Petunia Paleo was alone at home. For the first time in her young life, she was being granted this privilege by her parents, to take care of herself for an entire evening. And this newfound freedom meant watching a horror movie on TV and reading horror stories in the world wide web all night, of course.
Because what else would a filly do once the watchful eyes of her parents are gone for a night?
But in this night, Petunia should also learn where young fillies like her aren't supposed to look.
A Petunia Paleo horror story for Nightmare Night. Tagged "Alternate Universe" for a different look of Petunia's house and the existence of the Internet in Equestria.
Chapters (1)
Very nice! And it fills me with joy that you used Petuna, she deserves more stories. Though, the ending got me a bit confused.
Also, Happy Sheep Friends, I hope it isn't what I think it is
10509870
She does and I am happy that I could write something for her. Writing a horror story like that for Petunia Paleo is in my head for more than 4 years now and I'm glad I could finally do it.
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Feel free to read it again. I like for my writers to figure this out for themselves, instead of me explaining it to them, and there are enough hints for attentive readers to explore and analyze strewn out in the story.
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It's an average, happy, colorful cartoon made for little foals, the name is just a coincidence. You don't think Petunia's parents would allow her to watch anything else, do you?
I find the similarity in name very funny, though, considering what the story is about and how squeamish Petunia's parents are about her interest in horror stories.
10511158
Wel, better late than never.
Sure.
Good. I watched that year back, was fan of a perticular OC even
10511158
Ah, now I get it. Was just so tired that I didn't catch it fully
10511172
Good. If you want, you can tell me what you think happened here.
10511180
And spoil it for any future readers?
10511181
A story's comments are there to discuss a story, so readers should expect that in a comments section and avoid reading there if they don't want to get spoilered. Fire away with the spoiler cannon!
10511185
Okay. She basically found a pony skeleton by accident, which was cursed/ressurcted and the stallion came to retrieve it/safe her fro it and she thought the movie became real
My guess is far more mundane.
Horror film marathon+3 cans of bitshop Cola+energy drink+reading horror stories for an hour = runaway imagination.
10511190
Not exactly. Her ponysaurus skull is obviously not the same as the skull of a pony. You might need to watch "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" again.
10514321
So she imagined the stallion and how he talked to her and what he told her and asked her to do, as well? Pff. She had cheap coke, an energy drink and fat food, not crystal meth. No, there are true, otherwordly horrors that roam the realm of the mortals and Petunia met one of them.
10515420
Sure, the way you described it just made it look like she buried up a wrong skeleton at first. At least, that's how I read it at first glance
10515425
Really? I did describe that she couldn't dig the hole all the way to the end, and therefore not take the skeleton out, though. You should maybe look at this scene a little closer.
10515494
Yeah, as I said, read that in the middle of the night, thus mix up a few things
While reading this story, I found myself having to reread paragraphs to understand what you were trying to say. It was hard to get invested into the plot and just left me question as to why certain events happened. All I can assume is she is so tired and jacked up on suger/caffeine that her imagery is running rampant or that she pick up a cursed skull that someone takes later.
I noticed you use a lot of implicit undertones and imagery that expresses the story. However, you later state the undertones explicitly and it is jarring. You also have some imagery that seems pointless or already implied but state it explicitly.
I will show you an example of the undertones.
Specifically this line:
This feels out of place, you describe the soda as cheap and unhealthy and since Petunia is a filly, it is implicitly said and the parents buy the food while also it shows they do not really mind what she eats. When they left, it never stated what time and it never said if she ate, thinking of this the parents also never said to watch what she eats. But then the line I quoted tells me explicitly the that the parents only care about what she watches and not of what she eats.
I do not really want to break down the entire story, but I hope this helps you understand why I could not put it in my favorites.
10515551
Your feedback left me very conflicted. After reading your comment several times in the last two months and figuring out what you mean, something that took a while because of burnout in November and then more writing projects and the holidays in December, I could see what the issue is but, at the same time, also felt uneasy about the solution that you propose for the issue.
Your feedback here comes down to it that the behavior of Petunia's parents and the things they talked about with Petunia before they left imply that they are okay with it if she stuffs herself with sugar and that the second part of the sentence you quoted is, therefore, not necessary to explain that circumstance. I used Tell after I already explained it with Show.
I understand this and I am also someone who expects from his readers to think for themselves, rather than chewing everything for them. But cutting that second part of the sentence just because the information was previously implied in the behavior of Petunia's parents, also felt extremely minimalistic to me. And I can definitely see that there is some value in reminding a reader on a certain, previously established fact by explicitly stating it or in giving such an established fact a stronger emphasis later in the story by making an explicit statement about it.
In the case of the sentence you quoted, the reason why I feel such a strong resistance against cutting it down is because of one particular message that I wanted to get across with this story.
What I intended to pass on to its readers, something that sadly no one seems to have noticed because of a general lack of interest in the story, is the hypocrisy in how Petunia's parents raise her. They patronize Petunia a lot and are overprotective, by not letting her watch horror movies even though Petunia can handle these movies just fine as we see at the beginning of the story. But then they gladly leave Petunia alone in the house for an entire night for the very first time when there is a benefit they have from that, attending the concert they would otherwise miss. Suddenly, it works just fine to trust Petunia with handling something.
I wrote this hypocritical behavior by them into the story to make the readers of it think about how parents often belittle and patronize their children who can take so much more than they realize. It's not just a horror story, I also implanted a message here. And perhaps even a lesson, if there should be parents among its readers.
And it's because of this lesson that I wanted to have this explicit sentence. By comparing the movies they don't want Petunia to watch with something they don't see as harmful, I wanted to remind readers on it how adamant Petunia's parents are about not letting her watch horror movies, to make sure the message/lesson comes across to them. If I had left it with the implication alone, it wouldn't have created awareness for it that there is a lesson to begin with. A lesson has to be stated explicitly to make someone learn it.
This makes the sentence, even though it explicitly repeats something that has already been implicitly explained, necessary here.
But, like I said at the beginning, I see what the problem is and the other instances where it occurs in the story are probably not necessary to get my message/lesson across to readers, so I will go over the story and identify where else it happened and figure out how I could have written these parts better or what exactly needs cutting in those sentences.
What you explained me in your feedback feels a lot like a piece of knowledge I already had and that I already successfully applied in stories, but that I lost again, as the second half of 2017, 2018 and 2019 have been mentally stressful years during which my writing skill regressed a lot. I was able to build it up again last year, but maybe this one aspect is still missing.
This year will hopefully allow me to read my older stories from these years again and to determine how much the mental stress actually affected them and how good or bad I actually wrote them and once I do that, I will also check my usage of Show vs. Tell in these stories and pay special attention to that.
Regardless of what I find then and no matter if you just taught me something new or if I really already knew about this and you just reminded me on it again, your feedback has been very helpful and I will make great use of it in future stories.
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The second option is correct. Despite your feedback, I am not sure what gave you trouble with understanding the plot, whether it was the problem you mentioned that distracted you from the plot or if something else made the story harder to understand for you, but that you came to the right conclusion at the end shows me that I wasn't too enigmatic with the meaning behind the events.
10621415
There is no clean way of putting it but I would not call what I said feedback. I stopped giving feedback or correcting mistakes about a year or two ago. Take what I said with a grain of salt because I am choatic when it comes to what I love.
10624094
No, the feedback you gave me is very good and points out something very important. I wasn't aware of making this mistake, so your comment helped greatly. You should give more feedback again, you are good at it, and I always spot many new pony authors here who never get insightful comments on their stories and feel discouraged by this and give up again.
10624465
Alright, I am glad it helped you. Maybe I'll go back to giving feedback. Who knows where life will take me. I catch you around, have a good year!
10626251
Have a good year, as well, and thank you for becoming my follower!