Parma Quentaron Sintë Undómëo

by Undome Tinwe

Rubber Ducking (RariTwi... something)

Author's Note:

Okay, so a bit of context on this one.

I've been struggling with my thesis for a little while, because my research for the past few years has been a little bit all over the place, and I couldn't find a way to unite it all. In particular, I've been stalled on my thesis proposal for way too long. Normally, I'd talk to people in my lab and try to figure it out, but with the pandemic, that hasn't been possible, so I decided to rubber duck instead -- that is, explain my problem "out loud" to something inanimate (traditionally a rubber duck) in hopes of sorting out my thoughts and figuring out something.

Then I had a better idea. Instead of just writing out or explaining my problem, I could write Twilight explaining my thesis to Rarity and have the two of them act out my thought process as I tried to get a handle on the central theme for my thesis.

What you see below is a result of this process. I've replaced a lot of math/comp sci terms with magicbabble, but the core concepts are there, just obscured enough that it's unlikely anyone will be able to track me down using this information. I have absolutely no idea if it's even intelligible without the context, but I had a lot of fun writing it, and I figured someone might get a kick out of knowing that something like this exists.

"Darling, you've been staring at that scroll for over an hour now, and I've yet to see you write a single word."

Twilight set down her quill, which had long since dried up. "I just don't know how to start this." She groaned. "Or finish it. Or write anything in the middle. Well, I know some of the middle, I guess, but I don't know how to join it together."

"Oh?" Rarity finished up the last of her stitching so that she could turn her full attention to her marefriend. "This is for your thesis, yes?"

"Yeah." Twilight sighed. "I've already done most of the work, but I just, I don't know how to connect it all together? I jumped around between a few different topics, and now I have to weave them all together into some kind of coherent narrative that didn't really exist in the first place."

"Well, I do have some experience with weaving, and I like to think I'm a wonderful storyteller as well." Standing up, Rarity trotted over to Twilight and sat down beside her. "Perhaps I can help?"

"Sure, why not?" On instinct, Twilight snuggled closer to her, pressing their bodies together softly. "Maybe an external perspective is what I need to figure this out."

"That's often the case, I find," Rarity said. "So, tell me, what are these pieces?"

"Well, the first one is the work I did in combining multiple spell matrices together," Twilight's horn flashed as the quill lifted, drawing out a quick diagram. "The point was to be able form a novel spell in a short amount of time by passing existing spells through an intent filter and combining them in order to achieve the desired effect. You can modify a single spell, of course." At this, the quill circled one of the example spell matrices. "But if you don't have a lot of time, it's hard to properly squeeze out everything you need from, and it's easier to do a shallow pass over multiple spells as long as you only pull out what you need from it."

There was a moment of silence as Rarity studied the diagram. "So you used this spell matrix in order to align the target intent with the source spells, then passed it through this component in order to combine them?"

Twilight nodded. "The novelty was in both this setup as well as the spell matrix that I used for extraction. It's fast and easy to conjure, which is good because of the cost of filtering through multiple spells, which is really hard to do, so you don't want to add extra mental cost if you can help it."

"I see." Rarity stared at the diagram for a bit longer before saying, "And the next piece of the puzzle?"

"Well, after this, I got into spellcasting with parity constraints." The quill began moving again. "The first problem is that no one really has a good handle on what parity even is? Beyond the fact that the actual list of magical quantities you want to have the parity property seems to keep changing with our understanding of parity casting, parity itself has multiple definitions, and most works seem to focus entirely on maintaining parity for single-cast spells, rather than partially-channelled or even fully-channelled spells."

"That sounds like a mess," Rarity said. "Though, much of magic often is, yes? A patchwork of methods created for specific reasons, with little consideration to a larger vision."

Twilight nodded. "Yup, and since we can't figure out this vision yet, I wanted to create something that was at least adaptable to all the known variations of parity. And it turns out that the previous extraction matrix could also be used to both filter a spell to preserve intent while at the same time penalizing deviations from parity. All I had to do was invert the matrix for the second part."

The quill flew across the page, writing a series of complex equations that Rarity couldn't process. Still, the core idea seemed clear enough. "So in the first case, you were filtering by the intent of the target spell, and in the second case, you were filtering according to parity." She channelled her own magic and picked up Twilight's quill, their magic auras brushing against each other and sending warmth down Rarity's spine. "It seems to me like this three-way structure is preserved in both cases."

She sketched out a skeleton of the two spell matrices Twilight had drawn previously, showing that the second was but the first with an inverted term for the external guide. "Either way," Rarity continued after finishing the diagram, "it seems like you're creating a spell using guidance from another spell."

"Huh, I guess I never thought about it like that." Twilight smiled at Rarity. "You're really good at this!"

"I do try to pay attention when you speak, dear." Rarity leaned in to press a quick kiss against her muzzle. "Your passion is quite enticing. So, with these two pieces connected, what comes next?"

"Well, this is where it gets a little awkward, because we're back to single spell-casting for now, anyways." Twilight drew a much simpler diagram on the scroll this time. "This time, it's about casting spells in an unstable environment. See, if I'm going to be casting spells that would be dangerous if cast wrong, I need a way to figure out if I've formed the matrix improperly before I release it. I can add a filter to any matrix to do a check, but only if I know what to check for.

"The standard way is to just simulate the casting and see if anything wrong happens during it, but we know that simulations aren't guaranteed to reflect what will actually happen." A knowing smirk crossed Twilight's expression that thrilled Rarity. "Unless, of course, we mould the core spell matrix so that it produces good simulations."

"So you use feedback from the simulation to force the spell matrix into place?" Rarity asked, trying to puzzle out the equations that Twilight was writing.

"Exactly!" Twilight beamed. "With the right choice of simulation, we can ensure that the spell matrix we produce will behave the same in the simulated environment and the real one." Her smile fell. "But this is also really different from the previous work I've done, other than the fact that I use the same extraction matrix to mould the spell itself."

"Well, it seems to me that you've already found your second spell, then," Rarity said. When Twilight stared at her blankly, she clarified. "The simulation, dear. Is that not its own spell?"

"Oh!" Realization lit up Twilight's eyes like fireworks. "Of course! All of these are examples of using one type of spell to extract information about another! That's perfect! Thanks, Rarity — I couldn't have done this without you." She reached out to hug Rarity, who returned the gesture with equal affection.

"It's my pleasure," she replied, sinking herself into her beloved's embrace. "I'm here for you, Twilight, whatever you may need."

"In that case..." A sheepish expression crossed her face. "Would you mind grabbing another inkwell from the storage? I think this one mostly dried out while I was thinking."

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

A brilliant form of rubber-ducking. I may need to borrow the method myself.

[SigmasonicX]

This was a pretty nice conversation, even if it took some effort to follow.

[Bicyclette]

I definitely got a kick out of knowing something like this exists, thank you.