shortdesc
Pony Wallflower Blush wakes up in a desolate and empty world, hoofcuffed to a princess of a species she's never heard of before. Everything feels so wrong. She tries not to think about it too hard.
tags
Suicide / Self-Harm: Wallflower tries to throw herself off of a cliff
info
a submission to the May Pairings Contest 2022.
this strange story idea began life as an entry to Nailah's Shipping Contest that did not get finished in time. the randomly generated pairing i was given was Wallflower Blush x Princess Skystar, and the original version of the contest had a set of prompts that included the pair waking up hoofcuffed to each other in the middle of nowhere.
the pony Wallflower Blush in this story was inspired by Sledge115's Wallflower of Canterlot
thank you to Rego, Dewdrops on the Grass, Sledge115, and The Sleepless Beholder for prereading!
T-pose to assert reassurance.
Jokes aside, this is a fascinating exploration of very different personalities and sets of experiences forced to interact with one another. As is usually the case with her, the conflict of Wallflower vs. herself is deeply compelling, and Skystar’s own struggle with both Wally and herself is a great side feature. Thank you for a strange and enjoyable journey. Best of luck in the judging.
I bet cooking sucks in Atlantis and other underwater cities; everything is always boiled or cold.
This was excellent. I really like how well you explored both characters and how different people might react to the situation in the long run.
Special detail mention to the return of the manacles. When they get the key, having the context of the prompt mentioned in the long description, it reads a little like "okay this element of the prompt is inconvenient let's get it out of the way", but then it's masterfully brought back later and the fact they were originally manacled doesn't end up irrelevant like such inconvenient prompt elements often might.
11258761
hehe "T-pose to assert reassurance" is a cute way to describe the scene and i quite like it :) and yes, i am so glad you found Wallflower's journey compelling! it has been sitting with me for a very long time, so the Skystar x Wallflower dynamic feels very natural to me even though the whole point of the fic is that the two characters have so little in common with each other that it doesn't make sense for them to even meet
11258886
haha, i imagine the tastes of the seaponies would have adapted quick, so it would be just as rich and varied to them as our cuisines are to us. which would have been very fitting with the theme to have in the story!
11258894
thanks so much, i am so glad you enjoyed it! :)
in my original plan for the story, the cliff scene was the angsty climax that was supposed to be followed by a dénouement, but i literally ran out of time to write it, so i had to have everything happen in the last scene. originally, Wallflower was supposed to jump while navigating the cliffs with a seemingly-oblivious Skystar, who stops her just in time, followed by a conversation that is very much like the one that appears here, followed by another scene where the romantic climax is built up to and happens.
in the reshuffle, i had Wallflower split up with Skystar, with Skystar stopping her being a sign of her being more assertive, which led naturally to the manacles coming back. so everything you see here was conceived in the very last hour of writing this fic, and only because i ran out of time.
isn't that serendipitous?
This one didn't really land with me. I get what you were going for, the emotions just didn't really stick.
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cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/957679742822281266.webp?size=96&quality=lossless
And now I'm imagining the entirety of G5 is Wally playing with her plants. What plant would each pony be?
Read this months ago but neglected to write a review.
Really nice story! This was a pair I didn't expect to work as well as it did, and you wrote them falling in love well. It was an interesting choice to not have them escape by the end, but it worked for the story.
A very fascinating exploration of isolation, both chosen and circumstantial. Great work taking the random assortment of prompts along with the two central characters and weaving together some truly compelling themes.
“Existential romance” is an appropriate moniker for this story at its core. The desolate landscape Skystar and Wallflower find themselves in removes all the impediments of the regulated social world and all that’s left are two beings, their memories and personalities — and the manacles shackling them together. While this is a genre I’ve encountered before, I feel like you used the setting to your advantage to really dig into why
peopleponies and hippogriffs might elect to avoid connecting with one another when distance and social expectations are removed and the only thing preventing their closeness is their own anxieties.On the surface, Skystar and Wallflower come across as having little in common, but they have both intimately known the experience of being alone. Your exploration of that was so insightful, especially the detail of them both feeling most comfortable engaging with objects they can project personalities onto — but can never speak back. Skystar is far more overt in her craving for connection, whereas Wallflower is subtle and manipulative. I say this not as a pejorative, but in understanding that this is how she has come to cope with the feelings of her own inadequacy. She withdraws, but with the silent hope that Skystar will follow. I feel that you showed this very well throughout a lot of little moments in her dialogue. And in the story’s closing scene. Moments after preventing Wallflower's suicide attempt - an act that can be read as her avoidance taken to the extreme - Skystar reattaches herself to her. There’s something there about ultimate acceptance despite seeing someone at their lowest. Of course it's only after this gesture that Wallflower submits to accepting connection with Skystar in return.
I feel the only thing that left me wanting was the construction of the world, and even then I’m a little torn on that. Its emptiness and unexplained nature perfectly served the ideas being explored here, but I also wonder if there was more you could have done to further develop the atmosphere, such as involving other constructs that either challenged or provided for the corporal needs of the characters, like the transient pillars. (Which were conceptually very interesting and made me curious about where your inspiration for them came from!)
All in all, great work with this esoteric journey of connection. It was both comforting and unsettling.