Routine day with a dirt cheap brush, then a week goes by and it goes untouched. Then two, then three, then a month, and the rest of your life you beat yourself up. - Aesop Rock, "Rings"
Turns out the School of Friendship has a swim team leader board. Turns out Smolder is a pretty good swimmer. She wants to be the best though, for a reason more complicated than simple pride.
This fic is the product of another one of Nitro Indigo's text prompts. This one: Portray a pony with Naked Foal Syndrome. It ended up morphing into brief character study on Smolder, but that’s not a bad thing for a fic to be.
Page generated in 0.205 seconds
Total duration
1,023 users online
1,781,158 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
*Five, unless you meant "other than me."
I like the idea of cutie marks glowing while a pony is using their talent.
Cool story. At first I thought it was gunna be sandbar cos of his turtle cutie mark. A naked pony though, that’s rather unique
Hmm do we have any Canon source that the cutie mark is only on the hair?
10405864
There’s an episode where Snips and Snails lose parts of their coats, and their cutie marks aren’t visible on their skin.
10405864
Here’s a screenshot of Snips and Snails after getting gum in their respective fur. It’s from Ponyville Confidential.
I can't wait for the sequel where he falls for Smolder and gives her a special flower: the Rose of Salmon Tone.
10405934
And Ocellus eats him.
Always interesting to see an obscure bit of actual horse biology see use in Equestria. This was an especially nice example. Thank you for it.
(And I do love the idea of Ocellus treating her friendships like a family-sized bag of chips and being up front about it. Sure, she can generate her own love these days, but old habits die hard.)
Thanks for the fun story, and also for inadvertently teaching me about NFS. You learn something new every day!
:)
This story makes my interior bits feel warm and soft, like buttered toast. Or socks fresh from the dryer.
10406238
Tacky as it is for an author to shill their other stories, this isn’t even the most feel-good fic I’ve ever written. This one is.
10405727
And I kind of assumed it would be Yona with the entirety of the explanation being "Yaks best at swimming!" But then again, no comedy tag.
10406276
From not being able to swim to becoming best in school would be a funny idea, if a bit of a stretch
Naked foal syndrome? That's actually a thing?
10406340
Yes indeed; It’s a very rare genetic condition in Asian breeds. The foals born with it tend to have a lot of other problems (hydrocephalus, eczema, weak ligaments) that cause them to die after a few weeks, but very rarely, the offspring will survive.
The most long lived naked foal on record is an unnamed filly who is currently approaching three years old.
Nice
10406063
It's not just horse biology, my niece had alopecia areata. Luckily, it seems to have gone away with puberty but it was quite possible that puberty would have seen all her hair fall out.
this is really good. Lots of dialog too... I'm inspired.
When I read the line that mentioned how long Smolder had been trying to beat Salmon Tone's time, it gave me flashbacks to a time years ago when I feverishly worked at improving my times on various tracks on the-then latest-Mario Kart game, only to suddenly lose all drive for it after looking into the online records and finding most of the World Records to be held by cheaters.
This was a simple, enjoyable story. The message you placed in the Author's Note box is also a fitting theme for the fic.
I've never seen Smolder portrayed as a swimmer before, so it was interesting to see what you did with the concept. Also, nice character interaction between Smolder and Ocellus. Good work overall. :)
Now this is something always awesome to read! Short, sweet, and enjoyable all around! Quite a fantastic way to start the day off too by just reading this lovely fic! Hope ya didn't mind, but I made a lil' reading on this sweet short!
Audio Linky!: https://youtu.be/XrlF0aWcQuI
(I don't mean to offend anyone with this comment in any way!)
10407833
Absolutely. You have my blessing as the author.
Here’s hoping I caught and edited all the grammatical errors before you recorded.
This was a nice cute story. Ocellus's dialogue felt a bit too forceful for her, but otherwise you handled the characters well. It's interesting how you included a real horse condition. I have to say, bare wings sounds uncomfortable.
10409878
I agree I could’ve characterized Ocellus better. I think her attitude is a holdover from the harder edge she had the last time I depicted her.
- MLP: FiM
- Drama
- Slice of Life
Sandbar wonders about Ocellus's old life under Chrysalis.I quite like Ocellus' characterisation here. My primary issue is that it the ending feels a bit abrupt. It'd be nice if we saw swimming practice between Smoulder and M.T, rather than stopping at the dorms. You lead into it, but just stop before writing it. Good story all the same!
Short, sweet, and purposeful. And even some Smolcellus shipping undertones? That is some good stuff :)