Forbidden Love
By Syeekoh

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Sorry, no link for a Mature fic. There's no actual mature content - it's Teen at most - but rules are rules.

The biggest problem with reviewing all the short fics is that you pretty quickly run out of things to say in your opening.

Commentary and Review combined due to brevity.

So, Shining Armor and Flash Sentry have a thing. I don't object to this ship in general - this fandom needs more coltcuddling, and ShineFlash is a good candidate - but each has a canon mare interest that needs explained away.

I think the gist of it is that Shiny is emotionally attracted to Cadance, but physically attracted to Flash. I don’t particularly care for how the story explains that, since “Cadance was, is and always will be my high school sweetheart! You don’t just give up something like that!” is probably the weakest argument for a relationship ever. It, and other dialogue in this section, also suggests Shining is only staying with Cadance out of a sense of obligation.

So, here's the standard objection to anything that suggests Shining and Cadance don't share true and complete love. You really have to justify how they were able to love-blast the entire changeling army if that isn't the case. Also, she's kinda the Princess of Love. Shouldn't she pick up on this sort of thing?

Anyway, Shining and Flash meet in a supply closet and have wild offscreen implied sex. I personally think a prince and guardspony could find a better hookup spot than a supply closet.

On the subject of Flash, he comes of as a bit of a whiny bitch, particularly because he badgers Shining about the double-life he's leading. Which would be better if Shining wasn't doing it for Flash's sake in the first place.

So then Cadance seems to suspect something and Shining covers for them with a series of lies so bad and blatant they sound like they'd be used to set up the plot of a sitcom episode.

I didn't bring it up in the review, but the entire story is very telly. Emotions are never described, just stated outright. Try to express emotion through action. If you want to work on this, go back through and look for any instances of emotional descriptors ("cheerfully", "with pride", "defeatedly", "clearly hurt", etc) and rewrite to express the same emotions without using any of those words.

When it comes to showing a character feeling strong emotions, nothing is more tired and cliche than "started to tear up." Look for virtually any alternative to that.

A certain deviance from canon is to be expected in any fanfiction, but changes do need explanation. It's expected in a mystery, but in other types of story, wondering why things are different is just a distraction for the reader.

Needs Work. Grammar is good enough, but characterization is questionable. However, the biggest issue is telling and somewhat bland writing.

3438578 Thank you for your review!

I kind of interpret the whole love-blast thing as before Shining Armor met Flash Sentry in this work of fiction. And I think Cadance is in complete denial of the whole thing. And yes, Flash is a very whiny bitch.

Thank you for pointing out how telly I can get, though, and that the writing came off as bland. This was a very informative review and I can apply all of it to my future writing. Once again, thank you!