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Just Like Old Times · FiM Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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The Sun and Moon of the Future
It was a beautiful machine, all crystal and spun bronze, with whirling widgets and spinning spheres, pointing golden arrows indicating the location of all the celestial bodies and toothed cogs marked in careful graduations. It ticked and tocked, sparkled and glowed, and hummed like a happy hummingbird in a field of flowers. One entire room of the castle was taken up by its impressive presence, with a maintenance crew of a dozen ponies who kept it polished, oiled, tuned, and coddled to the point where Celestia swore they read it stories at bedtime.

She hated it. No, Celestia loved her alicorn student who had created it, and admired just how beautifully the machine had turned out. The world appreciated the exactness of the motion of the sun and moon, and it certainly took a great load off the Royal Sisters’ shoulders. She just despised what the machine stood for. Often, she took a few hours out of her day just to stand in its presence and listen to the whir and tick and hum of the world progressing along to the dictates of steel and glass.

“Good eve, dear sister.” Princess Luna glided up to Celestia’s side and joined her in regarding the machine. “Still no name for our eternal nemesis, I presume?”

“No.” Celestia regarded the machine for a few more silent minutes before correcting herself. “Nothing printable, at least.”

“It hath only been a full decade.” Luna’s words held a light hint of chastisement, but much welcome humor. “There is no rush.”

“True.” The sisters remained watching while the golden needle of the machine dropped closer to ‘Sunset’ by small clicks.

“Do you miss it?” asked Luna abruptly. “The touch of our stellar burdens, that is.”

“No, of course not,” said Celestia. “There were days when I struggled until sunset, blessing the time when I could finally collapse into bed and surrender my task to you, dearest sister.”

“My banishment must have taxed your stamina greatly,” mused Luna nearly under her breath.

“And my will, and all my soul,” added Celestia. “Even then, I would not have surrendered my duty to a machine. It reminded me of you, every day and night, and promised your eventual return.”

“Masochist,” chided Luna.

“Also,” countered Celestia before both sisters fell prey to a fit of unstoppable giggles.

“We find ourselves briefly without a task this eve,” said Luna once she had regained her composure. “Would you care to join me on the solarium balcony to watch Twilight’s machine perform?”

“Gladly.” Celestia fell into step beside her sister, tracing their familiar paths through the busy castle until they came to the room where they had raised the sun and moon for many years. They took their places on the balcony, side by side, and watched the sun slowly descend until it reached the horizon…

...and stopped.

“Strange,” mused Celestia. “There must be something wrong with the machine.”

Luna shrugged. “Perhaps a chunk of rock found its way into the gearbox. A tragedy.”

Casting a skeptical look the innocent expression on her sister, Celestia raised one eyebrow and lit her horn. “Shall we?”

The sun set.

The moon rose.

And two sisters stood together, joined again in their duties.
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#1 ·
· · >>Fenton >>CoffeeMinion >>georg
Raising the Sun and lowering the Moon seems like it is only a small fraction of the royal duties, even if they are rather indispensable. Their focus on it, thus, feels kind of odd; there doesn’t seem to be a lot of justification for it. Why does Celestia obsess over it, when she’s got lots of other things to do?

If she didn’t – if, say, things have gotten efficient to the point where raising the Sun was the last really important duty that Celestia had – then it would be good to establish that, as then this could be used as a metaphor for her feeling of being extraneous to the world.

However, a larger issue here is the end is basically “Ha! We broke things so we aren’t useless anymore!” Which… is a bizarre thing to end on. Is that the message you want?
#2 ·
· · >>georg
>>TitaniumDragon
However, a larger issue here is the end is basically “Ha! We broke things so we aren’t useless anymore!” Which… is a bizarre thing to end on. Is that the message you want?


Fighting against the automation is a well-know fight, even if we know that it's an already lost battle, so nothing really odd here. However, I believe that the message isn't quite this one but more like "Machines are great and all, but in the end, you still need humans/ponies involved in the process, in case there is a malfunction", but that's not really clear. That's why I think that an external ironic POV would have helped this story, its tone, and defining its message. Using Celestia's here doesn't seem to do much.
#3 · 1
· · >>georg
I like the banter here. You have good character voicing, and there's a nice touch of light humor throughout. Well, for most of it, anyway.

There is a little tonal dissonance, but it's not too bad. It starts out with alliteration and the kind of verbal flair you normally see in a children's story, so I was expecting that to hold, yet after the first couple paragraphs, it's gone. Then we move toward a little banishment angst, and I started to wonder if there would be an abrupt tonal shift. Really, there wasn't. It did still end on more of a playful tone. It still has a plot that deals with significant gravity, however (no pun intended).

That's the part that leaves me feeling a bit empty. There's kind of a vague explanation that Celestia might have gotten fatigued having to tend to the sun and moon together, but I'm not clear on why Twilight built the machine, since it wouldn't have come online until after Luna was back. So what was the need to automate that? And why did the princesses let her? It presents a cute scene but kind of brushes the justification for it under the rug. Or presents it subtly enough that I didn't see it.

There are a couple of perspective quirks. Look at your second paragraph. That's clearly Celestia's personal thoughts being expressed as narration, so you have a limited narrator in her viewpoint. But later on, there are things that wouldn't work in that setup, like her choosing to refer to herself and Luna as "the sisters"--that's rather an external feel for her.

So, nice, warm slice-of-life moment, but a little sketchy on how the scenario even came to be, and thus what you want it to mean.
#4 · 1
· · >>georg
A beautiful character piece here. Celestia both recognizes the use of the machine, yet hates what it represents. Luna, the same it seems, yet both joke about old times (completely on prompt.) That a rock found its way into the gearbox... Now that, that made me smile.

I'm reminded oh so much of my own love for physical books. I've collected hundreds, and read them all, since I was in my teens, all mass market paperback (the most practical) and had built custom shelves sized just for them, envisioning one day that I'd have a massive library in my house, filled wall to wall with books I'd read... of lives I'd lived. But then came the Kindle, and the eBook, and all the great digital stuff. And I gave in. I used to fill half my luggage with books on a vacation, now I can fit a thousand books on a tablet and not even notice. But I miss the smell, and the touch. I miss the old ways, even as I love having room for things like actual clothes on a trip. I hate eBooks, but I could also never go back, save for a dalliance, say with a final Game of Thrones novel. :-)
#5 ·
· · >>georg
Genre: Screw You, Technology!

Thoughts: This review brought to you in part by >>TitaniumDragon:

However, a larger issue here is the end is basically “Ha! We broke things so we aren’t useless anymore!” Which… is a bizarre thing to end on. Is that the message you want?


Right. This thing. This thing right here. The story is a beautifully written little piece that currently has (IMO) a near-miss with potential greatness by deciding not to tie together the various threads of the sisters' feelings, and the worldbuilding, and Progress (TM). Instead it does a left-turn at the end and has Luna show off a little bit of her troll side. Far be it from me to assert that she shouldn't have one, but right now it's like the story just abandons the clear potential for some kind of deeper meaning by letting that aspect of her take over.

Again, I can't fault the writing; my (La)beef is more with the storytelling seeming to punch the eject button right at the key moment.

Tier: Keep Developing
#6 · 3
· · >>Pascoite >>TitaniumDragon
>>TitaniumDragon
>>Fenton
>>Pascoite
>>Xepher
>>CoffeeMinion

And the prize for Missing The Big Point goes to… almost all of you. Except for Xepher.

Here we have Celestia, gazing on the machine that has replaced her greater role in the world. She hates it with a passion, but refuses to admit that to anyone but her sister, because Twilight made it for her. Have you ever gotten a sweater that you really want to burn, but it came from a grandma/aunt/insert relative here who you respect so much that you wear it anyway and smile when asked about it? That’s what we have here. She can see all the advantages of the Infernal Machine, but misses the heavy task it lifted off her shoulders, an opinion that Luna shares.

After all, Celestia can’t just go to Twilight and *tell* her. That would hurt Twilight.

So when Little Sister gently chucks a pebble into the finely crafted gift, she understands. The machine will be repaired, but until then, the Royal Sisters are once again masters of the world’s sky. And this is a good thing, rather than a discordant and worse, disrespectful act.

Critiques:
Yes, I needed to sand down the tonal dissonances, but the ending lines switching from Third Person Celestia to Third Person Abstract is *intentional* because we’re fading out, the curtain is coming down, the end is upon us, and the camera pans back up into the sky to show two sisters sitting side by side.

The POV choice (and shift, from the beginning to the middle to the end) was deliberate. By starting abstract and hammering the effort put into the machine it builds the readers comprehension of the situation, then putting the reader in Celestia’s golden shoes, it personalizes the emotions, the conflict, the hatred/love of the machine. Then the fade-out as above. Think of it as the camera starting with a long shot, zooming into Celestia for the action, then zooming out at the end. (which is how it would be done if this were a video)
#7 · 5
· · >>georg
>>georg
When 4 of 5 readers Miss the Big Point, usually we call that Author Not Getting the Point Across. But YMMV :B
#8 ·
·
>>georg
If you want to convey it being a gift from Twilight that Celestia isn't happy with, I'd recommend choosing something other than something which replaces her role.

You seem to be trying to have your cake and eat it too, judging by your description; the automation angle is the one that looms largest, and it also seems to be why Celestia isn't happy with it, so it is hardly surprising that that overshadowed the whole "Twilight gave me a bad sweater" angle.
#9 ·
·
>>Pascoite Heh. Normally, the reviewers find points that even I didn't think I had in there, like a porcupine where I thought there was a hamster.