<hattersgonnahat> hello #earthficcersunite I am in you, does anybody feel like listening to me complain about my creative writing teacher again, wait, don't answer, gonna do it anyway
<hattersgonnahat> you'd think the fact that you can in fact write many entire stories without magic and crap in them would indicate that it does not have to be considered a Core Writing Skill Without Which I Am Incomplete

<intomystudies> Dear hattersgonnahat; do go on.

<hattersgonnahat> heh. sarcasm y/n? anyway my creative writing teacher found out yesterday that my sister is a Serious Published Author, forgive me if I don't say which one, and now doesn't understand why I don't put worldbuilding in my stories. like relative to my sister I'm broken as an author.

<intomystudies> I'm not being sarcastic; I enjoy meeting new
ponies over this communications network. What do you mean by
worldbuilding exactly and why don't you put it in your
stories?

<hattersgonnahat> ...ponies? are you typing on a phone with some weird autocorrect behavior? worldbuilding is making up a magic system or sci-fi tech or whatever other speculative elements to qualify a book as not being earthfic.

<intomystudies> Yes, you will kindly forgive my autocorrect. But
what is earthfic?

<intomystudies> Sorry if I'm in the wrong channel; this is
actually my first time on this communications network and I don't
quite know what I'm doing. So what is your earthfic story about?

<intomystudies> What does the blind actuary do? I mean,

I would totally read a book that was only about calculating

insurance polcies despite not being able to see, but I read

everything, and I imagine you have something more in mind.

<intomystudies> I agree with you; research doesn't stop being
important just because you're writing fiction! What's the dog
character like? My eyesight is perfect, but I still depend a lot on my
baby-dragon companion Spike for so many things

<intomystudies> you know, writing letters from dictation and such. I can only imagine
how much more important a faithful assistant must be when you have to
cope with a disability

<intomystudies> Oh contemptible autocorrect! Please bear with me

<intomystudies> No, wait---I really am sorry; I've been
practicing with an unusual earthfic-writing technique in another
channel, and shouldn't have tried to bring it here without explaining.
<intomystudies> You see, one thing that makes writing good
earthfic so challenging is that it's hard to explicitly write about
that which we're too familiar with; the background facts of our lives
are invisible to introspection, and our writing suffers from it
<intomystudies> we want to "show, not tell," but when
considering ordinary, "mundane" things, it's easy to fall into the
trap of doing neither

<intomystudies> Right. People like your teacher who pit
earthfic and fantasy literature against each other have it all wrong;
imagining other words is a complement to better understanding and
exploring our own; neither genre is intrinsically superior
<intomystudies> So if, as a writer who tends to do somewhat more
fantasy than earthfic, I enjoy talking to you as if I were, say, an
alicorn princess who is the protege of the God-Empress of the sun in a
world of ponies that I occasionally need to defend with rare artifacts
powered by the magic of friendship
<intomystudies> and ask seemingly stupid, crazy questions about
things "everyone knows" in your world
<intomystudies> I hope you'll humor me and play along, and
describe your world in as much rich detail as possible, as if I were
telling the truth and you needed to explain everything to me from
scratch
<intomystudies> it really is a powerful writing exercise
after you get used to it

*** intomystudies has disconnected. (Message: Leaving)

several months later ...

"Hey Twilight," said Rainbow Dash, entering the library wing of [Ponyville Crystal Friendship Castle —the Editor]. Twilight looked up from her work with a look not so much like annoyance as sheer incomprehension; she had to remember the mundane physical reality around her before she could resent its intrusion into her studies. Some of her other friends, say, Rarity, or Fluttershy (definitely Fluttershy), would have apologized for the interruption. Rainbow Dash didn't notice. "I came to return the non-Daring Do book you recommended."

"Oh!" said Twilight, now aware enough to resent the interruption, but not resenting it, because if there was one thing the world outside her head was good for, it was sharing her love of reading with friends and hearing back about the results of said sharing. "What'd you think?" Twilight wasn't sure what to expect; Rainbow had descibed the purpose of her visit in her usual confident tone, which good have meant any number of things, from "That book was awful and now I'm going to justly complain about it", to "That book was great and I'm going to justly rave about it," to "I'm Rainbow Dash!"

"It was terrible!" said Rainbow Dash.

"What? Why?"

"It was nothing like the Daring Do books!"

"Rainbow Dash, it was exactly like the Daring Do books! I mean, it's not literally A. K. Yearling writing about Daring Do, but it's another popular writer working in the same very crowded, dare I say played out, subgenere of adventure novels."

"The protagonist is nothing like Daring Do! She's so&dmdash;somdash;"

"Yes?"

"She lacks a certain jeh neh say-is kwoi."

"Je ne sais quoi," corrected Twilight. "But Rainbow," she added, changing the subject [for all the world as if she were a puppet in a throwaway collaborative storytelling session in which one of the authors is suddenly realizing that he's taking too much time on the introductory scene —the Editor], "do you ever think about other worlds? I mean real other worlds, not fantasy-adventure novels like Daring Do."

"But Twilight, Daring Do is real! We met her back in [My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season 4, Episode 4: "Daring Don't" —the Editor]!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Twilight. "Anyway, I'm a little even more distracted than usual because I'm actually in the middle of reestablishing a connection to an alternate world that seems to have a strange lack of magic; they've managed to build a sophisticated communications system out of some sort of electomagnetic technology which I was able to tap into once, a few months ago before—before—" a single tear rolled down Twilight's cheek.

"Still miss the old library, huh?"

Twilight sniffled and nodded. "Yeah." Then she shook her head vigorously and put on a determined look. "Anyway, I was worried that I might never be able to reestablish the connection, but after the good practice with trans-world communication duing [the events of My Little Pony; Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks —the Editor] and that similar time I chatted to that annoying little colt and one of his superheroine gaurdians, I think I'm ready to reinitiate contact with an old—well, I don't know that were friends, yet; it was only a few minutes. But there's a pony—uh, well, a probably-not-a-pony, whose world I want to learn more about, a writer, like A. K. Yearling."

This was sufficiently weird even for Twilight that Rainbow Dash actually looked a little curious. "You can watch if you like," said Twilight.

"Okay," said Rainbow.

Twilight took a deep breath, and, horn glowing with effort, watched in awe as a quill wrote out the cryptic words—