Before Reading:

At least in my mind, this story’s reputation precedes itself. It’s been recommended to me countless times, I’ve seen it featured/promoted in several different groups, and I follow the author-dude. Needless to say, it’s been gathering dust on my RL forever now. I suppose it’s about time I finally read it, eh?

Plot:

On a holistic level, I absolutely love the premise behind this one. Essentially, Roseluck is “dead” (gasp!) and has lost all her memories. Thankfully, she’s got Pinkie there to help her find them again. They travel around town to find those memories, which are manifested as roses, until they’ve found them all. There’s a little bit more to it than that, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll save it for later.

The first thing about the plot that struck me as worth mentioning is that the whole “Roseluck is dead” revelation is drawn out for far too long. It really soured Rose’s reaction for me. When the fact that she’s dead can be drawn from the title, let alone the summary, two whole chapters of denial and overly descriptive imagery that just screams “She's dead, stupid!” is a little excessive. I really wasn’t a fan of those first two chapters; it took me a while to pick the story back up after I read them because I was worried that the rest of the story would be like that. Thankfully, I was was wrong.

On top of that, I didn’t enjoy chapter four much at all. It all felt… unnecessary, at least in my opinion. It overly sexualized pony culture in a way that just didn’t sit right with me, and it was more than a little uncomfortable to wade through. I get why it was included—to bring Post Haste’s and Roseluck’s relationship where they could break that boundary—but creating a “national semi-public sex day,” so to speak, just didn’t feel “pony” to me. I can think of a handful of other ways to get Roseluck and Post Haste to have sex that would’ve been much less intrusive. Don’t get me wrong; I can see the rationale behind including it, and it was a clever bit of worldbuilding despite how strange it was. Really, this is more of a personal complaint. While I’m sure it wasn’t a big deal for a lot of readers, there are bound to be others out there like me who are easily weirded out by squicky stuff like this. That’s the only reason I’m bothering to mention it—if there are any of those people out there who are thinking of reading this story, be warned.

Also, I have to add that I absolutely adored all of the little slice-of-life moments sprinkled throughout Roseluck's memories, especially in chapters three and seven. If there’s anything that this story consistently does right, it’s the slice-of-life stuff.

Characters:

>She could complain about it to Golden Harvest later.
>about it to Golden Harvest
>Golden Harvest

11/10 “Best fanfic ever. 100% would bang again.” -IGN

In all seriousness, I do have a few things worth mentioning here.

First and foremost, it felt like Roseluck had next to no real characterization until Post Haste showed up. For those first two chapters, it was all just her running away from the truth and being sad, which was no fun to read and made getting invested in her story arc difficult. Granted, it’s hard to have a personality when you don’t have any memories/past experiences to define who you are, but it’s still something that stuck out at me. I've got absolutely no clue how to address it, though.

Also, Pinkie and Rose’s relationship kind of came out of nowhere. The reader just has to accept that Pinkie and Rose were good friends back among the living, and there’s no true explanation given for how and why that happened. Yeah, Pinkie is friends with everyone, but I personally feel that the level of friendship shown is beyond the point where that would be an acceptable excuse. To be fair, there are little tidbits of information that exhibit their friendship, but none of them explain when or how it began. (Unless I’m forgetting something, which is entirely possible. I read this story over a period of two months or so, so the beginning of the story is a little hazy.)

Semi-relatedly, I absolutely loved Pinkie in the first half of the story. The way that she managed to maintain an aura of melancholy while still acting and talking like the happy-go-lucky Pinkie we all know was like a breath of fresh air. Once the truth of her existence was realized though, her whole self-deprecation schtick was way over the top. It felt so unlike Pinkie that I just couldn’t take it seriously, and I caught myself skimming over a lot of her dialogue. I suppose you could argue that she wasn’t really “Pinkie,” but I feel that my point still stands.

On the other hand, her arc's resolution was definitely well-deserved. That was the one exception to the “over the top” thing I just mentioned. I would have liked to find out a little more about her before the story ended, though. There are a lot of unanswered questions hovering around her existence in that purgatorial realm, so it still feels partially incomplete. But then again, I may have missed something; I took my time reading this one.

I also really loved watching the development of Swift’s and Rose’s relationship. Really, the whole family dynamic was a lot of fun to read in general. I’m telling you, this story really rocked the whole slice-of-life business.

Oh, and Raspberry is freaking adorable. I mean, just look at this beetus:

“Mommy,” Raspberry said again, this time butting her head against Rose’s foreleg.

Yes, Raspberry?” Rose opened her eyes and let her magic trickle away into the earth again.

“Hungry, mommy.” She bumped her head against Rose’s foreleg again.

Is that not the cutest thing you’ve ever read?

Execution:

Let’s start with the easy stuff.

Firstly, I noticed that words were sometimes used several times in close proximity to one another, and it definitely stood out. The vocabulary used is advanced, so when one of those less common words was reused, it stuck out like a sore thumb. For example, you can only describe the scent of a rose as “cloying” so many times before it starts to break reader immersion. And honestly, I think it only happened two or three times, but it still made me forget what I was reading each time it happened.

The point of view was messy at times as well.

“P-Pinkie... she’s going to grow up without a mother!” Rose pushed herself harder into her friend’s embrace and sought the warmth and comfort that could soothe the ache of not being there to watch her daughter grow up. “I won’t see her—” Do anything...

Pinkie held her close while she wept, and wondered where her own tears were. It hurt, seeing Rose in so much pain. But at least she wasn’t running.

It randomly jumps back and forth between describing Rose’s and Pinkie’s thoughts, which can be jarring to the reader.

This next bit is something of an anomaly to me. A lot of the negative emotions in story felt fostered, and I just couldn’t get into the characters’ heads. It was like I was being told, “Okay, you’re supposed to be sad now,” and it didn’t resonate well with me. Many of Rose’s post-memory scenes and Pinkie’s arc later in the story fell flat, and I’m not quite sure why. And based on a lot of the comments, I’m alone on this one. If I had take a shot at why, I’d venture that it’s because to me it seemed like emotions came out of nowhere—all of the sudden, Rose would just start crying without any buildup, and her emotions wouldn’t be elaborated upon much at all. Also, that unexplained friendship dynamic between Rose and Pinkie that I mentioned earlier probably contributed some; when one tried to comfort the other, I was too distracted by the strangeness of it all to be concerned with the emotions present. But regardless of why, it definitely felt a touch like “sadporn” to me, and I couldn’t enjoy as much as I would’ve liked to. (And yes, I am a filthy, raging hypocrite. Why do you ask? )

Tying back into that “advanced vocabulary” thing I mentioned earlier, the story was riddled with multi-claused, overly complex sentences that almost void themselves of meaning.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat and felt another horseshoe join the rest of the pile of anxiety in her gut.

Alone, that sentence is fine. But when many lengthy sentences like it are thrown at me in rapid succession, the pace begins to drag, and I find my attention waning. I frequently found myself going back to reread, only to realize that once again I had completely glossed over everything. Injecting a handful of short, quick sentences for variation would add much more life to the story. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love long, vivid descriptions—just in moderation. You know what they say: something something something too much of a good thing. Eh, close enough.

My biggest complaint, however, is the lack of subtlety. At times, it felt like I was being talked down to. The story treated its readers like they were, for lack of a better word, stupid. The prose frequently wrote itself in circles, making sure the reader knew exactly what was happening and then some. A lot of the symbolism/foreshadowing was very obvious, too. For example, I physically rolled my eyes when Rose steered clear the “corpse flower” because of her then-unborn foal, since I knew exactly where the story was headed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a breath of fresh air to see that a story has symbolism in the first place, but the majority of it rubbed me the wrong way. I’m sure there was a lot more carefully planned, less intrusive rhetoric that I completely glossed over because of the more glaring examples, and that makes me a little bit sad to think about.

All in all though, the execution was definitely impressive; I just focused on all the bad points here to avoid doubling the length of this already massive review. Like I said, I follow the author-dude. He knows what he's doing. I'm just here to be a nitpicky jackass.

Verdict: Recommended. I can definitely see why so many people have enjoyed the story. Heck, despite there being several things that kept me personally from enjoying it as much as I would have liked, I still had a lot of fun reading it myself. If the premise intrigues you and nothing I mentioned is a major turnoff, I’d highly suggest you give it a shot.

...Aaaaand two thousand words later, it’s finally over. I hope you’re happy, Lambent.

This makes a lot of sense. I, too, have seen a lot of hype about this story, yet the kinds of things people were actually saying about it as positives were exactly the kinds of things that put me off. You seem to have done a good job of balancing the two points of view (considering I haven't read it).

Now, about opening up for new fics... lol

4171132

Fair points on most all.

I don't think I have any complaints about the review, and it is fair and points out a number of issues I'm aware of in my writing. I do tend to have issues with overuse of words in my stories. It's a habit I need to unlearn.

My biggest complaint, however, is the lack of subtlety. At times, it felt like I was being talked down to. The story treated its readers like they were, for lack of a better word, stupid. The prose frequently wrote itself in circles, making sure the reader knew exactly what was happening and then some.

This was done ham-fistedly, really. Especially with the colors. And the mirrors. Although, interestingly, the corpse flower was coincidental. It was a rare fungus that smelled foul, serving to hammer in "She's pregnant, doofus!" and not intended to hammer in "She's not dead" because a corpse flower is a living thing, and though it smells terrible, it is still alive. I probably should have used chrysanthemums - which also have a very heady scent, and would have served the same purpose (symbolic of death) - without using the word 'corpse'. Although they would have been in the public gardens, not the private gardens.

I will also admit that the slice of life sections were my favorite to write. They are the bread and butter of this story. Not the romance, or the sad. The romance and the sad were a beginning and an ending respectively.

Also, that unexplained friendship dynamic between Rose and Pinkie that I mentioned earlier probably contributed some; when one tried to comfort the other, I was too distracted by the strangeness of it all to be concerned with the emotions present.

Finally, I did actually intend to include some of this in. It got dropped by the wayside in writing, however. It was in the episode with the smile song and Cranky, where Pinkie compliments her calla-lilies and Rose gives her one. It felt like there was more interaction there in the past, and before any of the events in the story.

And yes, the switching perspectives were a little odd. I admit. I should have worked on those a bit more, or left them out entirely aside from a couple spots with proper scene breaks.

All in all, I did learn a lot from writing this story, and I think it shows as the story goes from beginning to end. The beginning shows, I think, obvious signs of learning pains, and the latter chapters much improved (for all that I actually spent less time worrying over them.)