EReflection

• Equestria Girls
• Sad
• Slice of Life

Sunset Shimmer tells the story of her past to a friend while spending time on the beach.

• Sunset Shimmer
• Sci-Twi

SunTwi06 · 4.1k words  ·  56  5 · 1.9k views

Summary

During a relaxing trip to the beach, Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle have an intimate conversation about Sunset’s past. Through the course of the emotionally charged conversation, Sunset and Twilight grow closer as they bond over shared trauma. Sunset learns to open up about her pain to the friend who can best understand what she’s gone through.

First Impressions

I was drawn to this story because of the premise. I’ve always been interested in Sunset Shimmer as a character, and I love to see different author’s perspectives in how she deals with her own emotional baggage, and how that affects her relationships with her friends.

I found the characterizations to be honest, realistic, and emotionally compelling. The author takes an interesting approach to Sunset Shimmer and the way she handles her guilt. This is a Sunset Shimmer who regrets her actions, but not necessarily her goals or ambitions. Twilight is handled in a similar way, and I think in both cases it works well.

While I’d prefer to spend most of my time on this review dealing with content and plot, there is a grammar issue that becomes a huge stumbling block to any read through of the story. Throughout the text, the author continues to switch back and forth between present tense and past tense narration. This becomes hugely problematic, distracting the reader jarringly from the story itself.

If you can look past the issue with tenses, the story still struggles with some unclear dialogue and repetitive/unnecessary descriptions. The author spends a great deal of space recapping storylines the reader will already be familiar with, which negatively impacts the pacing of the story.

While I don’t want to spoil the ending here, I want to note that I think it was well written. Many of the story’s pacing issues completely disappear by the last few paragraphs, and the story ends on a sweet note. I enjoyed how the story ended, and feel it was well done and believable.

Ratings by Category

Characters: 6/10. The motivations and emotions of the characters felt real and honest. The core plot of the story, or the main idea behind it, works very well. It makes sense that these two, Twilight and Sunset, would feel a sense of otherness, or separation, from the rest of the girls due to their brush with their own dark sides. The author clearly shows why they would particularly gravitate towards each other.

Even while the author narrates events from the show that we should already be familiar with (which is probably unnecessary) he does so with the unique perspectives of the involved characters, and remains consistent and true to who these characters are.

The description of what the other characters are doing, however, is completely unneeded and slows down the opening of the story considerably. Since they are largely unimportant to the conflict and resolution of the story, there presence is superfluous.

Setting: 4/10. The setting is over-described, using repetitive language and clichés. Consider the opening two sentances of the story:

On a hot summer afternoon, the sun scorched down upon the Earth so furiously. Temperatures were at an all-time high, so hot in fact that a passerby could crack an egg upon the sidewalk and cook it.

Despite these problems, the setting plays a clear role in the story beyond simply ‘the place the action takes place’. It influences how the conversation proceeds between the two characters, though the author is perhaps a bit blatant in how the symbolism is pointed out to the reader. For example:

Sunset Shimmer turns toward the sun again, as if the very mention of her old teacher reminds her of the sun. But then again, her teacher wasn’t the ‘Princess of the Sun’ just for the fancy title alone.

It's a little heavy handed the way this is pointed out to the reader, but it does show that deliberate thought was given to why the story was taking place where it was.

Dialogue: 5/10. The dialogue is earnest and honest at times, clunky and overly verbose at others. The author overuses the single quotation mark to create emphasis in dialogue.

Plot Structure: 5/10. The story has a clear beginning/middle/end, with rising climax and a resolution. The nature of the story doesn’t require a huge amount of tension to get it’s point across.

The pacing of the story is negatively impacted by a slow beginning, and then further by some long-winded retelling of stories the reader is probably already familiar with.

On a personal note, I felt like the way the story’s resolution was handled was one of the best moments in the whole story.

Grammar: 2/10. For the most point, the author only really makes one grammatical error. The problem is, that error is so blatant, and repeated throughout the text, that it really makes the entire story a struggle to read at times. Simply fixing the constant changes between past and present tense would measurably improve the entire story.

Total: 4.4/10

Final Thoughts/Feedback: I think this story has some serious potential. The core concept is solid, and the author has the characterizations down. Many of the problems are technical in nature, and could be fixed with help from some outside perspective or editing. The relationship between the main characters is believable, and the ending is sweet.

While the mistakes and issues are easily repairable, the negative impact they have on the story itself are huge. Aside from the switching tenses, the pacing of the opening of the story and the long retellings of established history are barriers for anyone reading.

My recommendation would be to cut straight to Sunset, sitting alone by herself watching the rest of her friends play and enjoy themselves. This fixes the slow pacing of the opening. From there, repairing the changes between past and present tense and perhaps cutting down some of the exposition dialogue would make this story truly shine.

Best Part: The ending, the believable way the author shows how different/separate Sunset and Twilight are from their friends, and the realistic way Sunset approaches the conflict between her ambitions and her guilt/regrets.