Beautiful memories
By Novalis14

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Oh hey, a Doctor Hooves story. I actually haven’t read one of these before, despite being a Whovian. Well, I’ve seen him make cameos in other stories, but never anything where he was the star. So, aside from one discontinued tumblr, this is new to me.

Also, this line in the description:

He and Derpy grieve the loss of a friend as she seeks to comfort him with the only thing she can

Gonna be honest, here: "her voice" is not where my mind took that.

Commentary and Review combined due to brevity.

So the Doctor is grieving yet another death, and Derpy is there to comfort him.

Seriously, you’d think he’d be used to that by now.

Which she does by singing a little song for him about holding on to the memory of those who have passed. This song, in particular. Beyond the peculiar choice of putting the song inside quote tags, rather than italics or something, I'm pretty sure this is actually against FIMFic rules.

On the Doctor's side, it's him painfully recalling various friends from both his Time Lord and pony lives. I get the impression this is based on another Doctor Hooves story, because there are numerous references I can't begin to follow. Who's Tick Tock? What planet are they talking about? What's this "gingerpony" thing all about?

The whole thing is pretty blunt and telly, wrapping up with a cliché "ghost of the one we lost looks on satisfied" scene. And it clocks in at just 600 words. The second, 400-word chapter was added to pad it out and make it fit FIMFiction requirements.

As for that second chapter, it's a very quick scene visiting Tick Tock's grave. Very little is done with it, beyond proving epitaphs for Tick Tock and a second character the fic hadn't mentioned before now. There's also a moment with the Doctor musing about Derpy that confused me at first, as the context and formatting gave the impression it was dialogue in a flashback. And it ends on a cameo from yet another unknown character.

Spelling and grammar, while not terrible, are noticeably weak. Capitalization, comma usage, and attributions, all frequently have mistakes, while word confusion ("gate" for "gait" stood out at one point) is a problem as well.

Don't include copyrighted lyrics in your story. Not only is it against site rules, but it means a portion of your story is actually someone else's work

Find a proofreader. You have a lot of grammar mistakes, and they're almost all simple things that are easy to catch.

Work on showing your emotions instead of just declaring them. Don't tell us Derpy feels useless. Have her linger by the railing, unsure of what to do. Show us her thoughts as she considers, and then rejects, one course of action after another.

Don't rely on lyrics to carry your emotion. You need the characters to sell it. Description alone can't make the reader feel anything - sympathy for the character involved is the key.

Needs Work. Grammar issues and telling aside, the story relies primarily on the lyrics of the song to carry it, and those weren't the work of the fic author.