Apple-Pie

by Starlitomega

A special day.

A drip of viscous clear liquid dangled precariously above a bowl of frosting. Pinkie wiped off a bead of sweat from her head steadying her shaky hooves. Slowly the drop of liquid stretched thin and separated. Pinkie stared as it fell into the mixing bowl, her eyes wide in anticipation.

Poof!

A thick cloud of black smoke blew back into the pink pony’s face sending her into a coughing fit. After the smoke cleared she peered into the bowl of frosting. Using the mixing spoon she scooped out a small bit of the sugary substance and took a hesitant taste. Her mind reeled as colors exploded in her mind, her tongue crackled with energy, and her eyes flew wide open in surprise.

“Oh Celestia, this is perfect, I am brilliant!”

Pinkie grabbed a spatula and dipped it deep into the bowl and pulled out a huge clump. With a few skillful swipes she covered the waiting cake with the special frosting making sure to completely and evenly apply every last bit of the sugary substance as carefully as possible. With a heavy sigh she dropped the spatula in the bowl and took a step back.

“Almost there….”

In a flash she grabbed an icing bag in her mouth skillfully spelling out the message she decided upon months ago when this plan first came to her.

Thump

The icing bag hit the table as she took in a deep breath and surveyed her work.

“Marvelous! It’s gonna be so absotively, posilutley perfect!”

Very carefully, she pushed the cake into a box and tied a string around it.

“Finished!” She announced proudly. Her eyes cast to the wall clock and went wide, “Oh no! I’m gonna be late!” using her mouth she picked up the cake box by the string and ran through the kitchen doors setting them swinging. Dashing through the lobby she ignored the looks the sweetshop's patrons gave her and bolted through the front door just in time for a big surprise.

“woah!” Pinkie tossed the cake in the air just as Scootaloo plowed into her with her scooter.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!” recovering from the hit she jumped forward sliding across the ground just in time to catch the cake with her front hooves. Peering inside the box, she saw the cake miraculously intact. With a wide smile she hugged the box.

“Thank goodness you’re ok!” She cast her eyes on the orange filly on the ground nursing a cut on her knee.

Scootaloo shrank as Pinkie approached her.

“You should really get your knee looked at! If you go inside I'm sure Mrs. Cake will get you a band-aid!” The pink pony said.

Scootaloo relaxed at the smile beaming down at her. “I will Pinkie, Thanks!”

“Be careful you don’t hurt anyone on that thing!” The pink pony cautioned picking the cake back up. Back on track, she galloped down the road headed for Sweet Apple Acres. Her hooves kicked up a long trail of dust marking her progress. It wasn't long before the Apple family’s house loomed before her and she saw Applebloom outside waving her over standing next to a serving cart.

“I did it Applebloom! It took all night and half the day, but I did it!” Pinkie yelled.

“That’s great! Here, put it on so we can roll it in!”

Using her teeth The pink pony snipped the string and pushed the cake out of it's box onto the serving table. “Ok! Here goes nothing!” Pinkie pushed the cart forward with her front hooves into the house. The door swung open revealing her friends all wearing party hats and greeting her with warm smiles.

“Hey everypony! Sorry I’m late!”

Everyone’s eyes went wide and Twilight pointed in front of the pink pony, “Pinkie, look out!”

"Waaaaah!” The cart hit a loose floorboard sending Her face smashing into the cake as she tumbled forward rolling over the cart sending the whole mess onto the floor. Pinkie slowly opened her eyes, her face coated in frosting and the rest of the cake lying on her stomach. Her eyes watered taking in the ruined cake she spent all night on. She stared sadly at the ceiling as Applejack walked over to her.

“I’m... I'm sorry Applejack, I ruined it and you didn’t even get a piece....”

Applejack stared down at her pink friend on the verge of tears. She slowly lowered her head and licked a large dollop of icing off of Pinkie’s face. The party pony watched her blonde friend’s eyes roll up and a small puff of smoke escape from her mouth.

“Landsakes girl! Ah don’t know just what you put in that frosting, but it sure packs a sweet punch!”

Pinkie managed a small smile at Applejack’s reaction. “I mixed together a special frosting with the help of one of Twilight’s books. I used a teeny tiny amount of nitroglycerin as an experiment to make special frosting that would explode with chocolatey flavor, But now it’s ruined. I just wanted to make sure you had something special for your birthday.” Pinkie said sadly, tears filling her eyes again.

Applejack pulled Pinkie to her hooves and wrapped her forelegs around her neck. “As long as ah got you Sugarcube, ah’ve got everything ah need.” The blonde pony took another lick at the frosting still caked on Pinkie’s face, “Besides, ah think ah prefer eatin it this way anyway!”

Everyone laughed as Applejack tackled her pink friend again going back for seconds.

Comments

[lillytheomegawolf]

A very worthwhile addition to the end

[Starlitomega]

2067112
Two bits an apple, buying more than one apple nets you a discount.

The point of the story was that Pinkie already meant a lot to AJ. AJ is a pony of repetition and habit. Her life is mired in routine. When Pinkie threatens that, AJ feels her only choice is to run because shes scared. The other ponies aren't guilt tripping her, they're just shocked that AJ isn't seeing what they see her.

"...Oh yes. Because certainly Applejack is wrong about her feelings..."

This is the basis of many stories involving love. Fictional and non-fictional. People have feelings, they don't understand them, they sometimes hurt the ones they like. I'm dead serious here. Many of the higher quality fics in the community feature stories where one or both of the ponies of the participants are confused or unsure of their feelings. Sometimes it's the ones on the outside that see better than the ones on the inside.

"Twilight raised her glasses in shock. “You turned her down?!”

No part of this says "you monster!" or "how dare you." It's exactly what i put on the tin. Shock. Twilight has seen how they interact and believes AJ likes Pinkie, so when AJ says she doesn't, it comes as a bit of a shock. Never at any point through any of the interactions do I imply they are mad or angry with Applejack. just confusion. At the time I did my level best to portray AJ's behavior not being of guilt, but because her routine with Pinkie has been shattered.

Quite honestly, and I'm not saying you're wrong because i can't, but you're the first person I've heard from on three different sites that interpreted this as a pure guilt trip instead of AJ not realizing how much Pinkie means to her. Nonetheless, i will take this into consideration because one of the most important things to me is conveying the correct emotion. Normally I have a policy not to endlessly rewrite my older fics, but this will be an exception because this is the first fic i wrote that I started to believe that I have a modicum of talent when it comes to writing. I'll give it a quick clean up and make doubly sure I can convey what i mean.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on it, but i can't believe it was soooooo bad that it was impossible to finish, but hey, i can't see inside your head and I can't force context on you. I can however make sure my words match my intent more closely.

Oh, and in another comment you mentioned wanting to read a clop fic that was more than horse sex. I don't read clop stories mostly because they're just that. Blatant sex with nothing more than that. But someone i know who links me stories linked me one and said, "no dude, give it a chance."
and so i present you with this. http://www.fimfiction.net/story/69351/rainbow-dash-and-the-infinite-party-favors-of-pinkie-pie <--- nsfw.
Hope you enjoy it the way i did, quite honestly i'm not sure it would even work as a clopfic since the emotional parts of the story over shadow the clop.
Starlitomega

[Esle Ynopemos]

Hrm. How did I not know of this until now? Thank you for adding this to the Apple Pie group folder. I would never have come across it otherwise. A nice entry in a regrettably obscure ship.

Lessee, critiques... Well, mechanically, capitalization is a thing that needs to be worked on. There's a lot of uncapitalized proper nouns and 'I's here that make it look a bit sloppy. Readable, and otherwise grammatically sound, but sloppy. Also, for some reason you have a space between your punctuation marks and end quotes, which makes it sometimes a bit difficult to tell which side of the quote is the part being spoken, and sometimes results in the quotation mark ending up on a separate line from the sentence it's a part of.

You said that you re-worked it to make it clearer that Applejack's actions were because she didn't understand her own feelings, but I think it still needs to go further in that direction. The reader needs to really feel AJ's confusion. Sell it with long pauses, stuttered words, numb hooves, or things like that, and it'll be more believable later that she really did feel for Pinkie and wasn't, like Pidgeons said, 'guilted' into loving her. (I should be one to talk, this is the root cause of the biggest flaw in my own Apple Pie fic!)

While Pidgeons was a bit rude in the manner of pointing it out, he/she did have a point about one thing. Pinkie running off and getting hurt felt a bit exploitative. If the emotional buildup had been working properly, this mildly out-of-character action for Pinkie to take would not have been necessary in order to bring the story to a climax. As it stands, that part felt like it was laying on the drama a bit too thick just for the sake of forcing AJ to admit she was wrong.

But let's not dwell entirely on the negatives. There is definitely some quality in this piece. I especially like the early scenes with Applejack making her deliveries to Sugarcube Corner. The sense of comfort and amiability in that scene make it very believable that, were they so inclined, some kind of relationship would form between the two of them. I kinda wish that there were more scenes like this in the story; maybe actually have them go for swimming lessons like they mentioned, or something. For the duration that you write Pinkie Pie and Applejack interacting while things are normal for them, you do a lovely job of building a warm, genuine-feeling relationship.

All in all, this is much better than it might have been, just not quite as good as it could be. Setting my Apple Pie bias aside, I'd give this a seven out of ten. (With the bias, it's of course a perfect ten because we need MOAR APPLE PIE) Thank you for writing, and good luck in future endeavors!

[Starlitomega]

2105823
Yeah, you should've seen this BEFORE! Either way, the main problem i have with this story looking back is the whole pinkie goes missing part. Unfortunately, it's a core component of the story from my early days of writing, so I couldn't really take it out, just spit-polish it.
I'll work on the quotations and such. It's still my main weakness when it comes to grammar and the most difficult part of writing for me to be honest.
In a perfect world, I would've had this story start earlier in their relationship, say in the last week that Twilight kept pointing out their interactions. The only problem is, rewriting this fic means I'm not working on newer, potentially better fics. So apart from trying to convey Applejack's confusion and the quotation and capitalization fixing, as jontron would say, we're done here.

Thanks for your input and I'm glad you enjoyed it despite the flaws. Quite honestly, I never saw potential in the Apple-pie pairing until i wrote this story, I guess that's why it means alot to me. Both you and Pidgeon's input helped, or will help make this story better than any right it had to be!
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment and help me become a better writer.

starlitomega

[Esle Ynopemos]

The only problem is, rewriting this fic means I'm not working on newer, potentially better fics.

Definitely. I respect you for making what changes you did make, because it can be outright depressing putting that kind of work making fixes that only a handful of people will see (since making it a better fic doesn't give it a second go at the front page). I'm not asking you to do that when I leave critiques. Just to maybe think about those things the next time you write.

Y'know, what I like even better than your writing is your levelheaded and positive response to criticism. Get yourself a proofreader with a sharp pair of eyes, and I think you'll go far.