I am very confused

I don't really understand this ending
Is there something important I am missing?

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The short version is that Apple Bloom switched places with the entity.

The explanation is that this entity is bound to this cursed camera and it's just been hanging out in the house for years because the only way it can influence the world Is through manipulating the user of the camera. Finally, one day, Apple Bloom starts shooting and the games begin. First she hears whispers, then intrusive thoughts, then urges, then she feels compelled to do things.

The only goal of the entity is to escape into the real world and lead a happy life in someone's place. It does this by learning all about you and the world mostly via the camera. (Hinted at when Apple Bloom's viewfinder abruptly shows the entity's viewpoint.) Granny and Winona are the only ones who can see this creature but of course they can't explain it to anyone.

As its influence over the user grows, it begins chipping away at their self control, allowing them to be their worst selves. Apple Bloom was already disobedient which was a good starting point. This is how it learns to be the best you. It is your negative or the opposite of you. When you change, it changes. The more it sees, the more developed it's appearance. The worse you act, the better its temperament. The entity's character arc is seen toward the end where Granny and Winona are aparantly having positive interactions with the doppelganger when they used to be angry or afraid of it.

Eventually one day you're so bad and it's so good that it can cross over and replace you. Your family is unaware. They're just happy because they think you've turned a corner and you're such a good pony now. New Apple Bloom succeeds everywhere old Apple Bloom failed. She always eats her grits, in fact she loves them. She loves being near Granny. She takes school seriously and doesn't beat anyone up. No one misses the old Apple Bloom trapped in her own little world of one as a negative. (old cautionary tale ending)

As for seemingly erasing the aftermath of Apple Bloom's horrible acts, the new Apple Bloom is either a very good diplomat, (which is what I want to believe,) or can now perform uninhibited mind control. Or maybe this is some kind of new or parallel idealistic universe created by the final photo. Let's leave SOMETHING to the imagination.

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Following this logic... The "entity" was Applebloom's dad, right?
Because if so... Major "oof" for Applebloom, swapped with the "ghost" of her own father.
And yes, I did imagine the Roblox death sound just now.

A fascinating Read. I can't help but draw some comparisons to Stephen King's Christine. Was it perhaps a source of inspiration for this one?

But yeah all and all good story, nice one ^^

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I'm interested to read people's thoughts on how the fate of Apple Bloom's parents plays into all this. I have my own idea in the back of my mind but it's probably not as interesting as most.

I want to favorite this story because of how well-written it was, but god damn, do I feel bad for Apple Bloom. I almost don't want to favorite it because how much of a downer ending this was.

Of course, I should've expected as much, and I get the feeling from reading your user page that "downer ending" is exactly what you were going for.

All in all, though, I get a similar feeling from this story that I got from Dark Pink. It's incredibly well-written, and that quality of writing manages to carry me through a story that I would ordinarily describe as "not for me", because I am a simple person and like happy endings. I think that's a testament to how talented you seem to be at writing.

...That ending was unexpected. I'd almost feel sorry for Apple Bloom, but...

Thank you. We really need more stories like this

When Winona was playing fetch with the entity I was actually thinking the switch had already taken place. Ship of Thesius style, you are your experiences, memories, and personality. The entity, wanting to escape to the material, turned itself into Applebloom. To the point it maybe thinks it is. In our PoV character we see the effect of that draining on her mind as madness, severe antisocial behavior. Now seperate from the material and that solidity of reality and body, AB will continue losing herself until she is a creature of shadow just as alien as the entity was.
Until it figures out how to get back, and does the same to some other pony to anchor itself in the material. By becoming them and sending the shade of that pony to the same half-life it was trapped in to become another malignant entity.
Don't know if the entity was originally ABs dad, if so it wasn't her dad by the time the camera was found again in my opinion. The death of both parents implies to my that ABs mom noticed something wrong and possibly spoiled the transfer. Or recognized that he was no longer her husband and killed him and herself in a murder-suicide.
Yeah, that is how your stories go. As dark and tragic as possible without becoming comedies. Loved it.

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There's not really one thing I can point to as inspiration. It's more like the feeling of a lot of things put in a blender. It's the atmosphere of Serial Experiments Lain. It's the creepy parallel world in Insidious. It's the grotesque artwork from Carousel. The tragically forever unfinished Something's Happened to Scootaloo. It's the story, The Drum from More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Something about that weird ending was really psychologically unsettling to me as a kid and it just stuck with me. I wanted to do something that felt like that.

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The irony is that I often feel the same way that you do when reading a story despite the fact that what I write is often brutally tragic. But I mean... the ending here is KIND of happy... Just not for Apple Bloom.

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Getting to read posts like yours is the reason I like leaving things a little mysterious~

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the ending here is KIND of happy... Just not for Apple Bloom

Good. Never liked AB much.

by the way, was this story based on something?

The ending reminds me quite a bit of how things go in a lot of the Five Nights at Freddy's novels where the protagonist is swapped with an entity, often one that seems like the "better" version of that person. I'm glad in this story, though, the transformation wasn't overly graphic. It is super refreshing to see a horror that doesn't rely solely on blood and gore to be scary.

Also, there's one thing I don't quite understand. How are Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle okay with Apple Bloom all of a sudden? Even if she apologized for the perverted photos, I doubt it would change the fact that those two would still be creeped out, offended, whatever.

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It wasn't really based on anything. It was inspired by a handful of things.

Okay maybe the concept is loosely based off of various folklore tales with things like selkies, boo hags and doppelgangers.

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Clearly explaining how she smoothed over Apple Bloom's transgressions is something I didn't worry too much about. My thoughts are that either new Apple Bloom has incredible charisma, empath or mind control powers or this is some sort of idealistic alternate world like the type you see in a family photo where everyone is smiling. That would tie in with AB staring longingly at the photos of a better time in the first chapter.

This story definitely gets the swine seal of approval. I read some of your other stories before, and the general flow of this one reminds me of another favourite of mine "I have no wings and i must fly" even though this one starts off a little different. Absolutely love the portrayal of the slow descent into mental instability before hitting us with the big finale.

My favorite part was the anthill. really shows how far gone she is at that point.

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I guess it's pretty obvious by this point that the downward spiral is my favorite story structure.

I'm onto ISO and it's really gripping me still!

Okay, there needs to be an epilogue or something that actually explains what happened and not leave it so nebulous.
But good story overall.

I'm confused by the ending. What just happened? Will there be a squeal explaining everything?

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See
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just finished reading all of this, an i just feel compelled to say that there's like ... smth strangely rlly raw abt how this feels. aside from the obvious paranormal aspects, as somebody who grew up in a similar situation to apple bloom i found myself connecting a lot to her at the beginning and understanding her frustration at all those things. watching her getting worse and worse with each chapter was like glimpses into a different life that i could have led had i not learned to handle/deal with my situation, and that made the story all the more real and sorta gut-wrenching. nice job!

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Thanks. I feel really good about the mood in this one and I feel similarly about Apple Bloom on a personal level. This and Dark Pink are basically therapy in story form which is probably why they hit harder, feel genuine and get better ratings than my others.

Creep is me lamenting the duality of being a desperately artistic person in a society that doesn't really value artists. I'm hard wired to be doing creative things. That is how I'm most useful and where I find purpose. I have a BFA in product design and one in graphic design... but alas, I drive a high reach truck in a warehouse and then I come home and pass out. I've basically given up trying to find a way to make use of my 'cutie mark' in society and hardly even have the time and energy to do design as a hobby. Passion and obligation are practically a zero sum game. You feed one, the other starves. In the story, art is basically depicted as a curse or a drug addiction that destroys your life the more you try to pursue it. But to keep from ending on a downer, at least I have creative writing which I can do on my phone while passed out.

I really can't praise this piece enough.
There's this prevailing sense of wrongness; even with a good guess about what's going on, seeing it all play out is gripping.
Pacing and atmosphere are critical with mystery/horror fics and I think this one nails it.
The vibe is not for everyone and that's alright, but I do think this is an underappreciated gem. Just a dark and unsettling one.

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Thank you! It's always nice to hear when my odd products find their audience.

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Life stories like this are something I'm extremely grateful that people share.
They're why I took science instead of the arts which I loved, even though I'm a terrible stem student.

It's really hard, and it tests your passions against endless monotony.

I regret nothing.

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Yeah, I still daydream about getting a job in my field of interest sometimes but with ubiquitous generative AI on the horizon, it just seems further away than ever.

Nice! I did anticipate that she would be replaced—Winona being friendly with the ghost gave that away—though I wasn't sure how. One possibility was that Apple Bloom would steal the camera and run from home, leaving a "free spot." Another thought was that Apple Bloom's body would be taken over. I rather thought that's what was happening but the good behavior of Otherbloom rules out that explanation.

I am confused as to how Otherbloom is not inheriting the damage that Truebloom committed. (Insofar as it was truly her committing those acts at all.) Is this one of those "it was all a dream" fics~? Alternatively perhaps substantial time has passed and Otherbloom has simply regained everypony's trust by now. Mightily impressive if so, considering that blaze of a magnum opus.

In any case, destroying every relationship tying her to the world is certainly aesthetically appropriate. I can see that being metaphysically and/or metaphorically necessary

The brainfog was good—that's a real thing that happens albeit not because of a curse IRL. It almost felt like a fourth wall joke when she tried and failed to discern the cursed metaphor that is her life now~ Yep, the camera and the specter are indeed related and they have something to do with your bad behavior... but you can't literally destroy them because that's not literally how their IRL dual works. Apple Bloom—or her guardians—need to find a healthy balance. Most likely send her off to live with another branch of Apple family till they recover.

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It is your negative or the opposite of you. When you change, it changes. The more it sees, the more developed it's appearance. The worse you act, the better its temperament.

But why should it care what its own temperament is?

Eventually one day you're so bad and it's so good that it can cross over and replace you.

...Huh?

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Ah that one's easy. Granny Smith knows the camera is dangerous, thus I infer that there was a failed attempt to capture Bloom's father. They then... uh, well, kept the cursed camera for some reason. Instead of destroying or burying it. Hm. And it's still got his old roll of film... Oh, wait, maybe he just died before the transformation completed. That would do it. And Granny Smith doesn't know, she just has bad memories around that camera~

Hmmmm.
Say, the spectre started as some sort of blank slate, right? As empty film. Shouldn't Apple Bloom be erased to fit the pattern?

If I were to run with the metaphor that the spectre is a negative... Truebloom's magnum opus shot was the moment it chose to strike—to imprint itself as Apple Bloom. There is thus a timeskip because uh it had to be developed. Metaphorically.

Okay so here's a metaphysical idea. The Applebloom having dinner with her family in the final chapter really is Applebloom.
The specter inverted her, you see? So that it could then invert back like in Apple Bloom's unasked science question about the eye. She was inverted *twice.* And what happens when you invert something twice? Nothing! Ergo, this is Apple Bloom. The specter? Oh, that's uh... I dunno what that is.

Maybe the spectre is just whomever is nearby. It's not the former Apple Bloom captured permanently into the camera, it is today's "reformed" Apple Bloom. Tomorrow it will be tomorrow's Apple Bloom, reprojected into the specter and terrified anew and desperately trying to escape. Next week Big Mac puts the camera back into the attic and is—for the duration—projected into the unseen specter.

That doesn't really fit the evidence, does it? Well it's a fun idea anyway.

Oh and I almost forgot, chapter 12 has a missing end quote and chapter 13 has a couple typos.

"The interesting thing is that everything your eye sees is actually upside-down. When your brain gets an image from your eyes, it has to flip it right side up so it makes sense.

the guardrails in her brain we're missing

When her wouldbe school day was over

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I will fix those typos...

I wanted the camera backstory to allude to the cause of the destruction of Apple Bloom's parents without getting distracted by fleshing the whole thing out in detail.

Maybe Apple Bloom WILL be erased into another blank template given enough time. Someone brought up the theory that the entity replacing her was once her dad. Even though in my mind it tried to replace him and failed, I still like that idea a lot. Though if he did get replaced, that would beg the question, where is his replacement? Perhaps Pear Butter confronted him on his gross obsession, they had a fight, he ended up killing her and that was his event horizon moment. Then his replacement just disappeared to start another life elsewhere. Granny more or less knows all this at least on its face but decides to keep it a shameful family secret and just tell the kids they both died in some tragic accident. Of course it doesn't completely fit but it's fun.

The entity just wants the highest probability of being loved and accepted in its new life so it trains hard to fill that roll. It has to be pretty amazing if it wants to fix all those bridges it had to burn in order to crossover.

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The entity just wants the highest probability of being loved and accepted in its new life so it trains hard to fill that roll. It has to be pretty amazing if it wants to fix all those bridges it had to burn in order to crossover.

Filling rolls~!
Now I've got the thought of using this entity... "industrially." This is where six perfect ponies for bearing the elements came from~ Plus it's an instant villain redemption tool. Or at least, within a month while the specter/former victim learns who it's meant to be. Though once you start doing that it gets kinda weird and the basic premises of horror break down. Still, a short fic of an irate Chrysalis doing a month of community service photography sounds very funny. Initially she's just amused that the naive ponies think this will reform her and then, of course, she tests the limits.

I would be interested in seeing Apple Bloom attempt her own escape—just to better understand that side of the world.
Oh here's a thought; the specter, once transferred to her body (or whatever), loses all knowledge of its ghostly life. So, one of the reasons it needs to be a very good pony is because it needs to be as resistant as possible to the now-trapped Apple Bloom's machinations.

I'm a... creep... I'm a weirdo... what the hell am I doing here... I don't belong here

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Ironically not included in the playlist.

Only flaw I see with the story is that this scene seems not too long from the events of the previous chapter — DT's face is still bandaged, and Rumble hasn't had his party yet. Unless the "new" Apple Bloom has some sort of truly supernatural levels of charisma (beyond "normal" pony levels) or memory alteration, I don't see how it could resolved this quickly. The theory that it being "set like a photograph" thus seems to make more sense.

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Yeah, she basically wakes up at noon the next day. The ending (which is supernatural,) is specifically intended to evoke the idea of a Rockwellian photograph of a happy family gathering to tie into the beginning of the story where Apple Bloom is looking at family photos of better times.

Very interesting story, for some reason reminds me slightly of the movie Lake Mungo. Good movie check it out, but you are slowly becoming one of my new favorite authors.

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I'm surprised I've never come across this one before. I've watched like 85% of horror (in English) that shows up on Netflix and had to move on to Hulu and Prime. I'll have to look around.

There was exuberant consensus from the table as everyone began scooting out from their chairs and packing up the food and dishes. Scootaloo nuzzled Rumble. Apple Bloom collapsed to her nebulous haunches as she watched Applejack and the other her wheel Granny out of the kitchen. The joyous party trickled out of the house, the last pony, Miss Cheerilee, shutting the door behind her.

The ending reminds me of Lake Mungo so much, holy shit.

lwlies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/lake-mungo.jpg

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The Perfect Drug really sums up the whole thing.

I was right, your storys (even if the half are NSFW ) are a really nice writer

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Thanks. It is a real treat when I actually put something out that isn't M-rated.

Very spooky ending. I really wanna know what happened like why is everypony so happy, what was real, what wasn't. Creepy.

Why isn’t there a tragedy tag?

Why isn’t there a tragedy tag?

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Could only choose three tags and it's kind of a tossup with mystery and slice of life. I'll be honest, I can't really define the difference between sad and tragedy but in my head, tragedy is an event and sad is emotions.

Loved this story, it was creepy and compelling. But. After an excellent descent into madness and a perfectly reasonably swap places with the monster, the happy ending without the protagonist was a bit jarring. It was too big of a jump of happy. If she had woken up and things were going a bit better for her family without the real her, that would be one thing. Big party and everyone is there? Even DT? That scene was stretch too far for me. Mind you, the other 99% were great and you still get my hooves up.

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You mean ike a reverse It's a Wonderful Life. I'm still wondering if I should have had her wake up the next morning in the dirt right where she took the picture.

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Do you mean Real-her wakes up in the dust and has to deal with her own consequences? And skip the swap? The swap was too great a mechanic to give up on.
Or, do you mean fake-her wakes up in the dust and has to start cleaning up the life it has stolen? That has potential, but...

All in all, i want to temper my comment of "the happy ending without her was too suddenly happy" with an acknowledgment that i don't have a better idea for how to handle it. The scene had kick, even for those who suspected a swap was coming, and benefited from brevity. If you had spent five pages with fake-her fixing problems, before having real-her wake up as a spirit, the close would not have produced such a hoof to the gut feeling it would have just been coda and almost unnecessary.

In about thirty years, somepony develops that last roll of film...

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I mean real her loses consciousness as soon as the flash goes off and wakes up outside and confused. Then she goes inside and there's the party and the other her. I did want to have the ending be the reader somehow 'seeing' Apple Blooms's final photo where there's two of her smiling at the camera in the same frame but I couldn't figure out the logistics and ending with the door slamming on her is jarring and visceral in an awful way that I like.