• Story: Piu Allegro // The New Roommate

    [Normal] I suppose band ponies were inevitable.  Octavia *IS* kind of cute...


    Author: Jimbo

    Description: The Grand Galloping Gala is an exciting night for many ponies, especially for the distinguished student quartet selected to perform there. But the road to success is not an easy one, as Octavia will soon find out.
    Piu Allegro FF.net
    Piu Allegro Gdocs

    Piu Allegro Live Reading

    Additional Tags: Octavia, pony quartet, Opus, Snoozaphone, Locrian, music, Grand Galloping Gala, Canterlot

    [Random] Indian in the Cupboard style stuff!


    Author:  Jimbo

    Description: A typical morning in a significantly atypical household. A twist on the "human in Canterlot" idea. Starring Colgate and her new human roommate, Sky Reacher.
    The New Roommate FF.net
    The New Roommate Gdocs

    Additional Tags: Colgate/Romana/Toothpaste Butt, human OC, Sky Reacher, brushie brushie brushie

    40 comments:

    1. Octavia is absolutely gorgeous and she is mai waifu.

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    2. Once again, a background pony with no lines and only a vague influence on the story has a shot at winning the hearts of bronies everywhere. If this keeps up, there will be hundreds of fics surrounding characters with a combined screentime of half an episode. And I am totally okay with that.

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    3. @Anonymous

      Back off, buddy. I loved Cello Pony first.

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    4. oh wow...i just submitted the octavia story i'm working on this morning! omg herdmind

      i absolutely loved the use of all the musical terms, and also the way you depicted octavia's personality (which is a bit different than what i went with).

      gonna read the second story in a moment, but just wanted to comment on that one.

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    5. on the first-
      that ending made it excelent

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    6. "brown one with the bass"

      Are you looking at what I'm looking at?

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    7. Colgate is my absolute favorite BG pony

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    8. Re: Piu Allegro
      It's "pored," not "poured." Nice story, though. I thought the random Sousaphone was pretty hilarious.

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    9. brushie brushie brushie

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    10. Why does the Cellist's Cutie Mark look like the disabled handicap parking symbol?

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    11. In reference to the blog entry itself, Octavia's instrument is a cello, not a double bass. A double bass would be bigger, and the tuning pegs on them are different than the other instruments in its family.

      And yes, Octavia is incredibly cute.

      @Dave

      It's a treble clef.

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    12. I love Octavia so much. She's my new favorite background pony.

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    13. Locrian? Hey, my band, "(Lo)creation" is also named after that musical mode! /shameless plug

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    14. Clearly Cello Pony is the Best Pony. Perhaps even better than you-know-who.

      I think at least an Octavia-themed banner is in order.

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    15. I do believe that's a treble clef on Octavia

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    16. It is a treble clef; and there's already some high-res art of her floating around:

      atomicgreymon.deviantart.com/#/d3g6ttg

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    17. @Anonymous

      No! You guys step off! I loved her first! She's mai waifu!

      ...

      Octavia! You're our waifu!

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    18. I was just over on DA and it was brought to my attention that Octavia shares her coat, mane, and eye color with one of Pinkie's sisters in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. mind = blown

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    19. I don't care what you cello-lovers say, the fact is that she's playing an instrument with a violin-family body in an upright position. There's an actual instrument that meets that physical description and is properly played from that position: the bass violin.

      That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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    20. @Chris

      Compare the pegbox of a double bass to anything else in its family; it's entirely unique. Octavia's instrument is a cello.

      She's standing upright because she's a pony, not a human; and only Lyra sits in the position most humans would play a cello in. She's still holding her instrument in the correct way for it to be a cello.

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    21. @ Anonymous (7:20):

      To your first point, the body of a bass violin is identical in shape to the body of a violin, viola, and cello. I think you're thinking of a string bass, which is actually a hybridized member of the viol family.

      To the question of pony sitting, we see not only Lyra, but Fluttershy (in Bird in the Hoof), Pinkie (in Party of One), and even the piano-playing pony in Octavia's quartet all sitting 'human-style,' so it's clearly possible for ponies to do so. Additionally, based on the apparent size of the instrument relative to the grand piano (assuming that it's an 88 key full grand, built to real-world scale) the instrument she's playing seems to be a bit under six feet from the bottom of the body to the top of the head; far to large to be a cello (unless for some bizarre reason ponies play scaled-up instruments). it seems to me most likely to me that Octavia is playing a 5/8 or 1/2 bass violin.

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    22. @Chris

      Pegbox isn't the body; it's the the construct at the top of the neck that houses the tuning pegs. A Double Bass features a pegbox (and tuning pegs) that are constructed differently than any other instrument in its family. Instead of wooden pegs, it has machine heads designed for fine-tuning rather than rough tuning. The entire look of them is different.

      Even if you aren't a musician, images and descriptions of the unique pegbox construction of the double bass is easily found on Wikipedia or other sites.

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    23. You guys, it's obviously a cello. How else would she be Cello Pony?

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    24. Ya know what I think guys?
      I think she's playing a bass. Lemme explain. Ponies are not sized the same way people are. People play basses standing up while you play a cello sitting down. Since Octavia is standing, she is playing a pony-sized bass which makes the same sound as a people cello.
      Science my friends.

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    25. Dammit, looks like someone needs to write Lauren Faust on her DA and ask her about this.

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    26. @Naxts

      Pegbox and tuning pegs are still wrong for a Double Bass, whatever its scale.

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    27. @ Anonymous (7:53)

      I apologize; for some reason I read pegbox and thought tailpiece (which is also slightly different between the violin and viola families).

      In any case, a double bass IS a string bass, and neither of them are bass violins (or violins, period), although they are sometimes erroneously referred to as such. The bass violin fell out of favor several hundred years ago, its roll subsumed by both the cello and the hybridized double bass we know today.

      And I double-checked, to make sure I didn't make any more stupid mistakes: the bass violin did not have a mechanical headpiece.

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    28. I doubt if the animators would've had her playing an instrument that hasn't been widely popular since the 17th century, so I think it's most likely her instrument is in fact a Cello.

      The bass violin, which I've looked up (never having heard one), is said in The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments to be the direct ancestor of the modern Cello.

      So whatever way you look at it, the thing is basically a Cello or something more-or-less indistinguishable from one to the modern eye.

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    29. ...And that's what I get for failing to remember I can click images for a higher resolution.

      D'oh.

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    30. FUCK ALL YALL, Octavia's mine!

      Also, the colgate story made me grin like a mad man. Would love some more "Indian in the cupboard" style stories.

      Also Also, @Naxts, You're forgetting these are LITTLE ponies. :p

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    31. Octavia is certainly gorgeous, but she won't win me away from Twilight's charms. Ahem. Regarding "Piu Allego", we now have a new entry for our collection of Famous Last Words. Well done.

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    32. Silly Octavia, music for the cello is written in the bass clef, not the treble!
      Also, as for the second one: wut

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    33. Looks nothing like Pinkies sister, stop this myth in its tracks.

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    34. What does waifu mean?

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    35. ^ just google it.

      I found Piu Allegro kind of disappointing. It feels like the intro to a story rather than the whole of a story. The only conflict is pretty much instantly resolved and the hero learns nothing from the experience.

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    36. Escher has a point, do you have any plans to continue writing for this?

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    37. @Escher (and ditto @ anonymous)

      Yeah, it is an introduction! The small victory was intended to lead into the next big chapter in her life - the Grand Galloping Gala! I wanted to lead into her life a little more, so the reader would understand more about her before the Gala.

      Ironically, this got delayed due to my attendance at a summer music festival! So I will be continuing it, but it might not happen til July. Sorry! Wish I had more free time, but I'm keeping busy here, and busy is good!

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    38. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    39. Call Celestian Music Conservatory students for Gala.
      Invite natural disaster itself from Ponyville.

      http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/t/r/trollestia2plz.jpg?1

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    40. @Chris

      Octavia is, without a doubt, a bassist. A cello would be much smaller, she would have to play it sitting down, the end pin would have to be out much farther, and there are no fine-tuners. The instrument is in proportion with a bass(if we were to say she were human-sized) and the pegs are bass-styled. Since Octavia is an amazing musician, she would have no doubt playing her bass to the pitch of a cello, which is possible on a bass. I am both a cellist and a bassist(as well as a huge My Little Pony fan), and can easily distinguish the two, even in cartoon form.
      The only thing I don't understand is why the symbol on her butt is a treble clef, and not a bass clef....

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