EReassurance

• Equestria Girls
• Romance
• Slice of Life

Rainbow Dash had a very long day at work. Luckily there's someone who she can rely on to cope. A bit of fun standalone Flutterdash fluff.

• Rainbow Dash (EqG)
• Fluttershy (EqG)

Dewdrops on the Grass · 2.6k words  ·  61  4 · 2.4k views

Reassurance

by Dewdrops on the Grass

Summary

Rainbow Dash had a very long day at work. Luckily there's someone who she can rely on to cope.

Initial Thoughts

Aw! Sounds like a nice little fluff fic. Those are usually sweet. A nice break from 300k+ novels and all the random+dark+comedy fics lying around here. Here we go!

Overview

Well. That was nice.

This is another one of those pieces that’s actually really hard to summarize without just… retelling the entire story. Human Rainbow Dash is having a rough time at work, and she invites Fluttershy – her girlfriend – over for a veggie pizza, a hangout, and light smoochy-smoochy stuff.

And that’s kind of it. It’s simple, but simple isn’t a bad thing. Unless you’re an Anti-Shipper for Flutterdash, I can’t imagine this would be some sort of dealbreaker. It’s a nice, sweet little story. You’d have to be such a massive tool to critique a story like this.

So here’s what I didn’t like about it…

Grammar

4/5 – Boring Paragraphs
Grammar-wise, there’s really no issues here. Unlike so many stories, the punctuation and dialogue are all there and correctly formatted. Nothing appears misspelled. No, the issue I have here is more a nitpick than just about anything else.

There’s a lot of internal dialogue and “action words” thrown into the normal narration. And it’s… boring. Breaking some of those up into their own paragraphs for emphasis would better draw reader attention to them happening (such as with Rainbow Dash listening to Fluttershy’s heartbeats), and would serve to both break up the paragraph “shapes” and give a more dramatic flair to the actual pacing of the story. As said, it’s a nitpick, but it’s something that I kept noticing.

Story

3/5 – A plot exists
This is a hard one. A lot of slice of life stories really don’t have a story, per say. But this category is also a way for me to score the general shape and flow of a story. And that flow is hurt in one respect: nothing changes.

I lied. There is a plot, but it’s somewhat muted, and hamstrung by not really getting resolved in the story itself. It makes this feel more like one chapter in a longer work. Rainbow Dash is having a tough time at work, and she confides in Fluttershy how bone-tired she is. It’s a nice bit of characterization… that ultimately leads nowhere. Despite a few ideas getting tossed around, it’s never given a true resolution. Dash just now has a few options stated (quit or tough it out), without any indication of where she might go, or how this plot might get resolved. And so, without an actual resolution, it feels incomplete.

Characters

4/5 – Characters are mostly recognizable, except when they aren’t
Dash and Fluttershy are almost perfect. Nearly. Rainbow Dash is still what we’ve come to expect, in that she’s a tough gal physically and mentally, but she still has a softer emotional side. A side that’s not always as self-assured as her braggadocio would lead one to believe.

Fluttershy is, however, a bit different. She carries over some of the later self-assuredness she gained in EqG and in the later seasons of the show, but… it feels a little too much. Especially with the physical stuff. There’s a lot of odd detail in the story about how Fluttershy is actually taller than Rainbow Dash, and late in the narrative she sort of proves herself physically stronger when she picks Rainbow Dash up in an impromptu form of cuddling/flirting.

Assertive Fluttershy feels somewhat in character. Buff Amazon Fluttershy? Not so much. It’s not bad, necessarily, but it’s an odd bit of detailing to her character that doesn’t always gel with what we know of her. It almost feels like this was originally an Appledash story that was hastily altered in post, if that makes sense, since I can more easily imagine Applejack in such a role.

Final

Reassurance is a simple, fluffy bit of Flutterdash goodness. If you’re a fan of the ship, or are looking for something quick and pleasant, this will certainly fit the bill.

To the author: This was a very nice story, and all the advice I give here is not to imply that it wasn’t, but that it could be further improved upon. I think that a little more experimentation with paragraph-sizes and breaking those “action-words”, like the heartbeats, into their own spaces would increase the story’s “flair”, just a little. And Rainbow Dash should really find some sort of resolution to her dilemma, if I’m being honest. After listening to Fluttershy’s advice, she could make a more definite decision, or resolve to change something. It doesn’t have to happen in the story, but some stronger direction would give the plot and structure a more-complete feeling.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes:7.2/10>

Oh cool a random review of a story how lovely, thank you.

Critique taken and accepted as one hundred percent true. This is one of those "whip it up in two hour" stories that aren't really thought through beyond that.

However I can state that this wasn't an Appledash story edited in post. It was always FlutterDash. Dash being short and small and Shy being taller is a headcanon of mine but this was also kind of based/inspired by my relationship with my spouse, whom I am both taller than and can easily pick up. (At the same time if you were to name who is who in terms of how their day went or personality, Dash is me and Shy is him, so it's kind of mixed. But that's why there's no resolution to Dash's problem because work doesn't stop.)

Anyway thank you Ninja, appreciated.

7681647
Well, that certainly explains every question I had! I hope some of this was at least somewhat helpful to you.

7681652
Oh yes, definitely. I particularly like and appreciate the advice with the paragraphs. My writing style does tend towards the dry, and sprinkling some moisture in there every now and again will help keep the reader from suffering dehydration.