ECocktails

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Sad

Twilight has a talk with another pony, joined by a cup of her favorite drink.

• Twilight
• Berry Punch

Sunlight Rays · 4.9k words  ·  45  1 · 487 views

Description

It's been ten years since six friends defeated Nightmare Moon. Ten years since a mare began her journey through friendship. Ten years since a path far into the future was set for her.

And, to that, they raise a toast in a bar.

Initial Thoughts

Ten is an interesting number in this context, since ten is the number of years for which the show ran. I wonder if that was intentional…? 

Either way, we have here what seems like a future fic. I’m rather surprised, however, that it only has Twilight and Berry Punch as its characters. That suggests to me that the Mane Six are no more. 

I’m also familiar with 4everfree’s songs, which are found in the story’s extended description, so… that kind of spells out a lot of what this story’s going to be about. 

Onto the story. As always, spoilers ahead.

Summary

Ten years ago, a little unicorn made her way to a backwater town and changed the world. Ten years to that day, an older alicorn makes her way to the town’s bar to drink and reflect.

Plot

Sunlight Rays has broken the story into two chapters—a decision I’ll touch upon a bit later. The first is all about the bar and what Twilight’s doing in it, and the second is more-or-less an epilogue that caps off the story. This makes reviewing the plot somewhat easy since we can split the story into two. 

Chapter One is perhaps the heart of the story—it’s where the most “narrative action” occurs. It’s a fairly standard set-up: Twilight comes to the bar (Berry Punch’s bar, no less), orders a drink, and after some time, starts reflecting about her life. It’s somewhat standard if you’re familiar with these kinds of story—not necessarily the ones where Twilight goes for a drink, but stories that deal with a quiet place, well-lit, and a character who’s clearly about to embark on an introspective journey. “Future fics” where Twilight is thinking about her life and where it’s gone aren’t anything new. 

Perhaps what makes this story stand out just a bit is the inclusion of another character named Everlight. She appears as a regular unicorn who just happens to stop by the bar. There are two functions to her character which I’ll touch upon in the Characterization section, but focusing on Plot first, her arrival lets the story start down that introspective journey to which I’ve alluded. What that journey concerns is something we probably have come to expect with these kinds of stories: namely, Twilight’s immortality and how that will affect her friendships with her very mortal friends.

I don’t take much issue with that premise, however. Though it’s cliché and its content is rather par for the course, Sunlight has tried to put in some real emotional appeal with it. Perhaps I am just a bit too used to this particular plot, though. The somewhat lengthy dialogue exchanges and explanations make sense as a story within a story kind of formatting (Twilight is essentially telling the others the story of her life, condensed into paragraphs of quotations), but I believe some stricter readers will find the use of such heavy exposition divisive. Personally I’m not opposed to it, but it still must be pointed out.

What does strike me as rather disconcerting is not the premise, then, but the execution thereof. I’d like to point out that the story spends a short while setting up its own scene, before Everlight appears. It’s slow but feels meticulous. Twilight and Berry talk a bit while Berry makes her her drink, and it’s only when Everlight appears that the story seems to remember, “Wait, I have a reason for all this happening.” 

This is primarily an observation made in response to the fact that Twilight, without much pressing from either pony, starts to tell Everlight and Berry what is on her mind. Honestly, this is a bit strange. Berry’s polite enough, sure, but I was never under the impression that she’d be able to cajole Twilight to talk. Later on, when Everlight’s true identity is revealed, her ability to get Twilight to open up makes some sense, but in the moment it feels a bit too rushed. While undoubtedly the story would need Twilight to open up, I believe some more dramatic tension would be needed in order to justify moving towards that particular movement in the narrative. A little more hesitancy would have made Twilight opening up hold greater impact.

That hesitancy would, perhaps, have at least addressed, if not otherwise resolved, another issue with the story: its choice of tone. While “Cocktails” claims to be a Sad story given its tagging, I wasn’t sure if it was necessarily “sad enough,” strange as that may sound. It meanders in the beginning, and then, when she starts through the rising action and climax, it entertains and provides necessary information to the reader—but was it “sad?” I’m not sure. 

Perhaps this is too vague of a point, so I’ll try and pinpoint what I mean. The story touches upon many sad subjects: Twilight’s immortality is the most prominent, but another is the physical mortality of her friends. I mean this literally: Twilight shares an anecdote about Rainbow sustaining a pretty terrible injury. And Twilight also talks about how she can’t help but feel that her friendships threaten to fall apart not through any fault of her own, but through simply the effect of time. Excuses keep getting made, though these are totally justifiable—the Council of Friendship doesn’t meet as frequently as they could. 

While through this run-down I’ve demonstrated that we can isolate three “subjects” primarily, I want to emphasize that the story only ever touches upon these things. Twilight’s immortality gets hammered home, but only superficially—it hits all the hallmarks of the “Oh, Twilight’s immortal” trope within these kinds of stories. The physical horror of physical mortality in comparison to Twilight’s ethereal immortality gets touched upon, too, but other than that anecdote, it doesn’t seem like Twilight reacts viscerally enough. 

I’m not actually sure if Sunlight meant for there to be a visceral reaction, but I think that would have actually given the subject a bit more posh. For, Twilight doesn’t have to just reckon with the fact that she’ll outlive her friends—she has to reckon with the fact that her friends might just simply die before she’s ready to outlive them (that’s paradoxically speaking). It seems like a missed opportunity, not going down this route. 

Twilight’s revelation and confession of what she fears, and the condolences that the other characters offer, knowing that they’re just hollow, are good and all; but, the story seems afraid to push the emotional revelation any further. I’d argue that that’s the direct result of the first point of tension—the question of whether Twilight will actually tell the others what she’s feeling—wrapping up too quickly. The story is obligated to go in that direction but this results in the emotional center also feeling obligatory, not narratively dramatic. Once again, the impact is lost. 

For that last subject, which is told near the end of Twilight’s “confession,” and it serves essentially as a nod towards what the rest of the story is going to reveal in Chapter Two. As that’s the case, I can somewhat justify having it touched upon in Chapter One, and then having the effects of that subject carry on to Chapter Two. But the impact is lessened not just because of it being superficial and on the surface, but by another factor: the unimportance of the second chapter. 

Or, rather, the unimportance of the first chapter’s ending and also the subsequent inclusion of a second chapter. 

Here’s how the first chapter ended, essentially: Everlight leaves, and just as Twilight’s mulling over how she could have known what drinks her friends would drink, the Mane Six (five?) arrive. We get several feel-good interactions between them, a few apologies for being late, and Twilight speaking now in a more hopeful tone. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of ending, but I would argue that it’s actually not necessary to go that far. That is, the story doesn’t need this explicit “wrapping up.” 

There’s a point just before the others arrive where the doorbell rings… or something like that. That seems to be the perfect place to end Chapter One. We have enough of an emotional build-up to permit not having to explicitly say, “Here’s the emotional pay-off,” which is what the original scene accomplishes, though not particularly strongly. Consider the strength of ending with that kind of image: Twilight thinks about what she’s heard, and just as she does, the bell rings. If you want, add that she recognizes all five voices. End chapter there. 

I think it was Hemingway or Chekhov who said that sometimes the best thing a writer can do in post-first draft production is cut the ending entirely and see what happens. I think this belief can be attributed to Chapter One, but even more so to Chapter Two.

This is because Chapter Two’s only main revelation is who Everlight is. I’d already guessed that she was future Twilight, but that particular reveal doesn’t seem actually necessary. Enough exists or can exist within Chapter One which would have pointed the reader, implicitly, towards this conclusion—and perhaps that kind of momentary ambiguity would have added even more to the story’s lack of dramatic form. All the other things that Chapter Two brings up, while of nice sentiment, are basically narrative fluff. Its sweetness, weirdly, dilutes the meandering of the former chapter.

For as much as Sunlight says that Chapter Two is meant to bring closure to the story, I think closure can be found in cutting it out entirely, and doing something similar to what I’ve described above. 

Score – 5 / 10

Characterization

It’s interesting we have two tagged characters but arguably three main ones in the story. 

Let me talk about Everlight first, then. As a character, she functions two ways: first, as a tool to transition the story to its plot, and second, as a “mentor” of sorts to Twilight Sparkle. This “mentor” status becomes somewhat philosophically existential by the story’s end, since we learn that Everlight and Twilight are the same: she’s just a future Twilight. Of course, we don’t know that in Chapter One, but there are a few hints here and there that suggest we ought to know who she is. 

For example, there’s a rather explicit hint when Sunlight writes:

“Ever the prideful one, she was,” Everlight murmured.

The use of past tense is interesting, and it doesn’t really require much of a close read to determine why Everlight speaks this way. And of course, by the end of Chapter One, we learn that Everlight knows a lot more about Twilight’s friends than she’s letting on. 

Additionally, look at her name. It’s rather obvious who she is. 

A reader might be turned off by the fact that Everlight seems to know exactly what to say. But this can be explained via the paradox presented at the story’s end. Given that Twilight is Everlight, it makes sense that she’d know exactly what to say to her younger self. She was her younger self, after all. Though this does beg the question of how and where she’d first heard these words—the paradox isn’t really explained, but it probably doesn’t need to be.

Still, the level of ambiguity, the number of hints, and how she plays off of Twilight, make Everlight a fairly interesting character.

Who isn’t as interesting, unfortunately, is perhaps Berry. This isn’t because Berry isn’t an interesting character, but how she is portrayed in this story feels not fully defined. She generically polite and cheerful towards Twilight, but her characterization stops there. Even in being supportive to Twilight, she feels rather thin and flat. 

I don’t believe Berry needs to have, say, a full character arc, of course—and she shouldn’t, since this is Twilight’s story—but it felt like she wasn’t “Berry” enough to make her stand out. This isn’t because of the fandom’s penchant to depict her as a drunk so much as it’s an observation about how simple her portrayal is. It doesn’t need to be terribly complex, but I can’t help but feel that she could have acted a bit… more, rather than the amount by which she acts at present.

The final character, Twilight, functions about as well as you’d expect. She hits all the marks: cheerful, optimistic, but also prone to worry, doubts about the future, and the like. She feels rounded enough and I do recognize her, so I think Sunlight did a nice job depicting her characterization. 

But I would like to repeat that I can’t help but think she’d be a bit more hesitant to suddenly share all of her worries and doubts with Berry and Everlight. Even if she’s far more sociable now, I think her characterization would have benefited with a bit more tugging here and there. It wouldn’t have just made the plot a bit more dramatic; it would have made her character have just a bit more dimension. 

Score – 7 / 10

Grammar

This’ll be a quick section. There weren’t any issues with sentences, but there were many punctuation issues scattered throughout the story. The most common occurred with Sunlight’s use of ellipses. Here are three examples found early on:

“Yeah… just… give me a second…,” Berry groaned

“Well…,” Twilight deliberated

Speaking of which…,” Twilight trailed off.

It’s strange because this seemed to happen with every instance of ellipses within dialogue, bar a few. You don’t need to put a comma after the ellipses, since the ellipses functions as punctuation enough. 

(For a smaller point: that last quote probably doesn’t need the “Twilight trailed off” portion, since the ellipses already show she has trailed off.) 

Score – 8 / 10

Final Score - ( 5 + 7 + 8 ) / 3 = 6.67 / 10

Final Thoughts

I think the most general criticism I can give is about the importance of balance. 

It seems to me that this story had a bit of an issue trying to figure out how much to say about each of its subjects while juggling characterizations, ambiguities, motives, and the like—the issue of punctuation notwithstanding. As the story seems simultaneously inclined to rush into itself while also taking a meandering stroll through its own ideas, it’s all the more important to find a balance in what is said and what needs to be said.

At any rate, I must admit that the story doesn’t do anything necessarily new, which is perhaps a bit of a disappointment. However, if we look at what it contributes to these kinds of stories, we see that it at least touches upon some unique perspectives an anecdotes. Some cleaning, sprucing, and re-planting, I think, would address many of the issues I’ve highlighted above. 

<For archive purposes: 6.67/10>