Before Reading: The word count is just barely over the passable limit and the summary doesn't really tell me much. I'm worried that the story won't have any plot at all, but the comments and the like:dislike ratio are both pretty good, so I'm going in optimistic.

Plot: Simply put, there was none. The story just a thousand words of Lightning Dust thinking about how "disgraceful" she is immediately after she gets the boot from the Wonderbolt Academy. There is hardly anything to it, and what is there is repeated again and again to the point where I found myself getting bored while reading it.

Characters: Ordinarily I can forgive a story for being plot-less if they make up for it by providing an interesting characterization of one of the characters. That... well, that was the intent of this story, I assume. Though, in my opinion, it didn't quite pull it off.

The only real character in this story was Lightning, and her characterization was, to put it bluntly, sup-par. There was no hidden depth. There was no interesting headcanon/justification for her actions in the episode. There was no golden nugget of characterization. All there was was one thousand words of Lightning wallowing in her own self-pity because she made a "disgrace" of herself and her dream.

My only other guess is that the intent of the story was to make the reader feel bad for Lightning. If anything, the story had the opposite effect on me. It made me think that Lightning was not only a sociopathic, unsympathetic wannabe-Wonderbolt, but a pony who can't "mare-up" and deal with the repercussions of her actions without whining about it.

On top of that, the prose is on the purple side, which didn't quite work in this situation. I can't really imagine Lightning thinking in such a refined and sophisticated manner, even if she's upset.

Honestly, if anything, the characterization of Lightning only made me frustrated.

Execution: Grammar and spelling-wise, this story was near perfect. The only issues I found were the occasional cluster of words that should have been hyphenated (like tear-splattered, for example), but that's not really a big deal in the long run.

After Reading: Unfortunately, as a whole, the story reads as fairly pretentious. It's full of pseudo-philosophical metaphors and similes, but I just couldn't really bring myself to care because the story takes itself too seriously. There's no message to be revealed, no lesson to be learned, no anything. It's just a thousand words of whining that left me feeling like I had wasted my time.

I really wanted to like this story. But, unfortunately, I couldn't find much there to like.

My advice to you, author, is to plan ahead. Think about what you're writing and why you're writing it before diving in headfirst. Your narrative voice is promising; you just need to work on your planning. I certainly expect to see good things from you in the future, though.

Yeah... I agree. That was pretty bad (and I wrote it. Ha!) Thanks for your input, and I'll definitely consider your thoughts in the future.

3436570
Hey! How is it going?

3436753 *rolls off bed headfirst onto floor* swimmingly