Book 1 of the Life in Ponyville series
Moving to a new home can be exiting and frightening. For Sea Breeze, it's usually the latter.
When her parents decide it's time for new stomping grounds, they make the choice to move to Ponyville, home of some of the most exiting, and peculiar, ponies around. Sea Breeze has always been a shy one, with new places making her nervous. But living in the lively little town soon brings her out of her shell, even if it's just a little bit. When she meets a pegasus colt around her age, she quickly builds a close friendship with him, along with his group of friends, soon becoming slightly more than just close friends with the soccer playing colt.
*Note: No actual sex, just lots of romance and maybe some suggestive content. Also,this is a OC centered story. If ya don't like it, don't read it.*
*Note 2: Starting today (Thursday, March 19, 2015) NTBT is going to be slightly edited over the next couple of weeks. Just some formatting and a couple spelling errors. I will be leaving an author's note for each chapter I have edited with the date it was edited. Thank you for your patience and please feel free to go ahead and read it if you like and point out anything you see that needs fixing. I'm here to learn and grow in my writing abilities.*
Cover art done by the awesomely talented BluegrassBrooke! Go check out her work, both art and stories. Thank you so much!
u have a good story in the making here impressive
5467545 Thanks!
5467910 i found no grammar errors either
5467982 That's a relief. I'm a little crazy about grammar. Both my sister and brother have speech/grammar problems and I'm constantly correcting them and showing them the right way to say and write things.
Liking the story so far, just discovered it today. I noticed a slight hiccup you have with your writing, I thought you might have noticed it while posting this chapter. You say things like "the pegasus' face", a quick reminder from English class for you, when a name of a character or item ends with S, like the name Regis or word pegasus, you express something as belonging to them by putting an S after the apostrophe. So you express by writing it by saying things like, 'Regis's hand' or 'the pegasus's wing'. It's a minor error, but you keep making it.
5500590 I was taught to just end with an apostrophe when there is a S at the end of the word. You can use both ways, but this is how I was taught and to me it looks better
5500740 I was taught you only do that if the ending S is used to make a word plural, so it looks a little off
5500765 That's fine. I have several family members and friends who do it the way you say, so I understand how it can look a little off.
This was a sweet chapter.
One thing you may want to work on is spacing out each paragraph as you make them.
When people read, they usually want for the lines to be spaced, so it's easier to follow and pick up where they left off just in case they take a break.
Also, this first chapter kind of zoomed past me, and I'm not the one to complain about pacing, but it is an essential part of writing, and must be looked after with the utmost care. As for the plot and characters, they seem pretty solid at this point.
5694391 Thanks for the feedback. I am planning on going back over this book and the side story and edit/slightly rewrite them after I finish book 2. I greatly appreciate your help!
A classic Meet Cute!
Ooh, somepony's smitten ...
You know, given the most instinctive position for equoid mating, that line is probably even more erotically-suggestive (intentionally or intentionally) among the Ponies than among Humans.
I'm guessing Amethyst Rose is Sea Breeze's mother, but that's not entirely obvious in the conversation between her and Pinkie PIe when she is introduced by name. Likewise, you've only given her father's name by implication as "Bass," which is probably only part of his name. These are not real problems, as this is only the first chapter of a series of stories about these characters. Just mentioning it from the POV of someone starting to read these.
You get many points for good OC usage.
I'm guessing that this story takes place at some point in early Season Five? YOH 1505 by my "long" chronology, which with Sea Breeze around 16-17 years old, which means she's almost a mare full-grown.
Heh, that's a nice one -- making Sea Breeze's mother the author of exactly the sort of romance fiction Rarity likes to read. This is a good way of setting up a way in which a member of the Mane Six plausibly admires an OC in a way which does not at all detract from the Mane Six's super-heroic status. You're also showing that you realize there's a lot more to Equestrian cultural life than super-powered battles against demons and evil conquerors. Well done.
Given that she's canonically-beautiful to high fashion model levels and a national heroine, I can see why the 13-year-old Lightning is in utter romantic awe of her.
It's both funny and sad that right after Sea Breeze is annoyed by her brother's being smitten by Fluttershy, she herself is utterly-overawed by AJ and Dashie. My wife has social anxiety, so I'm very familiar what that can look like from the outside.
Ah, nice to see Thunder Bolt again.
TYPO
There is a major formatting problem in this story between AJ's "Howdy there" and "Still, Ah feel responsible for it," in that you neither space nor indent to indicate your paragraph breaks, thus inadvertently creating a Wall of Text. I'm guessing this happened at some point in your cut-and-paste from word processor to FIMFiction text edtior. You might want to fix it, as it looks bad and it's a pure formatting problem, as far as I can tell.
Angus, of course, has a natural advantage in this respect.
There's a possible continuity problem here: near the start of A Canterlot Wedding, Twilight Sparkle claims to have had no good friends apart from her brother Shining Armor. On the other hand, she in the very same song then contradicts herself by stating that her babysitter Cadance was her good friend. It's certainly possible that Twilight exaggerated her social isolation for dramatic effect; and in any case on your chronology Sea Breeze's family moves away from Canterlot when Sea Breeze is 10 (and Twilight around 13) so Twilight would not have been able to enjoy Sea Breeze's friendship for some four years before Luna's Return -- plenty of time to become semi-hermetic.
Here's Sea Breeze's family's wanderings in my chronology, where Luna's Return is YOH 1500 (easily convertible into reckonings After Luna's Banishment by subtracting 500 from any given year).
1483 - Twilight Sparkle born to Twilight Velvet and Night Light, in Canterlot.
1486 - Sea Breeze born to Amethyst Rose and Bass in Canterlot.
1490 - Rainbow Dash (age 8) performs the Sonic Rainboom at Cloudsdale; Twilight Sparkle (age 7) successfully hatches Spike, gaining a younger brother and becoming Celestia's Most Faithful Student (and unknown to herself, candidate Alicorn Princess).
1492 - Birth of LIghtning Strike to Amethyst Rose and Bass in Canterlot.
1495 - Birth of Daisy Juniper to Amethyst Rose and Bass in Canterlot. Soon afterward, SeaBass takes the family to Trottingham to live near his own parents, though they visit Canterlot for a few weeks each summer.
1499 - Amethyst Rose, Bass and their family move to Vanhoover.
1500 - Luna's Return. Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the Mane Six become national heroines.
1501 - The Day of Discord. Sometime the same year, Sea Breeze adopts Angus as her dog.
1503 - Chrysalis attacks and the Crystal Empire returns. Twilight Sparkle ascends and is crowned an Alicorn Princess.
1504 - Tirek attacks. Twilight Sparkle defeats him, becomes the Princess of Friendship.
1505 - Sea Breeze, now 18 years old, moves with her family to Ponyville.
TYPO
You're having formatting problems with your para breaks starting with Fluttershy's first lines in this chapter.
5755268 yes, Sea was smitten from the very beginning.
I added the "I won't bite" part since that's usually what people say to me, since I'm a socially awkward girl.
Amethyst is Sea's mom and Bass Tempo is her dad. Sea is 17. My age
I'm not really sure where I wanted these stories to begin, so I just placed it between just after the end of season four and well before season five. I have it tagged AU so that I don't have any issues regarding anything in S5, since people seem to go crazy over things like that.
5755351 My mom is a romance author so it just felt right making Amethyst one as well. I thought it fit pretty well since Rarity is made out to be the type of mare that loves romance and more than likely has a whole stash of romance books.
Fluttershy is my brother's favorite (don't tell him I said that
). I thinks just so adorable that a 13 year old colt would be star stuck from the beauty of the yellow Pegasus
I'll fix that formatting problem as soon as my lap top decides that it will work. If I remeber correctly, it was indeed fine in the document. Must of been an error during the copy and paste. Thanks for catching that
5755534 I see how A Canterlot Wedding can be contradicting to this story, but I think what you said makes quite a bit of sense.
You don't know how long it took me trying to figure out the age difference I wanted between Sea, Twilight and the rest of the Mane 6. I figure they are all around the same age (19-22) I like to think that Rarity is the eldest of the 6, being 22, followed by Applejack at 21, Twilight, Rainbow & Fluttershy at 20, and Pinkie the youngest at 19. Others might think different and that's okay. Their ages are not made clear in the show so we have to come up with them to the best of our abilities.
I also have Shining Armor at around 28, which made him 8 and Twilight 3 when Sea was born. So about a 5 year age difference between him & Twi. I believe it's also said that he was the youngest to become the Captain of the Royal Guard. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's been a long time since I watched that episode. It might just be from a story I read and got it all mixed up. I do that sometimes
5756201
I figured that ... I wasn't trying to imply that Thunder Bolt was being dirty-minded. I could explain the point I touched upon in further detail, but I'm afraid I might induce embarrassment. Suffice it to say that while the Ponies are anatomically much more flexible than real horses, they probably still default to ventral-to-dorsal male-to-female in coitus, which means that (even among virgins) the mare's neck and withers would be a major secondary erogenous zone and some sort of mouthing of them by the stallion very likely during actual intercourse. No, I don't think that's how Thunder Bolt meant it, nor did Sea Breeze see it that way or she would have been much more embarrassed than she was in the scene.
Yes, I suspected Sea Breeze is meant to be 17. She comes out as 18-19 in my chronology because I go June 21st 1500 - June 21st 1504 as the span between the S1 opener and the S4 opener. I could resolve this relative to my chronology either by pushing her age up or pushing the gap between her and Twilight down. In your chronology, I'm guessing there's no such issue. It's not that severe an issue anyway.
We won't know for at least another couple of weeks just how much space takes place between the end of S4 and the start of S5. We know that Rainbow Rocks takes place sometime in the interim, but we don't really know how long Rainbow Rocks took on the Equestrian side of the portal, nor do we know how much time intervenes between the end of Rainbow Rocks and the first activation of the Friendship Map.
My guesses for the ages of the Mane Six at Luna's Return were Applejack 22, Fluttershy 20, Pinkie Pie 19, Rarity and Rainbow Dash 18, and Twilight Sparkle 17. I made Applejack the oldest because she is the most emotionally mature of all six of them; Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie I dated relative to each other based on a comment Fluttershy once made about being a year older than Pinkie, Rainbow Dash younger based on her emotional immaturity, and Rarity I've always read as a curious mixture between precocious sophistication and a certain naivete (especially S1 Rarity, who makes assumptions and errors that she wouldn't later on in the show). Twilight Sparkle, of course, is a young well-born supergenius, and at once both the most comfortable in high society and the most innocent of many normal social interactions of all of them.
(*nods*)
It also gives Amethyst Rose a good reason to maintain her close friendship with Twilight Velvet, who's an editor and publisher (at least in many fanons). And yes, I've always seen Rarity as the sort to love romance novels, too. She's pretty much living the life of a romance novel heroine as it is, even though the romance appears increasingly to be one inspired by Beauty and the Beast.
Yeah, figuring ages is difficult in-show, in part because of cultural differences between Equestria and present-day America. Specifically, Equestrians seem to become economically-productive younger and sexually-active later than is the norm in modern America or Britain (which is why I think their culture is more like that of America or Britain about 100-125 years ago, when people also started seriously working younger but having sex older than the present averages). To take an extreme case, Rainbow Dash is basically running Ponyville's Weather Patrol, but her opinion about romance is that she hates "mushy stuff" (which is essentially a preteen attidue). Granted, it's more accurate to say that Dashie is shy of talking about her own softer emotions, and in-show she's displayed clear romantic attraction toward two characters (Soarin' and Fluttershy), but it still says something about Equestrian mores that someone so obsessed with being cool would speak in such a fashion.
It's just struck me that Bolt and his friends are almost exactly midway in age between the Cutie Mark Crusaders (early adolescents) and the Mane Six (young adults). That's an age cohort that needs filling in Ponyville.
Aww, your fic made me smile!
5888219 thank you! I'm so happy you enjoyed it! In case you haven't seen them yet, I have 2 other fics in this series. 1 is a single chapter side story and the other is a multi-chapter story.
Wouldn't what?
I am liking so far.
6016677 I think it's supposed to be he wouldn't hurt any pony. Thanks for catching that. I will fix it when I get home from work tonight.
6017126
I'll point out whatever else I note as I go along.
did