Earth goes to earth; and those left breathing, shocked and startled, each must find their own path to carry on.
Chapters (2)
Baby Boo
Joined 3rd Oct, 2011 ·
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What’s that? A sad Applejack fic that doesn’t revolve around her being an orphan? What a lack of unoriginality.
Baby Boo’s syntax and typography are impeccable, as always. Except those spaces around the em-dashes. But really, that’s just me nitpicking.
I find the whole afterapplelife concept tantalizing and incredibly well done. However, the character tags and synopsis seed doubt in me. Will we get to see where the sky meets the valley, or will this turn into a mourning party?
Oh, whatever. I trust Baby Boo the end result will be great. In a few months, judging by his usual update schedule
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Next thing you know I'll be doing crazy shit like giving Scootaloo parents too and having Trixie not secretly crushing on Twilight. It'll be anarchy!
Hehe, they may be in error but I think I'll stand by those. Without them, it just looks to my eye like words are being unwarrantedly hyphenated. But then, I also put in superfluous spaces when separating words with a slash too. I've found that one really can't satisfy every editorial eye with any but a very few standard usages of punctuation.
I can neither confirm nor deny anything at this point.
Aww, thanks hon! I hope it stands up to the confidence; this is a pretty odd piece for me. I can at least promise a quicker release for this one, since the first four chapters are basically complete, needing only some filling and polishing.
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Oh, I just remembered it! “A couple of fine, upstanding pegasi with respectable jobs and no major mental disorders.” That was you, wasn’t it? I love this joke
Em-dashes are wide enough to not look like hyphens to me. If you want to put spaces around your dashes, you should use en-dashes – like this – rather than em-dashes—those should not be spaced. If you really want to use em-dashes and spaces, at least do it consistently:
In this sentence, the first em-dash has only a space on the right, while the second is spaced on both sides. Also note that inner spaces—the one before “not” and the one after “years”—should be non-breaking.
Don’t you try and fool me. Everyone on the Internet is male.
Yes, I’m being rude for no reason whatsoever. Please don’t take offense.
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Phum phum phum... I looked at a couple of print novels, and I guess the no-spaces thing does seem to be the usage. I can't help it, though, it just doesn't look right, it jars my eye the way a misspelling does. Eh well, I'll worry about it some other hour.
Hehehe! Eeyup, that's from My Little Pony's Little Ponies. Seems to be the most popular single joke in the whole story, from the responses I've gotten. People should be nicer to poor ol' Scootaloo!
None at all.
It's a statistically sensible default assumption, I reckon.
Was that Granny Smith, who met her to take her home?
This was beautiful, and I do look forward to reading more
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I'm afraid I hadn't really parsed this part correctly the first time I replied. To avoid disappointment later, I should say right up front that this story isn't a posthumous fantasy about AJ's experiences in the afterlife, and that although there may be some additional glimpses 'beyond the veil', most of it will be following her living friends and their reactions.
However, having started to think on the subject, I have been getting some hints of ideas about the Equestrian afterlife, so there may be a followup (eventually) that goes further in that direction.
I should confess, also, that the image of the metaphysical world of the ponies as a series of groves and gardens is not my own invention; it's a concept that plays centrally in an older fanfic, one of the first such that I read -- but I can't for the life of me recall which story it was. Something built around a developing romance between Twilight and Celestia, I believe, but I just don't remember the title, and I think I read it on a site other than FiMFic, so I'm not even sure if it's on here.
(And now watch it turn out to be something immensely popular and influential, and I get to feel quite the fool when a dozen comments link me right to it.)
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Eeyup, that's her all right. Spoilered because it's meant to be a puzzle for the reader, but you get the ribbon for guessing first, I reckon.
Very glad you liked it; hope the rest of it pleases as well.
Well hey look, I get around to reading something that you put out without putting it off indefinitely... as I tend to do with everything.
Anyways, this was everything I could possibly hope for in a tight little one shot. It's snappy, emotional, well-paced, and packed with enough stopping power to shut even my mouth for a good while enough to finish it. I'm hard-pressed to say anything ill about this, so I guess I'll start with the multiple things I loved.
Your insight into what the future might hold for our woefully under-appreciated farm horse manages to pull off not only credibility, but subtlety. This especially stands out during the MAGICAL EXPEDITION INTO THE APPLEVERSE sequence, where you mention the pony AJ went ahead and married. What thrilled me was how you managed to somehow capture the entirety of the love and history she shared with him in one simple sentence. That in itself is glorious. It's the mark of a great writer when you manage to keep your sentences talking after the period. The entire flashback goes the same way, and it had me hooked despite the fact that it was pretty obvious where this whole thing is going.
Speaking of sentences, I've said this before, and I'll say it again, your language is absolutely gorgeous. Your use of metaphors, similes, and straight-up offbeat words is incredibly refreshing. It really does make reading every sentence a treat. They're amazingly well-versed... sometimes even a little too well-versed. Every now and again the meaning of the sentence becomes lost under the thick layer of literary viscosity. As someone who struggles with the same problem, it's true to say that sometimes simpler is better.
While written phenomenally, this falls short for me on a story-based merit. This fic starts off strong, very strong, peaks around the middle, and then falls relatively flat towards the end. As far as a story goes, it's a mite predictable and didn't really sling any surprises my way. The reason I continued reading it through was for the sheer enjoyment of the language and appreciation of the style. Those looking for an interesting tale, or heck, a story, might be disappointed. For me, the pinnacle of the story were bar-none the appleflashes. That's a word now, you made it, roll with it. That in itself produced the entire "story within the story" that was so damn attractive to me as a concept. Personally, I would've far more enjoyed it if the story had somehow wrapped itself up on that note, rather than attempt to ponder on the state of ex-pone existence. The entire ending bit with with ol' (young?) GS kinda glazed me over. I suppose I was hoping with something really damn strong to close this fic on, but I guess I overshot.
But all in all, the good heavily outweighs the bad, for myself at least. It's not so much a story as it is a concept piece, as there's no actual development, but for a concept piece, it's a damn-near perfect one. I certainly don't regret reading it, and seeing AJ getting some lovin' both pre and posthumously was a delight, and as always, I await more! A hearty Roseluck/5.
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Ooh, a genuine review!
I'm certainly just as pleased as punch that you liked it, even if some of the sentences are, indeed, rather overly clever. The sad part is that the actual output is the result of extensive editing from phrasings even longer, more baroque and overcomplicated...
Funny to see someone else's perspective on the scenes, since to my mind the whole thing with the 'appleflashes' seemed like the most tired of cliches -- just a somewhat appled up version of the 'life flashing before the eyes', with a certain amount of Magritte imagery thrown in. Nice to know that it doesn't necessarily seem that way to others!
It's also intriguing to hear that it almost works as a one-shot on its own, but since much of the content of your review seems based on the impression that this is the whole story, I feel a bit sheepish pointing out that it isn't... although, since the rest of it departs from Applejack's perspective, it's probably valid to say that this first chapter should have been made to stand up as something more complete in its own right.
But anyway, thanks for the feedback!
3236025
Woops, I totally missed that "incomplete" tag down there! Well, that being the case, I hope you'll manage to avoid the dreaded Background Pony dilemma that pushed me to want to beat skirts about the head. Basically, be careful not to turn a very powerful one-shot into something unnecessarily drawn out. Know you, however, I doubt that'll be a problem.
Either way, I'm interested in seeing which direction you end up taking this! I'll be keeping my eye on it.
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I hope so too. Though I think that it's less likely to fall into that particular syndrome, and more likely, ultimately, to suffer from being a series of great scenes without much of a story holding them together. I'll try to fix that, but this story is kind of a weird thing for me -- it's more or less been writing itself, and I don't really know what it's trying to get at.
In any event, I don't think it's going to end up being long enough to really get 'drawn out'. Although of course, 'shorter than Background Pony' is a pretty easy target bar.
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Mmm, losing sight of a story arc as you write it is never a good thing. If I can suggest anything at all, it'd be to get yourself some paper notes on what it is you want your story to tell, especially what the overall point and ending to it will be. If you've got your destination in mind, your writing and overall cohesion will be much better, as everything you write will be geared towards reaching/enhancing that final point. Otherwise, you can fall into the dangerous trap of meandering aimlessly through a story.
Fail to plan, plan to fail. If there's one thing I've learned from motivational posters in class, it's that! Getting folks to bounce ideas off of is always a good plan as well. Outside perspective means a lot. Ask people who know nothing about your story, and you'd be surprised by what you can figure out.
It's a very strong start, the sudden pain then the entry to the past of Appleverse is very nicely done.
I'm sure however which way you write it the story will work out.
It is risky just wandering with the story but in some ways that makes the story more believable and it lends it a natural flow that you just don't get with a well structured story.
Very sad, and very well written.
Was painful for me to read, having had to put my father and mother both to Rest.
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Oh dear, my condolences! There's always a risk, in writing a story of this sort, of trivializing the emotions involved, particularly when they're presented via pastel talking ponies, but I hope the feelings ring true even though my experience of similar situations has never been quite so close as that.
3399444 No worries, no emotions were trivialized in this chapter. as painful as it was to read, it was also a good thing for me to read
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No greater praise could an author receive. Hugs!
3399493 *hugs*