EThe Hour of Twilight

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Sad

Losing a friend is hard. Losing yourself is harder.

• Alt. Universe
• Twilight

-Pinkamena_Pie- · 1.1k words  ·  29  1 · 859 views

She'd do anything to atone.Summary: After a spell goes awry, Twilight is horrified by her own actions.

Usually I’ll try to open this up with something witty. Today I’ve got nothing. Oh well. 

Today’s story is a good old fashioned tale about loss. It’s short but not really sweet (because it’s about loss), and tackles a pretty heavy concept for being so light. The story twists and turns and ends up going in a direction that I didn’t really expect it to go to, and while it’s very unexpected and surprising, I can’t help but feel that at the end it deviates from its original intentions. Let’s hit it.

The plotline starts with an interesting concept and then takes an even more interesting turn. We begin with Twilight, who has just committed a horrible mistake: she has accidentally killed Pinkie Pie with a rogue spell.

I should note here that the author credits a music video as inspiration for this story, which I have not listened to yet. But conceptually, I still feel like I’m missing something, because the author doesn’t start off with the accident itself. Rather, we pick up the story a few days afterwards. 

This made me think that this story would be a character analysis of Twilight as she grapples with the guilt of her own actions and searches for a solution. And in a sense that’s what we get, until the ending. But belaying that for a bit, let’s focus on this part of the story.

Inherently I think this has the potential to become a very powerful story. But as it stands right now it feels like it’s missing something. Starting at the point after the accident is an interesting move, and if done right it can definitely play off. But as it stands I don’t think this section is nearly as strong as it could be.

As I said I was expecting the chunk of the story to focus on Twilight’s reflection about Pinkie and deal with her as she grapples with her emotions. I think we really only get two paragraphs that address Pinkie directly and how Twilight feels about this. And maybe this is okay. Perhaps she’s still in denial, or this isn’t the aspect of the story the author wanted to focus on.

Whatever the case, I can’t help but feel that the exposition of this story feels tell-y. We get flashbacks that list off everything Twilight has done before we get into what Twilight is doing now, and I can’t help but feel the emotion here is slightly numbed by the pacing.

The story just feels that it is moving way too quickly as a whole, and it doesn’t seem to spend too long dwelling on any particular point. On top of this it feels like I’m missing information and as such don’t really know what to take away from this story.

Twilight’s actions at the end of the story are quite drastic and take a sharp turn from the direction I thought the story was going to go in. From a plot perspective the twist is pretty well executed, but there really isn’t anything that follows it. I believe the author plans on making a sequel, but by itself, I’m left with not much to work with when I take this story by itself.

So in conclusion, the plot is definitely not what I expected it to be. There seems to be less of an emphasis on the loss itself and more on the extreme actions that Twilight resorts to. There are elements of self-blame and bitterness mixed with denial and depression, but I have a hard time pulling these apart because they’re so sparse and rare. 

The main character here is obviously Twilight, and I think her character is mostly well done. She is clearly still hurting from the loss and is seeking a solution, but again I don’t think the other really delves into the ‘loss’ aspect of her character more so than her overall reaction.

Yes, people take loss in different ways, and yes, I can see some aspects of depression and denial embedded in Twilight’s character, but… I just want more.

Her final actions at the end of the story are also quite extreme, and it could be argued that this goes against her role as Princess of Friendship, as she goes against the grain and doesn’t tell her friends as to what she plans. I’m not going to go too in-depth here because there is an AU tag, but I will say that I would have loved to see some more development in Twilight’s character. As it stands I can’t exactly relate to her or understand her actions.

Grammar was mostly solid. There were a few word choices and odd sentences that I don’t quite agree with but still function well.

I think my biggest problem with this story is that I just don’t feel like I have the whole story. As I said in a previous review, The Burden of Hope, this feels like a part of something bigger. And that’s fine, but by itself I have a hard time getting behind the impact of the story. I just don’t feel like I have enough information to draw any conclusions, and the emotional impact is sort of lost on me. 

Well, that’s that I suppose. I hope you found that helpful! Next up is going to be Seer’s Recollections of a Nightmare. See you then!

Deuces.

If you like short emotional pieces dealing with loss, you might like this story.

Keep up the good work! I’m interested to see where you take this idea. I hope you found what I had to say helpful.

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

Plot: 5
Characterization: 7
Grammar: 8

Average: 6.67

7197407
Glad you fixed the error (edited)

Well, you certainly got this review right.

I understand your misgivings with the plot. And here's my explanation:

This is a side story to the little series I have going on where I throw up words and jumble them up to see what sticks. It's not meant to act on its' own, but I'm starting to think I should rewrite it to be it's own story.

It originally describes the events after Pinkie Pie is teleported to a different universe in The Super Duper Awesome Life of the Party Pony, and what Twilights' assumption was, how she dealt with it, all that good stuff.

Now, I'm more of an action writer, rather than an emotional or tragedy writer, so I went way out of my comfort zone here, which may be why you felt the pacing was fast. I'm just no good when it comes to drawing out sadness, it's go, go, go with me.

Anyway, thanks for the review. Feel free to check out the other three fanfics I wrote. Just be warned, your brain is going to melt like crazy from the leaps and bounds I make in time. It has a random tag after all.

Your questions should be somewhat answered in them.

7197798
Interesting, I'm quite the opposite in that my strong suit seems to be emotional writing while my weak points are action. That explanation makes a bit more sense! I'm glad you found my review helpful! Also, next time make sure to reply to me so I get notified!