The Sun Also Rises · 3:35am Mar 14th, 2015
As a part of the Sunset Shimmer group's review circle pitch, I intend on reviewing the titular story here in this blog, along with another one much further down the cabbage patch (that one is significantly longer). Most of my review is going to be in the format as if I were posting it directly on the bottom of the second chapter's page, so there may be a spoiler or two in case you wanted to read the story.
She laughed as she nodded off and thought aloud, “Wait ‘till Lyra Heartstrings hears about all of this…”
Oh please, she would never belie- Oh. I see what you did there. 
Ah mean, is she gonna go back to bein’ your student?”
A regretful expression crossed Celestia’s face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAJlxPAnjQg (about 00:02 - 00:04)
Overall, a nice slice of life fic of sorts, wrapped up Equestria Girls 1 rather nicely. My favorite part had to be the exchange between Celestia and Sunset and their brief but present back and forth.
Just a few things that others may have pointed out already:
“This one is indirectly connected to the other world, leading to a third, smaller realm. A portal there leads to the world you went through, but one who enters through this side cannot enter it.”
Instead of "it", there would be better clarity if you were to use "the other" or something a little less vague than just "it". It took reading the rest of it to fully understand what you meant in this sentence.
I might’ve been a monster, but I’ve never been a hypocrite. At least, not about dead relatives.
I don't, get it. Even if Sunset had pushed out the old Sunset and decided to live with her parents instead, how would that be hypocritical?
And what was the whole point of bringing Shining Armor and Cadence into the discussion? I can't say I saw them add anything substantial other than a greeting or two. I mean, even having them present seems kind of unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.
As I said, overall, I enjoyed the story, though I think slice-of-life might would be a nice addition. The story is not really sad at all once you get past the initial "I really screwed up didn't I" phase.
Thanks for checking the story out, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! As for your quibbles...
I agree on this one, it does come across as a little confusing. Plus, saying 'the other' is a little bit more like Celestia.
Sunset's not talking about moving in with her counterpart's family, but about being cruel to Applejack regarding being an orphan. It would've been hypocritical of her to mock Applejack about that, given that she also had dead parents.
Shining Armor's absence from the film was a sticking point with me, and given the recent threat to national security in general and his younger sibling in specific, he'd want to be informed about everything (and see about Sunset Shimmer) personally. As for Cadance, her inclusion was mostly because I would've felt wrong leaving her out.
It never occurred to me to call this a 'slice of life' story, mostly because it's not about characters going about day-to-day business. My next story with Sunset is something I'd definitely call 'slice of life', but this one? I think that's stretching it.
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Fair enough I suppose, it's not really an adventure of any sort, but slice of life might would be a little bit of a stretch considering just how many people cross dimensional barriers by the end of the story. And now I get the hypocritical thing a bit more now.
I still don't think that you didn't really needed either character in the story. Yes, Shining Armor would have wanted to be informed, but by and large, there was nothing that he could do about the matter; Celestia would not have allowed him to intervene then, and there was hardly any point in getting him involved. After all, what if something were to pop off while this little get-together is happening?
I don't know, I just don't feel either of them really added enough to the plot to really need including. At least the bits with them did not drag down the story, but if you were going to reduce all of the characters meeting in one place, I would imagine those two would be the first to hold off sticking around in the pocket dimension.