- Member Since 11th Apr, 2012
- offline last seen Yesterday
Bad Horse
Beneath the microscope, you contain galaxies.
Bad Horse
Joined 11th Apr, 2012 ·
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Was Chapter 2 a metaphor?
...and off in Canterlot, Princess Luna was doodling on a piece of paper while sitting in Night Court, writing over and over.
I like apples. I like apples. I like apples.
Why can't we let the characters be happy?
Also nice story.
Well... Talk about a punch to the gut...
~Skeeter The Lurker
I really liked this. Will there be more?
I lack the smarts to understand the dream and instead say that that dream is damn creepy.
...That dream is damn creepy.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I wish my dreams were that interesting.
static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120616003317/random-ness/images/9/9f/Darth_vader_no.gif
Poor Mac.
Yeah, I don't even think I could handle the dream metaphor here if I wasn't half asleep...
Hmm... interesting, a story of a fellow who sees the strings of life, but isn't at the top.
Too sad. I demand a sequel. With happiness
I feel like I should read this again tomorow, when I've had time to properly reflect.
3634296
The dream is deliberately vague, I think. I liked it.
For the love of pony, Bad Horse, stop torturing Big Mac! He's an illiterate, lovelorn, depressed, dissatisfied wreck in your world.
The fact that you write so well only makes it worse.
3634492
Have you met Bad Horse?
3634148
Because Bad Horse feeds on misery and suffering? Fan tears make him perpetually youthful. Or so I've heard.
Bah, you tricked me writer! I knew it was going to be sad, but this is out and out depressing.
Ga-ha-ha-ha!
That name of this story... I thought its some horror-story including Twilight being smashed into raw material fo cider, but, to my disappointment, this is sad romance story.
Lets read.
Yikes, that was some bad timing, Mac.
meh...
I think that Celestia would have some advice for Twilight about keeping hold of the things that are really important, no matter your new circumstances.
That said... I really wonder if Twilight really has the sort of mind that would really understand Mac's feelings here. She's still something of an innocent in many ways and the idea of romantic love would probably be a bit hard for her to understand.
Ouch. My feeeels.
Not as painful as normal though. Either you are losing your touch or I am getting immune.
3634492
You do realize who you are demanding happiness from?
Dreams are weird.
3634125
You sir, have made me laugh in the aftermath of a Bad Horse story.
Sir. I am genuinely impressed.
I guess not all stories have to go somewhere, but it's still unsatisfying…
Damn, Big Mac gets dreams of getting killed by apples and ironically consumed by the pony he loves, and all I get are visions of the future.
3633732
Of course Chapter 2 was a metaphor. When Applejack says,
The symbolism of the potatoes is the key to this whole story. Potatoes are vegetables which mature underground — accumulating starch based on energy from the sun yet locked within eternal darkness — which are uprooted and consumed, providing sustenance.
Contrast this with the cider at the end, in which the best parts of Big Mac are pressed out and poured for princess Twilight, providing sustenance.
This is, on the surface, a story of a farmer's unrequited love. But through the magic of complex parallelism, at its heart it is actually a story of a princess' unrequited love. The tragedy of the unattainable Twiluna.
tomorrowlands.org/images/the-point-vs-me.png
But anyway, neat little read.
3637657 or maybe they're, I dunno...potatoes?
Now I'm a philosophical guy, but I'm having trouble understanding the meaning of the dream.
I am suddenly hankering for some more TwiMac. If that was your deliberate intention, well done.
If it wasn't, well, well done anyway.
3637911>>3637657>>3637109>>3636132>>3634583>>3634439>>3634296>>3633732
I don't know how clear the dream should be. I thought that if it were clear, it would seem fake. Mac is both the slave and master of the apples, because they control so much of his life. The cider press simultaneously destroys and purifies him. He feels like his occupation is too humble for Twilight's status, but is the only way he can be of service to her. He imagines his life being squeezed out for her, and I imagine this makes Big Mac feel sad, but also joyful and honored to be of service to her. The dream suggests to him to accept this feudalistic attitude. You could consider it either courtly love, or a vassal / Lord relationship.
see 3638756
3638756
This is pretty much what I got out of the dream sequence. I can't say it was exactly what I got out because that was like yesterday, man, and the nature of human memory means that reading your explanation now causes the memory to recrystallize around that explanation.
So anyway, I think you hit the obscurity level about right on that sequence.
Holy heck that was horribly, wonderfully beautiful. So many tears....
Thank you, Bad Horse. That was very, very well done.
Poor Big Mac.
And though she'll never know it, poor Twilight. 
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
I feel I have been mislead by your tags, Bad Horse. Sad implies that there is a sad tone to the story as a whole, not necessarily the ending. The right tag would be a Tragedy tag, since it ends poorly for our Hero, one Master Macintosh Apple. I have been deceived, and demand full recompense for your lies!
3638826
He sees within he the aggregate of all that can be aspired to. All hope, all that is good and beautiful, incarnated in one pony. The dream, then, is his will towards self-destructive sublimation. The dross would fall away and only the best of him would remain and join in the perfection. He cannot love her--he thinks--but something good is in him, that bit of him that loves her, and he wishes that that bit alone would survive and ascend.
He's wrong, of course. In turning Twilight into a symbol he is both exalting and demeaning her. It reminds me of a fragment I once wrote. It's about Celestia, but it suffices for Twilight in this instance:
"Celestia is Light, says here. And Celestia is Love. And Celestia is the Sun Victorious, the Sun Ascendant, the Sun Invincible. And Kindness, and Justice, and a thousand other things. And all of them, all these sages and philosophers, every single one of them is wrong!"
"What is she?"
"A pony. Above all, a pony."
Anyway. I digress. I still think the story's awesome, of course. I'm just sad it ends with Big Mac still suffering. He's earned a happy story from you, BH. Many times over.
3637657
By Jove, I think you got it!
...I always wanted to say that.
3634296
It's more tragic than creepy, really.
3636947
Wow. That is impressive. Generally it takes at least a few hours after a Bad Horse read before I can smile again. Several days in case of one story.
3643311
Which story, if I may ask?
(I am still recovering from "Moving On", myself.)
3643530
Moving On ended happily, though. And the scene with Luna hit me right in the proverbial feels.
No, the story that traumatized me is "Twenty Minutes." I've only read it once (a rarity for me and BH stories) and I shudder at the prospect of reading it again. One of only two pieces of fiction that gave me legitimate no-joke nightmares.
3643604
The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.
It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.
He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
'I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,
'I will send them to her and die’;
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.
They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.
--W. B. Yeats
3635047 For the love of pony, Bad Horse, stop torturing Big Mac! He's an illiterate, lovelorn, depressed, dissatisfied wreck in your world
You're right. It isn't fair to keep torturing Big Mac when there are so many other ponies I haven't tortured even once. That Dotted Line fellow, for instance... hmm...
3646141 Now that's creepy.
3643311 One where he get's Twilight and doesn't get stuck feeling like he no longer has a purpose in life because he's hitched to a princess.
Oh look. Another one.
3647158
Don't even joke about something like that.
3647175
Well, I don't know: it seems Yeats' jester comes to the same conclusion Big Mac does. Which is, if you can't win love through expressions of reason or passion, perhaps you should try expressions of self: being what you are, doing what you do best, whether it's making cider or making jests.
And perhaps your passion, and its reasons, will come through in that. It's not an unhopeful conclusion.
3647640 My reading of the poem is that he died to express his love, and that finally pleased her. I might have misread it. For some reason people are much less accepting of ambiguity in stories than in poetry.
3647531 Sorry. Comment edited to be Safe For Ghost.
3647695
His death may have been a necessary part of the expression, but I don't think it's what actually pleases her. What pleases her is what he did with his life: being a jester. All the jokes and funny stories--she remembers them when he's gone, and she realizes what a wise and loving person he was.
It's just my interpretation, of course, but in its defense I will say that Yeats returns to exactly that theme in other poems:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
3647695
'Sokay. Thanks.
3647777 Remarkably similar, then. And admirably compact.
Poor Big Mac. Poor hard-working, long-suffering, masculine caryatid of the fandom.
Someday he's gonna read Atlas Shrugged and all hell will break loose.
Nasty little nightmare for Big Mac at the end, but I really really liked the variation in his yup's and nope's.
This was well done