Prithee and well met, thou tempestuous witch of storms, to alight so delicately upon the jet streams of the cerulean sky. Welcome to Spirit Airlines.
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One way or another, Buttercup always knew things would end like this for her and Bright Mac. She just wished she’d known well enough to wonder what she might do when that moment finally came.
A very, very overdue reworking and posting of my 2018 Everfree Northwest Iron Author entry.
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Pretty hecking neat.
Short, punchy, and poignant. The Apples' parents going down in a blaze of gunslinging glory's deid apt, and that final paragraph conjures one hell of a image. Bonny work.
For those who don't get it. Educamacate yourselves
Huh a Band Perry reference. Who knew you knew.
I assumed it was a 'If you plot revenge, dig two graves' reference. Which is an old traditional aphorism.
One of the best last moments I've seen for these two. Brilliantly done throughout, with an excellent blend of regret and hope for the future. Thank you for it.
Why you gotta do this to me, man. ;_;
You done this right.
You know, when I saw the cover image I was going in expecting something close to Knocking on Heaven's Door, but this... this was so much better.
Oh, hell . . . Now I’m leaking.
I love you right now, this . . . this was beautiful. Thank you, so much.
May they rest in peace.
The finality of this story began with the very first words. Just knowing who these ponies are made every scene heart wrenching.
I loved the letter, but I'm honestly kinda sad they weren't the outlaws. I feel like the letter meant a lot more before they pinned on their sheriff stars, when I thought they were bank robbers or something. This is purely opinion, and I'm sure others may say the opposite.
Also, technical note: the smell of gunfire indoors is a unique thing. Burning powder vaporizes lead from the bullets - especially the old-timey solid lead bullets I expect from an old west theme. The lead coats the back of your throat, and leaves a cloying sweetness that almost makes you gag. All gunpowder smells different. Russian gunpowder has an ammonia tang to it. South African is different from Mexican, etc. But going with the old west theme, they'd be using black powder, which smells strongly of sulfur. The combination of the sulfur smell and the tangible sweetness on the back of your throat makes an unmistakable combination.
I love the voices you gave to Bright Mac and Buttercup. In such a very short scene, you've fleshed out two of the least developed characters in the show. I really got to know them, just before they died. You are a monster.
I don't think I really enjoyed this. It's written amazingly well on a technical level, but there's a few more subjective notes that pulls me out of it.
Firstly, I should say that I love the light touch you did with the accent. There's maybe one or two words I don't think should have been accented the way you did, but in point of fact most of Buttercup's dialogue and all of Bright Mac's dialogue is done using word choice rather than writing out the accent, and I love that. I'm of the opinion that writing out accents is always a weaker choice, largely because I have several ESL friends who would legitimately be tripped up by trying them (not that I haven't come across some egregious accents before that even give me a headache), so seeing such a light touch used here (and some uncommon but rather clever uses like <drop'a>) is great.
Now, the two main issues I have with this have actually already been brought up in the comments. The first is that song reference. Now, I'll admit I've been living under a rock for the last ten years (I tired of pop music long ago and disconnected from most music sources), but I feel like the song reference isn't that strong, especially when you reference it as "an old song" and apparently (I had to look it up after Mitch H mentioned it) the Confucius saying is "when you plot revenge, dig two graves", making it actually old. The thing is, I don't really get the feeling from this piece alone that Buttercup has been as close to Bright Mac as the song your referencing would imply. We get like, one line about her following along when he wanted to rid the West of outlaws, but that's about it. Everything else is more or less what one would expect from anyone who is either not completely heartless or at least close enough to be partners (in the Wild West sense of the term, i.e. "pardners"). I feel like the reference could have been so much better if you had taken the time to establish how many other raids/hunts/shootouts/whatever that they'd been on together, to let us understand it rather than it being just kinda implied. I also think it could have been a stronger piece if you'd gone with referencing the Confucius saying, as revenge stories fit perfectly in the Wild West setting.
I also have to agree with Hap, in that I feel like you pulled a bait-and-switch, making it seem like they were outlaws who were holed up from either the rest of their gang, or the law, right up until you pulled out the sheriff stars. In that sense, I think the "reveal" makes it a weaker piece overall. My reasoning for that kind of ties in to my other complaint about not really getting enough time to get to know how close these two are: yes, it makes sense that the Apple parents would go out to try ridding the West of evil, but that's so... expected, really. It doesn't have any real weight because we don't get to see them on their wild adventures and close calls, we don't get to see them being heroic and fighting for justice, what we do get to see is a melodramatic goodbye and a quite frankly stupid (as presented, see below) charge of the light brigade. With such a short piece, it would make so much more of an impact if the goodbye letter was more of a "don't make the same mistakes we did" kind of thing, and if it were a longer piece, it would make the sheriff angle work more in your favor.
To clarify what I mean by their charge being stupid, is that we are not given any sort of characterization, backstory, relationship, or even dialogue from or about whoever is shooting at them. We can infer that it's a gang of outlaws that overpowered them, but even that isn't even hinted at in the text. We don't know if maybe the outlaws are threatening more than gunfire (e.g. dynamite), or if they might be the kind to start doing collaterals damage if our protagonists don't come out, or anything else about them. They're only there for plot convenience, and it almost would have been more dramatic if the two had managed to take the shooters out before the end of the piece (or possibly before it started), so that you could really work in how much they'd follow each other into the beyond. The only thing we know from the text itself is that, the outlaws are shooting at them, and that Bright Mac might not make it out alive, meaning we don't really have anything further to go on other than these two idiots wanted to go out in a blaze of effing glory and I'm getting really worked up because it's obvious they actually care for their kids and they're just throwing their lives away and gah!
Like I said, this is really, really well written for what it is, but I have some issues with it that are largely personal preferences, but which subtract a lot from the overall effect of the piece.
A wise man once said, stories about ponies are stories about people.
I have never known the hell of deadly violence, and God willing I never will. And I try to stay humbled by the fact that this is only because so many before me—usually without a say in the matter, as such is the unfair nature of existence—did know that violence, and fought to end it, despite it costing them their lives.
Perhaps the prime motivator of action and endeavors in my own existence is the desire to, together with others, build a world where no one, or realistically, as few as possible have to know this sort of violence on an intimate basis.
We build a better world for those around us and beyond us, because such is the nature of love, powered by hope and delivered with kindness.
Thank you for writing, and believing in a better world, friend.