EHigher and Higher

• MLP: FiM
• Tragedy

Inside the mind of Sunset Shimmer was a voice who never gave up.

• Sunset Shimmer

Lumina Faith · 1k words  ·  25  2 · 926 views

I am unstoppable! Three (fine, technically two because one was written already) reviews in a day! Ahahahaha! 

In all honesty, I finished this one faster than I expected, because I forgot the next two stories in my queue are shorter works. So, get ready for probably a shorter review. For only being a thousand words long, Higher and Higher actually captures Sunset’s character quite well, and even better, it never even mentions her by name. I think the characterization here is quite brilliant, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Let’s hit it!

The plot of this story is interesting, and in a good way. The story is about the rise and subsequent fall of Sunset Shimmer, starting as a lone mare in an orphanage and becoming the personal student of Princess Celestia.

Now pacing wise, the story moves pretty quickly, but I think that it’s supposed to. This piece is meant to be a bit of reflection on Sunset’s part, as the voice in her head chides her for her past mistakes and ambitions. 

I don’t think I have any major complaints here. I was wondering why Sunset was so well recognized here but not in canon, but the author provides an explanation for this, so nice touch!

I guess one point I can say is that I just wish this piece was longer. The story takes a bit of time to set up the rise of Sunset, and all of it is well done. But it’s the fall part of the story that feels extremely abrupt. Granted, her fall is abrupt, but I would have liked a bit more. Maybe desperation and paranoia, as she worries that ponies are talking smack about her, or her panic when Princess Celestia gives her a weird look, or any amount of action that leads to her venturing through the portal. But overall? I think it’s fine. 

Sunset is a very interesting character her, because we can see that deep down she’s just a mare that wants to be loved. She has a lot of backstory and quite a bit of motivational factors affecting her, and I think each one of these factors is at part explored. Perhaps the ‘orphan’ aspect can be touched on a tiny bit more, but I think the story stands fine as it is.

Now, even though there is only one character tagged in this story, there’s actually a second: the voice. Weird fact: apparently not everybody has a ‘voice inside their head.’ When I think, for example, I ‘hear’ myself speaking sentences in my head. Apparently, others think in pictures rather than sentences. Weird stuff!

But yes, the story is not told from Sunset’s point of view, but rather the voice inside her head’s. When I first settled into this story, the use of the pronoun ‘you’ threw me off, and I had to check if this was a second-person story, but I quickly figured it out.

This story is really a conversation between Sunset and… well, herself, as she reminisces on how everything went wrong. And I think it plays out here beautifully. I could probably do a full-blown literary analysis looking at Sunset as a tragic character, but I think I’ll just leave at this: the characterization is very good, and Sunset herself doesn’t even speak to us directly! 

There are a few moments in this story, particularly towards the end, where the author utilizes features like text size and additional spacing. People might think of these as cringey methods, but here, everything comes to play quite brilliantly.

Particularly, I love the emphasis on the word ‘higher,’ and I think the enlarging of this text immidetly followed by small text is brilliant. Some people might find this a bit hard to read, but I think this is just a risk the author is going to have to take, and personally? I love it. 

There were a few odd words here and there but nothing major. The editor within me is satisfied.

For only being a thousand words, this story gives quite a lot. My major complaint is that it’s too short, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. And yes, the length does make this a nice, digestible story that doesn’t take long to read or understand, but… give me more, dang it! I’m greedy!

All jokes aside, I’m pretty impressed with this work. I’ve done some experimental stuff myself, and I applaud the author for having the bravery to do something different and unique. The concept is rock solid and the execution is well done. Great work! 

Up next we've got My Little Epona's The Station, another short fic, so hopefully I can get that out very, very soon. Stay safe out there!

Deuces.

If you want a nice, short read or if you want to know more about Sunset, read this story! 

Don’t think I have more to say other than what I’ve said already. This thing is going into my favorites list. Good job! 

I do have my reading notes for your fic, if you would like to see them let me know.

Plot: 7
Characterization: 8
Grammar: 9

Average: 8.33

7193746
Ah, now I actually have time to properly respond :P First, thank you so much for taking the time to both read my story and write a review! I know it's a short one, but I appreciate it all the same!

Grammar: I do agree with your observations, as the piece was extremely experimental on my part and especially so for the font formatting. If I went over it again with a fine-toothed comb, I could probably find quite a few things to fix, though part of me would try to argue that the lack of extreme perfection and flow adds to the story; Sunset, while brilliant, is no linguist in my mind, and her grasp on what would and wouldn't make sense in her self-reflection would loosen as she becomes more emotional.

Characterization: I like to think that I'm a very detail-oriented writer that thrives in character descriptions and depictions, so I'm happy that at least some part of that was validated I'd argue that the orphan bits are glossed over more because they're parts of Sunset's life that she'd rather not dwell on, but I think that was mostly just me being lazy at exposition

Plot (and I did this last because of lots of words):
I do agree that it is very fast-paced and arguably too fast, but I like to think that it's a fair representation of our moments of self-reflection. As much as some of us may loath to admit it, the adults and teachers in our lives are right when they say that self-reflection doesn't always come so easily, especially an in-depth self-reflection where you go over everything. Sunset sees her ambitions and past actions as the greatest points of failure in her life, especially when she became so tunnel-visioned on becoming an alicorn, (as seen in the comic, where she disregards any notion of getting caught and breaks into the archives), and like a lot of people might do, she skips over parts of her memory that she thinks are not related to her problem. In the end, she might not even have changed that much from when she was Celestia's student: she's still focusing on herself before others.

In addition to this, our memories are not always reliable and can get coloured by later events. Where Sunset used to think that her achievements were a point of pride, she's more ashamed of them because of how she acted and focuses more on her own actions because of how the memories of what she did come more readily to her in her later years. Where she once ignored (or not even noticed) looks of concern because she was too focused on bettering herself, she's now left wondering that if she had seen any, would she have still gone down that path? Either way, she still acted terribly to the ponies around her, and that's what she hyper-focuses on throughout the story.

Conclusion: As I stated before in the group's Discord server, I do feel like I could extend the story, possibly in a rewrite! That won't be happening right now, though, so you'll just have to settle for what we have already Thank you again for reviewing and liking my first published story on the site!