EMy Wings Will Keep You Safe

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Slice of Life

A little filly lays terrified in a library through a raging storm with only an Alicorn princess to comfort her.

• Twilight
• Applejack
• Apple Bloom
• Dinky Hooves
• CMCs

Astral Phoenix · 9.7k words  ·  274  10 · 17k views

Surprise! It's a review. Today we have one of those stories that's been reviewed by everyone who's anyone.

I'll preface this post with something that has nothing to do with the story (so don't take it personally, Astral, I'm speaking in general terms). I must make an admission: I really hate being mean to people. By extension, I hate it when I'm harsh in my criticisms of a person's work and make it sound like I'm attacking them. Quite the contrary, if I ever say mean things about your story, rest assured that they're not aimed at the author in any manner of speaking. I've noticed in my past reviews, much to my chagrin, that I often append niceties such as "but it still has potential" or "but it's not the worst thing" to the negative comments. I just feel bad, you know. I have nothing against anyone personally, what is said and done is largely said and done in the name of literary standards. With all that said...

This is probably the harshest review I've ever written. Just so you know that. I'm not holding anything back.

I had an absolute blast reading this story. Because it was so fucking bad that I ended up enjoying it ironically. This is without a doubt one of the funniest unintentional comedies I've ever read.

The problems immediately become apparent. We have the opening scene where the CMC are taking off from school (for spring break), and the story constantly has to remind us that Scootaloo is hungry. The narration keeps telling me that she's hungry at nearly every given opportunity, and it doesn't relent for the first fifth or so of a nearly 10,000 word fic.

“Wow, Scootaloo, I’ve never heard your stomach growl that loudly before,” Sweetie Belle exclaimed.

“Hungry?” remarked Scootaloo. “More like starving.” She held her stomach as it growled hungrily again.

“I like the sound of that. Especially the part where we eat!” remarked Scootaloo hungrily.

We get it, she's hungry. But see, the most pervasive issue is that the author takes these small little moments and expands them beyond all reason. For example, Scootaloo's stomach keeps rumbling. We get three or four uses of onomatopoeia, and reminders that her stomach keeps grumbling ad nauseam.

She quickly noticed the noise emanating from Scootaloo, whose stomach continued to grumble loudly.

“Grrrrr,” Scootaloo grumbled as she held her stomach to cover up the noise.

“Sorry, it’s just I’m starving and I can’t stand my stomach growling,” explained Scootaloo as she rubbed her rumbling belly.

Scootaloo was far too hungry to think of anything as she lay slumped over her scooter, still grasping her growling stomach.

Scootaloo’s stomach roared at the very mention of Spike’s cookies, making everyone once again stare at the hungry filly.

Keep in mind that all of these descriptions are written together, some right after the other, within the first few hundred words. It becomes a joke. The best part is that these aren't even all of them.

Another example is the amount of times a thunderclap occurs and Apple Bloom gets scared, starts crying, and hides under something, like a table. I lost count. It was hilarious.

The prose itself is telly in the extreme. Characters often say or do something, and then we're told of it in the next line, as if this story has short-term memory lost. At every opportunity, without fail, we're explicitly told what the characters are feeling or what they're thinking. Frankly it insulted my intelligence. Now look, the advice of "show, don't tell" can get very easily misconstrued. Yes, exclusively telling is bad, but so is only showing, in my personal opinion. A balance of the two ought to be reached, and that balance depends on what story you want to tell. If it's a historical piece loaded with exposition, it's more appropriate to tell. This story was not that, unfortunately.

But my favourite offender is the artificial and forced characterization. I did not buy a single line of dialogue that came out of anyone's mouth. None of it sounded right. Even when it did, it felt like the characters were being forced to say those things. Am I really supposed to believe that Twilight harbours this intense motherly side for Apple Bloom of all characters? Just look at this:

A smile formed on Apple Bloom’s face. “Thank ya... Mommy.”

Twilight held her hoof over her mouth, tears starting to well up in her eyes. She knew Apple Bloom wasn’t referring to her — she was merely mumbling in her sleep — but still, the very words that came out made Twilight overcome with emotion.

You see what I mean by forced character writing? This is so incredibly exaggerated and artificial that I'm convinced each and every character has been secretly replaced with a changeling. The characters are made to act in the way the author wanted them to, without any consideration for how they would actually act. After I read this part, I instantly predicted every single interaction that would take place afterwards, including the ending. And I was dead on right on all of them. In other words, the best word to describe this story is "repetitive." The dialogue is repetitive, the narration is repetitive, the interactions are repetitive, and almost every scene sounded the same.

Twilight, if Apple Bloom is scared of the thunder, why do you keep suggesting new games? What is that going to solve? Also, why did Apple Bloom's friends just abandon her? Why was Twilight's letter to Applejack so unnecessarily long when it could have been, like, two brief lines? Why is 90% of Twilight's dialogue variations of "it's okay, I'm here for you"?

There's not a single line in this story that I unironically enjoyed reading. None of it sounded natural or meaningful or convincing. This is a fluff fic in the truest definition of the word. But man, whenever it mentioned Apple Bloom getting scared for the 17th time or Twilight "consoling" her, I couldn't help but get the biggest grin on my face—in anticipation for how I was going to rip this thing apart.

The only objectively good remark I can make is about the grammar. It's mostly clean and I spotted very few errors. That and there's nothing offensively bad.

The rest, though? I loved it for all the wrong reasons. With all that said, Astral, here's why you shouldn't be disheartened. Yes, this story is awful, but for your first one-shot?—it's leagues better than my first one-shots. In fact, this is better than anything I wrote on Fimfiction during my first year or so. And now look at me, I'm an EqD-featured writer. If I can improve from my previous abject levels of bad writing, so can you. Hell, I'm sure you already have improved.

This fic gets a 2/10. Easily. But always strive for improvement, no matter what.

7170985
0/10
Not a single blunt or joint.