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Applejack expected a lot, when she got an invitation from Cherilee to talk about Applebloom.
But not this.
A little One-Shot, I had to get out of my head.
Edit February 12th, 2014: Major props to Frission, for proofreading the story and making it more readable. You rock!
I don't plan to add something as of now, but maybe I will in the future.
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I really liked the story. It was really cute at the end.
Thumbs up for making a Carl Sagan reference in the title.
This was really awesome, I loved it!
The end was so cute too
Good idea, but... It's hard to describe but I feel it could have been pulled off a little better.
One thing is that prodigy's usually excel at a few categories, or have a unique way of viewing the world. I just feel that it is a missed opportunity to not try to put something related to that in.
It feels a little odd that Applebloom, an earth pony, outclassed Twilight in an article that was most likely to do with unicorn magic. I know this is nit picking and it could have been about the universe but... it just didn't sit right as well as some brilliant new way to view magic would have. Solving a problem that thousands of others have tried seems a little ridiculous.
But I digress, this was a one off that I have no other major problems with. Hope this feedback helps.
Not bad, but you need to be careful with punctuation.
... and she still doesn't have her cutie mark? Damn, her talent must really be something amazing!
3927462
Thanks for your in depth feedback. It really helped me.
Maybe I add something in the future to fleshen it out more.
3929006
Man I love your profile picture.
3929094
I'm helpful!!!
Honest feedback time: it feels very rushed.
There's a decent buildup to the reveal that Applebloom has been sandbagging her tests. Fine. Then things just happen: reveal, she's solved a major field of unicorn study and eclipsed the canon genius, she's planned ahead and clearly articulated her reasons for sandbagging, she's given proof ahead of time to back her story up, all the adults do the rational thing as soon as it's presented to them... there's no conflict after the buildup. Aside from solving the Starswirl Theorum (couldn't she have created her own theorum of Earth Pony Magic, since the unicorns already have one and she isn't a unicorn in the first place) she's a level above believable in terms of intelligence anyway. Next, the adult ponies just agree to Applebloom's wishes as soon as she says what they are - this very rarely happens and was what finally broke immersion for me. Why do they agree so quickly? At least Twilight should need to be convinced (or should convince) because of Applebloom's expressed desire of friendship.
I do like the premise, it just feels about a thousand words short.
3929957
And again a very helpful feedback. I can see your points and why you think it should have been done better. Pretty much the places I would do touch-ups.
But for now I want to focus on my main story.
3929957
Actually, it's not all that unbelievable. Ponies thus far have proven to be easily swayed, not to mention Twilight and her friends are pretty much paragons of kindness, loyalty, honesty, et-cetera. If it's so important to Apple Bloom to not have her childhood ruined by the fact that she's a genius, well, I don't see why they wouldn't almost instantly acquiesce to her desires. Besides, if they honestly tried to force her to exploit her genius, she could just tell 'em to go screw themselves. I know I would.
Interesting story, but you really, really badly misuse commas. A lot.
You might consider looking for a proofreader to help with that. All over the place I find commas where there should be none, and no commas where there should be one. It just broke my immersion too much to continue after a while. 
3929509
3932774
Could you give me examples? Maybe, one for each?
It would help me alot
This is brilliant. I'd love to see more from this Apple Genius universe; it's an interesting premise as a one-shot, and I think it'd be an interesing premise for a longer story as well.
3933947
Sure:
The two commas you have there shouldn't be there; there should, on the other hoof, be a comment after "over the paper".
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
3933969
Thank you.
That article was very funny.
3930779 If ponies acted rationally all the time, more than half of all episodes would be over in five minutes.
3930233 I'm glad it was helpful, and I hope to see more of your work soon!
Interesting. Very interesting.
i kinda want to see a sequel made where despite their efforts, her genius get's out to the public. i'd love to see how they all handled it.
3933947
Remove the comma.
Remove comma. No end of sentence punctuation.
Move the comma from after 'here' to after 'trouble'
Move comma from after 'stopped' to after 'table', and remove the 'and'.
Move comma forward one word.
And there's more. So much more.
If you've got this up on gdocs, shoot me a PM. I'd gladly go red-marker the hell out of it for ya should you so wish.
3933969
Very cute story
Not bad. But you keep missing the period at the end of quote sentences.
Going to have to mirror some negative comments in here. There are many grammatical and punctuation flaws in the story, and it feels quite rushed. The premise has potential; Applebloom feeling pressured not to go into science or academics because of her situation, or worrying that she will be treated differently if she excels academically, are ideas that make for a compelling story.
However, this conflict in her is set aside entirely. It's mentioned, and glossed over; a more interesting story might center on how this conflict affected her emotionally. Alternatively, investigating the reactions of the adults involved to her behavior in more depth might be appropriate.
Either way, the depiction of intelligence is not realistic. It's not that someone that age 'can't be that smart'. It's that intelligence is not some magical property, possessed by some and not by others; what we frequently call intelligence is a skill (actually, a set of skills) that one develops over time, with effort. Psychology is moving further and further against the idea that people are simply 'gifted' in modern times; it's more about what you care about and what you don't. One is 'gifted' with the drive to become good at academics.
Despite my criticism, props to the author for giving a unique premise a whirl. Here's hoping we see more out of this person in the near future.
I think the others comments said this, albeit not in the same words, but I'mma say it anyways. I can't help but feel like this story is underdeveloped. Everything just sort of happens without any buildup, and the ending is easy to see right from the start. I think it'd help if you spent some more time on Applebloom's point of view. I mean, she's a child genius, but where did she learn all that she did? Did she sneak books out of the library or something? Like others have said, the premise is good, it just needs some more work and development.
The proofreadening has completed!
I love Carl Sagan.
You get a thumbs up for that.
3936562 3927278
This is a great idea. I've read stories about Big Mac being a complete and total closet math wiz
, AppleJack being more worthy of a lab coat then Twilight ever will 
, even Granny Smith being not only wise but incredibly "book-learned" as she called herself, but never of Applebloom. Now my arsenal of Apple geniuses is complete
.
Welp, this was awesome. I (and probably a bunch of others) actually had the idea to write Apple Bloom as a math genius for a future story, but now I see somebody beat me to it. Oh well.
This was nicely written, everybody was in character, and the premise was handled really well. The detail with Apple Bloom's tests all being the same score was especially awesome.
But...and I know I'm going to get a crudton on thumbs down for this... I feel like this kind of a concept, particularly with Apple Bloom, could have been made into a REALLY good full length story. I know you wanted to just make it a oneshot, and that works totally fine for what you have here, but... consider it, maybe?
I feel like there's a lot of potential conflict that could come about as a result of this sort of thing happening. But again, this story is great just the way it is. Don't change it if you don't want to.
With all due respect,
~Arwhale
3935521
Firstly, intelligence might be a magical property in MLP. It is certainly influenced by genetics in the real world (although except in outlier cases, effort and upbringing make a far greater impact).
For the sake of this fic, lets assume that Apple Bloom has all the magic and/or genetics required to be a super-genius.
For anyone then curious as to how she then learned everything required to be as smart as shown in this fic without getting her books from the library (and cluing in Twilight), the title tells you what you need to know. She reinvented the wheel so to speak, by discovering a lot of what she needed independently of Equestrian prior knowledge.
The only question to then ask is; why doesn't she have her cutie mark?
3938185
Clearly, she's too omnicompetent for a single cutie mark to encompass her brilliance.
Any cutie mark sufficiently abstract and all-encompassing to represent her amazingness cannot actually be depicted in a 2D image on a pony butt.
The price of greatness. Also - HAH, Twilight's not the most bullshit overpowered pony in Ponyville anymore!
(I wonder if Applebloom has a secret lab. She should have a secret lab. For cutie-mark-discovering experiments too complex and dangerous to performed in the field with her friends.)
I had to read this for the title alone.
Edit: Scrolled down the comments, looks like you've already linked Glorious Dawn. Woop-haaw. Woop... haaw! (double
and a 
)
Ehh.
I'm going to be honest. I didn't really enjoy this. Your writing was mostly fine aside from some minor errors, it was just the concept that got me.
Apple Bloom as secret undiscovered genius just...doesn't resonate. I dunno. Maybe I've seen too many of this style of fic done badly before, and this is just a knee jerk reaction, but I didn't really enjoy it.
The whole thing feels rushed, too. And really underdeveloped. And while Twilight and Applejack do seem to be written very well, staying in character, it's Apple Bloom who feels way off here, and I get that some of that is due to the concept of her being a secret genius. But her just suddenly have solved this mystical theory, which if I'm reading Twilight's reactions right, is the pony equivalent of solving the Schrödinger wave equation in 4 dimensions, and it all seems to happen way too quickly after that.
It almost feels like you've made Apple Bloom too smart-she doesn't read like the character we know from the canon, and her language is way too advanced for her to be believable. And, like some people in the comments have mentioned, real-life geniuses tend to only truly be exceptional in one or two fields, and can, in fact, be utterly terrible in everything not related to that.
But again, I dunno.
3939319
There's a wealth of examples of real-life individuals who excelled in a multitude of fields (Polymaths). In modern times, most of the groundbreaking research requires cross-discipline knowledge regardless.
Still basically agree with the thrust of your comment.
3939405 Yeah. I'm not denying that people like that have, do and will exist, but they do tend to be rare, and the 'conventional' genius, who excels in one or two fields of study is more common.
And most groundbreaking research these days is done by teams of people, anyway. (the general rule is that for every person's name on a paper, there's at least five other people who helped out :D)
You should so a one-shot sequel of this, only x amount of years later. To have her stand before the scientific community, them looking down on her with their self appointed superiority, and have their egos crushed to a fine paste when she reveals her genius.
Goddam I hate brilliance. It makes me feel inadequate.
3939319 I think you are very much right on everyone being in character but Applebloom being made overly smart, she just seemed like she was a bit too out of left field and someone that smart would have shown it somehow, minus Applebloom though this was a good concept and read for me
(In regards to the title)
Is that why I suck at baking so much?
Daaww!
I... don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this; I am happily surprised!
I certainly hope this doesn't mean her cutie mark will be a picture of Albert Einstein, Issac Newton and Steven Hawking
And one week later after all this trouble to not be revealed, she ends up with a calculus formula as a cutie mark, thus outing her.
I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't been added to "Cheerilee is Best Pony".
I'm gonna have to add it to a bunch more groups so more people can see this.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe...
Damn it, I knew I was missing a step. That explains why it kept coming out as rhubarb.
3927462 Are you saying that an Earth Pony would probably not be as capable of solving such a problem such as magic?
And besides, I doubt this story was being all that serious anyhow.
Completely consistent with Applebloom being a time looper, and the only one active in this iteration :-)
This is actually pretty dang good for a short story such as this. Really hope to see more of this AB in the future!
This is cute, and I like Apple Bloom's desire to keep things like they are.
Why didn't Twilight just help Applebloom publish the paper anonymously?