ayy lmao - Post-production · 2:31pm Jun 8th, 2016
Apooljack's "Dae" Oof is the latest story to join my loosely related episode-inspired fics, along with Just the Usual, Fork Everything and Trust Me. It is the most shitfic-ish of the lot - that should give you enough heads-up to know what to expect without spoiling anything.
Of course, if you've already read it, spoilers and post-production bits are below the break.
The Inspiration
I resent the idea that this is a fixfic, because firstly, it's not an attempt to fix anything. As I've mentioned in my sorry excuse of an episode review, I didn't hate the episode, and don't really feel my time was wasted watching it (since I don't watch it for much more than what it offers at face value).
No, this is a subversion, a riff on its structure.
Basically, somewhere into the beginning, every time Rarity made a pouty face or a sound of protest, all I heard and saw was: "Fookin A, Applejack". I mean, seriously, Applejack? Why are you being so plot deviceish stubborn? It sort of all went from there. Originally, this was going to be "Applejack Invents Process Control", in which Applejack is torn between her lifelong duty as a farmer and her fling of passion in debottlenecking. It was going to have all these chemical engineering references and parallels. Then I remembered that though I have a degree (with honours) in it, I am not an engineer, and so the idea petered out.
Just as Trust Me, Fork Everything and Scald were written out of sleeping desires to write Celestia apologetics, fame fics and Korean-inspired drama respectively, Apooljack was written because I've always wanted to do a shitfic.
Really.
I blame PresentPerfect's reviews. Through them, random ass blurbs are elevated into a kind of controlled art, and I was led to believe this to be so. Not having read a lot of them, though, left me with all of the want and none of the referencing, which is really important to keep a certain style consistent with its context (more on that? Nah. Then we wouldn't have any space for
gratuitous Patchy.)
Anyhow, yeah, I wanted to do a shitfic, and this one - where nobody would particularly mind a butchering and reconstituting - was a good episode to try my hand on.
The Work
The hardest thing to do was actually start a second time, when my first two hundred words were wiped by a ham-fingering of some button that closed my tab. I dunno. Having decided to lay off it just before bedtime, I returned to it in the morning and banged it all out.
Doing Aloe's lines was not very hard, as she had less lines than expected. Doing Rarity's lines were not hard, because her accent is horribly inconsistent and a weird cross between Scottish, Canadian and what appears to be South African/Afrikaans. The irony, of course, is that Applejack's lines are completely clean of accent wording.
Once again, this was another story that I would have liked to put the [Comedy] tag on, but ultimately did not. It's too random and not funny enough, though I've done my reasonable best at laying down layer after layer of funny things. Now I'm really hoping you've read it already, because nothing is less funny than a guy pointing out jokes and saying "hue see it's funny cos reasons".
Seriously. This will probably make the funny feeling you’ve had fade, kill any desire to read it if you haven’t already, and is really only of academical interest (and even then it’s worded so poorly you’re better off browsing a dictionary).
1) The Rule of Three: This is the only thing I remember from Space Jazz' excellent lecture on School for New Writers. If you notice, I've been applying it a lot in my previous fics, too. Lists of threes with the last one being a subversion or something surprising. It's in the summary, too.
2) Dumb stuff: Rarity is a burly Scot. I mean, come on, that's funny. ;_; That's not the least of the dumb stuff, but an awful lot of the humorous atmosphere hangs on this and other outright random instances. My signature exaggerated metaphors fall under this category too.
3) Episode parallel: Despite being nothing like the episode, it retains the episode's structure and revolves around the same events. I actually had the wiki page open for this to reference, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything - that was also why the ending with Rainbow Dash was there, rather than ending it sweetly and cleanly on the final, third (see #1) "Fookin A, Apooljack". This was the core idea: to do the exact same thing, like Rarity bumping into somepony, Applejack fixing plumbing, Aloe's entrances etc. All the small events, all twisted (and with the farm scene, completely turned on its head) so that it's the same but in no way whatsoever. And by subverting or applying twists to all of these, faithfully, while retaining their flow (kinda) I could make a solid reimagining of the episode.
There's also something to be said about emphasis distribution: how the ending is given a heavy role in tying everything up, and everything before is pretty much just stuff, just like in the episode, but that's a bit of a far reach.
4) Literal jokes: Rarity walks into somepony. Applejack fixes plumbing. Spike is a dragon. Aloe is Polish (according to the wiki). Twilight being "on top of the list". All of these are taken from the episode and made to be different, though what you'd call them - their name, literal descriptions, somethingiunno - are the same.
5) Lampshading and irony: You're in a crowded room and someone tells a joke. Everyone laughing is more powerful than if it were just you. By being that other person, the narrative subconsciously convinces you that the illogical absurd bits are funnier than they deserve to be.
Well, no, but it sounds really cool when I put it that way.
But I honestly thought Rarity being self-aware/ignorant about her accent when actually hers is the most proper in the show, and Applejack's is the furthest away from standard, would be hilarious. Please say it was.
6) That Rainbow Dash joke: this deserves its own section, because screw you it's the best thing I've written please no hurt me.
The Sneaky References
Aloe's lines are actually coded messages. Spoilers for those too lazy to translate (this was what I threw into Google, roughly recalled):
So if you're using a translation service, you'll know that these are not going to make any sense.
You could say that they're... unpolished.
By the way, you should definitely check out my episode review blog (Google gives me something very different?).
Also you should check out the post-production blog too!
Also if you liked this, you should check out the other ones, they're less absurd than this.
Mentioning potatoes twice was a lead heading into a joke about me not being able to tell the difference between Scottish and Irish accents, that I just forgot about as I wrote. "Free bowel motion" refers, of course, to prunes and their role in aiding digestion.
Spike's stuff is never mentioned. Why did Spike have so many tins anyways? Find out in the next shitfic by Casca! Also, "tinny screaming". That one wasn't deliberate, as great as it was. Twilight making bad jokes is an honoured tradition from Just the Usual.
The farm gate milk prices thing refers to the very real milk price squeeze by Fonterra and Murray-Goulbern in Australia, forcing very many milk farmers into very hard times.
"Perispedirione" doesn't exist.
Why does Towel Pony sound like Athene, minor gaming personality? By which I mean “for them keedz” is his justification for doing scummy things like viewbotting. I dunno. It was the closest thing I got to an easily recognizable accent through writing, which was a setup for Rarity's own ironic quip about accents.
The coincidence of the pigs revolting and Animal Farm is accidental.
"Good old days" refers to banyas, traditional Russian steam baths.
When Rainbow Dash says "This whole scenario's based on a brief sheet" it's because the fic had to follow the episode structure all the way through. The episode ends with them meeting Rainbow again, so eh.
Conclusion
This was fun. I liked the idea and the writing of it quite a bit more than the others, which mens I'm jinxing it to oblivion. Still, I think it's a fun read for those of you who follow me for such fics, so give it a crack. If you have, do comment - I always enjoy reading what you guys think.
Thank you once again for reading, commenting, fav'ing, liking, the whole shebang. Much appreciated. Stay tuned, and stay awesome.
As if I didn't immediately need to read this story anyway. :D My work here is done.