Applejack never has a good time in Ruby fics, does she?

Anyway, I'm glad that I got a chance to read this early, even thoigh I probably would have read it eventually anyways <3

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Never >:3

I'm glad you were one of the first sets of eyes on it, and it helped me to sharpen it to something better than it was before! Thank you again, Fidd <3!!

ok bet

Y'know for being the Element of Honesty, Applejack lies to herself a lot in this story.

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This is the best comment on any of my fics.

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Talk to me, Ruby, how did you do this? How deep of an understanding of your characters do you need to have to write something so authentic like this? Instead of putting cardboard cutouts on awkward actors, you brought the actual characters to life. The fact that AJ, the element of honesty, lies to herself the most is very ironic and makes the story all the more enjoyable to read.

Cheers to this good story, Ruby. Keep it up.

This brings up an interesting question, what does mourning really have to say about our relationship with the living and the dead? So many rituals and traditions around it are about talking to them, telling them what happened since they were gone, so much imagination is brought into picturing them still watching over you.
Do people move on from death and how do rituals work with it? In a way, necromancy is a natural progression of rites of mourning and grief, bringing someone back for the last time, sleeping next to them after the day of their death (an actual tradition from where I live), all of it is very, for the lack of a better word, selfish. And I've seen people mourn and observe these rituals but never truly move on.
Also I have to mention I really like that Applejack has to go through inventing the process entirely and how it consumes her life in a self-destructive way.

...Euuugh.

That was incredibly well written. A fine descent into grief and depravity.

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I'm being advised by my legal team to say that I cannot confirm or deny that I've tried necromancy personally and that it in no way, shape, or form informed my writing in this story :)

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I would say that, yeah. Applejack trying to resurrect her really is the final conclusion to mourning and grief. In pure Applejack fashion, she can't just accept things, she's gotta roll up her sleeves and try to find a way through it. She can't just go around the mountain, she has to level the damn thing because it's in her way, regardless of how stubborn or impossible that task is. I'm really glad you saw it that way!

well shoot that wasn't going to work. even a foal knows you start by seeking out the dark entities that lie beyond the edge of reality and strike up a bargain with them. Then it's just a matter of terms and conditions.

Quick editing note:

“Granny.” The mountainous stallion furrowed his eyebrows, “And those potions you been makin’, matter of fact.”

“Nothin’.” His voice sounded labored.

I think there's a line from Applejack missing here. There's also a few minor paragraph spacing errors in some spots, but nothing big.

I really kinda loved most of this fic. The way you write Applejack and her obsession is great. The little hints to how things will go wrong are built in well, and I love the fact that the inciting incident here is basically a twisted call-forward to G5. Big Mac and Twilight are both good foils to Applejack, and the buildup to the inevitable is perfectly paced and poignant. The description of how AJ's potion works and the ritual she performs is just plain great.

When I read the ending section a second time, I understood what was happening better. But the first time I read it, there was one line that completely threw me off.

She couldn’t have looked more beautiful.

I get the intent with this line, and it's a great line out of context, but I have to admit it distorted my perception of what Applejack was experiencing in that moment. It gave me the impression that Applejack had completely gone off the deep end, that she genuinely believed she'd succeeded, and we were heading toward a truly pitch-black ending where AJ and corpse-Dash "live" happily ever after. So I got a bit of whiplash it became clear Applejack was going to put Dash out of her misery after all. Re-reading this section of the fic, I think it would make more sense without that line. In general, there's also a few lines in the ending (e.g. "The potion had worked, but...”) that feel like they're needlessly explaining what's already clear through the (excellent) descriptions of the hideous thing Dash has become, which wasn't an issue elsewhere in the story.

Overall, though, I did dig this story quite a bit and your talent for writing these kinds of tales shows. I look forward to your next outing!

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Oh no, there's no mistake there. It's just Big Mac saying two lines in a row, but I definitely could've put something to better communicate and transition that. I personally agree with your assessment of lines towards the end, and that I was overdoing it but I felt that if I didn't do that, the ending might remain too unclear, and even now the ending is a bit of a knotted mess reading it back. It's tripping over itself a little bit in trying to say a lot all at once. So I figured it'd be best to overexplain and untie the knot a little bit than have it remain a blurry, gnarled final image.

Having said that. I am. Dying. To see praise and criticism coming from you had made my whole night and probably tomorrow too! I'm ecstatic that you enjoyed my fic!! Even if it was a little decrepit and grim! I really try to write characters who selfishly and stubbornly pursue ambitions that they convince themselves are noble. Applejack isn't just defying nature to bring back Dash instead of letting her rest, she's deluding herself into thinking she's doing everypony a favor and conquering death itself. I really try to capture that mindset, so to hear praise from you and others that I've succeeded here makes me tear up with happiness!! Thank you so so much, Eileen!!

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Wow. To be honest, the fact that you value my feedback that highly has kinda made my night too. Thanks so much!

Oh, this was a good one. Didn’t expect her to straight up cleave Rainbow.

But also wouldn’t the implication of Applejacks knowledge surely means that after someone died VERY recently, they could be brought back with no damage? Considering it was a peaceful death, they should be fine and dandy if they had just died right?

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Interesting thought, maybe Applejack's actually got something there, even if she wasn't able to do what she wanted.

It was ok. A decent fiction to read.

So, the way I understand it, the potion could probably work on someone who has just died or who was in some way preserved (frozen etc). If only AJ had prepared it ahead of tim..

I like it.

This was beautifully written. Although, AJ will need to have a pretty huge apology to her friends... all those unopened letters...

It might even have worked if AJ just froze rainbow's corpse. You cant just leave it rotting underground and hope for the best

What a great story. A perfect mix of sadness and horror. The characters are believable and feel true to their show counterparts, and you can really feel Applejack’s emotions throughout the story. I’m not a huge fan of AppleDash in general but regardless this story is going into my Favorites. 10/10

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I'm super happy you enjoyed it! It took a lot of revisions to make Applejack's mindset, and everyone else's character interacting with it, work, so I'm stoked that you liked it!

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I honestly think you did a great job with this story. I especially liked the ending as it gave me chills but also really made me get a sense of the love between Dash and AJ. The part where Dash flaps her remaining wing during the kiss scene is a combination of heartwarming and unsettling to me and it was so captivating that I ended up reading it multiple times to really take it in. I think you portrayed grief and the death of a loved one very accurately with this story in the sense that it reminds me of what Stephen King did in Pet Sematary (the novel, which is better than either of the films). Basically posing the question that just because we can bring a loved one back does it always mean we should, or is it better to just remember them as they were when they were alive? To me this piece was an infusion of Pet Sematary and MLP, and because you wrote the characters so well it feels believable. I’m a big horror fan in addition to being a pegasister, so horror is one of my favorite genres to begin with, but honestly this is one of the best dark/horror MLP fics I’ve read in a while.

This is very neat. I was half expecting AJ to lose a limb there (lmao), but, yeah. The buildup to the raising was intense, bit of gruesome beauty in it all. The fact that it worked on animal corpses she collected seemed to imply that the magic had a limit in how much it could reverse, tragedy in that if she kept RD's body in ice there might have actually been a chance ... which is very hilarious in retrospect due to having a similar conflict in my own story, of healing being unable to perfectly reverse cell damage. The solution being one of my many random immortality magic babblings: taking half a page from Time Lords and inducing Meiosis on one's entire body and replacing damaged DNA from someone else.

Grotesque, nauseating, and fascinating. The earth pony magic and darker powers at play made this hard to not zip through with how interested I was. This was great work at taking a darker look at AJ.

Sometimes dead is better.