Life is a garden, beautiful when it blooms. More than time and more than labor, it requires devotion. Rarity and Fluttershy have been growing a garden for years, even if only one of them knows it.
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shortskirtsandexplosions
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HNNNNNG.
I can't believe someone would dislike this.
2734552
it's a crying shame. still, can't please EVERY moron out there, yeah?
This is one of the best and worst Flarity stories ever.
Good stuff, man. Always glad to read your work, even when you claim it to be crap. The ending was very sweet, a good job with the bookends to the story.
Which is unfortunate, because the implicit sad slice of life story of Thunderlane maturing you wrote in my head is just as sad.
another fic to add on my Read Later list...
gonna collect lots more fics for the weekend. :3
edit...
oh, this is a one-shot?
I'll read it now then. xD
The feels man...
Another great story good sir
Well, well. Never thought I'd say this, but you are shaping up to be possibly the best author on the list of my to-remember authors.
Ah, also, obligatory:
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I don't know why you'd call this story crappy. I personally don't have any issues with it.
Got to admit.....I got teary eyed....
If you think Frank`s story is really cool..., three weeks ago my mum's boy friend basically made $6035 just sitting there ninteen hours a week from there house and they're neighbor's mom`s neighbour has done this for 9-months and worked and got paid more than $6035 part time at There laptop. applie the tips from this web-site... BOW6.COM
I'm not sure who I feel worse for... Rarity, who had her heart's desire quietly supporting her the entire time, Fluttershy, who probably could have had Rarity herself if she had just said something, or Pinkie Pie, who got a bridge dropped on her off-screen.
The best aspects of this story are those transitions. They’re so smooth, like greased silk, and I just glided between each lapse in time. Top that off with some nice bookends and an appropriately sad ending, and you have a structurally neat little tale.
However, the story failed on an emotional level for me. Fluttershy has a deep, unflinching love for Rarity – platonic or not, it works either way – that reveals itself through her constant support of Rarity over the course of her life.
It’s a passive support, and this is where the story stumbles.
This passive relationship is overshadowed by Rarity’s melodrama and ongoing issues with love, or to paraphrase Skirts: being generous with her heart. And then Rarity dies; that’s sad, however it is seeing Fluttershy left behind (and still loving her after she is gone!) that holds the potential to tug on the heart strings.
However, all I got was a twinged of sadness.
Fluttershy was too passive, too supportive, and as a character she never really grew beyond that. While her constant love was sweet, turning bittersweet at the end, I think that more internal conflict was necessary for me to empathise with her. Had she confronted Rarity about her hardened heart or her priorities, or (if you’re leaning towards it being a romantic love between them) tried to express her own feeling, it would have allowed her to grow beyond that supporting role. And if she tried to do that, failed, and returned to that simple supporting role? All the better.
She never did, and so while the ending was bittersweet and misted my eyes a bit, it didn't truly strike home.
It was a good story, but has plenty of room to improve.
your writing powers are too great, I cried because of this story. I CRIED.
"You would love them. They're simply darling..." WHY?!?!?!
This is really great, although the vagueness of Rarity's speech could be trying. I hope she doesn't affect the style of a Victorian novel deliberately :P But the characterisation... this deserves many likes. Many.
Poor Rarity...and Fluttershy is such a good girl.. *sniffle*
Good as always SS!
Nnnnnnggg!! Bravo!
You wasted an opportunity to use "Fitzmareald."
Skirts.
Coulda used "Fitzmareald."
Eh.
The moment Rarity asked about the gem I knew it was coming!
DAMN IT WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GIVE HER ALZHEIMER'S???
Way to depress the ever-living hell out of me, Skirts.
I shouldn't even be surprised anymore...
Fine work. Very fine work.
2734586
Uh-huh...except it probably needs a Teen rating.
2737455 Nah, but it is sad. It reminds me of "Two cups of Tea.
2738076
You don't think so? Fluttershy discreetly asks Rarity if she had sex the night before...sounds like a teen concept to me.
"Steinbuck and Hemingwhinny and Fitzgallop!"
Also, this part made me die in my chair of laughter. Wonderfully integrated references.
I enjoyed this. Very well written.
I would like to suggest a few alterations though.
1. Perhaps changing the chapter title to Gardeners.
2. You mentioned Rainbow Dash's tail as being spectral-colored while they were watching the Wonderbolts. I think you meant spectrum.
3. When Rarity is describing the ruby that Spike gave her, it struck me as slightly out of character when she said "It was shinier than a Canterlot diamond..." You could rephrase it as "It shone brighter than a Canterlot diamond."
Those are mostly unnecessary changes but I thought I'd suggest them. Good story.
well written
Depressing, but still well written.
Who the bloody hell has the lack of heart to dislike this story?
Fuckin' Fluttershy, man.
Fuckin' Fluttershy...
2738851
I don't know. Maybe they were upset because they cried like babies and lost man points? There's always trolls out there, anyway; that one guy who has to hate everything pure in the world.
Me? This is going to my favorites.
Heartbreaking...
And yet, still wonderful. You wrote the two beautifully. This is going right on my Favorites list!
Don`t get the sadness in this story. Or this story in general. So, she never found anypony to love, complained about it and then died? Fluttershy was just her pillow to cry on and was just tagging along for the ride? I don`t get the actual story in this. Will someone please explain this story to me? I just don`t see the sadness in this. Depending on whether or not someone can explain why this is beautiful I will dislike. Also, what kind of garden? I know that it was a figurative garden, but in which way?
2746942
It's sad because Fluttershy was there for her in silence, a subtle, unrequited love that is shown to pierce the veils of death. Fluttershy stood by Rarity's side, being a shoulder of support and comfort despite whatever she may have been feeling in conflict with Rarity's interests. Imagine sitting next to someone you love and helping them time and time again through a breakup, hearing all the gritty details and thinking how much better it could be between the two of you. Imagine never telling that person, and staying with them faithfully even as they slip past reason and fall to the cold cruel march of time, and never wavering in your resolve. Fluttershy has a beautiful, sorrowful strength to her love that brings the feels right to mine heart.
Think of the garden as a metaphor, a nurtured, cherished spread of experiences and feelings that you value more than anything and enjoy beyond measure, that a smile is the single bloom on a bush of budding roses and a memory is a leaf upon the stem of a graceful flower, where the flower is also a metaphorical representation of a feeling. Of course, there is the physical gardening in the begining, but I like believing that the author intended the metaphorical garden.
The sadness lies with us, seeing that Fluttershy, devoted and kind, never has the courage to tell Rarity her feelings, yet she stays with her anyways. She stays content being by Rarity's side, and we can speculate that she fears losing that closeness by putting stronger feelings out in the open. The reader questions, is Fluttershy merely content, or is she living in fear of her feelings being discovered, reacted to negatively, and losing the friendship she so prizes?
There's so much I could continue to say about this, and how I feel about it, trying to describe the beauty I see in it, but I feel that such would be detrimental. I'm terrible at describing things without days of thought behind it, and handy references. Perhaps you could reread the story with that sort of thing in mind, and see if you enjoy or understand it a little more. It's a subtle sadness, more of a shared heartache, and I suppose it is more easily relatable to those who feel they've had similar relationship experiences, but it's still something that looks like a person could appreciate without a life experience behind their reasoning.
2754075 So, Fluttershy loved her and never told her because she wanted Rarity to be happy and she didn`t want to stop being the shoulder that she cries on. She was perfectly fine just being a friend because it was worth it having Rarity by her side always. I guess that it`s a little bit more sad.
EDIT: I reread the story and still got nothing. I just don`t like this piece of writing. Well, it`s still a nice story though.
This is fantastically written, but also horribly, horribly depressing.
Now I have to find a good heartwarming Rarishy shipfic to fix this damn hole in my chest.
Dammit. Have you learned nothing? [Alt+0213] Façade. I even wrote a story about it.
Pinkie Pie's dead? That surprised me more than it should have knowing you.
This story didn't particularly move me so much as some of your other stories. In fact I would say I remained relatively passive throughout. Then again, it usually takes a train to move this dark heart of mine, and this was like one of those push cars. That said, while I may not have highly enjoyed it, this is a good story.
I think that when it comes to the mane six, you write Fluttershy the best. In my opinion your Rarity, as she was shown so well here, tends to be overly verbose compared to the canon whereas Fluttershy is sweet and gets the point across in exactly as many words as she needs. Remembering Tinnitus, I stand by that claim because, ironically, such a well written Fluttershy might've contributed to that story's ultimate failure of really being what it could've been. But I digress.
The story itself here was a bit on the predictable side as I have seen this sort of pattern before in other medias, but originality—while arguably and understandably important—is a factor I don't really pay attention to. All I care about is how it was executed, and while I might not have felt anything, I think here it was done well. We have Rarity, who grows up having opportunity to "fill the heart's desire" but nothing meets her standards, only for in the end to seeing herself as not meeting the standards of others and ultimately brings her downfall upon herself. What I thought she worried the most about, and is it turned out to be, was being alone and what sort of impact she would leave on the world, and the sad part of this story isn't so much the trials and failures of Rarity but her complete inability to understand she was never alone to begin with. I guess she sinned her element in that regard, giving in to greed and when her tastes weren't satisfied she ended up collapsing in on herself, so to speak. There might also be a failure then, as what's sort of the norm with nowadays, on Fluttershy's part to simply speak up. Had she gotten through to Rarity's subconscious earlier and made her realize she wasn't alone, would Rarity have lived the same life chasing dreams? Who knows. I think you just took these two characters and exaggerated their flaws which can be identified in canon, and you have done that admirably.
A trend I've been noticing actually, in a lot of your stories as of late, involve the characters physically aging. You show us a lot of what the future has in store for the mane six, exploring the possibilities of what canon has given us and where those paths may lead. Food for thought.
This isn't a bad story, in fact it's one I liked to read, but it falls a little on the forgettable side and I don't think I'll find myself recommending it in the future because of that. Seven dead spiders out of ten.
The description was so bland I had to drag myself to read it. It was the only injustice on this piece. I loved it. Would've been great even without ponies.
When I read it, I wasn't really touched.
It wasn't until afterwards when I though about it that the waterworks begun
You're brilliant, Skirts. Just... brilliant.
Amazing. You got me mate. Such a beautiful story, I truly loved every second reading it. Every got a few tears out with that ending. I'm guessing it was a Flarity story overall but Rarity didn't get it? Whether it was or not, it was still beautiful, and I loved it.
There are no words...
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What if the entire time Fluttershy was dead? And the piece at the end was just a dream Rarity had while in a coma before she passed on?
I speculate this because I don't really see any time where Fluttershy interacts with the environment in a way that changes how anypony looks at it other than Rarity.
This was amazing.
Your story made me feel.
Thank you for writing this.