EWhat Does Music Really Mean?

• Equestria Girls
• Sad
• Slice of Life

In Canterlot City, Twilight and her friends work in a retirement home for musicians. And over time, they discover what the true meaning of music is about.

• Human
• Spike
• Other
• Main 7 (EqG)

Artist · 3.4k words  ·  28  35 · 537 views

In Canterlot City, Twilight and her friends work in a group retirement home, In the home lived Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson. Twilight is the manager, Rainbow Dash is the caregiver who comes in the mornings, Sunset shimmer is the night caregiver, Fluttershy is Alan Jackson's one to one, Spike is the therapy dog, Rarity is the fashion designer that they have living at the group home and last but not least Pinkie Pie who is the premier party planner. One night Twilight goes to Paul's room, as she wants to know what the true meaning of music is. What Paul tells Twilight will brighten her love of music forever.

Opening remarks

What Does Music Really Mean? is a sad slice of life story by Artist set in the Equestria Girls verse starring the humane 7. The story contains several real life musicians cared for by the group and appears to be a fic delving into greater meanings of music. I have never read something by this author before, so we’ll see how this plays out.   

Technical

There are a significant number of tense changes between past and present over the course of the story. Run-on sentences are frequent with rampant comma misuse to string them together. There are also several Instances of missing commas.

5/10

Character

There are a lot of characters in this story between the humane 7 and various residents of the care centre, especially for a short fic that clocks in at a little over 3000 words. 

This becomes more readily a problem as the humane 7 seem to lack a lot of their primary personality traits. All seven of them, excluding Pinkie Pie who I believe doesn’t appear in this story, feel very similar as generic caregiver type personalities with only minor differences between them. For example, Sunset is perpetually tired and Rainbow Dash is easily overwhelmed.  

The patients also don’t really have any personality outside of their care needs. I frequently found that I could only keep track of who was who by identifying their care needs as there wasn’t much else to them.

Overall, the characters are fairly generic and don’t really stand apart from each other.

2/10

Concept

The concept of the humane 7 being caregivers for a group home is an interesting premise, but the actual execution is lacking. I’ll get into more details under vibe, but this story’s main issue is a lack of focus on a few characters instead of this bloated cast.

The opener doesn’t really draw the reader in and most of the story feels like a rapid fire of introductions. The long description also doesn’t really tell what the story is about. It just lists what each of the humane 7 do in this alt verse and then tacks on the actual plot at the very end. 

An interesting premise with potential, but falls flat due to an unfocused story and bloated cast of characters. 

1/10

Vibe

Firstly, the concept and premise of this alt verse is intriguing. The choice of characters and theme of music is also an excellent idea. 

That being said, the actual structure of the story could use work. 

To start, the fic is told in a very dry way, “x” did this, “y” did that. There’s a distinctive lack of setup in both the scene and thought process of the characters that makes it difficult to get invested in the story being told. Descriptors of the group home and feel of the place in general  would be useful as a way to set the tone of the story.  

Dialogue feels unnatural. It doesn’t sound like a person is talking when characters speak. The words are all stiff and overly formal. In addition, the dialogue sometimes gets split by paragraph breaks at odd points causing multiple lines of the same character speaking to be spread out over several paragraphs when it should all be together. 

There are also a lot of instances of run-on sentences, which really distracts from the immersion of the story. A few periods and paragraph breaks instead of multiple commas would be useful in improving the story flow. 

Tension is also largely absent from the fic. Something happens, it’s resolved in a few sentences then another thing happens, and it repeats. There’s no build up or reveal of the character’s struggles causing a lot of the emotional beats to come off as forced. 

This is encompassed by the most prominent structural issue which is the scope of the fic. There are too many characters and plot threads for a 3000 word story. The fic should have narrowed in on the interactions between Twilight and Paul to emphasize the themes promised within the last portion of the long description. There is nothing wrong with having the cast as is, but I believe the story would have been better suited as an anthology to properly focus on different members of the staff and residents. 

As is, there are far too many fundamental problems for the story to immerse yourself into this unique concept.

0/10

Closing Thoughts

Overall, this story has a number of structural issues that hold back the potential of the premise. 

2/10

<For archive purposes: 2/10>

Personal Score

This story really didn’t do it for me. Though interesting in concept, the lack of story focus really distracted from the message the plot was trying to tell me, which muddled the emotional moments. Not a favourite of mine.   

0/10

Coast is clear for now...

Good review ma man

7634101
Thanks for the feedback, but I will not change it, I like it the way it is

7634124
What do you mean by that?

7634131
That the review was all compassing and detailed. And also that the coast is clear here, no garbage anywhere good thing :D

7634135
Cool, I wasn't sure if you meant I wasn't here, because I can sometimes get mad when people say they want me to change my stories, but I don't change it because I don't care

7634137
I would never gesp :O

7634138
What? I'm sorry

7634140
No problem I'll just chill on the coast because it is very clear and very chilly no offence taken good day :D

7634143

I understand