Ok this chapter made me ill. I hate bad ends like this. I am not saying its bad, far from it, but I had to reread the true ending just to feel better about myself. Foe stories always do that to me. It's a guilty pleasure. I don't care or endorse the themes but the compelling writing pushes me through.

he could swear that what he saw was the slight glimpse of a dim rainbow.

… At the risk of sounding dumb, I don’t get it.

And like that, the bruised apples saga has come to an end.

What a ride.

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Honestly I expected this chapter to be much darker, with both AppleJack and Big Mack being blanked and switched then blanked respectively Just to add to the crushing nobody good can ever win theme of Foe.

Huh. So that's what would have happened. I look forward to your other chapters in other stories.

there's a tl;dr at the bottom

This chapter gave me some feelings. Some very strong feelings I've been meaning to talk about. Some feelings that left my soul looking like this.

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I kept meaning to write something about this. Try and get some closure for this damned thing. I kept getting distracted by other events, leaving this ending to nag at my brain for close to a week. But no more! I'm finally going to say what I've wanted to say since reading this chapter all those days ago! And my thesis statement is as follows:

This ending is BAD!

I don't just mean in the "downing ending" sense, or the "you insulted the mother of the best girl in this dating sim so now you get the sad cut scene" sense. I mean this is a poor ending to this story. As you said yourself Schorl, this story just reinforces the same old status quo. Nothing changed and nothing that happened in the story mattered. In fact, the only thing that DID change is making the status quo MORE FIXED! Now Applejack can never be a red collar at all. What the shit is this? This cuts off a possible angle for new stories and art in the setting. It could have lead to some interesting stuff, but noooooo, the status quo is GOD!

And not only is this ending narratively unsatisfying, it's emotionally unsatisfying. I don't think I really have to explain this, but I've come this far, and I'm not stopping now. Characters we've been with, who have been fighting and clawing to make some kind of positive change for themselves, are brought low. Not only are they brought low, but they're brought low from an already low point. The GGG is a harsh and draining time for everyone we've come to love over the last 300,000 words. This is perhaps the hardest point of Applejack's life so far. Not only taking all the abuse and pain and humiliation, but having to pretend to like it. Do we get some kind of catharsis at the end? A bit of levity to help us carry on? Nope. They just dig that hole deeper.

With all of this said, I think it's important that I say something else. I like this story a lot.

Putting why you like something into words is often harder than putting something you dislike into words (at least for me), but I'm going to try and give Bruised Apples it's due. Bruised Apples is, far and away, the best story written in the Fall of Equestria setting. I admit I haven't read a whole lot of Fall work, but I'm willing to put money on this statement. I will stand by it to the end. There are two big reasons behind this. The first is that it's the first story to treat itself like a proper story. It has character development, internal conflict, all the things that make 300,000 words worth reading. This is a piece of literature, and it deserves respect.

The second is that it strips off the mask of setting and let's us see all the gooy squishy bits inside. This story focuses a lot on the suffering of the Fall-verse. The pain, the anguish, the monotony. There's nothing but suffering that happens for no discernible reason, and Bruised Apples doesn't shy away from this. It pulls back the curtain and forces you to look at, shining a great big deconstructing spotlight on the world. What makes it truly brilliant is how all the deconstruction flew right under the radar. I really didn't see the true ending coming. Even though it was set up for so long, even though Schorl spent so much time pointing out every single flaw with the caribou and their new world order, it managed to avoid popping up on my screen.

Funny story, I had actually fallen well behind on the story close to the end. When I noticed that the epilogue had been uploaded, I realized I needed to catch up. Before I did though, something caught my eye. A chapter with zero words, simply titled "Explanation." Curiosity got the better of me. How could it not have? So I skimmed it quickly, and found out shit was gonna go down. I read the last several chapters knowing what was going to happen, and even though I spoiled myself, I got an odd feeling of satisfaction while I watched every piece fall into place. Some might argue that the ending is a little too sappy, but I found it to be extremely satisfying, and I'm thankful for it.

Which is a good ending to this long-winded monster of mine. I am thankful. Thankful for this story that provided me with all kinds of emotions over it's length. Be it fear, happiness, despair, or even the occasional bought of arousal. This story entertained me and made me reconsider the Fall universe in a new light. So thank you, Schrol. Thank you for writing this and releasing it to the world to read. I loved reading it, and once again, I will stand by it as the greatest piece of Fall fiction yet to be written.

tl;dr I didn't care for the alternate ending but still think the story is great over all, notice me Schrol-senpai.

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I thought the original ending was much much better.

why did you write this alternate ending ? After everything you've done to make your point ?

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It's not that I wrote this after my little statement. This was something that I wrote before posting my final chapter in order to get everything just right for NCN and get his approval to post my finale. You see, as ridiculous as it might sound, I always went by a specific set of rules when executing my plan. NCN had to approve of everything up to the point of my switch, and even then he had to approve every detail beforehand to make sure that this story fit perfectly with his canon, which it must since he approved it. It was also to give him the chance to see the issues in my story that lead to the demise of his OC (and by now I believe we all can tell that is what Dainn is suppose to be).

So this was just what I presented to him at the time, and seeing as I did put a lot of effort into it, I see no reason to waste that effort by simply deleting it. Plus, it can be used as an example of the kind off stuff NCN will approve so long as it fits his fetish. This ending, while I stand behind it as a piece of my work, is by no means "good". It goes down a route that really doesn't make sense when it comes down to it, not when you think about Mac's motivations or Dainn's limited personality (NCN himself said that what AJ did was practically unforgivable), and it really proves once and for all that Twilight is not in any way the character from the show, because if there was anything in the FoE version of the character, then she should have some qualms in her friend being physically tortured by pressing red hot metal against her flesh.

To put it simply, I made it to further place NCN in my trap, cement some of my assumptions as fact, and fulfill my promise to NCN that I would make a complete story for him. Even if I changed the ending at the last moment, this was the ending he received, and thus I kept my word to an extent that I was satisfied with.

I feel like the original ending was snappier.

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i understand. But if you still wanted to present it, you could have make this chapter in a different story, and put it elswhere (in the non-canon stories would have been an magnificent middle finger). Having it as the end does remove a bit of your story's punchline.

What does it mean? That final paragraph. Why is aj's red collar shining with a dim rainbow?

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The alternate ending was alluding that the collar had in some way became a twisted version of the key for the rainbow power. Had I continued with this version, the idea was that such keys could have been obtained from each element of harmony.

Basically the first 3/4th’s of the chapter is stuff that we likely already read if we saw the first ending. You should have just cut out that part and just started at the change and make this a 10,000 word chapter instead of making us search through 40,000 words to find out for ourselves where we can skip.

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Sorry about that, but I did give instructions in the author's notes on how to get around that. CTRL + F is your friend. The intent of keeping all that text there was for the sake of people who would rather read this version over the real ending.

Definitely the best ending.

This story follows Applejack and Big Mac's new lives in the Fall of Equestria universe and was canon within the primary Fall of Equestria universe at one point, though it can still be canon to you if you want it to be.

What do you mean by that?

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I was, at one point, an 'official' writer for Fall of Equestria. After a... dispute with the one commissioning the stories and images, I was removed from the project. However, shortly after the project self destructed cause getting rid of me also got rid of the only person consistently working on the stories, and dealt a blow to the setting that it could never recover from. In the end, read the stories and make up your own canon to this setting, that most people don't care about anymore.