• Member Since 24th Jan, 2013
  • offline last seen Sep 19th, 2022

Dash The Stampede


That crazy girl that writes random comedies, detailed inanimate transformations, and sad/dark heartwrenchers. $$60,000,000,000 says you can't catch me! I'm the Equestrianoid Typhoon! Peace and Love!

E

I am alone...

For days and days I have sat and awaited the one who will call me her own, the day my limbs no longer collect dust, but love. The day my book no longer remains empty. The moment when I find my other half, and she finds me.

Today is going to be that day. I can feel it in every fiber and stitch I have.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now with a dramatic reading by Neighrator Pony!

Placed 13th in the Write-Off 'Closing Time'. Editing work by Cerulean Voice.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 45 )

A cute little story.

with which I can connect with her and form a bond stronger than family. I will form friendship.

Wow. That line is wonderful. :twilightsmile:

You get all my upvotes :twilightsmile:

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Thanks, guys :D I had a blast writing it and watching the reviews roll in. I'm glad I can bring a happy ending story for once to you guys :V

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Thanks for that, and the follow :D I hope my changes made the impact that much more realistic, I know I fixed a lot of inconsistencies. This is something I need to keep doing :D

Excelent story, but I don't see how the romance tag applies here. I'd recommend going with just the slice of life tag.

Really good story, though. :twilightsmile:

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A comment on the Writeoff thread by HoofBitingActionOverload penned it as a romance with a happy ending, and in a way, I see it. We have the longing of Smarty, and the adoration of Twilight, the meeting that brings the two together, and subsequently pulls them apart. Each one will complement the other, and the ending brings us to see that it isn't so much a romance in the physical sense, but a romantic-styled theme and plot. Emotional romance, if you will. It's longing of the heart, but for friendship, more powerful than love, and that, in my idea, is the best picture one can paint of a romance.

I want to pen it as plain SoL, but it just feels right with that there. Still, thanks :D

I haven't cried like this since Toy Story 3's ending. :fluttercry: That was truely a heartwarming story.

SERIOUSLY?

THIS IS THE STORY THAT MAKES ME TEAR UP?

Absolutely LOVED IT!

Also I found reading the story in this voice was really effective.

>inb4 Relevant Heavy Metal

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:O Nice! Sounds like a mix between Manowar, Testament, and, well, a lot of shred bands, but I hear some Marty Friedman influence in there :D

Completely off-kilter from the fic, but thanks for this, got a band to go download. :D

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;_;7 Thank you, good sir :D I tried something new, and it seems to have worked!

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So it's romance in terms of narrative form rather than in terms of the type of attraction they feel for each other? OK, I can see that. In that case, I'd suggest mentioning it in the author's notes, if not the description, to avoid confusion. Carry on. :twilightsheepish:

5632852 If there's one thing Germans know, it's their power metal. Pretty sure you can find the discography on Pirate Bay, too.

Absolutely stunning, made me care about a doll way more than I was expecting. I really liked the shopkeeper as well.

Very nice. It reminded me of The Velveteen Rabbit, and I could see an Alt-U continuation of this story going that way (considering what we know actually happens to Smarty Pants).

I remember this from the writeoff.
It was beautiful, it made me feel for lil Smarty Pants.
Well done.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

I still don't get this story. :/ Must be something wrong with me.

Beautifully done...manly tears were shed

I have mixed feelings about this one. I think the concept is unique and clever -- how many times have you seen a love story between a toy and a child? -- but the execution needs work.

I've identified three areas for improvement:

1) General grammar. You know, you actually did a pretty damn good job with this. Most authors can't handle long sentences well, but you knocked them out, one after the other, without too many stumbles.

However, there were several usage errors (using The sunlight instead of just sunlight in the first paragraph, using awe as a verb, etc.) as well as areas where you're grip on those long sentence did falter, where two shorter sentences would have been more suitable.

2) Rhythm. Long, luscious prose can lose a reader in its intricacies, bore them, or just give them eye strain (although only in those bastard works of literature which have sentences as long as a page). As an author, you can control how a reader moves through the text, and you control that by rhythm.

Rhythm. Slow or fast, meandering or direct. It changes the flow of the sentence. It modifies how a reader reads. It is your best friend when it comes to turning uninspiring prose into something that sings, dances, and leaps off the page and into a reader's memory.

I played with it a little just then. I think you need to play with yours. As is, the piece moves between flowing and stilted prose, especially due to the repetition of _______ and ______ descriptors. If you went through and read the piece out loud, then modified it to suit the voice you are going for, then I think this would be a much stronger story.

3) Conveying emotion. This piece is strongly on the tell spectrum. No problem with that, if it's done right -- especially when your narrator is first person and it is much more forgiveable for them to just tell you what their dominant feeling is.

However, I think this story would benefit from a bit of understatement.

For example, when the toy next to Smarty Pants is chosen instead of her, you wrote "a cold wave of regret washes over me as the plush bear passes into view."

Instead you could use gesture to convey the same emotion: "I slump/sag/bow my head as the plush bear passes into view."
Or manipulate paragraph structure:
"I brace myself, preparing to weigh nothing, when I feel a slight brush against my left side.

He didn't pick me.

I slump/sag/bow my head as the plush bear passes into view."

By implying emotion rather than just stating it, I think you could achieve a much deeper depth of feeling, partly because it forces a reader to empathise and project their own feelings of sadness and/or rejection onto the character.

---

Anywho, it was pretty decent. Did not hit me as emotionally as it did others, but it has the potential. Keep up the good work :pinkiesmile:

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I'm glad I've gotten some useful stuff from this comment :D I want to address a few things:

If you went through and read the piece out loud, then modified it to suit the voice you are going for...

There's something you should know about me as a writer, that applies to most all of my work >.>

I'm a terrible planner/re-worker. I get inspiration for something, then write the first draft and final draft as one and the same, go through for edits(I read aloud to catch errors), and post. This one was honestly something entirely new for me to write. I've never really focused on first-person nor the perspective of limited consciousness. It was an interesting write, but I felt the sentences were what needed to be told, as opposed to the story needing to be reader-tailored.
I'll keep your suggestions in mind, though. I know I write a bit heavy - blame it on reading heavy writers here - but I tried to exude the feelings without making he/r seem animate, which brings us to the next aspect of this:

Instead you could use gesture to convey the same emotion: "I slump/sag/bow my head

I know this is technically bad writing style, but I disagree wholeheartedly here. I feel it would actually break the immersion, were I to give Smarty more liberal movement than a ragdoll toy should have. I use the sagging to show the deepest emotional sadness in the story, when she is taken from Twilight's grasp, but I feared that giving he/r even that small bit of animation would break the reader from the aspect of Smarty being unable to do anything about he/r predicament. I tumbled over that idea with a couple prereaders (something else that's new for me), but in the end, the emotional punch hit a bit better when Smarty was truly inanimate, yet vividly emotional within.

One thing I'm really confused about - and don't get me wrong, I like emotional pieces - is how making it even more vague would immerse the reader better. I kept getting that in the writeoff thread: "Make the emotions more vague" "Try leaving it up to the reader a bit more" and my personal favorite "Let the reader imply it on their own" :V I'm not sure how doing so would work, when almost everyone who read it could not see the aspects of the shop that proved it to be a dying shop: bare shelves, broken toys, drunken/hungover shopkeep, I honestly don't know how I could have made it clearer without actually telling the reader it was a 'going out of business' shop, yet everyone's nitpick revolved around how poorly this store displays its wares.

You can't fill the shelves if you don't want to make more toys to fill them now, can you? Can't we entertain that Canterlot has its failing businesses that crumble under the Barnyard Bargains and Stall-Marts, unable to continue their family tradition of toymaking when mass-production is stripping their shelves bare? This store is dying. If the general populace of the write-off couldn't figure that out, I don't think making the story even more up to reader interpretation would have the intended effect.:unsuresweetie:

Thanks for entertaining the notion, though.:pinkiesad2:

I'd love to fix it up to fit your aspects of change to better immerse you in it, but I fear it would break the rest of these fine folks out of their reading as-is. I will definitely consider that for next time I venture into this perspective, which I really want to try :V

Thank you, for commenting, and suggesting things to improve upon, I'm really glad you at least liked it :D

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Always nice to see when an author replies to comments in depth. :pinkiesmile:

I to give Smarty more liberal movement

I understand what you're going for here. The powerlessness of Smarty Pants is important to the story, but I stiiiill reckon you can include gestures without compromising that.

Call it style bias :rainbowwild:

Like, there are already gestures in there: "My seams sagged", and the such. You could use gestures of a similar sort -- even a lack of gesture ("I sat motionless") -- for greater effect than simply telling.

Which leads onto the next point.

One thing I'm really confused about - and don't get me wrong, I like emotional pieces - is how making it even more vague would immerse the reader better.

If the general populace of the write-off couldn't figure that out, I don't think making the story even more up to reader interpretation would have the intended effect.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. That advice ("make the emotions more vague") is so vague in of itself that it's just confusing. Not helpful at all. I had the same problem with show versus tell, and I'm still trying to get over bad habits.

So let me explain what I meant.

First, I don't get either why people couldn't tell the shop had fallen on hard times. Souring toy maker. Bare shelves. Hangover. It was pretty obvious, and now it's even more so, what with the coffee.

Second, and this is where it gets trickier. This story relies heavily on us being told emotions. Which is okay, in first person, because it's pretty much a convention. But it isn't the only tool available, and in other narrative modes, it is a serious flaw.

Why?

Well, I think it's because when we communicate in real life, we rarely set out to deliberately make someone feel something, and we rarely tell someone exactly what we are thinking and feeling. We infer feelings by how someone phrases something, what words the choose, their posture, expression, visual ticks.

So when a character tells me that they feel a wave of sadness crashing over them, or something to that effect, it doesn't affect me emotionally. It doesn't really connect with a sense of true sadness either, because I understand sadness through speech and gesture.

But if the author, rather than telling me that the character is sad, lets me figure that out for myself, through gesture and timing and dialogue and subtext, then I'm connecting to the character as though they were a real person. This makes the emotions that much more believable. It even allows me to read a lot more depth into those feelings than you would be able to convey with direct telling.

So when people say "be vague with emotions" and all that, I think they are trying to say, "We aren't so dumb. Let us figure it out for ourselves."

(Interesting connection: It's related to why so many authors recommend people-watching. You have to figure out what behaviours convey which emotions, and then you can use these in writing.)

At least, those are some of my thoughts on it. I might be wrong. I definitely haven't been exhaustive. But I hope it helps clarify things a little. :twilightsmile:

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Also, yeah. It's probably not worth trying to alter the whole story just for these changes, haha. If anything, they're just things to keep in mind in the future.

If for nothing else than how quickly this was put together, I applaud the work done. I love the details and the unique perspective.

i.imgur.com/X4NpPxt.jpg

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I'm doing FoME's happy dance now. xD

I wish it could have hit others as hard as it did most, but alas, not everyone sympathizes with Smarty. Thank you for the kind words, and the add. :D

I came here from PresentPerfect's review. I love PP, but I thought he was way off the mark with this one. "I just never felt like I could connect with Smarty as a narrator" seems a poor excuse to dock a story. I loved it. :pinkiehappy:

A paragraph expressing Smarty's gratitude towards Creator might help bring things full circle, don't you think? Maybe play up the alcoholism at the beginning a bit more, too, to make his redemption in Smarty's eyes that much more impactful. Just a thought.

Keep up the good work?

Goddamn it, you got something in my eye. :fluttercry:

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Awh, s'okay, Meri. Prolly just dust. You guys got a load of that out there ;V

Thanks, for both adds. :D I thought you were already following me. Huh. I had a blast making this, I'm glad you've gotten enjoyment from it.

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Many thanks :D Glad you liked it. Liking this one's a matter of personal preference. Like the fandom's teeming hate for Flash Sentry, or whether you eat the blue pill or not. xD I've given some thought to the Creator fulfillment, and I could include something, perhaps, but I'm still trying to think of how I'd make it happen. I'll let you know if something spawns of it. Danke for stopping by!

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Sorry for the late reply :twilightsheepish: I've been busy lately.
I've not heard of The Velveteen Rabbit, but I'm going to go look it up, if this is making you reminisce on it. Of course, I dunno if I'll be revisiting this one exactly, though the style is enticing to write. Thanks for the comment :D

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I thought I was following you too. :P

5654324 If you don't object, I'd like to make an audio version of this one. Shoot me a PM when you're done revising?

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I would be honored :D Feel free to hop on that whenever, I've got this one finished :V Glad you liked it!

'Editing Work done by Cerulean Voice.'

I look forward to reading this. :twilightsmile:

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I am certain you'll enjoy it :D He did mostly punctuation and the such, the feels are on me.

That was a really beautiful and bittersweet story, thank you. :twilightsmile:

I write a review of this story. It can be found here.

That...that...that was borderline Toy Story 3 with what it does to you

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Y'know, that came up a few times in the Writeoff thread :D

...I should really watch that for once >.>

Thank you for the kind words/add :B

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I don't think I ever thanked you for taking time from your busy days to take a look at my story way back when, but I truly appreciate the kind words and your taking a chance with my most serious fic :V

That was really very sweet! The only nit I have to pick is the lack of funds in Twilight’s parent’s purses. I think it needs more explanation (scrimping every bit to send Twilight to Magic School?) or perhaps to have Twilight herself be the buyer short of cash.

Hap

This was beautiful. Rough in some places, which is reasonable for a contest entry.

I was confused in several places, and had to go back and read it again. Some bits I'm still not sure about. Mostly the shopkeeper's interaction with customers. I thought it was clear that the shop was at the least struggling, if not going out of business.

I don't think it was much more than sweet and emotional, but it did well at those things, and for a short contest entry, that's all it needs.

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The explanation would be that I wanted to wrench at your heart a little more, make the climax just that much more emotional, and really, who hasn't spent a day out shopping only to realize you're basically broke and have to leave behind something at the counter? I really, honestly, am so proud of this piece that I'm holistically against changing any part of it, but certainly I could have provided a bit of context, valid point. :twilightsmile:

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Thank you so much for the kind words, I've been absent from fimfic for a good while, so I feel bad about missing replies on my favorite story..I was only aiming to tug your heartstrings and then make everything better again in the end, with some crying in the middle. I still tear up whenever I hear the audio of it. :fluttershysad:

Feel free to PM me (I know this is a late reply so if you've passed on your interest elsewhere, I fully understand.) if you have questions or are just wondering about the overall story because I intentionally left a lot of things vague. I was trying out a lot of new things with my writing, not just in the tense but also with the style of writing and with how quickly it was assembled (about an hour to type and self-edit, one more for an independent editor) into a well-made story. Considering I garnered my fame with random/comedy shitfics, I'm quite impressed to this day with this little piece. I'm honestly so thankful that it's still getting views, even to this day :yay:

Not sure how u missed such a gem all these years. Cool

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Awwh thank you (: Coming Home is my baby of the site. I love and cherish it almost as much as Smarty Pants cherishes that foam-to-foal contact they receive at the end. Truly my best offering and very happy that you enjoyed.

Im just so glad to see this still getting the love and appreciation almost 4 years on. Thanks for reading (:

ooooo gooood

hit the feels in the spot where it is a bittersweet punch

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Thank you so much! I know its quite late of me but I deeply appreciate the ability to make for a good read despite having put down my pen. Neighrator Pony made a pleasant audio version of this that really puts the atmosphere of that feeling in the room if you need to use your eyes for something else on a reread 😊

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