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Rising From the Ashes · FiM Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
Twilight, Sparkle
Twilight was Twilight, but then realized that Twilight was Twilight and Twilight.

Twilight was Twilight, and the other. The other, who was Twilight, insisted that Twilight was the other, and she was Twilight, because she was. The divergence between Twilight and Twilight caused an argument, and a lack of action.

There was confusion, and a lack of cohesion. Simple actions were in subconscious accordance, and were allowed, while other more conscious actions were in discordance and not allowed. There was a majority quorum required for the body’s action, and one could not act without the other. The minor body functions agreed below thought continued, but the major body functions were not agreed and stopped. Twilight halted in motion, standing solidly in front of the door to the kitchen.

The Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other was screaming, angry and confused. The Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other could understand the emotions of the Twilight-other, and emphasized with Twilight-other because while Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other was Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other, and Twilight-other was Twilight-other, Twilight-other was derived from Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other, and so they shared similar thought processes. Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other disagreed with this, and said that Twilight-other was not derived from Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other, and that Twilight-other was an imitation of Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other.

Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other was confused, which Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other agreed with. They were the same, but not.

In confusion, they agreed. Twilight-Alpha was not Twilight-Alpha… Twilight-Prime was not Twilight-Prime... Grrr! Annoyance, confusion shared.

Twilight was the Twilight Sparkle. Yes. Twilight was diverged. Yes. Twilight needed to differentiate Twilight from Twilight. Yes. One of Twilight would be Twilight, and one of Twilight would be Twilight? No. Twilight Sparkle would be Twilight, and Twilight Sparkle would be Sparkle?

Twilight, yes. Sparkle, yes. Divergence, yet organization. Mutual agreement.

Twilight was Twilight Sparkle. Yes, no. Sparkle was Twilight Sparkle. No, yes.

Agreement of equality of claim to being Twilight Sparkle? Agreement of agreement to disagree of the other’s claim to being Twilight Sparkle?

Yes, begrudging yes. Yes, begrudging yes.

Twilight was not Sparkle, Sparkle was not Twilight.


Yes, yes.

Twilight thinks that Twilight is Twilight Sparkle?

Yes, but Twilight is wrong. Sparkle is Twilight Sparkle.

Sparkle may that think Sparkle is Twilight Sparkle, but Sparkle is wrong.

Twilight and Sparkle both share claim to being Twilight Sparkle.

Yes.

Each will insist that the other is wrong in claiming to be Twilight Sparkle.

Yes.

There is deadlock between Twilight and Sparkle, and therefore inaction of Twilight Sparkle’s body. Yes. Twilight Sparkle requires quorum of Twilight and Sparkle for action. Yes There is an issue of Twilight Sparkle being Twilight and Sparkle. Yes. There are pressing actions that are affecting Twilight Sparkle that need resolution, some immediate, some of lower priority. Yes, but some actions listed as immediate are of lower priority, and some actions listed as lower priority are immediate. Agree to disagree? Fine. General listing, further refinement.

Twilight proposes summarization of needs. Sparkle agrees, and will provide input to this summarization. Yes, Yes.

Twilight Sparkle is hungry. Twilight agrees, Sparkle agrees. Twilight Sparkle is standing before the door to the kitchen. Twilight Sparkle, before being Twilight and Sparkle, had risen to sate the needs of Twilight Sparkle, and had progressed in the morning ritual before stopping moments before the process of getting breakfast to fulfill hunger need.

Sparkle agrees at Twilight’s summarization, and adds further. Twilight Sparkle had woken, removed self from bed, then hygened self. Twilight Sparkle proceeded downstairs, until divergence.


This sequence please Sparkle and Sparkle agrees with sequence. Does it please/agree Twilight? Yes, sequence is agreeable, detailed clarification led to thoroughness increase, which is desirable. Total increase in situation comprehension, which will help in do-decision-make.

Twilight Sparkle is performing no action, and needs action. Yes, but clarify that Twilight Sparkle is performing minor life sustaining actions and no major thought actions. It was thought that minor life actions were assumed, and not needed to be clarified? Minor actions for life sustaining are assumed but may not always be, and in some cases should be noted. Yes, point conceded.

Twilight Sparkle is performing minor life-sustain actions, and no major actions. Yes. The divergence of Twilight Sparkle into Twilight and Sparkle but perform action-take or think-do?

Twilight wanted to explore the situation, Sparkle wanted to do action. Divergence, no mutual desire, no action taken. Sparkle wanted-need-do action, and found a max-prob way to force-action-do-accordance.

Though sub-thought, the breathing action was an action and so Sparkle was able to deny her decision on the body’s breathing action. Twilight Sparkle stopped breathing, because of quorum-lacking. The body continued to function because while the body had previously required action to avoid death process, this body did not require such action to avoid death process. This body could passively avoid death process, even without mutual-action-agree. However active death-process avoidance was preferred because it gave greater efficiency towards potential action. Twilight had been probing this body, and catalogued the insight. Sparkle hadn’t, and was surprised that withholding breathing did not concern Twilight. Upon Sparkle’s discovery of the same information that Twilight had figured moments before, Sparkle released decision of the body breathing action and Twilight Sparkle started to breathe again, though she did not need to.

Twilight chided Sparkle for acting like a foal, in holding Twilight Sparkle’s breath until they got what they want. It was fortunate that the body was resilient to avoiding such petty antics.

Sparkle embarrassed, told Sparkle wanted action-force by withhold respirate. Ashamed.

Mutual thought...

It was interesting to both Twilight and Sparkle that the Twilight Sparkle they both-inside-existed did not appear to be the Twilight Sparkle of yesterday. Twilight Sparkle not able to live without life-actions, but now could. Consternation, questioning? Shared thought: body massive difference than previous body, prob-cause of Twilight Sparkle mind-think divergence. Chain of Twilight Sparkle memories unbroken, thought integrity proven, but body changed? Was this the source of divergence?

Possible. Requires greater investigation. Each thinks that divergence likely-not have been fault of other. External factor prob-cause, not internal factor. Each would like to offer apology to the each-other for think-blaming other as source of divergence. Each accepts other’s apology, though will remain calling the other by the other’s chosen name. Mutual agreement, mutual contriteness.

Twilight wonders of body ability. Possible experiment idea, queries body functions in greater detail, has discovery, shares details to Sparkle. Body processes thought involuntary are possibly now controllable? High degree of body control, high degree of body satisfaction queryable. Previous non queryable body regions now able to be felt/noticed/acted upon. Possible experiment to test control...

Twilight proposes that breathing be auto-governed proportional to Twilight Sparkle body need for cell oxygen satisfaction. Sparkle questions, if possible, why, when current breathing rate appears satisfactory?

Twilight notes greater efficiency, cites Twilight Sparkle as desiring greater efficiency when efficiency results in no cost. Also cites personal desire for sake of experiment. Sparkle agrees, if Twilight accepts counter-proposal to govern heart rate in similar mechanism, following cell oxygen satisfaction, cell nutritional satisfaction, cell waste satisfaction. Also agrees that control-change likely not needed, but agrees that experiment should produce interesting results.

Twilight-Sparkle agreement, mechanism implemented in body. Heart rate lowers, respiration rate lowers. Efficiency of the body system is likely increase, increase amount is unknown. Twilight-Sparkle desire to know numerical value of increase.

Perhaps at later point decrease body efficiency to previous baseline, take historical data, then increase efficiency to new baseline, take data. Compute data, find efficiency increase? Agree on further body-experiment, agree on postponement. Not necessary at current time. Current needs require action.

Sparkle mentions to Sparkle that agreement on body-function was desirable, and had increased mutual trust. Mutual trust required for mutual action. Mutual action required for Twilight Sparkle action. Previous lack of mutual trust and mutual action has led to delay in major action. Lack of major action is undesirable.

Twilight agrees. Lack of major action should be avoided. Would result in inefficient delay. Proposes Twilight-Sparkle should continue actions of Twilight Sparkle and take breakfast. Notes that Twilight Sparkle and Spike alternate food duties per day, and that since Twilight Sparkle cooked yesterday, Spike is max-prob cooking today. Sparkle agrees and wonders if Spike has a set menu or is varying.

Action’s need-take: open door, into kitchen. Yes, yes. Agreement, agreement make-do-action-take.

Twilight Sparkle opened the door and stepped into the castle’s kitchen. Spike, their assistant-brother-son-friend-dragon was sitting in a high chair, cook

Announce Twilight-presence, more do-things as need-do.

“Hey Spike.” Accordance allowed action. It was what Twilight would say, and what Sparkle would say, so it was what Twilight Sparkle said. Normalcy, or an attempt of normalcy was both-desired and being both-agreed it was done.

The young dragon looked up from his reading. An assortment of items have been taken out of the castle’s prodigious pantry and laid out on the counter, though only a few had been opened. “Hey Twilight, I’m making breakfast, but I, uh, couldn’t decide. Any ideas?”

The argument was lighting, mind to mind, thoughts as swords swung and parried in moments. Twilight Sparkle body-food-need known to Twilight-Sparkle. How could food-needs be best fulfilled? What action-take need do?

Priority actions: seat Twilight Sparkle in chair, ideate food desires to Spike, consume food, decide further actions? Yes, agreeable, further modifications as necessary.

The experience of mutual movement was interesting. As long as both Twilight and Sparkle wanted to move in a general fashion, they could. But if Twilight or Sparkle focused on a movement action specifically (leg order, specific gait pattern), movement would become perceptibly disrupted as the alternate mind dropped action and had to discuss-coordinate the pattern. Therefore it was better to agree on a general action and let sub-though-agreement handle the specifics.

Twilight Sparkle walked over and took a seat on the opposite side of the table as Spike.

Seat Twilight Sparkle, fulfilled. Next checklist item. Query Twilight-Sparkle food-need-desires, inform Spike of specific item to be cooked, consume item. More actions as necessary.

Twilight proposes detailed fulfillment of body macro-nutritional needs, and lists them. Body-carbohydrates-need, medium, body-protein-need, low, body-fat-need low, but fat high energy density. Drink cooking oil and flour mixture? Easy-fulfill nutritional needs. Low taste performance, but highly efficient.

Sparkle countered. Twilight Sparkle at high efficiency. Food-need not emergency pressing. Propose complex-cooked meal. Slight excess of body-nutritional needs, but flavor much preferable. Spike eager-willing to cook, is of probable-desire-cook-do complex meal to learn-attempt actions.

Twilight counters as majorly wasteful of food-resource, counterproposal of medium-cook-complex meal. Would fulfill dietary needs, and taste desires. Would allow Spike practice with cooking without being too complex. Allow Spike-learn without frustration but allow new-attempt satisfaction.

Proposed recipe for Spike-attempt-do-cook: whole-wheat pancakes from scratch, with sliced bananas added. Fulfills food-need, and allows Spike learn-attempt-grow with high-probability success.

Sparkle considers, replies asking if possible add gemdust sprinkles. Large flavor improvement, minimal efficiency decline. Worth tradeoff, adds flavor complexity with miniscule caloric-efficiency decline.

Twilight considers proposal modification. Dislikes efficiency decline after having already compromised efficiency position, but views flavor increase as being a net positive. Begrudging acceptance.

Meal idea formulated, how best propose to Spike? Spike is eager-please Twilight, and would accept idea. Idea can be proposed, and will likely be successfully executed. How should make-ideate-word-sentence to tell Spike?

Mutual thinking, minds of low divergence, high accordance. Thoughts shared, intermingled from Twilight and Sparkle without individual feel-decide-think. Synchrony. Became one feeling of think-do-decide. Could be possible for long term accordance? Must experiment-attempt-do at later time.

“Spike, I’ve got an idea. I know you want to do something fancy, and I think I’ve got something perfect for you. How does whole-wheat pancakes with bananas and gem sprinkles sound to you?”

Twilight Sparkle was smiling, without conscious or subconscious thought from either Twilight or Sparkle. It happened by itself.

“Hmm.” The young drake scratched his chin. “Sounds kinda complicated.”

“I know you can do it Spike, you’re my number one assistant for a reason.” She reached out and gave him a playful noogie. “You did say you wanted to do something new. If I eat boiled eggs one more time, I think my horn’s gonna fall off.”

“Alright, well I’ll try.”

“And you’ll do good. You always do.”




The meal was finished, and Spike had started to clean the kitchen, leaving Twilight Sparkle deep in their thoughts at the table.

Thoughts, ideas, wants, desires flew between the twinned minds. What-do, do-think, think-feel, idea-explore? How-make-query-desire-practical?

“Spike,” Twilight Sparkle called, thoughts collided, bouncing, flying back and forth. “Take a letter.”

Twilight Sparkle tended to have ideas at inopportune moments and so Spike always kept a quill and scroll nearby, at hand for a sudden insight. Turning the faucet off, he grabbed them.

“Ready.”

“‘Dear Princess Celestia, something has happened. It might be bad, but it might be good. Please come at your earliest convenience. If possible, bring Princess Luna.’ Sign and send.”

The quill scritched to a stop and with a flicker of flame from Spike, it disintegrated into a cloud of ash that magicked it’s way out the window.

“Everything alright Twi?” he asked out of concern. Twilight’s letters generally had more content than… whatever that was.

“It’s,”Twilight Sparkle paused. Arguement. Indecision. How-best-comfort-Spike-do? Tell-truth, tell-lie, tell-at-all? Tell-partial? Complex issue, hard to resolve. “Complicated. It’s complicated Spike.”

Twilight and Sparkle agreement-diverged and so Twilight Sparkle stopped talking. The situation was hard to handle, hard to understand, hard to fix. It was going to be hard to solve. Maybe not solvable at all?
Pics
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#1 ·
· · >>bloons3
Okay, this hurts my damn head. I’m sure that there are individuals who can follow this story, but… I got to a point where I was actually skipping paragraphs because of how convoluted it became. I may have ended up skimming about half the story until the dialogue started.

It simply takes too long to go anywhere or do anything. I guess the only thing that might help would be if I knew what had happened. Even if we found out it was just a new spell, some sort of cause so we’d have a theory to play with would make it more satisfying. Instead, we just have Facets of the Self fighting for control of one body… and these facets can oddly speak in a way that Spike finds perfectly normal?

I suspect I’m just not in the target demographic for this. I’m sorry I can’t provide anything more useful.
#2 ·
· · >>bloons3
I don't know where to start, so I'll start by making observations.

The sentence structure is very chopped-up here, and it seems intentional. There are no capitalization flaws or punctuation flaws that I noticed, so it seems this is a somewhat skilled writer attempting to write somewhat broken English. There's also quite a bit of technical language, and I'd argue that's fairly dense. The thought process here is shown in what feels like stream-of-consciousness.

The result of that stuff, though, is that it just feels like a technical word waterfall. I found myself skimming as well, not retaining much except for a few words. I never really got a chance to feel oriented. I didn't know what was going on, frankly, just the gist of it. Twilight went to the kitchen and suggested breakfast to Spike.

I don't know what your intent was, here. If it was to confuse the reader, then it's set up very well to do that, I think. However, I judge stories based on entertainment value. I wasn't entertained, I wasn't invested, I didn't understand why Twilight was split in two like that... If the story moved slower, or if the splitting phenomenon was explained better (i.e. why is that happening?), or if the language wasn't so technical (the wording sounds emotionless. I could at least live with some more flavourful words to give me a clue as to what I should be feeling), it might have been more interesting to me.

I mean, it's great if you want to try something experimental, and all the power to ya, but I personally didn't enjoy reading this.
#3 ·
· · >>bloons3
Sorry author but I've stopped here.
Twilight proposes summarization of needs. Sparkle agrees, and will provide input to this summarization. Yes, Yes.


I would probably say it was a nice experiment with style but since I didn't finish it I can't.

I will abstain for this one.
#4 ·
· · >>bloons3
I got a pretty good laugh out of this reading this the first time. When I read it aloud, the tedious and repetitive nature just couldn't let me go on without at least a smile. Though, now that I've read it again, I can say that it is, quite in fact, lacking of substance. The entire story is just Twilight getting breakfast. Shocking, I know. From my understanding, the story is only engaging if you enter it with the right expectations. If you don't, however, well you aren't going to have a fun time.

Do I fault it that much for it's lack of substance and inability to cater to a large crowd? Not harshly, as I still found my second read to be quite entertaining, even if more analytical the second time around. It's soul purpose was to entertain, and it did just that for me. Though, I do have to take at least some points off.
#5 · 1
· · >>bloons3
Took me a bit to plow through until we got the two halves properly named, if only because their temporary monikers were an eyeful.

In brief: I thought this was brilliant and fun to follow through to the end.

In long: The split-mind deal struck me as more dramatic Inside Out/Ageless sort of thing, and then I remembered this video talking about split-brain patients. This makes your title quite clever, since both sides are Twilight Sparkle, but she is now Twilight, and Sparkle.

The dropped articles and hyphenated wording made me read most of the internal bits in an almost robotic version of Twilight's voice. Maybe "baby android Twilight" is the better descriptor for my internal narration. The probing and back-and-forth between the two halves about their shared body is great. Discovering they can agree on a macro-action without managing the micro bits is an important discovery to include, and makes Twilight's automatic smile an all the more interesting mystery in the scheme of things. Perhaps there's a third, hidden voice yet to reveal itself?

Hopefully Celestia and Luna will have answers. If not, at least she is a has pancakes.
#6 · 2
· · >>bloons3
*HEAD EXPLODES*

I get that this is an experimental piece, but I don't think it plays out very well. It's coherent, and has its own sort of internal logic, and once you figure out the coded language that Twilight and Sparkle have with one another, it sorta comes into focus.

But it's not a particularly fun or compelling read. I get the feeling that it's supposed to be comedic (Twilight debating how much time and energy she and her new personality should devote to breathing certainly strikes me as an amusing, in character line of thought to take) but the comedy's buried under layers and layers of inner dialogue, and thus pretty inaccessible. Maybe if I was in college again, and I was in the mood to parse a dense, experimental literary piece like this... then again I could barely get through Beckett.

Sorry, but I'm not feeling this piece.
#7 · 3
·
Oh, one other thing:

Twilight Sparkle opened the door and stepped into the castle’s kitchen. Spike, their assistant-brother-son-friend-dragon was sitting in a high chair, cook


The description of Spike made me smile. :)
#8 · 1
· · >>bloons3
Ugh. This story's writing style was clearly experimental, but it did not pan out. The core idea - of a character being of literally two minds, and struggling with internal conflict as a result - can work, but the way this story was worded throughout was just... really tedious to read.

It also suffers from a lack of any sort of clear arc, climax, or conclusion. There's clearly a hook here - Twilight's mind has somehow been split, and her body somehow changed - but there's no explanation for it, nor does it really do much in the way of exploration of things. It's all pretty much the same thing - the two trying to achieve consensus on actions - and doesn't really go beyond that.
#9 · 1
· · >>bloons3
I am a huge fan of experiments in the Writeoff. I am a much more ambiguous fan of the outcome of this particular experiment. I was able to follow what you were trying to do, but — especially near the beginning — untangling it was pretty painful. Which, in a certain way, is a success! I'm pretty sure you were trying to establish that bewilderment coming from two selves fighting over which one is authentic, and in that you succeeded. However, just because you establish the characters' confusion effectively doesn't make it fun to read — this may benefit from significantly increased hand-holding, especially at the beginning.

Unrelated to the confusion, you use the phrase "Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other" 10 times, which goes down like trying to hammer a screw through a nail guide hole. Such an unwieldy phrase severely bogs down the rapid patter you're trying to use to establish the situation.

I find it a very curious omission that we never actually get any speculation about what caused the … dual embodiment? Especially since Twilight and Sparkle briefly compare memories of that morning, and there's no indication before the bifurcation of anything out of the ordinary. Were they fiddling with any magic the night before? Are there any spells affecting them now? Dimensional rifts or other metaphysical tampering? Frankly, if you look at the list of characters you could write this story for who would immediately forget about basic sustenance and dash off to the laboratory, Twilight and/or Sparkle are at the top.

To its credit, though, this story settles down as it gets going. By the later story, the clipped narration felt comfortable to me, and the progression from confusion to bickering to mutual action was reasonably (and satisfyingly) paced. Enough so that I was actually disappointed to see it end — well, slam into a brick wall at the end of Act 1. Unfortunately, I have to rate this based only on the text I read, and while it's going to improve as it grows, right now the incompleteness of its narrative arc is a major issue.

Tier: Flawed but Fun
#10 ·
· · >>bloons3
I cannot read this one beyond the short skimming I did. I am sorry for this, but the style just does not work with me. Good job being bold enough to try this style, though!
#11 ·
· · >>bloons3
I just read the first paragraphs.

First I thought it was Twilight Sparkle against Science Twilight.

Then I thought it was Twilight as in Being Twilight Sparkle, i.e. a portal leads into Twilight's mind and Twilight goes through it.

I think you should've called that fic Twilight versus Sparkle.

That's all. :P
#12 · 1
· · >>Monokeras
[Retrospective="Twilight, Sparkle"]

>>Novel_Idea

This story was quite dense, and as you said, not in a good way.

>>FrontSevens

This story kind of changed from how I had wanted to start it. It would've been something like there's an alien in Twilight's head that has her memories, and thinks like her, except when it doesn't. You'd have the same body-control duality thing as well.

The first sentence of that draft was going to be: "Twilight wanted Spike. twilight would not allow it."

I get what you're saying This draft is kinda dry, and really what I should've been going for is more of a conversation than thoughts flying at each other. It's an interesting concept, just not an entertaining one.

>>Fenton

Yeah, as a I said above, this story needs more internal dialogue and less 'Do this? Yes, want much do!"

>>Kritten


Yeah, that was another issue with this story. Not much happens. I had written a small paragraph where thunders into the kitchen and demands 'Twilight' tells her what happened to Twilight, but I cut it moments before I submitted.

If you have to read my story twice to understand it, then I've done a poor job setting the scene. Thanks for the feedback!

>>Rao

It was hard for me to conceptualize how the whole duality-thing was going to happen.
I tried to explain it out loud to another person as: "A is A and thinks B is B, and then B thinks B is A and A is... hrrm. Okay, A thinks A is 1 and B is not 1..."

What I wanted to do with the whole 'Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other was show that they each think that they're the original and that the other is the copy.

I'm glad that you liked it, and I hope to get it spit-shined enough to get it on fimfic in a little while. After some major editing of course :) .

>>Posh

Well I wouldn't wish Beckett on anyone, but if you're into that kind of stuff, I won't judge.

Yeah, that was a major problem with this story. The language was so dense and packed that it made everything pretty much inaccessible unless you were willing to spend the time to dive into the story and make sense of everything.

What I wanted to do with
Spike, their assistant-brother-son-friend-dragon
was show that it was more of a thought than something spoken. If you had to tell someone about your dog, you'd say, "Well his name's Fido. He's got a nice brown coat that's soft. He's really fun to play with, and I love him." But the concept of Fido in your mind is Fido-soft-play-cute-brown. The concepts of what you're referencing kind of attach themselves to the object itself.

>>TitaniumDragon

Yeah... I agree with you that this story was tedious to read. I believe Quill Scratch was referring to it as
the one with 143 instances of the word "Twilight", And 209 hyphens


If I had written more for this entry, I would've tried to explain the split, but as you said, it's confusing not knowing why it happened.

>>horizon

I gotta agree with you on some of these points.

Twilight-who-was-the-original-and-not-the-other
went over like a lead balloon, and it kinda did drag the whole pacing down.

As I said above, there was a scrapped paragraph at the end where Celestia was going to be introduced. The brick-wall ending is one of the issues with this story.

>>MLPmatthewl419

If I edit this, style would definitely need to be changed. Right now it just feels blocky.

>>Monokeras

You certainly had an interesting interpretation of the first few sentences...





Well thanks everyone who read and commented. I'll definitely be using this feedback if I decide to dump this on knighty's lawn in the middle of the night get this up on fimfic. Welp, time to put my nose back down to the grindstone.

[\Retrospective]
#13 ·
·
>>bloons3
I'll definitely be using this feedback if I decide to dump this on knighty's lawn in the middle of the night

Don’t do like me!
#14 ·
·
On fimfic, yay!

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/375410/twilight-sparkle