My Cowboy I Met in Appleloosa

by Creativa-Artly01

Chapter 25-Sire’s Day

A few weeks later, it’s Sire’s Day and Cowboy’s mother is taking it pretty hard as she still very much misses her beloved Gold Bar and spends the day at her husband’s gravestone. Cowboy and I, however, we enjoy the day to its utmost. I take him out for a picnic dinner date. We go to the movies after that and see the new movie Mystery Mares. Needless to say, we have a blast. From what I heard from AJ, they spent the day at her parents tree, just like they did for Dam’s Day. Late that night, we return home where we find Brushstroke fast asleep in her bed but Paint Splatter is still awake.

“Mommy, daddy, it took ya long enough,” says the filly with a yawn.

“Yeah,” we say as we go and tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. We then leave their room and head to our own.

“How did we get so lucky?” I say as I climb in bed next to my husband.

“I don’t know, but I love you, and our girls,” he says as he kisses me. “I love you so much. And hey, today was fun!”

He promptly turns over and falls fast asleep. I, however, take awhile to fall asleep. It’s been that way ever since my own dad passed to be honest. As I can’t sleep, I go and sit outside before going over to Sweet Apple Acres and chatting with Applejack.

“You miss your dad, huh?” She says to me as she opens the door.

“Yeah,” I respond. “It’s still hard. How do you move on?”

“Simple, I didn’t, I just learned to deal with the hurt, the pain, the loss,” responds AJ as she puts her hoof around me in a hug and wipes away my tears. “Other than missing your paw, was your day good?”

“Yeah,” I respond, “doing things with Cowboy was nice. He’s such a good father to our girls.”

“Yeah, he’s so good to and for you,” responds AJ.

“And I have you to thank for that, I know,” I respond with a giggle.

“Darn right,” she responds now laughing as well.

Meanwhile at home, Cowboy continues to snore in his sleep and doesn’t even realize that I’m not there. I end up spending the entire night at AJ’s and we have a sleepover in the barn loft. I return home the next morning after breakfast at the Apple farm. Applesauce pancakes which were pretty good not gonna lie. After that, I return home where I’m greeted by Cowboy. “Morning honey,” he says as he kisses me on the cheek.

“Good morning to you too,” I respond with a smile as I kiss him back. We then sit down to breakfast as a family where Cowboy notices that I’m not eating.

“Honey, are you okay?” He inquires. “You normally eat all of it at breakfast.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I had breakfast out with AJ this morning, sorry I didn’t tell you,” I respond. “And ya know, the obvious, I miss my dad so there’s that too.” I excuse myself and go to our bedroom and I cry. Cowboy runs after me while the girls just stay sat there eating their cereal. He comes into the room where he sees tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Oh honey,” he says as he embraces me in a hug and wipes the tears from my eyes. He just lets me sit there and cry. He’s such a supportive husband. We stay in there for a good while so I can calm down. Eventually, I compose myself and we finally leave the bedroom. We go outside where I get some fresh air and the girls run out after us. They tackle me and Cowboy to the ground and we all bust out laughing. Man! My family truly is the best and I’d honestly not have it any other way! And that is thanks to moments like these when they’re the only things keeping me grounded, sane, and happy.

Comments

[Fernie Canto]

I must confess, my eye was drawn to this story because of the like/dislike ratio. As I have only recently started to browse this site, I hadn't come across anything like that yet. And the author seems puzzled by the amount of dislikes. Of course, I can't speak for everybody else and I can't claim to know exactly why so many readers dislike it, but what I can say is that the story suffers from most, if not all, of the typical problems of stories like these.

Original characters, especially self-inserts, are tricky creatures to deal with. They can be great, even wonderful, and many writers have proved this in this fandom and others. But it's often too easy to lose sight of the fact that a self-insert is, above all, a character. Characters have to be built. You see, for you, the main character is probably the most interesting and fascinating pony there is, because she's a representation of you. But we, readers, don't know you. We know nothing about you. At the very least, when you publish a story like this, you have to assume that nobody knows a single thing about the main character. If there's a prior story that establishes this character, then that should be pointed out as a prequel. This is not the case here, so, when the story seems to assume that I already empathise and understand the main character, it makes a big mistake.

When we create characters, they have to seduce the reader. We have to introduce the characters in a way that the reader wants (or needs) to know more about them. This is tricky, and there are a million different ways to do it right, and no perfect formula. However, we are not introduced neither to the main character nor to her love interest. She's just there. We're supposed to care that she's in love with somepony, but we don't know anything about them. We just happen to see that AJ and Apple Bloom are her "pals" (but why? Again, is there a prequel?), AJ automatically knows that she's in love with Cowboy, and promptly decides to set them up, no persuasion necessary. But that isn't even a set up: "Cowboy, this is Creativa, have fun." If AJ really wanted those two to have a chance, that's... a quite unenthusiastic attempt. In any other story, it would seem that she doesn't care about any of these two, or is even making things awkward on purpose. But here, she acts like that because the story requires those two to fall in love, so AJ doesn't even need to try.

And so, they have an interaction that doesn't suggest any kind of affinity between them whatsoever (Cowboy can't wait to meet the siblings of a mare he just barely met? Why?), and, one paragraph later, they're officially dating. We're given no idea of how it happened, which is the single most important element of this kind of story. If the relationship between these two was just a small part of a bigger story, it would be excusable to skim over it a little, but this is their love story, and we just don't find out how it happened. Again, it's like the story simply demands that they be in love, or, better yet, like the author demands them to be in love; and, since one of the characters is a self-insert of the author, this is a big red flag: the author is just giving herself a boyfriend as if she deserves it by birthright. So we really have to ask the question: are we really being told a story? If we're not allowed to learn how this relationship came to be, are we gonna learn anything at all about these characters, who they are, how they feel and what they want?

The answer over the next few chapters is, no. We're thrown into these tiny, episodic chapters that don't really reveal much about what's going on. The story throws names and characters at us, without even letting us know who they are (again, is there a prequel?). Chapter 3 oddly enough talks a lot about Applejack's family, which doesn't seem to tie into anything. The interactions between the main characters are... laconic, at best, and again, we don't get to experience how they feel. We don't really feel anything that's going on; we're told that things happen, but we're not shown how they happen. Remember the maxim, "Show, don't tell"? We're getting the opposite here.

The most glaring example of this, however, is regarding Cowboy's sister. He wants to avoid her, but we're given no reason why. She meets her boyfriend, and immediately suspects something's wrong (again, no proper reason why). But he immediately turns out to be right; the story says it's "as predicted", but by whom? Certainly not by me: I could've easily assumed, for example, that Cowboy was being overprotective of his sister. Was it predicted by Cowboy? Well, why didn't he do anything? Anyway, we barely get to know how he feels about this; he just immediately finds a better boyfriend for his sister. In the end, this incident doesn't let us learn anything about his feelings or his relationship with his family, but it seems to be there to show us that he knows what's best and he can fix anypony's problem. Yet, wasn't he the one who kept getting into physical fights with somepony else because of rodeo problems? Notice that this could be a very interesting character development (he is protective of his family but troublesome with other ponies), but the story seems blissfully unaware of this contradiction.

This is how far as I've went in this story as of now. I just felt the need to point out to you that, perhaps, these could be the reasons for all those dislikes. People came here expecting a story, but they get a flurry of rushed events that don't seem to connect properly, led by characters with no motivation and no development, and we don't seem to be learning anything about any of them. See, it's totally okay to write stories to play out personal fantasies (arguably, that's why we write stories to begin with), but we have to remember that readers are dedicating their time into the story, and when it feels like this investment doesn't pay off, it can be very frustrating. Art is a cruel mistress; she can reward us, but she can also punish us. I'm taking my time to write all this because I believe that there's always something to learn from every experience in life. I learnt a lot from my own mistakes, whether in writing or in music, so I'm just hoping to pass along what I have learnt. I don't know if you'll care, but, well, I'm just making a stab.