• Published 13th Jul 2014
  • 10,739 Views, 490 Comments

Mutual Interests - Spirit Shift



After the events of the Fall Formal, Sunset Shimmer has become a solitary recluse due to the entire town hating her. Can the girls bring her out of her shell enough to make amends with the town?

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Extra CH: Sequel Hook

Author's Note:

Just a fun thing for you check out. New Story's up. There's also the small sidestory Mutual (Dis)Interests

No? Still here? K that's cool. Just know that this is just a piece of the awesomeness that awaits you.

Button leaned away from the corner. Having observed Sunset these last two minutes he felt that he had come up with a reasonable plan of attack. He turned to relay his plan to the girls. "Now is the time to plan, but soon we will advance!"

Scootaloo simply looked at him. "What?"

“Alright, Sweetie Belle!" Sweetie flinched as Button thrust his finger towards her to get her attention. He then leaned down near the floor and began running it along the ground, obviously moving around pieces on the map that only he could see. "First you’ll stay along the back row to hit the boss with the classic debuffs. You know, stuff to make it easier to attack her. As soon as you’re done with that then you can get to work buffing us three…" He stopped and looked between himself and the other two Crusaders. "Actually, reverse that. Buff us first then hit Sunset with the debuffs. We'll need it first.”

He turned to Scootaloo and Apple Bloom and pointed to them in addition to himself. “We’ll rush her and form a circle around her. This way we can stop her from escaping and we can swap aggro between us. Scootaloo you go and fight her first. Since you're a monk you can dodge her attacks better. When you get low on HP swap over to Apple Bloom who can hit the hardest. I think her warrior skill “Shield Bash” will work the best. I’ll take the last round as the ninja to give you two a period to recoup and reload your skills. Then we’ll restart the cycle."

He then turned back to Sweetie and smiled confidently. "Sweetie Belle, play close attention to our health, specifically the one of us with the aggro. You don’t have raise or revitalize so if one of us dies then the cycle breaks and we’ll lose this battle. I don’t want to have to go back to leveling in the lower minefields again.” He sat his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. "I'm counting on you."

He looked up to the entire group. “Is everyone clear on the plan?”

Two clueless faces greeted him. “Ah have no idea what you just said." Apple Bloom admitted.

Sweetie, however, looked ready to rush in there. With her eyes sparkling in anticipation, she cheered, "I'm ready!"

Comments ( 39 )

Wow.. Liked the story..

And u chose well for the cover art.. Uotapo.. Dat one is goooooood.

You lost me at debuffs.

>Attempting to process…
>lolwat
>dafuq did I just read

The Crusaders an Button Mash are planning a raid with Sunset as the boss?
"Start Sarcasm Mode" THIS CAN ONLY END WELL!

5675407
Yup Sequel lol
5675450 lol if you want to see me doing this at my best check this out Or maybe it's defying the censors entirely. I never could tell the difference.
5675466
She is.

Reading that last line, I almost expected Sweetie going "All right chaps, let's do this. SWEEETIE BELEEEE"

Comment posted by Spirit Shift deleted Feb 28th, 2015

I felt the need to post this:

Scootaloo: I didn't understand a thing you said and I completely forgot what we're even doing anymore. So I'm just going to say blueberry.

5679852 I am alright with this :scootangel:

5679564 You're right it should be hand. Anyway, its a symbolic defensive gesture basically meaning dont yell at me.

5679873
I got from Red VS Blue's Dexter Grif. Man I love that parody web series.

5675669

Oh! I read that... nice twist there! I was sure it wasn't the obvious, but I was wondering what it was...

ButtonBelle!

I posted a review of the first 5 chapters of this story on my blog here. I'll keep reading and try to review the rest of it soon. Below is my summary comments from the review. The link has my running commentary of each chapter.


Overall (as of chapter 5)
This story starts off rough. Very rough. But it steadily improves in writing technique and in general form. There are still flat jokes and some painful prose at times, but it's getting quickly better after 5 chapters, I'm hopeful that by the end it's even more improved.

It's important to note that being coy is rarely appreciated by readers. They want to know what is going on all the time and if they're confused, they want to be confused because a situation has surprised the characters. A good story should never let the readers get lost or confused or be wondering what on earth is happening. The beginning dream sequence of chapter two is a great example of 'what on earth is happening' going on far too long to rely on the charity of your readers. It's only the second chapter, after all. You haven't earned enough trust by that point.

I realize that there is a desire for suspense and reveal, but this has to be organic to the tale to be effective and can't be the result of a sudden shift in perspective or main character unless that shift has been sufficiently telegraphed. As later chapters show, you are becoming good with your prose, so you should rely on it fully instead of clever writing tricks.

Sunset here is strangely static. She exists, she is annoyed, she does what she is told, and then she returns to initial state. Until Chapter 5, we see her exercise very little initiative at all and even then, the biggest thing she does is turn down an offer to stay at the house.

With respect to everyone else, I get the feeling of a 'Ten Little Indians' situation, though markedly less morbid. Each of the main characters takes a swing at trying to get Sunset to open up but they all generally fail. By the time we get to Rarity we're expecting this to go poorly and just waiting for it to happen. The fact that it is going passively well is a nice surprise, but, again, Sunset is doing very little but sitting and reading, so there hasn't been much for Sunset to rebel against.

Also, this is a nitpick but the synopsis refers to Sunset as a "solitary recluse" which is sort of redundant. Recluse pretty much sums it up.

This is only a review of the first 5 chapters, so I'm sure some of the things above have been addressed, but this is what I'm thinking at this point in the story. If you've improved significantly since this point it might be worth it to come back here to the beginning and touch all this up so as not to alienate new readers too early.

Review for the Sunset Shimmer story exchange.

fimfiction-static.net/images/story_images/203260.jpg?1405218152 Mutual Interest
By Spirit Shift
Word Count: ~51600.

So, I started a thread in the Sunset Shimmer group a little while back where people can exchange similar Sunset shimmer stories to review. And I chose Mutual Interest for the first one because the very basic premise is very similar to Dear Diary: Sunset Shimmer's Best Friend in that Sunset is lonely and the rest of the girls need to befriend her and show her the magic of friendship. It also features a lot of friendship, helping others, and Sunset being put through the ringer before things get better.

For this review I will start with the bad, then get to the good, then get to the really good parts of this story without spoilers.

Now, this was one of the authors first fics so starting off the grammar is pretty bad, and there are even some major character/plot issues. But Spirit Shift quickly improves, partially from the help of a series of editors but also through a lot of hard work. By the 4th chapter it becomes an easy read and it stays that way throughout the 50,000+ word count. It's kind of fascinating how the writing improves because I went from constantly being pulled out of the story in the first two chapter to not wanting to put the story down for other 16. In fact, for the rest of the review, wherein I explain how I fell in love with this story, just know that I am not including these comments for the first two chapters.

Spirit Shift manages to get in a few good jokes, even one about Snickers and I don't like Snickers. He also manages to make the reader care about all the non-antagonists. You can really feel Sunset, Rarity, Coco, Rainbow, all the supporting characters, and even a lot of the side and background characters manage to elicit a lot of feelings. This is because the writing style is fairly simple and doesn't waste words with overly long explanations, but it's also because every character manages to sound both unique and natural. All the characters have their own voice and I think I might have to go and read some of Spirit Shifts later stories just because I now expect really good characterization, and probably a lot of grammatical improvements.

The story is long, but it's not words, it's not overly deep, it doesn't try to trick you and has just the right amount of hints and foreshadowing. There are even a few good dream sequences, which tend to be hard to pull off but keeping it simple and doing it well really worked and allowed the author to play with some metaphors that would have been too obscure to work in otherwise.

But the thing that really stands out was the psychology behind the characters. As someone with a degree in psychology I take great offense to even some of the best stories on this site and only about %20 (:rainbowdetermined2:) of the stories I read really pass muster with me when it comes to characterization when you add in psychology. I even overthink my own stories and have a tendency to drive myself crazy. But in this story it's all pretty spot on. All the characters have their own motivations and their own way to go about obtaining their motives. They all have their own personal obstacles to overcome. Everything is explained well. And though there were a few points where I thought Spirit Shift was going to drop the ball he always seems to pull it back and put a smile on my face.

I can honestly say that I laughed, I cried, I scooted to the edge of my seat on occasionally called out curses as I yelled at the characters not to do something that they absolutely had to do because they were true to their character.

I think Spirit Shift has a lot of potential. I think this story is good. I think that if anything the last actual chapter (not the bonus chapters which I didn't read) could have been a bit better but the story really concluded the chapter before and he was just wrapping up loose ends.

I also think the author should re-write the first two chapters, maybe look at the third, but if that happens and he goes over a few edits I could see this story being featured and reviewed highly by reviewers and groups with far more clout than me.

Mutual Interest is a good story. It's just a shame that the beginning is a bit of a slog but there are by and far stories worse than those chapters that have far more views.

Give Mutual Interest a try. By the end you will have some fond memories or wit and woe.

5735276 Was it to your enjoyment? :trollestia:

5868180 HaHA! i finally got someone!

5990814 No, you're right. Derpy convinced Daring to come to her town under the excuse that Daring would find out about the odd happenings.

6279898 lol It's nice to see the joke still continues. Makes me glad I left it in.

Liked the story, also I'd like to say I'm glad you stuck with it and improved based on the criticism rather than give up. Because dear god, there were so many grammar comments!

Also, I've seen so much worse than Humansville. There is a Street, Maryland and an Accident, Maryland in my state. Good combo, no? :trollestia:

Anywho, liked and going to follow the sequel now :derpytongue2:

6287175 Oh snap you live in Maryland, come hang with me!

6285520

Fear, primal and pure, invokes fight or flight.

"Do I believe them to be a threat?" Yes. "Can I protect myself by striking them down?" Yes. = Fight.
"Do I believe them to be a threat?" Yes. "Can I protect myself by striking them down?" No. = Flight.

The moment plans and ideas start getting involved isn't fear. It's anxiety mixed with either brilliance if the ideas are good, or anxiety mixed with sheer stupidity and Darwin-Awardism if the ideas are bad.

If you're afraid of a gunman, do you go "HEY I SHOULD MAKE HIM MAD." Or do you go, "Hey he's looking the other way, I'm runnin'!"?

6746908 Hmm, sounds delightful. And I never did like my left leg...

7348982 Nah I already made the decision that i don't want to use that story at all

7673874 Nothing will ever explain humanville... except the fact that it actually exists in our world

MJP

7678560 do u know him, is he on fimfic

7678564 Nah they're mainly stationed on Deviantart and do comics. Here, they do amazing comics. And if you like awesome comics, check mine out.

MJP

7678985 jeez you can write entire fics out of her artwork, I actully have been wanting someone to do comics for my page for a while

7678996 what kinds of comics?

MJP

7679296 well I was gonna do a comic

RD, fluttershy and Pinkie Pie are in fluttershy's beroom when they hear the doorbell ring

Pinkie Pie: I got it

RD: if it's Zephyr don't answer it

Fluutershy: hey! my brother happens to be....yeah, don't

7679833 That actually sounds like a funny 4panel gag comic

MJP

7680293 ikr, i've been trying to make that comic for a good while now

MJP

7680308 no I did not steal this story to Make Attack on midnight castle, I was unaware you had a button+CMC scene in this story until I just read it just now

7701442 I don't understand what you mean?

MJP

7703340 I did not steal the last chapter to make my story "Attack on Midnight castle, I wasn't aware you wrote something like this until now

Very nice story, good work. :twilightsmile:

8/10 very good story. Can't wait to read the sequel.

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