[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

I read: Completed at 1,940 words, 4 chapters
I rate: 2/10
I recommend: Skip

You know how they “write what you know”? I mean, of course you do - everyone says it and it usually pretty good advice. Personally, I’d recommend instead for you to just write what you want to read because, last time I checked, everyone had a childhood. Might not have been a good childhood but I’m pretty confident that, unless you’re like a soundcloud rapper escaped from his cloning facility, everyone did actually mature from being a baby to wherever they are right now. And that begs the question then - why would I want to read about somebody else’s childhood?

If you’re like me and you’re a bit slow to the upkeep and/or are too concerned with figuring out how to get grease stains out your jeans to seriously pay attention here, then let me explain. This story is about the author’s childhood - with everyone ponified but otherwise just acting like normal children. And here we run into the first of many issues: Why is everyone a pony? The author, Lunestia StoryHart, is not a pony irl, and trying to transpose explicitly human experiences into Equestria is hit and miss process. Would it not be wiser to simply set this in the Equestria Girls universe?

Anyhow, ponification notwithstanding, the actual story here isn’t that good. I know it's supposed to be autobiographical. But keep in mind that both me and you, dear reader, have absolutely no clue whatsoever as to who Lunestia actually is or what her childhood was actually like. Therefore, there isn’t actually an excuse to not have a properly-paced plot, satisfying conclusion, or interesting characters. Just recollecting random childhood memories with little regard to actual story composition (such as a three act structure) is not a great read.

Furthermore, the grammar is not up to point. There are multiple misused words, misplaced capital letters, mediocre punctuation and the author keeps spelling “years” as “yrs” - yeah, that gets very distracting very fast and writing like this actually breaks immersion. It takes you out of the story because you keep noticing how the sentences just don’t work properly.

My next point of discussion would be the narration itself. Now, the author here did one of those things everyone likes - namely, she included other people’s OCs as characters in her story. However, this also means that each and every character who has even the slightest bit of impact on her life is described in excruciating and repetitive detail. And mundane appearances don’t really matter that much in stories (look at Stephen King’s writing for an example) - a reader has an imagination and forcing them to see a character just as you’ve described them when they appearance has no bearing on the story whatsoever, again, breaks immersion. Furthermore, this actual effort spent in description really should’ve been better spent in describing personality. We’ve hit with a list of character who are effectively cardboard cutouts just coloured in differently - that makes a lot of Lunestia’s struggles seem trivial when everyone she meets is so samey.

Also, the author has a habit of robotically writing simple sentence after simple sentence and that actually make reading this quite boring. There isn’t any emotion conveyed in the writing itself (especially since the punctuation lets it down too) and a story like this lives and dies on emotional investment. If I don’t care what happened to Lunestia the character, I’d put this down and read something else.

Plot: 1/5. There isn’t a plot - most of it is just rambling.
Characters: 1/5. Lunestia’s OC is the only character with any personality past a cardboard stereotype.
Style: 1/5. The grammar is subpar and breaks immersion while the narration is boring.
Execution: 1/5. Semi-fictitious biographies can work. It doesn’t work here though.
Overall Rating: 4/20 = 2/10

To Lunestia StoryHart: I know this is a harsh review but that is really in part because I’m disappointed about the fumbled potential here. Clearly, if you were compelled to write this, then you must have experienced some really serious stuff. However, until you work on your grammar (get an editor) and actually compose these memories into an actual story rather than just blandly stating everything that happened, especially when direct audience addresses should be in the author's notes as per FimFic guideline, you won’t have a good story.

For something like this:

• Never Be Alone discusses similar themes of adolescence and friendship, albeit with Scootaloo instead of an OC. It isn’t autobiographical (as far as I can tell) but it is worth a read nonetheless.
• If you absolutely must read an semi-autobiographical story, I collaborated with Artist on one - I went to school.

As always, thanks for reading. If you like this review, why not check out more of my writing here?