Winter Wrap Up heralds the coming of spring. It symbolizes the end of the long cold haul of winter and the rebirth of the land. It also happens to herald the coming of change and the budding of new love. This year, Twilight Sparkle finds herself struggling with strange feelings that only seem to surface when she's with her best friend, Rainbow Dash. Will Twilight be able to figure out what these 'feelings' mean and be able to manage the stress of coordinating Winter Wrap Up? And what will Rainbow make of these feelings?
Big thanks to The Abyss for doing a superb job editing this!
Edit: Featured March 21, 2013!!!
Chapters (1)
A very enjoyable read. So enjoyable, in fact, I missed my bus stop. Eh, it was worth it!
I reckon you pretty much nailed the Mane Six characterisation in this story, although the romance side, as in any story, would have been nice with more development. Don't take this as a criticism, this was obviously intended to be a small, sweet story, but I'm a real sucker for cute pony romance.
From a cold-hearted, analytical standpoint, there were a few cases of capitalisation errors and perhaps a slightly more unconventional style of thought punctuation, but none of this detracted from the reading experience itself. Expanding on my previous point, I tend to see thought punctuation used as such:
'Hey, look, I'm thinking a thought!'
Still, this was a lovely story and was certainly worth reading. Best of luck with your future works!
2297280 I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Sorry I made you miss your buss though. Good to know this is hopefully good! We'll just have to wait for other people to read it...and then the faves and likes/dislikes may or may not trickle in O_O
Cute and fluffy overload!
Good stuff, and written well to boot!
2297288
I have come, to read the pony romance. It was glorious.
And then they had sex.
You said you were gonna get it done. Then you take an extra day. Then I wake up. And then I look online and see your story. Was like YAY, now I read it and now... I loved it hahaha. Characterization was dead on, you got Twilights over analytical mind, The mane six was perfectly characterized, and now, GOOD STORY MY GOOD SIR! (Told you you could make a damn good longer story... Pfft. 1000 words hahahaha aha.)
a little rushed. but still rather nice
2297353 the end.
2297454
Lol it wasn't uploaded yesterday because I offered to edit it for him! I finished it just before 1am last night, but he wasn't on skype, so I had to email it to him.
2297601Hahaha, I heard
So technically he did do his goal. He finished it yesterday, just couldn't post 
Btw great job on the prrofread/edit. I couldn't find anything.
2297658
Thanks! Ya know, if you want, your work could look like this.
Yo
Timaeus. STAHP. Quit writing adorable TwiDash that swells my Read Later list!
What a fantastic thing to stumble upon. I only found this by accident, but i am so glad i did. Love the way you wrote... well, all of it, the characters were spot on, the romance was cute and sweet, just the sort of thing you want in this kind of story, you got everything perfect. Man, i love this story.
*takes off monacle*
Hmmm
*squints*
I dare say this is a fine piece of Twidash, good sir.
In all seriousness, very nicely done. I must say it was interesting, and while I have been reading way too many of these things recently, very entertaining. I look forward to your next story.
Also, and you called me the king of fluff?
d'aaaw that fluff
Holy balls that's a lot of comments. Okay's let's do this:
2297333 I have a tendency to make any kind of romance I write overly fluffy and cute without really meaning to lately... I'm glad you enjoyed it!
2297337 D'aww thanks!
2297353 2297597 GET OUT OF MY HEAD, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
2297454 What can I say? You were right the whole time my friend. And I would take The Abyss up on the offer by the way, he's a phenomenal editor.
2297580 Yeah...it was a little rushed. I thought up the idea the day-before-yesterday and I really really wanted to get it done for Winter Wrap Up
Technically I did. And also it would have been a lot worse if not for my editor's care and fine eye for grammar, even if it did take until the next day to get it posted.
2297878 ...maaaaaaaaybe
2298172 Sup dawg
Enjoy the story?
2298230 I'm afraid I can't do that buddy. I got another chapter of Jukebox Scribbles in the cards for tomorrow :}
2298392
Thanks! Really, I was pretty nervous posting this!
2298566 I share your sympathies...I have been spending waaaay too much time on this website reading stories...a good deal of them TwiDash
And as it turns out I am a potential usurper to your throne. You may want to deal with that at some point.
2298926 DANG IT YOU JUST HAD TO POST THE COMMENT WHEN I WAS RESPONDING TO THE OTHERS AND MISS YOU!
I'm glad to hear people seem to be enjoying this!
I can go home happy now!
2298956
Are you telling me I need to write more chapters?
2298969
Of course this one is sneaky
2298981 I'm not saying anything. You do have one of the best prompt stories I've seen though.
2298982 1.bp.blogspot.com/-4bBarmC8Bzs/T15evpKc_4I/AAAAAAAACuA/B1XbTlUryYQ/s1600/anigif_enhanced-buzz-24252-1331327230-31.gif
The sneakiest
Daaaaaaaw! For a first Twidash fix its one of the better ones I've read and I was getting bored when I saw this I was like Yes! Something to keep me busy! And man did it do just that
2299671
I'm glad you thought so! I had fun writing it, even though it was a bit rushed.
Good story, really fluffy
IT'S SO FLUFFEH!!!
J'aime. :3
<3 DarqFox
Great job with this story! I think you did a perfect job with the characters and the plot was absolutley perfect. I really hope that you decide to write more TwiDash romances of similar length or even longer. I look forward to reading more form you in the future. Keep up the great writing!
2300614 D'aawww thanks! I take it I should probably move this into the Fluff folder of the TwiDash group
2300761 I LIKE FLUFFEH!!! <3
2301416 Thanks, and I'm honoured that you added this to your own "Best Stories Ever" group! Seriously, thank you!
2301526
I forgot to fave this story. SACRILEGE!
I liek. Moar of this awesomeness plawks. :3
<3 DarqFox
2301618 All is forgiven. Okie. I will try and get something up today for JS, sound good?
<3 (only for you Darq)
Really cute and characters seemed spot on. For a first attempt at TwiDash AND longer romance, I'd say you accomplished the task quite well. Congrats on hitting the feature box!
My only quip is that you should maybe add more plot (heh) and storyline behind the feelings. Like, maybe some more looks into how they handle the feelings within, not just 'I talk to some friends and now I have a crush' know what I mean? I understand, small one-shot works dont get around easily, but even still, you did really well! not too little content, not too much content.
Yay TwiDash! I'm a softie when it comes to TwiDash..theyre sooooooooo cute!
Keep doin what you do, and please do try more shipfics! I like your style!
2301727 Thanks a lot! And yes, I agree. Like I said before, this was indeed a bit rushed. I thought up the idea the day before I wrote it and really wanted to get it done for Winter Wrap Up
I should also mention this is purely the product of listening to 'Winter Wrap Up' one too many times and thinking of something TwiDash-y to write. I do have something in the cards for a little later, and I plan to make it multi-chapter so their should be more time for feelings to be developed and handled. Thanks for your input!
2301758
Hey, no problem! Writers need to help writers if we hope to ever improve!
I know the feel with the short content thing, I've been having trouble myself writing fics based off loose ideas (let alone pony inspired ones) and making them so good (like this one)
Keep it up and I'm glad to contribute suggestions. Besides, what could writers do to their work with "Nice story"?
~Dash
Aaaaaaaand... Featured! Congratulations. If ever happy fluffy d'aaawww-inducing diabetically sweet shipping deserved the Featured box, then this is it.
Damn you! Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the Winter Wrap Up song out of my head? Months!!
Great story though!
2301689
I feel special now. :3
I'ma work on a surprise little story. I tink u will liek. :3
<3 DarqFox
To all the men who lost there masculinity.
*Ahem*
Let’s Roll. -- Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93
I came. I saw. I conquered. — Julius Caesar
You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas. — Davy Crockett
Come on, you sons of b*tches! Do you want to live forever? — GySgt. Daniel J. ‘Dan’ Daly, as he led the 5th Marines’ attack into Belleau Wood, 6 June 1918
The story is pretty by-the-numbers but just kinda stumbled in several places. The characters feelings are telegraphed hard, to the point that any level of genre savviness gives away the plot wholesale. That's usually not a deal breaker with shipfics, but you were constantly shifting the point of view from Twilight to Rainbow mid-scene with no real breaks or transitions and that completely ruined the tension.
It's typically bad form to shift the point-of-view mid-scene as it messes with the flow and can make things confusing at times. It's worse when your story is relying heavily on a character's thoughts to relay information to the audience. Due to the sudden shifts, I found myself getting confused several times trying to realize who was thinking what thoughts. At first, it felt like the story was from Twilight's pov, then suddenly it flips to Rainbow then back to Twilight all in one scene. Lack of general scene transitions between pov shifts made much of the story feel like one giant scene, even though you have multiple time skips where you could have broken things up. Those moments: "After a couple hours of talking about planning of sequences..." or when Twilight made the trip from Fluttershy's area to Applejack's, etc, are good places to make a scene cut. In the latter, especially, as you have the entire trip through the 'snowy fields' happen nigh instantly between two sentences in the same paragraph.
Just because you are writing in third-person-omniscient, does not mean you are allowed to rapidly shift focus mid-scene. Try to stick to one 'main' character per scene and use as few character shifts in-scene as you can. Also, thoughts-dumping in third-person-omniscient is not something to use heavily, if at all. Try to convey a character's thoughts as description instead of just typing them out word for word. Done properly, you'll have a much stronger story and be able to give more depth to your characters. Typing out thoughts is best saved for the third-person-limited and first-person points-of-view. In general, a lack of thoughts dumping will make rapid character shifts much less jarring should they prove necessary.
When using a dual point-of-view, it is important that the audience is allowed to spend enough time in the characters' view that they can understand and relate to the character's feelings and the situation. The point of the dual pov approach is to allow the audience to see two different sides of the same situation (or see two different situations, but that's not relevant to this story). Instead of letting us spend time with Rainbow Dash on her own, you just dumped her pov right in the middle of Twilight's whenever Rainbow entered the scene, which not only made the sudden shifts jarring, but also robbed the audience of any real chance to empathize or relate to Rainbow. Not to mention it denied a lot of insight into Rainbow's character and left Twilight to carry the story and provide all of the tension (she failed at that, by the way).
I can see that you were aiming for a story where two characters who have already fallen for each other struggle with actually acting on those feelings. One character who has to come to terms with her feelings and recognize them for what they are, while the other is struggling to simply admit the feelings she's had for a long time. The dual pov was certainly the right choice, but as I said, you didn't show the audience both sides of the story very well; nor did you portray either character's inner conflict with their feelings in any level of detail. The result was something that, while a bit sweet and fluffy, felt massively rushed and forced as it stumbled, clunkily to tell the shell of a story.
2301769 Well if you ever want someone to proofread over anything that you have, just give me a shout! And this is fact, but hearing "nice story" always brightens my mood so I'm grateful to anybody who even takes the time to write that out
It's still infinitely better than the people that decide to dislike something I write without giving a reason.
2301956 So many adjectives... And thanks buddy!
2302021 The Winter Wrap Up song was the primary reason I wrote this in the first place
And it succeeded to get the song out of my head and into everybody who read this 
2302222 Ha. Hahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahaha.
2302244 Oooh I look forward to reading it. <3
2302433 I can scare those cowards away without any help. - Goliath, Gargoyles
2303471 *whistles* That's a long comment. I see your point(s) and thank you for taking the time it must have taken to write such an in-depth analysis of this story. Seriously, thank you. Though I will respond to a few things that you have said. First, as I have said many times, this was indeed rushed. I recognize that, and will have to live with the consequences of it. Second, the intent of this story was to be a short one-shot no more than 6,000 words, so I can see how I was skimpy with portraying inner conflict of the characters (specifically Twilight and Rainbow Dash).
As I have also mentioned before, this was my first real attempt at writing any kind of romance. I discount my other story, Jukebox Scribbles, because it is a collection of mini-stories that have little continuity. So I never expected this to be perfect by any means, nor do I expect anything I write to reach that level of quality you outlined in your review. As to why this story of mine reached the Feature Box is beyond me. I am by no means a great author. I am simply a decent writer who decided to put this together at the last minute to try and make it ready enough for Winter Wrap Up. Turns out I failed at that too.
As for typing out the character's thoughts...I'm still not sure whether or not I agree with you there. This story was largely meant to focus on Twilight with some Rainbow Dash. I wasn't sure how else I could have communicated in those few cases what Rainbow was thinking otherwise. I personally like communicating a character's thoughts by, well, literally communicating their thoughts in character. When I did this, I thought it would clearly portray what the character's were thinking. Also, I did restrict explicit thought-telling in this story to Twilight and Rainbow, the focal characters. The others had their emotions communicated in the manner you suggested, albeit short and not with great detail as this was meant to be a short fiction. The purpose of a story must always be considered when writing. Writing out a character's thoughts, especially if the scene focuses on them, I guess is my kind of style. If you read my other limited selection of works, you will find the same method used.
I am sorry that you did not find this story enjoyable, but I again thank you for telling me why instead of simply down-voting it as most people would do in your case. I respect your critique of my work, and I respect you for it. Also thought I should mention that I respect you for your own works. See people? Now that's REAL TwiDash. I personally loved "What Brings Us Together."
2303585 The problem with simply typing out thoughts in third-omni, is that it lacks depth that can be found in actual description. Sure it might be easier and make certain thought processes highly transparent, but it doesn't add to the scene anymore than regular dialogue. Think about it like this, what is stronger:
or
I understand the temptation to simply type out the first one and keep going. I used to do exactly what you did here and type thoughts out at every opportunity. It wasn't an easy habit for me to break, but doing so made my writing much stronger at telling a story and developing a character. Please keep in mind, I don't advocate never using it ever, but that it should not be the primary method of thought conveyance in a third person omniscient point of view. If you can avoid it entirely, so much the better.
A good lesson I've had to learn is that the beauty of fanfiction (and really any non-commercial writing) is that you aren't on a time limit. If you aren't procrastinating heavily, then you don't ever need to do a rush job on a story. Rushing a story out will always lead to inferior quality. If you know that you've rushed things, then just don't publish it yet. Take your time and fix it. There is seriously no excuse for shoving out something you know you've not spent enough time with. Take it from someone whose still learning from that lesson.
For a first romance, it's not terrible. Like I said, it was clear what you wanted to do, you just got ham-stringed by your word limit and pov issues. You can do a lot more than you think with 6k. The biggest thing to learn when writing under a word limit is learning to pare out unnecessary words so you can fit in what you need in order to tell the story right. For instance, you could save a few hundred words by dropping the intro-info-dump and starting with a brief line about what Twilight was reading and moving right to her first line of dialogue. You could use scene breaks as time skips without having to tell us that "Twilight spent several hours talking with the Mayor", and so on. It isn't easy, but it is something you can practice at. Timed writing challenges, like those thirty-minute prompts are amazing at helping you learn to cut pointless fluff. Just spend some time practicing and you'll be amazed at how much you can do with limits. The best part is that those skills help even more when writing longer stories.
2303837
I just have to say that your analysis of this story is spot on and mirrors what I think almost exactly. Thanks, now I don't have to write anything like it myself! :)
2303837 See that's the difference between us. I am an okay writer while you I consider to be one of the greater writers on this website. I will take what you've said to heart, and after thinking it over some more I see what you mean. I like using direct thoughts sometimes, especially for certain characters I write that don't vocalize themselves very often. But I really do see the difference here with what I wrote and what you wrote.
And you're right, I really shouldn't place time limits on myself as much as I do. I guess I just get worried that if I don't put a time limit on myself then I won't get around to it. I suppose that's just university starting to rub off on me though
Also sorry if I came off a little defensive back there. This was honestly my first critical review of anything I've written thus far. I wasn't exactly expecting to read one after walking home from a long week
So thanks to you (and Zanzibar!) for giving me many things to take into consideration and for providing me with a means to help improve my writing for future projects.
One last thing: I've figured out why this was featured. It was due to the sheer number of TwiDash shippers and fans on this website
I consider it a success however in one regard. Simply that it was able to get your attention and compel you to write out such a lengthy review. 
>Twidash
Why
2303992 Gah, I've always been terrible at dealing with flattery, or even compliments in some cases. I appreciate the vote of confidence, even if I rarely feel I live up to such praise.
As a writer/artist, never regret attention for your works! Attention is how you attract feedback.
Yes, Uni is great for teaching the importance of not procrastinating. Though, for a free time activity/hobby, try to set realistic goals. For instance, instead of a hard release date, strive to write at least X words per day (what ever fits you schedule). Then once you've got a chapter done, throw it at your pre-readers/editors and let them rip on it for a few days (or however long they need, so long as they are thorough), then address their concerns... then post it. It's still a schedule that you'll be following, but one that will leave time to work out kinks ahead of time.
Trust me, you didn't sound abrasive at all. I'm used to much more colorful responses to my critiques. Not everyone is willing to discuss criticism calmly, and for that I thank you.
The longer you view a method as 'my style' the harder it is to break that habit and try something new. Don't think of basic presentation mechanics as a 'style', but as a tool. If the tool isn't doing what you need it to, it's much easier to change it when there's no personal attachment to it.
2304099 Hey Regidar, what brings you here?
2304103 I agree, and that's probably a better method for writing that what I've been doing. Uni's been great for a lot of things, but sadly I find all of me free time quickly getting sucked up by it. This spring I'll probably be in class from 8:30-5:30 Mondays through Fridays
After growing up with a few certain people around me, I've learned that getting mad at anybody who critiques your work or what you do (constructively or otherwise) just leads to more trouble than it's worth. Especially when it comes to interactions online, I mediate everything I say as things tend to get thrown way out of proportion when it's not face-to-face.
2304316 Lurking.
2304362 Okie. Just checking. Thought I'd make idle chit-chat as I passed by.
2304499 The passing.
This was a fine fic, not really remarkable but I liked it.