Pleasant dreams, but please don't sleep too long...
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Braeburn was young, gay and confused. Then his extended family from Ponyville came to visit in Appeloosa, and Braeburn finds himself even more confused as he tries to work through his feelings for his cousin Big Macintosh.
An introspective romance story featuring Braeburn and Big MacIntosh, written for the 2023 M/M Shipping Contest. (Oh, hey! Won judge's prize!)
Contains some strong homophobic language.
Feedback is appreciated, as brutal as it needs to be.
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You should say that this is an introspective romance story in the synopsis instead of the cover art. The text is way to small to see. Please respond to this comment.
11731665
Good point. I've put the text on the cover into the description - I'm pretty new to this site so I'm still getting used to description work! Sorry. I'll keep the text on the cover though because it's an homage to a book cover I like and I'm obsessive for dumb details like that.
Pick a struggle
okay... wow. I don't usually comment on fics (something I need to change) but man. fair warning im not good at words when it comes to evaluating others work so i will say this: i love love this fic. it's so heartbreaking and so real.
this is probably gonna be a pretty downvoted fic because m/m is not so well received on fimfic and then on top of that you've got incest but i want to go ahead and say that this is a damn good fic and i guarantee 90% of the downvotes havent read a word of it.
two notes: this fic needs the 'sad' tag, i think, or at least maybe 'drama'. i mean, i went into it assuming it was gonna be emotional so i was prepared but other people may not. aaand, secondly, your paragraphs get pretty lengthy! i think theyd benefit from a few more breaks, but to be honest this was so good i didnt care by the time i got like 10 paragraphs in. i understand stream of conciousness and introspection tend to have bigger paragraphs, but i think for readability id still chop em a tad.
okay, now that thats out of the way, first and foremost, props to you for going for something more taboo with this much confidence and tact. incest... well, it's rare that a fic includes it but doesn't fetishize and/or romanticize it and instead goes into the realistic implications and the shame. and you did so, so well. props.
there is something about the apple family that really digs down into me and fics about them just hit me so hard. maybe it's because i'm from a middle of nowhere rural southern town and they seem... familiar, maybe it's because they seem so much more grounded than lots of characters, maybe its because they lend themselves to so much (realistic) angst - but there's something about them. and until today I did not know this extended to braeburn, but oh man does it.
this fics braeburn makes me so... sad. this braeburn is real. almost too real. just stuck in a town that will never understand him no matter what he does, aching to leave and get away, but then look at what happened to the colt that tried. everything so still and stale and never changing. i wish i had more words for it. the dust and the steel and the way the desert is so empty but so oppressive. you never say the colt died but, well. hes not here. the way it seems like none of it matters a bit to mac and for all we know it really doesnt. it hurts.
this hurt more than any other line. i dont quite know why, but even rereading it now im almost tearing up haha. the way he is going to stay unhappy and unfulfilled in even the simplest manner for his entire life. stuck. whew.
man. my heart hurts. im going to be thinking about this for a while.
im also going to try and enter this contest with a fic that happens to include homophobia, both internalized and, well, external, and a not entirely happy ending with two ponies that cannot really ever be together, and im not sure i can top this! wow. just. so good.
all that said... kudos to you.
Well this was a mood. Good work man; made me feel sad.
11731748
(at least in the comments right?)
Thank you! I did think about adding the sad tag when I was uploading it, but it felt sort of weird like trying to decide what the reader's emotional reaction would be. I know that's not really the point, but like I said in another comment I'm new to the site and dumb. As for the long paragraphs, that's something I need to work on in general. Before I re-edited, my last fic was like insane page long single paragraph stretches. I'm learning. Again, thank you. This means a lot.
As for all the downvotes, if nothing else, it's more money to charity.
11731783
Thank you too! I guess I really do need to add that sad tag, haha.
11731748
It seems like we probably have some pretty similar taste, so I figured since I've got some spare time I'll try and share some other pieces of media that are similar(ish) to this fic.
It's tough to find much media about being young, queer and scared. The best I've found to capture this has been in the indie webcomic scene. Cate Wurt's asscastle on her website lamezone manages to capture coming to terms with internalised homophobia perfectly in it's absurdity, and Sarah Fowlie's webcomic The Quick And Dirty Life of Fritz Fargo manages to portray a much more three dimensional gay character than typical for m/m romance comics. These can both get pretty sexually explicit, so I'm not sure if I can link them here. David Sedaris' essay "I Like Guys" for the radio show This American Life manages to (entertainingly) portray a genuine story of being young, queer and scared, struggling to work out a first relationship of sorts from his own life.
EDIT: Car Seat Headrest's album 3 also captures this young, scared queer feeling pretty well. Overall I'm not a fan of their music, but this one album has captured me.
Aside from the gay stuff, if you're just looking for some bittersweet, emotional Apple family content the best I can reccomend is SGaP's song e40. A sort of retelling of the last roundoup, it usually gets me at least a little emotional. One of my favourite SGAP songs. Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Punkitt's trans Big Mac story.
For any stories with similar style or prose to this one, my main inspirations writing were Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (which also inspired the cover for this fic) and Charles Bukowski's Ham On Rye. Neither of these are queer stories, I should add. If anything Ham On Rye is anti-queer, but I found both really engaging with their prose and they helped me settle on the style and structure of this story.
This cover is dope, dude!
11732017
Thanks! It's a
ripoff offhomage to the book cover for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest made for the ~1975 rerelease.On some level, I get why fics dealing with certain topics get downvoted-bombed, but this is a perfect example of one that doesn’t deserve it. Really interesting and emotionally meaty portrayal of a confusing situation, and while I could quibble about it here and there, the prose being structured as short sentences in long paragraphs works really well here a lot more often than it doesn’t.
11732896
Thank you. I uploaded this fic at like 2 am my time, so I'll admit it was a bit of a shock to wake up at like 6 hours later just to find it was already the most disliked fic entered in the contest, but I really can't bring myself to care about any of the dislikes when I've gotten these sorts of comments. People genuinely interested and engaged in what I've written. I write these stories mostly for myself more than anyone else, so to also see that people have genuinely been touched or engaged by them means much more than any dislike ever could.
Also, if you don't mind, could you expand on the sort of "quibbles" you have with the writing? I'm still working out my style and prose, so any criticisms and advice would be pretty helpful. Thanks.
This type of story isn't everyone's cup of tea but you did provide a healthy amount of tact. The ugly side of the pairing is treated with respect and I actually feel kinda bad for Big Mac and Braeburn for the mess they put themselves in.
Lastly I know I read something with a similar style of prose, but it's currently escaping me.
Anyway good luck with the contest.
11733596
Thank you! Being a fairly new writer, it feels so great to see people be able to connect with and understand what I tried to do.
Dang... this was a heavy-hitting, incisively emotional exploration of a deeply complicated subject. Your prose style was used to great effect. It evoked a vivid tone reminiscent of Southern Gothic literature and firmly plants you in Braeburn's head. The imperfect grammar was spot on in its capturing of his natural speech and the circuitous direction of his thoughts drove home how uncertain he was about his feelings on everything he was experiencing.
I also absolutely loved the recurring motif of dust. Dust as a dehydrating and suffocating force -- it externalized the desert as an oppressive barrier, symbolic of the inescapable social oppression within Appleloosa. Including the story of the colt who died as a result of trying to escape from one hostile environment into another made for a haunting parable looming over the story as a representation of everything Braeburn dreaded.
It's especially heartwrenching to see bigotry permeate and demoralize the close-knit Apple Family, whose overwhelming love for one another seems as though it should be able to triumph over social cruelty. The scene where Big Mac tells off the intrusive colt near the end was especially painful, because even though he said the things he did as a means of protecting Braeburn and himself, all Braeburn heard was him speaking the words of a violent oppressor.
All in all, a very captivating, moving story. I saw you had mentioned in a previous comment that you're working to pare down your paragraphs, but their length in this work came across as intentional for the sake of tone setting and were effective in that aspect. If it's natural for you to draw out your passages of writing, maybe consider exploring this style a bit more. There's a lot you can do with it!
11789599
Thank you! It's really nice to know that the story and its style are resonating with people - it still feels crazy to me that something I've written has managed to make people feel things.
It's definitely reassuring to know that the longer paragraphs work for this story! I'm still working on finding my style, but it definitely seems to involve long paragraphs lol - I'm just trying to make sure they're properly broken up / not oppressively long where they don't fit.
i adore the descriptions here, wow. could just chew it off and roll it around in my mouth
aww he doesn’t know about Big Mac yet
such a wonderfully observed detail here
hoowee
young Applejack’s got a few years to go before her countryisms develop into their full form
well that is just awful, augh. i can’t imagine the heartbreaking guilt and fear and all the complexes Braeburn would be carrying around from that. any version of Equestria that has the homophobia that our terrible and unworthy world does is just horrifying
and given the context of the earlier paragraph, that stings all the more
that is exactly what i imagine a game that the Apple kids play would be called, just perfect
just love this detail as well, the stuffed dragon is very metaphor
the contrast with the Apple sisters feels really important here. like Braeburn’s sickliness is also a manifestation of how stifled he is by his place in this world
ah, i didn’t understand what the steel was the first time but i am getting a sense of it now
the ghostly half-life that an oppressive world puts on us, i feel it!
oh this is just Literature
metaphor!
i mean, what literary gay narrative would be complete without a story-within-a-story of the simplest and standardest hetero romance? and Braeburn having already started it at the beginning and running out of it now in an effort to distract himself from Big Mac is two chefs kissing on the mouth
Big Mac being the inscrutable, silent type combined with Braeburn’s very understandable anxieties, i really feel this
and of course the girls are just reflecting the heteronormativity of this world but augh i sure do hate it
i just love how much this stuffed dragon is doing in this story. makes the story feel even more like an example of its genre (coming-of-age in the late 19th century American West)
given what that could have been, yeah, they definitely did. and damn did you do a good job with the tension leading up to this
of course Appleloose has been such a well-drawn character itself throughout this tale, and bits like this really make it feel real
adds to the oof to remember that adult Braeburn does indeed still live in Appleloosa
ahaha, Soarin’ origin story! well done!
that is how memories are, isn’t it?
oof, what a passage!
again the messiness of it just feels all too real!
the way that perceptions of masculinity and homosexuality are entangled with each other in this society has been a theme throughout, and this is another great use of it
that they end up re-enacting a bit of the runaway colt’s journey, Braeburn’s reflection on it, augh. there is so much terrible beauty in this
really cutting it close!
ending it with the same laughter as he had after telling Big Mac about the colt; no goodbyes, no resolutions, just dust.
i am unfortunately writing this on an empty stomach and just after work, so i worry that i can’t quite put together the praise this story deserves. just want to say that i loved it. the oppressive atmosphere, the oppressive realism of it all, the dust and the steel. if this is the work of you as a new writer, i cannot wait to see what you have in store in the future.
11799550
Wow - thank you. It's always interesting to see which parts work and stick with different people - and incredible just to know that it did work and did stick. Also, I wasn't sure if anyone picked up on it being Soarin', so it's good to see that it landed, lol. I'm sure there were a couple other vaguely encoded mlp / fandom references in there somewhere too.
Thank you! If you are interested in reading more of my work, I recently updated my rarijack fic, Applejack and Rarity: Scenes from a relationship. It's my hopeful magnum opus.
Shilling aside, if there's another M/M contest being held this year, I'm sure I'll try again.
This is genuinely brilliant. I wish I could write as poetically as you do. Fantastic work.
I love how poetic you write, and how this story feels so much like a story. I don’t know how to express it, but it feels like a pal telling me a story, and not like I’m just reading fanfic. You’re writing style’s to die for.
Oh my gosh what an amazing story.
Seriously, I was so blown away that I had to make an account just to leave a comment. I relate to and feel so much for Braeburn here, and Big Mac too. They really feel like real people the way you wrote them, and sadly real people aren't always happy. The way they both just made a few mistakes in a short amount of time and were too young to comprehend anything in that one week.. It's SO heartbreaking, but honest.
The scene that really got to me emotionally was when Big Mac confronted the foal. Like, it's written so well from Braeburn's perspective only. In a way that it's difficult to tell if Big Mac genuinely thinks he's protecting Braeburn, protecting himself out of something internalized, or a little bit of both. it equally scars the readers just like how Braeburn was scarred.
But Braeburn's "Of course it was dumb dreaming. I never did leave Appleloosa." broke me the hardest. There's something about the finality of that line, at least up to the point that Braeburn is telling this story, that completes this whole story. I hope Braeburn can come to find happiness after the events of the story.
11887557
Thank you!
Wow. I really don't know what to say to this - I'm just still so glad (and shocked, haha) that what I've done connects with people.
In terms of hoping for a happy ending for Braeburn, I felt the exact same way when I finished writing it, so I ended up writing a (hopefully happier) follow up, if you haven't seen it yet.