The Conclusion of Serious Business Calls for Tea
"This tea is particularly excellent," says Twilight, sipping slowly. They are on a palace balcony on a warm, sunny afternoon. Birds are chirping in the gardens below, and no hint of the bustle of Canterlot reaches where the palace perches high up the slope of the Canterhorn. Everything is still and calm.
Celestia smiles. "I think I've got a fairly good handle on your tastes after all these years."
"So, I assume you wanted to talk to me about yesterday's... incident."
"Yes. I did give you my approval at the time, but I'm afraid I need to make it clear that it was unofficial, personal approval. I understand why you did what you did, and I appreciate that you restricted yourself to merely causing property damage. Well, and one dislocated shoulder and two sprained ankles. But given the situation, I can hardly blame you for that. Alas, officially, Princess Celestia cannot approve of ponies going on destructive rampages, even given the worst possible provocations."
"I'm sorry. I take it there will be charges brought against me, then?"
Celestia sighs softly, but nods. "Yes."
Twilight inhales, then exhales. "Well, I'll do my time and consider it worth it, then."
At that the elder alicorn chuckles. "Oh no, jail time would be quite unlikely for a little minor vandalism." Twilight's eyebrows rise at the notion that the damage she had caused might be considered "minor", but Celestia continues. "Your duties make it highly disadvantageous for the crown. No, there will simply be fines and damages to be paid."
"Ah. I see." Twilight's smile is a little wry. "I guess it's a good thing that being a princess comes with a generous stipend, then. I may have to cut down on my book purchases for a while, I suppose."
"A tragic sacrifice," says Celestia, smiling back at Twilight.
There was a pause, and both alicorns sip their tea. At length Twilight says, "I suppose my reaction really was a little bit excessive."
"It was understandable. Academic misconduct is a serious issue. Add that to the fact that this particular instance affected you in a very personal way, and I can see why you reacted as you did. I also am very proud of you for maintaining the self control to not actually harm anypony, and to keep the fire confined to your specific target. I can recall several instances of losing my temper in the distant past that were rather more destructive. And you don't want to know what happened the first time Luna really lost it post-ascension."
"Oh dear. Well, I feel a little better about that. I'm still disappointed, though. I've revolutionized harmonic magic, and nopony has noticed!"
Celestia chuckles warmly. "Oh, I wouldn't say nopony. In fact there's another reason I asked you here to today." She reaches over and pulls a sheaf of papers from a cubby. "Here, have a look."
"'Meditations on the New Harmonics,'" reads Twilight, her brow faintly furrowed. Her eyes scan down the page and slowly widen. "This is..."
"A monogram on the subject of your new theories and they way they interface with my own centuries of magical experience, yes."
"I... I hardly know what to say."
"I had actually written it before your incident yesterday, but the realization that your amazing work had not yet been cited in any of the major journals prompted me to pull a few strings this morning. This will be published in the next issue of The Royal Academic Journal."
"Wow." The RAJ is incredibly prestigious, and incredibly widely read. It is less focused than Mathemagica, but as Twilight flips through the pages she realizes that Celestia has, in the process of relating Twilight's theory to her own experiences, managed to put the theory into layman's terms in an astonishingly elegant way. Even non-mathematicians might be able to grasp the basic principles. That is even better than the fact that this monogram would give her a citation in Equestria's most prestigious journal.
Twilight looks up at Celestia with shining eyes. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," says Celestia warmly, and takes another sip of her tea.
Twilight follows suit, and friendly, peaceful silence enfolds the two alicorns.
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Hm.
Well, I like it, and happen to think Harmonic Theory is fascinating, so there!
8548889
He he he. I'm pretty sure the actual math involved would be beyond me.
8548883
Seen a few times where an authors most hated work is the one most popular with people while one they pretty much put their soul in goes unappreciated.
8548936
Well, nobody starts out to make a work they're going to hate! But when something you think isn't your best does better than the ones you love, you do kinda start hating it sometimes.
This is the best short story I have read so far. (I didn't know if it classified as a one shot or not.
)
8549125
(And thank you!)
It probably is a one shot, yes.
8549282
I debated a lot about putting "comedy" on it. It doesn't really have any jokes. Nothing exactly funny happens, as such? So I ended up not, but I don't know, maybe I should.
Edit: two people have said this now, so what the heck, I guess I will.
8548936
I've seen it less as "most hated" and more as "lower effort" work that they are annoyed gets more attention.
8549292
Twilight losing her shit tends to be funny, whether intended as such or not.
Yeah, that captured the feeling of magnus opus dissonance all too well. Ours is a strange and fickle audience. A most enjoyable rampage; thank you for it.
8549613
You're welcome. I'm glad it's resonating for people.
Aw, I liked that ending. :3
8549853
Huzzah!
And so we see the biggest issue with academic publishing. The contents are mostly meaningless, the important things are connections.
Neat.
8550164
Which is another way of saying that friendship is magic.
8550186
Oh SNAP!
Sorry, had to.
When doing research I've found papers that seemed to be about my topic, but upon reading were so dense with jargon and statistics only the abstract and conclusion were understandable to me. I imagine Twi writes like that.
This was a fun little story, good job!
I wonder what Twilight's Erdos number is. Or whatever equestrian equivalent it would be.
8548947
Personal experience?
*WolfishLOL* "For want of a citation, the publisher was Toasted"
*Couldn't resist the pun, sorry*
8551324
Oh you have NO IDEA what it can be like to read even a "Simple" academic journal article, much less some of the ones written that are more complex. Unfortunately these articles are written BY professionals FOR professionals all too often. Which means even Undergrad students can have problems trying to understand them! It's like "There's a decent chance students could be reading your article, you think you could try to make it easier to understand? No? Damn"
8551324
You could say that...
8551372
THIS STORY OFFENDS ME BY TREATING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS DIFFERENTLY THAN I WOULD, THEREFORE IT IS BAD AND YOU ARE BAD *downvote*!!1
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Seriously though, this was fun!
Drats. I was hoping Twilight's Vandalism was indeed state sponsered. Oh well, I guess Celestia isn't one to abuse her power. Well, ignoring all the other crimes that went unpunished after a brief reformation of the culprit.
8552657
Well not one to abuse her power outside of cake related endeavors, or trolling the G3.
8552653
It's NOT just Non-Scientific Publications that the problem. Even the Scientific ones have become more focused on "Non-Biased Double Checks" OVER "First Time Publication of Biased Results". Getting positive results just sells better, even in the Scientific World to some degree, than a general "Previous Study Proven to be Untrue!". I think part of it is because when getting Funding for Research you can legit say "Oh my Research was published", WITHOUT having to add in "But my Research was Proven False". Even if it IS mentioned I'd say that carries less weight than "Hey look at least my Research was awesome enough to get published, even if it was later disproven!". Partly because I imagine those associated with such research get a nice boost as well.
8552657
He hehe. I'm sorry to disappoint you.
8552959
Very true. There is also the pressure to publish multiple, diminished pieces because your career success is usually measured in "how many times have you been published?" What I was saying is that all of this nonsense exists as a bid for more funding, support, wages or what have you, and the people typically making the decisions on those things wouldn't value refutation or repeat experiments as much as flashy new claims.
8553072
That I can completely agree with. It's a sad state of affairs when even the Scientific Community is Valuing Quantity OVER Quality. It's also why I have started to be a lot more skeptical when people say they find things from an article. Both because often times the reporting is done burrying the real meat of the article far down below, and because it may not even be accurate. I've found reports of research stuff that was outright false, by neglecting to mention the conclusion.
As an academic I rather think Twilight's reaction is reasonable. Refutations are one thing, deliberately mis-citing is ANOTHER THING.
8553072
smbc-comics.com/comics/20090831.gif
Funny enough, the author citing Twilight didn't actually commit academic misconduct, he just badly miscalculated his equations and wasn't smart enough to notice.
Actually, the only academic misconduct I can see is Celestia pulling strings to get her article published.
8554385
The author is debatable. A certain level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
What's not so debatable is the misbehavior of the journal, who published the article in question without any sort of peer review or even editorial oversight.
And a certain amount of nepotism is a rather traditional perk of being the royalty in question, when there's a Royal Journal of Something.
8554412
True enough, there's a reason the Canterlot archives aren't subscribing to those clowns.
About her "everything is fine"-mantra:
8555104
True enough. Still though, good story.
Shouldn't this be past-tense? If so, you're telling the story (in this chapter) as if it is present-tense when it should be past-tense.
Loved it. At long last, a story where one princess or another doesn't just cope with the shit the subjects throw at her. So many authors either completely forget or purposefully avoid the princesses pulling rank while in many cases it's perfectly appropriate.
In so many cases they need to jump through so many hoops as the subject abuses some law, regulation or freedom - while the correct course of action is to go Judge Dredd on their asses.
As a historian I have most definitely never fantasized about responding to academic misconduct in Twilight's manner. Most definitely not been infuriated to the point of arson by History being bastardized by hacks. Most definitely never never had to restrain myself from taking a road trip with a sword for company to visit said hacks. *awkwardly shoves the remains of a shredded punching bag into the trash and puts away arming sword* Most definitely can't relate to Twilight here.
In all seriousness though, very well written. I've dealt with academia for a long time and have a professional interest in seeing proper respect being done to theses and their writers, and to academic integrity in general. It's always painful to see how often that integrity is mislaid. This story genuinely does hit rather close to home and I got a kick out of it.
Yeeh, and a sweet happy ending, just the icing on the cake.
Huh. Maybe I'm just in a weird mood today, because normally I love "alicorns going crazy" stuff, but I wasn't able to find this funny. Maybe because this has to do with freedom of speech? The funny bone is an ambivalent thing.
9345240
The right to free speech and the right to be published in peer reviewed literature are not related things, just fyi.
9345373
The issue isn't whether or not they are published in peer-reviewed literature, but having one's offices destroyed by a ruler because of something you've printed, just because she has the power to do so. Like I said, I usually find unhinged Twilight very funny, but not this particular fic. It's well-written though!
This was a really gratifying story to read after submitting my camera-ready manuscript for my first-ever Real Publication.
Awww, I love a good happy ending!
I love this, especially the ending.