• Story: Crying in a Bottle (Update Complete!)

    [Normal][Sad-Slightly] The Great and Sad Trixie!  This is a long one, the only thing missing from "complete" is an epilogue. Also skimmed so.. You are all pre-readers today!

    Author: Zeeth Kyrah
    Description: In the village of Wellshod, a day and a
    third's travel from the burgeoning Ponyville, there is a general store
    and a tavern, and that's about it. Someone who was once "Great and
    Powerful" has been watering her salt lick with tears...
    Crying in a Bottle (All links)


    Crying in a Bottle (All links)


    Additional Tags: angst, storms, performances, grieving, inner transformation

    10 comments:

    1. It's an alright story, but it feels a bit underdeveloped. Trixie's being haunted for reasons never totally explained, and her obsession with her mother is more reminiscent of Norman Bates than anything. There isn't that much of an emotional impact either, which is really the calling card of a good sad fic. There was a lot of potential here, but it didn't quite reach the level it should have.

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    2. Hey, author here. I didn't intend this to be either a ghost story or terribly depressing, but I knew it was going to be angsty. I realized after Chapter 4 that I could take the story in two different directions, and decided to pull the readers fully into a perspective that most never experience, without doing an info-dump like I could have.

      Also, the story now has an epilogue (the "reprise" chapter) and author's postscript, and while I might go back and replace the image reference or correct any remaining errors, I consider it complete.

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    3. @Zeeth
      I didn't mean haunted in the literal sense. She's obviously got issues, but they aren't really explained.

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    4. @ToonNinja
      Ah, I understand. On the show, Trixie obviously sees herself as "better" than her audience, mocking and subverting their tricks, rather than out-performing her challengers. But when danger approaches, she admits she lied, then sticks around and tries to actually handle the Ursa. She has bravery and competence inside somewhere, it's just not showing itself well. And maybe Twilight saw that when she told Dash to let Trixie go.

      I was also inspired by the image I gave a link to. And I decided there was a trauma there which needed addressing -- but, as I noted in the postscript, I wasn't willing to spend dozens of chapters delving into the kind of emotional turmoil that most people go through to break out of their worst hurts. I'm really a light-hearted person in nature, and I would have been too depressed by my own writing.

      So I took an easy way out by turning off the pressure and hiding the actual catharsis in a jump-cut. I could instead have had Trixie run away, the answer that was screaming at me for several chapters, but I see her as braver than that, once you get her to admit the truth. And people who will look at truth and say it like it is go far in emotional healing.

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    5. D'awwwww....... She needs a hug...

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    6. Tags need to be updated, the Epilogue is up now, so it should read as Complete.

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    7. Hello from the future! It's like the past, except more... well, same thing really, just with jetpacks and stuff.

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    8. A nice story, but I feel the same way as Toonninja's first post. All the same, thanks for sharing!

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