Saturday, April 16, 2011

Story: An Ancient Letter

[Normal] One of the pre-readers said it gave him goosebumps! That's always a positive!

Author: Scorch_Mechanic
Description: While searching for a tome of nigh-forgotten pony lore, you
accidentally dislodge an ancient scroll from its hiding place. Putting aside your former intentions, curiosity gets the better of you and you carefully unroll the faded paper...
An Ancient Letter

Additional Tags: Recursion

24 comments:

9Nine9 said...

I'm not sure I like the writing style here, but it looks interesting.

It also confused the shit out of me.

Need moar to rate correctly?

Wraithwood said...

a few typos and odd wording add the the confusion but the basic gist of the story is history repeats it'self? not bad but not great

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed it. A few small typos but nothing you can't understand with a re-think of what the author meant to type. (Was it written hastily?)

Won't speak about the story itself to avoid spoilers, but a nice, quick read. :)

Brian said...

Reaching the final line sent shivers down my spine.

Shadow Phoenix said...

I do wish that additional tag wasn't there. It kinda kills the twist that the character tags set up.

9Nine9 said...

@Shadow Phoenix
Yeah, this kind of. Some stories don't need tags, especially when they start out like this.

Anonymous said...

Confusing and interesting.

I need a mop to clean up my melted brain now...

Prancingfox said...

I like it, I really do, but it was all so befuddling and hard to make sense of until the last paragraph or so.

Anonymous said...

Every day, it's getting harder to separate fan-fiction from the actual story.
Great fic, write more

Hayquill said...

More like this, please.

Ridley said...

Reminds me somewhat of The Dark Tower.
I enjoyed it.

Anonymous said...

Woah.

Wow.

Anonymous said...

Play 'Father and Son' from the MGS4 soundtrack in the background whilst reading this. I DARE YOU.

Anonymous said...

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Scorch_Mechanic said...

It was really hard choosing a description and a tag that wouldn't spoil the story, but I think I managed okay.

I'm sorry to hear about the typos... I thought I fixed them, but apparently google docs is weird about versioning or something and some of y'all are seeing the original uploaded document or something.

As for confusing wording...
Well, I'm not really a writer. This is literally my first fanfiction ever. This is also the first story I've ever written, and I don't know if I'll do more. My writing style is as idiosyncratic as I wish my speaking style could be, if that gives all of y'all an idea of my personality.

@Anonymous 1: Yes, this was written rather hastily. Literally on Thursday afternoon. I'd had the general idea floating around in my big empty skull for a week by then, but it didn't coalesce into something until after I read The Sun Never Sets. That set my mind churning, and during my walk that day I sorted out most of what I wanted to do. The nature of time and history, how they affect each other how they are affected by each other, and what curious results these interactions bring has always been a sort of fascination of mine.

Anonymous said...

Hmm.
Hum.
Not sure if I like, but thought provoking.
Reminds me of the Wheel of Time series.

By the way:
A reagent is a chemical used to analyze chemical reactions.
A regent is someone who occupies the throne in place of its rightful holder.

nova_25 said...

@9Nine9
Yeah, I say this too...

It's wasn't a bas story... but it's quite confusing.

Not ''confusing'': I don't know what's happening... but ''confusing'': I don't have enough to grasp what's happening, to understand it properly.

QuantumFire said...

Nice story but now my brian is made of asdfgghjkldbhpeob.

Anonymous said...

And again the wheel turns.

Friendly Uncle said...

That's really cool.

Scorch_Mechanic said...

I'm loving all this feedback. Especially after discovering that I had Anonymous 1 on steam. We've been having a very enlightening conversation.

Maybe I'll write more fanfiction, but I don't know what about. This was a spur-of-the-moment fic. If I do write more, I'm probably not going to expand on this story though. I don't want to shatter any reader's mind castles with radically different canonical interpretations. Sending your collective minds into churning and wild speculation was my goal from the beginning, and the thought of damaging the conclusions all of y'all have come to is painful to me.

Anonymous said...

Hehehe. This works! And I am impressed.

I really like how it all comes together. The gradual trickle of details, the style of speech, the fact that the reader is quite cunningly led to believe one thing, and, of course, the crescendo when he realizes that in reality, it's another thing altogether. The way you've constructed the whole thing really builds up to the twist, and when it comes, it's a crescendo that results in sudden realisation, understanding, and, well... goosebumps. And considering you're first-timer, that is really impressive. I'd love to see more from you.

Escher said...

@Anonymous
Totally this! Practically the first thing I thought of after finishing the story was "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was /a/ beginning."

Pride said...

This is god damn phenomenal, people.

It should not have this few comments, nor should it have a Star-4 tag. It clearly deserves Star-5.

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