This is an Interquel of Seven Days in Sunny June, Book I
2016 Christmas Story!
TV Tropes page!
For spring break, Applejack and her family head back to Heavener, Oklahoma and Heavener Apple Orchards, the farm her family used to own...and now owned by her Uncle Stayman and family. The Canterlot Apples are looking forward to the week of getting used to the old farm life. But for Applejack, Apple Bloom and Mac's girlfriend Sweetcream Scoops, can they deal with life out of the ordinary?
To complicate things, someone on the farm might be causing a little more trouble than they're worth....
Chapters (7)
Well crap.
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I think they'd have bigger problems if they had a well of crap there.
Things are happening now that may only be a fraction of the bigger picture...
Merry Christmas!
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AKA an outhouse
7818570 Nah, that's a reference to the fiber content of farm food; lowers the fertilizer bills...
Dear God, you're pulling some variation of Legend of Everfree.
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The guys and I were discussing that while I was writing the first chapter. We're actively trying to avoid that.
Well, that just seems bizarre. I lived for a while in rural Texas, and a lot of families there would start teaching their kids to drive starting around age 12, so they could help out with the farm. (It's perfectly legal, apparently, as long as the kids stay off public roads until they have a license.)
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Easy answer: some parents are strict as hell with girls, and more lenient with boys, though it sounds like they weren't exactly that lenient with Braeburn.
To wit: I have a friend who didn't get her driver's license until she was in her thirties, because her parents didn't let her have one during her high school years, and during college she lived in New York and didn't have a need for a car. It wasn't until she moved to rural Pennsylvania that she got one.
I'm starting to think that there will be a twist, but I'm not sure my guess is right.
Oo - kay, then.
Now we have TWO magic-users in Heavener, in addition to whatever-it-was that messed up the family's apple trees.
All I can ask is: what the HELL have you got in store for them, Shin?!
And by extension, us?!
I'm more curious about how this will affect the events of Book IV.
Is this the first time in the series we've seen magic that's (seemingly) neither Equestrian in origin nor connected to Divine Right's project?
Well now...I was right and wrong.
Ahh, so she's sensing the Equestrian magic coming off of AJ. Gonna say, it'd be pretty weird if an Element plopped down onto earth.
Now I want to see AJ pony up and fight some weird magic shit and knock Summer down a few pegs.
...Shouldn't a Christmas story take place in December?
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For those who've followed me for a while, they know my Christmas stories are when I take a week and hammer out a quick new story, with a chapter every day. It's a Christmas gift, given that I tend not to hammer out short, quick chapters often.
Looks like the relative flow of time between Earth and Equestria is even more disjointed than I thought. Makes me wonder if their timelines even run consistently in the same direction - if not, then the mirror could be used for time travel.
have we just found the way to beat divine right?
7826501 That might be a prototype mirror Starswirl created before working on the big one...
I ain't surprised, yet I'm not even mad.
... So basically Gaia, but probably a whole lot worse.
Well that went better than I expected. Though now I wonder how the events of book IV will be affected, or if AJ even told Sunset about what happened.
BEtter than I expected, but not as worst as I feared. Going to be interesting how this affects book IV.
I read this story back when it first came out and wasn't sure what to think. I decided to take a few days to mull it over, then promptly forgot about it.
Now though I finally remembered it and so I took the time to re-read it and can now give my assessment, several months after everyone else stopped caring. 
My final assessment is that I like it...but it feels incomplete, like it's a few chapters short of what the story it tells needed.
The first issue is pacing, the conflict between Applejack and Summer ramps up way to fast, when we got the scene where Applejack confronts her I remember thinking "wait, they're already at threats of physical violence, did I miss something?" Similarly when Summer becomes Titania the fight with her starts before we've really properly established why they need to fight, there's allot of important information about that whole incident we don't learn till after its been resolved. Similarly the whole thing with Crystal Heart and the final scene in the hospital feel extremely rushed.
The other issue is it feels like there are important scenes missing. For example we never learn how exactly Summer met and befriended the wolf spirit or learned about the stones, just some vague hints. Much more glaringly, outside of the part where they yell at each other and final fight, Applejack and Summer don't have any significant scenes together, and given their (rocky) relationship is one of the cores of the story that's kinda a problem. In particular it feels out of character that Applejack, one of the most levelheaded and patient of the main six, never tries to reason with or persuade Summer, either before or after her transformation, instead every scene they have together Applejack starts with ultimatums (granted she phrased her ultimatum to Titania politely, but never bothered to explain the reasons why she needed to turn back to a human so it was still just an ultimatum) and then starts lashing out (verbally in the first scene, physically in the next). I get that Summer's behavior is pushing all her buttons, but it still feels off we never see her try. And on that same note, for most the fic Applejack only ever expresses frustration and anger towards Summer, we never see her showing any affection or sympathy towards her cousin, and prior to the final bit at the hospital I was starting to question if Applejack actually did care about Summer or if she only saw her as an annoyance to be dealt with, because until that last scene there's not allot to indicate the former. Now again I grant that she has good reason to be upset with Summer, but never seeing any scenes of Applejack expressing familial affection towards her cousin kinda undermines the whole "heroine who cares about family more than anything being tragically forced to fight a beloved family member who is walking a dark path" thing the story seems to be trying to go for, and again feels out of character.
We also don't get any significant scenes between Summer and Jade, which is another important relationship, though this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the two do at least manage to convey that they care about each other.
Ultimately the Applejack vs. Summer story had great ideas, in particular I think giving a bratty teen in a rebellious phase the powers of a god is a neat way to produce a major antagonist while still keeping the story personal, but it feels incomplete, like it needed more room to grow to really achieve its potential. I wouldn't say its bad, there's stuff to like, but there are to many issues to call it good either.
The part of the story with Applejack and Jade, on the other hand is really well done, in fact it might be on of my favorite parts of the whole 7dsj story line (and this is one of my favorite fics, so that's a high bar to clear) there are some moments that really moved me, Jade is a great character with an interesting background, she and Applejack have wonderful chemistry, I loved how you managed to give us some insight into the history of Equestria, and I totally want to see more of the character in the future. So on the strength of that part of the story I can still recommend this little detour and honestly say I'm glad to have read it.
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Thanks for the feedback. Always nice to see someone give thoughtful criticism. Allow me to state a few things.
For starters, if things feel rushed, it's because they were. The whole idea came into germination just minutes after Applejack won the Christmas story contest. From that point, I was pretty much making the plot up as I went along, trying to make sure I had a written and edited chapter for each day and still was coherent. So, admittedly, it wasn't perfect.
As for the lack of chemistry between AJ and Summer, it was actually worse: you can thank Flynt for noticing that and reminding me to fix it at points. He was an invaluable help there.
And as for Jade, this isn't the last you've seen of her. Not at all.
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Cool, look forward to seeing her future appearances then.
8007544 Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday we'll see Jade again. Let's just say I may or may not have plans for her in one or more of my own stories in the future....
7977137 Agreed.
Yeah it's official...Starswirl was an ASS. And I don't mean donkey.
To be fair, it is really difficult to get an apple tree to produce the type of apple you want. Plant seeds from a fuji, you might be growing pink ladies, golden delicious, gala, or literally any other variety. Apples pretty much never produce fruit from the seed of the apple they came from. Buying the trees would probably be the better option anyway.