• Member Since 22nd Dec, 2011
  • offline last seen Aug 31st, 2023

Gabriel LaVedier


Just another University-edicated fanfiction writer who prefers the cheers and laughter of ponies to madness and sorrow.

T

The tale of Bad Apple, growing up and all the formative experiences that turned a country gentlecolt held in a heartless mother's grip into an exile of boundless goodness and concern for the common pony.

Note: It's not exactly over. But this particular "arc" of his life is over. Most of the stories about him can be considered to be taking place between "Perfect" and "Apple Shrugged."

Chapters (5)
Comments ( 44 )

Brilliant. I really love this apple charaoecter of yours. I remembered The Discarded Son and I actually wanted to read more about Bad Apple and here I find your page and so. Many. Stories. I love your interpretation of the Apple family, and I love the way you write!

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I write the Apple family as an appropriately fragmented entity, separated on generational lines. Ruthless Granny Smith, situationally-criminal Bad Apple, and the Apples we know and love as sweet innocents. I was also inspired by Southern Gothic writers like Faulkner when it came to Granny's motivation. Fading power, stubborn pride, lingering racism and old sensibilities.

:derpyderp2: Yay, a new chapter I was not expecting!

So have you been reading Ayn Rand recently and needed to vent or just pissed at all the evil cocksuckers around? Great story my friend, we could use some more Bad Apple.

On a sidenote, my state's incoming speaker of the house stated that he loved Atlas Shrugged...ffs.

Well, other than a formatting tweak (it went centered about halfway through and never reverted), exquisite as ever. I eagerly await chapter 4, of course!

Roll up, indeed...

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A bit of both really. I've long been against Objectivism. This is just a very long arc about cleaning the idea from Equestria.

146104

More Bad Apple is always a good thing, you have created my favorite OC pony out of a pool of very few good ones.

I like the irony of a conpony bringing down a bigger, petty tyranical one. Love the reference to Stalliongrad, both of them. I guess you could say that the townsponies expropriated the expropriator.

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I threw in a few references, including "Hot Fuzz" and an episode of The Twilight Zone. And a lot of internal references to prior Bad Apple stories, plus headcanon.

It's like BA has a nose for bad towns...does he ever go someplace nice? Does he do this knowing what he's getting into or does he just have a 'talent' for going to the most messed up towns in Equestria?

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A little from Column A, a little from Column B. Honestly, if I wrote about every town he ever went to I'd be writing forever. He finds plenty of nice places, as implied by "I, Bad apple." But when you're poking around all the very hidden and off-the-beaten-track places because you're trying to huckster it up, you occasionally find places that have been hidden on purpose. that's the big part. He encounters these places because they do so much to hide themselves that he finds them because of it, in spire of their precautions. Sometimes, very rarely, he goes to bad places on purpose. Part five and the series after shows that, because he has, in some sense, constable powers and the ability to legally change bad situations.

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Well, he will have the constable powers soon, but that's technically a few stories down the line. Does this mean that chapter five is after Nightwatch or just his last mission before that, after all the GGG stuff of course?

I have to ask, are any of the non-supernatural antagonists going to not be unicorns who masturbate to Ayn Rand?

I found a handful of minor errors, but as this is so long I have forgotten where they were placed, though I can tell you you have the word ended when I think you meant hand and a she in place of a he, I believe in the attempted prostitution part.

Yeah, I found typos too, dearest. But damn if this wasn't entertaining as hell!

I love when Bad Apple plays the avenging angel of retribution on idiots who worship those books...

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The antagonist-in-chief has not only enshrined the idea of economic superiority but the idea that unicorns are superior to other pony types who may approach but never meet a unicorn's quality. It's not technically speciesism, simply the belief that magic manipulation is the most important quality to be considered. That a brilliant unicorn will always be better than a brilliant earth pony or pegasus. Don't worry, she has other disgusting qualities to make her repugnant.

Please understand: I never intend these stories to get this long. I mean, I COULD have taken extra weeks and make this three times as long, with more characters and a slower build of paranoia. But that would have simply taken too much time. I'll fix the ones you mentioned, though.

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There's nothing wrong with the length or the pacing, I was just away from anything to write on (read on my phone mostly) and wanted to qualify why I could not specify the exact placement and amount of errors.

443037

Ahhh. I do too. Mostly in the morning after breakfast.

Have you ever seen Batman: The Animated Series? If so, have you seen the episode titled "The Forgotten"? If not, watch it because it will give you ideas for Bad Apple shenanigans.

Also watch "Heart of Ice" for the other side of the coin you've been presenting with these stories...a much darker side.

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I've seen many episodes (My favorite is the one with the Gray Ghost. Nice touch having Adam West as the voice.) But I don't remember those two in particular and I don't know where I could find them. Could I get a short synopsis?

"The Forgotten" -

Bruce Wayne learns of mysterious disappearances of Gotham's homeless and goes undercover to investigate, only to himself be kidnapped and suffer temporary amnesia. All the prisoners are being forced to mine gold ore in terrible conditions for the very fat, very nasty-tempered owner.

"Heart of Ice" -

The episode that defined the series and won awards. Dr. Victor Fries is horribly mutated and his wife Nora Fries doomed when the greedy CEO of Gothcorp, Ferris Boyle, violently shuts down the experiment that would have saved Nora's life, claiming that the experiment cost him too much money. Now as the embittered Mr. Freeze, he seeks to murder Ferris in cold blood.

EDIT: Strange that you can't find it. It used to be on Apple's iTunes, but I guess it isn't there anymore. I just happen to own the entire first season of the show on DVD and both episodes are in the first season. The show is currently airing on the Hub a couple of times a day during the workweek.

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Ahhh, and now I remember. Yes, both very good episodes for Bad Apple-ness.

And it was more that I'm broke, and even if they were on iTunes, I can't afford them.

Simply amazing. I love this Bad Apple.

1001711

Thank you. I have tried to make him an engaging fellow.

I haven't had the chance to read the new chapter yet, but you have already made me groan with the chapter title; you punny bastard.

Ah, Bad Apple. Strong and true to the end, that you may have the darkness you so cherish. The work's not done, not yet... but it will be.

1065492

The irony is delicious, as you will see. "Sauce for the goose" as they say. :twilightsmile:

But a huge example. This paragraph could use a few more words and maybe some punctuation check.

I can understand the personal morality of not killing the rapist, but hobbling and nullifying won't kill the little cockroach or harm his ability to die slowly over years' time.

Bad's meeting with Rosemary, those lines were brilliant.

ever seen, form the. From.

Manehatan or Fillydelphia. Missing a T.

various bunt, blunt.

Shank Rearedend, Reardend Metallurgical, which is it?

portion of frog touched, fog.

They want to make nukes, holy shit.

I thought this might be the end of his ceaseless travels, but of course you are going to make him continue.

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That is "frog" it's the flesh part of a horse's hoof. I've used it in other stories.

Not only nukes, but if you look in there, you can see they are a parody of a popular FiM Fanfic element, as far as their name goes. As well, there are a couple of characters in there that are both a parody of the same person. But that's not important.

He must go on. Because he is too useful.

1069077

In the context, neither seemed to work very well, but having fog in a cold room made more sense than the center of his hoof being mentioned.

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It's not perfect. But given that's how ponies interact with the world, by and large, describing surface temperature and texture makes sense.

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Yeah, it just doesn't read very well but I can't think of anything better. Reading it again I see it, but the first time it just sounds odd; I think it's the way the sentence is structured.

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Admittedly this is true. Sometimes there simply is no ideal solution.

I don't like the politics of this. At. All. I'm no Ayn Rand atlas shrugged type but the way this portrays people who love individual freedom I found quite insulting. I'm a conservative. This exaggerates the thought that those like me who believe in less government and individual freedom are rigid and unfeeling. You portray business as the villain here. I will say if you are going for Nazi with the racism you didn't quite pull that off.

As I've said in the past, the Bad Apple/Luna stuff always bothers me. I don't even know why, it just bothers me. It may be because I'm not usually a fan of romance, at least not one so overt (this coming from someone who wrote a story and published it here with romance undertones, though I admittedly did an absolutely terrible job at my own intention).

I think you should get away from that aspect of the philosophy and look at another. If I may ask, have you seen "The Dark Knight Rises"? If you have, then let me pitch this to you: Why not Bad Apple against someone like Bane? Someone using terrorism and extreme populist ideology to pursue a personal vendetta, destroying their morale by essentially trying to destroy their country?

Also, it's "dessert" not "desert". One has sand and dust. One might have sugar. :trollestia:

1088863

To each their own, I suppose. This was taking the piss specifically out of ethical egoism, especially the ridiculous idea that such a thing could exist in a world like Equestria where cheerful socialism and competent government exist. Plus, remember, Any Random has been his bete noir since he broke the powerful grip of Dry Gulch. And remember his flashbacks? Effectively, they're the excesses of the Gilded age that spawned the monster that was Ayn Rand. The most direct parallel is the company town. George Pullman really DID hire Pinkertons as a private hired goon squad to murder dissident employees, which included dropping dynamite from a plane.

Plus: Individual freedom is available to all the socially-connected ponies. They surely have all kinds of individual personalities and all sorts of freedoms. the evil ones are the ones that use their freedom to... do evil. Did you miss the part about the magical nuke?

I never saw any of the Dark Knight movies. I don't need ANOTHER reimagining of Batman. It seems like bog-standard cynic-junkie bullcrap and Theme Park Version nihilism. Bane is just another villain. The Animated version was good enough. Better, in fact. There was a better mix of cynicism and idealism.

"Desert" is an archaic term. And in fact, it still survives in "just deserts." It is related to "deserve."

1089041

It strikes me as a "competent government" that with few exceptions takes a rather hands off approach to the world. Within Canterlot it is rather absolutivist, but beyond that Celestia pretty much lets the rest of the country alone unless some specific incident comes up or there's some potential magic catastrophe that requires a Greater Dispel Magic or Break Enchantment spell.

Bane is a villain with a frightening amount of intelligence in the comics, and is counted among his better arch-nemeses. He's one of the very few to defeat Batman in single combat. Meaning, he so utterly defeated Batman he left him a parapalegic for a while. The animated universe portrays Bane rather poorly, treating him like a hired thug. This movie portrays him perfectly, despite the exclusion of his super steroid Venom. In any case it's a shame you don't want to see it, as all three movies are fantastic interpretations of Batman. Don't let what Joel Schumacher did to the series discourage you. Christopher Nolan treats him well.

When I read it, all I could think about was ice cream. :pinkiehappy: The context is confusing.

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About the new Batman movies: If I want to watch an emotionally damaged reject with more money than sense fight crime and then get pissy about it, I'd watch Iron man. But then, I hate him because Tony Stark's true colors came through loud and clear when he became the number one fascist in America. I always suspected that he was of that bent, but he had to go and confirm it. I know, different companies. But still...

The new Batman movies are... unbearably ugly. The set designs are intentionally so, in a beautiful sense (They work like modern grotesquerie or neo-gothic), the stories are ugly, the character's personalities are REALLY ugly and the whole thing is just... ugly.

I mean, I avoid fics that are that ugly, and these things are free. Why would I pay to watch ugliness? Because it's more "real" or "hip"? The "realness" of ugliness is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. People think ugliness is normal because media portrays it that way and media portrays it that way because everyone thinks it's normal. It's a vicious cycle.

I myself am a fairly firm objectivist, and I actually think you did a damn good job of showing how horribly it can go wrong. At least as good as Bioshock.

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I took some inspiration from "Bioshock" (despite never having played it, mostly using elements I picked up from others), a study of both Objectivist texts and Ayn Rand's life and personal works, and all my head-shaking disbelief and utter disdain for racist, misogynist, vaguely creepy, thoroughly unpleasant super-Objectivist Jay Naylor.

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Maan, these chucklefucks need to either die, or be tormented without end.

Hell, hand me a bonesaw. Time to make Earth Ponies out of Unicorns.

So you know off Jay Naylor....

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I do agree his work has gotten progressively odder as time went. His earlier stuff is not all bad.

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The early work is fine. Later it's... crazy.

Well that was certainly an entertaining 10 hours or so. I was reading the latest update on a 'let's read' style running review of Atlas Shrugged (freaking awesome) and a few people posted links in the comments to the last chapter of this story. After finishing it, I immediately had to read the prior chapters from start to finish. So from what I've gathered there are other Bad Apple stories? Is there a set grouping of them I can find?

It's hard to give suggestions since he weaves his way in minor and major ways through many stories. There is a mini-arc in "The Unfavorite", "The Nightwatch" and "The Equestrian Resident." that establishes the romance with Luna.

5987177

I've never read any of Ayn Rand's books though I have seen them on library shelves. As far as "socialism" goes, slaves freed after the Civil War sometimes created their own towns where everyone worked together and shared everything. At the time, it was the best way to survive and it worked. Eventually most of these places dried out because the younger generation moved on. There is a site not far from where I live called Jamestown that was run by a family of freed slaves. Most of the youngsters left for better opportunities elsewhere. What was called The Great Migration.

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