• Member Since 19th Apr, 2022
  • offline last seen Last Thursday

OverUnderCookened


Many years ago, on my very first day on Earth, I was born. Two decades later I celebrated my twentieth birthday, and then I had a glass of water.

More Blog Posts6

  • 1 week
    Return Snippet II: Just in the Nikki of Time

    And we're back with another snippet! This time it's much older, all the way from version 0.5 of the story - back when I tried starting it out from the moment of Lapis' arrival to Equestria, instead of Twilight's arrival to Ponyville. This was the first version of Nikki's entrance to the story, as well as the first mention of Hot Cocoa, the waitress (who I'd forgotten was a unicorn in the first

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    5 comments · 685 views
  • 2 weeks
    Return Snippet I: RD.1.1

    This is the opening scene of an unfinished and scrapped chapter, which picks up pretty much exactly where I left off over a year ago. I decided to toss this chapter in favor of a time skip, but see no reason to let the scene go completely to waste.

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    17 comments · 663 views
  • 2 weeks
    Where I've Been

    This is an announcement. I formatted it like a snippet. I don't know why.

    In the middle of a darkened room, a griffon walked onto a stage.

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    48 comments · 1,090 views
  • 62 weeks
    Scrap Bin 2: An Exhibit of Taxidermied Angst

    Another batch of excerpts from my scrap bin, but this time, it's three of them at once. Next chapter should be coming by this weekend, if not sooner - hopefully this'll provide some insight into what I'm trying to trim out!

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    3 comments · 2,112 views
  • 77 weeks
    This Is Fine

    So first off, hey, guess who still isn’t dead? And guess whose story isn’t dead, either - just some stuff in the way.

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    20 comments · 1,334 views
Jan
3rd
2023

Scrap Bin 2: An Exhibit of Taxidermied Angst · 3:56pm Jan 3rd, 2023

Another batch of excerpts from my scrap bin, but this time, it's three of them at once. Next chapter should be coming by this weekend, if not sooner - hopefully this'll provide some insight into what I'm trying to trim out!

Oh, and about the timeline - I am using one, and it's this guy: link here. My realization that the timeline for this series wasn't the same as the order of episodes came at about the same time that I noticed that Hearth's Warming Eve was produced before Fall Weather Friends. Specific amounts of time between episodes is probably going to deviate, by a lot, but the general order should remain the same!

Hoki, scrap bin time. Enjoy, and watch out for sharp edges!


A very new example, adapted to explain something that Big Mac will ask Lapis for in the next chapter. Note the four instances of a recurring phrase, an adaptation hypothesized to provide additional flow disruption by breaking the Rule of Three. This member of an invasive species was identified and captured by a glass of champagne, which wasted no time in alerting the larger Tonal Ecology department to the potential for overgrowth of morbidity.


There was never enough cider on Cider Day.

Every member of the Apple family, even the cousins, knew this. They learned it the first year they were old enough for their memories to start sticking, and they grew to understand the finer details not long afterward. The first thing to learn was that you still needed to make as much as you could, or else what would already be a fiasco would grow into a full catastrophe. The Year of the Cider Drought wasn’t the only reason that cider lines were so long, but it was certainly one of the reasons.

The second thing was that every year, something besides the line would start to build up, break down, or otherwise go wrong, and that everypony had darn well better be on duty to spot it and stop it before it could finish. Last year, Big Mac had spotted the axle on the press trying to pop out, and he’d had to spend the rest of the day bumping it back into position with his shoulder every few minutes - and the year before that, the chute over by Granny Smith’s quality-control station had broken, and Granny Smith had been forced to hold it up with her back hoof for a good half-hour before any of them spotted a spare log big enough to prop the chute up with. This wasn’t the only reason that Granny Smith could use a new hip, but, again, it was almost certainly one of the reasons.

The third thing to learn was more like a rule. You never, ever talked about what might go wrong, even if something else had already gone wrong. Especially then, because there was no sense in tempting fate. This rule was followed to such a thorough degree that most members of the Apple family picked it up without realizing it, at least until after they or somepony else had broken it. Again, this wasn’t the only reason that Big Mac didn’t bring up the inefficiency of the cider press, but it was certainly one of the reasons.

In recent years, though, Big Mac and the other immediate members of the Apple family had confronted a fourth and a fifth lesson. Number four was that whenever something did go wrong it was possible, though not ideal, to truck on through it. And number five was that you had to stick with what was possible more than you shot for ideals, especially when your cider-making crew was two members short.

That last detail was another one that was understood more than talked about. It wasn’t that discussing that detail tempted fate - no, those discussions just soured the mood quicker than vinegar soured milk, and keeping morale high was nothing short of required on Cider Day.

So, Big Mac didn’t talk about it as he and Applejack took one last look at the pre-prepared bushels of apples they’d assembled in the cellar, checking for any that were obviously bad. He didn’t talk about it as he looked over every nook and cranny of the press with Apple Bloom, giving each part a firm tap with his hoof to ensure it was as loose or as stuck in place as it should be. And he most certainly didn’t talk about it as he glanced at the sturdy, dust-covered two-pony wagon sitting in the barn, then averted his gaze and walked away.

This wasn’t the only reason that Big Mac didn’t talk much.


A somewhat older species, specialized to explore Luna’s desire for her subjects’ love instead of their fear. It initially adopts a storybook-esque tone, so as to camouflage itself as a less depressing explanation more rooted in Luna’s incredible age distant origins. This possibility is believed to originate from Dishonored 2, and indeed its sociological cynicism and a few of its themes may be compared to similar possibilities localized to the canon High Chaos route of Corvo Attano.


Once upon a time, Luna had enjoyed being startling. Even in ages long past, ages before her horn, she had derived a great thrill from appearing in places she wasn’t expected to be. It was empowering, to know that even the strongest ponies she knew could not touch her until the moment they knew she was there - and it was quite amusing to watch them shriek like little fillies.

She had grown up, and met Celestia, and grown a horn, and everything had changed - and yet, the advantage of being startling had remained. When they had resolved to build peace, it had been Luna’s role to appear wherever their foes believed she could not be, to undo what they believed fixed, to frighten them into running. Celestia’s role, meanwhile, had been to build the cages into which their foes would run, sometimes with policies and strategies and diplomacy, and sometimes with iron and stone and spellwork.

With every success, every one of early pony society’s snarling animals or unfortunate carriers of disease that Luna and Celestia caged, Luna grew beyond being merely startling. At first, the transformation was related only to the magnitude of their victories. Luna was recognized no longer as a mere unpleasant surprise, but as an unpredictable and massive problem.

And then, as Equestria had began to take shape within their hooves, Celestia and Luna had fought… higher powers. No longer could Luna reply on surprise alone to strike fear into their foes, and so she had to draw on her own power - and though she often found it wanting, she rarely found it insufficient. So it was, too, with Celestia, and despite all Celestia’s frantic pruning, their reputability grew into reverence, their mere deeds became legends. And…

Guardsponies, foot-soldiers, common thieves and vagabonds. Ponies and creatures who had never before seen Luna, who had never even lived in lands she ruled. They knew Luna’s name, they cursed each other for speaking it, feared bringing her down upon them. This much Luna observed herself, when she scouted in advance or brought down nests of criminals. She experimented, and found that merely letting herself be seen within the borders of a city was enough to suppress crime there for a time.

Luna had believed herself an omen of her sister’s arrival, but she did not believe that she herself had become a fear.

Not even the first time she saw herself in a nightmare.

Not the second, not truly. Or the third.

The tenth time, she began to wonder.

By the time she lost count, she knew.


The oldest species in this exhibit. Current dating places its origin as far back as just after the writing of The Summer Sun Celebration, though some methods of ideological analysis indicate close ancestors in even greater antiquity. It evolved to build upon Lapis’ hysterical laughter in the face of the Nightmare, where it would adapt into an explanation of his distant relative relaxation around Princess Luna. It is currently in containment due to potential relations to The Joker, a registered producer of ridiculous angst (the phrase “we live in a society” is a particularly infamous example.) Considering the author presently hasn’t seen The Joker, research is expected to uncover a simple case of convergent evolution - which likely indicates a far worse threat than direct descendancy to Hold It Together's tonal ecology.


“When I was younger, I was always confused by… well, ‘evil laughter.’ You know, when the mad scientist or the evil king in the story puts together the last parts of their grand plan, and they have a good chuckle about it? That kind. It never made sense to me, I didn’t know what was worth laughing about. I didn’t get the joke.

“I got older,” Lapis said, and as he spoke new memories flashed behind his eyes.

A paper, half-finished, staring back at him from on top of his desk, the beeping of his alarm clock telling him that it was now 6:30 AM and he had to start getting ready for classes.

“My life started getting harder, and I felt like I had fewer and fewer things to look forward to. I tried to see the bright side of everything, to find anything to be happy about, under any circumstances.”

The wrong side of the road, taking up the parts of his car’s windshield that should’ve been filled by the sky, the scent of burning rubber stinging his nose as his seat belt dug into his shoulders, his chest.

“It worked. I laughed when things broke, because they were only objects, I didn’t need to get so worked up. I laughed when plans went sour, because I was good at improvising anyway, I’d be fine.”

A sheaf of papers in his hand. In the top left corner, the number 85,428 sat in large font. At the bottom, a plain black line on a plain white space waited, as patiently as the woman behind the desk, for his signature.

“Then, I laughed when something went really, really wrong, because I thought it’d make me feel better. And it didn’t. All I felt was guilt, for having laughed at all. So I stopped. When I got frustrated, or when important things broke, I didn’t look for jokes. I just either fixed the problem or walked away.”

“Except it wasn’t that easy. Sometimes, I couldn’t do either one. Sometimes I just had to grit my teeth and bear it, and when that happened there was always a joke, sitting right on the edge of my tongue, and I’d want to laugh the same way you want to scratch an itch. Sometimes I’d be too tired to care anymore, and I’d laugh, because there was nothing left to do anymore.

“And… I developed a theory. Maybe ‘evil laughter’ was the same thing as the laugh I had, the laugh for when everything is going so wrong that you can’t stop it anymore; for when you’re going down in flames, so you might as well make a firework out of it. For when the only thing you can do is hang on for the ride, because you won't make it to the end and it's too late to get off.”

Lapis sighed. “Sorry, this got way heavier than I meant for it to. But… well, when I heard Nightmare Moon laughing, I recognized it, and I knew I was right. It’s not a happy noise, it’s not an ‘I’m-having-fun’ or a ‘this-is-funny’ noise. It was a noise that said she was too tired to scream, too tired to even cry. That everything was broken and she didn’t know how to fix it; that she wasn’t sure she could, even if she knew. It meant her heart was broken. It meant despair.”

Lapis swallowed, hard, and blinked away the blurriness in his vision. “And I heard her laughing, and I looked at her, and I saw myself. And I knew I couldn’t help her, and that just about broke my heart.” He cleared his throat, then swallowed again. “Sorry. Frog in my throat.”

Comments ( 3 )

Next chapter should be coming by this weekend, if not sooner

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Final week lolololol THE CAKE IS A LIE

Wow these are too good for scrap, but i guess they dont fit in anywhere. The second and third ones are especially good, loved how luna went from trickster to feared without even realising it and the explanation for evil laughter is way too good to stay in a fimfiction blog.

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