• Member Since 13th Jun, 2012
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AugieDog


I've been writing and selling stories for longer than a lot of folks reading this have been alive. Check Baal Bunny for more!

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Twilight's life has changed a bit over the years. She used to worry about it, but more often these days, she finds herself celebrating it.

The story was written for FanOfMostEverything's Imposing Sovereigns contest for the Twilight portion of the Partiers group but didn't finish in the contest's Top Six. Happy squeaks of thanks to The Masked Ferret for spontaneously volunteering to edit and to Miss Cats for the cover image.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 25 )

Interesting. Very interesting. I feel like this is the sort of story you'd write had the show not been renewed after Season 6, a celebration of Twilight's life continuing even if we never got to see more of it.

All the more interesting is life through Twilight's eyes. What manner of creature is an alicorn of captial-F Friendship? How does she sense the world around her? What gets her through the day? What does her nebulous domain entail in its upkeep? You answered questions I never thought to ask, and that's definitely something worth celebrating. Thank you for this, and best of luck in the contest.

That...was beautiful! A sweet airy slice of I'm-not-sure-what, like a meringue.

Lotta skill in making meringues.

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That is a very good description of it.

Obligatory musical reference GO!

I reviewed this story as part of Read It Now Reviews #105.

My review can be found here.

This one feels weird to me, like...the sort of weird you get when a smile is just a little too wide. Like Twilight is trying too hard to be in Party!! mode all the time, and yet in reality is she's gone thin & stretched LOTR style. She says she's happy and it felt superficially so to me, yet...well, it's like she says. She's in an unending party.

And parties are fun. But parties are the sort of light, sugary fun that can't be the only flavor in your diet or you will end up with nutrient deficiency.

So...yea. I come off of this feeling weirdly alarmed. Like I've just witnessed Twilight in her own version of Our Town. Huh.

This was a little weird, and a lot of lovely. Like 8026198 says, there's a hint of Twilight pushing herself too much in there, and the way she seems to be framing everything as "party"... a bit of elemental imbalance there? I like to imagine that it's because she's cycling through the elements, and this is what Laughter looks like when it's channeled through Twilight Sparkle; a Honest or Loyal or Kind Twilight would be different, yet also indubitably Twilight. :pinkiehappy: :twilightsheepish:

And that said, I repeat: this is a lot of lovely. It's sweet but not overly sugary, funny without becoming comedic, and Twi's interaction with Spike and Starlight is great, and something you don't see that much in fics.

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Thanks, folks!

When I started working on this last week, my outline was for a much darker and brittler story than what I ended up with, something more along the lines of what Morning Sun talks about--the last paragraph was going to be "I'll rest when I'm dead. And y'know what? That's never going to happen." But when I actually started writing, the tone of the first few paragraphs came out so much brighter and happier that I decided I'd rather spend my time exploring that.

As for meringue, the first time I tried making it, I didn't read the instructions carefully and poured the sugar into the egg whites all at once. I ended up with something that was more a thin frosting than anything else--still tasty, but not at all what I was after. And as for Robert Earl Keen, I link to a bunch more of his songs in the Author's Note at the end of the story. :twilightsmile:

Mike

That was just delightful, especially the beginning with the sun but then all the way through, too.

This was a great story. Truly the end result of a thousand friendship lessons. I am curious about the trixie conversation though. It points to something unresolved. And then the end can be read in a few ways. Contentment is one. The other is that she is cursed to live without sleep, spreading friendship wherever she goes, giving a hint of the unworldly.

I'm kind of partial to "Merry Christmas from the Family"

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Thanks, folks!

I think there's still some residual tension left in the story from the original outline I talked about earlier... :twilightblush:

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The whole:

Gringo Honeymoon album really just hits it outta the ballpark.

Mike

This story made me feel happiness. Thank you.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Twilight, are you high

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 1

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Thanks, folks!

The outline for the story was much darker than the version I actually wrote, and I think that helped in some odd way.

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Just high on life, steed. High on life! (Please combine :twilightsmile: and :pinkiehappy: to form the appropriate image)

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There's definitely some of that in the story, but the title actually comes from a song by Robert Earl Keen that's linked to earlier in these comments while the manic yet hopeful tone comes from a different song by the same singer.

Mike

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I wouldn’t be surprised if the song was influenced by Tolkien (directly or indirectly), or by common cultural threads! :twilightsmile:

One of the more adorable fics I've read that's not ScootaDash bonding.

"In my defense," I say, taking a big scoop of oats, banana slices, and cinnamon frosting, "it was magical water and magical fire."

Screwing up the heating spell so it starts splitting the water molecules...

So instead of a court situation like Celestia's settling into right now and Luna will be calling into session twelve hours from now with the gleaming splendor of Canterlot Tower surrounding them, the morning session is all meet and greet, conversational, sometimes just as simple as a smile and a wave. I've got no normal route, no regular pattern I follow—in fact, the first thing on my list for these sessions is, "Don't make a list." Which is kind of a paradox, but the second thing on that list is, "Be more accepting of paradoxes." So I've got it covered.

You HAVE been learning from Pinkie

But the primary lesson I've had to learn is that I can't solve ponies' friendship problems for them. I can help them dig into the problem, can help them put it into a larger context, can help them step back and take a breath, but the rest is up to them. Starlight's gotten really good at the sort of gentle persuasion this calls for: as she says, it's as close to mind control as she lets herself get anymore. And Spike's always been an expert at cutting through a pony's blustering self-righteousness with a straightforward question like, "But you still want to be friends, right?"

Sounds like a really good team.

Which isn't the end of the party: not by a long shot. Because every pony I touched today, I brought a little bit of the party out to them, gave them a piece of it to take with them and spread to every other pony they might've run across. And yes, it's a quiet sort of a party—I'm not Pinkie Pie. But it's a spark, a glow, a sliver of the wonder that's been flowing through me every minute of every hour of every day since these wings sprouted from my sides.

Small, contagious goodness :) Gandalf's speech on this kind of thing from the Hobbit movies is great. But it's also why I really love the Dresden Files short story The Warrior.

Anyway, really liked how Twilight has been learning from Pinkie Pie and how it's informing her perspective on princessing. I can see how she's pushing herself pretty hard, but even then it seems like it's because she's caught up in the dance rather than forcing herself if that makes sense. And if she starts going too far, Starlight is there to smack her with a rolled up newspaper.

So I send a little tickle in the sun's direction. The whole sky giggles soundlessly, then exactly on schedule, it pulses with a wail of power that would shatter every window in Equestria if it wasn't aimed very specifically at one pair of ears. All I ever catch is the shadowiest wisp of that psychic shriek, but it makes me resolve each morning never to have a heavenly body of my own. Not in the immediate future, at any rate.

Several seasons later.

:twilightoops:AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(the sun):Are you done yet?

:twilightblush: Just about. I've got a minute till I have to raise you for the very first time. I am going to panic all I want.

:twilightoops: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

:twilightsmile: Okay. Now I'm good.

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Ah, but:

Twilight's got that "robot nanny" to help with sun and moon now. I'm sure she's programmed it to filter out the shrieking. :eeyup:

Mike

So I send a little tickle in the sun's direction. The whole sky giggles soundlessly, then exactly on schedule, it pulses with a wail of power that would shatter every window in Equestria if it wasn't aimed very specifically at one pair of ears. All I ever catch is the shadowiest wisp of that psychic shriek, but it makes me resolve each morning never to have a heavenly body of my own. Not in the immediate future, at any rate.

:trollestia: That's what she thinks.

Initially I interpreted this as a 1000+ year old Sole Princess of Equestria Twilight reliving the same perfect day over and over, whether by memory, magic, or dreams. It's just a little too perfect of a day.

But I'm pretty sure Twilight's just a little maniacally happy here. Good for her. :)

That was a very lovely little story. It's nice to read something that's very slice-of-life, optimistic upbeat daily routine-kind of story with the ponies. I might have to read through it a second time sometime later. Thanks for writing this! :twilightsmile:

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