TA Simple Pony

• MLP: FiM
• Romance

All Applejack wants is a kind, good-natured, simple stallion to settle down with. Why then can't she stop herself from falling in love with a villain?

• Sex
• Applejack
• OC

Deep · 6.2k words  ·  53  7 · 2.9k views

A Simple Pony (Applejack)

by Deep

Summary

All Applejack wants is a kind, good-natured, simple stallion to settle down with. Only problem is, the stallion she's fallen for is anything but that.

Initial Thoughts

Well. Here we go. We got ourselves an OC romance story. I do really like Applejack, as a character, and seeing her in a romantic tale is always a lovely thing. But the fact that there’s an OC tag has me worried. These are always hit or miss for me, but I like to keep an open mind. And besides, there’s no Human tag. So… should be good.

My General Reaction

SPOILERS AHEAD. You have been warned.

So… Applejack is looking to settle down with a stallion.

Yes. A stallion. Don’t laugh. That’s not the part that lost me with this story.

Applejack is in the middle of a first date with a friend of Braeburn’s, and she finds that while he’s basically as white bread as they come – and that she’s normally down for white bread, oddly – she’s utterly disinterested in him. To the point where he’s not really even a character in the story. We don’t even get a name or dialogue from the guy, despite his relative importance to the story later on.

Instead, Applejack looks out the window, sees a bank robbery in progress, and basically falls in love right then and there with the criminal. Oh sure, she has to run out and fight him first. But then… she lets him get away. She does this twice over the course of the story, actually. He’s still committed a crime. Crimes, really. But he never goes to jail?

The Villain (yes, that’s all we know him as) is as bland as bland can get. Take the character of Rorschach, from the Watchmen series, and strip him of all nuance and interesting quirks, and you’d have the Villain of this story. It actually kind of infuriates me to read about him, as we can see from a mile away that Applejack is falling for the guy despite him having ZERO charisma, and so many red flag character flaws that I started asking myself how Applejack got this particular instance of brain damage.

The story asks you to buy, for an instant, that Applejack would side with a psychotic criminal. And I’m not buying. Not even a bit. There is no logic to this pair-up, and no emotion either. Just a good pony having a perplexing amount of interest in an asshole.

Grammar and Word Things

Not too bad here. There are some awkward phrases and sentences every so often, and one mid-sentence word-reversal that caught my eye. Honestly, while that can become annoying, this story largely misses those sorts of mistakes, instead managing to drop the ponyisms once too often. Part of the MLP charm is that hooves, flanks, and other horse-type things replace their equivalent in the characters’ vernacular, and having the human words in there instead can be jarring and bad for investment.

Story/Plot/Pacing

The story’s plot requires a lot of buy-in to enjoy. This is mostly due to how incredibly fast the events of the story whip by the reader in its eight-thousand-word runtime, but it’s also a result of the narration’s lifeless delivery. The story is too short and too quick in its narration to carry the significance of the events told within, and the narration is so heavy on the ‘Tell’ part of “Show, Don’t Tell” that it makes the story read quite sluggishly.

Characters

The Villain of the story, as one commentator put it, could have been named Edgelord McHoofinson, and I wouldn’t have noticed at all. He’s just so infuriating to read about that I was very tempted to start skimming every time he came up. He’s a criminal who lives by his white/black morality system and won’t change his ways for nopony else. And he cheapens the character of Applejack by having her fall for him. She’s supposed to be level-headed and wise for her years. She’s always been the least likely one amongst the Mane Six to fall for crap like this, so it just doesn’t jive at all with how she’s depicted. If Applejack was replaced by another OC, this probably wouldn’t be as upsetting as it currently is.

Final Word and Rating

3/10

A Simple Pony is a story about shipping Applejack with an edgy OC. If that’s your jam, you’ll maybe enjoy it.

To the author: The biggest offenders of your story, to me, are your characters. I’ve said before that Applejack falling for him makes her look stupid. What I didn’t say, at least enough, was that he comes across as a classic Gary Stu. He’s a bad guy “with a heart of gold” who bucks the system and “lives by his own rules”. He’s a dick. Yet, he keeps getting away with it. Like, just because you don’t get away with the money or the Royal Guard gear, it doesn’t mean you didn’t commit a crime. It feels like he can do bad things and no one cares. Hell, he’s rewarded for it, since Applejack likes him, apparently. The fact that it seems like we’re meant to sympathize with him makes this all the worse.

Feel free to comment below.
<For Archive Purposes: 3/10>

7377335

Yep, I 100% agree with this review. This part in particular:

This is mostly due to how incredibly fast the events of the story whip by the reader in its eight-thousand-word runtime, but it’s also a result of the narration’s lifeless delivery. The story is too short and too quick in its narration to carry the significance of the events told within, and the narration is so heavy on the ‘Tell’ part of “Show, Don’t Tell” that it makes the story read quite sluggishly.

A longer word count would've helped so much with showing the events instead of telling them, and with making the romance feel real (along with fleshing out "The Villain" much more).

Thanks for the review!