably 20-something TV Tropes tabs open right now, and I don't know when I'll stop reading.
Relationship = Time x Money
Relationship = Friendship
Friendship = Time x Money
Money = Time
Friendship = Time x Time
Friendship = Time2
Time = Energy = Person
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Friendship = Person2
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My version might make too many assumptions.
That was remarkably cute and still very much a believable situation for Twilight and Celestia.
Well done. Well done, indeed.
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Actually, no. Cerberus showed up independently on Twilight going back in time. Twilight was responsible for taking Cerberus BACK to Tartarus. We are never told why or how Cerberus left in the first place. He just.... did.