[Normal][Human] I feel relatively certain we haven't used all of these yet. Somehow My Little Pony and Vietnam keep coming up in tandem. Whodathunkit?
Author: Mamoo
Description: A GI fighting in Vietnam suddenly gets pulled from the jungle to Equestria, friendship ensues.
Out of the Jungle
Additional Tags: Vietnam, soldier, romance, human, death
34 comments:
Lol, friendship ensues :P
ReplyDeleteHopefully this is better than the MLP/Vietnam story I tried to write.
ReplyDeleteMight warrant a grimdark tag.
ReplyDelete@Sagebrush Also, Sad tag. You'll see.
ReplyDeleteand shipping tag.
ReplyDeleteits a POS take this crap down
ReplyDeleteHaven't read yet, but I hope PTSD is involved. o.o
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeletewho peed in your cereal this morning?
I love this fic. idk why. i just do. it just works. and at the end of chaper 9 i think it was i almost started crying.
Oh wow, did not even realize it was 10 chapters.
ReplyDeleteIt's sorta... Medoocre if you ask me.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWhich makes it a POS that should be taken down?
I like it so far, different but very interesting. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteIt's also complete, according to the Author.
ReplyDeleteIt's.......different......
ReplyDeleteKinda lame story...sorry
ReplyDeleteI love this series its so good I'm willing to pay the person that wrote this to make it longer. Military and ponies who knew there was so much WIN! if you combined them together.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with Applejack and humans? She gets shipped with Takeo Masaki in the Nazi zombies crossover too.
ReplyDeleteAs to this one, it feels more than a little rushed, not least when Nightmare Moon just kind of... pops out with no lead up or explanation.
If the Author went back and fleshed out the character interactions, gave a reason for Nightmare Moon's return and a build-up and slowed the ship right the fuck down, they'd have a much more believable, emotive story. Really, I have to think a battle weary soldier sharing Applejack's bed would think "am I okay with this, and what do I do/think of myself if I am" before any notions of love enter his head.
That said, I actually quite liked where the ship went; I've got a bit of a soft spot for Applejack 'getting her man', as 'twere, she just got him (and he her) too damn soon.
tl;dr: good, but needs polish and pacing
It's not that bad of a premise, in all honesty, but the pacing of the story (And the romance, might I add) is completely unrealistic, and just killed any interest in reading past the third chapter.
ReplyDeleteI'd read it, if the author polished the story and included some pacing into the story, therefore showing how the romance would slowly build between the OC soldier and AJ (Instead of going from "OMG Emotional War Traumas!" to "I think I love you, you beautiful pony~"), and his life in Equestria.
I wouldn't call this a POS but it's got...problems. Spoilers ahead, ye be warned.
ReplyDeleteIt lingers a lot on John's traumatic war memories. This wouldn't be so bad if it seemed to have any effect on the ponies, but they pretty much universally go "Gosh, that's horrible" and go back to whatever they were doing. Applejack and Twilight are the only ones he really interacts with much, the former because she's the ostensible love interest and the latter because of scientific curiosity or something. This is rather odd, because the apparent intended tone is that John's seen stuff the ponies can't even fathom, and yet for all Applejack and the other ponies learn about it, it doesn't really seem to affect them. So the whole story comes off as really just a soldier popping into Ponyville and dumping detached violent war images on the cast, and then he leaves, and aside from Applejack bawling her eyes out in chapter 10, it doesn't really seem to have made any impact. And along the same lines, the "everypony" tag is kind of misleading. The only ponies who get a great deal of facetime are Applejack, Twilight, and maybe Rainbow Dash. I'm not sure if Pinkie even had any lines.
John doesn't seem as shaken up as you'd expect waking up in a world of magical cartoon talking ponies, which the author acknowledges. But the ponies seem rather nonplussed by the creature they've never seen before suddenly in their midst. And since it's apparent throughout that John is still a human and Applejack is still a pony, well, that makes the resulting romance kind of weird. You'd think a fairly ordinary guy from late-1960s America would at least have second thoughts about making out with a pony.
I was hoping that, in keeping with the theme of the show, the theme of this story would be something along the lines of how friendship can help overcome even the horrors of PTSD and the like. I mean, friendship is magic and all, right? But John doesn't really undergo any character development. He starts out as a traumatized war veteran and he ends the same, except then he kills himself because he can't be with Applejack.
cont'd...
cont'd...
ReplyDeleteAlong the way, he doesn't really seem to be a human with a personality of his own so much as he is a shell full of ghastly memories and experiences, which makes it hard to see what Applejack sees in him. Instead, the story ends with a Nightmare Moon plotline that literally comes out of nowhere and gets resolved as quickly as it emerged. And then Celestia shows up and sweeps it all under the rug, apparently not minding that, as it's alluded, John just killed her sister, or something.
Only it's not over. I suppose the development in chapter 10 might be interesting, since John Marsh without is war trauma and brokenness is basically an entirely different character. We'll see where it goes from here, but I'm doubtful this story really needed a conclusion. Unsatisfying as the first ending was, it was still an ending and still wrapped up pretty much everything but where Nightmare Moon came from.
The writing style is kind of clunky and difficult to get through. There's a lot of redundancy and it feels very robotic, lacking the dynamism and energy of what you might see in the show. Perhaps gloomy and broken suits John, being a traumatized war veteran, but it doesn't really work for the ponies, and the author missed an opportunity to draw the contrast between John's brokenness and the upbeat, positive nature of the denizens of Ponyville.
I'm still holding out for some iteration of the theme I mentioned above, about how even something as awful as PTSD isn't unconquerable without friendship and support. And if nothing else, I'll give the author credit for finishing the story (or so it seemed). All too many fanfics on the Internet rot away and die before they reach the end. And, as seemingly violent and bleak as this may seem to get, it's still not violence and bleakness bereft of a point, so this isn't really in the league of those authors who just want to torture some ponies. But it could definitely be better.
Right off the bat, the transfer from war-torn Vietnam to magical world with ponies was a little too easy. By that, I mean that people who fought in Vietnam had to have seen things that caused a LOT of problems with their mentality. The fact that he holstered his rifle so easily and was actually able to laugh within the first few minutes, didn't see all that realistic though. Awesome concept though! Definitely NOT a POS
ReplyDeleteThe above really touched on what I felt. I stopped at chapter one because, well, the abruptness of 'Vietnam vet suddenly ponies, oh ok' was too jarring for me. I think the idea has merit, maybe with a SpecOps group in deep Cambodian territory getting yanked into Ponyville and the group's dynamism and war-built friendship contrasting with the more easy-going Pony friendship or something. As I said, I stopped at the end of ch. 1 because it just, well, didn't 'pop' for me. It's not the last fic I didn't finish reading though and it's by no means the worst I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteAll-in-all, from what little I read, it seemed the author had an idea (Vietnam vet in Ponyville) and didn't develop beyond that, making things up along the way to keep things interesting. From the comments here, maybe the Nightmare Moon thing was trying to give a sense of 'epic' to the ending that really hadn't been built up. An outline or a more solid plot idea beyond 'suddenly Vietnam vet' might have made this a bit more ... I dunno, great? As it stands, it's mediocre. Sorry, I hate telling people this. Also, I don't want to be a bundle of criticism with nothing good to say but I tend to read the good as 'of course' while I focus on the bad. I hate that about my comments and feel bad when I post.
TL;DR Promising but lacks something. Also, this comment is bad and I feel bad.
I'm on chapter 3 so far, and I must admit that I'm both confused and allured by the story so far. Confused because of how easily a human is being accepted in Equestria, especially a soldier straight out of Vietnam with a steaming pile of PTSD on his plate. Allured because damn it all, I want to see if this idea works out.
ReplyDeleteSo, how many ponies were traumatized by that little peek into John's brain at the end of Chapter 5? What, nopony? For a civilization that hasn't seen the horror of war in millennia, that's kind of a fucking stretch.
ReplyDeleteYeah...this isn't all that great, I'm sorry. The above commentors really touch on why I think so, but another business is stuff like the radio. What is it playing from? Last I remeber, vinyl records were still the tech of the 60s and 70s, cassette tapes weren't really around until about the 80s, so what the hell is it playing from? It can't be an FM or AM radio, that's for sure. This is also nitpicking, but was CCR or ay of those other bands and songs mentioned all that popular in the 60s among GIs? Remeber, we look back on those songs as something that defined the era, but that's because we don't remember all the mainstream bile and chaff that made up the majority of what went on the airwaves. Even Hendrix didn't make the charts when he started off.
ReplyDeleteI know it's an MLP fanfic but this feels less like "American GI from 1960s era Vietnam war falls into Equestria" and more "Walking, talking collection of tropes, cliches, and stereotypes of 1960s era Vietnam War falls into Equestria."
I'll have more to say when I'm not on my phone, later.
This is possibly the worst piece of literature I have ever read. I would give my reasoning but the good fellows above seem to have done a fine job at that.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteEver read "My Immortal"?
Umm... Suddenly Nightmare Moon?
ReplyDeleteWhat the?
Very fascinating story. I'm looking forward to see how it ends.
ReplyDeleteHow could Celestia do that? It makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteHell.....im enjoying it.....add another fic to the update waiting list.
ReplyDeleteI has an enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteWhere can you find the MLP in Vietnam pics? I've seen a lot of them but who made them? Deviant art maybe?
ReplyDeleteHere's a copy: https://fimfetch.net/story/1006973237/out-of-the-jungle
ReplyDelete