The Ballad of Rainbow Dash and Time Turner:
Give a Little Love
By dramatic_spoon

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Initial Thoughts
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The story follows an all-too-common situation of where best friends discover that they might be meant for more than just friendship. Rainbow Dash discovers that she's in love with Time Turner, and in turn asks for help from Rarity. Time Turner has the realization forced out of him by his actual just-a-friend, Ditzy, and then they come together in a mix of third-party planning and straightforwardness.

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Story
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The story itself is light. It has no major holes in it plot-wise, although that's partially because the story is simple. There's not much besides Rainbow Dash and Time Turner getting together, aside from a small figment of Rarity and Ditzy colluding together. That said, that doesn't mean it's bad – its enjoyable, in my opinion – but it does negate the possibility of making something more intricate or engaging.

If there is one complaint, it's the ending. To have an climax be somewhat anticlimactic, along with the situation itself being called anticlimactic within the story, takes some cojones. It can work in some instances, I suppose, but for a direct-and-forward romance like this, it would've benefitted from a more climactic ending.
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Narration
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If there's a major flaw to be had with this story, it's that it reads beige. In other words, there isn't much to immerse the reader into the story. A prime example would be where Time Turner and Rainbow awkwardly bump into each other after admitting to themselves they might be in love:

Okay, a whole lot more could've been shown here, even with the same lines of dialogue used (although, they could easily hold much more flavor). As with much of the story, this is lacking in immersion, and mostly because there are no sensory details to bring us into it. It's like reading a screenplay, except screenplays are just blue prints for the movie, and thus are excused. In Ballad, it reads slower like any prose would, but it lacks the very basic component which separates prose from poetry and screenwriting: rich sensory details.

Prose isn't held to the condensed, heavily-mulled-over word choice that poetry is (although those dogmas are dying). The author has the time, space, and attention to go in-depth about the world around our characters, the characters themselves, what they do, what they smell, etc. Why toss that away?

As such, what detail there was, was almost always tell-y. For instance, borrowing from the example again:

"The two awkwardly stood there, avoiding each other’s gaze."

Here, we can tell through context and the phrase "avoiding each other's gaze" that they should be pretty awkward. We can understand the mood through their facial features, their stances, their dialogue, and their pasts, so telling us they "awkwardly stood" is redundant. I'd recommend using and describing more of how they look, feel, and act to show the mood of the scenes, rather than tell us.

Continuing on, a lot of trimming could be done content-wise. There are some points where the narrative lingers on conversations that don't benefit the story. My main issue was with the lengthy chatter over coffee. Why was it in there?

On another note, I'd say don't repeat jokes. None of them here were strong enough to be amusing on the fourth or fifth time I read them. The two culprits were: "He's not my coltfriend/marefriend!", which although is applicable for this kind of story, it was repeated more than a dozen times; "Trashy romance novels by Conscious River", which was a nice bit of character development when Rarity and Rainbow both admitted to it, but slowly turned into a distraction as it appeared in other character interactions, almost like some inside joke the reader wasn't allowed in on.

Lastly, the characters were pretty flat. Rarity's is constantly, incessantly pushing her own romantic agenda, without much of a thought towards the feelings of her friend. Sure, she lets off sometimes, but only from external pressure, not from her conscience or anything. Turner and Rainbow Dash don't have much memorable to them, besides Rainbow showing a rare moment of weakness and nervousness. Where's her bravado? Where's her swagger? Doesn't she always try to play it cool and have a laugh? Here, she's more mellow, more anxious, and that reduces the fun that comes with Rainbow Dash.

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Grammar
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The grammar was okay. It didn't have any jarring, out-taking errors to it. It was readable from start to finish, with a minimal level of typos and misspellings. So, kudos on that.

I will point out that in a situation such as this –

“Because she’s never been in a relationship either.” Dash responded.

– you would generally want to replace the period after "either" with a comma. This is because, if you're describing how the dialogue was said, it's still part of the same "sentence" as the dialogue. The aforementioned quote is nothing different from,

Dash responded, “Because she’s never been in a relationship either.”

Also, I would suggest using ellipses much more scarcely in the future. They have limited effect, and using them too often diminishes the value of the pause they bring. Sooner or later we, the reader, just skip over them and don't pay them any mind.

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Verdict
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Needs Work

This story was a good try, and I can tell that there was a lot of effort put in, especially towards stretching the basic narrative of the story out into a respectable length. If I look at it from a scene-to-scene point of view, the story holds up well. However, it falls apart at the point where prose should really shine, in the small details and the immersive ability. The characters could be more dynamic as well, having a bigger range of emotions and attitudes that we see them in. The dialogue was alright, so now it's pretty much down to filling in the actions, emotions, expressions, and sensory details between the dialogue.

I would really suggest going through some of FIMFiction's top stories and seeing how they add in details, and how they manipulate that to engage the reader and make them feel as if they're within the story.

Keep on going!