EStomachaches

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Drama

Lightning Dust’s life has been a perpetual mess. As she struggles to put her life back together and repair her relationships, the last thing she needs is another version of herself appearing on her doorstep.

• Braeburn
• Little Strongheart
• Lightning Dust
• White Lightning
• Fiddlesticks

The Red Parade · 14k words  ·  148  10 · 1.5k views

Overview

This is a story about Lightning Dust. Not the Lightning Dust of the show, but one who is older, down on her luck, and perhaps just a bit wiser. It’s an introspective piece that asks whether she deserves everything that’s happened to her, given how many mistakes she’s made. And it asks just how many second chances ponies should get.

Lightning Dust has lost a wing, lost her ability to fly, and broken up with her marefriend, Fiddlesticks. She’s stuck doing weather administration in Appleloosa, and tells everypony who wants to help her that she’s fine when she isn’t. And then a magical mishap drops a younger version of herself on her head, and suddenly she has a chance to maybe change things. To teach her younger self the lessons she’d need to turn out better than she did. But it turns out it’s hard to teach your younger self to fix her problems when you’ve been spending all your time running from yours. 

Characters

The main focus here is Lightning Dust. She’s well-realized, but depressed. She’s decided she’s made too many mistakes to deserve happiness anymore, which is something a lot of people can surely relate to. The problem is that for most of the runtime, that overshadows anything else about her character. She spends a large majority of the piece telling every other character around her that she’s fine when everyone knows it’s a lie, and not much else. Only towards the end of the piece, when she’s talking with her younger self, does the rest of her character shine through.

There’s a whole set of side characters in this piece, but I’m going to lump most of them together - White Lightning, Braeburn, and Strongheart are all pretty one-dimensional here. They each have their own way of trying to support Lightning, but in the end, that’s really the only purpose they serve. Each of them gets a scene or two of trying to help in their own way, and it’s good that these all feel distinct from each other - they definitely aren’t one character masquerading as three. But they don’t have much to contribute otherwise, except for Strongheart, who leans pretty hard into the Magical Native American trope to dispense guidance.

Then there’s Young Lightning, Lightning Dust’s alternate reality younger self. Honestly, probably my favorite character in the piece. She’s brash and cocky and doesn’t listen, exactly as you’d expect. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get nearly enough screen time, and that makes the lessons she learns feel a little unearned. They’re good lessons, and the conversation the two Lightnings have is fantastic, but at the same time, they work a little too well.

Finally, we can’t talk about a Red Parade piece without mentioning Fiddlesticks. She’s understated here, but it works because even when she’s not around, she’s present. Whether it’s Lightning Dust reminiscing or other characters mentioning the relationship, it’s always on the reader’s mind. She exists as Lightning’s anchor, and she works in that role. That said, I would have liked to see a bit more chemistry between the two of them. Fiddlesticks doesn’t seem to have much agency of her own, and spends all her screen time supporting Lightning Dust. Does Lightning need the support? Yes, absolutely. But I’d still like to have seen more from her. Especially when she’s trying to tell Lightning that she’s changed - concrete examples, even just mentioning things that she remembered and that were important to her, would have gone a long way to show us why she wants Lightning Dust in her life, and what she gets out of the relationship.

Plot & Pacing

The overall message of this piece is great, and works very well. Lightning Dust is a great vehicle to examine regret over past mistakes, and throwing in magic and alternate dimensions is a great way to explore them. That said, the story does really feel quite rushed. There are lots of very fast scenes, which feel fast because of lots of short paragraphs and shorter dialogue. There are big revelations that aren’t lingered on, and a lot of questions that go unanswered. This piece could easily be twice as long without feeling bloated, and it would let us have more time with Young Lightning, explore Fiddlestick’s character more, and give us more information about the titular stomachaches, and just how those physical problems are linked to Lightning’s emotional ones.

The message of the story, and the exploration of Lightning Dust’s mental state alone make the story worth the read, and the things it does focus on - mostly Lightning’s mental state as it relates to her younger self and Fiddlesticks - are great. But there’s so much more that could be in this story, but isn’t.

Technical Skill

Overall, the prose is solid. I didn’t see any grammatical mistakes, but there are some questionable pieces of dialogue - some lines from Strongheart don’t match the rest of her dialogue, for example:

“Hmm… that may be true, but maybe it isn’t the best approach?”

On top of that, there are a lot of one-line paragraphs as characters talk back and forth. It makes the dialogue snappy (most of the time) but it also makes the story feel like it’s moving very fast, even in places where that isn’t appropriate. It slows down nicely in the conversation between the two Lightnings, but there are several other places where it doesn’t feel appropriate, such as when Strongheart brings up Lightning Dust and Fiddlestick’s breakup.

Rating

Character: 3.5/5 

Lightning Dust is a great character, and this story does a good job getting into her head. I just wish she was a bit more nuanced, and that the side characters had more chances to shine.

Plot: 3.5/5

The message here is great. I just want more time to dwell on it. There’s too many places where the story needs to slow down and breathe, and doesn’t.

Mechanics: 4/5

Mechanically, the prose works. The dialogue just needs a bit of tightening up, and it could really do with a few more descriptions.

Final Score: 3.66/5

A solid piece about a character you want to know more about, that could do with another five thousand words or so.

Final Thoughts

If you like introspective pieces where the main obstacle is the main character themselves, you’ll like this one. It does well in presenting a side of Lightning Dust that the show never gave us, and if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s well worth the read.