[Normal] "Ever since Season 1 ended, I've been waiting with bated breath for some announcement of when Season 2 would premiere. I must have missed that announcement, because I'd swear on the Bible that this author stole this whole story straight from Amy Keating Rogers' hard drive." -Pre reader #20
Author: John Perry
Description: Twilight is struggling to come up with another lesson on the magic of friendship. What's a studious mare to do when she loses her muse?Writer's Block
Additional Tags: Episodic, Twilight, Procrastination, Stress, Lesson
41 comments:
wow very good story good ending too :)
ReplyDeleteI swear, this could be canon.
ReplyDeleteReally you put the lyrics to a Beatles song in this fic? That seems like it doesn't fit at all, and was rather forced, I'm having trouble moving on from it. Hmm, after reading the rest of it that reference wasn't the only thing that felt forced, all the dialogue and characters felt forced. Like they just wanted to have a whole bunch of characters do nothing much really.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how this got such a good pre-reader review, this did not feel as well written as a canon episode.
Good story, but by God those band names...
ReplyDeleteThis very well could be canon. The running gag of everypony noting Twi's lack of sleep, everypony was in character, the ending... everything was great.
ReplyDeleteI really love these kind of episode-like stories. I liked the little shipping story between "Appleseed" and "Flash", but why did it sound so familiar? Oh well :)
ReplyDelete*chuckles* I should have known the band names and the song would raise a couple of eyebrows. What can I say? I love the Beatles and I'm a sucker for a pun. :P
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, everyone!
When suffering from writer's block and looking for inspiration on the site, what's the first thing I see?
ReplyDeleteAn awesome story, like it was written for me.
@ Pony In Chief
ReplyDelete... are you Zecora in disguise? :P
I liked this story quite alot, particularly as someone also suffering from writers block.
The story started out well. The snips of the stories she was reading were a nice touch and I could relate to the whole situation. Her morning chores seemed natural, I could imagine Twilight's morning starting out that way.
ReplyDeleteThen the song started. A ponyfied Beatles song felt out of place in an otherwise episodic story. It could've worked if it was more subtle, but it was just jarring as it is.
However, the story got back on track after that. Everyone was in character without seeming one-dimensional. I liked the casual feel to the story, it felt like an actual day in Ponyville. Great story overall, it held my attention all the way through.
At first I thought it said Joe Perry wrote it.
ReplyDeleteOne think I'd like to point out, Rarity had made mittens? For ponies? I can't be the only one thinking that that's a little odd. Otherwise, it's a great story.
ReplyDeleteThis was a wonderful story to read. It, for the most part, seemed like a normal day for Twilight in Ponyville. But I've got to agree with the Anon above. The song pulled me out of the episodic feel. Generally any attempt at making a reference to something in our world disconnects me from the story. It was cute and funny though so I don't mind it.
ReplyDeleteAs a small note that my inner pedant won't let me keep to myself, the word equestripology bothers me. It's replacing the word anthropology, which is a combination of the Greek words, anthropos and logia. The equesti prefix is derived from a Latin word so combining it with the -logy suffix would not be done for a scientific term. Using hippology would be proper. That said, most people probably wouldn't recognize it and hey, this is Equestia. There were no Greeks or Romans anyway, so it's really not that important.
wow that was really good. It did sound really realistic! well i mean like it could have happened in the show... you know what i mean.
ReplyDeleteThe Beatles song was great because Twilight had that simple horrific joke, and you captured spikes role of cringing with the reader perfectly!
ReplyDeleteI laughed more times than perhaps I should have. At this point I would have given you many stars; but the do-dad* isn't working!
Very good job Mr Perry!
do-dad* technical term for a widget with a thing-a-ma-jig
@ BlasTech
ReplyDeleteNo, no, not that I know.
I just happen to have a rhyming app in tow.
>Yfw Prereader 20 is an atheist
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, this works.
One of my new faviruses
ReplyDeleteThat was actually pretty good. Seems to me that the real moral of this story is to get some sleep -_-
ReplyDeleteWild goose chasers? How oddly appropriate.
ReplyDeletegoing to feel out of place in this torrent of positive comments but... I actually didn't like it that much. like, at all. It certainly isn't bad, not by any stretch of the imagination. Well written, clever moments (those band names, Salt Lick city is so frakin clever), and everyone in character I suppose.
ReplyDeleteBut it was so... sparse? It didn't feel like an episode of the show, even if it was written like one. So little character interaction without being supplemented by visuals. And there was no rising action, no climax! just eventually ending up at Rarity's and BAM! answer to problems. And then, BAM! Princess visit.
The Cutie Mark Conspiracy fic read like an episode and felt like it would be perfect as one, because it was simple but stuff, cartoony fun stuff, happened. (seriously, go to archives, read it if you haven't).
I don't wanna say it was boring but so little actually... happened.
Great job! I love fics that are written in this manor. Also although most of the lyrics were out of place and you could have used one or two lines from the suggested song to get the intended message across. It forced me to lissen to Sgt. Pepper's LHCB.
ReplyDeleteVery nice! Loved Twi's thoughts about fiction.
ReplyDeleteFeels liek actual episode. It's great!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWild goose chasers? How oddly appropriate.
Yeah, lol. I laughed at that :D
Quick, funny, and refreshing. An excellent combination!
ReplyDeleteso, it did feel like an episode, but... it wasnt a very good one.
ReplyDeleteim not saying it was bad, i enjoyed reading it. however, as it was said by comments above me, not much actually happened and the ending with rarity felt a bit weak. there were some great parts in there ("wild goose chasers" made me laugh)and the continueing joke with twilight being tired was done well.
so i guess what im saying is... a low MID-teir episode? a lot better than the owl episode. i would be not at all dissapointed to see this as an episode in season2, but it would probably be
outshined by the others.
My gut ached from all those musical puns.
ReplyDeleteBut still awesome. I suppose it would've been more likely if Faust was still attached. Remember the Powerpuff Girls episode that referenced the Beatles?
Mojo Jojo, Him, and the pink fuzzy guy team up to become The Beat-Alls, The Professor explaining Mojo Jojo's predicament "Mojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn't last." And then Blossom getting the zookeeper Judy to bring along a female monkey to make Mojo confused about joining The Beat-Alls "Hey, Jude" (she even said those two words in key).
I think we'll have our musical pun episode eventually. I sincerely hope for The Boss singing about the blue-collar working colt with Big Mac on sax.
Salt Lick City.
ReplyDeleteThis needs to be canon.
Pinkie Pie catching cats with a muffin tin. Why has no one drawn this yet? That's unfortunately the most interesting thing to happen in two scenes so far. This came highly rated, something better happen soon.
ReplyDeleteAugh, the music puns. And now she's... just singing the lyrics to a Beatles song.
The part with Pinkie is amusing, the duck/goose joke is pretty funny... But this isn't really going anywhere. It's structured like an episode, yes, but it would be the most boring episode ever, I'm sorry to say. This did nothing for me.
This should be an actual episode in my opinion, it would be so awesome!
ReplyDeleteWoo! Lots of comments!
ReplyDeleteTo the Anonymous at 4:52PM:
Drat, I should have looked up the roots of that word before I wrote that. Thanks for pointing that out - I'll be sure to avoid that mistake in the future if I write anything else.
To the Anonymous at 9:17PM, the one at 4:31PM, and Present Perfect:
Point well taken, though in my defense I will say that the fact that nothing really happened was intentional to the story, since the reason Twilight is having trouble with her lesson is the fact that nothing is happening. :P
I totally agree that this story would make a terribly boring episode, but my inspiration in writing this wasn't so much to perfectly replicate the feeling of an episode but to project my own personal experiences as a college student with writer's block (and the procrastination, stress and anxiety that somehow manage to come with it) on to this character and seeing where it takes her (kind of a sneaky way of doing a self-insert I suppose, but there you go...)
To Dave:
Oh my god, I totally forgot about that episode! I remember doubling over with laughter when Professor Utonium says "The Beat-Alls are a rock band! ...You know, Fuzzy does that...rock...thing."
To mrjoshmacintosh:
Thank you! I think I literally jumped for joy when I came up with that.
I kept giggling for pretty much the whole thing, very nice. I'm gonna break from popular opinion and say I loved the Beatles interlude. More fics need to have Twilight and Spike hanging out and being cute together. Everypony was perfectly in character, and the running joke was funny, particularly the last iteration. Twilight's cute when she gets twitchy.
ReplyDelete*Read story*
ReplyDelete>Even for all her studying, Twilight was not exactly what one would call “well read.”
-It's Reference-Time ! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqDhDLITZ98&feature=player_detailpage#t=638s
-I wonder if the author just ignored that line from the episode, or just forgot about it ?
Sure, it's Twilight saying this about herself, but... if we can't trust her own words, who can we trust ?
(half-joking / half-serious)
Great story. It really did feel like an episode of the show.
ReplyDelete5 stars!
i have to agree with RainbowDat
ReplyDeleteinb4episode3
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess the prereader was right.
ReplyDeleteSpoiler alert:
ReplyDelete(Beware, beware you pony folk. The above phrase is not a joke.)
The episode that shares this story's synopsis is completely different and much more humorous/creepy.
...
Personally, I prefer the fanfic more for the sake of keeping a calm tone throughout the work.
foreshadowing.
ReplyDeleteLesson Zero anyones?
ReplyDelete