A long time ago, my family moved to Appleloosa, and we ain't had no luck since. We tried growing apples, but our orchards just never took right. Now, the bank's gonna repossess unless we can get some bits together real fast.
No, we ain't never been lucky, but in that ring, I don’t need luck. I’m one win away from saving our farm, and Granny says that tonight I’m fighting some fancy unicorn named Blueblood. I hear he's real fast, but there ain’t no way I’m losing with so much on the line.
This ain't gonna be pretty. In fact, I can just about guarantee it’ll be real, real ugly.
Edited by Pascoite.
Additional help from SongCoyote, Steel Resolve, Dragonas77, Skeeter the Lurker, Seether00, and RainbowBob
Cover image by viwrastupr
Chapters (6)
I haven't read the story, but that was literally the first thing to come to mind.
5194012 Well, it was going to be sort of a satire of Rocky and movies like it, but then it went in another direction.
5194034
Well, the idea of Big Mac becoming Rocky is, at least in my opinion, awesome!
From start to finish, this was quite the tale.
I thank you for letting me help with as (little) as I did.
~Skeeter The Lurker
5194051 Your input is always appreciated. The way I look at it, if I can interest people that have read a million stories, then I must be doing something right.
5194056
Haha, that is indeed very true!
~Skeeter The Lurker
Ah so its finally up. Very nice to see its finished form.
And wow that cover art. Nice job to whoever did that piece.
5194100 Yeah, I like that guy. He runs the MLPDrawingSchool over on Reddit. There are a few details that aren't correct, but it's most right. Definitely good enough to use.
Edit: He send me a corrected version! Awesome.
Just as dark and depressing as I remember. It sucks you in but there is no glory to be had in this Equestria.
5194135 Sorry, man. I don't know why this one came out like this. I'm usually a happier writer...
I have so many happy coincidences where I find a person I could have sworn I followed writes another unrelated story which I also happen to like and I then realize I have to follow that person.
5194313 I'm glad I could interest you again!
I'm not sure why, but re-reading this story here after working on it elsewhere was quite different. Still moving, still powerful... and even more strikingly (pun unintended) sad.
Thank you for the chance to help a bit with this story. I enjoyed the process, you're fun to work with, and very simply: it's good.
I'm especially glad that it gave me a chance to stretch my horizons. I tend to stay away from Dark stories... but this was more than worth the read.
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
I remember my first fight, it was a few weeks after my old man disowned me for supporting the CCCP and I was looking for some quick cash because I was super poor. I was up against some Scottish fella named John Amber, he was at least 8 inches taller than me and just about dropped me in the first round but then in the second round I got really pumped up and just started beating him. I remember just about every swing in that scrap, first he hit me in the chest and I swear he damn near sent me into cardiac arrest then I hit him straight in the eye and gave him a fair cut on his brow and he kinda stumbled back before swinging at my chin but I blocked it, then I got him a few times in the ribs and that really threw him off and he started kinda staggering. After that I went after his gut again but he blocked em and started snickering at me through his mouth guard, now I was mad and I mean MAD! I just started wailing on him and he couldn't even lift his fucking gloves then I reached back and BLAM straight across the face and he was out like a goddamn light three minutes into the second round. Good times, now I box just because I love doing it and I make fairly good money when I win.
This story would be simultaneously extremely similar and extremely different if it were told from Blueblood's perspective, which I would want to know more about.
Looks great.
Hate it when they can throw a bunch of hard hits fast, normally that method of just swarming them with punches is just a bunch of weak jabs but every once in a while one of em comes in fast and strong and it'll fuck you up man. I've gotten used to taking hard punches since I prefer to get real close and slugging the other guy but when it's just a rain of real heavy hits I get pretty tired real fast.
There isn't anything more satisfying than knowing you just thunderstruck someone in a match
5194974 It's something that I'm mulling over. I got about halfway through writing this, and it hit me that I really wanted to know why Blueblood was in the ring.
So Apple Bloom has a bad eye, Applejack is dead, and what's left of the Apples just don't have anything, so Big Mac boxes. Okay, then.
5195519 You know, just another day at the office.
Damn son
You describe this perfectly, you a boxer too?
Helluva story and true as fuck.
5196664
5196626 Thanks! I didn't box professionally, or at an elite amateur level or anything like that, but I took various martial arts for about twelve years, one of which was boxing. Well, I mean that I took several over a twelve year period of time. Not that I took any one of them for twelve years. I've also been in more sparring sessions and actual fights than I can really remember, and this story is how I remember that stuff.
You comment above about people that can throw hard, fast combinations is how I remember the first fight that I really lost. I started some shit in a punk club. At the time, I feared nothing because I was really physically fit and I'd been training for a few years. If I saw someone that pissed me off, I went after them. It was the dumbest time of my life, but at the time, I felt justified. I thought I was helping to give these assholes what they deserved. Anyway, I was in a mosh pit, and I forearmed this guy in the back of the head as hard as I could. He fell, but got right back up and went after me. I threw a bunch of punches at him, but I realized after about ten or so that he'd blocked pretty much everything.
Then he opened up on me, and he pretty much whupped my ass. He could punch really, really hard and much faster than me. I kept thinking he'd get tired, but he just kept at it. At some point, security ran in to break it up. I got kicked out, and I was really glad. I drove home thinking about badly I'd done, and it was my fault.
At the time, I used that as a reason to train harder, and it worked for a while. I did get better, but I eventually got a reputation for causing too much trouble and it all went downhill from there. Now, I'm happy I can defend myself if some shit happens, but I'm ashamed of that time in my life. I beat up a lot of people with no real good reason, and I was beaten up a lot in return later on down the road.
5196758 I got in trouble at a bar once because some asshat tried to steal my drink, I took it away from him and told him to go get his own and he started pushing me around and punching at me so I tried to calm him down and the fucker pulled out a knife. Quick right cross to the gut and he threw up on me and I got thrown out of the bar but what happened to him? Not a fucking thing!!! Pretty common for me really, people around here don't like me because I'm just a "fucking retarded commie sumbitch" as they elegantly put it. When I moved to Colorado I really didn't expect everyone to be stupid over patriotic hillbillies but I guess every state has it's bad neighborhoods.
5195057 Thanks for reading this!
5197266
No problems!
*Looks at you* *nods once*
5197905 *touches temple twice with two fingers, then points them at you while returning the nod*
Interesting, though I'm quite more interested in the backstory behind all this now.
In the end it seems no on really wins in this. Scary and sad for all involved.
Yup, as good as this was, I'm interested in the backstory and whatever it was Blueblood was fighting for just as much. Missing Princess, no Ponyville (or at the very least a significantly different one), no Celestia to train Twilight, etc. No reason to believe that Dash didn't do her Sonic Rainboom, but we sure know AJ wasn't in Manehatten to see it, and who knows about the others.
5198920
5206401 I'm probably going to write a sequel to this from Blueblood's perspective, and that will include a whole bunch of stuff from the royal court. I haven't fully decided, since this story wasn't too popular, but I'm personally pretty interested in what's going on, so there is a very good likelihood that I'll write it.
5200099 Yeah, this Equestria's not a very happy place. Not too many nice endings here.
5206623
Huzzah!
I cried. This one is definitely a favorite. Applejack and her family are by far my favorite when written well, and this story hit home. Thanks for this. I need to go see what else you've written now!
5230606 You're very welcome. It's nice to hear that this story worked for you. It didn't attract a whole lot of attention, but I'm glad that those that did find it seemed to have enjoyed it.
I enjoyed this story. You do a nice job building a dystopian alternate Equestria (the slice of life tag only enhances the despair). Although the story is much more violent than the typical MLP fic, the realism with which you describe the violence makes sure it is nether celebrated nor gratuitous. Despite the dark atmosphere, the characters and their values from the show remain familiar. I like how Blueblood isn't really portrayed as a villain; rather, I somewhat get the sense that the crowd -- and the broader social forces that they represent -- are the real antagonists of the story, forcing Big Mac, Blueblood, and others like them into lives of violence.
5238344 To me, the real villain in this story is just life in Equestria. The crowd is a symptom of a hard life. This is a place that doesn't know the magic of friendship.
I'm glad that Blueblood didn't seem like a villain. It's something that I really wanted to achieve. When I was writing this, I also had to think of it from Blueblood's perspective in order to know what he'd do. In a way, that story is much more interesting than this one, and I'm still mulling over whether to write it or not. Blueblood has had an interesting journey to reach the point where he's at, and I left in the paragraph about the palace dysfunction to tie into it if I decide to write that story.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Haven't read it yet, but the description reminded me of Jack London's "A Piece Of Steak". It's on my read list.
5374725 I haven't read A Piece of Steak but reading the description shows me that there are some similarities.
What a lovely, bitter ending. Well done, sir.
5375758 Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it, depressing as it was.
Hell of a story, this. There is no joy here. Just a quality story.
5385050 Unfortunately, this Equestria is not a very happy place, but I'm glad that you got some enjoyment out of it.
Fantastic. My god you've come a long way. I mean, I can't know how much is the result of your editors of course, but the quality of the sentence structures in this is a light-year ahead of all that pissing about with Awaken Scootaloo. I picked out barely more than a handful of sentences that I would have smoothed out – less that could be written of as mere style clash.
Add to that the fantastic way the pacing and the emotional content sync up perfectly and this was a real pleasure to read. We had our conversation about where I didn't think Tyrant justified the spotlight it got, but this blows all of those concerns away and really deserves a spotlight of it's own, in my opinion.
I like that the story is almost trivially simple at it's core. It highlights just how much of the meat of the story revolves around drawing the reader into that simple struggle by making it completely understandable and yet impossible to predict. Not so much edge-of-chair suspense as emotional commitment. I also liked how it played it's AU-style worldbuilding so utterly cool as to never speak of it outside of Mac's immediate train of thought. Everything had its place and slotted in without fanfare.
Quality work. Really impressed with you, Juggy.
5464479 I'm truly pleased that you enjoyed this because I thought a lot about you while I was writing it. I re-read the book that you sent me, and I tried to incorporate the lessons found there. Specifically, I tried altering the flow of the sentences to the emotional "speed" of the story at whatever point it was at. Longer, more thoughtful sentences for slower points, and shorter, choppier sentences for action. Muddled sentences for times when Mac was in trouble, etc.
As for how much of this is me, I'd say something like 90%. Pascoite edited this, and he helped me tighten up quite a few spots, but not much of the story or structure changed. It was more about specific sentences. He didn't connect with this story very much, so he didn't have a lot to say about it. Not to make it seem like he didn't do any work. He spent days commenting on this, but it was very specific things, like getting rid of the sound effects I'd written in or dialing back Big Mac's accent a little bit. One thing he did point out was the Apple family's backstory. It was all lumped in at a single spot after Blueblood had been knocked down for the first time. He thought it felt pretty unnatural for the focus to move away for that long, and I agreed when I thought about it. So I took that information and spread it out over three different spots. I think it was a good call on his part.
Chris wasn't so hot on the AU here, but I like how it plays out. I don't really think most of the details of the world are important for the story. Just what impacts Big Mac, and a tiny bit more for flavor. That was my take on it, anyway. I'm possibly going to write a sequel from Blueblood's perspective that will shine some light on what is really going on in this world, but we will see. I have limited time.
All in all, I'm proud of this story. It's one of my favorite things that I've written. I knew going in that it wouldn't really pull in a wide audience, though it would have been nice to have been wrong on that front. It didn't make a very big splash, but I think quite a few people that have given it a shot have found it to be worth their time.
This is fantastically written! Well done!
5540818 Thanks! I'm happy that people are still running into it.