John Honeycrisp Apple Final Chapter(s) · 3:11am Jun 23rd, 2016
Hello all, it's that time again...time to update John Honeycrisp Apple. Unlike all previous times, this should be the last. Talking about the story with spoilers after the break.
So we've made it this far. In a relatively short time, at least for me, I seem to have written an entire story. Admittedly, it's only 30k words or so long, so it's not a really long story, but it's the first multi-chapter one that I have completed. Anyway, let's save the reminiscing for after I talk about the final chapter and the accompanying alternate ending.
First, let's talk about the primary ending. As I said in my blog on the last chapter, Honeycrisp had gotten himself infected by some poison joke. The particular joke that befell him was to make him actually believe he was the human from his dreams when he was being fed upon by the nightmare wisps. Oddly, if the comments from the last chapter were any indication, people didn't quite seem to get that from AJ's realization. I had initially had John joke that maybe AJ would start thinking that she's a human too, but I felt that was a little too on the nose so I changed it to her turning into a human as his joke. Apparently, the newer one was too subtle as people didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that he had been infected by poison joke (with one exception, though he assumed that he got it while looking for Mac instead of after he escaped the nightmare wisps).
Now to explain some stuff that wasn't explicitly stated. First, the reason why he was able to wake up from the wisps' magic was because he had killed himself in his dream. The sudden shock of it all had overridden the toxin and caused him to wake up. Before you start shouting that it seems silly to have death in the dreams waking up the wisps' victims, let me point out that most of the creatures that are caught by the wisps are not intelligent creatures and as such probably wouldn't have the capacity to decide to commit suicide (remember, they could only get Honeycrisp at all because he was badly injured and actually unconscious at the time). Secondly, what does it matter if the creatures' victims woke up? If any predators' prey escapes, they just search for more prey. Additionally, I have to go back to how most of their prey are much smaller creatures that they can affect with their toxins without them having to be in a vulnerable state to begin with, so if they do wake up they can just be injected with more toxin and would be put back into stasis. Thirdly, it took him a dozen years to reach that point in his dreams. That's a really long time, the wisps got plenty of feeding done off of him in that time.
Two minor things that weren't explicitly stated are that John's cut on his hoof was caused by the sharp end of Mack's stick that he hit him with when he knocked him over the ledge, and the unknown drug in Honeycrisp's system that Nurse Redheart mentions finding back in chapter 2 (or was it 3? Whatever) was the toxin that the nightmare wisps had injected into his system.
Perhaps now I'll move onto the alternate ending. From the start I never had any plans on making such an ending canon. Even this I wouldn't consider to be canon, it's just an alternate conclusion to the story for those who like a somewhat less happy ending. I suspect that isn't a very large portion of the readers, but even so I felt compelled to do it. Initially, way back before I had my computer issues that some people may or may not remember me whining about where I lost a lot of my writings, I had thought that maybe I could actually put a chapter like the alternate ending up as an April Fool's joke. April 1 came and went long before I was ready for such a thing, though, so it didn't happen, but I still had the idea in my head.
Initially, it was going to be a rather dismal ending where he simply woke up alone in the hospital and was faced with his crushing loneliness for the rest of his (presumably short) life. I decided that I wanted this to not be quite that dark, so I gave him a bit of a hope spot. A fellow lonely soul for him to connect with. He would be a teenager on the cusp of adulthood and all alone in the world. John would essentially adopt the kid and in so doing get that family he had always longed for. He would have a son to take over the farm, the kid would have a father that cared for him, it was a win all around.
When I first wrote this ending, the television was actually going to be playing My Little Pony episodes and the kid was going to be really attached to the show. The intent was for him to have seen bits and pieces of the show as he faded in and out of consciousness and have that fuel his dreams of Equestria, but I figured that probably raised far more questions than it answered, so I changed it to generic television programming. I figured that it was probably best to not have My Little Pony be a thing in this human world and for it all to be an invention of his imagination. At the very least, it got rid of a lot of the massive coincidences that couldn't be explained (Granny Smith being so much like his mother, the Apple children having names so similar to his horses, etc.).
Now that I've finished talking about the endings, let's move onto the reminiscing. it's been a mere half a year since I uploaded the first chapter of this story on a whim. I had no idea that it was going to become such a popular story (282 likes to 8 dislikes as of this writing). It's handily surpassed Altered Visage as my most viewed and most highly rated story. To think that I posted the very first chapter on a whim with little intention of putting much effort into it. It didn't get much attention then, but after another story I wanted to post failed to pass moderation, I posted the second chapter of this story out of frustration without even taking the time to properly proofread the thing. After that, it started to jump up in ratings. Another chapter or two, and I had people telling me how much they loved the story, that they had read it multiple times over and that they would sometimes be late for work because they just had to read the latest update (I'm looking at you, Sipioc!).
To think that it's over now. I won't be writing anymore of this story, and unlike with another story I'm writing that nears its completion too, I have no intentions of writing a sequel for this one. John Honeycrisp Apple has become a very prominent part of my life these last six months, and now it'll be rendered as little more than a memory. What a bittersweet feeling it is to complete a story that I have grown to love. Regardless, I am proud of my accomplishment, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to shift my focus to other projects. First, I'll likely power my way through the last couple chapters of Altered Visage, and then after that I'll have little choice but to move onto stories that I haven't posted here at all. I have several stories that I have put at least some work into, one of them being over ten thousand words currently as it is typed up, though I wouldn't actually be allowed to post the story on here as it's not yet long enough to meet the 30k word minimum before posting. Perhaps one day I can continue writing it and get it up to that minimum. Maybe some of you can figure out what kind of story it is based on that requirement. Perhaps I'll focus on another story that I've put a lot of effort into. It's a rather ambitious project, and I'm not sure how it'll turn out in the end, but it's one I am very interested in putting more time into.
Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. I hope all of you have enjoyed John Honeycrisp Apple. For fun, I'd appreciate it if those that made it this far into my blog let me know which of the endings you prefer, though I suspect I can guess the one that most would pick.
What's this about not posting stories below 30k?
I kinda like both. I prefer the first, but the second does have a sorta happy ending.
4042951
There's a specific story type that has that requirement, specifically spin offs of the Fanfiction "Five Score Divided by Four". It was really popular for awhile and the author not only was okay with but encouraged people to write spin offs of the story in order to expand on the setting. There were so many submissions based on that story that FimFiction implemented rules stating that new stories based on it had to be either a minimum of 30k words long at the time of posting or completed before you could post it to the site. I had a few ideas for a spin off of my own and wrote a few chapters.
4042985
Oh. Alright
4042985
Actually the mods have since amended their position with the note that it has to at least hit the point where they are ponies. They were annoyed by stories that never got far enough for the people to become ponies and thus show a reason to be on this site (as this site doesn't allow non-pony works).
That was back when stories were manually approved. With auto approval for those with 3 or more stories, that may not even be an issue anymore.
4043173
Hmmm...I'll keep that in mind.