Hi. My name is Tale Spinner, and I like to read about adorable ponies doing adorable things.
Applejack has loved Rainbow Dash for years, but she never thought Dash loved her back. About to give up, she gets some friendly advice from Granny Smith and decides to tell Rainbow how she feels, for better or worse.
First ponyfic, written at four in the morning with no sleep. Appreciate constructive comments, flames make me cry.
Cover art pending.
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This reminds me of the fanfiction "Appledashery" with how Rainbow is always hinting about "those 6 words." Is it by any chance related? If not, have you read the fic? You should - it's incredible.
4604062 No, in fact I've never heard of it before your comment. I'll go check it out, though.
Not a bad story but this is pretty much a by the book "gay fear and confessing" fanfic. I hope that you keep writing, but try to tread new ground.
By the way do these flames make you cry?
(Sorry, I'm horrible person)
4605083 Yes, that was indeed the point of the story. I'm gonna tread into new ground in the future, but this was my first ponyfic, and I'm still not sure what I can do in terms of writing the characters. A simple tried and true approach is what I was going for, but they'll definitely be more original in the future.
4604945 I must warn you, it's incredibly long and still ongoing. At least the author updates daily...
Holy fuck I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would.
Me when I read this:
SQUEEEEE!!!!! *bounces around* OH YUS!!!!!!!
4656905
Glad you liked the line!
4656905
Thanks for giving the story a chance! I appreciate it a lot. Also, thanks for the follow, it's nice to know I've got a new fan.
You have great command of sentence structure and a good understanding of the characters. I especially liked Granny Smith's sagacity. It played well into her relationship with her granddaughter and hinted at how long AJ has been dealing with her feelings.
--<<Spoilers>>---
I agree with Zeyon. This story seems very safe, and I was expecting to get a deeper look into AJ's head. Since the conflict was almost entirely internal - Granny Smith barely disapproves and RD kisses her immediately - I think the fear and doubt could be drawn out a little more in the second act.
One formatting note: AJ's thoughts don't need quotation marks around them. Italicizing them is fine. For a while, I thought she was doing a Smeagol/Gollum thing.
This was an enjoyable read. I hope you keep writing more stories, and based on how long you've been a member of the site, you're off to a great start.
I'd love to read something that's a little longer with more of an eye toward literary devices, and I think you'd do a great job with it. 
4665064
Thanks for the review; it means a lot to me! I'd love to reiterate, however, that the whole "no real conflict and easy resolution" was, in fact, the point of the story. This wasn't written to be a dramatic fic. It was written at four in the morning with no sleep, and was simply intended to be a short, sweet read. Believe me, if I had intended for you to feel feels, you would have felt them.
But I'll take your advice going forward. I'm exceptionally emboldened by your praise of my story. It makes my day when people like reading my stuff!
hmm a lovely and "by the book" story (wish i could write something as simple as this for my TwiShy stories
oh well i'll keep practicing
)
from a rating of 10 i'll give this a 9/10. Good story but not very unique. Still very well done.
~Tobben
Thoroughly enjoyed.
I died at the end. Lovely story.
4766965 Aw, man. I hope you didn't actually die. It's hard finding new fans these days :P
Really glad you liked the story! Do you think I should do a Twilight/Celestia fluff-fic in the same universe?
4768407 I dunno. Not a huge fan of that ship, or really any princess ones.
4768954 Aww, oh, well. Thanks for your input, though!
4769731 glad I could supply and I look forward to more AppleDash from you.
that ending was so fun!!!
The title made me think about another story, Appledashery....
Rainbow Dash always says "those six words" before she sleeps...
4922765 Yeah, I know. I wrote this before I ever even heard of Appledashery, however, so believe me when I say I didn't try to rip it off. Someone on this story told me about it, and then I was just like "Aw FUCK." But I'm not gonna re-write it or anything.
I hope you liked it, at least. I enjoyed writing it. It was my first pony story, after all.
4921642 I'm glad you enjoyed the story! It always makes my day when I can help someone smile with my work.
Woah, woah, woah. Wait.
You're telling me that this is your first ponyfic EVER???
My Celestia, you have talent!
You, my friend, have just earned yourself a follower.
That ending.
I really liked this story and it would be awesome to see more like this.
Keep writing, you're awesome!
5149061
Aww, thanks for the praise. It means a lot to me.
And yeah, this was my first story for the fandom. Though I like to think I've gotten a little bit better since I wrote this.
If you ever read clop, feel free to check out "The Apple of Dashie's Eye", my AppleDash clopfic that I'm working on right now. Otherwise, I'm working on a non-clop oneshot that may or may not be a sequel to this story here.
Very well written. I don't read shipfics often, nor do I see an AppleDash ship ever working out. So this was a neat little experience for myself.
The ending was HILARIOUS!
Thank you for submitting this story to my group.
I'll go ahead and open this by stating that I don't ship AppleDash. Read into that as you will. I have a more general philosophy of "ship all the ponies" though it seems to me that some, despite being popular, just either bore me, or are done especially badly. They'll focus on tones and themes that don't interest me all that much. So, for me, reading this story is more an observation of the characterization of the two, and evaluating the interaction between them.
Another thing that should be explained for context of my opinions, is that Applejack isn't high on my list of favorite ponies. Her design doesn't especially appeal to me, and it is mostly the sorts of themes and tones she brings to a story that fail to catch my interest as described above. This is not to say I don't understand her. I just don't find her super interesting.
On to the review proper.
I like the title.
I have a great deal of antipathy towards Ernest Hemmingway; like many my age and other ages, I was forced to read his most famous story, A Farewell to Arms. Sitting through it and being forced to write reports on the thing were a special form of literary torture for me. However, I do really like another somewhat less famous (though still popular) story he wrote, that goes as follows, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Not only is that single sentence incredibly evocative of the imagination on it's own right, it serves as inspiration to me to try to tell as much of a story as I can with as few words. Indeed, before reading this story last night, a group of friends and I in a Skype chat spent about an hour tossing back and forth various ideas for pony six word stories.
My own offerings:
"Fluttershy cowered while Pinkie Pie approached."
The sequel, "Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Kaboom!"
then it became a trilogy, "Dragons aren't completely fireproof I discovered."
But none of those are this story. They merely serve to illustrate that, despite my misgivings about a cast that has let me down every time in the past, Those Six Words and I started off on the right foot.
Again, setting aside cast, this is a basic love story that we've all seen a million times before. Person A falls in love with Person B, and worries that Person B will love them back. We explore the reasons for the worry, and all the reasons the relationship is doomed, overcome those worries, confess, and find that Person B does indeed love us back, and had their own set of worries too. It's a basic framework that is simple to build off of and tailor to your own ideas. It's not original or creative, but it is a stable standby.
In the second chapter, I enjoyed the fairly creative and evocative "buffalo chips" expletive.
Moving on to the technical side of the story.
...
I'll admit right up front that grammar is not a set of laws that you must abide by or else face prison or hellfire. They do change over time to adapt to how language is used instead of the other way around. The best advice is usually to learn the rules and understand them first, then "lightly" experiment with breaking the rules when you have very specific reasons to do so. Like the more exciting experiments you can perform, these rulesbreaking forays carry risk of blowing up on you. There is also the concept of speaking "colloquially." Some characters are very informal, and would themselves break grammar rules with their spoken speech or quoted text. Applejack and Rainbow Dash do come to mind as good examples of characters that would do so. It can actually be tricky to write their speech correctly because of this.
Let me take this opportunity to invite you to join this group.
While I am simply not a big fan of Applejack in the cartoon, I find most fanfics depicting her to be plain awful, because poor writers try to express her accent by mispelling words. Applejack does not once in the entire show say, "Ah" as a replacement to the word "I." She says "I" with an accent, but you would still write it correctly. We all understand AJ has an accent. We know how it sounds when she says the word. There is no need to garble things to try to reinforce this.
Now, obviously, a whole lot of authors do this crap. A lot of readers eat it up. If you're this sort of person, then this portion of the review isn't all that useful to you. If you're sane though, this story is riddled with awful spelling errors because of this all too common bullshit.
I noticed several places where "sugar" was used when "Sugarcube" was probably intended, but honestly I can't tell which parts were wrong and which parts were attempting to represent AJ's accent. Other examples, like "mahself" just plain hurt my brain. Even if we accept this terrible practice, this story seems like an especially poorly done example of ah-tism.
There may be other errors in the story. I didn't really catch any, but then with me constantly having to pause and translate the text, my eyes kind of glazed over such things pretty early on.
This story bears the [Sad] tag. There isn't anything sad in this story. Tags are not meant to be used to try to tell you how the characters in the story feel, or how you the reader should feel witnessing the characters being mopey. [Sad] is descriptive of the overall tone of the story. A comedy is light-hearted and funny. Writing a comedy is an attempt to make the audience laugh and smile. [Sad] is for telling about bad things happening. Writing a sad story is trying to make the audience tear up a bit, cry, or at least frown and feel like reflecting on their own hardships.
AJ is, for no apparent reason, sort of depressive and sad. But nothing about that makes the reader feel sad for her situation. If anything, it's like those emo kids at school some years ago. No real reason to be sad, but try to play like they are.
On to the meat of the review. The non-technical, opinion-ey bad stuff.
Lets start this with Applejack. As I stated in the beginning, I do understand this character. I was also looking to at least see a solid characterization piece. We're presented with a series of self-esteem issues, homosexuality concerns, and worries about ruining friendship. These are the main three worries AJ seems to have, so lets address each of them.
This will ruin our friendship. While not an entirely invalid concern to have, this seems to be in every romance story involving the M6. This seems to get brought up every single time practically, and it never ends up true. The couple not only does not lose their friendship, none of their other friends mind one bit, and everything is simply better as a result of getting together. This story is no exception.
Homophobia is a thing here in the real world. There does not seem to be any reason to believe it exists in Equestria. Now, you can depict it in your stories if you want to, and it does come up pretty often, but it would be equally valid to omit this concern and still have a good story. But if you are going to include it, then it should be used in some meaningful way. If you want to showcase the culture of Ponyville or Equestria, or earth pony farmers and how they're stereotypically bigots, then do so. Nothing of that sort was done in this story, indeed AJ worried that Granny Smith was a bigot when we've seen nothing to indicate this in the show. That she ended up being a "light bigot" in this story was jarring, and the fact that she supressed her own dislike of homosexuality for being "unnatural" in order to not ruin her few remaining years with her grandaughter, while sort of sweet I guess, is plain odd. If anything, the theme of the Apple Family in the show is that they do argue a bit, as shown in Pinkie Apple Pie, they are very close and stick together despite disagreements. It seems to me that Granny Smith and AJ would both understand each other on that regard, and Granny Smith shunning AJ for being a lesbian would be a shock. So something that shouldn't even be a concern was, but unsurprisingly it didn't come to be an actual conflict.
Then we get to the really big one. AJ doubting her own self-worth. According to this story, AJ actually things she is not good enough for Rainbow Dash. Now, this does somewhat bring up the prince and the pauper trope. Except that Rainbow Dash is not royalty or any other sort of high-up status. Applejack, by contrast, is a pillar of the community, part of the family that founded Ponyville, supplies the major food of the area, and is all and all much higher status than Rainbow Dash by any sensible assessment of the situation. Time and time again, AJ doesn't ever worry that she herself is unliked or a bother (that would be Fluttershy, and to some degree Twilight Sparkle). Instead, she knows others look up to her and rely on her, revels in that, and tries harder to live up to higher and higher expectations of her. She may worry she isn't quite strong enough to meet these expectations, but she never has self-esteem problems.
Rather than being "AJ problems" that were loaded into the framework to act as worries, instead the framework was loaded with very generic problems, that really don't apply to everyone. They are a very poor fit to AJ, and nothing was done to sell them.
So rather than being a story about Applejack being in love with Rainbow Dash, we get a story about someone else. There are words in the story that try to tell us that this is Applejack, but it's like some depressive teenager was wearing an AJ suit.
Unsurprisingly, Granny Smith, the second character we see in the story, doesn't sound at all like Granny Smith. She's kindly, but none of her quirks or personality is shown in the story at all. She makes extensive use of the pet name, "sweetie" for AJ, which just comes across as shallow and generic. Just like AJ in this story.
Then we get to Rainbow Dash. Who pretty much blushes a lot, kisses AJ, and in the second chapter says I love you a lot. I think you get the point already.
Characterization is basically null in this story.
So... romance? Romance. Lets do this.
Why does AJ love Rainbow Dash?
...
I dunno. Applejack certainly says she does a lot. The closest we come to even remotely understanding why, is:
Seriously? So, how about while talking to Granny Smith? Seems like an opportune time for Granny Smith to ask what she see's in Rainbow Dash. Maybe to help convince her that accepting her granddaughter is an unnatural fillyfooler is a good choice. If she's devoted and serious to this other mare, she should be able to convince
Granny Smithus of the fact.Eeenope.
So, how about when the two are together, and happily horsekissing and so on? Would be a good time for us to find out what Rainbow Dash sees in Applejack too. Nothing. Just more, "I love you, I love only you, and I love you more than anything else. Oh, and I'm really happy we love each other and are together."
So, if you're looking into some kind of insight as to why AppleDash is a good romance, you won't find it here.
mlpforums.com/uploads/monthly_04_2014/blogentry-23942-0-61064500-1398727346.png
So, in summary, this is a "story" in which "Applejack" overcomes her fears with "Granny Smith's" help, confesses her love to "Rainbow Dash" and the two get together, kiss, and say I "love you" a lot. It's like someone write a story in only six words, and those words are "Rainbow, I’m in love with you.” Then that person decided to try to write out all the rest of the story evoked by those six words, but didn't actually add any substance.
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." was speculated to be about a parent who's child died before being to old to wear even baby shoes. It is a tragic story, one that is about loss, and the moving on. She sells the shoes not because she is heartless, but because she wants them to be of use to someone. Expanding on that story would result in something still interesting to read. Exploring the character of this mother, her loss, and her choice to move on and live would be an engaging story.
That didn't happen here. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." is a small selection of words packed with meaning. Those Six Words is a six-word story told in three thousand.
5746990 Thanks. I appreciate your taking the time to read my story. I'm sorry you didn't find it to your liking, and... Well, I hope you can find at least some good stories to read tonight. I'd hate for you to not have a good night on account of me.
You're right, on all accounts. It's a boring story. I didn't put any effort into the plot or the story or the characters, and that's the worst sin I could've made as a storyteller. I make no excuses; it's a bad story.
But I'm not gonna delete it. Sure, having all the flaws pointed out may suck, but there are still people out there who enjoy this. And since re-writing it would, in essence, require a removal of everything that's in this story, it would no longer be the story people favourited. So I'm just going to leave it as-is.
But I'll take your advice going forward. Stories that'll come after this are gonna have more emphasis on characters and their relationships. That's a pinkie promise.
Once again, sorry you didn't like the story.
Wait, what!?
CELESTIA AND TWILIGHT!?!
WHAAT!?!?!