• Member Since 20th May, 2012
  • offline last seen Dec 31st, 2022

not plu


rip

T

Inspired by the song Happy Ending by Mika.

Golden Harvest farms carrots, is incredibly devoted to her husband, and lives in bubbles.

Written Script writes and travels far too often, but is charismatic and well-liked.

Derpy likes muffins and is legally unfit to take care of her foal.

And then there's Dinky, who (legally) belongs to Golden Harvest and (legally) must visit her mother once a month.

Life is incredibly complex, but it's also profoundly simple.


Featured by the Royal Canterlot Library and Equestria Daily.
Dedicated to Regidar.
Thanks to Zaphod and many others.
Updates every other day.

Chapters (4)
Comments ( 67 )

So, um... how much I gotta pay for this "happy ending" I keep on hearing is so great? :raritywink:

The first thing I notice is that the sentences (even non-dialogue) are short. Choppy. I feel that it really sets a mood of curtness or apathy with the story, which is reflected well in Golden's mood throughout.

The bubbles thing is a little confusing at the moment. I can hazard a guess that it may have something to do with Derpy (Ditzy) and why Golden and Written are taking care of Dinky. Assuming, of course, that you're writing Dinky as Derpy's daughter. The visiting day thing makes me think that Derpy might be in a hospital or otherwise indisposed. Perhaps dead. I'm curious to see what direction you'd take that, if I'm anywhere close to the mark. The bubbles could also just suggest a fragility in Golden, that she feels she's not totally in control of her life and things might go wrong or 'pop' at any moment.

Dinky feels like she has that aura of childhood innocence and purity around her, which sets it in stark contrast with Golden's mood. I feel she may be a little harsh with her thoughts about the filly, but this might again feed into the whole 'loss of control' thing. I like that at the end, she's denying to herself a bit, saying she feels nothing for the foal when the truth is clear.

All in all, this may not have been a story I would pick up immediately upon seeing it (mostly because the genre isn't my typical reading fare), but I'm interested in seeing where the rest of the story goes from here.

It's also sort of inspired by him.

Jesus am I this depressing? :raritydespair:

Nah, I loved it a fuckton. I do think I'll enjoy where this is going. :twilightsmile:

One question: first she wishes that she wasn't there, then she gets upset when Dinky leaves and has visitation? I guess it's just me being dense and all, but that's very polarizing. :unsuresweetie: Ah, such is life.

4032208 Damn, Regi, use more specific pronouns. Or just nouns, I guess.
No, you're not. I meant more of the music thing.

4032224

This is why you never EVER let Pinkie run the Ponyville Spa for a day. :pinkiehappy:

Neverrrrrrr...! :pinkiecrazy:

All things considered, I think Script (or whoever was speaking during that italicized bit, but I assume it's him) is right: Golden is being incredibly selfish. It's fairly obvious it's not easy for her or Script, but imagine how difficult it is for Dinky. She's clearly observant and understanding enough to know she's not living with her real mother and still treats and talks to Golden as if she were her real mother. She's trying, dammit.

I'm still bothered by the situation as a whole. I'm not sure whether my initial guess was right -- that Derpy is in some hospital or mental ward -- or if she's just living away from Dinky. I'm not sure which situation I'd personally prefer to believe, if either.

I agree with Zaph, Golden is a fucking selfish bitch. I mean, you make her an interesting character, but she's still being selfish. I did enjoy this chapter though, even though it was short as hell. :twilightsmile:

Imagine how much worse it is FOR the poor thing IN the psych ward/assisted living complex.

It was so good I blogged about it :trollestia:
But seriously, you have some awesome stuff going on right here. I love the characterization of Carrot Top (it's strange, I always seem to like characters who aren't very nice people/ponies) and the bubble metaphors are great. The whole feel of the story is just generally awesome, and I really like the emotion that all of the characters, even Dinky, have.
Can't wait to see what happens next.

4047627 Thank you so much!
And, in general, I'm glad everyone is so down with my characterization of Golden Harvest. That's what I set out to do, anyway.

Whoops......There goes a great big bubble right the Hay there. Also, any hope that anypony in this story is actually going to have a happy ending. Dinky's innocence just went down the toilet faster than an unwanted pregnancy on prom night, Golden is going to have to spend the rest of her life outside her bubble, WS is going to have to step up and Derpy might as well be dead given what the State did to her.

4048600 Well it is called Happy Ending :trollestia:

4048690
Well, compared to Funky Winkerbean, it's a happy story......

>There's one thing you can't lose
>it's that feel
Tom Waits aside, this was a very powerful chapter. I feel like the story was climbing towards this, and is currently peaking. The climax (lel) if you will. We'll still be riding out that drama orgasm in the next chapter, I can feel, but this...

This is gooood.

4048697 Funky Winkerbean was so fucking confusing

4049012
You'll love the latest outrage. It seems that ABC fired Cindy because she was too oooooooold for HD. Instead of suing them into oblivion, she meekly accepted a demotion to Cleveland despite the fact that there was no way in Tartarus that would happen either. When challenged on his factual errors and lack of concern about same, the arrogant moron author says that he outranks people.

That ending
wasn't fucking ready for that
you nailed the simplicity rule, the less is more thing, perfectly
fuck you
I cried
it was amazing

Damn. That was like a sucker punch to the stomach.

You were trying really, really hard to get us to hate Golden Harvest. She knows what she felt was wrong, but in the end doesn't change at all for it. Didn't learn, didn't grow, and now the road ahead is going to be a million times harder for her.

I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she'll have at least some kind of revelation and not be such a hateable person. That at least she's feel something.

Well worth the read.

She has learned something: to be a more convincing fraud. What I want to know is why they locked Derpy up in the first place......

Well that was a nasty little story.

Damn. This really hit me hard.

Good job.

4355110 Thank you, I really appreciate it.

I understand that some ponies are terrible and Golden Harvest is 1 of them, but ¿why did she agree to raise Dinky?

While I disagree with your head cannon, this was a good read. It was very simple and there is a lot left unsaid but that's not a bad thing. I liked the repeated theme with the bubbles. I haven't read a story about Golden/carrot top before so hearing your take on her character was interesting. Good stuff.

4058882 never cried. I seem unable. Please help with that.

I have a 'fictional characters that I hate' list and I can't decide if I should put Goldie on. If I do, she will be on the bottom. So, should I?

5318297 Eh, it depends on what you find hateable. I'd put her on if I had such a list.

5324216 On the bright side, she is NOWHERE NEAR Neil Klaskovsky. He's my top, and if you wanna know why he's my top look up 'technicolor dom-N-8-ion' or just type in his name (Be warned though, this is NSFW imagine 50 shades of gray but with ponies, it's nasty.) Funny thing is, if you type in his name you get my rage comments. So if you're light hearted ignore this comment.

Wow. This story tells me that Golden is just a rude self absorbed pony. But in time Dinky will realize that Golden doesn't love her and will move on with her life someday become better than her.

4439881
I think Golden Harvest took Dinky in cuz she felt obligated to as Derpy's friend. They were good friends at one point, after all. They talked about Derpy's cutie mark all day in a barn and it was a momentous and memorable occasion.

4060755
Somehow, I think Derpy was locked up because of her flying, although that might be just a small portion of the issue. There's a line about Golden Harvest being cringy at how the tips of Derpy's wings are straight; her primary feathers are clipped so she can't fly. The court must've thought her to be that physically incapable from flying erratically.

She's being given drugs. From the observations Derpy has given, I wonder how much of it is due to the clarity the drugs give.

There's enough clues to paint a dread picture filled with terrifying speculation. How much did Derpy resist? How hard are they on her cuz of this?

4071622
Coming from you, it looks like a compliment :3

6421962
It got a green thumb from me. :ajsmug:

6421962 Her wings are clipped so she doesn't escape, actually. She's locked up for things that are much more mental than physical. But that whole situation does have really dark implications.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Sweet merciful fuck.

Is this implying Written Script is Dinky's father?

I love how cold it is.

This story simply doesn't work in my opinion. Ponies can be selfish but they are not cruel. These ponies are simply cruel.....

And there is another easonf or that. Equestria is a world of emotion. Friendship and lvoe are its greatest magics, while hatred and cruelty and its greatest threats.
This kind of shit would eventually manifest as something beyond anyone's control.

7076709 I generally agree, given the reactions in the comments.

Plum: I really, really don't want to read this story. Although I usually love intense psychological things, I don't want to see Derpy and Dinky under the hoof of cruel ponies. Congrats on making something that would probably hurt me worse than Cupcakes and Rocket to Insanity -- and those stories gave me dissociative episodes for a year and a half!

Compared to the descriptions here, my usual headcanon is pretty tame: Golden Harvest's husband Written Script and roommate Derpy Hooves accidentally found themselves in the same bed in the dark, one drunken Summer Sun's Eve, thus Dinky.

7076851 Less cruel in that they are abusive, but cruel for other reasons.

I feel this story is held back by the question that is Derpy's reason for being in that institution. I understand you're trying to hide it with the vague "because government says so" explanation, but I'm gonna need more than that to be satisfied with the justification.

Other than that, pretty okay story.

7076851 Did you really develop a mental symptom after reading [badly-written / poorly-characterized] fanfiction?

I'm rather surprised at the level of hate that Goldie is getting in the comments. I suppose a lot of people read this and sympathize with Dinky, Derpy and Written Script, and that's not a bad thing, after all, they are all in a less than ideal situation.

Let's take a minute here and sympathize with Golden Harvest. She wants what everyone wants, which is to be happy. It sounds to me like she's felt obligated to do certain things once she reached adulthood, like get married, take in her friend's foal when her friend is marked as mentally incompetent. Golden probably got married and later on took in Dinky because she felt that ponies wouldn't think she was a good pony otherwise ("Aww, he's such a nice guy, are you really going to break his heart?" "Aww, that poor foal! Goldie, you have a stable home in which to raise a foal in, and Derpy hand picked you to do so! You'd be perfect!"). If she went ahead with her 'selfish' desires to have the life she wants, she feels like she would be ostracized. Even if what I just said WASN'T her reasoning, she is a pony, and every pony deserves happiness.

Right now she feels trapped in a loveless marriage, trapped taking care of a foal she doesn't love, and she feels like there's no way out because she built the prison herself, most likely doing so because she thought making those around her happy was more important than making herself happy, and therefore doomed herself to unhappiness. I'm sure when she first took in Dinky, she tried to put on a happy face and tried to make herself love the foal, but I have a feeling that these moments depicted in this fic have been months, if not years in the making. Golden is tired, she can't feel happiness anymore because she's buried in sorrow and hates the life that she feels doomed to live.

You may say "Well, that was her choice to do those things!". Yes, this is true, but if you've ever met someone who has low self esteem, anyone who feels like they are personally responsible for making those around them happy, then you'd understand that that someone feels like they don't have a choice, that they would be selfish to choose to make themselves happy when there are those around them who 'deserve' happiness way more than them.

Was Goldie wrong in taking in Dinky when she felt like she could never love her? Yes, she was wrong to do so, but she probably felt like she couldn't say no. After all, if YOUR best friend had something like this happen to them, and the only other option might be for their kid to go into foster care or maybe to a much less responsible friend, wouldn't you think you might be 'selfish' for saying no in front of your tearful best friend?

In any case, this is a great fic that explores a usually unexplored topic. It's a killer in the feels department. Wonderful job author!

7078240
It's really hard not to see Golden as the one at fault here really. She didn't have to take Dinky in, unless I really missed something. It's her resentment that won't let her move on. It's not likely Dinky hates her, not yet at least, and it's unclear what the source of the problem between her and Script is. For all her complaints, though, it's really Dinky that's getting shortchanged here. She doesn't have a say in anything and to have the pony you look up to clearly imply that she doesn't love you is pretty cold.

Having issues doesn't excuse you, even if it explains some of the problem.

7078267

Oh Dinky is for sure getting a terrible hand dealt to her! Her mom is in an insane asylum, her adoptive mom is cold and unloving, her adoptive dad, though he loves her, isn't around a lot due to his job. I don't deny that Dinky is plenty deserving of people's sympathy. Being sympathetic of Golden doesn't mean the rest of the characters are any less worthy of sympathy.

Why I commented what I did was because it seemed like people were just saying that Golden was just cruel, hateful and cold, which, yes she is, but that doesn't mean that she's those things because she's evil.

I'm not excusing her for being cold, unloving and hateful, I'm just saying that she isn't just a bad or evil pony, that'd be far too black and white. She's hurting to the point that she's gone cold, she feels like no one will ever sympathize with her, that she'll only be labeled as selfish if she tries to be happy, so she lashes out at the world that hurts her. She's in a cage, and unfortunately Dinky represents another lock on her cage door. A self inflicted lock, yes, but a lock all the same.

7078240 I (obviously) think Goldie is not an inherently bad pony, but she's not good either. There's a lot of things she does that you can explain, and for a lot of it one can see where she's coming from. But at the same time, there's a lot that's really inexcusable.
I hate that there tends to be a dichotomy of good and bad in fiction, because that's not how real people work. So this was written, in part, to try to break that dichotomy. So tl;dr: I like how you're analyzing her.
Also, her being in a loveless marriage definitely wasn't intended, so it's an interesting interpretation.

7075657 It's not saying one or the other.

7077260 Simply put, she's crazy. Golden doesn't like facing that fact, so it's super ambiguous and not explained at all in the story, so valid point. But her institutionalization isn't necessarily the same thing as her being declared an unfit mother.

7078267 Yeah Dinky's kind of getting screwed over here. But I think a lot of that depends on how old/mature one considers her to be.

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