Hi! I'm just some dumb writer who likes ponies. Oh, and it's alaoel + foal. alafoel.
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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.
Contains some strong homophobic language.
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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.