Simply Slice of Life—A Review: Time · 9:05pm Jul 14th, 2013

Like other reviews of mine like this, I won’t be critiquing anything about this story. I’d rather you be as enticed as possible to read a simple Slice of Life I think is worth it, and this isn’t really meant to point out flaws. It’s more meant to pull you partially into an experience, and hopefully convince you to go check it out. I may take issue with something about it, and there may be some grammar errors, but they won’t be pointed out here.

With that out of the way, here we go!

Time marches on for everyone. There's no (known) way of avoiding the pull of age in our reality. Time is different for creatures, but eventually, time consumes all. There is little time given to each of us, so the only question that truly exists about time is, "how will you spend your time?"

The illusive nature of time leaves the imagination to play around with the concept: speeding up time, slowing it down, rewinding it, and so on and so forth. In My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the episode "It's About Time" plays around with one of the more popular time-concepts: time travelling. Twilight receives an ominous message from a future self that tries to tell her not to stress out about time. Twilight is frazzled quite a bit, and this episode sent her over the edge. Doctor-Whooves-not-being-there aside, the episode helped Twilight realize that stressing out over the future is detrimental, and that she shouldn't worry so much about it.

In this fimfic, Twilight explores the concept of time—not how to spend it, but what it is.

Time, by Regidar
Time is a very odd thing, and Twilight wishes to find out more from it.
She wasn't sure what to expect, but got exactly what she was hoping for.

This is a 4,327-word story where Twilight goes around Ponyville asking her friends about the concept of time.

The conversations Twilight has with her friends are brief, but I think that’s where the strength of the story lies. The question she poses to her friends—what is time?—would not be an easy question to answer right off the bat, so they have to give simple not-in-depth answers. I believe this works because the conversations don’t come across as convoluted; their answers reflect something immediately apparent about them, and yet reveal some things we may not’ve taken into consideration. The most striking of these is probably from Rarity’s answer, where we get to think forward centuries, perhaps millennia, into a future where her accomplishments don’t mean anything, or even exist. The optimistic answer from Rarity doesn’t remove this grim fact, but it does show Rarity as a pony with purpose in life, as a pony who has at least thought a bit about time. The others’ answers are more off-the-cuff, but they do reveal interesting things about both the present and possible future about them.

I also think the variety of answers works to the story’s advantage. Some of the characters’ answers express an embrace of the flow of time, while some other characters’ answers, specifically Rainbow Dash’s and Princess Celestia’s, reflect either pessimism or weariness of it. This works not only to give the story a variety and help keep the characters in-character, but it works to confound Twilight in order to make the final act at the ending more open, which is necessary given what the future implies (which would be that the future itself is uncertain).

Despite the variety of answers, all of them talk about the same concept: aging. The ponies are mortals, and therefore are susceptible to aging; it would seem natural that the thought of aging would come out as a reply to what time is moreso than actually talking about the qualities of time. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy both talk about aging as they themselves would do, while the others talk about aging in relation to Twilight. This is a good thing for the story due to two factors. First, Twilight’s query of time comes from playing with it in the episode “It’s About Time,” and therefore she’d be more curious about its properties than about aging, which she wouldn’t think of as a factor while the others would. Second, the ending of the story addresses aging in a simple way that relates to Twilight without being too definitive or complex; the last sentence of the story is the first sentence of the story, and it’s used in a much different way both times (I would also like to say that this sentence seems like a great opener and closer for this particular story). Overall, the concept of aging helps bring both the characters together and the story back down to “reality,” giving it some weight and character itself.

There’s not much more to the story that makes it special, as the power behind it is mostly contained within the dialogue and the implications of the answers given, and these in theirselves are very powerful; I do think the setting itself is worth mentioning. Regidar keeps the flow of time going by keeping the reader updated with the progression of the sunset. The story begins as the sun begins to set (close to twilight, I should say), and her questioning ends when it’s well into the night. I think the power that comes with the changing setting can be summed up with this sentence in the story:

It was getting dark now, so she had to hurry. Time is a rather tricky thing, as it was.

The conversations aren’t that long, and the progression of time in this could be said to be pretty fast, with Twilight meeting Pinkie Pie as the sun begins to set, and leaving after it’s almost fully set. I don’t think this is a problem, though, because she’s talking with her friends, and her usually punctual mind isn’t keeping track of time itself in the story. It can be argued that she’s engrossed in the conversations so much, she doesn’t realize how much time is passing, which I think reinforces the power of time. I would support this especially with the ending, and how it acknowledges friends’ power and the time spent with them.

The prose itself flows pretty smoothly, with good grammar and not very clunky phrasing. I only recall one possible spelling error in there, but like I said, I wouldn’t criticize the story here, so I won’t mention it; there are probably other errors in there, but there’s nothing too consistently erred, and there aren’t enough errors for me to consider spelling and grammar a problem. The characters’ dialogue feels in-character, and the answers given have some nice concepts. The pacing, I feel, is good; I’ve no problem with that. I believe that the prose, spelling and grammar is solid.

Overall, “Time” is a gentle story that plays with the differing opinions of characters to give the question on time a range of answers, confusing the question to the point of not having a clearly-defined answer. It plays more about how time is spent, and how friends influence how we spend time, while still keeping the characters in character. This isn’t too grandiose of a story, but it is compact enough, especially given the immediacy of the question asked, to not seem like anything was missed. If you’re looking for a story that contemplates the future of the Main 6 without being too definitive, I’d suggest giving this story a read.

Note: I am willing and eager to improve in these styles of reviews. If there's something you feel I can be doing better, please don't hesitate to tell me.

Other Reviews Of Simple Slices of Lives:

cloudedguardian's "Not-So Voiceless"
Garbo802's "Cirrus"
ArcheonZ's "A Moment in the Sunlight"
bookplayer's "Of Cottages and Cloud Homes"
Martian's "Dance"