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fan fiction Saved by Celestia


I used to be a stranger

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(Why do my music playlists always have to be so

when I do something like this?)

 

In my apprehension to contribute to the My Little Pony fandom textually, somehow I've managed to type out a fan-fiction, much to my surprise. The Fiction itself is a cross-over with Half-Life 2 (taking place after the events of HL2 Episode 1 and perhaps Episode 2) and directly it doesn't have much to do with the show itself. The main character is an everyman male Human Resistance member who has taken part in the Uprising against the Combine, who has not crossed paths with the main character of Half-Life, Gordon Freeman.

 

God willing the last thing I want to be afraid of is a bunch of teenagers who like shows aimed at little girls, so I'm going to post it somewhere for all to see.

Additionally, the title is only something I came up with for the purpose of this thread, for the entire time the fiction has been on my computer, I never gave the story a name. Thus since this whole thread is comments & criticism, the title is also open to that as well.

 

Enjoy~

_____________________________________________________

 

Dear Princess Celestia:

I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning. Sheesh, I’m writing a letter to a toy and the Captain said I must be going crazy. He’s probably right.

 

I remember being a little kid, probably about eight or so, and my little sister, who would watch My Little Pony on TV. I didn’t much care for it, especially whenever Mythbusters was on. I remember watching some of it some time and thinking it wasn’t all so bad, but most of the time I couldn’t care less.

But I do remember Christmas that year. I got her You, and a Rarity figurine. -Rarity because she would tell us alot about Rarity being better than the other ponies, and You, because I hoped that someday Rarity would learn from Celestia how to not be such an egotistic- well, there’s my Big Mac talking.

 

Must have been the water though, I don’t remember exactly how or when it was, the day we had to leave. Mom and Dad told us only to bring the things we’d need for a very simple camping trip. I hadn’t heard about them planning any camping trip at the time. Thinking back, they were very protective, shutting of radios and TVs whenever we went someplace. Everyone when we left seemed so frantic, but we managed to get on the highway before most other people, and managed to get out of the city. But then to stay informed, Dad had no choice but to turn on the car stereo, and that’s when I heard the words that have haunted my life ever since.

The “Seven-Hour War”.

Again my memory goes fuzzy, but instead of being a few months, the thoughts go hazy for a few years. The most vivid memory I can recall is being dragged away by two men whom I think were Dad’s friends, while Dad was being beaten by two Metrocops. In that, I also think I recall that Mom and Sis were gone and I missed them. There is no doubt in my mind now that all three are dead or worse, some forsaken place far from here.

 

I kept you, my Dear Princess, in memory of them, but especially in memory of my sister. Especially in spite of the fact that I’ve forgotten my sister’s name.

 

Living in City 17 has taught me a great many things. But more than that City life ever taught me, you taught me, Celestia.

As much as getting street smarts amongst the citizens around the city really saved my life more than once, it dulled my humanity to be simply getting up in the morning, walking slowly to an office building, staring at a wall for a few hours, grabbing a sack of food on the way home and going to sleep. But I could never sleep. Not without You, that is. For as many days as I can remember, I would go up into the rafters of the apartment block and play with You and- well, by that point Rarity had seen her fair share of love from my Sister, her eyes being entirely worn off, horn ground down to a bump and hair lost its curl and color to the weathering of wind, time and sun.

Dad and Mom taught me a great many things about life, probably more than any kids at school did, or the teachers. These lessons they taught me started to weave and mingle with some werid- maybe magical is the right word- feelings and memories I had of the show, and I started playing pretend.

I would pretend I was a little Unicorn colt named “Morning Ray”. A scrawny, wimp of a little pony who looking back, very much wanted to be friends with people. Studiously wanted to be friends. Desperate, maybe even.

Obviously in the world in and of Civil Protection, citizens would have none of that.

Playing with these two little horse toys taught me a lot. More than I would have thought possible, and that’s because I suppose I got lots of the traits of my Mom and mindsets of my Dad into You.

One distinct lesson I recall that came from these play sessions was the moral in the end “Never stop learning”. I don’t remember if that was something my Dad taught me to do, or an actual moral from the show. Usually I’d always go into a little adventure with exploring a cave to find a missing filly or trying to fight off some kind of big scary monster to save somepony, and you’d always be there to save my sorry butt every time I made a mistake. And when I’d got myself into some kind of big social mess with other ponies, you’d restart my self-confidence and re-commit my willingness to not give up and to stay on track.

 

Heh. I remember that time that I prety much fell in love with you, Princess, and Ray tried to bashfully date you on a few occasions. A crush if anything. In those brief events I think I saved myself a lot of pain and stupid moments by pretty quickly realizing the complexity and rationality behind women through you, instead of saying something stupid and awkward to some girls in the apartment block.

Ray would ask a question, and Celestia would answer. He’d do something and she would react, each with their personality and mindset that was proper and entirely like the personality I gave them, and how they thought. I never realized I was actually really smart and kind of witty, recalling things Celestia said from my mouth. And likewise, how pretty wonky and downright dim Ray could be. Well, at least he was patient and wise enough to know that he wanted to be a gentleman, and intended to get there though more patience and wisdom. I don’t know anymore if that’s a boastful thing to say of my pretend-self.

Whenever Ray would make a rude response, Celestia would be polite, or perhaps frank, but never cold. And the fact remains, I did learn a lot about girls just through you, Princess. Just through pretending to interact and having some part of my brain reason using this imagined personality as opposed to some kind of assumption of what girls were like. I never meant it to occur, but it can’t be thought of without its irony that an object of my affection taught me how one might have affection for women without them being objects. Always learning, ha ha.

 

As much as life seemed to suck, it was entirely weird to everyone who knew me why I was so chipper, despite the death and darkness that surrounded everyday life. April was the one who first found out about my secret hobby in the attic. She probably thought I was doing something of a... personal nature. In a way, wording it like that is right. It came as total surprise to us both to find a young man and a young woman, looking at each other over the distance of a few feet, one standing from the stairset and the other laying down spread over two joists and holding two plastic ponies as if they were walking side by side.

That night was an interesting one, but I am very grateful she was so understanding and patient with my explanation. She tried to convince me it was some form of dealing with the reailty of the world and trying to escape from it. Now I see that most definitively it was. It can’t be denied that I developed as a man because of it, and without it I would have been a very different man, but how dare anyone actually say it was fundamentally bad or wrong?

 

I defended my hobby very sternly in the angle of being in memory of my family. In a way of sorts, I suppose that night was a big test for everything I had taught myself about how to think and act to people. I couldn’t say it wasn’t fair for that ‘test’ to take the form of someone wanting me to part ways with my ‘educator’ in order to ‘pass’, without being one-sided. But regardless of what paths life takes us on, I see now that good always comes out of our choices if good is what we seek. Usually though, not quickly, nor painlessly.

 

The next morning after that, we got word that Nova Prospekt had been blown up and that Gordon Freeman had returned. I had heard rumours about this Black Mesa guy and how he was supposed to save the world, but it never struck me as a realistic idea to have hopes resting on one man.

Street smarts somehow quickly translated into fighting skills when push came to shove, surviving against the Combine and retreating out of the city. For eight days, my life became a blur or running, hiding, shooting, walking, glancing out from behind corners, shoving someone out of the way to avoid getting exploded, sleeping when I could and somehow managing to lose Morning Ray- or rather, what was left of Rarity. That was a few weeks ago. I don’t kick myself over it, nor do I mourn. I treasure what moments I had, and dwell on that feeling, instead of hating the future of what could have been vs. what is. I suppose in a weird way it was symbolic of my old young self dying and bringing about my smarter, more mature self.

 

I still was learning new things though; how to demolish a bridge, how to blow up an armoured vehicle, what to do when you find zombies, things like that. The odd part is, as practical and purposeful these skills are, they're still tiny in comparison to what I learned about friendship. Indeed the single most important tool we have in the group of rebels I’m part of, is teamwork. More valuable than any bullet, any hammer, or any one hand.

Together they and I have destroyed striders, buried enclaves, destroyed a fortress and wrecked a train, and they’re all colourful and fantastic stories that someday we’ll talk about to each other, to friends, maybe wives and children. But in the moment I think there’s far more importance between the guy that knows that there’s a God and the guy that knows there is no God don’t mistrust each other, or those other two fellows that are at each other’s throats because of some old flame long gone, can extinguish their anger and come to terms with what they know and love about life, and move on. It never struck me I was good at this, until I started getting praise for being able to tie the rag-tag band of jerks that we were, together. The God-fearing guy very seriously thought I also believed in God. I hadn’t really thought about that. I’ll have to think about that some more.

 

I had been called a hopeless optimist before, but that didn't sound right, nor sit well with me, what with all the evil still in the world. Somehow I preferred “Pony-Boy”.

 

All I know is that when this is all over, and those smart people at the base start having to set up the world all over again, they’ll be able to fit together the house of cards made of things like food provision, religious freedom, social stability in the face of aliens, law-making and justice, with glue, if the mindset is Friendship, not just Citizenship. Love, not just Order.

 

Here I lie with wounds in my shoulder and leg as they carry me back to the nearest base. They all know how inept I am when it comes to a firearm, ignorance when it comes to planning, blindness when it comes to tactics, and depth when it comes to looking inside yourself, and thinking about how you think. I think they all love me because I love them, as brothers do. I never had brothers until a few weeks ago, and it’s wonderful. They don’t just leave me behind because I’m good company they say, and they're quite clear in telling me that someday I’ll be a great father. I don’t know about that, I still have a lot to learn about being a husband first, and there are steps to take before I even get there. -Celestia-willing.

 

I’ve got really nothing to do as they carry me. Try to figure out the broken pieces of my younger memories, talk, write or read when I can. (Still is crazy to me where this writing idea has come from.)

I’ve never come to completely realize how much You’ve influenced my life, Princess. A journal would have been more orderly, but whoever says to themselves that their mind is a simple and organized place is either a fool whose mind is as simple as he says, or hasn’t delved deep enough into it. This letter as odd as it may be, serves truer a purpose I think, than any story would have- although some time I may have to recollect one of our adventures. Thankfully mail travel time for something like this consists of stuffing the finished piece into my backpack where you reside.

 

I still make a point of the truth that (wherever it came from) rings brighter than almost any other advice I’ve ever heard or given myself, to never stop learning.

Writing this letter has taught me a lot about myself, and I don’t intend to stop soon.

 

Thank you for everything, Princess.

Your faithful student

 

Raymond Markus

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Edited by Blue
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I don't normally read the fan-fictions around, but I decided to make an exception for this one and I haven't a clue why. It is very well written and paints a good image in my mind. But since it is supposed to be a letter written by a young man who lost his family at a young age, likely without a full education, it is a little bit TOO well written. Just needs to be toned down a bit in the way of grammar and vocabulary. Though of course I noticed your comment about that in the later paragraphs, that wasn't enough to convince me it was done by the person described in the letter.

 

Apart from that it was very good, and I enjoyed reading it. I'm surprised I even took the time to read it myself, but I certainly don't regret that I did. It makes quite a nice change from "Cupcakes", which I read only out of an extremely large dose of curiosity (I'm beginning to think that it really did kill that cat people keep talking about). Keep up the good work, I'm sure your writing skills will keep plenty of people entertained for a while.

 

 

PS: The sister mentioned in this story should have recieved a Fluttershy doll, because she is CLEARLY best pony. ;)

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So, in an unusual bout of curiosity over the fact that you mentioned Half-Life, I actually read this rather than ignoring it like most fan-fictions, and I've got to say, it was quite enjoyable.

 

You have an excellent vocabulary and great syntactical fluency, so of course it's extremely well written (I expected that before I even started reading it), but I daresay it might just be a little too well written given the circumstances. I know that you made a point to consult the narrator's vocabulary in the story, but it still loses some of the immersion when you realize that his way of writing just doesn't quite fit in.

 

That being said, it was a nice story and, as I said before, quite enjoyable to read. Being a fan of the Half-Life series, I'm extraordinarily happy to see that you didn't tinker with the story or any of the canon characters. Despite being a bit overbearing for the immersion, the details and vocabulary were quite useful in fleshing things out more than they might be normally, and it does paint a pretty good picture, though I'm fairly sure that anyone who hasn't played the Half-Life series will get an entirely different image in their mind.

 

I don't want to ramble about this all day, so I'll just say that it was good overall and the only real problem I can find with the story is the man's vocabulary. Confound these ponies, they drive the man to grammatical aptitude!

Edited by Fluttershy
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Yeah I sort of worried about that aspect.

Fixed it up a bit, although I'm going to retain the original version that was made with a more polysyllabic orientation.

 

Also, it wasn't really plot-relevant which pony was given to the sister. Could have been Snails for all that mattered.

Edited by Blue
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I have always had something in my mind tell me you were extremely smart and a well writer.

 

Looks like you have proved me right.

 

If you would please though, put it into Google Docs.

 

The spacing on the forums make it sort of difficult to read because of the spacing.

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