The goal was simple: Get from her home to a new world and lead it to glory. A shining beacon in the stars that shows the unity and friendship of a half dozen species' ability to colonize a planet.

What happened to wake Twilight early into the flight and how will she cope with traveling the rest of the journey, alone?

I really have bad luck picking stories based on out-of-canon influence. I've had a Lunaverse story, a Star Trek crossover, a Girl with a Dragon Tattoo adaptation, and now this story based on the movie Passengers. All things I've never actually seen before, or had precious little knowledge of.

So let's start at the top. The story is set centuries in the future--after ponies contacted and befriended humans, and after everyone done f'ed up the planet somehow. A series of spaceships are built and launched to a new planet, one of which Twilight is aboard so she can help settle and lead a new nation so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. All the settlers and crew are put in suspended animation to survive the ungodly long space travel.

The story begins with Twilight waking up at what she believes to be a two week journey away from landing, like the ship was programmed to do. Unfortunately, she soon discovers she has woken up over a hundred and thirty years away. To make things worse, the spaceships were built between ponies, minotaurs, and humans working together, and she doesn't understand all the technology aboard.

She can't put herself back to sleep, she can't call for help from the other ships since their crews are all asleep, and thanks to her immortality, she will live through every single day of her isolation.

At its core, this is what the story is about (and where it's at its best): Twilight coping with her situation. There are some other "characters" involved like a robot bartender and the ship's computer simulating Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie and others, but the main conflict is Twilight trying to stave off the madness that comes from being completely cut off from meaningful interaction by trying everything that comes to mind to occupy her time.

The story does bring up two more flesh and blood creatures that wake up early, but they come off more as plot devices than actual characters. One wakes up, feeds plot by figuring out what's wrong with the ship, then dies.

The other, Shining Smile, is a therapist. And that's it. We know this because he outright tells Twilight, "I've been helping you through your issues." Which was news to me, and Twilight. He kind of plays the Flash Sentry role. He's designated as the guy, Twilight's love interest, and we don't get much insight into him other than what Twilight feels for him. I'm not even sure why Twilight likes him other than he shares half of Shining Armor's name. The story shows us short, cute scenes between the two of them and tries to tell us a deep romance came from that.

Considering Twilight essentially killed him by waking him up early and dragging him into sharing her isolation, the shallowness of their relationship is glaring. He's just the guy lucky/unlucky enough for Twilight to have bumped into while he was asleep. I'm not sure how he bonded with Twilight enough to forgive her for that so quickly after he found out, nor do I understand why Twilight renounced her immortality (and duty to lead the settlers) to die with him. What made him so special to her? What made her so special to him?

The writing in the story was mostly solid. The most glaring issue was misuse of commas when writing out parenthetical phrases. I also saw sentences that were written correctly, so maybe just pay a little more attention in the future. A good rule to keep in mind is that when a sentence has a phrase set apart by commas, like this one here, the sentence needs to make sense when that phrase is removed. So that becomes: A good rule to keep in mind is that when a sentence has a phrase set apart by commas the sentence needs to make sense when that phrase is removed.

In conclusion, the story has a compelling premise, and Twilight was probably the most interesting character that could be put in that situation. Seeing her struggle with herself, contemplating her actions, trying to rationalize the consequences throughout, that was easily the highlight of things. The rest of the story doesn't go quite deep enough. There's stuff to like here, but the ending left me shrugging my shoulders and moving on rather than smiling or shedding a tear.

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A fic based on Passengers? Hell yeah! *adds to list*

But it'll probably be about thirty seconds until you go, "Eh, I'd hit it either way."

You knew I'd read this.

Also this looked interesting, but then I read the spoilered bit and hated it.

Also, do you suppose Passengers was inspired by Alan Steele's The Days Between, or did it just have very similar ideas behind it?

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Possibly, though I think manually waking someone up wasn't possible in Steele's story. They probably took the idea and adapted it to squeeze in Jennifer Lawrence. That's also why I didn't see the movie, I heard that part of the story beforehand and nope'd away.

And of course I knew. I have a reputation to uphold.

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Thank you for this review, I wouldn't have found this story otherwise :)

I'd like to offer my thoughts if I may, since I have seen, and very much enjoyed, the movie Passengers. Mocha Star's story is a very faithful adaptation of the movie, to the point that many of the flaws in Imperfect Stasis are also the flaws of Passengers. In the movie, the romance is similarly shallow and contrived; the two passengers have no real reason to fall in love other than that they are the only options available to each other.

But I would like to address something that I think a lot of people don't get about this movie. The morally repugnant action of the protagonist is literally the point of the movie. If you "nope" at it, then you are dodging the very question that the movie is asking: "If I was in his situation, would I do the same thing?" It's supposed to be uncomfortable. The movie is an exploration of what we might do if faced with such a desperate, hopeless situation, and that's what makes it great science fiction; because it's a situation that we can't really explore any other way.