Anypony will tell you that Princess Celestia is the most amazing pony in Equestria. She's graceful, she's beautiful, and she always knows just what to say. Her decisions are wise and her manners are impeccable. Some might go so far as to say she's completely perfect.
Celestia has a secret, however. As it turns out, she actually is completely perfect. She's utterly infallible in every aspect. And boy, is she sick of it.
Now she's determined to manage to make just one little thing go wrong.
It won't, of course. After all, she's perfect.
---------
Written for the Equestria Daily Pre-reader battle: April 2013- The prompt was "Celestia's terrible secret- Revealed!" Unfortunately it didn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped, but hopefully someone gets a cheap chuckle out of it.
Good laugh this. I liked the bit with the gardener cutting the power cord and leaving Celestia's breakfast perfect.
Pffffff hahahahahahahhaa!
That was good. You are truly one of the best authors on the site (besides me, of course. We all know I'm the greatest).
Question, though: if Celestia is perfect and succeeds at everything, how the buck did Chrysalis completely pull the wool over her eyes with her lame act, then proceed to utter kick her flank after the big reveal?
Tee-hee.
2419005
We must remember things differently, I seem to recall the loving couple joining together and using the power of their true love to shine freeing all the citizens of canterlot and then ending in a beautiful ceremony. What is that if not a perfect ending?
Not your usual but I like it!
Luna's conclusions were pretty spot-on... I think.
Celestia and Gomez Adams
could form the 'Failure to Fail' club. They both did/n't
(if you get that, don't admit it)
ETERNAL LOOOOOOOP!!!!
Counterintuitively perfect day, despite all attempts otherwise? (\(0_0)/) Discord.
If she's so perfect, then why does she feel something like hatred/frustration toward her perfectness? You know, most ponies/people go crazy trying to be perfect. She goes crazy trying to NOT be perfect. If she's so perfect, she'd be perfectly accepting of her perfection. Perfect perfect perfect. And now the word "perfect" has lost all meaning to you, temporarily, at least. Which is perfect.
But if you want something that's a little less smart-ass, Celestia could go insane, causing an overload of sun-magic, which in turn, would cause Canterlot Castle to go supernova (if you think about it, the Sun, like all stars is basically a very very large, very very long nuclear explosion), killing everypony inside.
And that's how (Fallout:) Equestria was made!
Nice! This was cute and fun. Although I'll admit the rampant saidisms were a bit grating. The bit where she raises the sun was my favorite part.
Who's a silly pony? You is Celestia! //dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Luna_lolface.png
Don't worry, when your niece gets married, you will have a good shot at royally mucking things up. //dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/lolface_Queen_Chrysalis.png
A wild Brain Worm appeared!
Celestia was so upset over her complete and utter failure to save her sister one thousand years ago, that she swore to never make another mistake again. Her being the powerful, nigh-omnipotent being she is, she had the magic to make it happen... whether she wanted it to or not.
OOOOHHH, I want to make this a story so bad!
2420656
Yeah, the idea seemed good at first, but I definitely felt like I chose a direction I'd probably have done better with given more time and motivation. I had a kind of insane week, though (this was intended to be longer but a few parts were cut out due to time constraints), and, on top of that, I really don't LIKE Celestia at all, so... yeah, this didn't turn out all that great because of those factors.
2420735
Go for it, I'm not doing anything else with this topic anyway.
The logic paradox of failing to fail, thus succeeding?
...
2419723 You aren't the boss of me!
I ADMIT! *thunderclap*
This story is perfect.
Way to make my head hurt, Luna
Perfect story nevertheless
And then she had her horn fried at her neice's wedding. So... yay?
2421564
Indeed.
As fulfillment of the prompt, I can see how it might have been less than what you'd hoped for. But while not laugh-a-minute funny, this is terribly amusing and a good story all on its own. :) All you need to do is go back through for the few typos remaining, I'd say!
2422463
I know it sort of only barely worked for the prompt, but that was because I feel like stories that fit that prompt have been done. A lot. So I sacrificed a little bit of direct connection to write something original.
You may want to change it from tired to tried.
Woah woah woah... hold up a minute...
What ever happened to not raising the sun?
Now I want to read of this quest of hers
The last few lines had an atomic number of 79.
Uh, "she"
2422642 She raised the Sun so that she could see the first item on the list, thus failing to fail to raise the Sun.
Well, at least Luna's parts were entertaining. Haha.
It probably would've worked better if you'd stretched Celestia's increasingly frustrated attempts to fail over the course of a longer period of time, but it was a nice, short, and silly read nonetheless.
Me at the end during Luna's explanation.
2422014
You know what's not perfect? How she treated Twilight, and her sister.
I guess the only things that aren't perfect are her relationships with the ponies closest to her.
2423638
Well, tbh she didn't treat Luna badly, and she was trying to make Twilight mad at her, not upset. They had never had a falling out, which is unusual for any relationship. And probably an unhealthy contributer to Twi's neurotic pandering.
Throwing a fireball at a parade is worse anyway...
Yeah this Celly is kinda insane.
Oh my, I think my criticizing skills are failing me because I think I have finally found it, a story that I can't find fault with or can look past those faults by how funny the jokes are within it. A friend of mine told me that this was a funny, worth while read and it did not disappoint. I found the failure at not raising the sun to be the best joke by far.
In fact, this whole story reminded me of one of the old SNL (Saturday Night Live) skits of Celebrity Jeopardy with Sean Connery where the contestants are told "Don't do anything", and Connery is the only one left and would win except he presses his buzzer and frustrated Alex asks, "Why do you do this to me?" And the actor playing Connery (nearly breaking character in the process) laughingly replies, "Because I hate you Trebek."
So in keeping with that, I view Celestia as Alex and her infallibility as Connery constantly tormenting her with a smug smile and a Scottish laugh (or in this case a feminine maniacal laugh). Also, Luna's logical reasoning reminded me of one of the greatest pirates ever to come from the Disney Empire--Captain Jack Sparrow.
Overall, the story does what it sets out to do in it's premise; have Celestia try and ruin her own day and fail miserably, or is it succeed spectacularly? I don't know, I'll leave that for all the Pinkie Pie impersonators to figure out, as for me I will take solace in knowing that for once I read a story that did not have me pulling at my hair out of frustration and had me rolling on the floor laughing at Celestia's attempts to fail to be perfect (she should have went to the expert on chaos for that). It's fresh, something different, creative, short to the point, doesn't try to be cleverly profound, and doesn't include the favorite side character cameos to function as a nod to the fan base, which is somewhat a rare find when it comes to comedy these days. Sure, I could complain about the few misspellings (having a few "the" instead of "she" at a few spots), or about how the gardener should have been electrocuted by cutting a live wire with cutting shears or why the cable was not run properly underneath the ground to avoid such hazards in the first place, or how the solar panels should have been melted by the giant ball of fire hitting them not reflecting it since they absorb light not reflect physical/ magical objects, but in a weird way I can look past that since the story itself is supposed to be nonsensical, funny, and entertaining which it accomplishes fabulously. In short, nice job.
And now to return to my dark, starry corner where I can regain my critiquing skills by criticizing the magnitude of each star I find.
okay, i just lost track........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ wha???
Luna causes best brain hurt.
2423132
I tried to. Ran out of time, though. That's what happens with these prompts with deadlines.
Poor Celestia. Always perfect in everything you do.
Must suck to be you
......
Short sweet to the point, and…
It was good
Actually I can think of one thing that Celestia fail at other than trying to fail (which actually did made the worst day of her life by trying to fail cause if she was successful in all her plans for the day that it really shows that she is perfect
)
and that was preventing Luna to become Nightmare Moon
2419723 OMG That is so TRUE! I completely forgotten about that epi
2423011
Ahh.
I think she could have avoided that one without defying fate, though....
Anyways, she also failed at each of her individual attempts at failing, so the paradox is irrelevant to whether she did, in fact, manage to fail that day, since those attempts were failed sabotage, which is a standard failure
Boom!.
No true thing as perfection, because if she was perfect, her attitude wouldn't be so sour about being perfect.
Well done.
Very well done.
Hilarity ensued with big giant fireballs.
This is a perfect lead-in to Twilight attempting something utterly crazy and failing, driving her into madness. They seal her away and then have to figure out how to balance the system so that when she returns she can... of course they'll have to get some chaos and then it will all loop over again? Hmm...
By establishing a paradox, in that her failures are successes, and her successes are failures, I would argue that Celestia has transcended those traditional concepts entirely. Instead, all of her actions take the form of Celestiures, which are a new rating of outcome which is simultaneously the best and worst possible outcome.
I definitely saw the ending coming but regardless of that fact it was a fun, well written story.
kudos
I liked it, but the ending was a bit predictable. I think the same basic plot was used in an "Adam's Family" cartoon, were you consciously imitating that?
2435750
Nope. I'm familiar with the Addams Family but I didn't know they had an episode like this.
Regardless, this was just a real quick story, I wasn't trying to make it anything special. So I guess if a predictable ending was the worst part, I didn't do too badly.
Whether or not this is up to your own standards is, of course, your opinion, but for me this was a pleasant little diversion. I liked it!