Red Apples - Over Analysis

I usually wait a few weeks before doing these retrospectives, but Red Apples has technically been ‘live’ since late August and I’ve already had a huge amount of feedback, so I thought I’d get ahead of myself for once. Big thanks, as always, to everyone who commented, favorited or just plain liked Red Apples and huge thanks go to the Write-off people who took the time to provide their thoughts to help make the FiMFiction version the best it could be.

A few people might be wondering just what this Write-off thing I keep mentioning is. The Write-off is a prompt based fanfic competition held every five weeks or so, where you try and produce the best short fic you can in 24 or 72 hours. I do encourage anyone who fancies themselves as a writer to give these kind of contests a try, they’re a great way of getting some good experience and you’re almost guaranteed to get some feedback as to what went wrong/right. It’s also a good way of getting yourself some exposure, if you’re still building a fanbase.

The prompt for Red Apples was ‘Distant Shores’, which produced a rather maudlin range of different fics, quite a few of which were about death in some form. I took things in a bit of a odd direction and Red Apples sprung from the idea of a stranger on a distant shore, and who better to play the stranger in the strange land than Luna, set a thousand years out of time. This is not a new story by any means, and Luna’s struggles with toaster ovens have become a bit of a fanon trope, but I figured I could put a very different spin on the story.

Luna often ends up being a character from a Shakespearean play, but those plays are from the Elizabethan era, only 400 years ago. A 1000 years would actually bring you to the age of Beowulf and plant you firmly in the medieval era (or even the dark ages depending on your definition). Life in those days is hard to romanticise, often both brutal and short, and every ruler earned their throne with the point of a sword. It was this world, when the feudal system was a natural law, when rulers were judged on acres not art, when blood solved as many disputes as diplomacy, that I wanted to firmly seat Luna’s PoV.

Red Apples tried to capture just how alien a modern Equestria felt, but by rooting the PoV in what this ruler of a petty kingdom expected of the world not by barraging her with facts and inventions. This is what I think Red Apples biggest draw is, Luna’s reaction. Her paralysis as she tries to figure out what to do and say in the face of a world that doesn’t make sense worked better than I ever expected. It was this early part of the story that really sucked people in, when she couldn’t even figure out if what was offered was an apple, because it was so impossibly red.

On a more negative note, I found Celestia’s prank to be the weakest part of the story. Strangely, the prank is also the oldest. The kernel of Red Apples was a story Celestia winding up a newly redeemed Luna about meeting the ruler of Equestria, then revealing she didn’t need to worry because it was Celestia all along. This made it into Red Apples almost in its entirety, but very much took the focus away from Luna’s experience in an alien world. I don’t regret putting it in, as Celestia’s prank is key to having actual character development—something I maintain is crucial in any story—but that character development could have entered via a stronger path.

I like to close these on a random fact about the story, and for Red Apples it’s random fact is that the story is shares a canon with, the Humans in Equestria Club. While no humans are involved in Red Apples, the history of Equestria I developed for the HiEC I used again to pin down what life was like for Luna pre-banishment. It just goes to show, work on backstory is never wasted.

Three announcements before I go. First, I've just hit a major milestone 250 subscribers! That'll be getting its own post soon enough so I won't spend to much space here, but thanks so much everyone who favorited and I hope I wont disapoint.

Second, I am now a Patreon funded author so if you liked this story, do consider pledging your support. I’m planning on running a monthly patreon prompt, so if you want to see me tackle some specific story you can cast your vote there.

Finally, I have a new story now live on FiMFiction. Broken on the Wheel will be a novel length story of Trixie’s struggle against the Nightmare, after she’s tricked into becoming her new host. Check it out below:

Broken on the Wheel
Trixie lost everything to the Alicorn Amulet. After she is tricked into becoming the new host of the Nightmare, however, she is the only mare who can save Equestria from eternal darkness. If she wants to.