I've been thinking a bit about abbreviated summaries of stories and how they're sometimes not a bad medium for telling stories themselves. Some story ideas work better if you don't give them enough time to wear out their welcome.

To that end, I think I'll post a few drabbles and things in these blog posts. Here's the first one, a retelling and revision of First Impressions, my bizarre entry into the first /fic/ Write-Off, and a story that I have tried and failed to revise into any other satisfying form. It's based on a very weird idea that I think is probably better told in this format.

So Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle are waiting at the trainstation one day, because Pinkie's Pinkie Sense told her that something important was supposed to happen there. Sure enough, when the train arrives, Pinkie finds this weird stallion who she decides is the pony her sense told her to meet at the station. He's got a red mane and a blue coat and they look hideous together. Another hideous thing about him is his personality – he's curt, abrasive and wears a scowl.

His name (get this) is Lothlorium. It's a terrible name, especially for a pony. He says it's because he's from very far away, but he's hesitant to give exact details.

So Pinkie and Twilight accompany him to Ponyville's hotel in spite of the latter's best wishes, and then they all part ways. Twilight flushed the incident from her mind, until...

...the next morning, when she wakes up to Lothlorium hanging out in her room, watching her sleep. But now he's all bouncy and happy and hyper, and she finds this really weird. Spike thinks he's cool, though, so all three of them have breakfast together. Soon after breakfast, Lothlorium leaves the library en route for Rarity's place.

Rarity meets a handsome and debonair stallion with tragically mismatched colours that his charm and grace more than make up for, and that her fashion talents soon hide and soften. They hit it off and go on a date, which Rarity tells Twilight all about the next morning at a picnic, only to...

...be interrupted by a red-maned, blue-coated pony with a heavy country accent taking a walk with Applejack, whom he just finished helping with farmwork. Twilight is perplexed. Rarity is perplexed further.

Rainbow Dash flies in and lands in front of Lothlorium, who suddenly starts scowling and challenges to a hoof-wrestle. It looks like he's about to win when all of a sudden, Fluttershy shows up and his legs turn to putty. Dash defeats him and he whimpers an apology for wrestling with her.

Pinkie Pie bounces onto the scene and suddenly Lothlorium wants to throw a party. Twilight, who's starting to see the pattern here, steps up to Lothlorium and touches him on the shoulder. All of a sudden he's trying to engage her in a conversation about astronomy. She pushes him towards Rarity and the conversation switches to star-spangled fashion design. Rarity is removed and replaced with Rainbow Dash and suddenly Lothlorium is talking about making her see stars, and not through a telescope.

Twilight gets an idea, and has everypony reach out their hooves and touch him on his shoulders and snout. Lothlorium freezes up for a moment, and Twilight's afraid that she's broken him or something, but then he snaps out of it and starts crying.

Fluttershy asks him what's wrong. Eyes filled with tears, Lothlorium tells his story.

Where he's from, the six Elements of Harmony are well-known, but not openly. The rulers of his people have deemed any information related to the ponies to be too dangerous for consumption and have hidden and destroyed most of it. But Lothlorium is an avid admirer of the ponies, and he's managed to collect all kinds of things about them – pictures, stories, recordings, and even dramatic re-enactments of their adventures.

It wasn't to last, though. Someone got wind of his stash and called the police on him. Lothlorium remembers sitting in a dank basement, listening to the sound of sirens above him and clutching... a sheaf of papers related to the ponies. But before the police could get him, there was a magical blink of light and he was teleported to the train he recently got off.

Lothlorium finishes his story and is met with silence and awkward stares. The ponies smile kindly at him, and tell him that frankly they're a little freaked out by his obsession with them. Twilight gives him a business card for a psychiatrist and then the ponies leave. Pinkie says goodbye, and Lothlorium forlornly bounces away.

Meanwhile, a pair of workers haul the last crate of MLP contraband into the warehouse where that sort of thing is kept. They exchange some sad words about the last poor soul who had a nervous breakdown because of the insidious human voodoo at work in the Friendship is Magic DVDs and slime out of the warehouse, slapping each other on the back with their tentacles.

The latest chapter of Long Distance has taken a bit of an I Dream of Daisies bend – which isn't unprecedented, given that I did all those dream sequences in the first ten chapters. As for the actual IDoD, well, I'm working on the next episode of that too, but it's probably going to be fairly long and I can't rightly say when it'll be ready.