Tears in the Cold

[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

Today we look at another story discussing the disturbing lack of parentage possessed by Scootaloo for 90% of the show’s cannon. Here, we have Scootaloo hanging with her friends and their family in a Christmas sort of party thing (this was not entirely clear) and eventually telling a story about how her father was killed.

This was a decent story at its heart, a sort of sad slice of life. While the ‘Scootaloo is an orphan’ story is well trodden, this at least takes the effort to use a twist on the concept that I have not seen before, she indirectly and inadvertently killed him. Due to being the reason for her own misfortune, Scoots has some survivor’s guilt going on and it is decently interesting to read how the author went about portraying this.

Unfortunately, this story has glaring issues in my eyes that keep it from being a satisfactory read.

One thing I have to note negatives wise is that the writing is off. I was going through the story at first and I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was not being done right, and I think I figured out the reason; sentences like this are decently common.

With all her friends coming over, it was clear the bond Scootaloo had with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, folks could swear they were like sisters.

Sentences have a habit of occasionally becoming disjointed, with ideas not following with what is being said or being written in a way that is either going for a higher level of English or the result of the author not fully grasping some of the rules. With this example specifically, the breaks formed by the commas cause issues because the first part and the second part do not follow each other as written.

Secondly I would have to bring up the pacing as a criticism. Things move really fast, with little down-time to allow tension to fester and grow. Based on the tags and the tone that was seemingly being attempted, this was supposed to be a story that was meant to inspire sympathy and sorrow. Unfortunately, this story was written like it had a 50 page lore/story bible, but we only got to see the first page or two, but not in the good way. The problem is that the focus is too wide. In the story, the author is more than likely trying to invoke sympathy for Scootaloo and her lack of a father. The problem is, the author doesn’t sit down and do everything to reinforce this.

The primary reason for why I think this is because none of the characters seem to have more depth than what is required to progress the story and an abundance of useless information. I’ll address the information bit as I think that is where the pacing problem derives from the most. So, with the story being about Scoot being sad she ain’t got a dad, why were the gingerbread scene and the stabbing scene not capitalized on? Both of these scenes were only used to justify a transition to the next scene while not really adding anything to the story. If I was to rework this story, one of the first changes would be to reinforce how isolated Scoots feels by having her internally comment on how she wants to be comforted like Applebloom was and to describe how her gingerbread house or the others tugged at her heart in some why (unfortunately, giving the full descriptions and corrections with the reasonings for why would be a full page or two, and I would rather not turn this review into 90% ‘here is how you do this one thing better and why it would be better this way’).

As for the characters, the problem I have can be described using a joker quote; “You can’t savor all the… little emotions.” Almost exclusively, there is an uncomfortable lack of subtlety in both the dialog and actions of the characters. What would have drastically improved the story would be small physical shifts, vocal hitches, something to show that the characters were more than just words on a screen.

Final scores;

Writing: 6/10, As I said earlier, the writing is not ideal. There is a strangeness to the flow of things that made reading this story a bit of a slog and created an undue amount of confusion. If the author finds the time, I would suggest either going over it again of finding an editor to buff out the irregularities.

Pacing: 5/10, Things just go by too fast to impact how they should in a story like this. Because we are not allowed to see the little emotions of characters or to sit back as things progressed, wondering how everything is going to play out, the tension suffers and makes reading further feel like more of an obligation than a desire.

Characters: 4/10, Major work needs to be done here as there was practically zero instances were characters showed any depth. Some good advice I would have would be to have every character have at least one instance of reservation or insecurity to show at least a level of inner conflict or struggle, because as it stands, every character is candid as can be and responds like a computer would, replying in what would be considered the optimal manner.

Concept/Originality: 3/10, Again, Scootaloo is an orphan. This is such a well-known and accepted idea in the fan base that the show had to address the issue. There is the comforting fact that HOW she became an orphan was a breath of fresh air, but there just wasn’t enough here to make the story feel enough like something I haven’t read before.

Atmosphere: 6/10, This is mostly a product of the pacing and characters. The issue here is that if you are familiar with story construction and progression, this story feels like it was made in a paint-by-numbers style, with the elements being written formulaically without graceful transitions to make the story feel organic.

Total Score: 24/50 or 4.8/10, This story is in need of some work to address the issues brought up. There was an interesting story buried here, but the construction of things leaves much to be desired. Going forward, I would suggest that the author spend a little more time fleshing out how they want their story to play out and make sure that most, if not everything being used, serves a purpose and advances the narrative. Additionally, when using characters, I would suggest asking the question ‘what would they do here?’ for every action you want them to take and not have a fixed outcome in mind, or to take into account the personality the character has and determine how they would phrase and act when saying the thing you want them to say.

My apologies for the late reply. I just noticed this. With that said, I apolgozes for the lack of details on the story. Ill admit this is mostly due to my inexperience and constructive criticism like this makes re-writing this much easier now that I know what to fix and how to go about it. Thank you for taking time out of your day to give me a deep insight on this