GaPJaxie Judges Others IV: The Roast of WandererD · 4:50am Jun 22nd, 2017
Sometimes, a story just falls into your lap, begging to be judged. Sometimes you find stories on the front page, sometimes you find them in your favorites list. But sometimes, the author doesn't come to you. When that happens, you need to go to them, and you need to be prepared to go the extra mile to set them up for the trap. It takes a lot of time and planning to commission a story from one of FiMFiction's most popular authors just so you can trap him in a web of lies and judgement.
But you know why I did it all?
Because I was bored and it was funny.
Time to judge others.
Specifically, this week, I'll be judging Twilight's Garden, a story I commissioned from WandererD. The prompt? "Through some chain of events, Applejack becomes the most important pony in the Mane 6. The more attention she gets, the more Twilight burns up inside, until finally she realizes she's jealous. She's gotten to like Applejack as her background pony flunky, and seeing AJ get the limelight actually really eats at Twilight. And the fact that Twilight feels that way? Bothers her."
Did the story live up to the prompt? Can it stand up to my judging gaze? And precisely how many copies of that hat does AJ own?
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Overall Score: I didn't learn ANYTHIN'! I was right all along!
Summary:
A neat premise, good humor, and unpronounceable Nahautl names give this story a lot of character and make it fun to read. But if you're looking for any deep soul-searching on Twilight or AJ's part, you won't find it here. While a fun little comedy in its own right, the story avoids saying anything about Twilight's jealousy, and it's hard not to mourn the lost opportunity.
When he was writing this story, WandererD told me he struggled with the premise because he doesn't like Applejack as a character. At the time, I kind of blew his comments off, because don't all writers feel that way about her? Applejack is often the best background pony, and that can make her hard to write. But I thought, isn't that part of this story's premise? It'll be fine.
With the full benefit of hindsight, I deeply, deeply underestimated how much WandererD hates Applehorse. Because as this story quickly makes clear, the only way he could figure out how to make her more important than Twilight involves a giant cult proclaiming Applejack the chosen hero, and Twilight the chosen hero's full-time buttmonkey.
No, really. I think that's what some of the long Nahautl names translate to.
This premise is simultaneously the story's strength and it's weakness. The island of Iluikatliltik is a silly place, full of cultists who build Applehorse statues, natives with bizarre religious beliefs, and oddly well stocked bars. It's a setting that is well set up for levity, and it's zany nature serves to set up a lot of Monty-Python-esq jokes, or just good old Saturday Morning Cartoon humor. But at the same time, it is also very obviously a massive contrivance to justify Applejack being important and Twilight being jealous. AJ succeeds through no merit of her own, while Twilight is continually demeaned and insulted for no more reason than prophesy says so. Twilight's jealousy often comes across more as anger at being mistreated, and it's hard not to empathize with her.
I won't spoil the ending except to say that it's like the rest of the story, only moreso. It is really quite funny -- probably the funniest moment in the whole story -- but doesn't wrap up the emotional arc in a meaningful way. I laughed, and I had fun, but it left me wanting more.
In the end, viewing this story as a commission, I feel like I didn't get what I wanted, but I did get my money's worth. The story is well scripted and entertaining, and viewed just a short story commission I feel it was very solid. But the reason I picked the premise I did is I loved the idea of WandererD diving deep into Twilight and AJ's relationship. and it appears that ship is not, in fact, his OTP.
Maybe some clop though.
Next commission for WandererD should be an AJ selfcest clopfic with a focus on heartwarming romance?
4579557
Is... is making that mistake racist?
Am I racist now?
Actually, I really like Applejack! Granted, she's still not the easiest character to write just because it's hard to write her as "country" without turning her into a hick, and stubborn without being a complete idiot. Heck, sometimes even the actual show writers have trouble with that.
Just the same, "best background pony" or not, I love that damn applehorse.
Either way, I might have to give that story a look. I like some silly comedy every so often.
4579563 Like I've told Jaxie, I don't hate her... or hate writing her... I just struggle because to me she's very fulfilled overall.
4579560 Nah.
4579560 4579577
WD40's right. If anything, you were probably already a racist, just like the rest of us.
4579557
4579560
Man, Nahuatl and Hawaiian aren't even close :D
Personally I prefer Apple Bloom over Applejack, but that is just my slight preference. All apple horses are great in my book. That's why my horse also has an apple on her butt.
I don't know, it might have taken the ridiculous extremes because Twilight doesn't get jealous of other people having the spotlight normally. She had no problem with Trixie. She had no problems with Applejack being the center of the entire towns' attention and given a speech to all of Ponyville during Applebuck season. The only times she had an issue with someone getting all the attention was Cadance/Queen Chrysalis (and that's because it was her brother's attention)* or Rainbow Dash in Mare Do Well and that was more over Dash being an asshole than Dash getting attention.
Or maybe Wanderer D just felt like doing a comedy.
*which combined with human Flash looking like he should be human Shining leads to easy brother complex jokes.
Oh yeah, I kind of forgot this was your commission when I read this story. In fact, I forgot how it ended up being tracked but just continued to read it because I liked where it was going
4579584 Tlajtoli!
4579577
Right. Her goals mostly amount to keeping what she already has, and making sure her family (mostly Apple Bloom) is happy. That doesn't make for the best protagonist for a story about accomplishing things or pursuing (non-romantic) aspirations, absent something negatively upsetting the status quo.
In the first two seasons, there was an edge of financial stress on the Apple family, between the Gala plan and stressing out over the importance of cider season, but since then that's pretty much fallen by the wayside, if not been erased or reversed. That's unfortunate, because it provided a built-in source of challenges that just aren't present to the same degree since.
4579806
If you didn't somehow include at least one excerpt of a Nezahualcóyotl poem, I'll be irrationally mad.