A FLEet|ng LIght |n thE DArknEsS
By Flashgen

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Okay, back into reviewing after a what, three month absence? It’s kind of weird to not be criticising bad clop here. I did so many of those, and I was so close to finishing…

As for the first entry upon my return, do you even see that storyID? This is an old one. I’m honestly surprised to see that it’s not in the top 100 most-viewed Dark fics. Granted, that list includes any fic with the “Dark” tag, not just ones that feature primarily dark themes. Also, a distressing number of those top fics are rape fics. Still, at the time of reading, I placed this among my top five darkfics on the site.

Let’s see how it holds up to a re-read.

We open with a Royal Guard’s report on the findings in Ponyville. There’s some language I find questionable, but nothing major. Just things like “was a mess” sounding too imprecise and informal. I’d expect something more like “was in disarray” to be used in a formal report to the Princess.

There’s a brief section where Twilight experiments with making potions and teas, and it doesn’t seem to really add anything of value to the story as a whole, beyond establishing a “normal” (which we already have from the show) and introducing the invisible ink; which felt unnecessary, as so little is explained in the story that having the origins of the hidden text left that way as well wouldn’t have hurt. On that subject, I personally find the concept of hidden text a bit trite, anymore, and the writing itself in those parts is nothing exceptional.

The setup continues with several references to background events which intrude just a bit too much and are just a bit too vague, leaving them more distraction than foreshadowing.

A page from the journal is torn out and used to record what seems to be a dream journal from Twilight. The writing style is a complete change from what we’ve had, a point that is called out as notable in-character as well through the report’s annotations. This section ends with an image used to create a single word in very large, angular text, another gimmick that I’m not sure is very effective anymore.

Some more suspense-building goes on, and here the dates at the beginnings of the entries become particularly relevant, as the journal is stated to have been found on April 16th. The journal features dates extending out to the 29th. As for what this actually means, I have no idea. More on that later.

The entire town is blanketed in darkness. Rarity, Pinkie, and Fluttershy hole up in the library with Spike and Twilight. The stress—or whatever’s out there—is getting to everypony, and they seem to be gradually losing their minds. Lights are going out in the distance.

I don’t think I’ll summarize any more, as I feel what I’ve done so far does enough to convey the tone and basic plot of the story. Beyond this would just be more work and more wordcount that would accomplish little beyond adding needless spoilers.

Aside from a few word choices that were awkward, grammatically questionable, or out of place, there’s not much for me to say, here. The story on the whole is well-written and well-edited. Further, it being over two years old, I doubt Flashgen really has any interest in going back and changing things now.

That said, I do have one major objection to the whole thing: it might just be a bit too difficult to follow. I understand a large part of it is meant to be a mystery, and the rest has the hallmarks of existentialist horror, which rarely features explanations. However, I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and even after my fourth or fifth read-through, I still can’t say for certain what actually happened during it. It’s possible I’ve actually seen it, but expecting something deeper, am looking for things that aren’t there, as well, but it bothers me that I can’t even say that for certain.

Is it still one of my all-time favorites? No, not really. I’ve read a lot more fanfiction since I first saw this about a year ago, and in part the novelty has worn off, and in part I just see flaws that I didn’t notice the first time through. It remains a very strong suspense story, however, and I do recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a Gore-free Dark fic, particularly those that are more unsettling than scary.

Recommended.

A bit short for one of my reviews, but I didn’t have much to work with. I need either a longer story, or something suffering from far greater flaws, to really get going.

Or something to hang a bunch of clop jokes off of.