'Everypony Loves Rainbow' followup · 4:37pm Nov 28th, 2012
This one is gonna take a while.
I'm going to preface this followup with a little disclaimer. There are three other fanfictions out there that bear an incredible resemblance to ELR. I can honestly swear that I had not heard of these stories before writing ELR, so I certainly 'didn't steal their ideas', but the fact that they bear such resemblance means I almost feel guilty regardless. If you love the idea of ELR and want to read more in a similar vein, I suggest checking these out:
>...But The Kitchen Sink: A story that ships Rainbow with—what else?—a sink.
(As a side note: if anyone has any artistic skills and wants to do an image of the life-cycle of the sink in my story... I would hug you so hard that your colon would pop out of your backside.)
>AAAAAAAAAAAAArientation: A story in which Braeburn turns every stallion in Ponyville gay.
>Everypony Loves Dash: A story which is a story, and is also supposed to have a catharsis.
Now that that's out of the way, we can begin.
ELR came from a single idea that made me chuckle a little one night: "Wow, there's a lot of Rainbow Dash shipping in this community. Hah, wouldn't it be funny if there was an Equestria where all these ships came together, and Rainbow had to deal with that all the time?"
And then I wrote it.
It took a lot longer than I expected to get this finished. Not really sure why, but about halfway through I just... lost interest, and stopped altogether. Still, at least I got it done eventually.
A real problem I've faced whilst writing this has been... well, you lot. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed reading your comments, but I did have a real issue coming towards the end of this. You see, the entire point of this fic was to be a day-in-the-life of a Rainbow Dash in a world which was, in the Equestria Daily prereader's own words, "run by crazed Dash shippers". There was never meant to be an actual ending, per se; we wake up at the beginning of one day out of many with RD, and we end as she's going to bed. No further than a single, particularly eventful day.There's no particular start to this issue for the reader, and there would never be an ending to it.
Could I have had a resolution in there? Of course. I had plenty of ideas for it: having it all be a great big incredibly cruel prank, or some random choas magic from Discord, or a love potion, or even Cadence; heck, I even had one where Rainbow confronted the reader, to go for some real fourth-wall breaking. Ultimately though, it all came back to the same point: I didn't want that ending for my story. I wanted my day-in-the-life, with no real ending in sight.
It was pretty damn clear that that wasn't what other people wanted from my story, though. They wanted a catharsis, and I wasn't prepared to give it. I'd tried my best to make it clear that wasn't going to happen, without deliberately slapping it across the reader's face: the chapter titles are meant to be something you'd find on a day planner of Dash's, and there are multiple times that the fact that this is a story about brony over-shipping is eluded to so ham-handedly that i'm almost ashamed of it.
Gee, this feels familiar. It's almost as if I already said all of this.
Heck, the whole point of the Pinkie Pie chapter was to show that, hey, Dash can't solve this. She's tried, she's gone right to the epicentre, and she's come out with nothing she can act on. This is something she can't stop, so you know what? She's gonna live her life anyway. She's Rainbow Dash, she's gonna take what she wants from life no matter how hard it is to get it to give it up. She's just that awesome.
Still, I did feel like throwing in an epilogue that related it all back to the 'real Equestria', if you like. As far as I'm concerned, it covers everything (and for anyone who says it doesn't because she must have to be mishearing ponies and dreaming up entire scenarios like being tied up by the twins: I challenge you to tell me that you've never remembered something completely differently to everyone else who was there. Now add on a huge amount of ego, and you're at Dash's level.), and links it together moderately competently. It's not my preferred ending, but I found it funny enough to share with you all, and I had hoped it would give the people who wanted an actual ending so badly something that could at least answer some questions.
Looking back, maybe I should have put an "alternate universe" tag on this story. I don't think it really suits it, but it might make my original point with this story clearer.
By the way, I'm not ragging on at shipping at all. Hell, take a look at my favourites; most of them are at least partially shipfics. I really do enjoy reading them. I just had a silly idea to build a world around the common view that Rainbow Dash has been shipped with absolutely everyone possible.
For all its ups and downs, I had a huge heap of fun writing this. That's pretty much what I write for; my own enjoyment. If you guys get some enjoyment out of what I write as well, then that really just makes my day. If you don't, then that's too bad. Still, there's plenty of other stuff out there that you can look at, and almost all of it is better than what I can cobble together.
A few thank-you's are required now. Firstly, thanks to Pascoite, for pre-reading the first three chapters, and helping me actually get a grip on grammar instead of just pretending to know what I'm doing with it. Secondly, thanks to AzuNyan, for pre-reading up to chapter four (regardless of how slowly you did it at times! :D). Thirdly, thanks to Silent, for pre-reading the rest of it—and doing it so damn quickly, too. Seriously, man, do you not have anything better to do than correct my grammatical errors?
Fourthly, big thanks to Laberoon for the artwork on this piece, and for all the artwork you do for me for no reason that I can fathom, and for sticking around for me to bounce ideas off at times.
(By the way, he and I do a bi-weekly pony webcomic that you're welcome to take a look at if you want some more visual yucks.)
And finally, thanks to you guys, for sticking around long enough to read this. ELR is the longest thing I have ever written, and one of the things i'm most proud of writing. I hope you all enjoyed the ride as much as I did.
Well, that's it for ELR. Moving forward, I'm thinking about going a little more dramatic and long-winded with a more serious fic. Will I succeed? Only time will tell, my friends...
There's no Dash/Tank shipping.
Fimfiction, I am disappoint.
By allusions, i should answer.
So, you are meaning to say that Dash is remembering being tied up instead of being in a "‘Hurray You’re Back To Normal And Now We Can Be Bestest Friends Forever Again’ party!”? Even for all the quirks of Pinkie Pie, it's still to much of a stretch. I can deal with Dash misshearing things and missunderstanding the whole attention she is recieving. But the part with Pinkie being all a case of "bad memory" is something i just can't see happening.
*sigh*
Look, if you wanna roll with that is OK, since is your story. I just don't like how you wrapped it up. It was a fun ride, but the ending killed it.
And don't let my opinion kill your mood. A bad ending don't make you a bad writter: is just that i didn't like how this one ended, that's all.
439976 I'm just as surprised as you are!
440197 Actually I was more thinking that Pinkie, being insane and all, decided it was perfectly sensible to "restrain" RD to stop her from fleeing before Pinkie could say her piece, and then Rainbow, being stuck in her own head, sees it differently. This whole thing happens in first person, after all, so we're all subject to Dash's flawed viewpoint.
Look, someone even did a drawing of this idea.
Well, I don't see Pinkie as a crazy mare. In fact, my vision of Pinkie is more like a mare with a different perception of the world (being the "Pinkie Sense" the most obvious thing, but not the only one). That's why i can't see normal, even for Pinkie, to restrain RD like that. Obviously, all the intentions made by RD could be part of her altered state of mind, but restraining RD was just OOC if you go with the canon (and that's what you wanted in the epilogue, ¿right?)
There's one more. Rainbow Dash Seduces a Watermelon