Parables are stories written by accomplished astrologists, intended to help unicorns studying magic by teaching them how it feels to attune themselves to a particular star and harness its power. Young Twilight Sparkle is learning to teleport, but Asterism's Parable of the River vexes her. How can one say two different things are in fact the same?
Princess Celestia knows the feeling all too well. As Twilight forges forward, she wonders whether where she finds herself and what she tried to escape are really so different.
Chapters (4)
FIIIRST POOOOOST?!
That's a nice opening. An appropriate palace for a Monarch of the Sun, who fulfills that title in a way least like any of our real history's French kings.
And I like the bit about the pattering of little hooves, and what such patterings mean to different characters.
I do wonder how you invented or arrived at or derived your story's unusual magic system. Interesting indeed!
hahaha
(italicization/emphasis added)
Nice (partially linguistic) worldbuilding there, exactly in a proper place and serving well its purpose in the prose, not gratuitious.
'writers who use weird Latin phrases in their stories without any explanation; and the one time I tried to find out what this phrase meant, I woke up the next morning with an ache in my head and a cactus in my bed. still don't know what THAT was about.'
I like what you've done here towards the end of ch1, with the conflict between Twilight Velvet and Celestia.
More generally, I like how you portray Celestia's awareness of and efforts to avoid the risk of accidentally overpowering ponies in ways less physically tangible than her mere size.
This is a good Celestia internal pov imho, and I'm enjoying it a lot.
12121294
I know G1's magic revolved around wishing and stars, though only the author can say if that's where they got it from.
Thing is, it also seems very doubtful that ponies use meters.
The fact that this Celestia makes this choice, instead of carrying the sleepy child 'homewards' to her tower room, in itself is an interesting and meaning-carrying choice by the author (and by the author's Celestia, of course.)
The fact that Celestia, in the face of the conflict between herself and Twilight Velvet we see towards the end of ch1, chose to gift or long-term loan her young student that tower room in the castle, a room which comes with a (possibly history bearing!) ready-gathered large collection of books and an official status as a 'residence,' is of course ANOTHER interesting and significant choice.
Maybe more importantly, your ideas about what the Nightmare has been doing these last nine hundred and eighty-some years, while Luna has been on the moon? Haunting (oh, a pun, oops
) in a powerful way.
This really is one of the better and more interesting new fimfic stories I've seen so far this year, with more literary strengths than I can reasonably be expected to list or count.
On that basis, Recommended! 👍
This is very well written and a good story too.
Thank you for sharing with us!
This is a very nice start for a story! Tiny Twi is adorable, precocious but still clearly a young filly. And the description of Celestia's palace is wonderful, too!
But I'm perhaps most interested by the system of magic you've created here, drawing on combinations of stars for "wishes", each star having its own influences and... "portfolio", perhaps, and different connections to others... Very atmospheric, and very unusual!
You write with a rare and enviable quality.
I love this. I'm a fan of reading things out loud, and must say this reads really well. It's sweet.
The Nightmare's influence here is a pretty creepy touch! And that's quite insightful from Twilight, at her age. Very Heraclitean of her!
Also, Cadance having an affinity for insects, including stick bugs that pretend to be something else entirely...
One of the best things I've read on this site and I've been here since 2012
This is crazy. I was captivated by the star lore, and equally impressed by what I've always felt is the core of Celestia's relationship with Twilight; her belief that she sees the pony behind the princess.
The ways that you describe Twi unconsciously vastly outclassing her entire cohort are powerful, and yet none of the details feel overly technical.
Referring to to star based magic as "astrology" makes etymological sense, but gives me a little brain twitch when I read it because I associate the word with fortune telling.
I think the use of parables is genius in that it feels grounded and like something the reader can ponder while the characters mine it for their own meaning.
I'm curious about the astralidade. It seems to be a Portuguese word, but also I found references to it as a navigational instrument in English in an old (1944) issue of aviation week. Where did you pull it from?
Have you written other stories in this continuity?
thanks for the love everyone!
12121294
most writers seem to just exchange 'hand' for 'hoof' but i like to think about when ponies use their mouths and when they use their hooves
in general, when writing celestia one of my favorite things about her is the inescapable power imbalance that separates her from those around her, how she navigates that, and how it mirrors her physical differences (putting a comforting hoof on twilight velvet without crushing her)
12121416
huh! i haven't watched anything but G4, so it's just a coincidence, but i imagine we drew on similar wells of inspiration - wishing on a star is pretty whimsical. one of the actual reasons for this system is my unending war against overpowered unicorns. in the same way you can truss an earth pony's legs or bind a pegasus's wings, just turn a unicorn upside down and they're powerless, no need for any conveniently-invented 'anti-magic rings'.
12121564
in a previous draft twilight fell asleep in celestia's bed, but it felt a little too personal to me. i err on the side of celestia being twilight's teacher rather than her mother (from twilight's perspective, at least. this fic explores celestia's struggle with that). celestia's very careful to call the tower twilight's library, not her room, and she only moves in once she'd naturally move out of her parents' house anyway.
12121656
that's very kind, thank you.
12121724
symbolic weight aside, i like the idea of cadence being a little weirder than people expect her to be.
12121736
wow, thank you!
12121761
thanks! i've never really liked the idea that twilight is "the most powerful unicorn" (see above unicorn-nerfing conquest), so i express her talent in terms of attunement rather than raw power. though it's described in violent terms, her ward-breaking is more an art of subtleness. the use of 'astrology' as a term is to make the magic feel a little more down-to-earth (heh) and practical, rather than Wizards or Magicians.
astralidade = astral (stars) + alidade (a sighting instrument used in surveying)
i wouldn't call it a continuity per se - i haven't really thought of any canon divergence, this is mostly just my own interpretation of the stuff the show doesn't get into, the 'gloamiverse' i guess. i generally keep those things in mind while writing, but the only other story that actually touches on these mechanics is Professor Rarity's Totally Platonic Romance Curriculum. i'm hoping to write other work that gets across some of my other ideas (picking one at random: the very awkward version of The Talk twilight will have to have when spike when she does enough research to realize that dragons are sequential hermaphrodites, as hinted in this work...) but it's a roll of the dice whether i'll have both time and energy for it
Clever extrapolation of Unicorns originally moving the Sun and Moon and Twilight’s star cutie mark to drawing their power from the heavens in general. You’re not the first writer to do it but this is probably the most in depth exploration of the concept I’ve ever seen.
12121826
"The ~tortoise~ unicorn lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping." (Holden)
"What do you mean I'm not helping!" (Leon)
"I mean you're not helping. Why is that Leon?" (tense silence)
1. NOW I assume that in at least one universe, the canonical way to disable a unicorn is to turn it upside down AND stick its horn into a hole in the ground so it can't move. Maybe even its entire head.
2. But one advanced defense is for a unicorn to have pretrained with all the stars that are on the FAR side of the planet, beneath the planet's underside. This results in some really bizarre and amazeballs counterattacks by the 'disabled' unicorn.
12122071
Hay, who else have you seen 'doing this?' Can you point me at stories or whatever?
I liked this story a lot. Intelligent, without sounding pretentious. I liked the magic worldbuilding, the named stars and so forth.
The Paramedic Paradox is one of my favorite paradoxes. Until proven otherwise, in accordance to newfound anxiety, the professional treating you is both extremely knowledgeable or extremely ignorant at all times in parallel to if you are dying or living respectively.
Celestia is an extremely complex character. That is, in truth, why she is my favorite among FiM's cast. She's got the depth that comes from having the weight of a nation's safety - a *sister's* safety - laid on your shoulders.
Very few authors truly understand the layers to her character, that tragic blend of loneliness and strength. Many will see one or two layers - often in the archetype of "the lonely ruler". Here, however, I can say that I am greatly delighted to find a story which understands Celestia and delves deeply into the full richness of her character. She is both the manipulative schemer, and utterly bound by her own emotions. Absolutely respectful of her subject's wishes, and yet always aware that she is a ruler, not a partner.
It is a stunning character study. Often I critique stories for being too short - wrapping up before their premise has enough time to grow. That is not the case here; I only wish for more out of a selfish desire to see such great characterization!
On top of that, I have to congratulate you on making an alternative magic system here which both feels fitting in the setting, and is also consistent and cohesive. The idea of manipulating stars' wishes is especially significant in the context of their "aiding Luna's escape", something I suspect you were strongly thinking of when you designed it.
Still, this is first and foremost a character thing, and it's been a long time since I found a Celestia story this good. Instant favorite, wish I could read fresh again.
The world building is very different than my cup of tea. But I absolutely adore your characterization of Celestia.
I think my favourite bit of all in this story wasn't any of the great heartwarming stuff, but rather Celestia's idle thought regarding bonsai trees.
Well bloody hell, if you don't half know how to write a story that grips me for reasons I didn’t even realise I could be gripped. Celestiangst is a time-honoured tradition around these parts, for sure, but the way you seem to tell several stories at once here is wonderful. The main trunk of Celestia’s failures spanning out into the branches of Luna’s banishment, Sunset’s abandonment, and even hiding the truth from Twilight, they all work together to make the angst feel a lot deeper than plenty of stories that focus only one of those.
But what stood out to me right from the get-go is that you’ve written some of the best filly Twilight I’ve seen on this site in a very long time. You never write her as stupid, but instead lacking life experience; you never write her as a smart-arse, but instead someone who’s endlessly curious and constantly taking in new information.
The subtleties seem just as important as the interactions, too – you added in plenty of pauses and hitches, moments where she focuses on a seemingly-innocuous thing that Celestia says, that gave me the impression that she understands there are things going on here that are beyond her. And when she does get distracted or come up with some non sequitur, I never got the impression that she was ‘just being a dumb, distracted kid’ – it just felt like she’d found another thing to focus on, another thing to learn (the end of Night & Day is a brilliant example of this).
And I’d be remiss not to mention how you build the concepts of magic into this world. Wishing upon a star to cast magic is neat (and wasn’t that done in one of the older gens as well?), but the idea of studying magic and honing one’s ability through understanding parable and philosophy is bloody inspired. One of the things that’s put me off magical fiction in general is that so often it’s written basically as another form of science: Something to understand, research, find the right equations and ‘logic’ your way through, and frankly if I wanted to read about science, I’d read about science. Learning magic not through ‘getting it correct’, but by changing the way one thinks about the world, one’s perception of it, and oneself? You managed to make the magic in this story feel truly magical.
Apologies, one last note: The start of Years was the icing on the cake for me. I said earlier how well you wrote filly Twilight, so to see her grow up in those few short exchanges had me grinning from ear to ear. How in not even a single sentence, you let us see Twilight becoming more mature (both through her tone and the changing subjects of her dreams), but also more jaded, more guarded, with more than a few flashes of Sunset’s glassy-eyed expression in there as well. Brilliant stuff, thanks for sharing this.
And the idea of a hemidemisemimetre made me spit-take my tea. Thanks for that :D
thank you for the thoughtful comments!!
12140850
i love all the little dualisms inside celestia - guardian and teacher, princess and goddess, ruler and friend. exploring how she balances them all - and how she always seems to fall short of synthesis - is some of my favorite work on fimfic. and yes, the prophecy definitely helped inspire the focus on stars! i interpreted it less as "someone will use the stars to help her escape" and more the stars having wills of their own and being her allies. the four specific stars that worked that seal-breaking are mentioned in my other work that touches on this system.
12141453
thank you! i don't really like to think of celestia as The Ultimate Chessmaster, but i think having such a long life gives her a unique perspective on mentorship.
12142325
i will always be a dedicated celestiangst warrior 🫡🫡🫡 filly twilight is a joy, her jaded affect is definitely something that came later for me (partially because i think i hc her as a bit older than most do: she's 27 when she meets the other mane six, more a disgruntled postdoc than a bright-eyed undergrad). i think of her as someone who did a lot of internal development before she started turning it outward and reflected it in her vocabulary; despite learning and internalizing all sorts of advanced vocabulary, her own is still pretty simple.
i'm glad you liked the unscientific approach to magic! that was definitely my focus. i like twilight being a nerd in front of a blackboard full of equations, but that whole depiction (and alchemy just being thrown in there for good measure) feels a little generic to me at this point, and often i want to go in my own direction in worldbuilding even when i don't have a great reason for it. please don't apologize for writing such a detailed comment, i was hoping someone would appreciate the progression in the epilogue! it took a lot of tuning.
Really nice story. This magic system is interesting and actually does line up with things like Twilight in Rainbow Rocks trying to cold-read a counter song. Celestia and Twilight's relationship is cute and the way Nightmare Moon influenced things was well integrated.