Today is the 19th birthday of Eric Reed, Equestria's only human, and it is his first birthday in Equestria. Pinkie Pie planned a party for him to celebrate.
Also, the two ponies that are the closest to him, Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer, forgot all about his special day and panicked. With Spike's help and with hours before the party, will the two desperate mares find the "perfect" gift in time?
And how many times will Spike tell them they are overreacting?
This story takes place after the events of my A Giant Adventure to Equestria story. However, it is not required to read it first to enjoy this story, other than to learn how and why the human OC Eric Reed is in Equestria, and how his bonds with the other characters formed.
Last but far from least, special thanks to The Sleepless Behlolder for the great cover art and to TheBrokenBrony for proofreading this story.
I feel like this will come back to bite her.
Are these all on a linear timeline?
I like the cover art
10612351
Given Equestria's technology level I highly doubt the girls would be able to give Eric any of the things you described unless the mirror world has them
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Thank you
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You’re welcome
10612075
I can neither confirm or deny it will happen.
10612240
Linear timeline. Everything happens in order.
10612351
Sunburst and Thorax wouldn't be much help even if they were with them, and glad you're liking it so far!
10612565
And you are right.
MOAR, NOW
PS: If they had managed to buy the game, I would've totally expected that when they gift it to Eric, he accepts it while hidding a copy of that game somepony else gifted him earlier that day.
10621341
That comic dub was what came me the idea for those lines. I was even wondering if anyone was going to bring up that comic dub or not.
And early on when I was planning this story, that was an idea I had for how it would end. if I went with it, you would have been right,
10621443
That would have been my reaction too if someone else wrote this story.
10623149
I actually read it in that voice when it came up in the chapter
Nice to see that bigender video game characters exist in this world.
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Or at least this Equestria does. For a while, I forgot video games at all existed in Equestria until I re-watched the episode that had the CMC trying to find a girlfriend for Big Mac and saw Ponyville's little arcade section.
Hahahaha Pinkie's and Rainbow's gifts were amazing
And Sunset's arrival was the best way to end it. Poor mare/girl
This was really fun. Hope to see more stories coming from you!
Sunset spin-off?
This is pretty touching.
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Glad you liked it, and poor Sunset indeed. She didn't do much in the story, but she sure made an entrance
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I did have some thoughts of a sequel that showed what Sunset was going through after she got Twilight's message, but as if now, the odds of writing it are low.
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Ye[, those three having each other as a family as all that matters.
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I would say that that story has one of the more touchier endings for what's otherwise a comedy story.
I- hm, this story is nice with fluff if you don't think about it too much but some things just irk me about it. Like for starters they thought of the idea of getting him to las pegasus with all expenses paid but then the idea of paying a game needs both of their efforts?
I could let that slide honestly because maybe it was just throwing ideas and seeing what sticks but the fact in this world, games cost so much is just ridiculous. I mean realistically if it was so cost heavy then it would just plain not be accessible, the whole point of price for games is to be able to be bought not cheaply but not pricey either and sure bundles are heavy but like the price you put on them is just mind boggling.
Also the fact Twilight is a princess not being able to afford expensive things? Idk, could've expanded more onto that to tell us why? Because otherwise how does she even get paid? Or have money? Without having access to a treasury or whatever.
I also feel like you never let us, the readers, get a connection to the whole person that is important and built up to, you speak about Eric but since you skipped the whole list thing (which I feel could've been a prime spot to list off experiences and let us learn about Eric instead of just saying he likes games and stuff) it just left a lot to be wanted. We don't get a real good depth of Eric aside from him getting sad from not being able to be back home.
Like you list the examples of what they've done for him on the last chapter, with that little context beforehand it's hard to see WHY we should care whether his gifts are at stake. We don't see why it matters so much therefore hurts the suspension greatly and makes us not really care for the end result. If you need an example well -
Without the character building it just sounds like you're kind of scrounging for good character connections with him. I mean the saving from a fire? We could've heard about the with Twilight along the journey or especially Starlight if it was so monumental, it's a lot of telling but no showing y'know?
TLDR; Needs better character building on Eric, show don't tell.
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Thanks for that insight and duly noted.
As for the price of the games, before I wrote the story I looked up how much arcade games cost and the prices i got varied from game to game, but been anywhere from $300-$4,000, with some being in the tens of thousands, so I had the games in this story cost in the middle of that range. So, around $1,400 or so, or in bits, around 2,500 bits, give or take. Of course, the ones Flam and Flim sold that were 8,500+ bits was very severely overpriced because they felt they could get away with it. There was never a direct indication of how much a bit is compared to a US dollar, so I used the formula of 1 bit: 60 cents.
I didn't go into any specifics, but I did give a reason: Twilight has a budget and can't just buy more expensive stuff willy nilly, so paying, say, 4,500 bits was too much for her. I could have put in that she was fewer on bits at the time of this story than she might usually be. However, while it wasn't told point-blank, but Twilight could have afforded a 2,500-price game on her own; it was Starlight that couldn't (which Starlight herself stated that she could only help with paying it) and I tried to show it by Twilight acting as if she pay by herself by not asking Starlight for help in chapter 1.
My eternal nemesis and pain in the ass. I've long gotten the basics down (i.e. showing a character being said) but outside of that, sometimes I have little choice but to take a guess and hope I did it right. However, some of the thigns you pointed out should help me do it better in the future, so thanks.
I thought that the train and balloon costs would be why they were short on bits.
Now for a potential error:
Uppercase ‘i’ should be lowercase.
11341547
Good catch and I just fixed that error.
But misjudging or forgetting the cost of a train or something would have been about as big a fail as the fail that actually happened.