After a big fight between the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Sweetie Belle wonders if she ever had any real friends. When she sees how close her sister and her friends are as they prepare for their vacation, she becomes envious. Wanting to make some new, real friends, she secretly joins them on their vacation.
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Well. This is better than my entry, that's for sure! Inside Sweetie Belle's mind is adorable.
This and "War of the Roses" are the only stories I've found so far that I can really imagine people reading outside of this competition. Very well done. The reconciliation at the end could have used some more detail, but then you are already over the word limit, whatever effect that'll have.
I think between this and "Macintosh" (why isn't that on this site?!) we can just go ahead and dub you the master of character-study. First person Sweetie Belle... seriously, amazing. You perfectly captured her nature, sweet, sensitive, and a little on the ditzy side.
More people need to read this, definitely.
Sweetie Belle is perfect here! She's working at just the right age and just the right mindset (and I say this as someone who spent two summers trying to prevent adorable little girls from letting one little spat ruin their cabin at summer camp.)
Overflow, this was really, really good!
Thanks for the great comments!
Since this was a submission for a contest, I had to trim it down a lot. I submitted it to EqD but it was turned down, with a couple small suggestions. Should I extend this story and resubmit it to EqD?
Just replaced the story with the newer, updated version! I think I managed to fix most of the problems, including the abrupt ending. Hopefully you all enjoy!
I'd think that they would be pretty mad having to cut their vacation short by Sweetie Belle. I mean it sounded like it was going to be a week or something and it turned into a day. That;s the only thing that bothered me otherwise it was a good read.
Well done. Just some notes:
There's a missing period somewhere in there, those double exclamation marks are horrid, capitalizing words that you've already italicised is just ugly.
And really, aesthetics and minor slip-ups are all I can fault. This is a well-plotted, nice little story with some serious thought and heart put into it. The sequence of events is well done, Sweetie's inner monologue is well done, the themes are strong and well-embodied. Simply delightful work, and I thank you for the good read.
Oh, Sweetie Belle.
On a more serious note: this is some very good Sweetie Belle. She's not dumb or slow like I've sometimes seen, just adorably distractible. (Now I kinda want to ship her with Snails.
)
I lost interest and stopped reading the second it became obvious that the trip to Prance was going to be a pony-exclusive one. Spike is as loyal and supportive as Rainbow and AJ, if not more, and works as hard as the mane six do on average. On top of that, he's younger, and it reflects very poorly on the ponies to keep him working while leaving him out of a vacation he's spent the entire series earning. What repeals his privilege to a vacation with his only friends? Are they his friends at all? Because it's been implied in canon that they're sort of his surrogate family. Yet here they have no desire for his company, nor do they care whether or not he gets the experience of visiting a country rich with culture.
It would make me sick to see a kid treated like that, and it would leave me hurt and infuriated if my own friends treated me in the same way. It's confusing that you write a story about friendship when the friendship within it is so biased. I'm sure it's an excellent, well-written slice-of-life about love and companionship among ponies (and only ponies), but I'm so sick and tired of seeing Spike kept apart from his friends that nothing kills my high spirits quite so effectively as something like this. Quality doesn't count for shit when the message implies such a double standard.
And Sweetie Belle just rubs salt in the wounds.
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Um, maybe because sometimes adults take vacations to get away from kids, ya know? And maybe this vaction was strictly for the ladies and bringing a guy along would've been awkward. Besides, Spike's a dick like 99% of the time in the show anyway. Seriously, get over him, he's not that great.
Awesome story, TotalOverflow! Ignore the Spikeophile.
2746683 The show has demonstrated repeatedly that Spike interacts with the ponies just fine; they don't need to "get away from the kids". But let's say that were the case: not only would they have all of Prance to have some all-girl time, but they can free themselves of his company whenever they wish in Ponyville; there are times when he's not even around while all six of them are. It would be amazingly cold of them to use a bleeping vacation to another country for such a thing.
And if you seriously believe he's a dick that often, let alone more so than Twilight, Rarity, or Rainbow, it just goes to show how biased your opinion is. You clearly haven't been paying a smidge of attention to anything he does unless it reinforces your unflattering perspective on the character.
I liked this quite a bit. In many ways, it sort of feels like something I myself might have written. One notable issue I have with it, though, is how the end plays out. Throughout the story, you weren't afraid to have good, lengthy scenes with little more than natural conversation (which I love), so it felt weird for everything to rush past so quickly after Rarity discovers Sweetie. Deep focus on characterization is traded in at the last moment for "These things happened. Here's how Sweetie felt about them." I recognize that everything that the story had set out to do had been done by that point, but that fact makes the transition no less jarring.
Another thing I might mention is how, although you were generally excellent at cutting out anything that added nothing to the story, at least one thing comes to mind as having lowered my opinion of the story slightly: the multiple foreshadowings that Rarity knew Sweetie was there in the bag, which never panned out. The point where Rarity notices her stretched-out gown and doesn't laugh along with everyone else, and seems nervous. The moment wherein Sweetie wakes up after the train has arrived in Prance, when she comments, "Rarity had even returned her nightgown to my bag! How did she not see me?" Things like that were really pointing to Rarity having realized Sweetie was there, so when she opened up the bag and found Sweetie, reacting with what seemed like such genuine surprise, I felt confused—possibly even a tad betrayed. I'd had it in my head that a moment was going to come where Rarity would go aside and confront Sweetie, have a talk with her and such, and only when it never came did I realize it had been something I was actually looking forward to. So yeah. Tad disappointed on that front.
Speaking of someone having a talk with Sweetie, I'd been expecting that in general pretty much from the start. Some cathartic moment where Sweetie talks with someone about how she's been feeling and what's been going on with her recently. There at the end, I was still holding out hope that that someone might be her mother and father, and then after that went nowhere, I hoped it would be AB and Scoots. The talk she had with them wasn't at all close to what I'd been hoping for, I suppose. Too perfect. It wrapped things up, sure, but I didn't feel it reached as deeply as it easily could have.
Apart from all of that, like I said, I liked this story quite a bit. At almost all points, everyone is wonderfully characterized—a very good thing, considering that this story is almost purely characterization. And you didn't just go with what's safe. You had Applejack flying off the handle and chewing someone out, Twilight yelling at all of her closest friends to shut up, and more—things that, in other contexts, could easily be out of character. Here, though, you made them all seem natural and warranted. It did wonders for making your fic feel far from generic. As much of a sucker for good characterization as I am, this easily makes it onto my favorites list. Excellent job.
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that... waz... so... loooonnggg
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Pfft, this isn't even my final form! But really, it was just a casual review. A formal review from me can top 4,000 words.
A fun little story. As others noted, some of the things were slightly implausible (e.g. she managed to hide that long, and Rarity didn't see her) but I did love the show-worthy message to be had, and the first person thoughts from Sweetie's perspective.
Don't Spike and Sweetie Belle make a cute couple?
“No animals!” groaned Twilight, “no cats, no mice, not even a chicken!”
Just then, an orange pegasus filly barreled onto the station. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!” she yelled, running to the blue mare.
I was going to say one of the usual jokes involving Scootaloo and a flightless bird as a response to that bit, but I'm not going to.
I like it, but I honestly think it might've been better if...I don't know. Maybe Rarity discovers her and they have a sisterly bonding moment or something