Ponies Give Me Hope

by Kuyashii

16 Epilogue

“Once I reopen the portal, I cannot predict how long it will be stable. It’s likely to only remain open for a few minutes,” Twilight informed me.

We stood in the field where I had first appeared in Equestria. Beside us, the other five Elements of Harmony and the two sisters waited to say goodbye. After the last night's celebration, I decided that it was time for me to return home. It wasn’t an easy decision; I had always found goodbyes difficult.

We set off on one last patrol together, back to where it all began. The rest of the ponies were back at the outpost, packing up what few possessions they had carried out of New Ponyville and preparing for what would hopefully be the final leg of their journey.

Twilight looked to me, waiting for the signal that I was ready to leave.

I turned to each of the Elements, exchanging hoof bumps and hugs. When I got to Pinkie, I embraced her for an especially long time. She seemed content to hug me back without understanding why I was so emotional.

As I reached Derpy and Lily, they rushed me together and threw their hooves around me. I barely managed to encircle them with my arms. I didn’t know what to say, so I silently held them as they buried their faces in my shoulders.

“We’ll miss you,” Derpy whispered. Lily squeezed me tighter.

“Brother,” Derpy added.

I froze, eyes wide. Looking down, I saw them both smiling back at me.

“We decided that you had earned the title of ‘honorary brother’, for all that you’ve done,” Lily explained. “Thank you, for everything.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, and neither could Derpy or Lily. I squeezed them both as closely to me as I could.

“You have no idea how much that means to me.”

I stepped back, wiping my cheeks. “The honor is mine, sisters.”

They each wrapped a hoof around one another, tears sparkling on their faces.

I walked over to Twilight. “I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“This isn’t goodbye,” Twilight reassured me. “It’s just goodbye until next time.”

I smiled, and hugged her as well. “Until next time, then.”

When she let go, I squared my shoulders and nodded. She bowed her head, her horn glowing, and sent out a pulse which stopped just in front of me. An oval shaped doorway between worlds appeared, swirling with prismatic radiance. I reached out toward it, and once my hand contacted the edge of the portal, I felt it drawing me in. I turned to wave to the ponies with my free hand as I let it pull me across the threshold.

It seemed like no time had passed at all before I found myself on my back at the base of the horse statue in the park, still wearing my bloodstained sweats. I quickly made my way back to my apartment to change, lest I attract any unwanted attention.

I surprised my parents with a phone call that night. We talked for hours, catching up with each other. I left the ponies out of it, but my parents still noticed the change in my personality. I asked if they wanted to meet up for dinner some night that week, and they happily accepted.

I started spending more time at the park, jogging down there and finding a nice shady spot to sit and think for hours. I found another job which would allow me to work from home, developing web content for a locally based company. It was a breath of fresh air to be doing something I loved for a change.

On one of my jogs, I found a blonde woman sitting on a bench, completely lost in the novel on her lap.

“What book is that,” I asked. “It’s been a while since I’ve read something good.”

“Oh, it’s an older story by one of my favorite fantasy authors.” She seemed surprised, but welcomed the friendly conversation. Rather than sitting alone and thinking that day, I talked with her for hours before asking if she would like to meet me for coffee sometime. She smiled shyly and gave me her number.

“I’m Max, by the way.”

“Lily,” she replied, extending her hand.

We’ve been dating for several months now. Lily has a younger sister who’s still in high school, with beautiful eyes that tend to wander in an oddly familiar way. Her sister often goes by the nickname “Ditzy”, though Lily definitely wields it as a term of endearment, and Ditzy owns it anyways. This weekend, we’ve got tickets to go and see the finals for a Battle of the Bands at Ditzy’s school. It feels good to be doing things with people again.

I frequently find my mind drifting, lost in daydreams about the ponies back in Equestria—wondering how they’re doing, and whether they found what they were looking for. I often head back to the statue and run my hands along the smooth concrete base in the hopes of finding the portal again. Nothing yet, but I remain optimistic.

Those ponies gave me hope for my future, and the courage to seize the opportunity for a fresh start.

I couldn’t be happier.

Author's Note:

Thanks for joining me for the journey! I sincerely hope you enjoyed it =)

Comments

[dark_zero]

ok but the ponies got a new home

but that happened with dissonance, princesses, discord ???????????

equestria will be under the reign of dissonance ???????????

I feel that many loose ends left unresolved

[Kuyashii]

5254589

Sure sounds like there might be enough content for another story or two, huh?

I was mainly concerned with Max's personal journey in PGMH, which I hope was resolved in a satisfactory fashion.

[Kuyashii]

5448093
Glad you're enjoying it!

[Simon_oSullivan]

Greetings and welcome to one of our reviews. I am Simon o’Sullivan, and this is my beard, appropriately called Beard. Here are our thoughts on your story.

Before starting, I would like to apologize for how long this has taken; holiday festivities combined with my training/studying for aptitude tests I’m preparing myself for have become a concoction that haven’t allowed me to focus on much. With that out of the way, let’s start with this.

There wasn’t really much to work with when it came to see what issues should I be looking for, save for the fact that it had been rejected from EQD. With that in mind, I started reading. And I read all of it. This is what I found out. I warn beforehand to anyone who decides to give this a read that OBSCENELY HUGE SPOILERS are coming. Because I’m going to dissect the whole fic and I don't feel like making massive blocks of text into black boxes that everyone's going to read anyways.

The first problem I had with the story was the main character, Max. I have gone through depression myself; I still am, actually, but more on that later, since it’s relevant. This teenager is quite a nuisance for everyone who expects to get a memorable character. Instead, what I was unable to forget was the mental image of this guy crying himself to sleep on the floor while hugging a carton of orange juice. Which out of context is a hilarious thing, you probably weren’t going for that. One of the things that shocked me the most was the moment where he runs away from the grocery store at the sight of the Pinkie Pie toy. I really wanted to know what happened. My Beard and I discussed that maybe this was set in the world of Toy Story, so toys might come back to life, and he had read Cupcakes, so he might fear the toy would hunt him down. Part of me wished that was the real reason. Truth be told, that was quite an overreaction, being more believable the second one he has in the same chapter. And then, just after a few scenes, when he gets the toy, he seems so accepting, just shrugging it off. The same toy that, in the very same chapter that is a couple pages long, made him storm out of a building.

Even when he meets Pinkie Pie as a pony, which is still hard to understand how he goes to Equestria, but that’s a different matter I’ll address later, he slowly gets used to her, little by little, to the point that he even makes jokes with her. Again, I wasn’t really aware of what caused him to be so scared/uncomfortable in front of her. It’s not until close to the end of the fic where you find out what all the fuss was about: a small hint about his late sister, probably a newborn, with a Pinkie Pie toy there. Now… I am going to buy the fact that this is a plausible thing for a character to feel like that about Pinkie Pie existing around him, and part of me still thinks I shouldn’t. Because by that rule of thumb, considering how much of a WoW fan my ex was, I would never be able to get close to an orc ever again. Even if we are willing to accept that, though, it still makes his first reaction ever way too overkill. You might feel nostalgic or sad, depending on the memories that came to mind. If his first reaction is fleeing, that sounds like something different from depression. And even then, most of the time I feel that you try too hard to make us feel bad about him, and it comes to the point that it becomes slightly hilarious. I’m sorry, but hugging an empty orange juice carton to sleep was the funniest thing in the story. Considering the tags of the fic, though, that is not a good sign.

Something that bothered me quite a bit was his lack of knowledge regarding basic mythology. I will buy to a point that he is aware of who Pinkie Pie is, and that sums up all he knows regarding the TV show. But the fact that he has no idea what a Pegasus is? Or a unicorn? That is highly unbelievable. Even if he has never read the story of Belerophon, the hero who, riding the legendary Pegasus, killed the chimera, there are many, MANY portrayals of the Pegasus. Disney’s Hercules, the Tristar logo, and other TV shows, games, paintings, sculptures and books where both pegasi and unicorns appear. I can assure you that you don’t really need to watch MLP to know what those animals are. Sure, you can just call Earth Ponies simply “ponies”, because that’s what they are.

A thing I noticed in the story is that everything serves a way too obvious purpose from the very moment they appear. Everyone aware of what a Chekhov’s Gun is will figure out from the instant you mention the gilded arrow that he will use that knowledge somewhere in the story. Mainly because the lack of personality he has makes obvious that, instead, most stuff that will be shown about him will refer to skills he has. He’s not patient, calculating or any other quality that you would expect from a decent marksman. But he happens to be the long-lost son of the gay union of Hawkeye and Green Arrow (or William Tell and Robin Hood, if you’re not that much of a comic nerd). Because not only he shows to be a more than decent archer (which I can dig, that with the trophy and all), but also a bowyer AND a fletcher. And yes, I know that, when learning archery, you’re given some advice about how to check if the bow is in good condition to use. A totally different thing is to walk into the woods, and in less than one day have yourself built a bow. Just let the ponies give him a bow; they know they exist. There’s a marksmanship competition in the Equestrian Games. Hell, they have arrows with heads that freeze whatever they touch. Let him take those. I could’ve bought it if he had asked for a crossbow, in which case I would’ve called bullshit had he built one himself. You can’t make my Beard happy with that sort of thing. Other examples include the magical pond that heals wounds and such.

AUs are a tough thing to do; the fact that you slap Alternate Universe doesn’t necessarily mean you get a blank check for everything you want and expect the readers to nod and carry on. The main issue regarding this comes from the fact that the situation that has everypony go to these new settlements is barely explained, and only halfway through the story. Something regarding an alliance between Tirek, Chrysalis and… sigh… Dissonance, Discord’s brother. It’s really hard to pull the “unknown relative” thing satisfyingly. Much more if they have an important role in the story, as is the case with him being the main antagonist.

Regarding supporting characters, I have a few things I noticed. One of them being Twilight’s overly joyful mood regardless of the situation. One thing is trying to cheer people up in grim times, and another one is being making jokes and laughing openly at almost everything. It was hard for me to think she was Twilight; most characters don’t really have much of a character, if I am allowed to be redundant, themselves. I know who they are because of the names and descriptions, but that’s about it. Speaking of, let’s talk about Lily.

I have little to nothing against her; it was weird at first to see her patrolling with Twilight and Pinkie Pie, I will admit that. I was never one to believe that ponies that never met or talked on the show shouldn’t know each other in fics, so I was fine regarding this. When it was shown that she was Derpy’s sister. A bit out of nowhere, just like Dissonance. After what has been going so far, though, I will turn a blind eye on it. I fail to sympathize with the character, since the only things we end up knowing about her is that she kicks ass and loves her sister.

The most wtf-inducing thing of the story is the ending. Not the epilogue, no; I mean the ending of it. When they send him back home, when it’s obvious he’s still needed. They did NOT win the war; they did not defeat the threats. Dissonance is still out there, as well as Tirek and Chrysalis, who, by the way, we never actually see in the story save for when they’re mentioned. It is already irking enough that Twilight wastes time while in the middle of a war for survival to look for a spell to send Max back. Especially after he has proven to be a competent warrior against their enemies. And then we have Derpy calling him “brother”. Not brother-in-arms, like soldiers in the same battalion or anything like that. Aside from being a way to shoehorn Max’s “cure”, so to speak, this really serves no purpose and is a way too hard to believe scenario. I have called friends “brothers” after over a decade of time and anecdotes together; that word is way too powerful to give it away like that. “My hero” would’ve made more sense, but I see where you were going here; I insist on that is out of place, and a bit creepy.

The epilogue really serves no purpose, and ruins whatever the story could have as an ending. Max is super-duper happy, even calling his parents, the same ones who would apparently disown him if he got fired. And then he meets a girl name Lily, just like the mare he befriended and felt bonded with because of the little sister thing. Okay, I will admit that it would’ve been much harder to believe if, instead of Lily, the mare’s name was Honeypuff, Sugar Treat or any other name like that. Still, it serves no real purpose aside from saying how awesome his life is now, all while the other ponies are probably getting obliterated by Dissonance’s forces or the draconequus himself. And Tirek. And Chrysalis. All probably dead or dying, but who cares? Max is happy and non-depressed anymore!

If I had to give reasons why the story wasn’t approved, the main one will have to be the dullness and predictability of the story; it’s not really hard to figure out what’s going to happen, and that might pull many readers away. Sometimes that’s not that much of a problem, because even if we know what’s going to happen, it’s HOW it will happen what might keep our attention. Chapters are short, which usually come with fast-paced storytelling, which is rare here; the slow flow, usually found in fics with stories with larger word count, combined with small chapters, makes for a story with little room for events to take place. There’s a lot of telliness; we’re told the emotions characters are feeling instead of having body language give it away. If you want to work on it to make it worthy of EQD or not is up to you. If you are willing, there is a lot of work to do, as in, probably rewrite the whole thing from scratch.

Even with all that, you seem to have touched quite a few hearts with it, which is no small feat. So don’t my words discourage you. With that said, keep on writing and up the good work.

Simon o’Sullivan and Beard, WRITE’s Manly Reviewers of Manly Fics, signing out.

[Kuyashii]

5497272
Thank you for your review! I really appreciate you taking the time to read the story =)
Hopefully, as I have established characters and an ongoing conflict to work with, I can make good on leveraging your feedback in the sequel. I've improved significantly in my understanding of writing theory and mechanics since I started this story, nearly three years ago, and I'm excited to venture back into my little slice of Equestria with all the perspectives I've gained on my own writing!

At the end of the day though, like you said, I was given the rare privilege of touching hearts with my first venture into fan-fiction. I'm cautiously optimistic that the sequel will be a worthy follow-up, and an better story if I can manage it. ;)

[CrystalMoon884]

I loved this!!!!!!!!! Sequel?

[AstralFlare42]

10365746
Did you notice that I said a rhyme that time?

[Kuyashii]

10365957
Ah haha, no I didn't. It was so subtle and natural that I missed it. Well done!

[AstralFlare42]

10367010
Thanks.