• Member Since 4th Mar, 2012
  • offline last seen 24 minutes ago

bahatumay


Simultaneously able to type 94 wpm and still take five years to finish a story. If you're feeling generous, throw a ko-fi at me.

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Source

Berry Punch is not a bad pony. Her cutie mark, after all, is for mixing drinks, not consuming them. But sometimes, things change.
For example, having your husband die. Or being turned into a vampony.
Now Berry Punch has to deal with being in a new city much bigger than her hometown, trying to provide for herself and her daughter, trying to hold down a job and make a living, and trying to not get exposed as a vampony.
....Stay thirsty, my friends?

Chapters (5)
Comments ( 15 )

Not bad, I can see you tried. But ehh?

1245390
You'll have to be a bit more specific than that... I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong. :pinkiehappy:

1245463 I don't really see anything wrong with this. But it just seems odd. Never really imagined Berry Punch as a vampire.

"Yeah... I'm gonna... gonn- HIC suck your HIC ... your... Oh God."

fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/268/0/7/berry_punch_drunk_by_miketueur-d4auu52.png

It's not bad, but how is she going to drink her delicious booze if she's carving for blood?

1245491
...I like that picture a lot more than I should...
I was going to bring that up later, actually. I figured trying to get drunk out of her mind would be the first thing she'd do. (Un)fortunately, as part of the curse, her body "resets" itself every thirty seconds or so. Very handy for eating contests, spicy food challenges, healing, and surviving poisons; bad for trying to get drunk.

Author's notes:
1) Sorry, Berry; that one's the author's fault, not yours.
2) “Vegetarian” vampires are BS and you know it.

Just wondering... do the pictures add to or detract from the story?

1) I think it's fun when people give ponies a few more horse characteristics. For example, a horse is, by nature, a prey animal (my little pony, my little pony, nom, nom, nom, nom....), so they depend on their sight and especially hearing to detect and avoid predators. The fact that a fully grown mare appeared beside her without her noticing would be... disturbing to her instincts, to say the least.

"She stumbled down an alley, drunk more with fear than alcohol, a massive headache pounding in her head."
This language gives me a problem early in. How can you be "drunk with fear"? I'll admit the metaphor could be used in some circumstances, but the description just sounds like she's very drunk and a little nervous.

Further comments:

She looked down at her side. There were not even any scars. And the pain was.... fading?
Am I THAT hammered? Berry Punch briefly wondered.
Not bad. Some sense of Berry's character and vampirism.

showing a yellow face with sky blue eyes that seemed like they were... missing something I like this. It's a nice ominous little detail that suggests the perceptual filters of vampirism and stimulates the imagination.

Regarding note 1, I think the "door that seemed closed even though it was open" is actually a clever and interesting way to describe the invitation prohibition. Her inability to enter her own house was also the point where I really got engaed by the store.

"Turned me?" The thought, 'But I like stallions....' briefly flashed across the mare's mind. That got a gigglesnort out of me.

[i"I'm so sorry. I know you didn't seek this out. I did. I wanted revenge. Why? Because my parents were murdered, abandoning me and leaving me alone. I couldn't let that happen to Pinchy, but at what cost
Oookay, this is technically character consistent, but the dialogue kind of fizzles out. I get the "distracted, emotionally-driven ramblings" feel your going for, but given how evasive and reticent Sunshine is, she shouldn't be airing this much personal information this soon. I'd either spread it out and work up to it, or rewrite this as a much more obscure and hinting passage.

Hmm. On the whole, I like the tone you're setting, a decent atmospheric chill and hints of twisted perception peppered with just enough humor. However, I feel the language needs polishing, especially some of the dialogue. There are veins of good story here, but I don't feel deep enough inside Berry's world, aware of the sensory contrasts between intoxication and vampirism. Sunshine is torn between helpful exposition figure and reticent mysterious sire, and a lot of her lines feel awkward because of it. You've got a good thing going here, and the alcohol/blood theme is one that should flow nicely.

One more thing, vampires that feed on animal blood rather than the blood of their own kind are a bit less wimpy and more abhorrent in a world where almost all animals are at least quasi-sapient and where the dominant species is herbivorous.

She unfortunately had learned that lesson from first-hoof experience, by opening a cask of amontillado.

For the love of Celestia, Berry!:raritydespair::raritydespair:

1317693
Your review is good and you should feel good.

I must have been thinking of the phrase "drunk with anger" or something. Google says that my version is not a common phrase, so I'll change that.
A gigglesnort means I've succeeded. :pinkiehappy: My goal is entertainment.
I think that "why" is actually a vestigial personal note I forgot to delete... that is awkward-sounding. I was going for guilty rambling, and I guess it came out just rambling. I actually wasn't planning on having Sunshine come back at all in this story, so I might have rushed her character a bit.
And you make a valid point about the animals. I'll admit, I'd never thought of that.
and now I feel pushed to raise the caliber of my writing to live up to that review so thanks for that I guess

1322608
:raritycry:

"Berry Punch resumed shouting. "You can't just love me and leave me!" she whined, as she half walked, half stumbled after the quickly departing mailmare. "I thought we had something!""

I am amuse. :rainbowlaugh:

Tenderheart smiled. Another normal day in Ponyville.

Okay, I'm getting to like these little vignettes. Berry Punch's antics are fun, but I appreciate the insights into wider life and ponyvillians they grant indirectly. You have a knack for characterization.

Redheart decided that whatever the vampony had to say, it was very important, because normally she wouldn't try to roll over waiting patients like that. Even vamponies have hearts.
Wait...what? How did Redheart know that Berry had become a vampony? This is a crucial connection that should have been established earlier on.

It's interesting that Redheart is the first pony she brings her concerns too. However,
Redheart blinked, the smile completely gone from her face. Whatever she had been expecting, that wasn't it.
If Redheart already knows she's a vampony, then she WOULD be expecting a reaction like this. What gives?

Berry Punch repeated herself, accentuating each phrase. "I wanted. To feed. On Pinchy. I went into her room, watched her sleep, listened to her blood, the filly...."

See, this is a problem. We shouldn't have Berry Punch saying this. We should be there with her. We should have had a scene with Berry leaning over her own window, watching her own child, smelling the heat and carbon dioxide in her breath, listening to every artery flex, and wanting it so bad. Having Berry tell somebody else about it isn't the same. This is a scene that should have been presented to us. "Show, don't tell" and all.

"Not thirsty," Berry Punch said, waving a hoof dismissively.

Redheart's eyes narrowed. "Drink it."

"I'm not thirsty," she maintained.

"Drink it."

"No."

"Drink it."

"No!"

"Drink it."

Again, we need less dialogue, more description. Get us inside her head. Help us understand why she's not drinking it. Also, I though that the "pink filly going back to her blocks" earlier on might have been Ruby, but then decided that if she was, the characters would have recognized her as such. This is misleading your audience, in a bad way.

1329295
That's probably my favorite compliment I've ever received on my writing.

This story is in the same universe as another story I wrote on here, called Fluttershy the Hunter, where she thinks Redheart is a vampony and tries to prove it. Almost as a joke, I decided to make Berry Punch the vampony--and ended up liking it so much it spawned this spin-off. It's revealed in the epilogue that Redheart knew that Berry was a vampony. The link is on
...sweet celestia I forgot to post a link to the prequel.

I was trying to imply that the surprise came from Berry wanting to feed on Ruby. She was formerly called "Overprotective Mother Pony", after all, and a few times later in the story I have her saying that she would rather die than feed on Pinchy.
Then again, what makes sense in my head doesn't always make sense when I write it down.

That back-and-forth scene was funnier in my imagination. I think I know how to fix it.

No, that wasn't Ruby; though now that you say that, it is a bit very ambiguous. I am terrible at new character colors, names, and descriptions. You know why she was pink? I didn't want to make up a name and I couldn't think of a canon character right away, so I scanned around my room, looked down, and saw my headset microphone plug, and that's why she was pink.
Will fix.

All right. I updated all the chapters at once, because I hate it when just one chapter updates and it clogs up my favorites feed. Prologue has new dialogue for Sunshine, chapter one has the scene between Berry and Redheart rewritten, chapter two gave Berry a few additional lines.

1) You know, in a world with pegasi, this probably isn't as safe as it is in real life.
2) If you've never tried opening a locked door with your mouth... I recommend keeping it that way. People give you funny looks, especially if your hands aren't full.
3) That really awkward moment when you realize that you can draw straighter lines holding the pencil like a kindergartener than when you hold it normally...

Read the 4 chapters in like 3h and I just have to say one thing:
Please get your next chapters out ASAP :pinkiehappy:

I remember it...I think this is a cute fic and I'm curious to see more. I like berry being so skilled manipulating objects with her tail too, that was very clever.

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