Berry Punch has taken to the hobby of pulling out the old lawn chair and watching Ponyville explode. It seemed a little too common at this point to be honest. How many times could a town explode before it got old?
Everything was going the way it usually did. Her on a lawn chair, bottle of wine in hoof, and a catastrophic event playing out in front of her that would no doubt be written in the history books. A usual afternoon in Ponyville.
Then a certain dragonequus shows up, drained of his magic, down on his luck, and in need of some mortal wisdom.
The fate of Equestria rests in her hooves, and Berry Punch doesn't even know it.
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-Inspired by that one lawn chair meme.
ENROACHING
You know, you could've just as easily jumped from this point to the finale, where Discord, reeling from creating the ultimate disaster, would recall Berry's words and that would motivate him to get the ball going on stopping the villainous trio he brought together.
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That is a great idea. I didn't think of that.
This is so sweet and poignant. I'm a bit teary from the wisdom, it's something I should try and remember more often.
I really like how you've portrayed these characters. It really does feel like the world changing on the spin of a dime.
The description of the wine was a great touch too. n_n
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A member with refined taste, I see.
Will be back in a jiffy after I read the story, I swear. Had to shout out Vergil real quick first.
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I am glad you liked it. Thank you for reading!
Delightful exploration of both the Ponyville bystander and the wisdom she can offer. Especially when enjoying the good stuff. Thank you for a wonderful bit of character interaction.
Themaskedferret sent me here. I really like this story, which is, of course, all about the lawn chair.
The opening hook has two prongs: the excitement of things burning and exploding, and the humor of Berry's blase' reaction. Both things come across in just the first sentence.
I may even write a blog post just about this, once I get a feel for what fraction of stories do this. It's great; but I haven't been trying to do it myself. and haven't been watching out for stories that do it.
I like the pace, the flow. A "literary" reader might complain that the message is too on-the-nose. I dunno. That sort of thing is hard to calibrate. It seems to me that what you wrote is just explicit enough for every reader to understand what the story is about, while literary people only like stories that only 10% of readers can understand, not because it makes the stories better, but because it makes them feel better about themselves to be in the top 10%.
You made Berry Punch interesting. That's an accomplishment.
Only one finger-fumble...
only two grammatical mistakes that I noticed...
... but dozens of little mistakes with semi-colons, commas, apostrophes, hyphens, and when to use (or not use) them. It's like you didn't even proof-read the story. That's going to hold it back from my favorites list, and land it in Very Good instead; because I tell people who think all fan-fiction is bad to go thru my favorites list, and such people will use just one story with an abundance of little errors as an excuse to quit reading and dismiss all of fan-fiction as vulgar and careless. People are always looking for excuses to justify their prior beliefs. I don't care a lot about punctuation; but for people who do, a missing hyphen or a comma that should be a semicolon shatters the suspension of disbelief more-violently than any narrative inconsistency.
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Thank you for the insight. I will admit that I should brush up on grammar if I am going to post my writing now. Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment.
This is some amazing slice of life character work at the height of an apocalypse.
You can (belatedly) has review!