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Applejack wanders a dying land.


Appleack also celebrates a string of good years thanks to mechanization and expansion as Ponyville grows.


They dream of each other.

Updates twice a week.


Death of Mother Nature Suite--Kansas

Chapters (13)
Comments ( 60 )

She'd been led astray innocently even more times. But maps? Maps didn't lie. They were just wrong. The lack of intentionality was comforting.

Well said :)

 A mare can get addicted to the feeling of creaking, wandering with little water and the sun high over head. A mare could get to enjoy the mindless stumbling into death, thanatopic and vague like the heights of devil-grass high or the pits of whiskey nights. It was the kind of joy a foal discovered pulling at a scab, a destructive, miserable sort of joy, a delight in the varied simulcra of vileness.

A great fear of mine is becoming content with things... but i can see it happening. Today fades to tomorrow which fades to the rest of your life in a quiet contentment. I dont quite know if it is the enemy or the goal- contentment.

You have my attention, i was hoping somebody would explore the concepts and ideas of that last alternate future and i am excited to see where this leads.

What's up with the YouTube link in the synopsis?

If you'd stop being so good, I could put your fics down and go do something other than immediately read them when they update.

Clearly this is intentional sabotage.

Stark. Unnerving. Punchy. I like what you have here so far up to this point. Your first chapters have the perfect balance of introspective description that is usually the product of either good intuition or long practice. I will be watching this story eagerly.

I call one typographical error to your attention from the preceding chapter, as it is a bit jarring to the eye: "Unnatrual, sure, but not uncommon."

-Foxmane

I'm glad she's happy.
I'm glad that the prospect of succeeding her way out of her endeavors doesn't make her feel a little nervous and kind of hollow.
That'd be a real shame.

Before I read this, what is the Dark tag for ?
And how bad does it get ?

Maps were another thing that Applejack felt she could write sermons on.

A Jeremiad as well, given the desolate, sombre tone?

Interesting set up here, certainly looking forward to reading more!

This chapter reminds me of The Road by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis:

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I'm glad that the prospect of succeeding her way out of her endeavors doesn't make her feel a little nervous and kind of hollow.

Given the nature of the previous chapter, I am thinking there is a big "but" coming up in the story...
:ajsleepy:

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A great fear of mine is becoming content with things...

It sounds like it might be a confusion between "contentment" and "complacency"

Content typically has shades of "satisfied and at rest, but still active". "Complacent" has shades of "stagnation" and "blindness to faults/weaknesses".

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The presence of what now?

I was thinking the same thing when I read this. I cannot help but think of a certain (ponified) quote:

The pony in black fled across the desert, and the applemare followed.

I don't know where this road leads to, or how this story ends, but I am here with you from dust to dust. Lead on.

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Perhaps... though contentment and complacency only seem a step away from each other. When someone finishes a project and they say they are "content with how it turned out", they usually aren't saying they are fully satisfied. Contentment usually has a feeling of having settled in some way, at least in the way i hear it colloquially used. To me it means "i am okay with things", and sometimes that does seem like enough, but whenever i am content i cant help but wonder if i have given up on questing for something more. Complacency has a feeling of having accepted the terms of the present situation, especially when those terms aren't one's own, and i have no mixed feelings on it- it is usually one giving up. Though, giving up is also not always a thing to be ashamed of.

And as to your ponified quote of

The pony in black fled across the desert, and the applemare followed.

I was definitely getting a Dark Tower vibe as well, so I'm glad you picked up on it. Especially when the Tower of Gears was mentioned.

Your writing is excellent as always ("She wore power well, and Applejack, who held authority to high standards, was satisfied" in particular was evocative), and you're setting out an intriguing premise. It'll be interesting seeing what happens when your two plotlines collide!

AJ is the best pony to do a dream fic about! She's so damn practical in both world and she doesn't bother navel gazing when she's out of her depths.

I'd like to see more though I guess updating twice a week like it's posted is not going to happen.

All right then... apparently things settled a bit after the apocalypse but now they've gotten even worse.

If only these moments could last forever....

I wonder if Flutters or anyone else is having similar visions? Of course, everyone has nightmares, so who knows.

the young stallion, who had not yet learned when to be still or quiet.

"Ponies do not enter the Wasteland in two's. The rule is: two do the work and the third watches, and when they ask her about
it later, she tells"

The new aesthetic, cinderblock and institutional grey shot through with bright color, the sharp right edges and the boxy construction. Twilight had asked for a modern building and she had gotten one.

Ah. Brutalist school of architecture for the school.

Easiest way to identify such buildings? They are the ones people cheer the most loudly when, in a rare outbreak of common sense from government zoning board, they are demolished.

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I wonder if Flutters or anyone else is having similar visions? Of course, everyone has nightmares, so who knows.

That would be in interesting avenue of research for Twilight to pursue (with the assistance of Luna perhaps?). If the vast majority of the population are having the *exact same* set of nightmares, that could point to something fundamentally deeper and more dangerous than mere industrialisation jitters...
:twilightoops:

Fascinating world you're building here, can't wait for the next installment.

It's so nice to see everyone mature in a healthy manner. That's probably how a g5 would treat them. A bit older, a bit wiser, a bit calmer.

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It's a link to a song by the progressive rock group Kansas, who also did Dust In The Wind and Carry On, Wayward Son. And I recognize the title from an album I've listened to many times.

Hooboy... things may be getting in motion now....

Good to see how everypony's getting on.:twilightsmile:
...and as I type that, I realize nopony has mentioned Spike.:twilightoops:

Excellent, vivid prose with skillful vocabulary. A sense of creeping dread. This is no ordinary dark fic; it's something that stays with you. I will follow this story to the end.

Sweet little slice of home life, before we and AJ are thrown into chaos again.

And here I was about to go to bed....

If nothing else, I have to agree with AJ about consciousness being slippery- at the very least you don't know when you've started to drift off until you suddenly wake up. Thankfully, I can't speak to the rest of her experience.

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The pony in black fled across the desert, and the applemare followed.

My thoughts exactly.

This is beautiful. The world you've made here is absolutely gorgeous.

Applejack is d u s t i n t h e w i n d~

Why do I fear that B AJ's happiness might end? Or maybe she will give A Applejack many nice snacks (A AJ does not like eating dust, I imagine) and they can both be happy?

But I now strongly suspect only the Raridash entity is allowed to be happy in your stories, and everypony else must feel many shades of m e l a n c h o l y.

Applejack is shrouded along her lonely walk in the world of ash and quiet.

She walks a lonely road. Maybesorrymaybenot.

I really like this wasteland, and the prose that goes into describing it. The ash really ties everything together.

I smell a type of Twi jack and I am pleased by all these developments.

Delightfully slow with unease on the horizon. AJ is a good horse to explore this land, and her adventure is intriguing.

The story is really clicking in place well. Farm exploits weave well with the end of the world AJ and the peaceful, content, big sis AJ.

It almost feels like they're the same.

. They were an unholy and--if one believed what the whispers said--unconsensual marriage of flesh and machine. The clockwork legs jutted out at odd angles, and each one was a new experiment of the artificers of the Tower, each a unique but incomplete answer to their Questions. Their bodies were a canvas of experimentation, and with each Auditor the Tower of Cogs grew closer to the perfection it sought. This Auditor’s eyes were still intact, which Applejack supposed was a sort of blessing. Great, hideous tubes and vials of fluid rose up violently from its sexless, gaunt body, and an jointed iron hand which emerged from a compartment in it’s chest held a clipboard.

And now I am afraid.

There is also a strange period there.

Some nice character exploration here and introspection on the part of Twi and AJ.

A tolerable version/depiction of Starlight Glimmer?

Well then.

“That you can’t, not all the time. Y’know, Mac was always good at stuff like that. He’d be glad to help you if you get stuck. That an’ science.”

I always liked these kinds of headcanons about the Apples.

Curse this cliffhanger! D:

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