[Second Person Narrative] [Features ponies and Vacuums]
You're trying to tidy up your mess of a house. Unfortunately for you, a certain multi coloured friend of yours is in the way of that.
Just a small one shot fic to brush up on my skills. Written for the fun of it with no real explanation to anything.
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Pft pretty unhappy with this. Will rewrite eventually.
3164801
Question: If you're unhappy with this why did you published?
this was cute
lololololololololololololololollolololololololololololololololololol
Well...
Fahk.
This brings back memories of tormenting my cats with the vacuum cleaner when I was younger
That was brilliant, found it so funny
This reminds me of when I would go over to my aunt's house and torture her chihuahuas with the vacuum cleaner.
now that is funny
3164801
You do not remove it, or you be so dead as well
but this was adorable short, up and faved 
Just kidding
Awesome story! You deserve a fave for this.
Cutie
*You're
3164882 Because I needed feedback and my proofreaders are too much of a b*tch to tell me that my story sucks :3
A really cute fic, well done.
3166618 No, no, it's pretty bad actually. Really needs a rewrite.
oh just you wait dashie till he gets A HANDHELD vaccum cleaner
3165414 haha i still do that, she gets all bushy tailed and her ears go back, it's well funny xD
This is so funny XD
Just wait til' she gets a load of one of these!! XD
img.directindustry.com/images_di/photo-g/outdoor-litter-vacuum-cleaner-103047-3678399.jpg
She gonna have a heart attack!!
3165414 dude, put plastic wrap on its tail. It'll explode.
3168154>>3167604>>3165414 You guys are just plain mean
3164801
Ears twice. I'll help sir! You have my axe.
Well. THAT happened.
When I saw that picture, I knew it would be made into a fic.
And while this one is VERY rough... I liked it.
Well done.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3168222 Calling this VERY rough would be an understatement.
CMCs used a vacuum cleaner to suck the color off a rainbow. Wonder what that'd do to Dash. O_O
Also, I scrolled past this at least twice thinking that "Suck It, Dash" was going to be a bad clopfic.
3169222 puns
Hmm, CMC use a vacuum on Rainbow?
Ideaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
3168189 yes I am, a hilarious psychopathic evil toad who attacks kittens. While listening to jazz.
A lot of grammar/spelling errors but still a fun one-shot regardless. Green thumb for you.
I kinda wish my dog was scared of vacuums. But no, he sleeps on the floor, and then when I have to vacuum that part of the floor, he gets up, and sleeps on the part I just cleaned! he's such a doge...
3174910 More or less, yea.
Oooooor I might turn this into a very weird clopfic. Depends if I'm drunk or not.
3173256 That kinda sounds like me. Everymorning my parents kinda just walk in and place Roomba on the floor and activate him and I just move my things to wherevers comfortable.
3172105 give it a downvote
it'll make me feel better
I don't usually like Human fics, but this made me lol so hard that I think I broke something
.
... I approve of the Achievement Hunter shoutout.
Oh yeah, and the story was pretty cute as well!
3183626 Achievement Hunter shoutout?
3184275
I guess technically it's a Rage Quit shoutout, but Michael and Rage Quit are part of Achievement Hunter so I thought I'd just say that!
3168143
.-.
3184897 Oh yea
I thought of someone who would swear a lot and immediately thought of Micheal
That's Rainbow Abuse ya know. your lucky a guard isn't around
wow that was hilarious. soo mean but soo funny and soo cute. my dog defiantly acts the same way when we vacuum so I have a perfectly clear image of Rainbow running away scared.
when it became unplugged, I figured that's what would happened but I also kinda hoped Twi would appear seeing RD getting tormented and unplug it and they would get payback
this was the one thing that did truly catch my eye and bug me enough to mention it
Great little one-shot you got here!
Really fun, it reminds me of how our current family dog is afraid of brooms and freaks out at them.
Nice fun and adorable concept you used here!
I like that you avoided the saccharine "My Little Dashie" feel but rather, gave Dash a.....dash of "Scumbag Steve".
RIP That dude's car.
*pours one out*
3486545 I still don't understand why this thing is so popular. Personally, I hate it. The ending seems a tad bit... off.
3486663
Probably because its amusing to see an intelligent (in that she knows how to do taxes and understands abstract concepts) get tormented and react in the same manner as our dogs and cats do.
Also the cover picture is really cute!
In addition the world building that establishes how they met is funny.
TL:DR version: It amuses us since it reminds us pet lovers of our pets' reactions to cleaning devices.
3487279 well, alright then.
I'm actually still debating if I wanna write the other five or not.
3487617
Hopefully I was helpful.
"Other five"?
3488777 nothing
3492043
I'll have my eye on you.
I'll start off by saying that I don't really like HiE/PiE(PoE?) stories. My basis for what counts as a good story in general precludes them. Despite that, I kind of liked this story anyway. The cover art is amusing and somewhat adorable, and this story does a fine job or putting the story to that picture.
The story was easy to read. Any errors in grammar and such were minor and didn't distract me from the story.
In terms of overall story-length, the idea fit sort of within the wordcount. While there were a lot of details and even a bit of backstory thrown in, they helped set up the main purpose of the story fairly well. A deeper and more thorough analysis might confirm my suspicion that some things could be trimmed off or done a bit more smoothly, but that would be splitting hairs I think. That said, it isn't often that I feel a story should be shorter.
We have a small cast of characters to work with: Rainbow Dash and the human main character. The central idea being explored is Dashie being afraid of a vacuum cleaner in a manner similar to that often seen in pet dogs. Any pet owner can tell you the fearful power these devices have in turning otherwise brave, loyal, and protective companions into timid, quaking balls of adorable. On that merit, the story idea is amusing and shouldn't be poked too deeply into and I'll avoid doing so.
Despite the oddness of the setting and theme, Rainbow manages to be kept fairly well in-character. She's introduced to us by pouncing into the lap (painfully) of her human, bursting onto the scene in an appropriate way. The dialogue between the two feels pretty natural, also despite the setting. I especially liked the line "Pft I AM culture." Even though the explanation that followed was needed for me to understand it. I have to wonder if perhaps there is a better way to deliver that line, but the overall joke is good. Add to that the overall sense of Dash being pleased at being something of a celebrity and I find myself pleased with how she feels and sounds in this story. Even if it isn't flattering, the transformation of her role from Dash to cowering "dog" is all the more striking and appropriate.
The unnamed human of the story provides our eyes for this world. While the story makes absolutely no direct indication to the gender of the protagonist, they come across as masculine in attitude and hobbies. The story is told in second person, so it is understandable that such details are omitted. A lot of the details included in this story build up this character in a natural way. He's clearly a gamer. His attitude towards entertainment takes a central role while other aspects of his life are downplayed greatly. No mention of what kind of job he has is made, friends and family aren't mentioned, and no hobbies outside of video games and TV are brought up. The fact that his car was destroyed is something of a minor detail contrasted by the destruction of his "Roomba" (which, if I understand correctly, is a minor robot floor-cleaning machine) plays a bigger overall role in the story. The details of the cleaning supply closet also lend to the overall image of what is and isn't important to him. The presentation of him is, as I said, fairly natural. This is much better than the typical "Here is my human OC, and this is what he is wearing, etc" that I typically see.
In addition to his general lifestyle, we also get to see that he is slightly dickish. This is rather necessary for him in his role of wielder of the vacuum against Rainbow Dash, so it isn't a flaw of the story in the slightest. He isn't over-the-top villainous dickish, but casually interested in entertainment rather than politeness kind of dickish. Despite the fact that she can talk, it feels like he thinks of Rainbow Dash as more of a pet than as a person. In reflection to that, Rainbow does act a bit more like a child/pet than a mature adult in the story, so the overall dynamic doesn't feel wrong.
So on to the things that are flaws in the story.
First and foremost, second person perspective. I'm not male. While I do enjoy the occasional video game and have been much more immersed in them in the past than I currently am, the games listed in the story are either totally unfamiliar to me or completely uninteresting to me. I've never even heard of a "Roomba" before, and if I encountered Rainbow Dash as presented in this story and started living together with her, I would have a completely different dynamic. In other words, I'm nothing like the protagonist of this story, and the use of "you" and the overall use of the second person is incredibly off-putting. It is jarring and pretentious of a story to tell me what it is I am supposedly doing. Second person may work for games like Skyrim where you are intentionally adopting a character, but the narration and dialogue in those stories is careful about being much more neutral, and by enhancing immersion by allowing you input into the story. While this fic does some things right, the second person perspective ends up being more of a copout intended to either get away with less detail, force better immersion, or both. It fails to do either.
As mentioned above, several items in the story are foreign to me. I can understand through context what a "Roomba" is, for example, and I can make guesses about what various video games mentioned are, but they fail to provide the kind of detail they're clearly intended to provide due to my lack of familiarity. While the way the protagonist is depicted as feeling towards the game gives a lot of insight about him being a gamer, those other details as to what kind of gamer he is fall short. Other references like Michael "Rage Quit" Jones and "Pawn Stars" were similarly lost on me. I could understand them through context, but they stood out to me as unfamiliar things that I had to spend a few seconds puzzling over instead of enjoying the story. Not the worst use of symbolism I've seen, but reliance on "Name Brand recognition" is incredibly poor storytelling.
Lastly, this story seems to have this certain level of awareness about it that doesn't seem quite right. The main point of the story is to be a silly little random scene where a human wields a vacuum against Dashie, making her cower cutely. There is a fair amount of background and setup packed into the story. I can't say the story would be better with that setup removed, but a lot of that setup raises some odd questions. Why did Rainbow Dash fall from the sky into this world? The human at one point casually dismisses the idea of taking her to the vet for fear of scientists stealing her to study as an alien. How is he keeping her hidden from everyone to continue to prevent this? His car was destroyed and it went up in flames, but he fled the scene. Was there no police investigation? Did insurance take care of the issue? Why is the loss of his car not rather important in his mind? How is Rainbow Dash dealing with the loss of her friends and entire world? How is she dealing with being hidden away from what is apparently a hostile world, and having to depend on this guy? We shouldn't poke too deeply at these things because of what this story is about, but the issues are still presented by this story. A lot of these things seem rather common as problems in a Pony on Earth story, and this one doesn't really dodge them as well as it should I think. It instead toys with them to the distraction of the main humor.
In the end this is a mildly amusing story. It doesn't feel like a waste of time like many other stories are, but it could stand some improvement. I'm not sure if it is possible for this idea to become great, but the execution could be done better.
3985078 tank chu for the input
Like I said, it was written to brush up on my (non-existent) skills. No backstory whatsoever, just a small scene.
I can understand the unfamiliarity with most of the items that I've mentioned here. I'll keep that in mind.