On a late-night flight around Ponyville, Rainbow Dash inadvertently stumbles across a friend in the middle of a crisis. Handling it with all the grace and poise she's known for, Rainbow immediately sticks her hoof in her mouth. Now she's promised to help Twilight Sparkle with her problem, no matter what. Rainbow Dash doesn't leave her friends hanging, after all. Even if the subject matter is outside her comfort zone.
Neither of them could have guessed the ways that one promise would change their lives for the better.
Set after seasons 2/before season 3. Rated teen just to be safe for some mentions of sex down the line.
Chapters (4)
Really love Rainbow’s methods of nudging Twi way from panic mode. Also the relentless teasing.
In no way does this surprise me.
Excellent first chapter, btw, hun.
Can't wait for the next one!
I enjoyed how much of Rainbow Dash's voice showed through the narration at the beginning. I feel this same narration petered out as the story went on, however, and not only because Rainbow's influence grew scarcer.
On the other hand, I found nothing wrong with the characterization. On the contrary, I thought Rainbow's improvised trick to make Twilight realize just how outlandish her fears were to be entirely up her alley.
I also appreciated that there was not a single trace of preexisting infatuation between the two of them.
Going back to the narration, I consider the start the best-written part of the story as I mentioned. I found Rainbow's intimate point of view spot on, a true front-row seat into her head, whether it be her roaming train of thoughts as she distractedly ponders about her weather schedules and Applejack, or her obviously fake claim that Twilight's outburst didn't startle her.
Twilight's very introduction into the story was another part written in Rainbow's voice and it was all the stronger for it as far as I'm concerned. The cracks begin to appear a short while after her arrival, however, partly because the narration starts shifting between their two points of view at random; and Twilight's voice holds no influence at all on hers.
That's also roughly when the typos start, the narration grows an addiction to present participles and the story feels the need to remind the reader that Twilight has a lavender coat five times. Come Rainbow's second conversation with Twilight, some words even get repeated in short order as well.
To be more specific on the last point;
And to be more specific on the typos;
ask her out
motherload
I knew
The pegasus' mirth
Horseapples
a little lavender speck coming more and more into focus
to dinner
Rainbow's voice being the strength of the story in my eyes, seeing 'her' use words or phrases I don't associate with her—like "mirth" or "raising the unicorn's anxieties"— threw me off as well.
That does mean I enjoyed these lines, however;
And out of order, my favorite line out of the whole story;
9682496
I wouldn't hesitate to call the beginning of this story some of the best writing I've done. Unfortunately, it's very hard for me to reach that level with any kind of consistency. The first part was written when this story was going to be a different thing entirely, and was edited and combed through multiple times as a result as I shifted the story to what it is now.
But I'm making excused for my shortcomings, aren't I?
In truth, that switch to Twilight's POV always bothered me, but instead of finding a way to fix it I pushed past it and told myself it wasn't that bad.
That first part is a testament to how much more I can grow as an author. I know I can reach that level with proper time and effort, but time is something that conflicts with what I want to do with this story. Perhaps I need to reconsider this story as a whole, and do it properly.
And your favourite line is by far the line I am most proud of in this story.
Thank you for this. I need to consider my options moving forward with this fic.
9682771
Thank you for replying.
The switches in points of view might not have been that bad if Rainbow's own wasn't so her. What would Twilight's voice look like, in comparison? Right now, I can only think of an unerring accuracy about which words to use fueled by a thorough understanding of nuances and, this story being set early in the show, some kind of bite or sarcasm. On the whole, less noticeable and more generic than Rainbow's voice.
I remember the narration sometimes shifting to a third point of view that made me think more of someone watching the scenes from afar and describing what they see, or even reading the story to an audience long after the fact. I'd have to reread the chapter to make sure and note down the instances, though.
I particularly liked this line because it's a kind of linguistic pragmatism I'm very fond of, yet see so very rarely.
You're welcome.
Best way to love paperwork is to work retail. You would gladly give up a kidney to get away from customers let alone fill out a few boring forms.
I'm wondering if the scenery should be described earlier. It took fifteen paragraphs for me to know just where in Rainbow's house she and Twilight were practicing asking Rarity out, and for someone who doesn't remember they agreed to meet there in the previous chapter, the question becomes 'where, fullstop?' instead.
Seeing how many interruptions and parentheses there are in the narration, I'm also wondering if you should start using em dashes instead of hyphens.
I found Rainbow's voice less prevalent in this chapter and didn't really notice any trace of Twilight's whenever the point of view switched to her. There was one golden opportunity for it though; when she startles Rainbow as she's doing her paperwork, I feel you could have described the results better than with merely "she watched the chaos she’d inadvertently unleashed."
This is Twilight we're talking about here. If anyone is going to describe an inkpot spilt on paperwork as an oil slick inexorably submerging an innocent, unsuspecting squeaky-clean beach punctuated with the crashes of thunder of her racing heartbeat, the banshee howls of displaced pieces of parchment floating about and the driving rain of ink dripping almost silently from the edge of the desk onto the cloud floor, it's her. The whole thing in slow-motion, naturally.
Incidentally, seeing Rainbow—the mare so skilled in sneaking in and out of supposedly secure places she puts professional burglars and spies to shame—scold Twilight for sneaking up on her amused me so very, very much.
I still enjoyed several lines from Rainbow's point of view;
"miss fancy wants" certainly was a favorite of mine. The following "wined 'n dined" was nice too, but I still liked the former better because it's a play on Fancy Pants' name. We both subscribe to the same 'Rainbow Dash has her way with words' school of interpretation, it seems.
Speaking of which, I half-expected her to follow "Water under the bridge" up with a curt 'Ink under the desk' hissed through her teeth, but she was trying to downplay her frustration there.
There was another line I liked that didn't showcase her voice, but still fits her character in the sense that it feels like the rare gem of wisdom in the rough of Rainbow's 'thoughts only weigh me down' usual mindset;
And one last line I enjoyed but doesn't really display either character's voice;
There were a few lines I found to suit her voice, save for the vocabulary used;
I'm not sure Rainbow would use words like "eternities" and 'conductive' (which is incidentally misspelt here), though this comes from someone who didn't watch the show in its original language.
I'm pretty certain she wouldn't use "surreptitious," however. True, this line might have been from Twilight's perspective since the point of view ping pongs between the two of them come the second part of the chapter.
Which brings me back to matters of points of view. Word usage this time, specifically.
I'll preface this by saying that I have a severe dislike of constructs like "the unicorn" or "the pegasus" being used when pronouns or their names could have been used, without confusing the reader in the case of all characters involved sharing the same gender.
Here, though, I feel the issue is less subjective. When it comes to intimate points of view, I don't think Rainbow would refer to Twilight as "the unicorn," or the other way round, unless it's important to underline her tribe rather than who she actually is. But that's not the real misstep as far as I'm concerned; it's Rainbow or Twilight referring to themselves as "the pegasus" or "the unicorn" in their own mental narration.
I just don't think it makes sense in limited, in-character points of view.
I feel some paragraphs could be broken up as well, though that's most likely up to debate;
into
and
into
There also were spelling and punctuation mistakes, notably some of the said tags;
she cried
Rarity,” she summarized
incredibly
she asked
conductive
Canterlot
I think "level much more manageable" should be 'much more manageable level,' as well.
FIMFiction apparently skipped three lines rather than only one after "Twilight smiled gently. “You don’t have to do this with me,”" too.
I noticed you referred to Twilight as 'dragging' Rainbow into a hug, which is a very nice to describe the latter's reluctance, especially that this same reluctance was downright stated with the reference to Pinkie. It's noticeable enough, however, for me to remember you described it the exact same way in the previous chapter even though I last read it over a week ago.
I believe this 'issue' is more subjective than objective, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Twilight seeing, then hearing Rainbow's teeth 'grind together' is another instance of repetition, though in much closer succession this time.
I also feel the line "Rainbow jerked her head back, motioning to her desk - pushed against the wall of what was probably supposed to be a dining area - piled high with stacks of parchment and covered in quills" could benefit from being slightly rewritten and shortened; replacing ", motioning to" with a simpler 'towards' and replacing the pseudo em dashes with commas. As it is, I feel that stating Rainbow is "motioning" is redundant and that the part between the hyphens doesn't qualify as an 'aside' and as such is not suited for em dashes.
All that said, the characterization is once more good from what I can see. I'm still unsure whether Twilight would laugh so much with Rainbow as she does here and in the previous chapter, but I've not watched the first seasons in a long time—and she did end up laughing herself silly after Pinkie's Giggle at the Ghosties in the show premiere.
9695057
All excellent points, as always. If there's one thing that frustrates me about my own writing it's the... inconsistency of it. I will note; if I use 'the pegasus" or similar, it's usually because I was writing during a block. I tend to get pretty dry - especially in my dialogue scenes - when I'm having a difficult time with something. It's unfortunate, but something that's hard to fix when I want to put chapters out regularly. Sometimes I just gotta push through and do my best to clean it up in editing. It'd be a hell of a lot easier if I did the "proper" thing and fully planned/wrote a story before starting to release it. Which is what I'm starting to do with my more serious projects.
I'm off topic, though.
Again, the problems with keeping the narration focused. I did a pretty heavy editing pass on the first half, before the break, and I like to think it shows. Somewhat. (It previously switched perspectives a lot) but... well frankly I ran out of both energy and time for the second part, and so just did a spell/grammar check. I'm actually pretty bad for that. It would have required quite a bit of rewriting to get anywhere near the level of the first half of the first chapter, which is ultimately the kind of quality I want to aim for. I didn't want to put in the effort for something I see as a silly side project. Perhaps one of my many flaws as an author. The third chapter that was supposed to be out today would have to be totally rewritten to be anywhere near up to snuff, which is why I'm hesitant to release it.
In the end, it comes down to what I want this story to be. And I've been going back and forth on that for a week. Part of my wants to slap it on hiatus and do it proper. The other wants to do a fun side project that I don't have to worry about being super well written. Though that would probably just end up reinforcing bad habits... ugh. No one told me writing was going to be hard! Then again no one told me anything about writing. I just kinda did it.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna hold the next chapter back while I see about doing some rewrites. Might end up making something proper out of this in the end. We'll see.
Welp, another workaholic Dash. I’m curious to see how this ends :D
At the same time as I read this fake rarilight to twidash I am also reading a rarilight fanfic. At the same time...
No matter how many flaws are in this, I still like this story so far.
Took you long enough!
Also: at your own time.
Glad to see you back.
ahhh, what a delight to read (sound like a victorian lady). Bu seriously really nice chapter, glad to see youre still going
Dang cant wait for rest
Will there be another chapter soon?
Your TwiDash is great, as always. I always know when I see your name it’s gonna be a good one! Can’t wait for more 👍
nice chapter!
Loving this so far. I admit, the RariTwi fakeout scared me a bit so soon after reading Guilty Pleasure. But this is much easier reading, and I look forward to more.
(For the record, both are good)