Pony Stories 544

More Applejack shipping enjoyment today! It’s the new bookplayer one that recently finished up. So, you know, the review can be boiled down to the statement: “It is a romance story involving Applejack written by bookplayer.” However, in this case the addition of “and it is really good even compared to the others of the author/genre combination” is attached to the summary.

• Lost Time by bookplayer

Lost Time by bookplayer

This story falls into a specific category for me. It is a story that has me feeling a specific kind if sad when it’s over. Nothing to do with the emotional content of the ending itself. It is a sadness that the story is over. Not just the story ends, but that the story finished and wrapped up in such a fashion that I don’t want more to come after it. So, sad that I got to the end of a really good story. Which this is. It is bookplayer’s doing what she does best, and doing it excellently.

Heh. The main complaint about most shipping stories is that they just start with the relationship and never give the reader any good foundation for it. Which is basically what happens here, but as the plot. Rainbow Dash gets dumped into a AJ and Dash shipfic and has to deal with it.

Not often I run into a time travel bit that is new. Mostly because I love time travel stories. Which is not to say I’ve read/watched a ton of them, but I’ve gone through a bit more than the average person and can spot most if the tropes. Getting surprised at the end was nice, but more importantly even when I thought I had an idea about what was going to happen it never felt predictable or cliche.

It was also a somewhat emotionally wrenching. This is probably the only story I’ve emphasized with Rainbow Dash. Certainly the only one that the feeling was this strong. I’m about as far on the other side of the spectrum as you can bet from Dash. In the show and pretty much in all the stories I’ve read I understand her, but commonality of feeling has never really happened. Too much raw emotion and quick acting in the Pegasus for me to ever be uncomfortable with. However, when she is trying to adjust to the future she struggles with something I struggle with on a regular basis. Things that are important to other people, things that should be important to me, are just kind of a emotional empty spot. I, however, do not have a gorgeous blonde farmgirl wife or adorable and intelligent children to help me deal with it. So the game point has to go to Dash.

For all the quality in the story, it isn’t my favorite bookplayer’s story. Possibly because the pairing isn’t my favorite. Also I spent a good amount of the story twisted up emotionally and I only let a story get away with that if it’s got a big payoff at the end. Which this does not. A good ending, but much more things are wrapped up and life goes on situation rather than everything fixed with sunshine and rainbows.

Which is how most of bookplayer’s stories play out. One of her running themes is that relationships are what is built in the day to day life between the big events after all. A romance is not just the date, getting ready for the date, or the morning after the date. It is the weeks leading up to the question, and all the weeks after as one date becomes several and two people figure out the transition between dating and living together.

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Spoilers:

No really, avoid the spoilers if you haven’t read it. A lot of the emotional punch comes from not knowing what the ending is going to be. Not in a reveal sense, but because then you are following along with Rainbow Dash’s not-sure-what-to-do confuzzlement.

If you have read it, go ahead and keep going for the amusement below. It’s just a fun little thought I had about it.

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Got to love what the final reveal turned out to be. Not either of the forms of time travel they have experience with, but something even weirder. Really tells you a lot about the mabe six that not only was time travel the go to easy answer, but that it was a weirder option. Like the universe had run out of types of time travel to throw at the mane six and decided to get creative.

“So, you are telling me that the stupidest thing I’ve done in my whole life ended up saving my life a decade and a half later?”

“Yep. Because the second time you did it would’ve fried your brain if you hadn’t done it the first time.”

“Mixed signals, universe. Mixed. Signals.”