[ Cheerilee is addressing the pupils in Ponyville's school-house. ] Cheerilee: OK, everypony, in order to prepare you for your story-writing-assignment, I invited a guest lecturer from Chaosville University. Please welcome Professor Discord, Ph.D.! Discord: thank you, Ms. Cheerilee. Just for the record, I am an MCSE [ = Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert ], not a Ph.D. +++: anyway, one observation on story-writing my colleagues and I came up with, and which seems logical, is that most good stories describe one or more problems which need to be reconciled. Some examples: +++: 1. The Israelites wish to find a way to defeat Goliath, a tall Philistine giant, and so win the battle. [ Reference. ] +++: 2. Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit, is recruited to assist a band of dwarves reclaim their ancestors' home from the dragon Smaug; he wishes to accomplish that while remaining alive and healthy. [ Reference. ] +++: 3. Theseus wishes to kill the Minotaur of Crete, so it will stop killing the youth of Athens. [ Reference. ] +++: Like my colleagues like to say: “One does not simply start a story with ‘And they all lived happily ever after’”. [ ] Discord: well given I have a chaotic nature, I decided to write just such a story. [ Discord snaps his fingers causing a smartphone to materialise and float in mid-air. He takes the phone, and taps on it. ] Discord: [reading from the phone] “And they all lived happily ever after. But not before they: +++: • Caught pneumonia after crossing the Alps. +++: • Got involved in a copyrights' infringement lawsuit. +++: • Were stranded on an uninhabited island. [ Cut to the Cutie Mark Crusaders (= Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo). They are bored trying to listen to Discord. Cut. ] Caption on the screen: 5 minutes later. [ Cut. Scootaloo is sleeping and snoring. ] Discord’s voice: • Found it very time-consuming and ran into many difficulties rewriting a large Python 3 project in Rust. Sweetie Belle: Scootaloo, wake up! [nudges her.] Scootaloo: [wakes up] what? … oh. Apple Bloom: ahem, Professor Discord? Discord: yes, dear? Apple Bloom: if I may be prudent enough to inquire: how did “they” (whoever they are) manage to reconcile all these problems? Discord: hmmm… to be honest, it slipped out of my mind. Can you please file an issue on the story’s GitHub project? [ Cut to the Cutie Mark Crusaders; they look angry. Cut to a long shot showing the school building. ] The Cutie Mark Crusaders: [shouting] Discord!! [ Discord is shown running, while holding his phone in his right hand, chased by the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Pause. The screen fades into greyscale. Zoom-out to a page in a book saying “And they all lived happily ever after”. ] [ Emblem: This text is Copyright by Shlomi Fish, 2023 and is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike 4.0 Unported Licence (CC-by-nc-sa) (or at your option - any later version). ] [ Dedication ]