Title: I Hear the Stars by Whinifree
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Reject (7/10, seconded by That one RationalCritic)
Reason:

What’s this? A sadfic featuring one of my favorite characters?

Anyways, I did think this story had some good points to it, but it also had some bad points to it that held me back from accepting it.

The main thing I thought could’ve been improved with this, and the principal reason it was not an accept, is the writing. Sure it’s grammatically clean, but the biggest issue is that it’s just kind of dry and bland. Some of the more exposition-heavy aspects of the story, particularly the beginning, just get tough to get through. The writing doesn’t really add much to such an emotionally-charged story, just instead kind of blandly and mechanically describe what is happening around the characters.

Secondly, the wordiness. This story is nearly 10,000 words, and it could have lost about half that and still have stayed about the same story. There’s a lot of extraneous writing throughout, especially when it does get to those exposition-heavy sections. A couple of things, such as Tempest now knowing how to introduce herself and talking about what her friends did to her so many years ago, are mentioned a few times, and they don’t really add much by being discussed frequently.

Now, onto what I liked about this story. I’m a bit of a sucker for Tempest backstories (admittedly), and this did not disappoint. While a tad sappy, it made a happy ending for Tempest reconnecting with her past and learning to move on from what was done to her so long ago. There’s some notes of bittersweetness in there as well, such as in Glitter Drops’ death and in her parents having to live for 20 years not knowing where their daughter was. It showed the passage of time well, where both of her friends grew up and realized their wrongdoings, as well as her parents never really forgetting their own child. The emotion, while happier than I expected from a story with the “Sad” tag, was good and left me satisfied with the backstory of hers that the author created.

All in all though, I have to reject this. While it had some good emotion, the technical aspects of the writing were not as strong. It’s rather dry and verbose, which can make it kind of drag on at points throughout the story. For those reasons, this story is a reject.

6566525
Sad and Horror fics are some of the hardest to write from what I've seen. There has to be a perfect balance struck in terms of emotion and events, because as soon as a reader loses their immersion, it's pretty much over. Props to the writer and reviewer.

6566525
Thank you for the feedback. Since I'd like to get at least one thing accepted by a review group during my Fimfic career I will be going over the story and fixing as best as I can without losing the essence of it then resubmitting.

6566525
Okay. I've done some revisions and taken out everything I could find that was bogging this down based on this review. I'll resubmit next month.