A human in Equestria learns to cope with the struggles of a new world, discovering for himself all the differences that separate him and the inhabitants of Equestria.
Chapters (1)
Anonymous_
Joined 27th Feb, 2012 ·
Offline
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Benman · 1.5k words · 159 3 · 3.2k views
- rockyrobben · 12k words · 28 2 · 862 views
- Arcainum · 23k words · 35 1 · 1.4k views
- PseudoBob Delightus · 92k words · 58 13 · 2.8k views
- D G D Davidson · 1.5k words · 121 29 · 2.7k views
- Feo Takahari · 1.5k words · 43 9 · 1.9k views
- RavensDagger · 3.3k words · 70 2 · 1.4k views
- RazgrizS57 · 1.7k words · 78 1 · 1.3k views
Join our SubscribeStar to remove these adverts!
Join our SubscribeStar to remove these adverts!
Stats
Page generated in 0.119 seconds
Total duration
1,007 users online
1,282,921 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
This is truly wonderful.
I cannot thank you enough for writing this, it really does make one think about their own life and future. No mean feat, for a HIE no less.
You should be incredibly proud of this achievement
Simply amazing!
I don't know what to say. It it a bittersweet situation to outlive your friends and loved ones. I cant help but wonder if he was actually immortal, or just incredibly long lifed. Still, bravo. A little slice of immortal life. I might have liked to see a Luna pairing, due to the whole immortal thing, but the characters didn't seem to mesh well. I really liked this story, bravo again.
Hey author:
People WILL dislike this unfairly, based on the fact that it lacks a description. Unfortunate but true.
Well-crafted, considering the incredible span of time that it covers. Somber, but not so sad that I wanted to turn away from it. Religious, but not overtly so. Though, I'm quite sure I didn't grasp the full meaning of the conversation at the end. I hope you write more.
This story was intriguing and definitely different from other 'human' stories.
However, I have to admit that I disliked the vagueness surrounding all of the characters and events. Although it conveys the idea of memories past and forgotten, it didn't hold much interest in the way of detail, coming off as too vague.
Certainly an interesting read though.
Very different, and very lovely.
Vagueness didn't bother me, but for the ending, where ambiguity reigns.
Might be intentional, might not.
Beautiful story nevertheless.
(Can't stop speaking in sentence fragments. Need help!)
Oh man
oh man oh man.
thanks for that.
I honestly used to think I had less emotional capacity than what I am currently displaying.
This is another in the long line of MLP fics to happily prove me wrong.
WHY? WHY? WHY?! Why did you have to make me cry?! I love reading sad stories but they make me cry! call me stupid or whatever but i just can't stop myself. Well written sir!
This was very touching.
It's...beautiful...A well-written story and very touching at the same time. Makes me wonder about the future..
Good work! Indeed
I've seen this reposted on the Internet a few (read: two) times, including 4chan/mlp/ where someone rewrote some parts a little and tacked on his own ending. I'm assuming this is the original, and it's nice to find it.
EDIT: I think this is the original.
Damn...
This one's a real treat, a short little gem of a story.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you for writing it.
I linked this to a few, I hope you don't mind. This deserves both more recognition and more attention.
Well, fine then. Write an HiE fic that proves me wrong about writing off the whole genre. Make my fucking day.
You magnificent bastard, you.
I enjoyed this, it is definitely one of the better HiE-stories I've read but it left me with a
.
What's the message?
Being immortal is tough? Gee, I don't know, I'm not immortal, I can not relate to that.
I'm not particularly religious either so I may have missed some quote or context concerning the Bible, but over all I'm not sure what to make of this.
... That was beautiful...
I...I can see why this is getting so much love. Its a very nice story, didn't get to me as much as i would of liked, no idea why considering i'm a sap for this stuff but this was a wonderfull work, whatever you do dont stop wrighting.
OMG
dat was beautiful....
This was really well written, and very... sad? happy? Heart-warming!
Even though its only around 2,000 words the way you wrote it made it feel very long.
I've read this before. But even reading it again, it is still a lovely story.
This... is a work of art. Even people who despise MLP would love this.
This is a lovely, lovely story!
At first I thought it was a sort of Book of Eli thing, where it was just in his possession as "central text in the Western-canon" kind of way, him preserving it like the old guy in The Day After Tomorrow.
The whole look at immortality was heartbreaking. Especially that end. That was the best of ways this story could have ended, for real.
I really genuinely wish I understood this better... Maybe because I'm not familiar with the bible? I don't think so, you could have definitely made the overall message of the story more clear. The ending was a little hard to follow. Besides that, great job. You earned a thumbs up, if not a favorite. With a little more editing this could be one of the best.
I guess I'll just mentally edit out all the parts mentioning the bible.
Pretty good story.
damn good job
A beautiful story, very well done. You should be proud of this.
I read this, and immediately loved it. Then, it started bugging me. Why was he so emotionally detached? Why did he grow more and more distant over time, instead of the opposite? Perhaps the author intended this to be a result of him feeling out-of-place as a human, or being separated from his family - but this isn't psychologically plausible, and in any case the story ought to tell us so if the author wanted us to think that. I'm afraid that, without an explanation, without a cause, the story is just emotional porn, hitting us hard in the feels but not giving a causal context, not leaving us with anything to think about.
Not sure why or how this one ended up in my to-reads, but I just ran into it and here we are.
Taken in the context of HiE on the whole, this does certainly offer something new, with the angle of time passing differently for our POV character. But I think you could have done more with that. This story began rather poignantly, but drags by the end, and I found it unfulfilling because of this. The biggest problem is that this story is written mostly as a list of what happened. It's not all tell, there were some effective parts, but by the end, I was bored with it. Also, I'm pretty sure that guy had sex with a mare, and I'm just... no.
Nevertheless, I have distinctly read worse. This just feels like a good idea that you ran out of steam while writing.
Before I pass comment, I must ask. Has the human become immortal? Or will he die eventually?
(Here via an old blog post of Aquillo's.)
This is an awfully big story packed into a small wordcount. It's got a lot of neat and touching little moments, flows well, and will definitely go on my shortlist of fics redeeming the HiE wasteland. Liked and faved.
I just have one problem, and unfortunately it's a big one: At first I read the ending wrong.
I glanced through a little too quickly, and this is what the last few paragraphs looked like once they'd passed through the brain filters:
And I was all: "SWEET MOTHER OF FAUST, THAT'S AMAZING! She's just given him the passive, oblique hoofslap that finally made him realize that the paradise of his old world's religion is Equestria modulo ponies, he's there now, he's immortal and can't go back, so he's dead and in the afterlife! And she's chiding him for not realizing it and for needlessly tormenting himself! Now he's crying because he's been pulling away, bit by bit, dreaming of someday returning to earth, when all along if he had simply let himself become part of Equestria he could have had hundreds of years of happy and fulfilling life, not perfect, but as good as it gets!
"And ... um ... wait.
"Did I read that right? Wait. OMG, WTF, barbecue. Celestia is crying?"
Now I just have no idea what's going on.
Is the "they" in Celestia's parting line referring to the humans in the book they were discussing, or the ponies in the city she's looking at? Is she sad because ponies don't have the same dreams that humans do? Is she sad because she herself doesn't have that dream and knows as an immortal that she has to live a life full of watching ponies die? And what the hell is the ending doing making a point about Celestia when the entire rest of the story is focused around the human? This needs to have some sort of moral, make some sort of point, about the guy and his actions. The fact that he's clearly been missing out on opportunities for connection throughout the story, and in fact increasingly withdrawing as time goes on, needs to build to something.
... Hang on. Was your intention to obliquely point at Celestia as the natural endpoint of the human's trajectory, as some sort of immortal living permanently apart from the mass of ponies living and dying? Because that's poignant and kinda logical with what you wrote, but also totally wrong. She's spent the whole story pushing at him to reconnect.
Seriously, please give me some sort of clue toward the ending. I simply cannot seem to squint at it from any angle that makes everything align. I really hope that this is a sign of me being stupid, as opposed to a good story's missed opportunity.
Well...
My personal interpretation of the ending was the simplest one, that these ponies, unlike humans, don't believe in an afterlife. Kinda depressing for me but there ya go. Of course, it might be interpreted differently if you try.
This is an oddly told story. I ended up upvoting it.
Was it a good story? I'm not really sure. But it was interesting to read.
The ending is nice, though I strongly suspect the actual reason for the tears is Celestia is crying because the man has entered paradise, after a fashion, and is immortal, as the Bible promises he would be, and amongst friends and good people, and yet, he cannot see it. He simply sees it as life, because that is the human thing to do. What is it that they say? Every man builds his own hell? That is the case here.
More or less, he got exactly what he might have wished for, and yet, still isn't satisfied with it.
1395597 1746074, CC 3731276
I suggest you read Titanium Dragon's longer comment on the story here. I didn't get that when I read the story, but it makes perfect sense.
I think I didn't get it because the character doesn't seem to care about the Bible--it comes up at the beginning and end, but it doesn't affect his actions in any way. The Bible is just a token for him. He doesn't even read it.
On one hand, him focusing on the craftsmanship of the letters is a great way of showing that he misses the point. On the other hand, it says he's forgotten about the Bible, which kills the irony.
Also, as a former Christian, I don't think of the Bible as being about the afterlife. If you don't count the book of Revelations, which is an acid trip and is generally ignored except by end-times nut cases and bestselling apocalyptic books, there's maybe ten sentences in the entire Bible about heaven, and they don't tell you anything about it. They don't even say that it's nice.
3732920
That certainly would make more sense than any other interpretation I've heard. Thanks.
Arrived here from Bad Horse's blog post and pretty glad I did. Never seen a HiE fic done in this way before, and uniqueness is always a plus in my book.
Also it has a style that I just adore...a very detached feel that I can't quite describe but still love. Liked and favourited good sir.
4144974
3744452
3732920
3731276
While I love Dragon's idea, I don't agree the story intends the message he pulled from it.
The idea of "heaven" is, as Luna puts it, the idea of living forever with your brethren. It's not just being surrounded by nice ponies, but by those you've loved and lost (such as the man's family, who he misses even hundreds of years later). Celestia's eyes are locked on Canterlot because, in her words, being able to see all the ponies you've ever loved or cared about is "such (a) beautiful dream".
She is crying because she cannot die. She has no hope whatsoever for something to look forward to.
5801261
What happens in the story?
Well, he lives forever... but he chooses to isolate himself, in the end, to cut himself off from love and from other people. Indeed, he makes the decision to cut himself off right before the ending.
That's a clear case of deliberate ironic juxtaposition.
He has been granted his "great hope", and yet he still isn't happy, and in fact, is deliberately doing things to make himself unhappy.
Celestia is crying because he can't see it.
The entire story undermines your idea - it directly contradicts your interpretation of it, the idea that there is no hope. Because there is hope. The story is full of it, and indeed, points out that the man is going out of his way to avoid these things - chances are all around him, and he is deliberately avoiding them. The story goes out of its way to point this out.
The story would not have deliberately given him another chance at happiness that he self-sabotaged if the point was that there was no hope. If it was supposed to be trite immortality angst, it wouldn't have done that.
But instead:
He is a stranger to his own family because of his own deliberate behavior. The story goes out of its way to point this out.
He has opportunities for love, and his brethren are there to connect with - and yet, he chooses not to do it.
If the point was stupid immortality angst as you suggest, then why on Earth would it go out of its way to point out that there were endless opportunities for him to connect with people?
The tragedy is that the dream is to have these things, but when he was actually presented with the opportunity to have these things, he simply passed on them.
You can't be surrounded by love and live forever with your brethren if you go out of your way to avoid love and not connect with your brethren. And that's precisely what the story just pointed out he did, right before we get to the ending.
It is basically a criticism of the idea that paradise would actually make people happy - if they aren't willing to reach out for happiness now, why would they do so then? You can't force people to be happy and have them still be the same people.
5801338
I don't agree. I think it's a nice idea, but the whole point of heaven is getting to see your loved ones again. There isn't anything particularly heavenly about the man's life in Equestria.
5801338
5801409
3744452
3732920
So first, apologies to tag you all in years-old comments.
Trixie pointed this to me today, and I read it all before seeing any comments. I tend to agree with her interpretation; the protagonist's immortality is unexplained, but the reason Celestia is upset is that the human idea of paradise is something she longs for, because apart from Luna - and now, the human - she is always destined to be left behind.
In light of that, I think her urging for him to connect with ponies is sort of her getting a second-degree connection; she wants him to find the happiness that she doesn't know how to get, perhaps.
But other than that, yea - she's crying because the dream of Heaven to her is a beautiful one, and the Biblical concept of Paradise - where all the ponies she has known over her long, long life can be with her again - that, to her, is a wonderful dream.
It could be she is immortal and cannot die; or, I think it's in some ways more beautiful that to her, she desperately wants to believe in that dream, because it means that each time she has to say goodbye for the last time to somepony she has loved? It isn't the final goodbye. That there is a hope that someday, she will be with them all again.
I think I like that one a bit better; it leaves it on a bittersweet but optimistic ending. It also casts her urge for him to connect in a different light, that the relationships are valuable and it's only their brevity that she regrets, but that dream gives her something more to hope in.
7927791
I still think my interpretation is correct. I dunno if you looked at it, as it was in Bad Horse's blog:
The man has gotten what the Bible promises (eternal life in paradise) and he doesn't recognize it as such, and thus is still miserable and lonely. Paradise isn't something that can be given to you, because no one else can make you do the things that make you happy.
7927861 I read that, I just don't agree with it
7927865
The story isn't about Celestia; it is about the man. The story doesn't make sense as a Celestia is sad story, because it isn't about Celestia.
7927876 I'm not saying it's about Celestia. I'm arguing that Celestia's comment is that she's having a moment of immortality angst that the protagonist can now understand, because like her and Luna he is under the same blessing/curse now.
7928346 7927876 The author doesn't even know the story got popular in August 2012. He hasn't logged in since July 12 2012.
7929835 Yea, that's one of the sad things. And why I tagged all of you, because that was the one crowd that would have reason to comment/see this