TLike Tears In Rain

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Lightning Dust sets out to settle her score with Rainbow Dash. Though, she meets a pony that puts a stop to her reckless abandonment.

• Profanity
• Octavia
• Lightning Dust

Not Enough Coffee · 3.3k words  ·  50  4 · 709 views

Good:

• Octavia sounds like Octavia. She never seems to slip out of her natural voice, which is great to see. She's that same old regal noble character with a sort of nonchalance that makes her more approachable.
• Story-writing is always flowing, and is never wanting to stop. This leads to good prose and overall flow, which, despite the grammar errors, pops off the page.
• Conversations, although crass, comes off as being realistic, something that the author always strives for in their work (from what I’ve read).

Suggestions:

• Listen to how Lightning Dust talks. She’s definitely not herself in this fic, only a skeleton of what her character is like. Being blind with rage can be pulled off if it isn’t so forced. Unfortunately for this story, Lightning Dust's anger is forced here. The beginning was a good start, her being a bit uncomfortable with the train attendant, but her suddenly being brash due to a few glares from random people seems highly unlikely without a bit of context.
• Not sure why this story had to take place in Hearth’s Warming, since that episode in particular that you’re referencing is way earlier in the show’s history. Seems a bit odd that she has this explosive reaction after a few months or more of time to herself. Yet again, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but it also needs more backstory for clarity. Why couldn’t she do this earlier? What was stopping her? Why now of all times? Were Lightning Dust and Rainbow Dash actually supposed to meet? And why does Lightning Dust harbor this anger long after it is worth exerting it? And if this wasn’t long ago, then when was this actually taking place, and how does this period of time correlate to the Wonderbolt Academy canon? I’m left with more questions than answers for this story.
• Get a third set of eyes to look over your work. Commas and capitalizations errors were common, and a few word choice/unfinished words were around as well. It was enough of a hindrance that I had to re-read to make sure I was understanding the story.

Final Score

Grammar: 2/3
Creativity: 3/5 
Characterization: 2/5 
Flow: 4/5 
Impact: 2/7 
Overall: 13/25 (Not Your Average Confrontation)

<For archival purposes: 5.2/10>

Lightning not being fully herself is intentional, as the general idea is her unwillingness to forgive Dash has jaded and blinded her. That, and this is an issue with this being a jinglemas fic and limted with word count, she has had a bad reputation follow her since her academy days. Essentially, it ruined a lot of her life. I couldn't fit that in fully while maintaining jinglemas word count, so I had to gloss that over a bit and leave it subtle. A bit too subtle it seems.

I like to imagine, and this is another issue with not being able to flesh the setting out, this has built up in Lightning Dust for a while. So, left to her own mental bashing, she has come to the brash on edge nature she shows here.

Grammar wise is for sure fair. I only had Famous look this over with me before having to submit to Jinglemas, otherwise I would have spent more time polishing it.

Thanks for the review, broski.

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7469402
You're welcome, bud. Glad I could review one of your fics.

Yeah, Jinglemas could limit the word count there. To be honest, I wish you could've gone over the count just to give your story more grounding because it needed it. Always love your Octavia voice man, that and Luna are your two strongest characters.

As for that Lightning Dust's bad reputation section, I get that and I saw it, but that doesn't mean much when there's no context or grounding to sell me that point. I can't buy into the situation as a reader if I don't really see how it works or correlates with what canon I'd know unless I buy into what you're dishing.

I hope you go over your story sometime soon to give it a touch up and maybe even a slight re-write to add those details in. It would be cool to see how you would address those concerns so the story can pop off the page more than it already has.

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Maybe I will do a version of it that doesn't have to adhere to Jinglemas' restrictions. That could be a fun side project. It would also let me do the build up the opening needs to get jnto Lightning's headspace.

Also, maybe I have a thing for turbulent introspective types as I see both Octavia and Luna as? I do write Octavia a lot, so I think I have a feel for her more than a lot of other characters. Plus I like the way they speak, and it's a joy to write conflict with them.