[story isn't dead; completion is just too grand a task for me to take at this point in time]
Equestria Girls. It's the end of the school week and Rainbow Dash can't wait to kick back and relax for an awesome weekend of partying with her friends. It's also progress reports time at Canterlot High, and one of the Super Fun™ activities planned (by Twilight, who else?) involves an unboxing of their grades. This doesn't go too well when Rainbow is forced to reveal her whopping 0.3 GPA and leaves in tears.
Intelligence comes in many forms, but Fs only come in one. Luckily for Rainbow Dash, that's the letter that friendship starts with.
/x/x/x/
Takes place after The Legend Of Everfree but before Forgotten Friendship.
Prequel to my fic Milkshake, and begins a Sci!TwiDash friends-to-lovers arc.
Part of my extended Equestria Girls Continuity.
Tagged for naughty words and minor social drugs.
Content warning: contains underage drinking, cannabis use, discussion of teenage sexuality, a scene containing homophobic and lesbophobic slurs, and struggles with autism and ADHD.
I'm kinda liking this story so far...though the first chapter was quite a mouthful in length. But anyway, the fact that they were drinking and even doing drugs may not be exactly good behaviour, but it surprisingly makes sense considering the fact that they're teenagers, and teenagers aren't known for always making the best decisions.
The thing I found most interesting about this story though is that Rainbow Dash seems to be written as being on the autism spectrum, with probably ADHD as well. Since I too am on the spectrum, I do like that idea quite a lot. And I can definitively relate to her learning difficulties. That's basically me and math in a nutshell.
I'm gonna start tracking this from now on and see how it goes.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of stories so I will track it to see where it goes.
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Thanks! Yeah, going back and rereading it I totally could have split this into three separate chapters of fairly equal length and in the future I'll be cutting down on the word counts if it's a problem, plus maybe I'll get more chapters published in less time if they're shorter. And yeah, I'm modeling these goings-on after my cousin's group of friends; they drink and smoke but they don't go completely insane (although they occasionally do lean, which I'm not chill with), and I wanted to set the tone that this is an Equestria Girls that is a bit more mature than the movies.
Omg I think it's so funny that you picked that up because that is EXACTLY where I was going with this!!! I was literally going to put in chapter 2's authors notes that Rainbow has both of those. I'm autistic too, and I also think I have ADHD so I'm going to see a psychiatrist for it soon. This story is kind of projection, lmao, but it's just a little project in between the bigger stuff.
I appreciate the track, I'm glad people are interested in this story :)
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Yaaaasssss! I've been in love with Neil Young's music ever since I learned that he was the fourth member of Crosby Stills & Nash.
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Thank you! And if you don't mind me asking, what kinds of stories do you mean? Because if you mean what I think you mean then you gotta link me to the other ones you like.
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Well I mean stories where one of main six have to over come some kind of hardship or disability (Often it's Rainbow for some reason). I know I've read a story like this but unfortunately I'm terrible when it comes to keeping track of stories I've read XD.
i honestly cant see the girls doing drugs like that they are to goody good for that
still very interesting story
8484065
That's fair. In my defense, though, all of my fics are gonna be roughly linked in terms of backstory, tone, content, and overarching plot. This story wasn't even a priority when I was writing it; like I've said in blogs and stuff this was originally just a writing exercise that got popular. There is retroactive backstory behind why they drink and smoke, and I'll probably use Juniper Montage to convey it without narration, plus I watched the movie and can definitely bring Starlight back into the plot (as she was put on a bus while I was writing this chapter) so June isn't just the token explanation ball. Hopefully if I explain why they do it then it won't be such a shock to the system.
this was beautiful
This story has a lot of potential. You put a lot of work into it I can tell. A story of failure and overcoming it. This hits home to me alot considering i just finish my finals for my exams. I would love to see rainbow succeed in this story and i do wonder if Rainbow in the EQG world is like her Equestrian counterpart. Hoping this isn't completely a rehash of Testing Testing 123.
Look forward to the next chapter.
Which one of your stories is the first in this continuity?
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aw ^.^ thanks
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I honestly didn't put like any work into it, haha 😅 but thanks anyway. and I didn't have trouble in high school but once college hit, I was just crashing and burning and I finally could empathize with all of my friends who did struggle in school, so I'm using this (and twilight's pov) as a sort of homage to the whole thing. and don't worry, there are good endings for everyone all around (at least as of the end of this particular story, but there are sequels and prequels abound incoming eventually). the two rainbow dashes handle their stuff similarly but they are very different individuals. things will be significantly different than the episode, though I do reference the events that occurred; unfortunately human rainbow dash can't exactly fly, it's several classes for things that don't interest her rather than one test about her autistic special interest, and there's a couple things concerning eqg backstory headcanons that will affect the way things go from here on out. I've got a rough plan about what I want to happen so hold on tight: it'll arrive eventually.
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out of what I've written so far, this comes first, then milkshake, then tfw nudes. I'll be eventually setting up a blog post that details the exact chronology of all the equestria girls fics I have planned in more depth than the text box on my profile.
Was planning on reading this after the holidays but fuck it, I went ahead and read it
It's a good story with a lot of potential, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. Being autistic myself, I'm very interested to see what you do with that aspect, especially if I'm calling it right and Rainbow isn't the only one with autism; Twilight also seems like she could be, although the two of them would be falling in very different places in the spectrum.
when I was supposed to be workingwhen I had some free timeI really loved the opening, which did a great job at showing us Rainbow's distracted thoughts. In general, every place where we really get into Rainbow's thoughts is fantastic. When they were all reading off their grades it could've easily been a boring section since their grades aren't particularly relevant, but the way you handled it alternating between her thoughts and the others' dialogue/actions made it stand out as one of the best parts of the chapter. Being much more of a Twilight myself, I can't personally relate to exactly how Rainbow feels, but it's really easy to get in her head and understand her feelings with how well you did her thoughts.
The lyrics in between sections are super cool. For not being written for the story, most of them were very fitting and it helped set the tone very well.
I did notice something to work on, though. The story occasionally switches to present-tense instead of past-tense. This is highly odd to read and can pull the reader out of the story. An example would be: "and it either turned like...and the way Applejack drives it is very very fast". Turned being past-tense while "is" is present-tense. Unless you're very sure what you're doing, I'd definitely recommend keeping to past-tense for the narration. I noticed this less as the chapter went on, but I'm not sure if that's because it was more a problem in the beginning or because I was getting more invested in the story so focusing less on the words.
Some things to think about, although these are more opinions, so I hope you won't just change the way you write to accommodate them if you're not feeling it. That said, they're opinions with reasoning behind them, so I hope you'll consider them. You give a lot of details, more than the reader actually needs. Since this story is incomplete, it's a little hard for me to say what is and what isn't important, but things like the title of Twilight's book or the exact mode of transportation for each character aren't particularly noteworthy. If this were completely from Rainbow's point of view, it could be seen as an extension of her noticing everything around her, but it comes up with other characters as well (we get a description about what's upstairs and downstairs at Rainbow's house while she's not present, even though we don't actually go anywhere but Rainbow's room).
On a related note, the story talks about Starlight and Juniper a lot for characters that aren't present. This is okay if they're going to be in the story later, but if not, then why set them up more than to explain why they aren't there?
To argue against myself though, some authors (including some big name successful authors) believe that you should give the reader as much information as you can to paint the most vivid picture possible. I'm by no means a minimalist, but I disagree with this train of thought. But my opinion on the matter is just an opinion so make of it what you will
It seems that you're bending over backwards to keep the reader interested at times. The many extra descriptions are part of this, but it also ties in to things like giving each of the mane six a different alcoholic drink to match their personalities (disregarding whether or not they would drink at all, how did a bunch of teenagers come up with such a wealth and variety of alcohol?) and the word choice on occasion (Dash "depressurizes" the "liquid sugar" instead of just opening the soda; I only noticed a few over the top word choices though). I get that you don't want to readers to lose interest, but it's the story they're here for, not the words. And the story is good. I want to keep reading because I'm invested in the characters, what they're doing and what they're feeling. All the extra stuff makes it seem (at least to me) like you don't have as much confidence in that as you should. Trust your story will keep your readers involved, and hit us with a fantastic second chapter. You got this
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and thank you ^.^ i'm pretty sure I have a vague idea of exactly where I want it to go. no spoilers but you're not exactly wrong, especially since I straight up admit to it in the sequels (I haven't gotten to it in milkshake yet but I did in tfw nudes).
yay for shirking responsibilities!
I'm glad to hear that; I wanted this fic to be an exercise in my eqg rainbow, so that's good ^.^ and I stressed a bit about the balancing act. I didn't wanna be too focused on either and neglect the other. i'm more of a twilight myself as well, and rainbow's struggles fall more in line with what i've gleaned from a close friend of mine. and I have hyperempathy issues so i'm not surprised to hear that, haha.
i'm glad they contributed and benefitted. I wrote the segments keeping the tone of the songs as a whole in mind, and then I picked the most relevant quotes I felt represented each passage.
I reread through the chapter when I read you said about the tense. I can kinda see what you're saying there. the way I write is that I wanna describe a tv show or movie as closely as I can, but with elements of omniscient narrator-ness, because that's how I think about plot development. with the example you gave, though, I do see that I could easily change it to "the way applejack DROVE it WAS very very fast. thanks for pointing that out, it's actually super helpful! I wanna stay mostly in the just-slightly-past tense since it's sort of narration, in that i'm just explaining what happens in my mind to the readers, if that makes sense? i'm also not comfortable writing in present tense. or first person. you'll probably notice that I use the exact same style and tense and perspective in pretty much every single one of my fics, lmao. and it could be a mix of both because once it got to the halfway point I was in the proverbial zone.
I value the opinions of authors who write better than I do :P I understand the thing about details, but I like giving too many rather than too few, you know? this is gonna sound stupid but I add enough details to make paragraphs three lines if I can, because I HATE having more than two one-line paragraphs in a row. part of that is that I've read entirely too many fics that were "he said this and she said this and he said this and she said this" for basically the whole thing. another part of that is that those details are a way to give backstory without exposition dumping by way of being like "this information is relevant to the immediate situation". is twilight reading something hardcore educational or is it literature? why are they driving only applejack and fluttershy's cars? what does rainbow's house look like on the inside? other things that could affect the way the fic is read, I guess is my explanation. and it's not exactly fully from rainbow's POV, but the 'camera' typically follows her except for when it doesn't. I did edit the chapter when I posted it on ffnet and I may do it here as well that splits up this chapter into 3 so that the pov change to sunset isn't as abrupt. I could modify the details to only be things she notices from here on out, but I don't want the style to be dramatically different between chapters, you know?
and yeah, they show up in this one, but I keep most characters mentioned because they are all on my mind and will be a part of the overarching story at some point. all my equestria girls fics take place in the same universe except for the ones with my queen of the fireflies au dusk shine, and that includes a juniper/flash shipfic (because i don't hate either of them unlike much of the fandom and because they've both had a rough go at it)and maybe a sunset/starlight friendshipping fic too (I actually immediately wanted to do one right as soon as I typed that).
and I do like the vivid picture thing, but if it gets to be authors like steel resolve and rough draft and oroboro and cloudy skies and hoofbitingactionoverload and shortskirtsandexplosions and coopercrisp and bats and dubs rewatcher and krickis (edit- omg) and ESPECIALLY estee and odeinoichus, all authors who I love the works of (or at least most of them), sometimes have an insane amount of details and purple prose and extended introspection that while I don't exactly have much trouble reading myself, I know that other readers take issues with it, and I would kill myself if I had to write as many details as it can get to be. I wanna try to go for a mix between the two, and i'll be considering your opinion as somebody who's on that list of authors who make me starry eyed.
I don't wanna bore readers, lmao :P but I can kinda understand what you mean. however, as for the alcohol thing; I made it abundantly clear that sunset was the only one who was sober, which came into play when she had to drive, which lead me into alluding to a certain purple skinned teen's feelings for sunset, which launches a subplot that lasts through sequels. not much in this chapter was planned but the alcohol and weed certainly was. the reason they're drinking so heavily now is because it's early in their high school careers. I haven't gone much into detail but their school system is kind of a mix between canada and japan with american influences rather than straight up American and they're essentially fresh/sophs at this point and are just being curious exploratory young teens right now; they sober up as they get more emotionally mature, and in tfw nudes, my twilight and rarity are a lot more locked down on drinking, and fluttershy is temperant, but rainbow is still drinking (but not as much). the reason the teenagers could afford that much booze is because the economic system is where things should be here. wages match inflation and the mass increase in the cost of living and the economy is not completely borked: rarity drives a Mercedes, mac owns a metric fuckton of electronics, sunset lives alone in an apartment in essentially new york (for now), and booze costs about as much as soda. this is of course all headcanon here, as I've yet to actually go into detail about the worldbuilding, but that at least addresses your concern I hope.
the word choices thing, though? valid. I just have an obsessive compulsion about using the same word twice within one page if it's something other than an article or preposition. even there, I struggled with typing the word 'word' twice in two sentences and now I just used it two more times in one more sentence HAHAHAHAHA but yeah, I also don't like when there's a big awkward gap if I use a long word at the end of a line to the point that if it's too wonky then i'll reword the entire sentence just so that the right margin is at least somewhat close in formatting to the left margin. I also wrote this entire chapter on my iphone's notepad, bracket formatting and all. I do appreciate you pointing that out though, I didn't think it would be a problem. I wasn't really thinking in terms of "how would rainbow dash say this" because I was saying it how I the narrator would say it. I've been writing mostly twilight/rarity/fluttershy too and they're more read than the other half of the mane six (thanks, tribalism). i'll pay more careful attention to that in the future.
EEE!!! i'm glad you like the story and care about the characters! and you're right, I do have kinda bad confidence because nobody has really given me as in-depth of criticism as you have so I've constantly got a "am I even good enough for people to tell me what I did bad???" thing going on. but i'm getting better on that. i'm not letting my harvester of sorrow like/dislike ratio get me down and i'm not doubting my abilities or anything. and i'd like to get this particular fic going once I get tfw nudes to the second act [and i'll probably be working on my tales of symphonia fic too but that one is a low priority], just so that I can actually properly get milkshake going before tfw nudes (why, why did I work on the chronologically third in the series more than the first two T.T). but you're right. I GOT DIS SHIT. thank you ^.^
So, is this story dead? I don't really want to start it if it is.
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ITS NOT DEAD ITS SLEEPING!
it's just not the highest priority at the moment because of The Wall™. everything I've tried to do has been sub-par and I wasn't satisfied with it. I know exactly what I want to do and exactly how I want to do it from the end backwards but how to get there is tripping me up. but I will say that Milkshake, TFW Nudes, Confessions, pretty much all of my Equestria Girls fics I've now or will ever upload are all taking place in the same universe, and honestly the main points of the story were already rattled off and the rest is just relationship building and character development for rainbow and twilight, and the meat of their respective arcs lie elsewhere. it's complicated, I know, but reading this will kind of give you a rundown of my style and characterization and worldbuilding to see if you'd like the rest of my stuff, plus it's the earliest point I'll go from for the time being. but for now there's just too many projects going at once for me to focus on this one right now. but I'll update eventually. maybe i'll go more in depth about each individual song... maybe i'll do that for outlining the rest of the story's progression? I definitely wanna finish this thing though. eventually. writing this comment has actually given me a couple ideas I'll play around with. but for the time being it's just on the back burner.
I do get your thing about dead fics though. If I see one marked incomplete that hasn't been touched since 2013, I just walk away.
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That's totally fine, I'll definitely look at your other fics after I read this one. I just had to ask sick it hadn't been updated since October. Thanks!
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no problem, I get the unrewarded investment anxiety thing, and if you were interested enough to click on the fic I want you to walk away satisfied
Not too keen on the smoking and drinking but I managed to look past that, and it looks interesting.
You KNOW irony is strong when Sci-Twi is hitting on her and Sunset can't catch it. Rainbow has an issue in active and passive memory. Her body needs to be in a kinetic state so her mind can process and retain info better.
She's not dumb by far, her mind just retains and prioritizes active memory ties linked to movement like predators.
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Throughout the chronology, the girls develop from dumbass kids doing drugs and discovering themselves to fully grown adults who make more responsible decisions and know what they're doing with their lives. Although, Fluttershy and Sunset are the only ones who smoke later in the future (for medicinal purposes because anxiety and PTSD, respectively), Rarity has a glass of red wine in the bath, and Rainbow/AJ/Pinkie drink for fun during the weekends and summer. I knew going into writing this that some people would have a problem with the weed and booze, but I'm glad to know you did look past it despite your discomfort.
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You're absolutely right on both counts. And considering what happens later on in the series... ;P
Haven’t read this yet, but I’m putting this on read it later simply for the ‘friendship starts with f’ line.
To anybody waiting to read this until it's finished:
Go ahead and read it now. The plot as it stands now is a functional oneshot.
The eventual continuation is slated for after other fics are done because if I do continue this fic now, it will spoil something for the rest of the fics in the continuity. All it will be for the most part is Twilight tutoring Rainbow and helping her study leading up to Twidash and segueing into my fic Milkshake, and I as a perfectionist simply do not have the motivation to construct the plot arc at this point in time. It's been over nine months since I uploaded this, and my equestria girls fics have blown up since then, and this has been at the forefront of the attention, so I figured I should offer an explanation as to why this isn't being worked on. It's because of this fic and the positive attention that it received that I even thought about doing an extended Equestria Girls continuity in the first place, and for that I want to thank every single person who has supported the project and added this to their bookshelves. Every time I get a notification on this it brings a smile to my face and sets me up with the motivation to take another step forward and write a little more. So thank you, and I will finish this one day.
I can honestly relate to Rainbow in this story. I have had trouble focusing and studying before, which led to my grades suffering and feelings of depression where I felt I was incapable of succeeding and that I was completely worthless as a person.
I also was drawn in by the mention of struggling with ADHD and autism because I actually have both of those and have had to learn how to cope with it in order to succeed and become less reliant on the support of others.