Adapting a classic novel into cinematic form is always a little tricky, especially when the book's weight has seen six nations require registering the hardcover as a lethal weapon. The two-hour version reached the screen a week ago, and early returns are less than encouraging. The studio stands to lose a lot of money, and those involved in the production would prefer it if their careers didn't end today. But as it turns out, somepony who's intimately familiar with every last paragraph of the megalith knows how to fix everything!
Surely an alicorn has to know what she's talking about, right?
...right?
Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.
Chapters (1)
Author's Very Public Note: the final fate of the film was suggested by Sanguine Potato during a chat session about the story idea, and was used with permission.
Twilight, unusually, was laying in a defeated slump. Normally she was a surprisingly active mare, either pacing or pretending to work while pacing, but she'd worn herself out in the first few hours. Now she lay underneath the screen, softly groaning to herself.
A presence entered the theatre. The presence was cold, even in the just-cold-enough-to-be-uncomfortable screening room, and the hoofsteps heavy. The voice was old, powerful, mature, and only slightly smug. "So, Twilight Sparkle," Luna began, "Have we learned something?"
Twilgiht raised her head just enough to speak. "Just because we know the answers to everything," she said, "does mean we haven't missed something."
Archly, "And?"
With considerable more reluctance; "And I was wrong and you were right."
Luna nodded in satisfaction. "Thank you, Twilight. I am glad to hear that you can learn from my own mistakes..." She, unusually for her, hesitated. The ancient mare had made her point, and she was quite certain that Twilight would not make such a mistake again, but under the other hoof...
Luna leaned forwards. "Do you still wish to try and correct my tax laws? You seemed quite certainā"
She frowned. Twilight had begun to either cry or manically giggle, and neither would end well. Mayhaps I should have waited until the effects of the film had worn off...
(An old joke, with multiple retellings to fit the circumstances, and far too real for comfort)
There was once an Important Director who was brought in to save a struggling epic film in the middle of production where the previous director had failed miserably. He walked into his new office only to find three envelopes on his desk and a note.
"When things go to heck and disaster looms, open an envelope and do what it says."
So he returned to the movie and for a time, things worked out. Until they didn't. Actors threatened to strike, the studio was on his neck, and the daily rushes were terrible. So he opened the first envelope, which had a note that said "Blame your predecessor."
So he threw all the blame on the previous director, and things straightened out so they could shoot again. Several weeks went by and the film was in deep trouble with cost overruns and an actual fistfight among the actors that threatened to stop production cold. So he opened the second envelope, which had a note saying "Blame the studio."
So he went to his actors and writers and shooting crew, blamed everything on the studio, and in a burst of creativity and harmony, production started up again. For several weeks. As the end of the shooting approached, multiple reshoots became necessary, actors started locking themselves in their trailers, and everything was going straight to heck in a hurry, so he opened the third envelope and read the note.
"Prepare three envelopes...."
This was art.
Given Twilight's reaction to the leading mare, she'd better never find out about it if they do.
Well, at least it was only 11 hours of Boring & Pointless. Imagine if it were the length of Amra Ekta Cinema Banabo.
Wait, at the end, is Twilight powering the projector with a flywheel or something for some reason?
I thought she was pacing like in It's_About_Time, but no? It doesn't seem it's about trauma?
And I get that this is a Snyder Cut joke story... The rest of it was
The VASE!
So, the origin of the term ādeath of the authorā was that after she was told what her story really meant, the author decided to die?
I love your concept for the Donkeys in your universe. They're absolutely hilarious to read. Would really like to see more of them. Or maybe some Cranky Doodle stories could be fun too.
Absolutely love the story, but I'll admit I'm a little confused about what exactly happened in the last few paragraphs here.
Ooh, is that Belles-Lettres?
That is the best donkey name ever.
I'm not sure I get the very last bit though.
btw
hanging
"Death Of The Author," the alicorn haughtily declared, "means it doesn't matter what the author said!"
I don't want to call Twilight a hypocrite, but I suspect that if she ever wrote a fiction book, she'd have a very definite opinion on what it was about and would not be happy by Ponies telling her she was dead wrong.
(But then, this is a crackfic.)
1. I want to know what was going on in that house, the obfuscation of which is a feat of casual brilliance. You out-noodled the Noodle Incident.
2. I can't help but think of two things, for some reason, and they are:
"I did not hit her, it's not true, it's bullshit, I did not hit her. I did not. Oh hi Mark."
and
"MAKE US WHOLE"
10739365
Yeah, the ending lost me as well. I understand that Twilight came to regret her life choices for some reason, but the reader is left to imagine why. Presumably something happened at the awards ceremony.
She didn't quite learn Lesson Zero's real lesson, did she? "Leave well enough alone" should have been the take-away from that one.
10739418
Or maybe she discovered that books and media are two very different media and utter and perfect faithfulness may not be the best way to translate one to the other.
(1100 pages a dangerous weapon? You know, my combined edition of Lord of the Rings [1] is 1112 pages with appendices, and it's a paperback . But perhaps this edition has bigger pages. I picture something comparable to this... i0.wp.com/thalmaray.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/is-Biggest-Bible.jpg
[1] Which Jackson made into a nine hour trilogy. Probably would have been eleven hours if he'd included Tom Bombadil and other stuff he cut.
What? Really, Twilight? My opinion of Bookhorse just dropped a few notches.
This story was hilarious
So...
We have here a 'Heaven's Gate' treatment of Vorgon Poetry directed by Ed Wood Jr.
Well, when you start at the absolute bottom...
You occasionally melt down completely...
Of course the donkeys would love it.
I don't quite get the last couple paragraphs.
I love Grimderp. She's such a little ball of sunshine!
Though never let those feedback cards get together. Who knows what the symbols might summon if arranged properly. Though now I'm considering a new format for an eldritch tome in a CoC game....
I enjoy the fact that I can see a new story in my feed, read the title and think that sounds like something Estee would write and then scroll down and see myself proven correct.
Well, not only did you get Death of the Author in there, you also got Auteur Theory in there as well. That's as balanced as you can get.
Then there's the Hitchhikers references and I'm pretty sure there were many others that I missed, not being a great film person these days...
I enjoy the fact that I can see a new story in my feed, read the title and think that sounds like something Estee would write and then scroll down and see myself proven correct.
Absolutely wonderful and funny!
Quick thing that I think is a mistake?
I'm guessing that " "come in " should have a quotation mark to close it off?
10739365
Posted by FanOfMostEverything in the chat server:
10739302
10739683
10739365
10739418
Actually, I do think it is trauma...
Just not getting the significance of 11hrs, other than the precise length of the movie...
Was she just playing it back in her head??
It could have been the mark. It could have been that his ego had grown so massive, it had started to bud.
Ah. We're still early enough in the process that most screenplays are adaptations of actual plays. (And novels, of course.)
That was easily the most threatening thing Twilight said in the whole diatribe.
What, they couldn't blur that out in post?
Curious. Protesting Protocerans who happen to be earth pony-shaped?
... Oh. Well then.
I'm of two minds here. I could see Twilight subscribing to this interpretation, but at the same time, cherishing books as the final preserved vestiges of those who have passed on means that she probably cares about what those ponies thought in the first place. Of course, she may have been hanging out with lit majors for too long.
At least she wasn't pursued by a bear?
Perhaps the first time Twilight got somepony to speak in tongues. Definitely not the last.
"Beastriality." I'm very much not sure about how I feel about that term.
And I'm going to have to agree that the end scene was a bit too vague. Pretty sure I understand what happened, but I'm not entirely sure. Still, a most amusing case of Twilight having Opinions and no one else having the courage to stop her. If nothing else, she's pushed cinema forward by years if not decades. On-location shots, advances in projectors, glimpses at unplumbed depths of the equine psyche...
Thank you for a story that was exactly as long as it needed to be.
Grimderp.
Estee you magnificent bastard.
I salute you.
A story is always worth telling to the right audience, no matter how NOT right it may seem to everyone else.
This was awesome. Never expected things to actually go well for the PoV character in an Estee one-off. Just kidding.
It's good to see film adaptations taking a turn for the accurate! All that suffering was worth it...right?
Oh, and I just love how the donkeys find it a religious experience. That's just perfect. Just the right amount of misery to have that impact. Like Passion of the Christ was apparently. All that torture had to have been for something, damn it.
Fantastic tale.
Twilight could learn from that time Luna took up play criticism. Ponies who know her well enough might be able to spot when she has a bad idea (or at least one contrary to their own) or when something is just her opinion, but ponies who don't, well... they may see horn and wings and think what she says, even not as a decree, goes.
10739765
This.
Also, probably non-'verse quasi-crackfic.
oh, someone who made a movie about the Battle of Alamo built a full-sized replica a few miles away.
it's still there, and it's SO good that tourists confuse them!
"the Tangle" reminds me of "the Tumbledowns" in "tales of the Questor".
"an entire section of town that's nothing BUT back alleys."
It feels like Boring & Pointless was original written as an absurdist send up of another book, but the humor was so deadpan and dry that many ponies decided it couldn't have possibly been a joke. So it ended up becoming the definitive book of that genre instead of a parody. To the point that any suggestion that it's supposed to be a comedy would be taken as sacrilege.
Iām very impressed by the apparent amount of fire, murder and acid that plays into a tale still aptly named Boring & Pointless, but then I think of the inspiration for this story and I can suddenly relate.
Thankfully Alicorns work in mysterious ways, even when they never actually intended to do so. Just like those clueless authors.
There was a point in the history of Marvel comics when angry fanboys were sending letters in to the writers, complaining about how badly superpowers were being handled. The fact was, these fanboys argued, that if [character] were to only use their powers correctly and sensibly, they would never lose a battle. Professor X could put anyone into a coma or Zerg Rush them with mind-controlled civilians. Spider-Man could simply fire so many webs he'd restrain anyone. Iron Man could tactically nuke a city block and pay for it to be rebuilt. And obviously, the writers were doing a terrible job because they didn't write it so that the fans' favourite characters were indomitable, invincible, unbeatable.
"Alright, f$@#ers," said the Marvel Writers, "let's try that." And so they took the two lamest-sounding super powers in the deck: The Proportional Speed And Strength Of [Creature] from characters like Spider-Man, and the Ability To Telepathically Communicate With [Creature] from characters like Aquaman. And they dialled them in to the most adorable, harmless, ridiculous creature they could think of.
This was the day that Squirrel Girl was created. And then, using the precise fanboy logic that had been thrown in their faces so many times, the Marvel Writers proceeded to have Squirrel Girl effortlessly and logically take down Thanos, Doom, Hulk, and every major hitter she came across. She became the unbeatable, fearsome, mightiest hero in the Marvel Multiverse, standing atop the mountains of her defeated foes and gnawing on a walnut.
"You see," said the Marvel Writers, "and this is why we don't let our characters be invincible."
The moral of the story, boys and girls, is that the cruelest, evilest, most sadistic thing you can ever do to a raging nerd is to give them exactly what they asked for.
A lesson that, I note, poor Twilight Sparkle still doesn't seem to have learned.
10739582
Oh that's spot on!
Estee, you are a true wonder!
lol!
The setup:
And the punchline:
I relate to Twilight on a spiritual level hear. All Book adaptations should be exactly the Same, word for word!
Also I hope Twilight's view of the Theory of Death of the Author goes to a more mature level, especially since she has such a strong belief of the importance of what the Author says and their words to the world. I guess right now those ideas are contradicting themselves in her head.
Though I will say I suspect that the overall nastiness of critics due to them telling the author the authors intent and the suicide may be Estee's frustration of the same thing.(If I'm wrong please tell me if you want to)(sorry I hope that wasn't rude or mean I was trying to say that in the politest way possible, sorry)
Side Point: I'v always assumed that Death of the Author meant that the Author was a authoritative voice on their work but not the be all end all. And that multiple different interpretations of a book or characters are possible even if the author only has one.
10740369
Or, you provide an explanation why the characters do not behave in the "sensible" way. Maybe the power can only be used x times per day or comes with some downsidee.
For example - in Stargate series, the bad guys have a device that can heal all injuries and even bring back people from the dead. Sounds awesome, so why our heroes do not use it themselves? Well, at first they did use it whenever they had access to one, but it is not in regular use because using it too much makes you evil (and it's probably why the bad guys are so evll).
Then again, maybe I sometimes expect too much logical consistency from a movie.
This is what happens when you allow a major fangirl control over a movie.
Twilight, you derp, what did you do?!
10741001
All of it. She did all of it.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in its megalithic entirety, so help her Cthulhu, because the god of Christianity would have nothing to do with this.
In fact, even Cthulhu might find association reprehensible.
"she knew chemistry) that the process was fully"
"she knew chemistry) know that the process was fully"?
"They counterpointed the surrealism of her underlying metaphor!"
"especially as most of his energies were being devoted to wondering why he suddenly wanted to kick somepony out of a high-altitude air carriage"
:D
"have searched things she might"
"have searched for things she might"?
Another excellent one, Estee; thanks for writing! :)
(Though I'm not entirely sure I understood that very last scene.)
You magnificent bastard.
For every film, there is a audiance.
Was J.K.Rowling like that back when Harry Potter was still being filmed?
š
Stay awesome, friend!