EA Special Gift

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

It's the first Hearth's Warming after Twilight's coronation, and Starlight notices that Twilight has been overworking herself. She wants to make Hearth's Warming perfect, so she enlists Sunset's help...

• Main 6
• Sunset Shimmer
• Starlight Glimmer

iAmSiNnEr · 7.4k words  ·  72  6 · 1.8k views

A Special Gift

by iAmSiNnEr

Summary

Starlight wants to surprise Twilight on Hearth's Warming but needs something fresh, and thus she enlists Sunset Shimmer's help, to ask her how they celebrate Hearth's Warming on the other side. Sunset agrees to help, and they work together to make the perfect Hearth's Warming for Twilight.

Initial Thoughts

I always love seeing certain character-combinations in stories, either because of their relative rarity, or because of the sheer amount of drama/characterization that could be put on display. Let’s be real, it’s far more exciting to see Sunset and Starlight interact than Pinkie and Dash. Not because P&D are bad, but because we don’t often get to put two such volatile ponies in a room together and see what happens! So, I am very excited to see what happens next.

My General Reaction

I will say, this story felt surprisingly like one of the Equestria Girls’ specials. Just… not one of the better ones.

As a brief summary (so, spoilers), Sunset Shimmer gets invited over to Equestria during the holidays to help Starlight plan a surprise Hearth’s Warming party for Twilight, who everyone/pony thinks had become overworked and overstressed in the few short months since her ascension to sole ruling Princess.

And we hit my first problems with the story. In my initial thoughts, I was hoping for… anything, really. I just like reading Sunset and Starlight together, and this fic doesn’t really deliver on what it promises. Starlight doesn’t ask for any information about the human world, Christmas or otherwise, and Sunset doesn’t so much help as she simply serves as the audience avatar; she’s there to look at things and ask questions, and little else. There’s a sort of running theme that Equestria is changed from how Sunset remembers it, but that goes nowhere, fast, leading me to wonder why the author felt the need to add such characterization when it does nothing and isn’t all that strong a theme in the narrative itself.

Another thing that becomes clear with this version of Sunset is that she’s clearly missing memories. In-universe, she’s been back to Equestria once or twice before in the specials, and she can’t have been gone more than a few months, if that. So then, why does she seem to not know anything about Equestria? It just feels like she’s being there for the first time. Pinkie Pie is similarly out-of-character for much of the story, and I was hoping that would have a payoff – I mean, she mixes up Christmas and Hearth’s Warming too, so have the human and pony Pinkie’s swapped places again? – but it never does.

It doesn’t help that the narrator mixes up Christmas and Hearth’s Warming a few times. It’s intentional in character dialogue, and there can make sense, but the narrator is of the omniscient third person variety, so what’s up with that? Christmas doesn’t even get mentioned in the final party prep. From what I can tell, the party uses zero Christmas ideas (outside of calling the lights Christmas ones, and that shouldn’t count since Hearth’s Warming has the same thing), and Sunset has almost zero impact on it besides. There’s something about runes, but the story completely drops the ball in giving us any details at all on what those are, so that’s not a point in its favor.

Finally, the story is just too long. It runs about 7-thousand words, and should have been half that, if not a third. It just doesn’t need, like, half the scenes it gives us. There are three scenes that matter, and the rest could have been cut entirely without loss of anything worthwhile.

Grammar and Word Things

7/10 – A few misused words, and over-explaining
The grammar is actually pretty good here, with some minor exceptions. For instance, when Sunset visits Sugarcube Corner, she at first notes the smells of the bakery, but is then described as ‘Oblivious’ to them.

Blended into it, though, was a hint of tartness that immediately reminded her of Pinkie Pie, the type of scent that could get you craving for sugar… Oblivious to it, Sunset took a step into Sugarcube Corner, following Starlight.

The occasional mix-up aside, the story also features a number of tense shifts that drag the reader out of the moment, often hurting the overall flow of the narrative.

Story/Plot/Pacing

7/10 – Nice, if a bit bloated
At the story’s core is a good idea. I could even see this working as a lovely short holiday special, actually. The trouble is that this script is bloated. Half of the scenes could have been cut, or even two-thirds, and it wouldn’t have mattered. I think the basic idea is clear to the reader from the get-go, so belaboring that point and adding padded scenes everywhere just drags out the tale until our good will starts to fade.

Characters

5/10 – Uh, is Sunset okay?
Most of the characters are precisely what you’d expect of them. Twilight is stressed. Spike is well-meaning. Rarity says ‘darling’, etc, etc. But not only is nothing special done with these characters – indeed, Discord gets a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo with the Royal Sisters, and they don’t even get a line between them – but Pinkie and Sunset act very out of character, which is a shame since they’re two of the three-ish main characters of the piece.

Final Word and Rating

6.3/10
A Special Gift is a fine, safe holiday special to read if one is feeling nostalgic for Christmas already, or if you need a Sunset/Starlight fix. The story is just fine, with a few grammatical and pacing hiccups along the way, and the characters are adequate, if not totally original or delving deep on characterization.

To the Author: I think this story could have done with a brutal editing approach. Just slash and cut all the extra dialogue and scene-changes that add nothing to the story. Or, expand on what you did add, so that the story becomes richer for the additions. I would have loved to know what the deeper meaning of Sunset’s pondering of the new Equestria would have been. I would have loved to see her and Starlight compare and contrast human and pony holidays. A tighter focus, or a broadened one would have made this a stand-out story, instead of one that was safe and middle-of-the-road.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes: 6.3/10>

Welp. I know there were certain issues, two writers wrote this at two different times so there were some plot disprencies. But thanks for the review! :D (also side note I would have dearly liked to expand this but I had a max count of 7.5k so I had to work with what I have)