Out of Time is 2,968 words long and tagged [Sad] [Slice of Life] [Fluttershy] [Main6] [Discord]

Life won't be as long as Fluttershy wants it to be. With each of her friends breaking down around her, she doesn't know if she'll be able to stay in Ponyville much longer unless she is to break down with them. Confronting them won't be easy. But her greatest confrontation could be with someone she views in a more special way.

I briefly thought this might be about Fluttershy having to move, but it is about her having a terminal illness. She has a few more weeks to live and is trying to figure out what to do with it.

First things first: unless a few essential points are being cleared up (which they aren’t), I whole-heartedly reject this premise. Two quotes:

Embrace the goal of success instead of making excuses for failure
_{– Eliezer Yudkowsky}

Throughout high school and college, I noticed that many of my peers seemed like they were trying hard, but they weren't trying hard to learn content or pass classes — they were trying hard to make sure that they had good excuses and cover stories prepared for when they failed.
_{– Nate Soares}

I this spirit, I do not accept that Fluttershy can’t do anything against her fate. Listen here, Fluttershy. You are friends with:
– The ruler of the world (who is immortal)
– The co-ruler of the world (who is also immortal)
– A near-omnipotent spirit of chaos (who is most definitely immortal).
– All 5 other bearers of arguably the most powerful artefacts in the world

If you are going to tell me that you can’t do ANYTHING against something as mundane as a disease, then you better give me good reasons. And if you could do things but don’t, then you’re an idiot! Stop whining and fight! Embrace the goal of living instead of making excuses for why it’s okay to die! Because I got news for you: it’s not okay to die! Dying is really really bad, both in the real world and in fiction. Don’t make excuses for why it’s okay. Fight it!

And if you want to sell me on a story about coming go terms with your imminent death, you need a different setting. MLP is a difficult starting point for obvious reasons, but it’s possible (more about that at the end).

Leaving that aside – another thing I want to address is the dialogue. If anyone else is reading, let’s make this an experiment. Here are the two crucial lines (there isn’t much more, it’s a short story):

“Of course I know, silly,” [...] “I knew the moment you first came home from the hospital. I didn’t say anything, though. I knew how much you wanted to avoid all the drama. It's fine, really.”

and

“[...]I feel like my world’s falling apart when something happens to you, and I don’t know how I’ll bare you being gone… If you stay, I could try liking you. Not out of pity, because I want to.”

(I cut out one piece in the second quote which gives too much of a direct hint.)

Now: who do you think is talking? If you aren’t the author, I’d actually say, take a guess in the comments (or even several guesses). I honestly don’t think I’d have gotten it right in the first three. It feels like the author just took their pre-destined character to have this love thing with Fluttershy even though the choice seems pretty unfitting.

And that’s... not good. Like, you really don’t want to just have arbitrary names attached to characters. You should always be able to guess who someone is by their role in the story.

Lastly, I think this story does the same thing better. This is also about “how do I make the most out of a small time period” (in this case one day) but it solves the problem of finding outs through the fact that Twilight is already dead (this is not a spoiler). She just has a one-day exclusive visit from heaven. So, there are ways to do this. But (if you want me to appreciate it) you actually have to solve this problem. It doesn’t go away by itself.

Writing style & grammar is competent. Also note that I gave another story from Mikleo a 48, which is almost perfectly neutral.

19/100

6024266
Uh, the link to the original story leads me to a different story. Was this intentional?

6024277
Ouch. No, thanks for pointing that out. Fixed it.

Quoting Yudkowsky? Really?
boo.

6024266

unless a few essential points are being cleared up (which they aren’t), I whole-heartedly reject this premise. 

>lowering the score of a review because of your opinion
Nice, dude.
Nice.