Endings: A Postmortem on a BronyCon Bookstore Entry · 6:57pm Feb 10th, 2021
The year 2019 probably stands for most people as the last time things were truly ‘normal’ in the world. For me, it was the year I finally committed to my participation in the fanfiction elements of the fandom. At BronyCon 2019, the final BronyCon ever, I submitted ten copies of a fanfiction collection to the BronyCon Bookstore. This was a collaborative event led by Aquaman, where several authors submitted their fanfic books to be sold at the convention in a specialized booth. It was very successful, as I and other participants can confirm from the long line that filled the vendor’s area for the first day of the convention. Out of my own ten copies, nine were bought, with the final copy being held on by me per request.
My collection was called Endings, and it focused on six tales involving My Little Pony. As I was wanting to leave room open for creative stories, I kept the theme rather open-ended by focusing on endings. I felt this was fitting for what would be the last BronyCon ever, as well as giving me wiggle room if I decided to change a few stories in the line-up. I originally planned on having eight or nine stories in the collection, but time constraints prevented me from fully committing to this number. Plus, I figured six was good enough since many people would tie that into the Mane Six, and the page length went over 170 anyway. With this settled, I submitted the book to Aquaman for perusal and committed to printing the stories in time for the convention (they actually got to my house the day I left for BronyCon; just another sign of the extremely poor time management the next paragraph will demonstrate I had).
Yet in all the time since that final BronyCon, I never really talked about the Endings collection. Part of it was the sheer exhaustion of making the book; the other was a desire to put a certain amount of emotional distance before I fully talked about the final product. The former was mainly a result of the rushed process I used when writing the piece. Despite having months of preparation, I found I did most of the writing for the collection a month before it needed to be ready. As such, the final product was largely lackluster. The margins didn’t always line up, there were more than a few typos, and some characters seem a little flat. The collection was functionally adequate to the point I'm pretty sure most would accept it as a first-time effort, but I knew even back then that I didn’t put my best foot forward. The fact that much better authors with much better books were selling their products for lower prices made me feel all the worse (in one particularly melancholy episode I had, I considered offering refunds to everyone who bought the collection, even though I didn’t have the money by that point). This is the main reason I haven’t advertised the collection on my author page. Even now with it fully edited to ameliorate the aforementioned blocking and grammatical issues, I doubt I will make it available for the public ever again, even at a reduced price.
However, now that said exhaustion has worn off and time has led me to have different perspectives than I did, I decided to go forward with my re-edit of the story. My mother had been asking for a copy of it ever since BronyCon 2019, and I’d stalled by claiming I wanted to put some final touches on the editing process. However, graduate school and other elements of my life kept delaying me, so I pretty much ate up a lot of time with the collection just sitting on my desk. After enough time in 2020, I finally got to looking at my To-Do list and figuring out what needed to be done. I decided Endings needed to be my focus since both my mother wanted one and I myself wanted to reflect on what the experience taught me as a writer. I figured the format for this essay would be that I summarize my feelings on the final product, then highlight a few lines that stuck out to me.
It should go without saying that there will be SPOILERS for every one of these tales, so if you’re at all interested in reading Endings before you hear the creative process, check them out first. This is also wise because I’m not going to summarize the stories, since this reflection is effectively pointless if you haven’t read said stories. That, and I’m just not in the mood of explaining every single plot beat of each tale. Trust me, when you see how long this reflection is, you’ll understand.
With all that being said, let’s get started!
STEVE AND CRANKY’S FINAL ADVENTURE
One aspect of Endings I want to talk about is the quality of the stories. At the time of writing, I arranged the stories in what I considered “least to greatest” in terms of overall story quality. Steve and Cranky was what I considered the worst story, partly because it was the first written and it received negative attention by the three people who read it. Being a leftover draft from the 2017 National Pony Writing Month, I’d pretty much just gussied it up with a few edits and threw it onto the website. Hell, even the one pre-reader I got to go over it just kind of said “It’s alright” and bounced without another word. I wasn’t half-assing it per se, but I certainly recall being less focused on it compared to some of the other stories in the collection. As such, I’d maintained the thought that it was the weakest story coming back to it for edits.
Returning to it a year and a half later, however, I was struck by how strong a lot of elements of the story were. Make no mistake, it’s not perfect; there’s a sparseness of description and the bland environment of Windvane doesn’t make a lot of things pop. But compared to a few other of my initially well-regarded stories, I found there was quite a few interesting ideas at play here. For starters, the repertoire between Cranky and Steve Magnet was far better than I remembered. Dialogue has always been my favorite part to write in stories, and I actually did have a lot of fun writing these two very different characters together. While their partnership may’ve been more a joke than a serious intention when it was brought up in “Slice of Life”, I actually thought their comradery could work. So it was actually quite nice to see I was able to make that aspect of their characters work.
I also realized I was quite right to focus more on Cranky as the emotional center point to the story. Make no mistake, I loved writing Steven, but in all honesty, I had a lot of trouble finding any sort of emotional linkage I could use with him. He appeared only twice in the show that I can remember, and his main contribution was to be aggressively metrosexual.
Not a lot to work with there from a character standpoint. Fortunately, 2019 Me seemed to realize this and instead put a lot of the emotional scenes on Cranky. His character, as many other fanfictions on this site can account for, is just quite rich in terms of conflict and inner richness. Steven is essentially there to be the comic relief, who freaks out more about Bersal’s style of dress rather than the disturbing events surrounding them.
In fact, I want to talk about Bersal for a second. He’s essentially trying to do the same thing as Cranky, trying to recapture youthfulness, but in a much more malicious way. Cranky wants to find a donkey from his past, while Bersal wants to be young forever so that he can obsess over the past longer. I actually am happy I tied the retirement home into his past, since it gives Cranky an excuse for hating his age. He’ll either go mad looking for youth like Bersal, or become impotent to stop evil like Bersal’s former roommate. This makes Bersal a lot more interesting than the hammy villain he obviously is by the time Steve and Cranky come across him. Not the deepest character possible, but I think using the retirement home and theme of age gives him a better link to the protagonist than a few of the other villains in this same collection.
That all being said, I think the biggest problem with the story is its ending. I feel like I was trying too hard to tie the story into the canon MLP Equestria, because that whole final section feels like it’s trying super hard to explain both Steven and Cranky’s first appearances in the canon show. It also just feels like Cranky is beating the reader over the head with his feelings and what the story means, which a lot of readers would’ve probably grasped by the end had I emphasized them a little better. I was just desperately trying to portray this as the event that sent the duo eventually to Ponyville, and that makes the emotions in the final section feel a little too forced. I think had it ended on that second-to-last section, where Bersal’s former roommate looking at the damage of the town and realizing his cowardice, would’ve been a stronger stopping point.
Now, some lines of interest:
“I can go twenty-seven more.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “What did the fella say? ‘Time enough for sleep in the grave?’”
“How morose,” Steven said, shaking his head. “I thought you were Cranky, not Neightsche.”
Never can resist a chance to throw a philosopher reference in a fic (though I don’t think that line is actually from Nietzsche). And of course Cranky would be the one spouting it.
“Ponies can do that. They’re mushy like that, playing patty-cake into their thirties and singing about how they appreciate each other so goldarned much. Donkeys got a reputation to uphold.”
Sometimes I think I accidentally inserted my dad into the story instead of Cranky. You’ll see what I mean in the next story.
“He was my roommate, here at the home. Didn’t say much, kept to himself reading most of the time. None of us were concerned; we mind our business in these parts.” He looked back out the window. “It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when he got...odd. Got all excited and stayed up all night to look at some history documents. Then he just started walking around and hypnotizing everypony.”
This is actually my favorite line about Bersal’s past. It makes it unclear whether he was always putting on a fake personality before he found the Fountain of Youth, or if he was corrupted by whatever magic was within it. A certain amount of vagueness can be great for character building.
“The time is near!” the figure shouted. “You must get back to work!”
“Yes, master,” the crowd repeated in tandem.
What’s going on here? Steven thought. Some sort of weird teamwork seminar?
“And stay to your tasks!” the figure barked. “Anypony caught lazing will not receive the Gift!”
“Yes, master,” they repeated.
Unless the Gift is a coupon for a free massage, I don’t like where this is going.
Steven being confused by a bunch of weird cult stuff is such a mood. All the more reason making him the comic relief was wise.
“…And then it turns out the ale was actually white instead of red, so of course the Baroness was displeased and her uncongenial attitude made the rest of the event rather…”“…Because of this, we moved out east to Manehattan, where there was a fresh supply of seaweed to condition her skin for her occasional outbreaks of…” the noblepony continued. “…So the doctor said the anesthesia didn’t work as directed, so we’d have to do the surgery when the moon was full to allow the hypnosis-“
You ever have that moment when you realize the background gibberish you just absentmindedly put as background noise actually sounds more interesting than the current events in the story? That was my reaction to this whole section. What the hell was the thought process I was going through when typing these parts? I almost want to write a story about this Canterlot twit going through these weird events.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter who you are,” Bersal said. “Once I have the Gift, I’ll have all the time in the world to solve this little mystery.”
“The answer’s just about as boring as you,” Cranky said with a sneer.
“I’ll permit your flippancy, donkey,” Bersal said. “If only because the pain you’ll receive will more than make up for your insults.”
I’d forgotten how fun these lines between Bersal and Cranky were. Cranky’s just gassing him up, and Bersal’s talking like he’s a pulp villain. It is dialogue like these that remind me how much passion I was putting into these stories.
“But I’m not so cruel to make them all slaves. No, certain ones will be quite… instrumental in my ascendance.” He wandered over to one of the mares staring down at Cranky and began to stroke her auburn mane. Her head lowered and leaned into his hoof, a gentle purr emanating from her throat.
“Every formula needs to be tested, after all,” Bersal said with a thin smile. “And the ones to survive the experiments will be quite exalted in this new world.”
I’d forgotten how creepy this part of the story is. Bersal goes from a power-mad sorcerer to a creeper in a heartbeat, and it’s just so off-putting. The original wording was actually “a gentle moan emanating from her throat”, but I changed that in my recent edit because I was worried it would sound a little too sexual. Though I’m not sure “purr” is much better.
Sweet Celestia, he thought. Of all the nuts to get in the Trail Mix of life.
Nothing to elaborate about this line; I just really like it.
Steven’s eyes went wide and he dropped Bersal to the ground. A ribcage, skull, and smattering of other bones tumbled to the earth.
Fun Fact: The story originally ended with Bersal regressing in age until he was a baby. He would then be put in the orphanage, where the townspeople tried to raise him to be good. I got rid of that because I thought it was a little too goofy for the story I was going for, as well as just being weird. His final fate feels more in-line with a karmic punishment, and it shows a brutal consequence to Cranky about obsession.
After the explanations, the townsponies stared up at the two friends in silence. Then, a tan pony with a monocle and a top hat on his blue mane walked up to the stage.
“Thank you for your help,” he said in a quiet voice. “Please feel free to stay the night.” He then turned to the others and announced that there would be a full investigation in the coming days, but that now it would do everypony best to get some sleep. With that, he walked off the stage and disappeared into one of the side streets. The rest of the pony followed suit, shooting only occasional glances towards the duo onstage before vanishing into the dark alleyways.
I really like how this caps off the townsfolks’ role in the story. Instead of the hero’s welcome, the town seem too traumatized to even really process what happened. It adds to the creepy atmosphere.
Only the orange stallion remained blank, his eyes locked into a stare that went right through Cranky and Steven. In the moonlight, Cranky could see the little stream flowing down the stallion’s face. Little drops formed on his drenched moustache, waiting for the reflexive sob that would send them falling, but which never came.
“Maybe they can help the town remember what happened,” Steven said.
Cranky shook his head. “They want to forget this more than anypony else. But I hope they don’t. I hope they live here for a nice, long time.”
I really think I should have stopped the story around here. It shows both Cranky’s realization of his own age and the bitterness starting to gnaw at him. The whole final chapter is okay, but it paints a little too pretty of a picture instead of ending on this cynical note. I think most readers would have got why this was Cranky and Steve’s last adventure, instead of having it all spelled out at the very end.
Despite what my story page might suggest, I actually have been writing on this site consistently before 2018. A good chunk of them were contributions to contests, back when contest stories were compiled in one giant story on the site rather than being uploaded singularly by each author like we do today. One of these events was the OC Slamjam, a contest done by the sadly departed Obsolescence (departed from the site, that is; last I heard, they were still alive and well). Done in 2015, this contest focused on us creating our own OCs and pitting them against another member’s OC in a head-to-head competition. Two stories were written by the competing OCs authors, and then we voted on who wrote the better story.
While I was voted out in the second round, I always held onto my creation, a misanthropic and antisocial reporter called Price Back, as a fallback character for a future story. I thought there was a lot of possibility for him as a character, and I kept sitting on a story about him. When Endings came to my mind, I realized this was a perfect time to use him. None of the other stories I was using (even the discarded ones) dealt with BronyCon or a similar fandom situation. I realized that Price could be a great character to use in such a situation, as he’s completely antisocial and somewhat of a snob, so there could be a lot of great interaction at a BronyCon-esque event. After a quick change to Daring-Doo convention, I had a good excuse for putting Price in Baltimare.
With that settled, I then moved on to what the actual crime Price would be investigating would be. I fell upon the idea of some kind of weapons deal, partly because I hadn’t seen many stories on the site dealing with arms trading, and partly out of a local crime caper that’d happened a few years earlier. A major hurricane had come through my area, and during the storm, a bunch of thieves broke into a local gun store and looted a lot of the firearms/ammunition.
Literally this movie.
While I didn’t go with a hurricane or guns, I used the event to nail down something that I thought might be considered a weapon in Equestrian society: obsidian. Given they immobilized the Princesses in the movie, I thought they’d be the kind of danger Price would absolutely want to stop.
Mixing the two was easy, as I knew the Daring-Do convention set-up would be easy, with the obsidian plot sneaking in via an anonymous tip. I briefly considered having the Daring-Do convention organizers be the criminals who were using the convention as a front to spread the weapons (just like in reality!), but I wanted to emphasize how the convention actually helped Price rather than antagonized him, so I quickly discarded that convention-mobster connection and made the plots separate.
Revisiting the story, I was surprised by how less of an ass I made Price. In the original OC Slamjam contest, Price was supposed to be written like a jerk who could barely stand other ponies. Yet even in those Slamjam stories I wrote, there seemed to be an unconscious attempt on my part to ameliorate Price’s jerkishness. This is actually what got me voted off in the second round of the contest, as many of the other participants felt I’d strayed too wildly from the original character prompt I submitted. I now know why: he’s much more effective as a crusading reporter than an antisocial prick. I kept his standoffishness and annoyance with the world, but I heightened his more positive qualities like his love for books and his cleverness. Reading this story again, I realize how much of this would’ve fallen flat had Price been his original pompous, disgusted self.
Admittedly, there are some things that fall flat in this story. Sugar doesn’t have a very big role in the story other than just bringing the gangster plot into Price’s story, and the fact she becomes the damsel in distress during the climax is pretty solid evidence that I really didn’t have any creative way to use her other than giving Price somepony else to save. The ending scene of Price sending her off doesn’t feel nearly as emotional as I was going for, probably because Sugar doesn’t leave much of an impression. The villain Johnny Trottelli similarly just feels like he’s a stereotypical gangster. He serves his purpose much better than Sugar, but he still doesn’t feel as impactful as I was hoping to make him. Even Vice, the other gangster in the story, feels more three-dimensional with his congenial menace and clear trolling of Johnny. Also, the fact I named a pony Johnny should show I wasn’t thinking that deeply about naming conventions in Equestria.
Yo, check out my next Equestrian character, Stacey Trottingham.
There are more than a few good things in this story, though. I really liked how much Price is suffering during the convention, seeing only the bad or things that annoy him. (Fun Fact: This attitude was based off my father’s feelings toward the first few BronyCons he accompanied me to. He straight up bragged once that he could bribe any of the staff or just beat them in a fight, and he listed out the cosplayers he thought would get mugged based on their outfits.) I also really enjoyed Tough Talk, given he’s what I kind of wished BronyCon security would’ve been instead of just really chubby guys in blue shirts or electric wheelchairs.
No joke, I'm pretty sure Timmy was the one guarding BronyCon's lobby.
My favorite thing about this story, however, is AK Yearling. I never even really planned having her in the story when I was first mixing the convention and mobster plotlines, but I figured I’d throw her in just because I had an excuse with the convention. Then I gradually realized that she could actually be quite useful to Price as an ally, and that there was a lot of amusing potential in Price never realizing how Yearling was so experienced in handling dangerous thugs. Unlike Steve & Cranky, which pounded the canon story into the narrative, this one seemed like it handled the transition more smoothly.
And man, does the final result speak to how good of an idea this was. I remembered liking her and Price’s interactions, but I’d forgotten just how great they worked off each other. AK works kind of like the coy female friend who can only communicate through teasing, and Price is the dude who finds himself opening up to a kindred spirit. It just was so much fun, and I kind of want to find another excuse to put these characters together again. Maybe having Price run into AK’s alter-ego on another trip and finding her oddly familiar?
“Say, you remind me of some totally overrated author I used to know.”
Now, some lines of interest:
Sweet Celestia, I need a drink.
This is the only inconsistency with Price’s character I could find, mostly because it’s the very first line. While I did originally intend him to be a bit of a drinker, I eventually got rid of that the further I wrote the story. This is the only evidence of it in the whole story, along with one line about getting a cognac that I edited out this round.
Then he saw it. A large brick building with green and browns filling the windows and a name hanging above the doors in big, bold, beautiful white lettering:
Barns and Nuzzle Bookstore
What little emotion hid within Price’s breast flared, and he began to enthusiastically trot towards the blaring sign. A wide beam appeared on his face, hidden only by the slight downward angle Price held his head.
For those that don’t know, there was a massive Barnes and Noble bookstore just down the street from the Baltimore Convention Center. It sat right on the bay and was right next to the aquarium. I’d actually visited it back in 2016 when I’d gone up to BronyCon by myself, and I figured it would be a good way to show Price’s book obsession if he was at BronyCon’s Equestrian counterpart.
Plus, it just looks like a place where multiple felonies were committed.
Price shrugged and walked on. The mare fell from his mind upon the Modernist section coming into sight, as well as his desired book: The Sun Always Rises.
The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorite books. Don’t be surprised when you see it and other Hemingway books show up in the other stories included here.
The Convention Center itself was one of those places that stood as the ultimate representation of blandness. The halls were white, the walls tan, and the carpet a bland mish-mash of various dark blue shapes. Even the front-entrance pillars sat in such neat and unassuming positions that there was no risk of the architect’s personality sneaking through their structures. It was a place made to have as little personality as possible, a perfect camping ground for a hundred different groups on a hundred different days.
This is pretty much me just writing about the Baltimore Convention Center. Not slamming it, just pointing out how purposefully bland it is made to be.
“Where are you going?” she chuckled. “I don’t own this spot.”
“Didn’t you want to be alone?”
"Yeah, but you said you wanted to be alone too. We can be alone together.”
“That…seems self-defeating.”
Leave it to Price to ignore the signs of a cute mare and argue semantics with her.
“I know it’s a bit sudden, but is there any chance of an interview later in the con?” he called out.
“Look at the schedule,” Yearling called back, not even turning around. “Any time between my panels…well, you know where to find me.”
I’m glad that I didn’t walk into this fic thinking, “Gee, I should make Price and AK be super into each other.” That would’ve made me try too hard to make them work together, instead of just naturally occurring like it does here.
The picture of Councilmare Hemlock being walked out of court reminded him quite fast. The headline itself was a dead giveaway: CROOKED COUNCILMARE ARRESTED IN LEAD WATER CONTROVERSY. And underneath it, a barely visible byline: STORY BY PRICE BACK.
Could you tell that Flint, Michigan was a big thing in the news back then? It’s just subtly in there, if you look hard enough.
“No. I was trying to look for some information about Trottelli’s money laundering racket, but had to duck out fast. The fact we ran into each other was pure luck.”
Damn, I’d forgotten there was even a money laundering aspect to Johnny’s crimes. It makes sense it falls out of focus once the obsidian comes into play, but I’d completely forgot that was the reason she was at Barns and Nuzzle. Though now I’m wondering how she would’ve gotten that information there. Did Johnny hide the money info in the financial books section?
“Hey, Johnny,” he said, flashing a small grin. “Long time no see.”
“Mmm,” Johnny mumbled. “I’m sure there’s a reason for that.”
“Indeed. But our little turf war last spring isn’t important right now. You want the product, yes?”
This whole scene makes me frustrated I didn’t go with Vice as the villain. He has such an amusing dark sense of humor, while Johnny just acts like a regular gangster. The fact he spends his whole time screwing with Johnny makes him all the more fun.
Damn it! Price thought. I should’ve told the cabbie to drop me off somewhere else. Trottelli probably bribed him to find out where-
Amazing what a quick throw-away line will explain away.
“Get back here, you-!” Sock didn’t finish the words, as Tough Talk’s raised leg clotheslined him and sent him flying to the ground. Morrow came to a stop just before his colleague and right into Tough’s disapproving glare. Tough lifted his hoof and wagged it in both their faces, a restrained pleasure on his face.
Tough Talk is the real hero of this story. Hell, maybe I should just do a spin-off with him beating up every villain in Equestria in two seconds.
“Sadly,” Price said. “It seems the henchponies of the biggest mobster in Baltimare want to use me as their personal pincushion.”
Yearling sat straight up. “What?”
“You know how I said truth is stranger than fiction? Well, consider this a demonstration.”
It’s moments like this that demonstrate why the Price character appealed to me. A snarky wordsmith can be a lot of fun in the right conditions.
He found himself jerked back and pushed against the stairway wall. Yearling’s red-rimmed glasses pushed themselves only an inch from his eyes, and he could feel her hot breath on his face.
“Look, Price. This whole ‘Do It Myself’ shtick gets old fast. I get it, I used to do it myself. But despite what your years of lonely wandering might have taught you, sometimes the best thing to do is swallow your pride and let somepony lend you a hoof. I want to help you, so let me help for Celestia’s sake.”
For a moment, Price could only stare at Yearling in confusion. Only when she leaned in a little harder did he manage to grunt, “Alright.” Yearling’s hoof eased and Price fell off the wall, his head shaking in disbelief. “Never knew fantasy writers could be forceful,” he chuckled uneasily.
Price demonstrating a classic case of Scarousal. In all seriousness, I’m shocked how I didn’t see this in a somewhat risqué light the first time. I actually changed the “hot breath on his face” from “hot breath on his neck”. It’s not meant to be that sexy.
"I know you’re a fiction writer and probably don’t have much experience with criminals, but-!”
A sharp laugh pierced his ears. Yearling’s hooves shot to her mouth, trying desperately to prevent any further guffaws from escaping.
Honestly, these lines are the whole reason I roped AK into the story. Just the idea that Price accidentally gets the help of an acclaimed adventurer is amusing enough to include.
The same knowing smile crossed Yearling’s face. “Oh, my dear sweet Price Back,” she cooed, her hoof stroking Price’s cheek. “Have you ever heard of ‘cosplay’?”
Seriously, do I need to even write sequels after this passage? I think we already know what Price and AK are doing after this adventure.
Sock turned away from the duo in disgust. Damned freak shows, he thought. Always coming to this town dressed like they’re three years old. Dad wouldn’t have stomached this. Heck, he’d have smacked me around if he caught me wearing any of those get-ups.
Again, I think my father snuck into this story again. Fortunately for me, he was never violently disapproving like Sock’s father.
Johnny turned toward Price and chuckled. “Dames. Have no respect for you even when you do everything for them.” He motioned toward his laid out sister. “Take Sugar. I bought her a nice penthouse, gave her fancy clothes, even gave her some tips on how to score dates with the real cool guys. And what do I get for it?”
“A lot of trouble, it seems,” Price said.
Johnny and Price then went on to found the first Equestrian MGTOW.
Price pushed himself up. “You won’t get away with this,” he grunted.
“Of course I will!” Johnny laughed. “I own this town. Not a single hood nor cop in Baltimare moves a hoof without my say-so. I can dispose of you in places ponies would never dream of looking. Heck, I could keep you alive in some dungeon for a hundred years and nopony would ever know you were there.”
See, this is what I mean when I say Johnny is good in concept, but not execution. His lines here aren’t bad, but they don’t feel like they had the same inspiration I had when I was cranking out Bersal or even Vice earlier in this story. Johnny serves his function, but there’s a lot of missed potential in the grand scheme.
“You may be just another muckraker for some rag I wouldn’t even use as toilet paper, but you could still cause me trouble.”
Okay, this is Johnny line that I think actually lands pretty well. I could totally see a gangster spouting something similar.
“You can’t do this!” he said. “This is beyond your jurisdiction!”
“Wrong once more, Johnny,” Price chimed. “It’s illegal to deal with weapons expressly forbidden by royal decree. While the list is small, one of those weapons are obsidian orbs.” He motioned toward the Guards. “These fellows have all the right in the world to be here. And I can guarantee that they’re far less lenient than your cronies in this town.”
I like the fact I made the Royal Guard the sort of federal law-enforcement agency of Equestria. It opens up a lot of interesting story possibilities.
“I will confess, we were surprised to see a world famous author come into our office with news of highly dangerous weapons.” He chuckled. “Didn’t stop Cloud Kicker from asking for an autograph.”
“Hey, I had a rare collection of Daring Do and Trotezuma’s Revenge!” a tan Guard shouted. “You take opportunities as they’re presented!”
Off-the-Cuff Story Idea: Price and AK on a romantic getaway, except they keep getting interrupted by ponies trying to get AK’s autographs.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I don’t want him to be in there any longer than he needs to. Just long enough to get his head straight.”
He may be there longer than that, Price thought. Obsidian orbs are borderline life sentences these days. Sugar’s wet eyes kept him silent, however. No need to ruin her hopes. Might be the only thing keeping her from going to pieces right now.
This is actually the most human moment Price has in the piece for me. He knows Johnny is essentially doomed to a lifetime sentence, but decides to spare Sugar the agony of that knowledge. It shows a certain compassion he had little of at the story’s start, and even contrasts with AK’s brutally honest speech about not needing to go alone. An interesting symmetry I hadn’t noticed the whole time I was writing the piece.
I’m going to say this right now: Lightning Dust is better as a villain. I know there’s a lot of you who like to portray her more positively, but I’m sorry, I can’t go for that. For starters, she’s done a lot of awful things that you really can’t justify by saying “Rainbow Dash pushed her” or “The Mane 6 had no business flying near the Wonderbolt Academy”. Because acting blasé about nearly killing somepony is totally a normal reaction and not the sign of a budding sociopath.
“Spitfire, I swear I didn’t know ponies could catch on fire!”
Also, she’s one of the few antagonists who are direct parallels to the Mane Six (in this case, Rainbow Dash) who I think actually work. She’s Rainbow Dash if Rainbow really didn’t have that Element of Loyalty to check her ego, and it’s actually quite interesting to see. Lightning watches out for number one, because that’s what she thinks is important. I don’t even think she sees it as bad or selfish, just because she can’t comprehend there is something outside of herself that is worth thinking about.
I’m also one of the few people who doesn’t mind “The Washouts”, as it was a reiteration of what I thought had been plainly obvious since Season 3: Lightning Dust was not a good pony. While her escalation toward the end was rushed, I could honestly see her putting Scootaloo in danger with a stunt. If Scoots made the jump, the crowd would love it and Lightning would feel vindicated in her decision. If she failed, then Lightning got to hurt Rainbow Dash in an indirect way. The only true problem I had with the episode was that it felt like the ending escalation came too fast; Lightning should’ve started doing smaller things to win Scootaloo’s trust, before strapping her onto the rocket.
So I went into this story trying to ameliorate this writing issue, with a deeper probing of Lightning to see how she reached that decision. I figured if I couldn’t affect the speed of Lightning’s decision through a canon means, I figured I could explain her decision. I did this by showing her meeting with the other Washouts and their interactions, as I felt there needed to be a reason Lightning felt so untouchable. She was a great leader to Rolling Thunder and Short Fuse, but it’s clear it comes more from feeding their egos than truly admirable leadership. And I think this is where I decided to go a more tragic route with the story. While I dislike Lightning Dust as a victim or positive figure, I think giving her the possibility to be good is great. Thus I pushed the story more as a tragedy, where Lightning is so close to having a true redemption, only to throw it away for a satiation of her ego.
Much like Steve & Cranky though, I think the story is hindered by its attempts to stay within continuity. The fast escalation to the Scootaloo rocket needs to stay, so the story is all about writing around that situation. One of the reasons I ended the story before the rocket scooter depicted in the episode was because I really couldn’t think of a creative way to portray it. And since the story had been written purely to explain that moment, what was the point of showing it if nothing would be changed? It was a case where I was so focused on writing a fix fic that I didn’t see if the execution would be effective. And unlike Steve & Cranky, which had some flexibility on how to tie into the canon universe, No Gift could not yield. The fact that some of the events aren’t one-to-one with the canon (as one commenter pointed out and I basically rationalized by claiming Lightning was an unreliable narrator) makes the experiment even more of a failure: a story trying to fix canon by misrepresenting canon.
In that sense, this is probably the weakest story of the collection, since it doesn’t entirely succeed in what it was trying to do. There were too many constrictions to allow for that explosive creativity that appears in all the other stories in some manner. I don’t hate this story, as I think it adequately explains my reasoning for Lightning Dust as The Villain and how “The Washouts” can still work. However, time has shown me this is where my writing is at its weakest, when canon overrules my own creativity. Which is a bummer, given this was the story that got the most amount of editors to smooth the story over. I’m sad I couldn’t provide a story that their talents would’ve truly made great, instead of one that was made merely passable.
Now, some lines of interest:
“You’re soused, girlie. Go home.”
“No way. I paid for my drinks! I have rights.”
“You’ll get rights and lefts if you don’t drag your carcass out of here.”
I’d forgotten how Chad this bartender was. Maybe I should team him up with Tough Talk so that they could protect Equestria forever.
“Ha!” Lightning laughed. “I would’ve been better than a dozen Babe Hoofs! A hundred of them! I would’ve been better than all the Babe Hoofs and Vic Canters and every other bum that called themselves the best!”
“Sure you would’ve,” the bartender said, wiping the glass clean.
Seriously, now I want to do a story with this guy just passive-aggressively insulting every villain in Equestria.
Spitfire, the Wonderbolt Captain who governed the Academy like her own sovereign nation, disagreed with this assessment. She’d pinned the responsibility on Lightning, labeled her guilty of “reckless endangerment”, and kicked her out of the Academy. To a degree, the pegasus understood why she made such a decision: accidents happen all the time, and when they start leaving bruises, a fall pony is needed. Said bruises also just so happened to occur to the Elements of Harmony, pinnacles of Equestria and the one group of ponies Spitfire couldn’t brush off. Spitfire needed somepony on the chopping block stat, and the mare who started the tornado seemed like the best candidate.
This is actually one angle of the story I really like: Lightning thinking her punishment came from nepotism. It feels like an emotion a lot of ponies might have if they ever came in conflict with the Mane Six and were on the losing end. Might be interesting to explore in another story that deals with the attitude more explicitly.
She’d been real good about it, too. Made sure Spitfire saw her crocodile tears, mentioned her Element of Loyalty as loudly as she could to anypony in earshot, bloviated about how she couldn’t be in a group that let ponies be hurt so easily and didn’t care about its own cadets. If this was a movie awards ceremony, ol’ Dashie would’ve gotten Best Actress for certain. And like any great performance, Spitfire ate it up.
Again, this is a really neat idea from a writing perspective. Somepony as broken and self-centered as Lightning would see Rainbow and her friends’ friendship concerns as somehow self-serving in some way. How could they not be, if that’s how Lightning thinks about herself all the time? Wouldn’t everypony else be the same way in her eyes? It’s a fascinating situation that I wish was elaborated on a little more than it currently is in this story.
Lightning wasn’t fooled. She knew Dash wanted this, and she knew that she’d feel joy from it every single day of her life. When she closed her eyes to sleep, when she sat in some far off café with the special somepony she’d never deserve, when she stared into her children’s eyes out of appreciation that she’d produced something else in her own image.
She’d be thinking about Lightning Dust and the pain she’d caused her, and she’d relish it for the rest of her days.
I love how this parallels with Lightning Dust towards the end of the story, who relishes in the coming humiliation of Dash. Really hones in on the projection Lightning is suffering from.
The bartender stood up and, instead of the slight pudge Lightning expected him to have, the stallion had a long row of muscles on his chest. The apron strained to stay tied to his body, and his legs similarly pulsated with thick tendons.
“What’d you say, bud?” the bartender said, neck veins looking ready to pop.
I repeat: ULTRA-CHAD.
I should do it now, she thought. I should just zoom in and land on her. Say it was an accident, say I didn’t mean to bend your wing that direction and ruin your Wonderbolt career. It’d be just an unfortunate accident, one of those karmic justices that surprise even the pony on karma’s good side.
Again, I really like how self-serving Lightning’s own memory is. She sees herself completely as the victim, like some pony version of Eddie Brock.
Turns out all Venom and Lightning Dust needed to become good was a slice of pepperoni.
She’s tough, Lightning thought. She’ll get through the Wagon Jump, the Jaws of Doom, the Smasher, all of them with barely a scratch. Heck, she may even become the second-best Washout.
For a few moments, she almost believed it.
For all my issues with this piece, I think these closing lines might be the strongest of the whole collection. It summarizes the delusional and retributive nature of Lightning Dust quite succinctly.
This story’s inclusion was the biggest accident of this collection. I had originally planned having eight original stories ready for Endings by the deadline. This was a story I’d done in December 2018 for Jinglemas, and I’d pretty much sat on it as a backup inclusion if one of my stories wasn’t written in time. As is clear, quite a few of those stories weren’t ready, so I put this baby in the wings as the topping off story. Mainly just because it had a lot of positive response, and I figured people would enjoy it even if the rest of the collection didn't do anything for them. Endings was also very vague in its theme, so I thought I could worm it in easily enough. If you want to know more about the creative decisions behind it, check out the author note in the final chapter.
I think this story works because of how small it is. It’s the shortest story in the collection, which means it has less time to mess itself up or overextend its welcome, which a lot of the stories in this collection have issues with. The set-up is also very simple, with Sunset Shimmer and Princess Luna interacting at a party. It’s a very cozy story, and I think that makes it hard to hate for a lot of people. I certainly like coming back to it every Christmas, partly from the positive reactions and just because I think the story works so well.
The only critique I can think of is that Luna and Sunset don’t interact as long as I would’ve liked, only meeting about halfway through the first chapter. Granted, I threw in Discord to make things a little bit more fun, but it does kind of feel like there’s not enough interaction in hindsight. The fact the second chapter has them only doing one quick exchange likewise makes it feel like their comradery depends more on the narration than their actual chemistry with each other. It’s not too debilitating to the story, but it does make it a little less stronger than it could’ve been.
All in all though, I’d still say this is probably the second best of the collection. A simple story told in a straightforward manner.
Now, some lines of interest:
But Sunset stood off in the corner, sipping her punch with the urgency of somepony who simply needed something, anything to do.
This one line captures all of my anxieties in going to parties. I can’t tell you how often I’ve been the dude drinking soda awkwardly in the corner, and this story is largely a reflection of all those emotions in one little story.
“Do you always appear to ponies in their drinks?”
“Of course not,” Discord said with a grin. “Sometimes I cameo in their toast and bowls of spaghetti.”
I remember Nyronus, the fellow I wrote this story for during Jinglemas, saying this was one of his favorite lines. It’s mine too, because it’s just such a Discord thing to say.
“Discord!” a powerful voice called out. Sunset didn’t even need to look up at the tall and dark figure to recognize the command’s owner, her blue mane flowing in eternal ethereality. “Cease this tomfoolery!”
YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A MOON GODDESS SAVE YOU FROM THE SPIRIT OF CHAOS AND GIVE YOU FRIENDSHIP GIFTS
What's the point of even living, then?
The rest of the books, from A Summons to Manephis to Equestrian Pastoral, had been just past the cusp of being ‘classic’, in that they’d been written just before the Elements were born.
I swear I wrote this story just to have an excuse to have tons of book puns.
“Hoofinghay,” Twilight said with a smile. “One of the biggest names to come out of the Equestrian expatriates living in Prance one hundred years ago. He wrote The Sun Always Rises and To Hoof and Hoof Not.”
I told you Hemingway would reappear. He’s too powerful to be stopped by mere reality.
“Big Mac was best pony, don’t @ me.” – Hemingway (probably)
Luna’s ears perked up. “Indeed! In fact, I spent a lot of my younger days pouring over Chevi’s treatises.”
“Chevi?” Twilight said, pried away from her stink-eye competition.
Now I’m just imagining Machiavelli as Chevy Chase, and I don’t know how to feel about that.
Sometimes you can tell when a writer was cranking something out due to a deadline. There’s a little less polish in the writing, characters seem a little one-note, and things move along so quickly that you never really realize what you’ve read. While I mentioned many of the stories in the collection felt this way to me, Nightmare’s Caveat is the one that I think represents this creative mindset the most. The fact that it was rather long (over 15,000 words) and was massively revised from its original iteration from the 2017 National Pony Writing Month (Earth Shine was largely a suicidal sad-sack and there was a lot of scientific psychobabble) made the inadequacies all the more clearer. There are characters like the Captain of the Guard who seem really important, but disappear for most of the story only to reappear towards the end. The story also breezes by a lot faster than a slow burn like this really should. Everything escalates and changes so fast that it feels like the cliff notes of a bigger story. The last third of the story, where Price discovers the truth of the situation and acts accordingly, really loses a lot of the personality the rest of the story had. Its submission into the collection was more me throwing up my arms and hoping for the best than the calculated writing the other stories had been.
That being said, this might actually be why so many people enjoyed the story. Re-reading it again from such a distance gave me a lot of fresh perspective for why it actually got pretty decent reviews at the time. The story doesn’t take its time too much and rarely slows down, but that makes it move a lot quicker and leads it to become easier to read. The mystery isn’t particularly deep, but it has a reliability that many readers are familiar with and is foreshadowed fairly well. The story is very dark, but its presentation is in such a way that the angst of the main character never becomes overbearing, and there’s enough hints of humor to make the story more engaging than it would’ve been in its original iteration.
In fact, I’m glad I went with a different characterization for Earth Shine, since the original sad sack portrayal just would’ve made the story more of a slog to get through. (Fun Fact: I named him Earth Shine after this Rush song.) Giving him more of a comedic edge made his sadness and suffering much more bearable, and his interactions with the uppity castle staff where he pretty much trolls them was so much fun. He’s so past the point of caring that he just talks without a filter, and teaming him with the precocious Nightshade makes his character all the more enjoyable. I also am really happy I emphasized his relationship with Nightshade, since she provides a good emotional center for Earth and makes the ending more effective than if they’d all just blooped from existence.
Much like Hard Deadline, what makes the story largely worthwhile is one very strong character: Nightmare Moon. I absolutely loved reading her simultaneously egotistical and playful nature, where she’s basically cooing in your ear while ripping the rest of you to pieces. The best lines come from her, and she’s just so enjoyable as the villain. Her opening scene with Earth sets the tone and her character so well, as she’s the one character Earth Shine can’t play dumb with and needs to actually use his wits to appease. Her voice is also good, with her almost cutesy threats against Earth emitting both a chuckle and a shiver. Not going to lie, I really want to use Nightmare Moon again, just so I can use this same voice with her.
All in all, I was surprised by how much of this story actually worked for me. While having the polish of an editor and a few more scenes would’ve helped, it is largely accurate in the attitude and storyline I was going for.
Now, some lines of interest:
Somewhere the sun still shines, he thought. Not too far, only a billion million miles away. Could make a fine vacation.
I’m glad I made this one of his first lines. It makes his decision to want to go to the moon make all the more sense. Also, because the moon reflects sunlight, which he wants more than anything.
Rainbow looked back up the stairs to her Commander, gazing down in increasing annoyance. She bent down to the prisoner and whispered: “Look, if you don’t get up, she’s going to tell us to beat you even more. Getting up now will save us both a lot of trouble.”
Even in the bad future, Rainbow Dash is still trying to be a good pony.
“...and then it turned out the Moon was actually an egg. So then this Doctor guy recommended we initiate a Horrendous Space Kaplooie to set everything straight-”
Doctor Who and Calvin & Hobbes are the building blocks upon which all of Western society is built. In fact, while the former has had tons of crossovers with MLP, the latter could provide for an interesting story idea.
Though Calvin’s repeated abuse towards women won’t appeal him to Equestria’s matriarchal society.
“Death, you fool! Death is the punishment!”
“What?”
“Death, you insolent whelp!”
“What?”
I almost considered cutting this bit out for being too silly, but I decided it was too good of a gag to leave on the cutting room floor.
“Beg for yourself. Demean yourself in the vilest way imaginable. Then I shall let you go.”
If I’d written this story post-Tender Loving, this would’ve gone in a much different direction.
“Well, honestly, Your Highness…” The prisoner’s eyes filled with a certain gleam. “If I’m really that bad, do I even need to bother demeaning myself? Isn’t my mere existence an insult to You and Your Glorious Night?”
For a moment, the Princess seemed puzzled. Her hard eyes and stern face wavered with each moment, and a smile soon crossed her face.
“Well done,” she said, putting him down in his original spot. “Very few ponies are able to truly grasp their inferiority to Me. You may be as smart as they say you are.”
The one thing I’m glad I emphasized was Nightmare Moon’s ego. It allows Earth Shine a way to manipulate her, as well as coming back to hurt him when he steps the wrong way.
“You better.” She stood up and strode down from her throne towards him. The Commander and other guards backed away from her path, all bowing their heads in respect. The prisoner, however, was so transfixed he could do nothing but stare and shake at the large shadow looming over him. Soon, she was not even a foot away from him.
“Because pain is something I am very good at giving,” she said with a raised hoof.
I’ll take Accidental Inuendo for $500, Alex.
"It wasn't accidental when yer mom came to my house, Trebek!"
Woomph! Earth Shine found his face rammed right into the Commander’s breastplate.
“Make no mistake,” she said. “Just because you’re working for the Princess now doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You’re still in prison, just with a bigger cell. You try and leave this castle or sneak around, I’ll know.”
The fact the Commander disappears after this scene until the end is my greatest regret about this story. She and Earth’s antagonism was one of the most amusing things about the opening scene. While I think Nightshade and Nightmare Moon make up for this absent relationship, I would’ve definitely emphasized the Commander more in a rewrite of this story.
That’s right, he thought. You’re supposed to drain it once you’ve used it.
For a story that was rushed out, I’m surprised I remembered to have a lot of scenes where Earth Shine actually had to familiarize himself with objects he hadn’t interacted with in years. It’s a little detail that makes the story feel a lot more real.
“Well…” She looked up and down the halls. “They said I should spy on you.”
“They did, eh?” Earth chortled.
“Yep! They said to watch out for you doing anything suspicious or against the rules.”
“Heh. Not a bad plan. But you forgot something very important.”
“What?” she said with earnest alarm.
“You’re not supposed to tell the pony you’re spying on that you’re spying on them.”
This whole interaction was the moment I knew that Nightshade would work just fine with Earth Shine.
“Nightmare Moon’s private quarters?” Earth asked.
Nightshade nodded. “It’s where she sleeps, thinks, and a bunch of other things I’m not sure about. I think she plays some games sometimes.”
“Yes,” Earth said. “Even a busy ruler like her probably needs a little time for games.”
Once again, a passage I’m really glad I didn’t write with a dirty mind.
But it was the figure on the bed that caught Earth’s eye the most. Nightmare Moon lounged upon it, laying on her side as if just playfully watching him gawk over the documents instead of her. She wasn’t wearing her official regalia now; laying bare save the crown on her head.
It’s a good thing ponies don’t wear clothes by default, otherwise this would look kind of sexy.
Oh, who are we kidding? This was always going to be sexy.
Earth made his way around the table, tiptoeing around leaning towers of books. “And you don’t think they looked hard enough.”
“On the contrary,” she said. “I think they did the best they could. The threats of death and eternal imprisonment certainly spurned them to do their best.”
Earth gave a knowing nod. “A strong motivator.”
Not only is Nightmare Moon’s black comedy good, Earth Shine’s careful response is hilarious too.
He looked back up at her, seeing she still stared at him expectantly. “Are you…you going to sit there the whole time?”
“Of course,” she said with a wry smile. “I want to be here when you find the thing that will give me dominion over all existence. Don’t feel intimidated.” Her horn fizzled, a thick crackle filling the room. “Or do feel intimidated. Whichever makes you work better and harder.”
My favorite exchange in the whole story, full-stop. Moonie is being such a troll that I can’t help but laugh.
“Our teacher Ms. Grizzle said ponies used to get a thing called sunburn that left them in pain for a long time.”
I’d completely forgotten there was a Magic School Bus reference in this story. I guess you could say I put the art before the horse.
He wandered over to the librarian’s desk, where an elderly mare with glasses stuck in her white hair and a faded orange coat sat. She read a periodical titled The Equestrian Grazzette with a headline reading: GRYPHON AND DRAGON SKIRMISHES IN THE NORTH.
Price’s newspaper the Grazzette makes another appearance. Something tells me Price kept the same job, just with more passive-aggressive jabs towards Nightmare Moon.
Nightmare Moon chuckled. “That sounds like Star Swirl. He was always so persnickety about the morality of spell use.” She sat up and wandered toward the table. “Still, we mustn’t judge. He couldn’t have known somepony with my power would come along and render such ideals pointless. After all, morality is just another means of control, enforced by those with limited power trying to keep it within their grasp.” She gave a playful grin to Earth. “And of what use is morality to one who controls all?”
Absolutely love this line. It shows that for all her playfulness and humor, Nightmare Moon is a dangerous and immoral tyrant.
“Of course,” she said, slinking back to the other side of the desk. “This test is perfect for finding the strong-willed in my Court. They and their heirs could reap incredible benefits for generations to come.” She looked over Earth from head to hoof. “You’re not too old yet, Earth Shine. You could start a family. You already have the experience, yes?”
This is the moment for me where Nightmare Moon becomes fully irredeemable. Taunting a stallion over his dead family and forcing him to commit a borderline-suicidal act pushes her actions into full-on sadism.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.” The devilish smile returned to her face. “Of course, my Night Guards are sometimes a little rash. If they heard little Nightshade disappointed their ruler, who’s to say what they would d-”
I’m pretty sure I wrote this whole chapter just to remind the reader that Nightmare Moon was kind of awful.
“Are you scared?” she whispered.
“Very,” he said. The table was now half its original size, the middle the only part remaining untouched.
Nightshade nuzzled her head deeper into his chest. “At least we can be scared together.”
“Yes,” he said, staring out into the Nothingness now mere inches from their bodies. “Sometimes having somepony to be scared with is the best you can hope for.”
Probably my favorite closing lines in the collection. It sums up the depressing nature of the situation quite succinctly, while also touching on the hope created by this doomed father-daughter relationship.
THE SLOW TRANSFORMATION OF OLIVER SANDERSON
Write what you know. This is the most common adage given to writers, and for good reason. You don’t have to do a lot of research and you can use your personal experiences as a springboard for your story. That describes Slow Transformation to a tee. I wrote this story again for the 2017 National Pony Writing Month, and it was based on a trip I took to Portland earlier in the year. At the time, there’d been some riots in the city and the city just seemed like it was primed for something horrible (which, sadly, hasn’t changed in the last four years). I was also visiting a lot of relatives in the area, including my aunt who had lupus (much like how Nell has ALS) and my ninety year-old grandfather. (Weirdly enough, this would be the last time I saw my grandfather alive; he died a few months after I published the story in 2019.) It was in this mindset that I approached Slow Transformation, as I felt setting a story in a dying city would be a great shift from the other stories in the collection.
I also wanted to use it as an excuse to deconstruct Conversion Bureau stories. While I didn’t know much about CB when I first wrote the story in 2017, I’d researched a little bit more by the time I prepped the story for Endings. The thing that struck me about the stories was that it tended to either glorify ponies or humans, with the other side being irredeemable monsters deserving to be destroyed. I thought this was a very simplistic perspective to such a strange situation, so I figured I needed to show a situation where the Conversion was realistically done and neither side was the bad guy. Showing the downfall of society and the effects such an event would cause to humanity was my prime goal. I also wanted to tie in an artist struggling with the change, something that I felt I was going through within my own family and my own artistic field. While I made Oliver a drawer instead of a writer, he still managed to capture the angst I felt I was going through at the time. And yes, that includes the cynical and snarky personality. I never said the picture was pretty.
Despite all these personal touches, the story doesn’t quite work in some places. I think there are a lot of points where Oliver becomes a little too much of a dickhead, and this kind of makes his reconciliation with Summer and Nell feel a bit unearned. I also feel like Oliver’s father is just there to be the wise old figure, but his complete resignation to the oncoming Conversion feels more like him being a doormat than a sage. This makes his pleas for Oliver to chill out fall flat.
However, I still think the story works because of the sheer amount of passion Oliver has in his voice. While he may be too cynical and confrontational, he isn’t wrong about Summer being insensitive towards his plight of losing his hands and humanity. Likewise, Summer isn’t trying to be obnoxious or coy; she legitimately just wants to make friends and can’t understand why someone would suddenly want all of the bad things in life to say in the name of individuality. Fan of Most Everything probably provided the most succinct explanation of why the story works:
Fascinating. An angle on the subgenre I've rarely seen, with layers of existential dread both explicit and implied. The silences are deafening, and poor Summer has to be the representation of the inevitable when she really does just want to meet new friends. They all do.
It's just that it would have been nice if they had asked first. But then, it would've been nice if they'd had the option to ask.
Excellently done. Thank you for it. A shame the backlash is still so strong.
For all its flaws, this story is personal to me. Perhaps in that sense I could never objectively look at it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong about the story having some worth. Thanks to this personal vision and the help of my editor Cyonix, this is in my mind the best story of the collection, and I will stand by that opinion.
Now, some lines of interest:
Nothing like an uncontrollable mass extinction to bring up some emotional baggage.
I feel like this line sums up the whole tale perfectly.
Downtown Portland would soon be upon us in whatever splendor it had left. Word back in Orlando was even an invasion of neat, colored equines with chipper personalities and literal magic couldn’t do jackshit for the drug-addled metropolis, now filled with more homeless people than actual citizens.
One interesting fact about the story was that it was much more political in its original draft, with Portland politicians being named directly and more attention being drawn to the moral decay of Portland as a city. However, Cyonix rightfully pointed out that a lot of these references would go over peoples’ heads and might make the story more of a pamphlet against the Portland government rather than the character piece it was intended as. In the end, I believe he was right, and this just further cemented my opinion over the years that mixing ponies and politics breeds bad results. Hell, just look at Twitter to see what chaos has been reeked upon the fandom.
Or even better, don’t look at Twitter and read pone.
“Realism, Dad. If a city looks like crap, it’s not usually a good city.”
“You spent three years in Baltimore. You seriously saying that place was a bed of roses?”
Hey, it was the last BronyCon. I needed to bring up Baltimore as much as possible.
Across the street stood a man with no shirt and ragged shorts, proclaiming himself to be the next Messiah in a high-pitched falsetto. The price to get into Heaven was fifty bucks or a bottle of oxycodone.
The sad thing is that you don’t even need an apocalypse for this to happen in Portland. They’ll do it for free.
“Hah!” I said. “Doctors are the one group of people that will suffer if everybody got well. Of course they don’t want everybody to get better.”
Cynicism, thy name is Oliver.
Look, little horsie, I thought, the jeans stretching over my legs and covering once-exposed flesh. You’ll only see something like this for a few more days. Don’t get attached to it.
Strange, how sketches and naked parading were the only revenges I could enact in our dying days. For now though, it was enough. Just more minor victories in a lost war.
It’s weird how the scene that would be erotic in any other context is downright depressing in this one. Just a further demonstration that human understanding is changing with the oncoming conversion.
“What’s the point of a pub if you can’t smoke in it?” Dad grumbled.
“You don’t smoke back at O’Sheas,” I said.
“O’Sheas isn’t British. Smoking is a proud British tradition.”
Another BronyCon reference. O’Shea’s was an Irish pub on Charles Street, just down the street from the Baltimore Convention Center. I often went there for dinner on the last day of the con, drinking a Guinness and having a meal mostly consisting of potatoes.
In other words, the most authentic Irish experience possible.
Weren’t those the days? You just had to defeat your enemy in battle, then you could rule the world. Environmental destruction? Just plant a tree where the shells landed. Death of millions? Give it a few years for birth rates to pick back up. War crimes and general disregard for human life? Not even an issue as long as you’re the winner.
Not that it mattered. War probably wouldn’t have even worked against the ponies, what with their spells launching up to 100 megatons of energy. But compared to the Conversion, a brutal and senseless war would at least give humanity something to show for. Not this lounging about, reminiscing about a past three generations from now wouldn’t even recall apart from history books and lame Hollywood biopics.
This passage is just so existential it hurts. The fact Oliver’s actively pining for a war, even if his side loses, shows just how disenchanted he is.
“Yes-siree. I can deal with the goofy names, the magic crap, and all those frou-frou outfits they wear. But they’ve crossed the one line they shouldn’t have: our bottom line.”
A thick scowl came across my face. “It’s all about the money, huh?”
Bob must not have caught my countenance in the dim light or maybe just didn’t care, because he just laughed. “When has it not?”
The strange thing about this passage is that I emphasize with both Oliver and Bob. Oliver suddenly realizes how many people hate the Conversion for selfish reasons, a stepping stone to realizing his hatred is similarly self-focused. Bob may be in a greedy mindset, but he’s right about money guiding a lot of decisions. It just highlights the complexity of the situation in a very interesting way.
But with each drink and dull reminisce, I couldn’t help but stare back at those two...What would be the phrase? Species-Crossed Lovers? Interdimensional Beaus? Or just plain Romantics? Whatever they were, they could sit there and be happy, comforted by the fact the Conversion would make things better for them. They would hold hooves and cuddle in some far off bungalow in the hills, spending their years in comfortable bliss.
And me? I stared past them, out at Tiny’s with its flashing sign and lifeless dubstep blasting in the wind, wondering if the establishment would even be there once we were all furry nudists and love never felt human again.
This whole chapter is just Oliver making himself more miserable. Also, love that last line; another encompassing phrase for the whole story.
“What the hell gives you the right to consign tuberculosis to the dustbin?” A fire built up in my lungs, my mind spilling a hundred thousand obscenities that somehow formed coherent sentences. “Just because it’s an ugly part of this beautiful place? News flash, sweetheart, history often chomps a chode.”
As one commenter made clear, having a dude announce how great a respiratory illness is really didn’t age well in today's current condition. Then again, it also works to further highlight how far Oliver’s gone in his hatred.
Thank goodness I removed the line about people storming the Capitol and race riots, otherwise this story might’ve gotten even more awkward.
God, to float down the rivers now, away from the angry man and the saddened alien behind me would’ve been Heaven. I’d just float out into the Pacific, gliding like William Blake into the afterlife Nobody sent him into. Maybe ascend before the Wave hit me, floating over the Earth into Paradise like all the prophets I couldn’t name.
William Blake and Nobody are a reference to the final scene in the acid Western Dead Man. I watched it when I was in high school and fell in love with the whole atmosphere of death and slow decay. It fits surprisingly well as a reference in this story.
“But something else I’ve been hearing is that some people…” The cane shook a little under her weight. “Some people don’t make it.”
This is the one part of the story I kind of dislike, just because it feels like an artificial attempt at drama. Nell wanting the Conversion to heal her ALS is enough of a difference from Oliver to create conflict; was the risk of her dying really necessary to make him change his outlook? I’d probably redo this scene in another story, just because it does come off as a little too contrived.
“You’re right. Some things are too complicated to really put into coherent sentences. Sometimes, you just have to say everything that comes to mind. Put it all out there, so you at least know what’s on your mind.” I looked down at my feet, cringing at what would come next. “I’m… sorry that you had to be on the receiving end of such thoughts.”
She nodded. “I understand, and I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. It’s just…” She dropped her hooves to her side and sighed. “Everything’s happening so fast. Two years ago, we were in a foreign land, surrounded by strange two-legged creatures and a complex world. Now, we’re hours away from a world just like our own, and with you all paying the cost.” She shook her head, a tired expression on her face. “It’s just too fast.”
This is my favorite part in the story because it involves the reconciliation I always wanted Conversion stories to have. It doesn’t change what’s happening, but it allows a certain amount of forgiveness so that these characters have the chance of moving on.
“Ain’t that something?” Dad said, shaking his head. “We missed it by just a few hours.”
“It is certainly something,” I said. “Would you call it good or bad luck?”
“Depends on how you view it all.”
Another line that sums up the whole story. Whether the Conversion is a good or bad thing is left up to the reader.
I don’t have much time, I told myself. I whipped out the charcoal and began to create a face and body, the figure’s legs walking in some nondescript landscape.
Better enjoy this while it lasts.
It’s funny; I wrote this as within the context of the Conversion Wave destroying humanity. Now that I’m a little older, I think of it as my motto for my finite life. I’ve got to do what I can to make it worthwhile, before time ticks too far forward. Just another demonstration about why I think this story works as a mature tale as well as a fanfiction.
Well, that's all I have to say about these stories. Thank you for reading, and I hope this has given you some insight into how this collection came about. Have a good life, and remember that writing is an eternal growing process.
