Title: In the Silence of the Night
By: Tropical Applejack

Rating: Everyone
Status: Complete
Read: 1,830 (all)
Tags: MLP: FiM; Romance; Sad; Twilight; Luna

Description:

This story now has a sequel! You can check it out here: In the Twilight Sky: Eternal Stars

Twilight loved Flash Sentry with all her heart. But now, several decades later, he's dead. Though her friends and brother still continue to live in their old age, her life has not been without heavy losses. However, this one hit her harder than the others. With so many ponies she cares about being so close to the end, she feels lost.

But there are still ponies that understand exactly how she's feeling. Luna tracks Twilight down to a small pond, where she is isolating herself from the rest of Equestria. What follows is a gentle heart-to-heart between two immortals that now feel alone in the world.

Edited by Shadowghostalex.

Review:
In the Silence of the Night is told from a third person intimate point of view, like someone reading the words off of a storybook. This plays well into the beginning paragraphs, which sets the atmosphere of the story and reveals where Twilight is in the story. The description says enough; the conflict is spawned from a rift between Twilight and her contrived love interest Flash Sentry.

But take whatever reservations or excitement you have about that pairing and push it aside. The conversation this story has with itself tried to tackle the consequences of living an immortal life with mortal love. The decision to place Luna in this situation with Twilight is a clever one, as it is the most likely to happen. Cadence and Celestia are both maternal figures to Twilight, leaving Luna, a voice of wisdom not often heard on the show, to give Twilight advice on romance, a topic not often heard on the show.

The weaknesses of this short story are the flow of its writing and technical quality. I expect the flow of the story to be handled delicately in excellent short stories since they don't have many words to impress the reader. And even though this story doesn't read choppily there are still areas that did not receive the same kind of care as the rest of the story.

The narrator becomes a weakness as the reader feels occasionally told things rather than shown; this is a common trait among short stories, but being common doesn't make anything stand out. Additionally, the author has areas to improve with dialogue. Punctuation such as triple full-stops is used to express pauses where descriptions would give a more vivid view of the character's emotions or thoughts. At certain places, additionally, an attempt to emulate Luna's speech pattern makes her sound more robotic in reality.

I rate this story 4/5 Traumatized Twilights

All in all this story is a good read with enough technical quality to hold it above mistake-ridden fodder that can easily make its way into your library just because of a good idea. Even though this idea is not totally original, the author adds their own canon to the mix to give the characters a new perspective while utilizing the classic Shakespearean relationship of Eros and Thanatos, love and death, to create emotionally charged interactions between the two main characters.

P.S. This bit is less professional, but it's 2 AM and I'm typing this up with my eyes half-closed and my brain half-asleep, so forgive any redundancies or spelling errors.

6738846
Huh. Okay.
So what I'm getting from this is that I should focus more on making dialogue more... descriptive? And also try to not force a certain speaking style with characters, as well as try to have a better idea of when there it's a better idea to go with first person or third person. Am I reading the advice correctly?

6739108
Not exactly. The decision to use third-person or first-person depends on your goals for the story. First-person would help you show Twilight's inner thoughts a lot better, while third-person shows a whole scene. For the purposes of creating the scene, third-person was the right choice. One of the issues with dialogue is where Luna approaches Twilight:

"Oh... Luna...."

"..."

"Thanks for trying to check on me, but-"

The use of triple stops to generate suspense and demonstrate Twilight's saddened speech tells the reader very little. What is the body language, how do the character's look at each other, what elements of the environment can enhance the reader's sensation of what is happening? This would have been a good point for the narrator's voice to be used, rather than just giving the audience a pause that carries very little weight.

Then, as Luna's dialogue progresses:

"Yes, Twilight, you want to be left alone. I understand that. I have to talk to you though. So you won't make the same mistakes I did."

"This may be exactly what you expected somepony to tell you, but... I know exactly how you feel."

"I suppose my circumstances were not quite the same as yours, but try to take this as another alicorn's realization of what love entails."

Luna has very formal prose in which she generally speaks succinctly, and it is important to express this so that your characters actually sound like they are who they are. The advice is not "to not force a certain speaking style with characters," but to give them their speaking style in a way that sounds natural.

The first line is too choppy, broken up by full stops when commas or additional words would be more appropriate. The second line also feels artificially constructed, even though the sentiments are commonly expressed in conversation. Something along the lines of "I want you to know that are not alone, Twilight. We are here, and we know exactly how you feel." The "we" has a more powerful double meaning, as it is known that Luna likes to speak in the formal register, where the self is not referred to as "I" but as "we." It also refer to the other princesses, which Luna later mentions. Giving one word two possible meanings is a way to fill a smaller word count with more literary effect.

The last quoted line also has the same weaknesses as the others. The idea gets through, but it doesn't sound natural, which makes it harder for a reader to buy into the idea that they are peering into a real scene with Twilight and Luna.

I didn't want to get into the details since this was a review, not an edit, but I hope this clears up some of the weaknesses that I identified and helps you understand its rating.

6739504
Okay, I think I get it.
When you said 4/5 traumatized Twilights, does that mean you gave it 1/5 stars, or 4/5 stars? Either way, I'll try to take this criticism to heart, because you make excellent points.
Don't use full stops when the full stops can be filled with meaningful content, and don't enforce a character's speaking pattern to the point it becomes out of the tone or robotic.

6739518
4/5 Traumatized Twilights works the same way as 3/5 Starving Scootaloos or 4/5 Monty Pythons (other rating systems I have used). It's 4/5.

6739525
Alright. Thanks for the advice!