A Review of, "What Friendship Could Be" by SPNGoatMan.

Alright, I haven't done a blog review in a long time. For a while, I thought I was done with these, but then someone came to me directly and asked for one, so I decided to give it another whirl.

I'm also a sucker for followers.

This story is called "What Friendship Could Be." It's written by SPNGoatMan, and it's an E-rated sadfic currently sitting at a rating of 11:4.

[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

There are a few things I'd like to point out right off the bat:
1) The short description has a punctuation error. As in no period at the end of:

The pain of losing a friend is hard to cope with

2) The cover art is pretty powerful, though there is no credit to a particular artist. However, there is a link to a source.
3) The long description (aka plot) is uses a very cliché theme of "alicorns last forever, so Twilight loses all of her friends." It's very uninspiring and it doesn't make me sad, it just irritates me because it's as if the author is trying too hard to make me feel sad. I will say that using a human in this story at least brings a little variety on the table, though I'm still skeptical.

Let's get on to the actual review, shall we?

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Author's Note:
Thank you all for coming and reading my humble little story. I will be honest, the story my character tells is true, it is a story that happened to me. I will not be angry at you for persecuting my actions, in fact I persecute myself here. 

I know this is harsh already, but from a literary standpoint, please don't put an AN the size of a paragraph before the story starts detailing your inspirations and all the people that supported you. I'm just here for the story mate, put your notes at the end of the story.

Twilight Sparkle had never felt such an emotional pain as she had when attending Fluttershy’s funeral. All of her other friends had already passed except for Rarity, Pinkie and a human who had dropped into her world a year ago. Rainbow Dash had been trying to recapture her youth and crashed, only this time she did not get up. Applejack had overworked herself on her farm.

I don't feel any emotional pain myself, Twilight. Probably because instead of making it an emotional telltale that absolutely sickens Twilight to the core, it's basically in a list format of nothing but exposition. Instead of blatantly writing all this out, wouldn't it make more sense to leave subtle hints of what happened to them via narration of the cast? I should also had that the human element seems superficial thus far, as in it was just tacked on without expanding upon it.

His eyes darkened and tears welled up as he read the news. He looked back up and nodded, Celestia nodding back, and the human followed the guards to her personal chariot.

The pace of the story is far too fast. There needs to be buildup, and because there's hardly any, I can't feel sad.

“Are you all right, Princess?”

Like, really? No, obviously she isn't. Kaleb was described as being smart in an earlier paragraph, but that was among the most dense things you could say. Also it's *alright.

“Tell me Twilight, what specifically about this has made you sad”

Once again, her source of grief is blatantly obvious. I'm pretty sure Kaleb is only asking stupid questions because the author is trying to characterize Twilight's emotions without outright saying them. It's good practice, piss poor execution. Also, that sentence needs a question mark at the end.

A long time ago in my world, when I was a child, or by your reasoning, a foal, I became friends with another boy my age, whose name was Thomas.

A few things I need to point out before we dive into the meat of this story, and I'll try to be somewhat sensitive seeing as this is a true story. The length of this paragraph is obscene and is a big turn-off for a lot of readers, as in, you need breaks in the paragraph to keep reader's attention. I also feel that the pain of being immortal and watching your friends die one by one is not the same as being racist toward your best friend.

Is it wrong? Certainly. Though, I don't feel as though it relates enough to Twilight's situation for her to seek catharsis from the story. And the line about him dying would've been less painful to you? That's just not true and you know it. If he was really your best friend, than not even having the chance to make amends would've been worse than not being friends with him anymore.

"On a much higher level, this necklace has been a sign of a friendship long gone, and now, I wish to give it to you. To show that I will always be here for you if you need me."

A resolute gesture, though I feel as though you have conveyed that the locket is a symbol of burden and pain that Kaleb keep around his neck as a constant reminder never to do it again. By giving it to Twilight, he is passing on the burden and allowing himself to almost be relieved of his sin. Maybe I am just thinking to much into it, but it feels like I've developed an ulterior motive that comes across as selfish in nature.

Spike was now a bit bigger, not quite a teen, but he had definitely grown since Kaleb had last seen him.

You should have brought this up before the end of the story.

Friendship is what makes me who I am, I may be smart, I may love reading, and I may be good with magic on a scale most unicorns could only dream of, but even I realize now that what truly defined me was my friends

I wouldn't say you're "good with magic," rather, you're one of the strongest mares in all of Equestria.

Your Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle

And that concludes the story. Personally, I like it when Twilight writes letters to Celestia in stories because it feels genuine, though not everyone appreciates it.

As you know from everything I said before, I think this story could have been much better. The author self-inserted himself into the tale and used his own personal sadness as a way to project onto the audience. At the beginning of the story, it felt like the human element of this story was superficial. Looking back on it now, Twilight's grief over her friends was the manufactured part of this story.

Kaleb needed a reason to share his tale, so the author ran with a theme that is sadness for the sake of sadness. Death is a cheap, asinine way to make people sad because it's unavoidable and it takes away people you love. If you want a story to be very sad, you need to make it something that could have been avoided, something that may have been negligible at one point, but was allowed to fester into something more malignant (i.e a disease such as depression or bullying). Make us feel for your character by not only showing us what happened to them, but letting us see them fight back against the world that did them wrong.

That's all I got, really. I hope you enjoyed my review. Check out the links up above to check out the author's stories, and let me know what you thought of my analysis.