Decaf
Joined 19th May, 2012 ·
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This was great!
The only thing that really put me off for a little while was the serial killer simile, because I personally found it too upsetting even in the context of this story, possibly because I don't like serial killer references in Equestria in general.
Otherwise, I loved the way you used language in this. It just pulled me along. It seemed like it took a lot of organization to handle the boxes and you did that well. And the ending was really nice!
This is....honestly beautiful. I've wished I could talk to my depression too, a few times.
I liked Afterword so much I decided to read this as well.
Both of these are a kind of story that I find really interesting. Stories that are all about jumping right into the head of a character and see what's inside their minds, and show what the world looks like from their unique perspective. And the way it gradually revealed what had happened to bring Pinkie to this point was really well done.
Thanks for both these stories, they're really good. I hope we'll see more from you.
Talk about a top-tier character study of Pinkie. It has all the humor and buried fears that she herself does.
Holy crap. That's how you write a one-shot.
Dang.
I need to go reevaluate my life choices.
That was absolutely amazing!
that is how rooms work yes
i did quite like this sentence, like one of those six-word short stories
this was very nice, a dissection of Pinkie's constant exuberance as a coping mechanism that actually has some existential depth, itself described with a whimsical Pinkie-ism, making it feel very in-character for her.
hard to tell sometimes when the meta is from Pinkie's perspective or part of the meta-ness of the story. that's what's nice about Pinkie stories.
really straddles the line of too whimsical and believable for Pinkie, with the additional bit of showing the social consequences of Pinkie's Pinkie-ness for herself
extremely true! a theme that i actually go back to very often myself.
haven't finished reading yet but wow, this is a great mental image! love the idea that the resolution to existential dread is slapstick, it is so fitting.
if only the scrollbar didn't betray that this would be coming up!
insert squinting Twilight emoji here
this was very good. PInkie's motivations and fears are very resonant here
really liked this exchange! an illustration of coping with self-loathing by treating yourself as you treat others, except more literal in this story
aww yes, Maud!
this was delightfully meta, and the exchange after just very fun
applying the magic of friendship to shards of your own soul that are tasked with torturing you forever is truly advanced friendship. this is how to do the reconstruction after deconstructing Pinkie Pie by picking her apart into a gaggle of self-loathing, insecurity, and avoidance. really magnificent stuff, here.
and an amazing ending.
this is by far the best character study of Pinkie Pie i have ever read, and on top of it a great exploration of anxiety and existential dread and how to cope, in the end finding its way back to the earnest positivity and hope that is the true spirit of the canon show. like i mentioned earlier, a deconstruction followed by a reconstruction. on top of that it really just flowed very smoothly, great pacing, descriptions just enough to set up the various scenes to make room for the fantastic character interactions between Pinkie and the parts of herself. there were also some fun metacommentary that doubled as convenient shortcuts which i recognized because it was exactly 100% the type of thing i would write! and Pinkie's perspective on her own self-loathing and insecurity and avoidance really match my own on my own in a way that was uncanny (though of course i could definitely do with more following up on what i "know").
this piece really resonated with me, and was a fantastic show of writing skill throughout. a true joy to read.
Howdy, hi
I like this a lot. I'm always a sucker for a philosophical debate through weird on the nose metaphor. I love Pinkie in this. She's emotionally mature, introspective, and just understands herself in a perfect way. The setup of the scenario is so interesting with the 6 boxes in the nondescript room as well as the setup of what a "why-hole" is.
The plot is meta in a tongue-in-cheek way that's super enjoyable to read with one exception: the epic adventure part felt a bit too far. Honestly, this story was amazing from start to finish. I literally couldn't stop myself from reading.
Glorious story, sir.
My dude.
I read this while I was out in public and I could not stop the tears. This is an incredible analysis of Pinkie's character and motivation. I'm speechless at how good this is. Honestly, this is something I needed to read.
Thank you.
Wow! This was quite a journey to unpack! As I said before, I’ll say it again, this gave me an existential crisis in a good way. You don’t hear that every day, so by far, this fic does what it is set out to do.
The fic does good to portray Pinkie in a light that both explores her personality and way of thinking. The show goes over the fact that you can’t reason with her shenanigans, but this fic explores the reason WHY.
It also has an ending that is entire within reason and leaves the reader satisfied. Part of me was expecting her to get out (as is the trope of all happy endings), but this has a satisfying ending (at least in my opinion). I prefer satisfying over happy. However, this one gives you both!
Now, a particular part that ruined my immersion has to do with a recalled memory:
I find this overly self-aware. Kinda meta… in a way? It’s not a huge problem, just one that tripped me up a bit. True, there are sentences that can add a story behind a story and can convey feeling in a short amount of time, like Bike mentioned:
This works perfect for the context. I guess the biggest thing I get hung up on is that this is not a conjured alternate-reality puzzle-thing (do not know what to call it) of Pinkie’s soul fragment, but an actual memory. But, then again, Pinkie’s mind could be tainting the memory (two people can recall the same memory differently because of varying perspectives), which could be an explanation of it. If so, then it might help to clarify.
Take that with a grain of salt though. Bike mentioned that it didn’t bother them, so it might just be me.
Altogether, Decaf, this is an excellent fic! It’s no wonder its hitting (or has hit) feature box!
I could honestly talk about this story for hours. There's so much to unpack.
The main idea of the story, the titular Why-Hole, is such a genius turn of phrase. It describes that feeling of getting stuck in a loop of your own thoughts. It's also just such a Pinkie thing to say, which does wonders for this story. A fun little detail about the story is that the first half of the story is, in itself, a Why-Hole. Pinkie's going through each box, one-by-one, taking them in, thinking about them, and then moving onto the next, sinking her emotional and mental stability. Eventually, she reaches the bottom, and she just stops for a minute, and thinks, which causes another Why-Hole, this time in her mind. It's a really cool way of designing the story because, as they say, there's no where to go but up.
You set the scene incredibly well. I was drawn in right from the start. It starts as this void of a nondescript room that has no real sense to it, but slowly forms into a familiar place. The backstory was also really creative. Probably the thing I like the most about the whole thing is the fragment of Pinkie that's trying to torment her. It's a part of Pinkie, but it also feels like its own character, and the quips and quirks of it are really good. Despite it being the source of Pinkie's problem, it's actually where a lot of the comedy of the story bounces from. And there is some really good jokes there. The older ones being stuck-up, the mentions of how Twilight is doing, it being confused by word usage after the crown, it's all just really good dry humor. I just love in general how casual a lot of the stuff said in this story is said. The characters and the invisible narrator have no chill.
The reusage of the main environment is also really good. The nondescript room being mentioned every single time inbetween boxes made the story that much better. I also like how each of the boxes were used for a second purpose that flipped the entire section on its head. In fact, the only one not entered twice is the one where the Why-Hole is explained, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Going back to the fragment again briefly, the concept of the being who's entire purpose is to torture it's host for the things they don't like about themselves also being mentally unsound is a subtle, but really effective portrayal of mental health. There's a lesson somewhere that people irl could learn from.
The ending is just perfect. It takes the entire theme of the story, the Why-Holes, which are a mostly negative concept, and flips it into a more positive idea. The word why is central to the story, and it's seen clearly over the course of it. Being used as a question, to Why-Hole, to why bother, to the ending, why not try, the word goes through an evolution. You really took the Why-Hole and squeezed it for all it's worth.
Honestly this story is in my top 5 for the year, which has some very strong contenders for that spot. This is the best Pinkie Pie I've seen ever. It's such a perfect visualization of an emotion that I didn't even have a name for.
Bravo!
This is certainly one of the most interesting stories I've read from a plot perspective. It's weird, but the perfect kind of weird, and very appropriate that it's centered around Pinkie Pie.
I love how everything seems so random at first but comes together at the end, even the red herrings become parts of Pinkie turning things around, and specially how Pinkie solved the ,little paradox was very creative and thematically appropriate for both Pinkie, the show, and the themes you touch here.
This is a one in a million type of story, and you executed it perfectly. Great job!
Where to start?
Everyone kept saying this story was a highly recommended one. I was interested to find out why it was so. The beginning was so random, so twisting, without any proper goal in sight that I could see. I began to have my doubts.
But as I continued reading, I couldn't stop. The story really drags you in, making you consider so many different things and really is an excellent example of jumping into Pinkie Pie's mind and showing us some of the inner workings.
The build up and the slow lead up to what happened to Pinkie was amazing, and I loved every word. There is a simple writing style underlying the story, and it gives the story an even better ambience.
The only complaint I have is that there's no decaf coffee. Where is the decaf coffee. Please. Because of that instead of the maximum enjoyment I should have had I only had maximum enjoyment.
Thank you for writing, Decaf. It was a really good story to read.
There’s a lot going on here, a lot to unpack.
So, Pinkie Pie is tortured in this existential dread for all of eternity. It’s so interesting how every single box is specifically designed to pull her off her hinges ever so slightly more. There’s allusions to routine, betrayal, slight inconsistencies, and it works so well because every person goes through and gets throughly sick of those things when they happen or when they’re noticed.
And of course, there’s two ways to react to this, you can either become jaded and emotionally dull to just about anything, or you can do what Pinkie did here, and find a way through it.
I really love how Pinkie did it. It’s a way that’s just so... Pinkie. Of course she’d make a friend with her own self-lothing, and of course she’d use her slightly offbeat style to bring it to light.
The ‘why-hole’ is also a very complicated concept delivered simply. Naturally, we want to know, and we’ll drive ourself crazy with ‘why’ until we figure something out. When that ‘why’ isn’t found, and Occam’s Razor is too unsatisfying, we’ll continue asking these questions, getting more and more infuriated, until we just have to give up.
A ‘why-hole’ is something I find myself falling into insanely often when I learn about a new peculiar thing and want to learn more about said peculiarity. I’ve spent an hour on end before just trying to find that final ‘why’. I love how that story describes that so simply.
I love the moral here, there’s a moral in there about how trying to improve yourself isn’t bad, and we all need to be critical at some point, but we shouldn’t be too critical, lest we become stuck in an endless rabbit hole of ‘why’.
There’s also the final closing words, fantastic as they are. Even if you are apprehensive, you still need to try, and try and figure something out instead of asking a myriad of ‘what if’s.
This story isn’t exactly my type of story, but that by no means means it isn’ a damn good one. Good job.
This was awesome. Just-
Awesome.