• Member Since 9th Dec, 2011
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RazedRainbow


Inconsistently making my favorite ponies miserable since 2011

T
Source

Was it a magical spell gone awry? An angry god laying waste upon a world that had forgotten him? A long and bloody war? An incurable disease?

Fluttershy couldn't remember what it was that had turned the world to this. All she knew was that she had to survive.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 75 )

FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so alone!

Editor. I win. XD

This is such an awesome story. yeah. There's so many good things.

1650734

Please don't do that,I'd rather you not get yourself banned.

:pinkiegasp: Oh my glob, you posted it. AMAZING I NEED TO READ LATER THOUGH :raritydespair:

EDIT: Oh my god, this is so sad FEELS GOT KICKED

Going to trust you on this. Because Fluttershy. I will hold you to that lack of a tragedy tag.

:raritydespair: Stupid educational system, I don't have the time to read this til I get home!
Well...read it again. It's pretty friggin amazing though ya'll

13k and complete, should be a fairly quick read. Faved for later.

More sad than dark. Also, Magical Holocaust? :trollestia:

JAG

As a rule I avoid these dark, post-apocalyptic stories, but... buck it. Fluttershy has a knife. I'll give it a shot sometime in the next week or two.

I'm going to read this when I get a chance, I'll post my thoughts on it then. I believe that I'm going to enjoy it though, just like I've enjoyed your previous fanfics.

This story is good. It is bleak, atmospheric... I just love it. You know how much I love it.

What makes this fic amazing for me is that there are only two characters, ever. Period. It is simplicity itself: Fluttershy and Him, the consummate Other. It's the kind of mythic simplicity that makes Jack London so interesting. The irony of the only other male in the world being a monster is also there as well. Love love love

love love

Yes.

So, Cynewulf sent me here. Sounds interesting, will read.

Through electronics , and technology

Extra space before the comma.

but that didn’t mean that it was on her side.

Extra space before the "that".

Her friends had expected to go out old, or at least whilst doing something for the greater good. Instead, they became nothing but grains of ash in the wind.

Did they did in the initial super spell explosion or whatever started off this whole dark mess?

“Move over,” Twilight said with a giggle. “The sleeping bag’s obviously not keeping you warm.”
“B-but why does that mean I have to...” The words drifted off as Fluttershy felt the most heavenly warmth she’d ever felt in her life rush over her. Even in the dark, she could see Twilight’s eyes inches from her own.
“Goodnight, Fluttershy.”

DAWWWW. Is there a picture of this? Because if there is I want to see it.

Friendship may be a star, but even the strongest, brightest stars fade in time

Actually those are the shortest lived types...

Eventually she was able to clear her airwaves.

Um, do you mean airways?

This next bit happens a lot, so I'm not sure if it's intentional or just a bad habit. You have a lot of triple spaces after sentences.

altogether. Gulping,
around it. Another gust
a single step. When she
the voices. It was
lift Himself up. Fluttershy
improvisation alone. She’d find

She continued to cradle Him even after His chest stopped moving and His body grew cold. When she finally laid His head back onto the equally dead ground, she was sobbing. He may have tried to kill her, He may have been a cold blooded predator, He may have done a lot of things, but He was still a pony. Everypony deserved to be mourned.

At the end of it all she's still Fluttershy.:fluttercry:

This was certainly dark, but not oppressively so, good job!
Question, do you have a back story for this scenario, or did it just pop into your head as "Post apocalyptic Fluttershy story GO!"?

1654214
Augh! I thought I had cleared up all those extra spaces :raritydespair: They always pop up during editing.

I just woke up one day and thought "I'm going to write a post-apocalyptic fic staring Fluttershy." It was a weird thought to have, but then again, I'm a weird person.

1654226
Weird people brohoof /)
Also have you tried control F and search for [space][space][space] NOTE: this only works in Google docs not on FIMFiction.

1654249
I actually did a cmnd+F search just now. I think I got 'em all. Thanks for pointing them out, though :ajsmug:

1654265
Also thank you for making those mistakes. They reminded me that I wanted to clean up mine and hadn't quite gotten around to it yet, but now it's all done. I had 46 stragglers. Yeesh!
Edit: I hope that didn't come out condescending or anything, just the obviousness of triple spaces over double spaces made me remember.

1654280
Nah, you didn't come off as condescending in the slightest. Triple spaces are quite glaring and annoying, and I'm glad you pointed them out.

1654305
I just found out I'm not watching you...*fixes*

Okay... this was good. Sad, dark, but good. Reminds me of SSAE.

The "dark" didn't get me, I'd rather say this was "Adventure" with a dash of horror.
The whole apocalypse is rather drab because we get near no background information. That might be acceptable in a short story, but I feel 13k is well beyond short story.
The end was quite good though, the despair was well played, hope beyond hope is a nice touch for Fluttershy.:fluttershysad:

Is that my beloved ƒlutters...wida friggin' KNIFE!?! :yay::yay::yay::yay::yay::yay::yay::yay:
MUST READ!!!

... I'm not quite sure what to think or feel. There were a couple of errors, and a few too many uncommon words, but the story, my God the story. I'm sitting here in front of my laptop, not knowing how to respond to what I've just read. The storytelling was incredible, I felt like I was there. The ways you described Fluttershy and her situation, her mentality, her thoughts, were just impeccable. I have so much to say, and yet so little. How does one describe that which is indescribable? Whatever this thing, this element that has no name is, your story has it. Perhaps it's the way you draw in the reader? The way you describe the setting? A combination of both? Neither? Your writing haunts me, my good man. Haunts me relentlessly and will not abate. Do you realize what you have written? Or am I simply a raving fool who took the story far too seriously? Damned if I know.

Finally got back to this (Thanksgiving!), and that was excellent.

Meant to post that in my previous comment. The song fits pretty well, in my opinion. The video description: "A song about nothing other than Fluttershy in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse." 'Twas Fate! (Minus the zombies)

1650739 Why would you get banned for doing that? BTW not sure if joking

1693027

Because the admins are very against firsters, and have, on multiple occasions, banned people for posting only "First". Adding a silly joke does not improve it. It's against the rules.

1693798 Well then, may my urges to post that be limited now. I've never been first anyway. Only once. :twilightblush:

So this is not a Princess Mononoke cross-over. Oh well. I'll still give this a read.

1650739

Banned for firsting?! that's ridiculous, that's a meaningless limit on freedom.

1709092

I'd rather you not endlessly reply to these comments to deny something, but yes, they will ban you for firsting because it's essentially considered to be spamming and trolling, at least as I understand it. It's in the site rules. Don't try to argue whether it's ridiculous with me, I didn't make them.

1709092
1: This isn't your freedom of speech activist website.
2: "First!" comments are annoying and I'm glad people get bans for them.

I've just reported that guy. Hoping for the best! :twilightsmile:

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand
And we fell into it
Like a daydream
Or a fever

Guess what I was listening to as I read this :pinkiesmile:

Fantastic storytelling, amazing imagery, this story didn't disappoint in the least. I was hooked from the minute I read the title! :pinkiehappy:

Excellent writing! Very good!
Sadly open endings and unresolved questions are not quite my cup of tea, so in the end it balances out at so-so for me.
Still, the quality is very good so keep on writing!

Congrats on EQD

1709182

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to direct it towards you.

I'm gonna take this slow, cause I want to put something, but not what or how.

First of all, the story. I'd say I enjoyed it, the conflicts were simple but urgent, and always kept the tension high. Fluttershy's constant alertness and struggles to keep her head while dealing with mental and physical threats matched my strong desire to read as quickly as possible but try to not miss any important details.

The ending that transpired was one of three I was expecting. The other two being more vague and symbolic such as Fluttershy seeming to find her friends in a sunny and lush greenhouse, and discovering that she has been in purgatory the entire time, while her friends waited for her to cross over; or Him turning out to be her inner fears and demons compounded into a hallucination, and that facing and destroying Him would change her for better or worse - ultimately giving her peace. The ending we actually got is definitely ironic, because the entire time Fluttershy has believed Him to be a natural predator relying on all the common and typical traits of such a creature, only to discover that her predator became that after giving up everything that Fluttershy is: a pony, an intelligent creature, a creature that is still alive.

Fluttershy's act of kindness is truly poignant, and completely sets in stone that Fluttershy survived because she kept her head, kept herself from losing everything that she ever was, that in spite of everything, she is still a pony with a heart. It's completely in character, in my opinion, for her to show compassion and mercy to even the most terrifying of enemies, and for her to have preserved that over the countless years of pain and struggling, is very moving, and speaks volumes of her bravery and will.

How things went to hell is clearly not the focus of the story, but I felt that Fluttershy didn't really acknowledge it much if at all - if only for herself to admit that she didn't know, remember, or care about what happened. It's a detail that should've popped up among 13k words, if only to push it aside as one of those things that Fluttershy refuses to think of. Without something to connect the show's Equestria to this story's Equestria, the fic was detached and divorced from the source material, and aside from tiny little details and references to the show such as banners for Octavia's conert, Commander Hurricane's dagger, and other remnants, the fic felt like it was on a different planet entirely from the Equestria we all know.

The ending, after the climax, is very open, and ends on a higher note than when the story first begins. Fluttershy has ensured she won't be hunted any more, she has found food to survive, and she has overcome a number of her demons. At the start of the story, thinking of her friends only caused Fluttershy to risk breaking down, by the end, the memories serve as the best support she could dream of, the motivation to look to the future and press on. In some ways, she has crossed over and found peace, but evaded death. I'm not one for open endings, since they're often pessimistic or ambiguous at best, but this ending works. It's more hopeful, yet it does point out the still-present dangers of her existence. Managing to maintain a more neutral ending.

All in all, it was a good tale, it had a strong narrative and good story to tell, but the lack of details on how things went wrong, where exactly Fluttershy was and where it was that she was initially afraid to go, all left the story feeling very detached from the Equestria in the show. So, to me at least, I felt very detached from the story with only Fluttershy helping to anchor me.

An interesting story, love the shift and perception in here, even the ending has a feel of being something else.

Argh! Curse you for not writing multiple chapters explaining how this mess came to be and Fluttershy somehow fixing it! My curiosity is hungry now!

This is just...wow.

So much ambiguity about this, yet at the same time so resolute. It takes a great writer to produce something like this. Absolutely stunning in both form and emotion. I love the presentation, and each and every conflict was palpable.

While every conflict was simple everyday survival, it was survival at its barest.

The alien feel of this destroyed Equestria was absolutely crushing. The weight of it all bears down throughout the entire story without any real details of how things came about being lighted upon. I think this fits well with Fluttershy's personality in not wanting to remember the bad things, and her focus on day to day living.

I also love that Fluttershy evolved as a character across the course of this fic. Yet, her fundamental self remained unchanged. She was, and still is, kindness personified. This was seen in her act of holding the pony she killed as he died. Even killing him could have been seen as a kindness and a mercy, because of the state he was in.

Thank you for writing such a particularly moving, riveting, and involved piece. You've just earned yourself a loyal follower, and I look forward to more great things from you in the future.

1709772

Same Here :raritystarry:
Glad to see I'm not the only one who knows those guys exist :yay:

For those of you who don't know what we are talking about, the line of prose is from a song called "the dead flag blues" by the band "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" off their debut album "F# A# ∞." If you are interested, look them up, you will not regret it.:pinkiehappy:

There's haunting beauty in the ruins here. I say that on multiple levels.

The story does an excellent job of setting atmosphere, it holds together well thematically, and you've done a fantastic job making the story engaging and well-paced with just two characters and no dialogue. I'm giving you the upthumb that brings you into triple digits, and you deserve it.

That having been said, I urge you to take an editing pass and improve the details of your writing.

The descriptions often shade a little too purple for my taste. That's generally forgivable when you're using your language to establish atmosphere -- but then the narration stumbles into a word like "caliginous" or a phrase like "cover of reticence," and it just gets a little too silly. You're writing about a bleak wasteland, sparse and dead; describing it as "dark" or "shadowy" is atmospheric, and describing it as "tenebrous" is overwrought.

Your language should echo your landscape, basically. When a thesaurus helps you achieve that, it's a great tool. When it's just giving you ways to say the same thing, it's time to examine how many times you need to say that in the first place.

Also, there are times when your metaphors work, and then there are times when the similes just come out of nowhere (like a mongoose diving into your pants). Frankly, I think the story would be stronger without a single simile — you're trying to draw us deeply into your tale of Fluttershy in a postapocalyptic wasteland, and every time you compare her to something totally unrelated to that atmosphere, you are by definition breaking us out of it.

There are a few points where it's not entirely clear to me what's going on. As an example, when she stumbles into the clearing with the ... um, the underground bunker, I guess? The description makes it sound like there's this huge round mound of earth, but then she pushes at it and it moves, so it must not be that big, and then she lifts it and it's apparently just a small trapdoor, into ... a tiny featureless pit? I'm so confused. That feels like a missed opportunity, too, to hint at the story of the other survivors -- or, at least, whoever it was that made that hidey-hole.

There are also a few points where things just seem incoherent. For example, when she wakes up in the cave with recently gnawed bones ... that seems like it directly contradicts the ultimate nature of Him; or perhaps is a fridge-logic hint (WARNING: TVTropes) that there's more than one Him -- except that idea would ruin a lot of the theme you're building up around Him, and if there was a literal-monster Him1 and figurative-monster Him2, why didn't she just get eaten?, and ... augh. It's a tense scene, but I just don't know what you were trying to do with it, and the fact she's able to just sit up and sneak away with no repercussions seems awfully deus ex machina.

All that having been said ...

13k words is long for a single-chapter one-shot. It's especially long when a story has writing problems. Despite that, I genuinely wanted to read through to the end. So please take this away from my comments: this is at heart a good story -- a good piece of storytelling -- being dragged down by some correctable factors. This is an awesome problem to have, because when you correct those factors, this story will be a powerful one.

Best,

H

One final thing:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT (from a long-distance hiker with wilderness medicine experience)

If you ever find yourself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with an open wound and a befouled used bandage, for the love of Celestia be smarter than Fluttershy.

Author gets points for hanging a lampshade on the fact that she did it because she thought it was better to cover the wound than not, but still, that's about the worst possible thing Fluttershy could have done. The purpose of a bandage is to prevent infection from outside bacteria, and in order to prevent that, she … um, slapped crusty bacterial colonies directly into the wound. If she was keeping the bandage around for later reuse, for all stars' love, she had soap and running water, she should have washed the thing.

(Also: spitting water into your wound -- bad. Worse than simply dipping the wound into your water source and swirling, because your mouth is a reservoir of bacteria. Also also, using stagnant pond water to irrigate the wound -- REALLY bad. Good gods. She should have been dead three times over before Him ever got a shot at her.)

Here's a quick guide to first aid if you stab yourself with your own rusty homemade knife after the Calamity:

1) Hope that you got your tetanus shots before the world ended, 'cause otherwise you might be fucked no matter what you do. :derpyderp1:

2) Stop the bleeding. :pinkiegasp: Wound cleanliness doesn't matter if your life potions all leave your inventory, so to speak.

· Squeeze together the sides of the wound. Apply direct pressure to the wound with your fingers**, or preferably a sterile dressing. In an emergency, an article of clean clothing will do.
· Lift the wounded part above the level of the heart. This slows the bleeding.
· Bandage the wound firmly but take care not to cut off the circulation to the area.*

3) Now the tough part. The big risk after bleeding stops (within typically 3-5 minutes; unless there's something really serious going on like internal bleeding, in which case you're fucked if you're out on your own) is infection. The wound will have foreign bacteria in it, because they live by the billions on every square inch of every surface of the planet (even your own skin). What you want to do is minimize contamination in order to help your body's internal defenses win the fight. :trixieshiftleft:

In an ideal situation, you could sterilize the area around the wound with (e.g.) alcohol, and keep sterile bandages over it. In Fluttershy's situation, the next best thing would have been to wash it with soap and water (boiled water if possible; then condensation or rainwater; then spring water; river/lake water if desperate; foul scummy puddle water, umm ... no). Then try to make a reasonably airtight cover. The gauze/fabric in bandages draws moisture and pus away from the wound; a tight wrap (or tape around the edges) keeps outside air from bringing in contaminants. :twilightsmile:

4) If the wound or infection get at all serious, rest so that your body can devote its energy to healing. Stay warm and dry, and eat what food you can. :duck:

5) If you die, have your friends chop off your head so you don't become a zombie. :trollestia:

--
** In the case of a non-unicorn pony, hooves aren't necessarily a good substitute, because they are in regular contact with dirt. Soil bacteria -> tetanus -> hideous painful death. WASH YOUR HOOVES before touching wounds, or else use wings, or apply pressure via convenient non-hoof body parts (such as the pastern).

Really loved this story.

The one criticism that stands out to me: All the evasiveness about the nature of the catastrophe, and Fluttershy's great reluctance to return to the city, gave me the impression that you were setting up for some sort of revelation. And then nothing of the sort happened. The lack of explanation for the apocalypse is not a problem in itself (one of my favorite authors, Philip K. Dick, wrote no shortage of stories set in the aftermath of unexplained apocalypses); it only feels off in this case because I thought you were setting up for an explanation. As for FS not wanting to go into the city–was the intention that FS simply could not face those reminders of everypony who had been lost? If so, I think that could have been made clearer.

That said, I'm very glad I read that story, and that very last scene with Him is more than good enough to make up for my criticisms.

1716453 Oh Phillip K. Dick

I think it was more the whole "The Other lives/hunts there" that really drives her off, which does seem to be suggested. On looking, it could've been clearer though, so I suppose that's valid.

And now I want to read a fic with Fluttershy as San. Curse you, awesome cover image!:flutterrage:
Also, I think the story was enjoyable, though not entirely my cup of tea, so it was a bit tedious at times.
Still, good work.:twilightsmile:

This deserves a mustache.:moustache:

1654226
In Gdocs: Ctrl-H >> Find: <space><space> >> Replace With: <space> >> ?? >> Profit.

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