Unearth

by Undermine

Day 0 (Prologue)

Day 0

My papa is celebrating his birthday! I CAN'T WAIT! I've got my saddlebag all packed and ready to go! I've got a LONG hike ahead of me! Twily was confused why I wanted to go alone and by hoof. That silly little pony! I told her that 1.) My family's house isn't big enough!..and my sis is very, very shy around new ponies (like Fluttershy!) and 2.) I know that trail like it's the left side of my cutie mark! Twilight should have nothing to worry about!

---

"And you're sure about this, Pinkie?" says Twilight.

"Absolutely! I've got my map, steamers, balloons, funny glasses, party cannon, water, and trail mix!"

"Ok, and you're sure you know how to get there?"

"Mhm! I take this path, go straight for a super long time, then take a right, go up the mini-mountain, go down the twisty rocky trail, and arrive at my old house!"

"And when will you get back?"

"Tomorrow morning! If I'm not back by noon then I've probably fallen down a huge, scary hole!"

Twilight chuckles. "Whatever you say, Pinkie. Now be careful, it's been very rainy recently, and I don't want you to slip on anything and hurt yourself."

"Pfft. No biggie! I got my twitcha-twitch to get me ready for any nasty rain!" The Ponyville clock tower strikes four times. "Time to go! Bye-bye, Twily!" Pinkie Pie gives Twilight a big hug and turns toward the path.

Righting herself up after the hug, Twilight calls out to Pinkie, "Wait! Who else have you told about this?"

Pinkie stops briefly before replying, "I've told you. I trust that you'll let anypony where I am when they ask!"

"Alright then. Have fun!"

"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie Pie turns and bounds her way down the trail. Twilight heads back into the library, finally able to get back to sleep.

---

I've been walking for a super-duper long time, but I've finally made it to the base of the mini-mountain! I'd forgotten that the path forks both ways! With no spoons! (I laughed out loud at that one)
I'm in a conundrum, though. I know the route to the right, up the mini-mountain, is shorter but up-hilly and the rocky twisty path down is not very fun, but the path on the left is flater but longer.
I'll have to use my brainy skills to sort out this confuzzling problem
I just remembered! Going up the mini-mountain will get me an amazingly amazing view of the rock farm! It is decided. Up the mini-mountain I go!

---

Twilight walks out of the library to retrive her mail. Ever since Pinkie Pie left, the town has been seemingly quieter than usual.

"Obviously it's because we don't have our energetic pink pony to accompany me as I get the mail", Twilight thinks to herself.

She is about to walk back inside when Rainbow Dash calls out to her from the top balcony of the library, startling her and causing all of her mail to spray out in every direction and flutter to the ground.

"Thanks a lot, Rainbow," she says, grumbling, as she levitates all of the scattered letters and parcels back into a neat stack.

Rainbow Dash, still giggling, responds: "Aw man, you have to admit that I got you good!"

"Yes, well, you did get me good, 'man'. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to-"

"Now waitaminute! I actually wanted to ask you somthing!"

"Yes?"

"Where's Pinkie Pie?"

Twilight sighs, then proceeds to tell what she's told the thirteen other ponies who had asked the same question:

"She's hiking out to her family's rock farm to celebrate her father's birthday, and she's going out alone, and she'll be back by tomorrow morning."

"...that's it?"

"Yup."

"Why alone?"

"I'm not entirely sure. She said something around the lines of their house not being big enough, and that her sisters were very shy...that's all I was able to get out of her."

"Wait wait wait, how come I, or anypony else, wasn't told of this?"

"She came to me early in the morning and said-"

"How early? Because I get up very early, and I'm pretty sure-"

"Owlowiscious was still awake."

"Ooh."

"Anyway, she came to me, bursting through the door, and said something around the lines of 'TWILIGHT I ALMOST FORGOT IT'S MY PAPA'S BIRTHDAY TOMORROW ACTUALLY TODAY NOW AND JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I'M GOING TO LEAVE OK?!'"

"Wow. That was a pretty good impression of her."

"I've been practicing."

"Sooooo, should we be worried about her, like, at all?"

"I don't think we should. She was very confident in herself. She knew where to go, she had everything she needed all packed up, and she even told me that if she wasn't back by noon tomorrow she'd be stuck in a 'huge, scary hole'. Not that I'm concerned that that would ever happen. This is Pinkie Pie we are talking about. She'd probably just bounce right out."

"Ha! Yeah! Or, like, the worst case scenario would be, like, if the hole was filled with chocolate milk, and she'd try to drink it all until she couldn't stand up anymore! Imagine Pinkie trying to hike back with a stomach full of chocolate!"

"Hey, maybe that might be a good thing! Maybe she'll have such a sugar rush that she just flies out of the forest and land right in the middle of Ponyville!"

"Hahahaha!"

The two ponies share a laugh before finally bidding each other farewells. Twilight enters her library and closes the door, and Rainbow Dash hops off the balcony and flies to the nearest cloud for her nap.

---

Oh my GOODNESS! Today was absolutely, super-terrifically AWESOME!

I got see the whole family, even grandma Pie! Limestone and Marble look so grown up and strong now, it brought a tear to my eye! And my parents look just as healthy and old as they did last year!

We did so many fun things today! I got to play some of my favorite games, like Find the Jade in the Slate Stack, Sedimentary Charades, Mylonite Mayhem, A Load of Schist, and Basalt Blasting! My sis Marble actually beat me twice at Mylonite Mayhem, but she was a good sport as always. She is, after all, a gneiss pony! (ZING!)

And at the end of the day, Grama Pie unraveled the cake; a red velvet masterpiece that was shaped and colored like of the inside of raw ruby gemstone. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!

Now everypony's tuckered out and asleep, but I decided to write in this journal again. It's a shame that I'm only going to use for a couple more times. I like reading back what I said! I write funny!

I'm pretty sleepy-weepy, actually. I have to wake up early again tomorrow morning if I want to make it back to Ponyville before noon, like I Pinkie promised. Apparently, according to my sis Limestone, there's a hidden shortcut that cuts through the longer, flater path back home. It's unmarked, though, and I have to find a blueberry bush that looks like a round brilliant cut diamond. Pfft! That won't be hard to find at all!

It's weird being in my old room, in my old bed, in my old house. Makes me wonder why I left.

Wait, did I Pinkie promise? I'll do it now. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye; I'll be back in Ponyville before noon!

Nighty night, journal!

Comments

[joe mother]

She is, after all, a gneiss pony!

Oh, Jesus. How long did it take you to think of that one?

[The Elusive Badgerpony]

Thumbs down for not using Inky and Blinky and instead using those dumb "canon" names

You've really got Pinkie's character nailed down fantastically. She's spastic, but not unintelligent, and the quips she makes are very Pinkie Pie. One of the closest portrayals in fanfic I've seen for a while.

[ShimmerShine]

oh Pinkie my heart is pumping just knowing this will not end well.

[Jioplip]

I'm sorry, but no.

The story does not flow well at all, and no action left any impact on me as a reader.

Further, I felt that Pinkie's character was misrepresented, while she is eccentric and kooky, I feel that you used too much of a creative vocabulary.

Additionally I don't think Pinkie has ever called Twilight 'Twily'.

And finally, I didn't get a feel for Twilight or Rainbow as characters, and resultantly, they felt more like setpieces rather than actual thinking people.

[Undermine]

3007522

I am also sorry, but I have to disagree with you. But, I also want to acknowledge that you do have a point.

(Warning: Wall of text. This will serve not only as a response to your comment but also as a complete dissection of my story. Don't take it personally. I just want to put this out for you and for anybody else and move on to my other stories.)

Does the story have somewhat of an awkward flow? Perhaps. Is there a lack of action? Yes, probably. Are some of the characters off-putting? Maybe.

But I did not intend for this story to be read as a character driven or an action driven story.

Initially this story was going to just be a survival story. The problem was I didn't know how to make Pinkie Pie's predicament exciting (falling down a hole), and I sure wasn't just going to recreate the events of Into the Wild. Then it shifted to something around the lines of survival-based character-driven story, similar to 127 Hours, but the problem was that the story became almost near-identical to the movie, and I wasn't gonna try and be the next Danny Boyle (as genius and inspiring as he may be).

But the story idea remained and I wanted to put it on paper. So I decided to try (notice how I say try) something a bit different. I decided on creating a survival-based character-reaction-driven story. In other words, my main focus of this story wasn't so much about the characters but rather how the characters reacted to a particular situation.

You can make an argument around the lines of "Well, I know that Pinkie/Twilight/Rainbow would never react like that," and you'd probably make a good case out of it. But the truth of the matter, and I realized this halfway through writing the first draft of the story, is that we really don't know how people/ponies will react to certain things. We can imagine how they would react to something, given from the knowledge we have of that person or character, but we are not them. We don't live inside their minds, see what they see, or fear what they secretly fear.

I kept on asking myself "How would they react to this," over and over again, and I couldn't find myself at a single conclusion. "She could've reacted this based on this occasion, but that would contradict how she reacted at this occasion." I had to keep settling down on one of the many reactions I thought of and move on with the story.

So the choices I made for each of the characters' reactions were deliberate, whether or not you may agree with them, and that's what drove my story. Pinkie's fate was decided by a chain reaction of reactions, like a Rube Goldberg contraption.

Could Pinkie have been found earlier? Probably, had Twilight reacted sooner to her disappearance. But she didn't react that way. Did Rainbow really need to yell at Twilight? Probably not, she could've been a bit more reasoning and the whole ordeal could've been over. But she still yelled at her.

Were Pinkie Pie's reactions for the five days she spent in the hole realistic? I dunno. If that's the big complaint that people bring up and expect an honest answer, that's it. I really don't know because I've never been in that situation. I've heard stories of people in that same type of predicament, but they are not cartoon ponies. It's like I don't know Pinkie Pie's character (it's hard to miss). But I mean, how would you or I or Pinkie or anybody else who read this story really react if they had to try to survive five days down a hole not knowing when you'd be rescued? I don't know. We don't know. And I certainly did not, in honesty, know how that pink pony would react.

But I decided to give it a shot. Because fuck it, it's a pony fanfiction.

So, I ended up basing Pinkie's reaction process with the Kübler-Ross model, or more commonly known at the 5 Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness, and Acceptance). With a character as unpredictable as Pinkie Pie, I did have to resort to something that was a bit more predictable and easier to work with. I thought I made this decision clear throughout the chapters (denial in Day 1, anger in Day 2, sadness in Day 3, etc.) but if you, or anybody else who read this, did not pick up on it that is the reason why she reacted like that in her journal entries.

I think that about covers my story. (Shit, that was like writing a positive review for Only God Forgives.)

If something above is a big "no-no" to you, and you wish to point it out for me, I will read through it and will try to look at it from you perspective. But I will not argue with you further over a My Little Pony fanfiction, as good or bad as either of us might look at it. Overall, it boils down to different opinions. I have my own opinion on the story, you have your own opinion on the story, and everyone else has their own opinions on this story. That's that. Hell, this mindset doesn't even have to apply to my story. I read one of the featured stories last week and I thought it was a piece of shit! But I respected the author's intentions, held my tongue, and kept my opinion down. There was nothing wrong with the story for the average reader, it was just the fact that I did not like it. (What story was it? Let's just say I'm not very fond of clopfics...)

So, to wrap it up (fuck! look at that wall of text!) I understand your complaints towards my story, and although I disagree with them I am not going to hold it against you or criticize you for having a different opinion than mine. I respect you, all of you, for having a different opinion and I hope you can respect (not necessarily agree with) my own opinions.

I hope that clears everything up.

Here's a video of a corgi rolling down some stairs.