EMy Little Pony: The Next Generation

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

At the first graduation ceremony of the School of Friendship, Applejack gets healthy reminder what is important.

• Rainbow Dash
• Applejack
• Rarity
• Ocellus

Scroll · 15k words  ·  14  3 · 657 views

At the graduation ceremony of the School of Friendship, Applejack is suffering from a midlife crisis. It feels like everything is changing all around her, and the apple bucking farm pony can't keep up. However, with a little reminder from her friends, including the School of Friendship's first valedictorians, Applejack is reminded of the important lessons she has learned and the important contribution she and her friends have offered Equestria. Change is important, and it's easier to settle on that when she knows that the future of Equestria is in good hooves (or talons) with The Next Generation.

And here we have a story that seems to carry the feeling of passing the torch from the Mane Six, who we have watched grow for nine amazing years, to the Young Six and beyond as an era in My Little Pony ends. Let's get started

Setting and Plot

This story takes place several years after the end of the "present time" for the show; ie., after Twilight became the One True Ruler of Equestria, but many years before she sends Luster Dawn to live in Ponyville and learn the magic of friendship just as she did. Specifically, Scroll recounts the graduation ceremony for the first batch of students of the School of Friendship, including (but not limited to!) the Young Six through the perspective(? I'll touch on this later) of Applejack, who has just recently married Rainbow Dash. The Young Six, surprise surprise, are the valedictorians of their class and Ocellus gives a speech.

And that's about it.

Topping out at around 16k words, Scroll wrote most of it as part of Ocellus's speech. Beyond the insane amount of bold formatting (which I will address later), the majority of Ocellus's speech was just her talking about friendship with other species and what each professor and/or staff member did to help this new generation learn about friendship. There were some grievances I had with the story, so let's start it from the top, shall we?

In the first chapter, the very first paragraph that the audience reads is about... geese? There is a long description of a gaggle of geese, (yes, that is the plural term for geese on the ground!), that ultimately has little purpose in the story. It's used to introduce the two characters in the cover, Applejack and Rainbow Dash, as they're walking from the farm to the graduation ceremony. And that's it. By the most liberal of estimates, the geese were relevant for about four paragraphs after their introduction, so ultimately, that left me feeling a little weird I do admit that I'm a picky reader, but it feels off to have this gaggle of geese described so deeply and just amount to nothing afterward, especially when Rainbow Dash just says:

“Hey! Watch it!” a blue pegasus mare with a striking rainbow mane complained at the birds as they flew off after nearly hitting the two of them.

[. . .]

“Flying around the geese maybe, not through them,” Rainbow Dash corrected her cowpony friend. “We're not that dense. The Wonderbolts have a strict policy when it comes to safety, and part of it has to do with keeping a clear airspace. Because of that, I just feel very uncomfortable when some-creature invades my personal airspace.”

And that's it! All that description, all that work into describing this particular gaggle and how they're not on a migratory flight, all that mental picturing by the audience, is just brushed off by Rainbow. It just leaves me feeling so unsatisfied and honestly a little miffed

Moving past that, we finally arrive at the graduation ceremony, which is already underway and AJ and RD are late. Very late. This just seems.... odd to me To be fair, I haven't watched the later seasons for myself, but I'm pretty sure that Starlight would be a stickler for being on time for an event as important as the graduation ceremony, and while Rainbow is a lazy ponybutt, Applejack kinda has no excuse here; sure, she has her flaws that we explored in the show, but one thing that she's known for is being dependable, and getting down and dirty with Rainbow isn't something that would stop AJ from being there for the students. I'll address that later, as well!

Aside from that, the ceremony proceeds as Applejack takes her seat and commences a conversation chain that irked me greatly. Why did it do so? Because of how infeasible it sounds. AJ and Rarity start a conversation like they're speaking at normal volume, which you wouldn't during a ceremony where the audience is expected to be quiet and when you're sitting on the stage that everybody in the audience is looking at This happens multiple times throughout the story with some other characters as well, but at the very least, say that they whispered! Rarity even "exclaimed dramatically," which conjures up the mental image of her speaking slightly louder than normal, but this is a graduation ceremony! The setting demands for silence, or at least close to silence! Applejack even exclaims as well, saying "YONA!"

I will admit, I think I skipped the majority of the second chapter for a couple of reasons, but the chief among them was boredom. Once I realized what the first part of Ocellus's speech was, which was talking about befriending other species, I zoned out and the bold was starting to get on my nerves, so I scrolled past a lot of it and tuned back in when Ocellus started talking about other stuff, which was just thanking and describing the faculty members of the School of Friendship, where I zoned out once more.

I got bored not even midway through Ocellus's speech, which is something you don't want to happen to your readers. A good chunk of writing a good story is writing it in a way that catches the reader's attention and draws them in, keeping them immersed and hooked all the way to the last word. Unfortunately, Scroll seems to have missed this mark, at least with me, when the plot became very repetitive very fast. I found out the pattern in Ocellus's speech almost right away and then it became dull, partly due to how the speech was written. I'm sure that the School of Friendship also teaches regular subjects, so speech-writing is going to be part of their curriculum somewhere, right? The way her speech is written is also dull; take a look at some of the greatest speeches of all time and they're dynamic while still hitting and coming back to the same points. If you ever feel like rewriting this story, or even writing speeches in future stories, Nerdwriter1's video on how Martin Luther King Jr. wrote 'I Have A Dream' is a fantastic watch and an incredible insight into the creation of speeches, because they too have to hook in their listener and keep them there until the last word is said. Yes, Ocellus isn't MLT Jr., but she does have access to resources to hone her writing and speaking skills

Overall, I get the underlying message that both Ocellus, Applejack, and Scroll wanted to express: we appreciate the past, of what brought us to this point, and we take what we have in the present and carry it to the future. It's okay that things are changing and that the torch is being passed on, because we've done our parts, and now it's time for the next generation to do theirs. We had sown our seeds and brought in the harvest, and now we're giving the seeds to others to do the next round. It's a lovely message if only a bit soured by how it was delivered

Rating: 4/10

Character Exploration

Unfortunately, I don't really see a lot of exploration into characters in this story. Yes, Ocellus goes into the Young Six's friendship and the meaning behind it, then to the Mane Six and what they passed down, but it's all just rehashing what we already know Aside from the ones about the species, the descriptions in Ocellus's speech barely go beneath the surface of what each character is presented as in the show.

Personally, it also felt like Scroll either leaned way too far in with some of the character personality tropes or closed the door on it. Pinkie Pie's only contribution in the story, as far as I can tell, is her salivating over chocolate and that's all. Applejack is allegedly the POV character, but the story is presented in a very hands-off manner and goes all over the place with its narration, where the distance between Applejack's perspective and the narration is pretty clear.

Take this paragraph from chapter 2:

Among the crowd within the bleachers, Cheerilee appreciated that objection from Starlight because it secretly validated something Cheerilee said under this same circumstance years ago. Cheerilee actually had experience as a cheerleader as well (naturally), but she was also wise enough to know when enough was enough. Rainbow Dash’s parents, however, simply did not seem to have that same social filter.

Just out of nowhere, we get Cheerilee's opinion and thoughts, but then Scroll takes a hard left and brings out "Let's remind the audience that AJ is our POV character and that she has realized the lesson of the story by giving her a paragraph-long monologue that neatly expresses her thoughts in a very personal manner" at the end of the story. You can see this difference in the style just by comparing two instances of Applejack "reflecting" on the situation at hand:

Applejack grinned. Upon hearing that, it reminded her of the time she first met Starlight in her old village. Back then, the ponies who lived there were perplexed at individual cutie marks and how different personalities of the ponies who wore those marks could still get along. At the time, Applejack was on the other side of the fence, equally perplexed at those ponies' confusion because Applejack grew up with those values all of her life and she had no problem with it.

In fact, to this day, Applejack was still somewhat confused at the villager’s twisted values at the time. Give up who one really is? That is just too antithetical to Applejack’s nature to properly wrap her head around that concept, and she wasn’t the only one who felt that way at the time. She used to think that all ponies felt that way and gladly embraced their destiny. That just goes to show how influential Starlight Glimmer was as a leader. She still is that influential, but it has been turned into a force for good. Thank Celestia!

[. . .]

Ma, pa, Applejack mentally projected above. Ah . . . think ah’m gonna be fine. The love and strength ya provided me helped me to carry on throughout these long years. Ah did all ah promised, to take care of dear sweet Apple Bloom in yer absence. I want ya to know ah appreciate ya continuin’ to look after me, but ah also want ya to know that y’all are no longer alone in those struggles. Ah really did do a mighty fine job takin’ care of the young’ins, and they ain’t so young now, cuz they helped to remind me what’s really important. Ah helped them to do that. Me’n mah friends. We did this together, so we earned this victory. Ya can relax now, jus' like ah can. The future of Equestria is well in hoof.

Like may dear, sweet, wife.

The first two paragraphs are described in the third-person, while everything beyond the ellipses is presented as Applejack's thoughts. They're both technically Applejack's thoughts, but one of them is so much more personal and would hit more emotional beats and provide a doorway to delve into AJ's character. Unfortunately, it's also a text wall, so that detracts a bit from the effect.

Another thing I wanted to touch on that contributed to the "hands off" style is the lack of descriptions of characters talking. Now that seems pretty mundane and probably very repetitive when there's a lot of dialogue going on, but describing the actions of characters while they're speaking helps build the mental image of the scene and draws the reader in because they can picture it. Take the following (fairly long) section of Ocellus's speech (and yes, all that bold is original. I will talk about this later):

“So every single one of them is a unique treasure because every single one will bring a unique experience. That means befriending ponies will never get boring. It might take some more work in some cases, largely due to their unpredictability, but that’s also their value. Take it for what it is.

“And speaking of befriending ponies, all of my friends here would like to share our profound gratitude to every member of the faculty of the School of Friendship.

“Pinkie Pie, who taught us to never take anything in life for granted, not even the very laws of physics. She taught us to seek joy in each and every situation we encounter. She taught us to never give up hope and to always seek a silver lining to every situation. We are only defeated when we give up in despair. There are profound treasures and lasting value in the simple act of spreading a smile to a friend, for a smile begets another smile. The more we share it, the more we feel it within. She also made it a specific point in how to bake sweets and sing songs, both of which are tools to help her bring joy to others. These aren't the only methods to spread joy to the world, of course. To each, their own path.

“Applejack,” Ocellus went on, which really snagged and focused the orange mare's attention, “who taught us the value of honesty, for how far can we get in life by living a lie all the time? Honesty not just among our friends, but also within ourselves. I felt especially blessed by this lesson, for she taught meto seek my own identity without borrowing it from some other creature. Because of her lessons, I learned that I don’t need a mask anymore, and I also learned that I do indeedhave a face beneath that former mask. Honesty also goes hoof in hoof with integrity, which means sticking to your promises once you make them. If you do, then your friends and associates know that they can depend upon you. If there are a dozen competitors on the market but you are the only one among them who is known for their integrity, guess who’s going to receive the most business? Applejack also taught us the value of appreciating hard work, for it is through hard work that we accomplish the most. In order to accomplish anything truly meaningful in this world, we have to be willingto give it our best effort and, of course, doing that is a whole lot easier with good friends by our side.”

I would not blame you if you skimmed that excerpt Describing how characters move, stand, shift, etc., while they're speaking not only helps us picture the scene, but it also breaks up the text wall that we're presented with. Even in this excerpt alone, can you imagine what Ocellus looks like when she's speaking? Is she nervous? Is she moving around a lot? Is she even smiling? It's hard to pin it down because it's not given to us, which leaves that up to the imagination and there are so many ways that Ocellus could look like while she's speaking, so which one is it?

Rating: 2/10

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

Generally speaking, I think Scroll did fairly well when it came to grammar, but suffered in the other two categories. There are inconsistencies that are noted by The Red Parade in the comments that I agree with, namely that the sentence structure seems to be strangely constructed to the point of where it almost feels like Scroll is rambling and that Applejack slips in and out of her accents when she speaks/thinks.

Okay, so I've been making mentions to it all throughout the review and now it's time to actually talk about all the bold. I don't know the exact percentage, but I would hazard a guess to say that at least half of the 11,864 words in Chapter 2 are bolded. Within the story, it's written that way because everyone who has their text bolded is either placing heavy emphasis on that word or, and this is the more common case, they're speaking very loudly. How loud? Well, it's either shouting or having their voice magically amplified. Now, it would work for a couple of sentences at the beginning to establish that the speaker is getting everyone's attention, and then it can be dropped because it can be assumed that the audience has fallen relatively silent. When we speak into microphones, we only raise our voice while speaking into the mic when the crowd gets too loud so they can hear us better, and then we quiet down.

Here, it just feels like Starlight and Ocellus are just... yelling at the crowd the entire time. And it becomes harder to read the longer it goes on since the bold jumps out at you and constantly tries to hold your attention. It might just be how my brain/eyes work, but I found it difficult to remain focused on the text when nearly all of it was bolded like this was the last time you could ever use bolded text.

Grammar: 8/10
Formatting: 4/10
Consistency: 6/10
Section rating: ((8+4+6)/3)/10 = (18/3)/10 = 6/10

My Little Nitpicks

Geese, geese, duck!
Why are they here? Why am I learning so much about geese? I'm Canadian, I know too much about geese already.

Oh, when the saints go marching in...
Believe it or not, I've never actually listened to this song Also, punctuation always goes inside of quotation marks, so it should be "When The Saints Go Marching In."

I'm late! I'm late for a very important date!
You'd think they'd try to be on-time for something like the first graduation ceremony of the School of Friendship And the reason they were late was that they were rolling around in the hay, if you get my meaning...

The Great Wall of Text
There are many segments in this wall of text included in this story

Bold of you to assume....
And so it begins.

Final Thoughts

A story that needs an editor to go over it with a fine-toothed comb and some work put into it to make it more immersive and interesting to the reader. The underlying message was good but was poorly expressed through the story.

Final rating: ((4+2+6)/3)/10 = (12/3)/10 = 4/10

Thank you for taking the time to read the story and for your attention to detail in your reprot.