On topic: The primary impression I got was that Celestia didn’t have the emotional firmness to carry out the plan she logically agreed was the best plan. As you put it, she has sentimentality, not true love. The story is about her abdicating, and about thrusting her duties onto Twilight. Twilight will shut up and multiply.
That is, I agree with your 1 and 2. (I don’t think the evolutionary plan is evil- but I’m also willing to trust cold equations.) It also doesn’t help that Celestia isn’t saying “I like Twilight more than I like myself, I think Twilight deserves to live more than I do,” Celestia is saying “I think Twilight will be more Stalinesque than I am, and that’s what my little ponies need more than mothering.”
The traditional way to make Celestia seem selfless is to have Celestia actually go native. That is, she’s not just raising up Twilight so that Twilight can be the Bad Cop that leads Equestia to the Glorious New Dawn, but she’s raising up Twilight because she thinks Twilight can come up with a better plan than Titania- the short-sighted ponies will figure out a way to abolish tradeoffs and make the world full of both glory and smiles and rainbows! I do not recommend this path: it is traditional but it is not correct.
Alternate, simpler explanation: people think the situation is sad because the situation is sad. Focusing on the parts that will make the situation happy will make people realize the things about immortality that are great. Celestia never visualizes the bright and glorious future that Twilight will usher in, and how Twilight will get to experience it when she might not. It’s implied by her belief in the equations- but she spends more time fantasizing about the stallion she never got to have sex with / the foal she never birthed than she does fantasizing about Equus Superior. No wonder people think she’s selfish!
Somewhat off topic:
I don’t think you understand the impropriety of asking me to turn my friends’ final moments into reports for you
Something that shows up sometimes in narratives might get called “the superagent assumption”: basically, if something happens, the most strategic / powerful character intended it to happen. Thus, this is evidence that Titania both understands and intends the impropriety of these reports. (I’m not on TVTropes enough to know if has a name there.) It’s not clear if that’s what you intended- and if not, you might want to have Celestia express it as a value disagreement (“I can’t express how much I resent” instead of “you sure you’re doing this right?”).
Alternate, simpler explanation: people think the situation is sad because the situation is sad.
The situation is sad, but I was expecting people to think about causality. It looks like they may just be associating emotions with salient features.
If this is what happens, the Dark Arts potential for exploiting this are enormous.
Focusing on the parts that will make the situation happy will make people realize the things about immortality that are great. Celestia never visualizes the bright and glorious future that Twilight will usher in, and how Twilight will get to experience it when she might not.
Yes; but if Celestia did visualize that, she’d trust and follow the equations.
So, a writer has to write for two completely different audiences. One understands the story and thinks about it causally. One audience understands it only on the level of “immortal is sad, immortality bad”.
(Which is larger: The difference in intelligence between these two groups, or between the second group and dogs?)
Off topic: I just realized that you wrote Big Mac Reads Something Purple, which is one of my favorite MLP fanfics.
Thanks! Maybe someday I will rework it and resubmit it to EqD. They didn’t like it.
Yes; but if Celestia did visualize that, she’d trust and follow the equations.
Agreed. I suspect that you probably can’t explain the story you want to the audience you have. Being more explicit about it might help, but… eh.
Which is larger: The difference in intelligence between these two groups, or between the second group and dogs?
This depends on what metric you use to measure and what purpose you want to direct those intelligences towards. In general, the latter difference is larger.
Thanks! Maybe someday I will rework it and resubmit it to EqD. They didn’t like it.
From my reading of their response, if you drop the first two endings and make it explicitly a one-shot, it’ll pass muster on word count. It’s short, but that’s because it’s written with beautifully economic prose. (The “very flat” description just seems odd to me- that’s the point! I don’t know if you just need to find a sympathetic pre-reader or explaining the reason behind it will be sufficient.)
Yes, but the first two endings lead up to the third ending. Starting with the sad ending makes the happy ending happier. I really don’t like making stories worse for EqD. (They’re also bad about first-person narrative—the pre-readers sometimes complain about first-person narrative that isn’t grammatically correct.)
The pre-reader’s interpretation of the word limit rule was arbitrary—the rule just says “2500 words”, nothing about alternate endings. It was silly for him to interpret the lower limit on words so that removing words makes the story appear to have more words.
On topic: The primary impression I got was that Celestia didn’t have the emotional firmness to carry out the plan she logically agreed was the best plan. As you put it, she has sentimentality, not true love. The story is about her abdicating, and about thrusting her duties onto Twilight. Twilight will shut up and multiply.
That is, I agree with your 1 and 2. (I don’t think the evolutionary plan is evil- but I’m also willing to trust cold equations.) It also doesn’t help that Celestia isn’t saying “I like Twilight more than I like myself, I think Twilight deserves to live more than I do,” Celestia is saying “I think Twilight will be more Stalinesque than I am, and that’s what my little ponies need more than mothering.”
The traditional way to make Celestia seem selfless is to have Celestia actually go native. That is, she’s not just raising up Twilight so that Twilight can be the Bad Cop that leads Equestia to the Glorious New Dawn, but she’s raising up Twilight because she thinks Twilight can come up with a better plan than Titania- the short-sighted ponies will figure out a way to abolish tradeoffs and make the world full of both glory and smiles and rainbows! I do not recommend this path: it is traditional but it is not correct.
Alternate, simpler explanation: people think the situation is sad because the situation is sad. Focusing on the parts that will make the situation happy will make people realize the things about immortality that are great. Celestia never visualizes the bright and glorious future that Twilight will usher in, and how Twilight will get to experience it when she might not. It’s implied by her belief in the equations- but she spends more time fantasizing about the stallion she never got to have sex with / the foal she never birthed than she does fantasizing about Equus Superior. No wonder people think she’s selfish!
Somewhat off topic:
Something that shows up sometimes in narratives might get called “the superagent assumption”: basically, if something happens, the most strategic / powerful character intended it to happen. Thus, this is evidence that Titania both understands and intends the impropriety of these reports. (I’m not on TVTropes enough to know if has a name there.) It’s not clear if that’s what you intended- and if not, you might want to have Celestia express it as a value disagreement (“I can’t express how much I resent” instead of “you sure you’re doing this right?”).
Off topic: I just realized that you wrote Big Mac Reads Something Purple, which is one of my favorite MLP fanfics.
The situation is sad, but I was expecting people to think about causality. It looks like they may just be associating emotions with salient features.
If this is what happens, the Dark Arts potential for exploiting this are enormous.
Yes; but if Celestia did visualize that, she’d trust and follow the equations.
So, a writer has to write for two completely different audiences. One understands the story and thinks about it causally. One audience understands it only on the level of “immortal is sad, immortality bad”.
(Which is larger: The difference in intelligence between these two groups, or between the second group and dogs?)
Thanks! Maybe someday I will rework it and resubmit it to EqD. They didn’t like it.
Well, the authorial possibilities are certainly enormous. “The Sword of Good” runs on this, for example.
Agreed. I suspect that you probably can’t explain the story you want to the audience you have. Being more explicit about it might help, but… eh.
This depends on what metric you use to measure and what purpose you want to direct those intelligences towards. In general, the latter difference is larger.
From my reading of their response, if you drop the first two endings and make it explicitly a one-shot, it’ll pass muster on word count. It’s short, but that’s because it’s written with beautifully economic prose. (The “very flat” description just seems odd to me- that’s the point! I don’t know if you just need to find a sympathetic pre-reader or explaining the reason behind it will be sufficient.)
Yes, but the first two endings lead up to the third ending. Starting with the sad ending makes the happy ending happier. I really don’t like making stories worse for EqD. (They’re also bad about first-person narrative—the pre-readers sometimes complain about first-person narrative that isn’t grammatically correct.)
The pre-reader’s interpretation of the word limit rule was arbitrary—the rule just says “2500 words”, nothing about alternate endings. It was silly for him to interpret the lower limit on words so that removing words makes the story appear to have more words.