Part 3: Geologic
Let me tell you a bit about what happened during those millions of years. Let’s start at the beginning, from where we left off.
Starlight lived, and then died.
More time passed. Then the last creature to ever have met Starlight or any of her friends died.
More time passed. Then the last creature who could read Ponish died, and with them the last creature who could have read the last copies of the longest-surviving document about the lives and exploits of Starlight and her friends, though said copies had lost the hoof-drawn pictures or the golden alicorn motif on the front cover of the original book a long time ago. That was all theoretical, anyway. Starlight’s name had died long before that point when said copies were lost in a botched archive transfer done by a civilization that itself had lived and then died.
More time passed. Then the ponies all died out. But not just them. So did the zebras and the griffons and the cats and the dragons and the hippogriffs and the donkeys and the goats and the yaks and the changelings and the dragonequui and all of the sentient species who inhabited the planet in the time period we are familiar with now. Not all at the same time, and not because of some dramatic event like an antimagic bomb exchange or the resurrection of a long-dead deity, but rather because all things die eventually, whether it be relationships or individuals or families or civilizations or entire species or, one day, life itself. Entropy finds a way.
More time passed, now over a planet completely devoid of thought and dreams. Climate cycles turned. Tectonic plates shifted. Creatures lived and grew and reproduced and died and competed and mutated and speciated and hybridized and went extinct and survived and evolved.
Then, it finally happened. Conscious life awoke on the planet once more. But unlike the first time, it was a long and clumsy process driven by the accidents of natural selection, rather than any teleological process. A certain species, not too well-adapted to the environment they found themselves in, managed to survive due to the development of tool use and complex social structures. It became advantageous for their minds to be able to simulate the future actions of the other minds in their social groups, and this iterated until there was an I to distinguish from the not-I.
The species’ development of oral language came very quickly afterward. Unusually quickly, in fact, for while the language center of the species’ brain had been atrophied away for millions of years by then due to lack of use, it was far easier to resurrect it through atavism than build it from scratch.
They have a strange evolutionary history, don’t they? The members of the species thought so as well, after they developed the empirical method, the theory of evolution, and the discipline of paleontology. Seeing how easy it was to trace the evolutionary lineage of so many of their contemporaries down through the fossil record, they tried it with their own, and were stopped cold at a point indistinguishable in the geologic timescale from the time period of now. This has led to a sort of creationism being very popular in their species, even within the ranks of their most ardent materialists. While the rest of the species on the planet could be traced back all the way down to the very first microorganisms and then the soup of chemicals they sprang from, their species was special. The only sapient life on the planet for millions of years, destined for greatness and purpose by some creator God, the details of which there was absolutely no agreement on.
The strict materialists mumble something about how the fossils of the transitional species that must exist haven’t been found because they lacked bones to fossilize or were few in number and isolated to a geological location and stratum not yet explored. Their explanations for the inconvenient fact that molecular phylogenetics implies that the genetic distances between them and the other animal species on the planet are so great that any most recent common ancestor would date back before the existence of plant life are more… speculative.
Now, you might wonder what species they did evolve from, but I could not tell you. It turns out that the creationists were right, but not in the way they would have liked. Some time from now, but no time at all in the geologic timescale, Discord created their evolutionary ancestors as a prank, because He thought it would be “ironic”. But both the Chaos God and the species the joke was originally on have been long gone by this point in the story.
Speaking of the story. We are focusing on one member of this species in particular. This creature’s species has a sexual dimorphism far more severe than ponies do. So she would be very upset if we ever called her by anything other than the female pronoun. But hey, at least our language has the option of gendered pronouns. She’ll just have to get over the fact that it doesn’t have obligate gender markers as well, though she probably wouldn’t approve.
(Of course, not just any obligate gender marker system would do. Female for K-selectors, abstract concepts, and thinking entities otherwise without gender. Male for r-selectors, inanimate objects, and non-thinking entities otherwise without gender. Naturally. How else would it be?)
So anyway, she. Similar enough to us to be able to talk about eyes and sight and ears and hearing, since those abilities are so useful they evolved in her species as well, independently of how they did in ours. So did her equivalent of a voicebox, though again, independently, which means that attempting to transcribe the sounds that make up her name in an alphabet meant to represent the sounds made by a pony voicebox would be very silly.
So let’s just call her Grasping Hand, and let’s call the one next to her Moving Finger, since that is what we would get if we translated the meanings of their names literally into our tongue. Their mindset is similar enough to ours that we could say that they are “adults” with “jobs” and “apartments” and the idea you get wouldn’t be too far off from how they see it. We could even describe their relationship with each other: “friends” and “coworkers”. At the archives of a “natural history museum”, specifically, though that one translates a little less cleanly. “Budget cuts”, however, translates more perfectly than any of the other terms I’ve put in quotes here so far.
“Really, Graspy?” sighed Moving Finger, though instead of exhaling air like us she expressed the emotion by snapping her third and fourth fingers repeatedly. “You’ve been staring at that thing all week!” She had dreaded seeing the now all-too-familiar image of two pony fossils as found in their original configuration, side by side.
“Yeah…” Grasping Hand agreed, not taking her eyes off the screen. “But not all week…”
“Are you thinking of changing specialties?” Moving Finger asked rhetorically, knowing it takes more than a week of staring at pony fossils to make one an equinologist.
“Oh, no. I like my dragons.” The dracologist still didn’t turn to face her friend. “Hey, did you know our species might have been contemporaries after all? Recent paper with new evidence that the permineralization rate of dragon bones varied more greatly than previously thought due to their original material makeup.”
Moving Finger didn’t want to bring up their perennial argument about how everyone who wasn’t a dracologist had already accepted that explanation of the Draconic Paradox long ago, due to the indirect evidence all pointing towards the same thing. No, it was her friend’s sudden obsession with her species that she wanted to get to the bottom of.
“Look, I just…” Moving Finger sighed again. “At first you were really into this whole ‘interdisciplinary’ thing and I really liked talking to you so much about my ponies, but ever since you saw this in the archives… It’s like you’re less interested in the cool science and more in just this one thing in particular? I mean, I love ponies but I don’t think I’ve ever studied any single fossil this hard. I mean, maybe ‘study’ is the wrong word for you, but—”
“Yeah, it’s the wrong word.” Grasping Hand admitted. “I’m just looking at it. I just… I can’t describe it. It’s just this feeling I get. Like they might have known each other. Something about that.”
“Well, yeah, we sometimes do get pony fossils that are entangled with one another in a way that might indicate they died together…” Moving Finger said. “But the geometry here doesn’t show that. They could have been contemporaries, they could have died millennia apart from each other. They’re just next to each other, is all.”
“Yeah, but…” Grasping Hand sighed. “The one on the right. It almost looks like she’s reaching out towards the one on the left.”
“The unicorna?” Moving Finger corrected, cringing at the unscientific tone of ‘the one on the right’. The horn core jutting out from the center of its skull was a perfect specimen. “I mean, I guess. But again, the outstretched foreleg doesn’t even break the plane of the body of the terra. Completely consistent with the terra and the unicorna just dying separately and their bodies ending up next to each other.”
The terra, of course, was distinguished from the unicorna by its lack of horn core. It was distinguished from the pegasa by its lack of a third pair of spindly limbs used to, according to competing theories, provide an ornamental decoration to attract mates or a way to feel the ground as it walked.
“I mean… they didn’t have to die at the same time to have known each other. Like… like…” Grasping Hand sounded nervous, dreading admitting her real thoughts. “Like, what if they were pair-bonded? The terra died first, and the unicorna made sure to die next to the terra’s body, or be buried there. Or—”
Moving Finger could not help but burst out into laughter, though her species’ version of laughter was spontaneously and uncontrollably clapping their hands.
“Sorry, I— Wow. That…” The equinologist struggled to form the words. “I’m sorry. Okay, first of all, that’s a hell of a strong pair-bond! Secondly, as an expert, there are just so many reasons that doesn’t make sense that I…”
“Honestly, I’d like to hear them.” Grasping Hand reassured, hoping to be convinced.
“Okay, first,” Moving Finger began, rubbing her hands in a way that meant excitement. “There’s this misconception non-equinologists tend to have that since the pony species’ anatomies are so similar, that they are actually subspecies and can interbreed with each other. But if that were true, well, out of the sheer number of unicorna, terra, and pegasa fossils that we have, we would have found at least one that was a hybrid of some sort. And that’s assuming said hybrids were infertile, which is the weak form of the hypothesis. In the strong form, we wouldn’t have distinct subspecies but rather a continuum, considering just how equally distributed both geographically and numerically the three varieties are. But we haven’t found a single hybrid. That implies a genetic distance great enough to prevent interbreeding, making them distinct species. And all this!”
Moving Finger waved her hands to indicate the room they were in, or maybe the entire museum, or maybe the city or civilization that the museum was located in general.
“Culture. There’s distance enough within our own blessed species to make friendship and understanding difficult. Between members of different species, with the difference in brain functions that would imply? It might make even communication impossible! An actual friendship, like the one we share? Unlikely. And pair-bonding! Hah!“
“But there’s evidence.” Grasping Hand said. “Entangled fossils, like you said. Between members of different pony species. That indicate they lived together, or at least died together. And we have no idea how their psychology worked. Even if they couldn’t interbreed, there could have been cultural convergent evolution, since their societies clearly interacted with each other. Or, maybe they could interbreed but by the time they were living in proximity to each other they developed harsh societal rules against it, and the exceptions were too few in number for one to get fossilized and discovered.”
Moving Finger shrugged, which she did by turning two of her hands outward and forming a “thumbs-up” with both. She had to admit that they weren’t bad points. “I mean, sure, who knows? It really is impossible to tell at the distance of millions of years, when all we have are their bones! If it weren’t for the glass and ceramics and the population density we would have no way of knowing they had a technological civilization at all…“
“Yes, exactly!” Grasping Hand insisted. “We just don’t know. Maybe pair-bonding happened, too?”
“Well, yes, but, uh…” Moving Finger was uncomfortable. “Being a low-dimorphism species, ponies had a different definition of that than we do. They pair-bonded with their broodmales. I mean, can you imagine? Holding hands, cuddling, even having sex with something you could have a conversation with? That would be crazy!”
“Yeah, crazy…” Grasping Hand agreed unenthusiastically.
“Sorry.” Moving Finger realized her faux pas. “Like, I know we’re scientists so we should be objective and not assign moral or personal judgment in our analysis of other species’ behavior. But as far as we can tell, it worked the same way it does for their non-sapient mammalian descendants of today. Pair bonding and reproduction between the male and the female. And look.“ Moving Finger indicated the pelvises. “Both female. How would that even work?”
“The terra’s is at the lower end of the female range,” Grasping Hand um-actuallied, “and the species is low-dimorphism enough for the trait distribution curves of the two sexes to intersect.”
“Haha, wow!” exclaimed Moving Finger, genuinely impressed. “Maybe you should change specialties. But there are other markers.” She indicated them in turn. “Femur proportions. Muzzle curvature. Height. Some well within female range, some on the ambiguous end, but all within range.”
Grasping Hand shrugged. “I mean, I agree they’re both female. And I know all that about pony pair-bonding, you’re the one who’s been teaching me this stuff all week! I’m not some—”
“Some yokel who pretends pony females pair-bonded with other pony females instead of confronting the rich diversity of animal behavior in nature?” Moving Finger smirked. “Okay, sure. Maybe pair-bonding like ours happened as well even though that’s how their species’ reproduction is supposed to work. But let’s move beyond that. Both logic and what we know about low-dimorphism species would indicate pair-bonding generally happened between ponies of a similar age. And we can approximate age at death by tooth wear. Look at the terra.“
She indicated the fossil on the left.
“Relatively little wear. All teeth intact. Died in the prime of life. And look at the unicorna.”
She indicated the fossil on the right.
“Much more wear, a lot missing entirely. This one was old when she died.”
“Or she ate rocks or something?” Grasping Hand shrugged. “Or they were a May-December pair-bond. More likely if pair-bonding weren’t so strictly tied to reproduction and parenting. Or they died at separate times and made sure to be buried next to each other, like I said.”
“Okay, first of all, we have no indication that ponies ate rocks!” Moving Finger was exasperated. “That doesn’t even make any sense! If their teeth were hard enough for that, they wouldn’t need to get fossilized because they’d outlast the sediment around them!”
“That one was a joke…” Grasping Hand said flatly.
“Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry. It’s really hard to tell with you sometimes.” Moving Finger sighed. “I’m regretting ever starting this conversation. Because yes, any of those things could be true. We have no way of knowing, that’s the point. Maybe one of them ate rocks. Maybe one of them loved rocks. Maybe one of them had a rock as a pet! Maybe one of them was a time-traveling wizard!“
“Hey, rock as a pet!” Grasping Hand recognized. “That was my idea for the basalt that you shot down the last time we talked about this!“
“Yes, I picked that specifically because it was the most ridiculous one!” Moving Finger frowned, which she did by bending down all of her hands at once. “I agree, that chunk of magnesium-rich basalt is very out of place in the sedimentary stratum, and its position between the two fossils would suggest that it might be part of a pony cultural artifact, but we have no idea what the other parts of it looked like at the time. It’s very unlikely that ponies just carried chunks of basalt around by itself. It’s a very common type of rock. Maybe it was a counterweight for some machine, or one part of a decoration, or something.”
“Or a pet! Or something important, anyway.” Grasping Hand frowned. “Or maybe it meant nothing at all to them, and it’s just there by coincidence. Just like how these could just be two fossils next to each other, nothing more.“ She sighed. “You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…” Moving Finger sighed. “Like I said, you’ve been looking at this thing a lot. It doesn’t seem healthy.”
“Yeah, I know…” Grasping Hand trailed off. “Like I said, I can’t explain it. I just get this feeling. But you’re right, it probably is unhealthy.”
“Want to talk about it?” Moving Finger asked, trying to sound extra understanding.
“No.” Grasping Hand said. “I can’t even talk about it or explain it to myself. Maybe it’s the romance of it? This fossil and hundreds of others, their voices reaching out to us from millions of years in the past, to be extinguished forever due to the short-sighted budget cuts of a very stupid civilization.”
“Destructive scanning is not extinguishing their voices forever!” Moving Finger had had this argument too many times to count. “If anything, it’s amplifying them, since now anyone will be able to look at the fossils in all of their detail at any time they want. That it frees up so much in maintenance and storage costs is a bonus.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Grasping Hand sighed. She was also tired of this argument. “I know! But, I don’t know. It’s irrational. I just feel this connection, somehow. Even though I’ve never even seen the actual fossils. And if I don’t ask you to break the rules and let me look at them in person soon, I’ll never get to.”
Moving Finger winced, which she did by squeezing two of her hands into a fist real tight for a second. “Actually, the scanning schedule got moved up last week. They’ve already been digitized. Four days ago.”
“What?!” Grasping Hand’s voice was full of betrayal.
“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you for so long…” Moving Finger sounded very worried. “I’m sorry.”
“But I—” But what was Grasping Hand going to say? That her friend should have held up the process and risked her job just so she could feed her sudden and inexplicable obsession with these two long-dead ponies? If anything, this was a good thing, ripping off the baby finger all at once. All the necessary pain done and over in one moment, so that the new finger of emotional maturity and not being obsessed with ponies all of a sudden can grow in its place, or something…. This was a bad analogy.
“But look! I, uh… I got you something!” Moving Finger interrupted her thoughts, and turned around to grab a large and heavy-looking bag from behind her, audibly struggling to talk while lifting it. “I was really, really not supposed to do this, and maybe it will even be bad for you in the end to indulge you like this, but…“
She presented the object inside to Grasping Hand, who had to use all of her hands to hold it due to its size and weight. It was the chunk of magnesium-rich basalt! Her gaze switched back and forth between her screen and the object in her hands, as if to confirm.
“I… I don’t know what to say…” Grasping Hand’s voice was full of childlike wonder.
“A ‘thank you’ would be nice! But, uh…” Moving Finger looked at her friend worriedly. “I guess I can tell you’re thankful just from how you look right now.”
Completely entranced, is how Grasping Hand looked. The dracologist continued to stare at the rock in her hands, not saying a word.
“Hey, don’t you start talking to that thing now!” Moving Finger warned jokingly. At least, she herself hoped it was jokingly.
Grasping Hand took a second too long to respond. “Oh, yeah, of course! Don’t worry. I’m not crazy or anything.”
Moving Finger wasn’t so sure. She continued to watch Grasping Hand stare at the rock for a few more moments before speaking again.
“Well, uh, I have to get going, actually. There’s a rebuttal I need to write before the end of the day. Another crank got published by this pop-science mag that doesn’t know any better.”
“Another alicorna hoax?” Grasping Hand actually turned to look at her this time.
“Yeah, but at least this one managed to get the parts from the same stratum this time! So I might actually have to look at the damn thing for more than a second.”
“Hey, now who’s the one with the weird obsession?” Grasping Hand laughed. “It’s one article for a ‘fun’ magazine. Nobody’s going to actually be convinced that there was a fourth pony species that happened to have the anatomical properties of the other three. Like, how does that even make sense from an evolutionary perspective?”
Moving Finger would at this point normally go on a rant about how lacking the general public’s knowledge of evolutionary theory was and how any erosion in the integrity of scientific publications, even the less serious ones, could lead to untold troubles for their civilization down the line, but she was instead just glad to see her friend back to her old self. She smiled, waved goodbye, and went on her way.
Grasping Hand stared at the rock for a few more minutes, then turned to look at her screen again. But she found that all of a sudden, that feeling she used to get was no longer there. Now it was just two pony fossils, standing next to each other, nothing more.
(They were, of course, lying down. But Grasping Hand’s language, due to her species’ anatomy, makes no distinction between the verbs for standing and lying down, and the associations of the verb that is used would cause it to map better to our verb of “standing”. I hope you forgive this bit of latitude in translation.)
Grasping Hand took the rock back to her apartment. It was hard to find a place for such an awkwardly-sized thing, especially since she didn’t want it to draw the attention of any guest who might ask her too many questions about what she was keeping this large chunk of otherwise uninteresting rock around for, or worse, where it came from. But she felt it was important.
She would go back to look at the fossil occasionally, through the published digitized scanned copy that she could explore in every microscopic and molecular detail. But somehow seeing more of the detail made it even less magical. Or maybe that wasn’t so surprising. In any case, it soon made her stop looking at or even thinking about the fossil entirely.
Eventually, she also died, and what she had seen would die with her. Sure, the digital image of the fossil would occasionally catch the eye of some bored archivist or graduate student flicking through the catalog, but none would ever see what Grasping Hand had seen. Then the last saved copy of the image itself was lost in a botched archive transfer done by a future iteration of the museum dealing with even steeper budget cuts, and nobody would ever even have the chance to see it, ever again.
That point is where our story ends, temporally. Let’s rewind a bit. It’s not far.
That day when she learned the fossil had already been destructively scanned for days was not, in fact, the very last time she felt that feeling she had gotten.
After she had stopped thinking about the fossil so much, she still kept the rock that Moving Finger had given her because it was a symbol of their friendship; a secret of a shared misdeed. But eventually they stopped being coworkers. Then they didn’t really have much of a reason to hang out so much, so while they still considered each other good friends, they really didn’t see each other very often. But they did manage to, once in a while, when one of them was reminded of the other’s existence.
The last time they met, like all the other times, they reminisced about their days at the museum together, two decades past by that point. Like all the other times, they talked about that time Moving Finger stole that chunk of magnesium-rich basalt for Grasping Hand. Like all the other times, Moving Finger laughed with delight that Grasping Hand had kept that old thing, even after going through multiple jobs, living in multiple cities, making and ending two pair-bonds, raising four daughters, and giving birth to an unimportant number of sons.
Neither of them ever told that story to anyone else. Not because it was some deep, dark secret, but because it really wouldn’t be interesting. You just had to be there.
Thus, neither of them knew that it was the last time that story would ever be said out loud. That they would never see each other again. Not because of some dramatic event like a falling out at that last meeting, or one of them suddenly dying, but rather just because some meeting has to be the last one.
But even after that day, Grasping Hand still kept the rock. And neither on that day nor any other day had Grasping Hand ever told anybody why. They wouldn’t understand because it was ridiculous. She couldn’t tell them that when she saw the rock, she somehow knew something to be true.
Let me explain.
“Love” is a very difficult word to translate into her species’ language, since there is no one word to unify the three types of bond thought of as inviolably separate.
The first is born from the cold logic of kin selection, and even a relative romantic (by her species’ standards) like Grasping Hand could admit that the intensity of that feeling decayed in herself as the target went from daughter to sister to niece to grand-niece. But still, as a thinking species, it expands to account for adopted relatives, close bonds formed in childhood, sisters-in-arms during battle, and members of religious orders attempting to replicate those conditions. Outside of those bonds, it is considered unusually self-sacrificing and even disturbed to run into a burning building to save another.
The second is born from game theory, and runs in a continuum from well-liked acquaintances to friends to pair-bonds. Pair-bonds usually live with each other, talk to each other the most, support each other emotionally and financially, watch movies together, and read each other’s fanfiction. But fanfiction tastes change naturally over time, and if one day the pair-bond realize their commonalities are no longer strong enough, it dissolves the way it had begun: with a handshake and a move, seamlessly scaling back to that of good friendship.
The third is born from the exigencies of reproduction. Though communication between the sexes is not possible, many swear that the calming hormones released by the caresses and cuddles and the pleasure of the reproductive act itself constitutes a “language“ of its own. Of course, those who answer “broodmale” in the age-old terrible icebreaker, “who would you run out of a burning apartment with first, your pair-bond or your broodmale?”, are, though not quite shunned by society, still looked at a little funny.
Grasping Hand knew, intellectually, that the ponies not only had all three types of bond separately, but also are conjectured to have a bond that incorporated features of them all, and charged with all the meaning and poetry that any sapient being would load into a concept so important.
What Grasping Hand saw in those images was how that bond felt. Strong and important enough to make an old unicorna lay herself to rest next to a terra that had died a lifetime ago.
And that was something she could neither explain nor admit.
To call it “forbidden” in her species would not quite be accurate. “Impossible” would be a more accurate term.
So what would you call a being who wanted such a thing for herself? Something impossible to realize because the species it was meant for only existed as dead images cast in stone or as pixels on a screen?
“Lonely”, one might say.
That is why she kept the rock all those years. Because whenever she looked at it, inexplicably, it spoke to her. Not in words, but in a feeling of knowing. That the bond she wanted, and would never in her lifetime or in any other lifetime actually have, was not an abstract concept dreamed up by an intellectual exercise, but rather something that once truly existed and was real and precious and strong.
And that made her feel a little bit less alone.
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Is this uplifting or demoralizing? I actually can't tell. I'm feeling a weird, existential mixture of both.
It's sort of simultaneously saying "Look, your insignificant life will end and nobody will remember you on a long enough timeline", AND "even when you're long gone, your existence will still have been, it will have mattered to somewhere".
10581953
Geologically uplifting and demineralizing?
But yeah, this is an unusual story, to say the least. A celebration of love and friendship, as well as a study of the inevitability of death and entropy. But it works for me. (Also, it's always nice to see reminders that Maud is Pinkie's sister, and has both a sense of humor and an unusually high capability for accepting weirdness.)
Lastly, the many-limbed un-Equine future-dwellers whose ancestors were created by Discord as a prank... they exist because he wanted to bug someone, didn't he?
10581953
I like to think of it as uplifting, since hey, on a long enough timescale the heat death of the universe happens. That any meaning at all from their lives gets transmitted over such a timescale is a bonus. But yes, the weird, existential mixture was my goal, so I am glad I did my job.
10582140
I am curious, since while I have a good idea of what the paleontologists look like and how their species works, there are a lot of different ways to interpret the information I put in. Do you think they are meant to be insects? Who do you think the prank was on?
10582368
Between the apparent many hands, and them finding Boulder a fairly big chunk of rock, I got a vague idea that they might be insectoid, or maybe spider-like; much smaller than ponies in any case.
I have no idea about who Discord might have been pranking, or what, precisely, the prank involved. But the idea that he wanted to be annoying, ie. bug ponies, reinforced my vaguely insectile/arachnid idea of the future critters.
Interesting story. I almost wish the story ended after "Biographical", where the emotional beat is strongest. But that would just be indulging the fallacious need for permanence that "Geologic" certainly obliterates.
Chapter 1:
"XIIIu"
...?
Chapter 2:
"Maud said with no inflection in your voice."
"Maud said with no inflection in her voice."?
"lunaversary"
Hm, interesting. Something like a monthly anniversary, I'd guess?
"more into paper than what was on the paper was about"
...Did something go wrong with the phrasing there?
"There will be still be so much more"
"There will still be so much more"?
"A lump of formed in Starlight’s"
"A lump formed in Starlight’s"?
"will live the beset life a chunk of basalt"
"will live the best life a chunk of basalt"?
Chapter 3:
"“Oh, no. I like my dragons.” The dracologist still didn’t turn to face her friend. “Hey, did you know our species might have been contemporaries after all? Recent paper with new evidence that the permineralization rate of dragon bones varied more greatly than previously thought due to their original makeup, explaining the Draconic Paradox.”
Moving Finger didn’t want to bring up their perennial argument about how everyone who wasn’t a dracologist never really accepted their field’s standard explanation of why sapient dragon fossils dated to such a wider temporal range than the other sapient species of their time: that the dragons simply outadapted and outlasted the rest. No, it was her friend’s sudden obsession with her species that she wanted to get to the bottom of."
...I'm confused. Is that thing at the end of the second paragraph not an explanation for the Draconic Paradox? One accepted in Grasping Hand's field? If not, what is it, and what is the Draconic Paradox? If so, why is Grasping Hand in the first paragraph apparently speaking as if there isn't already an explanation for the Draconic Paradox?
"and the associations of the verb that is used would cause it to map better to our verb of “standing”"
Huh. Interesting. I tried to think on that a bit but am extremely an stressfully low on time, so didn't make much progress; I thought I'd try and comment in case there was something I was missing, or... something. Like I said, found it interesting, but having trouble being sure I'm thinking clearly about this due to unfortunately really needing to finish this chapter and get to something else.
Well, that was interesting! Thank you for writing. :)
Sorry I don't have more to say/that I'm saying here, but, uh, again, I should maybe probably have logged off FIMfiction for the waking period over an hour ago, at least, so, yeah. But thank you for writing! :D
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There's no real "right" answer here, but you did pick up that yes, they are rather smaller than our ponies, making it impractical for the souvenir to be the entire fossil. But size is a pretty common trait to change out of adaptation, so it's not necessarily an indication of the size of the evolutionary ancestor. I do want to see what other readers think about what the "ironic" part is, or how to fit in the other details I dropped in.
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Huh, that's interesting. I found Geologic's beat strongest, and that section is what I centered the whole story around. I was actually tempted to publish it as the story itself, leaving the identity of the fossils as hints to be picked up rather than anything directly stated. Also, all three sections should be obliterating permanence!
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I don't know. Geologic is well-written but it didn't... resonate with me? Part of this is fanfiction bias, I have pre-existing emotional attachments to both Glim Glam and Dr. Pie, while any emotion I have for the OCs is because of this one chapter. But I think in a larger sense, Geologic felt too... fuzzy? I don't just mean the various allusions, or the ambiguous phenotype. The message is strong, but it is sufficiently subtle that it doesn't hit as hard for me as "Biographical".
This is not to criticize Geologic; had you published it separately, I'd still have upvoted and left a nice comment. But Biographical to me is by far the strongest prose I've read from you on the site (and some of the strongest I've read of any story in a while), so the sudden shift in tone in Geologic was what was it was.
TL;DR Biographic is too good :>
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I will definitely take that high praise for Biographical! Thank you!
What you are describing actually fit my goals perfectly. I too have more emotional attachment to the feelings of stoic rock pony and discount Twilight than this species I deliberately created to have a worldview unsettling to us humans, and an origin that is literally a joke. It's supposed to serve as the falling part of the rising/falling emotional intensity scale. But I do understand a reader's desire to get off the ride at the top.
But yes, the beat is definitely fuzzy. I guess the strength for me comes more from the themes evoked by it than the immediate emotional force, and the contemplative mood that comes with the dénouement.
This sure doesn't pull any punches. Starlight died, Maud died, Grasping Hand died, all of us reading this will die. But it doesn't wallow in that. Love and friendship are still real, and can outlast the beings who experience them.
Right, I still feel like I didn't give this as much though as it deserved in my previous comment, so despite the distance (and still being somewhat low on time now), I thought I'd see if I thought of anything else to say.
This might be a bit disorganized, though...
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"But yes, the weird, existential mixture was my goal, so I am glad I did my job."
Aye, I think so. :)
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I'm afraid I'm not having many ideas about the particular details of the species and their origins you're interested in hearing reader speculation on.
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"this species I deliberately created to have a worldview unsettling to us humans"
Huh. It was supposed to be unsettling? I don't think I got much at all of that, sorry.
Some other thoughts:
I recall being rather surprised that Maud actually died in Biographical; from the title of the next chapter and, well, who it was, my leading guess for how things would go, now that she'd been warned well ahead of the degradation becoming apparent and accelerating, was "cryo"genics by means of petrification. Petrogenics? Not right away, but before her health deteriorated too much; that way, either she can be revived later when a cure is found, or she's a rock. :D
But I can see that depending on the particular versions of the characters involved, and the mechanics of petrification in this universe. I also wonder if the oracle said something that ruled it out; there's much we don't know about the specifics of what the oracle said, after all.
Was Moving Finger's name a reference to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
(Though lest I look more (or at least differently?) widely-read than I am, I only know about the quote because a GM used it in an RPG I was in.)
...Well, that's a bit more commentary, at least. :)
Also, I'm kind of surprised you've not replied to my previous comment, but have to ones left after it? Is it just a matter of not having had time yet on your end (quite understandable!), or is there some problem? Sorry about it if it's the latter and any part of it was my fault.
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Yep! I hate coming up with names so I was glad there was a literary reference that fit the cultural scheme I had in mind.
It's a major theme! How fossilization works, the fact that none of the original matter remains, and the only traces are left by the most inert parts of the body lasting long enough to form spaces for mineral formation, is in the text. Maud herself destroys Starlight's belief that she is becoming something permanent through the process.
I only left clues about what the Oracle might have said, to be picked up later, but She was very clear that there was no way of saving Maud with the resources of the currently existing civilizations, including time travel, because time travel to prevent the ingestion would just create a past version of Maud that is saved but not the one that was in front of them.
The reason was that your comments brought up edit ideas that I wanted to get done before replying, so I didn't have time. But in the future, try not to think this way! There are a lot of reasons I might not reply. But, I understand you. If there is ever a problem for some reason I will at least do you the courtesy of messaging you about it, otherwise assume that is not the issue.
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Ah, thanks. And glad you had that, then, aye. :)
Heh. I remember back in middle school at one point, we were handling some fossils in class, and someone was surprised I was so at ease handling a coprolite; I explained that (at the time recently-learned, as I recall) in reply.
Though, two things here: first, I wasn't talking about fossilisation, but petrification by magic, the sort of thing cockatrices do.
Second:
"Maud herself destroys Starlight's belief that she is becoming something permanent through the process."
Weeeeeell... what is "becoming"? Yes, Maud seems to take the view that she's not becoming a fossil, but I think that's debatable. After all, is she her particular constituent atoms now? What of the constant exchange with the environment; at point point does a part of the world not-her become her and vice versa? I think there are multiple defensible definitions under both sides, that have her becoming the fossil or the fossil replacing her.
(Of course, "permanent" is a separate matter, and Starlight's belief another still)
Thanks, though that "resources of the currently existing civilizations" thing takes my mind back to petragenics(sp?). Of course, that might well also, if it's available at all, count as a resource of the currently existing civilizations, so. [shrugs]
But that would have been a pretty different story! And this worked, internally and for what it was and was trying to do, I think. :)
Ah, righto; thanks. :)
"But in the future, try not to think this way!"
Yeeeeah, kind of a long term ongoing struggle that, but thanks! :D
"If there is ever a problem for some reason I will at least do you the courtesy of messaging you about it, otherwise assume that is not the issue."
And thank you there, as well! :)
Commenting to note that I made some not-so-minor edits to Geologic. I changed the end to make very explicit the meaning I had originally intended to communicate subtly, and I added a fun thing about the interpretation of pegasa fossils. I also made more minor edits to both Geologic and Biographical, mostly typo correction.
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Based on cranial nerve numbering, but I don't know enough about the convention to know if sticking "u" on the end for "unicorn" makes sense or not.
Fixed, thanks! Disappointed I never caught these. Improved the Draconic Paradox thing, it was supposed to be that dracologists were slow to move away from their alternative hypothesis due to field-chauvinism and Moving Finger was rolling her eyes that accepting the null hypothesis was being spoken of as if it were this cool brand-new thing, but that doesn't come across in the way I wrote it.
I'm sad to say that this as well as everything else about the actual anatomy of the Paleontologists are ironic allusions and jokes, so that is what you spent your time on. To spoil it, this is to make the reference to the meme "standing next to each other" about how any ponies that are merely standing next to each other end up being shipped together.
This is certainly an unsettling story, but one that I appreciate nonetheless. I'll most likely be thinking about it for a bit. I'm not so good at expressing my thoughts, especially those that are profound, so I apologize in advance if I don't return to share them.
Interesting implications for Equestria as we know it.
I do love touches like this that remind the reader that this species definitely isn't human. Likewise the implication that drifting fanfiction tastes are the primary cause of pair-bonds ending.
Entropy requires that any story becomes a tragedy if extended for long enough, but this was a beautiful one, brutal and touching by turns. Thank you for it.
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I'll be here if you do, and I appreciate your comment! I also appreciate your Maud avatar.
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Glad you caught that! This is what happened to humans. We were not the only branch to achieve sapience. There were likely hundreds of human subspecies at one point, with varying body types and capacities of intelligence and sapience (which are not necessarily correlated with each other, fun fact!). We outcompeted and killed ALL of them. The Neanderthals just happened to be large enough in number and survive late enough to leave enough traces to enter popular knowledge.
Yet in Equestria, dozens of species of completely different lineages all achieve sentience and thauma-technological civilization at the same time! At the same time, they can communicate with each other, and their different species is not a barrier to having a common language, a common value system, a common culture! That is less variance than exists within single countries of humans! Strange, isn't it? Impossible, evolutionarily.
Thank you! I am proud of that one. It was originally "ripping off the Band-Aid(TM)" but then I realized that even ponies would not have that specific brand name to use in a metaphor, so I needed something that makes sense for the Paleontologists. I did not intend the fan-fiction thing to imply that that was the main cause, but rather a synecdoche for shifting tastes and attitudes in general (hope I used that word right here). But I suppose it contributes to the other-worldliness of the Paleontologists, so that's good.
Thank you! I really "believe" in this story in the sense that I think it might be one of the more important things I ever write, and I think the themes it touches upon are important. I hope I can find a way to get it to more people one day.
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Oh, I see what you mean by "petrification" now. I did not want to take the story in that direction. As written, what would have happened had they tried that is that the petrified Maud would just become inert stone when all the magic dies out anyway. I also didn't mean to imply that some future civilization will have the capacity to cure it, either, though I guess if that were possible it is moot since that future civilization does not come to be in this fic's continuity.
And yes, the word "becoming" is a very philosophically loaded term and becomes ambiguous on further examination!
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Ah... I guess I'll need to go back through that chapter, the whole thing, it sounds like. Oh well; thank you for the notification! And the improvements themselves, of course, even if the timing happens to not be the most convenient for me personally.
(It's not that I mind the content (though there is some negative enthusiasm from just how recently I went through it the first time, and the expectation that most of the chapter will be the same) -- but I am, as seems to be the usual case, somewhat low on time relative to the list of things I have to do.)
"So anyway, she. Similar enough"
I could see that text being what you intended, in context, but I thought I'd point it out here rather than just assuming that in case it was a case of one or more additional words going missing.
And finished, and I did enjoy it and the new bits. :)
(I do note that now the dracologists' explanation for the Draconic Paradox isn't given, but I think that works alright. :))
Also, it looks like my suspicions from "“Yeah, crazy…” Grasping Hand agreed unenthusiastically." were probably right after all! Interestingly, as I recall, I considered them too much shipping-goggles-level to comment on, under the circumstances. :D
(Though, you know, sad for Grasping Hand there. But at least Boulder helped. :))
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"Based on cranial nerve numbering, but I don't know enough about the convention to know if sticking "u" on the end for "unicorn" makes sense or not."
Ah, thanks. As I didn't even know the convention existed, though, I can't help you there. :D
"Fixed, thanks! Disappointed I never caught these."
You're welcome! And don't worry; typos can be sneaky...
"Improved the Draconic Paradox thing, it was supposed to be that dracologists were slow to move away from their alternative hypothesis due to field-chauvinism and Moving Finger was rolling her eyes that accepting the null hypothesis was being spoken of as if it were this cool brand-new thing, but that doesn't come across in the way I wrote it."
Ah, thanks. And I think that does come across more clearly with the new text.
"I'm sad to say that this as well as everything else about the actual anatomy of the Paleontologists are ironic allusions and jokes, so that is what you spent your time on."
Oh. Well. Glad I didn't spend more time trying to work it out seriously, then, though I have to say I'm disappointed I didn't get more of the jokes. :D
"To spoil it, this is to make the reference to the meme "standing next to each other" about how any ponies that are merely standing next to each other end up being shipped together."
Ah, hah, thanks. :D
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"Glad you caught that!"
Ah, I noticed that too but didn't comment on it, sorry.
(And thanks for the following thoughts on it. :))
"I really "believe" in this story in the sense that I think it might be one of the more important things I ever write, and I think the themes it touches upon are important. I hope I can find a way to get it to more people one day."
Aye, good luck!
I think the impact on me personally was less than it might have been, but primarily because I was already familiar with, or at least aware of, a number of the heavier ideas raised. I think it presented them pretty well, though, and is far from the worst introduction someone could get. :)
(And I'm looking forward to reading the commentary after I post this.)
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"I did not want to take the story in that direction."
Right, like I said, that would have been a pretty different story, but I didn't know what sort of story it was back when I was having those speculations.
"As written, what would have happened had they tried that is that the petrified Maud would just become inert stone when all the magic dies out anyway."
Oh, interesting; many more questions raised there, of course, but it's not as if I expect you to detail every even in millions of years of time. :D
"I also didn't mean to imply that some future civilization will have the capacity to cure it, either, though I guess if that were possible it is moot since that future civilization does not come to be in this fic's continuity."
Right, I don't think you did make that implication? Sorry if there was some confusion there.
But yes, quite plausible that it just happened to not happen, and that the oracle was able to successfully predict that such that they didn't even try.
(That said, I could potentially see a Maud opting for petrification anyway, but that depends on the particular Maud's feelings on that vs. natural fossilization and, again, I think it's quite plausible that this Maud would prefer the latter.)
((So much of fanfiction depends on what "this particular X" is like, of course -- one example that came to mind with this story is that there are many Equestrias where it really doesn't work, where the very laws of physics themselves don't support it. But, happily, there are so many possible and plausible Equestrias for authors to draw and draw upon, and thus this story and the placement of thoughts within it could happen with one that did support it. :)))
"And yes, the word "becoming" is a very philosophically loaded term and becomes ambiguous on further examination!"
:)
Thanks for writing, again!
Well, I decided to read the story again to try to get a better understanding of it, so here's my real comment. Neurochemical and Biographical are great, and while Geologic feels kinda different, I think it still fits in really well. It is apparent that history is doomed to repeat itself, what with the rise and fall of civilizations, botched archive transfers, and bad analogies.
I got these weird contradictory feelings after reading. One is that nothing we do matters, because on a large enough timescale, what once gave something meaning no longer exists. This is easily seen in the ending of the story, where all civilizations have fallen and nothing remains of either the ponies or the paleontologists. Does the fact that someone was once a billionaire philanthropist who effected world peace matter 100 years from now? How about 1,000? A million? What about this site? Surely not many of us see this place still existing even 20 years down the line, at least not in its current state. Sure, most of us would fondly remember it and the memories made, but does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? It's not exactly a pleasant thought, having something you care about eventually being reduced to nothing.
And yet, the other feeling I had is that everything we do matters, simply because it's happening now. You let Maud say it best:
You can't change the past (this story notwithstanding) and you can't change the future on a long enough scale. You don't even technically exist in these time periods, so why bother caring for them when you have your own present life to worry about? Why else would we be here, on a relatively niche fanfiction site dedicated to a show that's no longer running? One of the reasons is because the experiences we make here allow us to create our own beautiful views of the current world, both of fiction and reality. It's what helps make us feel alive, and that's what really matters. These worlds may only exist in the mind, but they define who we are.
There's also something to be said for interpretations of things that once existed in the past. Something that matters now might matter differently at some point in the future. Grasping Hand and Moving Finger are seen coming up with different explanations for why the pony fossils existed in such a state. They do this from both their own worldview and a theoretical one that existed during their period. They never fully grasp the true meaning behind it, but they are incapable of doing so anyway. Remember CRT televisions? They were once the standard for household televisions, but now they're usually found in retro gaming communities due to perceived advantages they offer over modern televisions. Of course, these CRT televisions are physically the same as they've always been, but the purpose they once held has changed. If you had never seen one in a household functioning as a regular television but had seen plenty of them used for retro gaming, you might think that retro gaming would be their true purpose. And some might consider you to be correct, because the fact that they were once used as regular televisions no longer matters in the context of the current world, which has created cheaper and (subjectively) higher-quality alternatives.
This story does not touch on the concept of afterlife, but my thoughts naturally went there regardless. Whether or not you are theistic, you surely have some belief in what happens to your "soul" after death. I consider myself to be agnostic, but I choose to believe that an afterlife is possible. Whether it is like Heaven, or it is simply a reincarnation into another being, I cannot know. I'd like it to be either Heaven or nothing, though; an endless cycle of rebirth sounds quite disconcerting. Since we don't know and will never know what happens until our time has come, we've just got to make do with what we have now.
Anyway, those were some of my thoughts after reading the story. Sorry if it was too philosophical, but that's what this story made me think of. Of course I really liked the content of the story, I just can't think of much to say about it that wasn't already said in this post and in others. I don't usually make posts like this, but your story is pretty much the only one so far that's got me to think like this.
Anyway, I've spent far too long writing this up. Long story short, Boulder is clearly the most powerful character since he can live for millions of years. Also, for some reason the story views are lower in the first chapter and higher in the last chapter.
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Yep, that echoing is intentional. But it is meaningful that the second botched archive transfer was due to budget cuts, which is pointed out as a concept that translates between the eons and species with absolutely no need for modification. It is not necessarily a sign of failing to learn the lessons of the past; economics is a force of its own.
I aspire to be the kind of pony the Maud I wrote is. You got the lesson I wanted to impart without me directly stating it in the text, so thank you!
I intended for this story to not be an exception. Even if Starlight had succeeded, she would have saved a Maud but not her Maud, the one who died in her timeline and whose death drove her to agree to this mission for Princess Twilight Sparkle, then-ruler of Equestria. Though I suppose one could say under certain interpretations of what counts as the same person, she would have, considering this Maud had the exact same memories and experiences up to the point of her Starlight’s death. Time travel is confusing, isn’t it?
Having spent twenty hours on writing this thing, more with these comments and blog posts, I have to agree. This stuff is definitely an outlet for who I am.
That is definitely one of the themes. The entire pony civilization once meant a whole lot to the ponies that lived in it, but in the timeframe of Geologic the meaning is now as a source of arguments, papers, research jobs, and status for a subset of academics, whose interpretations are incapable of being right, as you said since there is a fundamental assumption they are making about how the universe worked. But what the pony civilization’s interpretation means for them does not actually depend on the accuracy of the interpretation. They are doing their best to match their theories with the evidence, in this game there will be theories that work better and theories that do not, and the meaning they derive from how nicely the theories fit the evidence is what matters.
I really appreciate you saying this. This is the kind of reaction I wanted the story to invoke.
All I can say is that my Maud does not believe in an afterlife. I haven’t decided what the range of beliefs in my pony civilization are. As far as I’m aware, the canon has completely steered clear of this topic, which I think was a wise move.
I certainly appreciate all of the time you put into it!
I briefly considered writing a fourth chapter, Cosmological, which does deal with this little loose end (which I appreciate you having noticed). But on further reflection I can’t bring myself to kill off the most innocent and precious character on the show as well. I will probably write the chapter as a blog post and link it in the Author’s Notes at the end, but Boulder will still be “alive” at the end of it, whatever your interpretation of that is.
I ended up loading the last two chapters a lot while working on edits to them since I like the way the site presents it better than my own word processor, not to mention while replying to comments. I had hoped that this site counts views from the same IP and account on the same day as not separate views, but if it does not, that would explain the statistical oddity.
Maybe they just aren't reading closely enough.*
*I'm including those links to demonstrate that you wrote words on this site about magical gay horses that reminded me of my own faith. I'm not here to convert or debate you (or anyone else). I just want you to know that you're a brilliant writer to give me that feeling, amongst other feelings, with this story.
Discord would, that jerk.
The whole section with Finger and Hand was uproariously funny at points. Analyzing the magical gay horses like a scientist (of any discipline) would is a fascinatingly funny concept.
Someone needs to get out more.
Another great "dialogue tag that isn't a dialogue tag" here. Way to break English right. Trans Maud is a headcanon I can get behind. Something about ponies who insist on wearing clothes at all times makes it easy to have such a headcanon.
Okay, now you've lost me. No one would ever believe that.
Is it?
Oh man. Finger giving Hand Boulder...
It seems rather silly to point out the obvious symbolism. So, instead, I'll do something sillier and point out the entire ending of this beautiful story:
It makes me feel a little less alone too.
Beyond the concept of everything simultaneously mattering and not mattering (which makes the things we do so beautifully, intrinsically significantly unimportant and meaningful in every breath), this story has some meaning for me that I'd rather not get into. So I'll just say thanks for writing it, give you a fave (and the follow that I somehow, in my endless stupidity, forgot to give you already), and post some pictures of magical gay horses:
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derpicdn.net/img/2017/4/30/1425585/large.jpeg
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Dare I accept such a Great and Powerful compliment? (Thank you! You are too kind.)
Yes, I loved writing how the remains of a magic-powered civilization and species would be interpreted by magic-less paleontologists millions of years in the future. There is just so much potential in it that I’m surprised I am apparently the first one to do it. But maybe hard sci-fi nerds like me are actually hard to come by on this website. (Wait, scratch that, I’m not a nerd! I am, in fact, very cool.)
Anything can be a dialogue tag if you’re brave enough.
Ha, I never considered that commonality between stoic rock pony and homeless magician. But unlike Maud, Trixie eventually starts hanging around without clothes.
I gotta say, out of all of those eating rocks is still the weirdest to me. But that is what makes Maud so dang quirky and fun!
Fun fact: Boulder is the only character to appear in all three chapters. It is a cruel injustice that he does not have a character tag on this site.
Me too.
Me too.
I am glad you were able to get so much meaning from my horse words. I tried to put as much meaning into them as much as I could.
Thank you for your kind words and your pictures of the horses. I imagine them to be scenes from Starlight and Maud’s all-too short but beautiful time together, after Starlight started allowing herself to be happy. Also thank you for the follow, I can finally say that senpai followed me.
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Yeah, I can see that helplessness shining through in all three chapters. And yeah, on a neurological level, so much that "we" do is not up to us. Synapses fire and adrenaline floods and does whatever that system thinks is best before we even know what's going on or why we're feeling that way. It's both beautiful and terrifying to think about.
I did see that!
Oh, obviously.
I'm sure you'll find a way. :)
Oh, I figured as much. No way someone could write words like this and not be impacted by them. As the falsely attributed Hemingway quote goes, "All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed..."
You're welcome. I'm glad it does, because the story meant a lot to me too.
It really does. All the Starlights of the world deserve better.
From one high compliment to another, I'm happy to say you're welcome.
While there are a decent handful of stories on the site with the Sci-Fi tag, I don't think your kind is very common, no. The paleontologists were an idea I, at least, hadn't seen before. You made it pretty interesting and fun, even for someone who is not as
nerdycool as yourself.True, Trixie eventually gets more confidence. Plus, she has that imbalanced magic (illusion spell) on her side. The other trans character I wrote, on the other
handhoof...I could see her doing it.
I noticed both. Life is so unfair...
Be glad, because you succeeded.
That was the intent.
I'll accept being called an anime term exactly once. You earned it.
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I skimmed through that one actually, and I gotta say, I was instantly convinced 1000% percent. It really is uncanny. It’s also funny that all of Starlight’s friends are trans now and that is the only thing that makes sense to me.
Sci-Fi isn’t all spaceships and laser guns!
Thank you, s—
Thank you!
Interesting making of a distinctly unhuman species, with little details revealed, though the 'broodmale' term was introduced a bit before it actually made sense.
I'll be honest, I half expected Boulder to talk or otherwise communicate in some way.
Well you did say you aren't an expert so just one comment on the time scale: it rather depends on how advanced Discord started them as. The transition from the first mamalians to homo sapiens took what, 70 million years or so? 'Millions' suggested no more than 10 million to me, but they could well have started out somewhere equivalent to homonoidea or even hominidae (...homonid grouping names all look too similar if you ask me).
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"Broodmale" is not supposed to make sense at first, it's supposed to throw the reader off together with the the implications for the Paleontologists' worldview. Also I only picked that because "broodmare" is a term I've seen used in… other… parts of the fandom and I thought it would be fun to reverse it.
If you're talking about the timeline for emergence of sapience in general, well, they kind of had a head start in weird ways which I indicated with the atavism bit. Also we have a sample size of 1 for "how long it takes for sapience to evolve", and even asking that kind of question is taking a teleological perspective anyway.
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To both: Fair enough. And yes I was referring to sentience evolution. I missed the atavism part. Does that imply Discord's creations were sentient?
A really interesting world you’ve built here, I greatly enjoyed reading it
Hello, a review to your story has been posted. I hope you find it helpful.
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Thank you so much! I am very honored that you took the time and effort for such a thorough review. I learned a lot about my work from it. Wanted to give my thoughts in response to your thoughts here:
To preface, I’d like to say that I posted this fic in your box not because of your reviewer summary, but because I read your review of Loqui Veritatem In Caritate by Gay For Gadot and was very impressed with it. It showed me you were a great reviewer, and I would continue on about that but I admit I feel a bit self-indulgent praising your abilities after leaving such a positive review!
I think in the end this is a common theme to all of my serious works. Knowing just how unknowable the world and even ourselves are, and finding ways to accept both that and our place of helplessness in it.
I did feel very much as if the narrator voice I used in this had a lot more of myself than the usual mechanical, functional one I use otherwise. In a way it had to be, as otherwise the sections without characters would not have a voice at all, and that is just not good writing. Trying to render it an intimate experience is precisely what I was going for without thinking of it in those words, so thank you for giving me the words for it.
This really makes clear for me exactly what was “off” about Geologic. I am glad that you found it enjoyable nonetheless, but something in me could see something in the contrast between the reception to it and Biographical.
While a writer of greater skill than I could have made these characters less flat within the constraints that I had, in the end I think it was a mistake to render this as a traditional dialogue scene between two entities. Instead, I should have written this in the same narrative tone as Neurochemical and the first part of Geologic, which would itself emphasize the unknowability of the two characters in it. In essence, I took two characters that were designed to be unknowable and tried to render them legible and knowable by flattening their interactions to a dialogue, and this was the mistake.
It’s telling that the parts of Geologic that I’d always been happiest with were the beginning and end, since those were the parts that see a return to the omniscient narrator voice. With a few modifications, the whole thing could have been done that way and been better for it.
I often say that I want good comments because I want to learn something new about what I wrote, and this is a big and important thing I learned just now. Thank you for it.
Funny story! At the time of writing this story I was feeling ambivalent about the standard convention for how dialogue tags work. So there may have been unintentional errors for Starlight’s lines as well as the Palentologists’. However, the use of periods at the end of every sentence by Dr. Maudileena Daisy Pie was an intentional breaking of rules to get across the monotone definitiveness of how she talks (I imagine she ends all of her text messages with a period).
This is where one of the weaknesses of writing the central part of Geologic as a dialogue comes in. If anything, I erred on the side of a casual conversation between two scientists as being too “As you know, Bob”, but in the end it has to be a casual conversation, which means a lot of what is said can’t really be picked up by an outsider casually listening in. An omniscient narration would have allowed me to rotate and flatten concepts and draw out metaphors to make the actual thing that is being said under the jargon easier to understand.
I am really glad you saw and appreciated this. I am not a good enough writer to have moments of poetry come easily enough so that they can themselves be used as notes in a composition, so the moments of poetry that do find themselves into my work are precious to me, and the quoted sentence as well as the section around them are one of them.
This itself is a beautiful way to express an experience. Thank you for it.
Yes, this. This is my worldview, which is also why I find so distasteful certain very specific subgenres of ponyfiction which do not seem to treat the universe that way. There is something I find sacred in the unknowability of the universe/pure mathematics/ourselves, and that is something I hope to reflect in my writing.
I am glad you experienced it as lovely!
This is something beautiful I myself could not have written in analyzing this work. Thank you for it.
That is exactly what I aim for. Even in my darkest and saddest stories there will always be that warmth, because without it the sadness doesn’t really have a purpose. It is also in my view inhuman to write sadness without any warmth whatsoever, because to actually respect the characters going through it, you have to find that warmth, even if the characters truly are suffering and the situation is so very unfair, else you are just reveling in their sadness.
With a work such as this, I really do end up putting a lot of myself into the story and its themes, and a thousand upvotes are outweighed by one person showing me that they really understood this piece of myself and were impacted by it. I am very grateful for both the time you took in reading this story and the I imagine much greater time it took to compose this very thorough review.
On a personal note and admission of weakness, sometimes I lament that I joined a dying fandom and that I missed my opportunity to reach a large audience with my words. There are many times when I post something whose reception falls short of what I had hoped, and I feel frustrated at just how many hours of my life it takes to push out a story and wonder if what I’m doing is worth it. This review will be one of the things I reach for to reassure myself that it definitely is worth it. Particularly the way you started it all.
I really could not ask for higher praise than that. Thank you for everything.
just wanted to pop by and say this story affected me on a deep and visceral emotional level and i want to thank you
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No, thank you! Comments like this always mean a lot to me
Chapter 1: Oh, this is interesting, I... wait. Oh no.
Chapter 2: *sobs*
Chapter 3: I am not remotely smart enough for this today.
Maybe tomorrow.
The irony of Maud, of all ponies, dying of 'mad pony disease' is... bracing. I have TWO incomplete stories about prion disease, though with... ahem... a darker transmission vector.
Feeling sad Maud died, going to look at pictures of her now.
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Instead of Jakob-Creuzfeldt, I actually based the disease on ALS, so Maud's mind is intact until the end but all her muscles waste away one by one...
And your comment made me realize that between this and Sisters, Maud Pie is having a lot of bad things happen to her in my stories! Maybe I should write something nice and fluffy with her to balance it out.
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OMG Sisters is so good. Love that story. Gonna go read it again.
But yes. Maud fluff.
That is, hands down, one of my all-time favorite ways to describe dialogue, as nonsensical as it is. I love it.
Grasping Hand and Moving Finger made for quite the fascinating species. Sci-fi nerd time: I loved how much world building you packed into this short sequence, and I especially love that, unlike a similar Stephen Baxter novel, we didn't just have one brief period of dialogue in an otherwise dialogue free story. Getting to see another sapient species, even one as odd and unusual--and yet quite fascinating--really helps move the pace of the story along to get it where you want it to go.
The themes told here are heartfelt and they matter. Others have said that this is both heartwarming and depressing, and I agree. Yes, it's very depressing to be faced with the fact that eventually you will die, your species will die, and nothing your entire existence did mattered. But at the same time you might still matter in ways you'll never realize to those whom you never meet, have an affect on people you never understood and never will.
And that's something I think we can all benefit to learn from. Consider how often we're influenced by favorite celebrities, or the actors who play our most beloved fictional characters. Or writers, or artists, or even newscaster and so much more. The public faces of otherwise private people can affect is in ways beyond our own comprehension.
Something you write, for example, might end up being the thing that convinces someone somewhere else to seek a key career path that results in them being in the right place at the right time to solve a major problem and spare hundreds to thousands to millions from ever having to suffer from that problem again. Or something you drew might end up on an old art website or hanging in a museum, inspiring painters and poets and artists galore for centuries afterwards.
What I'm getting at is, the very notion of mattering is itself both ephemeral and more solid than we can ever understand. There's so much we do that we'll never know what the effects of are. That person you cut off in traffic by accident might go on to live a completely different life than if they'd been allowed their right of way. Maybe you've found the whole course of your life changed because you spilled spaghetti sauce on your shirt and had to go change.
And sometimes what you do lasts long after you're gone. Consider the writings of Homer or Confucius, people who lived thousands of years ago, and yet whose writings continue to inspire or bore or otherwise have an affect on millions to billions of people they never would know, in a world beyond their imagining.
And there can be so many more kinds of effects than that. The hominid ancestor fossils we discover, the people they once were never would've understood what they'd become. Same, perhaps, for us, should we die off as a species without leaving this planet, and leave it as a museum for some other species to wander along to and investigate millions of years from now.
Ultimately where I'm going with is, this story carries with it a deeper, stronger meaning than it appears on first glance. And while it might not seem like the three parts connect very well, to me they're better connected than some multichapter novels.
This was a fantastic read, and I applaud you.
Okay, this was really cute and emotional with Starlight and Maud, and interesting to see with the after-effects of their life together.
On the other hand it was really effing weird.
I still liked it and it was a good story.
But the last chapter was definitely weird, even though it totally worked in the context of the rest of the story.
man.
man.
man.
Okay, that went….out there. In a good way. A really good way.
I’m sad for Grasping. Maud and Starlight had their time and it was good. But Grasping…knew that what she wanted had existed at some point but it was no longer a possibility for her.
Also….I can’t help but start to scale things:
Through the most reliable methods I’ve found (Details when I find them again), the ponies are about as big as a medium size dog is to us.
Boulder is a small pebble to the ponies.
Boulder is something like a medium-large decorative yard rock to Grasping. At least with how my brain interprets her interactions with it.
So Grasping’s species is….the size of a cockroachohmygodtheircockroaches!
An interesting way to address time travel!
Very straightforward; this couplet works for Maud!
For the story itself, this works, but for complete adherence to Pony lore, I do not think there is such a limitation for time travel. (Perhaps I am mistaken?) I suspect this was an intentional choice and I think it's fine to depart from 'official' lore when necessary to make a cohesive and compelling tale.
A number of graduate students over the years must have been lucky that the practice fell out of favor. A reasonable consequence of the show's support for rock-eating!
Apt!
Reasonable assumptions. Maybe currency... But probably not or else they would have found similar rocks elsewhere (I realize it is Boulder). Pet rock craze. I'm surprised Starlight was buried with Boulder given that Maud had given Boulder to be adopted by Mudbriar in one timeline and Starlight in the other. Maybe Boulder decided it was time to be buried for a while rather than to move on? But if that was the case, how would Starlight have known Boulder's wishes?
It is interesting to see commentary on archaeology, cultural and otherwise in a sci-fi tale concerning whether what is "known" is being examined through an accurate cultural lens. Best wishes!
*Also note, the jubilant rhyme of bees and leaves was amusing in the 'sequel' Cosmological and it was a nice touch/addition to link show references to each referenced show part.
Another one that gave me an existential crisis! For context, I’ve read Cosmological on top of this, but for sake of this comment for now, I’ll treat it as separate in another comment.
Now, I can see how much care went into this- learned a whole lot about biology and geology! One can see that research was done to add dimension to this fic. While not my cup of tea, I can get around and respect it. I enjoyed the pony part, but the distant future with Moving Finger and Grasping Hand ventured outside my comfort zone.
I’ve probably been reading wayyy too much ponyAnyways, seeing the plight of Starlight and Maud, you’ve added a whole new form to both characters for me. I like your depiction of Starlight’s tendency to self-sabotage as well as Maud’s lack of emotion (I can picture her staring blankly at Starlight). This adds another layer when Starlight is willing to allow herself to be happy and Maud to show more emotion. It speaks volumes without speaking volumes. That’s what Grasping Hand and Moving Finger were also noticing as the final artifact of these two.
Again, not my thing with the final chapter, but that does not diminish how much care went into this and the bold artform expressed. Kudos to you! (More on Cosmological)
OwO this story has Maud, Boulder and Starlight. I might be in for a treat! *glances at Death tag* ...oh.
The scientific things in this story drove me insane trying to comprehend them, my tiny brain can't handle them. But from what I could glean from what I managed to understand, was just an amazing story. The concepts may have been confusing, but the way Bike wrote it, it just flowed so well that I found myself hooked almost immediately.
Many things died in this story, including its characters. What I feel that I could take away from this story is that death is very much something real for us to understand. However, death cannot constrain our emotions. Take them to the grave, and we can make it last forevermore. For example, love and friendship. If we are able to take love and friendship all the way to our deaths, we can say it lasted forever. Because, technically, it never went away.
This story didn't hold back anything. The characterization of both Starlight and Maud...I can't. We can't forget the omnipresent narrator too, though!
(Though I think that's Boulder, as the character tag indicates.) I seriously loved every interaction between Starlight and Maud. This story weaves the ideas into the very fabric of reality itself, making it both a heartwarming and heartbreaking story. This? This just exudes so much of Bike's creativity and love towards their stories, that I really want to read another Bike story right now. (Note to self: many of Bike stories are pain. Get tissues before reading)
I really loved this story. Thank you for writing, Bike.
I'm always a sucker for reminders of how things will inevitably end, and how each moment we spend and read is a fraction of eternity. Haunting.
I love it. I don't know why, but I just do.
Aw.
This feels a touch more abstract than the other chapters, but that's probably me staving away the feelings of entropy that crept up. You know me, Bike.
I'll leave my overall thoughts in the final part, but for posterity - just, beautiful, Bike. I love every stroke of your brush, every word and flow and ahhhh
Love it!
I have no idea how to feel about this chapter, to be honest. It's a mixture of many different things told from varying perspectives that really make me think about the implications brought forth by the writing on a pony fanfiction website which was not something I had not expected to have to deal with on a Thursday afternoon.
Okay, new species with a dominant gender and definitely more driven by practical and species driven goals. Reproduction is a requirement because it continues the species. Love isnt a concept because it is unnecessary to the goal of advancement based on *being* a species. There are so many high level concepts that hit on so many different pieces that I'm not even sure where to begin on how I look at.
It's interesting really because the society and species that has developed feels like a complete antithesis to humans and me personally. Decisions based more on logic than emotion, a near opposing school of thought to the emotion-driven decisions of most humans. Im driven by how I feel, propelled forward by loneliness and a need to make that feeling stop. The idea of relationships based in this near transactional approach is infinitely fascinating and something a kin to a living nightmare to me, but in that way as a man I wouldn't really have the ability to even make that choice with how their society is made up.
There are just so many high concepts and ideas here to pick apart and discuss and I couldn't even begin to try to really get to the core of everything.
Anygay, uh, good book, read more, howdy, gay.
So imma just start with a couple lines I really liked:
this is just fun, clever wordplay.
oof.
tip-top stuff.
the way just capitalising a pronoun interacts with ideas of these immense unstoppable forces of entropy and time is just really fun.
watchmen moment. manages a very similar effect, too, albeit on a much more intimate scale!
I love this weird finger metaphor. also, eww.
This thing about ideas repeating is really fun:
incompetent archivists! one of the few universal constants, apparently. along with budget cuts, typical.
Okay, so this story left me with a lot of complicated feelings, I’m just gonna jot my reading of some of them down here.
Neurological gets across its microscopic narration really well.
Biographical has a lot of information to get across, and starts out quite exposition-heavy, but maybe 2/3rds through the chapter, I realised that it actually worked really well: as the title implies, piling all this information on the reader really gets across the sense that these two have lived lives, and that both of these lives are contained within this one moment. So when you reach the end of it, the weight of all that information has its release in the isostatic rebound and turns into just pure emotion.
Geologic is honestly my favourite by far; the way it expands on and concludes all the story’s ideas is just wonderful. The mutating narrative scope from chapter to chapter gets across the idea of consciousness reaching from the cellular to the personal to the grand historical (and eventually cosmological) incredibly well, and I love the way that every chapter completely upends and reframes the previous.
The writing itself has this really interesting quality of using pretty formal language, scientific terminology, but within this framework of kind of casual narration. It works well to reflect the tension between these very romantic ideas about connection, and the dread of these unfathomably vast stretches of time which will erase it all eventually – the writing maintains enough personality for it to seem like the spirit of human connection is about to burst through the prose itself. The humanity of the story breaking through these immense temporal barriers is honestly such a hopeful, uplifting idea. And the narration knows this!
The narrator self-aware of their own narration highlights the fact that, whatever else, this is a story – and that while there may be an existential terror in the idea that everything, everywhere, will one day end, that every moment that means something to us now will one day (soon!) be forgotten entirely, the very act of sorting these elements into a narrative helps us understand and come to terms with this.
– This may be true, but the narrative we project onto it does give it meaning, and even after we're gone, that meaning doesn’t go away. I feel like this I why I find this such an unsettling, but undeniably comforting story – unsettling because it exposes characters to these unfathomably vast stretches of time, taking a snapshot of a life before it’s gone forever, but comforting because it ultimately confronts this terror, and rejects it: rearranges time, on the scale of atoms, people, histories, into a story, something that makes sense, that allows us to approach and get some way to understanding it. This is why I found the line
so unexpectedly emotional – it ties this idea of human connection through storytelling, of using this to find the meaning in the vastness of time, to the action of the here and now of sitting reading fanfiction about tiny talking horses. I don’t know, it’s a dumb line, it’s a funny line, but it's also really clever and compelling.
And all this isn’t even getting started on the idea of love itself in the story. I’ll keep it short.
That this love could transcend time, dimensions, cultures, species, ages, civilisations, is an unbearably romantic idea, but the expression of it in these terms of neurons, archives, timescales gives it such depth of meaning that you don’t even question it. Because the fact is that it means something to those that see the story.
All this is of course made explicit in Cosmological, which functions really well as an optional lil epilogue. Maud
and her belief in that connection made it real, and gave it meaning. Is Boulder alive? Maybe. Maud thought so, and that was enough for her.
so, uh, yeah. pretty good story, i guess
This is one of your stories that I like so very much. So much that If I talk about that, I risk ticking people off.
You can has review!