Just read My Little Dashie, and so here are my feels · 7:16am Dec 25th, 2012
I must say that I went into this story expecting a lot. And I mean a lot.
Looking at the sheer number of spinoff, fanfics, artworks that have sprouted from that single one-shot story led me to think that it must be THE perfect sadfic. The one and only. Okay, so there was a bunch of people screaming about how overrated it was, but that happens to lots of other great fics as well. I mean, something with 6 thousand favourites and 6 thousand likes HAS to be good, right? I thought I’d fall into a mild depression from reading it or something. I thought it’ll leave me a sad, hollow shell of myself. Or at the very, very least, I expected some tears to be shed. And so, with my clouded perceptions and after a long period of waiting, I finally dug My Little Dashie up, and began reading it on a cloudy Tuesday morning.
I was a little disappointed.
(This blog post contains spoilers. Major spoilers are marked after a line of red and end with another line of red. Do not read between the red lines)
The story begins with a man living a bleak life in a bleak city. His daily routine becoming dull and meaningless over the years, but he does find an occasional burst of happiness from watching his favourite cartoon series.
Perhaps I’ve read too many poorly written HiE stories or something, because the first thing that hits me is that this introduction fits into a cliché present in many, many HiE fics. It feels a little clumsy to me, as if someone is intentionally trying to evoke some sort of sadness in me by painting a bleak picture of his life, and then contrast it against the wonders of My Little Ponies. It works sometimes, but not here. There was a lack of subtlety and gracefulness here, and it didn’t do much more than move the story forward.
In fact, a lot of scenes in the first half of the story are simply there to move the story forward. Maybe there isn’t much to say during this period, but you can’t cut it out with big time lapses. Reducing it into summaries and telly writing shouldn’t be the way out either. Many of these scenes felt rushed and heavy-handed, with half-baked descriptions, and made worse by inserting age-old cliché phrases were into the writing(my heart explodes... twice).
These scenes are meant to build and show the growth of the relationship between the two main characters, so that people can feel for them and understand them. It can be boring, but it needs to be done. It’s like the outer layer of the bun you need to eat through to get to the juicy filling. And you need the layer of bread, because it complements and holds the filling in place. (Feel free to tell me how much of a fail this analogy is in the comments below.)
And now we’ve reached the halfway mark, where everything crumbles down and takes a turn for the worst.
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We all knew this was coming. For me, this plot point was ruined before I actually had a chance to read the story by a careless comment on Equestria Daily.
The day that Rainbow Dash had to be taken back to Equestria.
This is where ALL THE FEELS get thrown in. Usually, this’ll be near the end because much of the story is spent building up the characters. But in this case, it’s in the middle. No matter, it’s still the lowest, saddest, most heartwrenching moment of the story.
I really like the part when Rainbow needs to undergo a memory spell. (I mean, I like it because it’s a good idea, not because I’m evil or anything.) It throws a good punch of sadness straight to the heart, and boy... it does hurt. Definitely some sadness felt here, and gloom is all in bloom. It’s the rock bottom for all the characters, and they’re feeling it hard. They react appropriately through their tears and words, but they all know what has to be done needs to be done, and everypony, including a human, comes to an agreement of letting Rainbow Dash head off to her true home.
It’s sad, but could it have been done better? For one, I think it would have hurt me more if the human refused to let Rainbow Dash go, or if Rainbow Dash herself had refused to come along. It’ll won’t be a short moment of disagreement, but instead a definite, completely certain ‘no’. And no matter how much the others try to convince them to go, they won’t budge, and never will. This’ll lead to tension, you see? And eventually, Celestia has to force the two of them to be separated. They don’t leave on a good note. No, they leave with Rainbow Dash screaming and struggling against her friends, desperately trying get one last look at her foster father, who is fighting back tears himself. That’s the last moment he ever sees her again.
I also think it’d be good to wipe away the human’s memories as well, and do a possible linkage to the first scene. Just imagine that. The human just continues with his daily life, feeling as if something is missing but never quite realising what it was. And we, the readers, would be left with nothing but a hole in our hearts.
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The story draws to a close in a final, bittersweet note. Two one-liner paragraphs, full of impact, full of punch. And that’s a great way to end.
What do you guys think of My Little Dashie?
Sad, overrated, or both?
Both.
Itwas okay. Very okay, made me gloomy.
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647346
Yeah, pretty much the same here I guess. A touch gloomy, a little sad, but nothing much more.
Damn, with the ending your ending that would be rough. The only thing that I would see wrong with the ending you suggested would be that Celestia might come out looking a little tyranical in that scene by forcing them to split but even with that that scene would hurt. But anyway that ending to the original is what made the story for me. The rest was mmmmm'okay, but I'll admit the ending hit me in the feels.
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Thanks!
Maybe it's possible to do it such that Celestia is forced to do her duty and split them apart, no matter how much it hurts her. And it shows how being in charge can be very difficult at times. She has to play the role of the bad guy even though she doesn't want to.
648024 Damn with that on top of it that would make one's feels explode... Twice. Ha just kidding. But seriously that would be really interesting twist to the story.