Title: A Week in the Winter Storm
By: Samuel-Neocros

Rating: Everyone

Status: Complete

Words Read: 2001 (all)

Tags: MLP: FiM; Romance; Slice of Life; Rainbow Dash; OC

Description:

Winter is coming, and Neocros, publicly known as Samneo, is stuck inside his cabin with Rainbow Dash. The two spend the night inside the cabin, and Neocros expresses something that he's been working on for the past few months or so.

For CategoricalGrant's contest here

Honestly, this story feels like a Christmas Special, even though this story is not canon to The Water Dragon. This story is a stand alone fimfic.

Review:
With just a word over two-thousand, there isn't much plot or turn of events to be enthralled in. It is more or less a single scene. For that reason, when I go into these short stories, I expect a higher quality overall, because larger stories sometimes require the author to divide his/her attention between multiple different parts.

One strength and weakness is the fact that this is part of the author's other story, where their Original Character comes from. This can be a strength to readers of his work since he states it is meant to be a special of sorts, despite the fact it is a stand-alone story and not canonical in his own main story. The negative effect of this is that readers looking for a quick read they can sink into won't have the same empathy toward the OC as the author intended.

Another condition outside of the story itself is that this is a self-insert of the author's own avatar. As shown by his bio, this story is clearly influenced by his own desire to make Rainbow Dash his OC's "waifu," as fans are wont to do nowadays. Keeping professional, this is entirely a personal preference and I cannot make it a strength or weakness, but as a reader, it should be kept in mind.

Overall the writing lacks polish. There are not consistent grammatical errors throughout, primarily mistakes in verb conjugation between the past tense and the past participle, with a few syntactical weaknesses throughout:

would’ve froze

should be "would've frozen"

weather

is mistaken for its homonym, "whether."
and

the song he’s made is made up of raw power, so either it’ll sooth her into his touch, or it will scratch her, and leave a permanent scar

contains both spelling errors (soothe) and structured confusingly.

I rate this a "pass" with 3/5 Romantic Rainbows
The largest problem isn't the technical writing, but the lack of story progression. It's clearly narrated that the OC and Rainbow Dash have a comfortable relationship together, and the only "conflict" is the OC trying to sing a romantic song. Does it improve their relationship? Probably. Were there any changes or reasons why the reader should feel the importance of the song? There weren't any clear ones, at least. It's possible there's more to the build-up of this short story from the canon continuity, but as a stand-alone, it very weakly draws the reader's attention.