YMMV / The Rock Farmer's Daughters

• Accidental Innuendo: In context, two mares ask Cheese what it's like working on the rock farm. This is his answer:
  "Oh? Well… it's kinda sorta dirty, and boring, and hard… I ache a lot… but in a strange way I can't explain, it's sort of satisfying."
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Cortland. Is he mentally ill to the point of being dangerously possessive of Pinkamena, or just a massive jerk just trying to satisfy his own ego? Would stricter parenting on the part of Haralson have changed anything? What's he like in the Main 'verse?
  • Brotherly Bonding Time reveals that his Main 'verse counterpart is still a jerk, but he thankfully doesn't have a mare to be obsessed over, so he won't be committing any crimes anytime soon.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Cheese's story about the murderous coworker and the mare who replaced him finding out she was pregnant soon before her due date was based on an actual event in the author's life involving her family's horses. That said, that tale got a little depressing when the real horse born from the event, Shiloh, died from colic nearly a year and a half after the story was finished, when he was just four.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Marble's insistence that she's not shy after shying away at the sight of Bluejinx is much funnier considering canon Marble is shyer than S1!Fluttershy.
  • Many Beauty and the Beast jokes have been made concerning Cortland being the "Gaston" to Pinkamena's "Belle". Considering that Cheese is the "Beast" of the Love Triangle, it gets hilarious once you read Brotherly Bonding Time by the same author, where Cheese turns into a werewolf.
• Moral Event Horizon: For Cortland, it'd be lighting the house that Pinkamena, Cheese, and Igneous were in on fire in an attempt to kill them.
• One-Scene Wonder: Applejack. All she does is take Pinkamena, Cheese, and Seddie to the train station, but boy were readers surprised.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: When it was rated Everyone on FIMfiction and K+ on FanFiction.net, several people have had this reaction; the author has since changed the rating to Teen, due to what this fic contains:
  • A fight with Diamond Dogs that results in Cloudy Quartz scraping her leg and bleeding.
  • A potential domestic abuser.
  • Suggestive innuendo—mainly in assumptions about Cheese and his drifter status.
  • The Tar and Feathers trope Played for Drama.
  • Suggestions of murder.
  • Characters getting caught in a fire, fainting due to smoke inhalation, and nearly burning to death.
  • A character getting run over by a train.
• The Woobie:
  • Cheese Sandwich. Unlike the Canonverse, he doesn't stumble into a party (due in part to Pinkie not being in Ponyville), so he ends up earning a cutie mark in travelling instead. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't shown that he's mostly just trying to get by with any money he earns in odd jobs. He refuses to go back home because he's ashamed of his cutie mark and angry at his Innocently Insensitive brother, Tomato. He gets rumors spread about him just because he's associated with the Pies, he ends up being a rival with Cortland for Pinkamena's affections (even though he wasn't trying to win her over), and nearly gets killed by a Diamond Dog. His life at the rock farm steadily gets better as his influence helps the Pies become happier and he starts to face his own issues and finds himself falling in love with Pinkamena... and then he's fired. He leaves town, and once he returns, he's caught in a fire and nearly dies from smoke inhalation. Cheesy seriously had it rough in this fanfic.
  • Pinkamena. Thanks to not seeing the Sonic Rainboom when it happened, she doesn't become a party pony, and ends up with a special talent in rock farming. She grows up a sour mare, the subject of much debate in Nickerlite, and the target of Cortland's affections. She later gets humiliated by said pony, and in her emotional turmoil, she reveals to Cheese that she misses her grandmothers, whose deaths hit her hard. Later, as she finds herself falling in love with Cheese, Igneous fires him. In response to her father's overprotective measures, she runs away after Cheese—but returns once she learns he's missing. And then she's caught in a fire with Cheese and Igneous, and nearly dies from smoke inhalation. She faints as she's desperately trying to bust out and crying for help.
  • Igneous Rock could count as one. His father died when he was young, his sister ran away after being humiliated by a colt she liked, and then his mother died along with his mother-in-law, and he was helpless as his entire family fell into grief that lasted for years. He's the subject of rumors in Nickerlite, and is forced to keep on protecting his daughters from stallions, with Cheese only being hired because he seemed harmless. And then he starts suspecting Cheese to be Not So Harmless, and later fires him out of paranoia and anger at his disobedience. And then his daughter Pinkamena runs away, and while he tries to go after her, he gets caught in a fight, he tears a muscle, gets tar on his back, and kidnapped by Cortland. And then he's caught in the same fire Cheese and Pinkamena are in, and nearly dies from smoke inhalation. The author is not kind to them.
  • The Pies are a family of Stoic Woobies. After all, there's the rumors and the lingering grief from the grandmothers' deaths. They don't show how much those hurt—most of the time. However, nearly losing a father and a sister to a fire visibly shakes them, including Maud.

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