Just to explain, my account name refers to the fact that I've been a fan of My Little Pony since the 1990s. I especially enjoy the original series as well as My Little Pony Tales.
The Flash Sentry from the human world has been missing Twilight a lot, so with a little help from Sunset Shimmer he goes to Ponyville to see her again. It turns out she’s been missing him too, but will an old foe prevent their happy ending?
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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OK, so this is a complete, rather short story that I ventured to check, and... hmm. It's hard to say. I'd say I ultimately like it, but there are several things nagging at me about it.
First, the positives. I definitely like the small culture shock that happens between Flash and the Shining/Cadence duo on Chapter 2. It's cute and fun to see both sides' reactions to things from the other's side. I liked that, once they met, Twilight and Flash did not talk ONLY about themselves. Twilight showed very quickly that she was concerned about Sunset , and Flash did ask a fair bit about things and people/ponies in Equestria, which is very good.
I definitely liked that Spike used his head and sent Celestia a letter by himself to get freed from where he and Owlowiscious were. It showed that he's competent, which he actually is, no matter how much the show ends up occasionally writing him off. And most of all, I really appreciate that you tried to give Sunset Shimmer some closure while still being vague about the outcome. The last chapter is the one I enjoyed the most, for this reason and because her parents are definitely not entirely on board with the idea that she could be back, as neither is Sunset. That was good, and probably the most organically depicted moment in the fic, at least in my opinion.
Now, I do have some gripes with the fic. I'll speak about story elements first before diving into what I thought of your writing.
First, the portal. You are right when saying it takes thirty moons for it to open, and it stays open for a short time. However, this fic is after Friendship Games, right? You should know, then, that on Rainbow Rocks, Twilight makes a device that keeps the portal open at any time so long as it's there in Twilight's castle. Now, to be fair, you DO address this in the author notes later on, saying that, because Pinkie's been messing with it, the mirror was moved again. But that doesn't change the fact that the people on the human side would not know this: and even if they did, they shouldn't be making such a big deal out of the time limit because they'd then know that all they need to do is talk to Twilight on the journal and be like "Can you get the mirror back to your castle, pretty please? Your BF wants to see you", and bam. Problem solved.
Second, it's the inclusion of Chrysalis. I have no problem with her, just what you do with her. Her taking over Twilight's place to take in Flash's love makes sense, it's great. And being found out for dancing differently is actually sort of clever. But how did she get defeated? By Flash playing the guitar badly? How does that work? For the sake of argument, let's say it would work. If Flash has a normal guitar, there's no way he's playing so loudly that it's anything but a minor inconvenience. If it's an electric guitar, like I guess it would be, he still need a soundbox and/or an amplifier to get it to be loud enough to do any serious damage. And at that point, not only is he damaging her, he'd be damaging himself and the other ponies on the scene. And are you going to tell me that Chrysalis didn't just up and got away from there when this happened? Because she should at least try and escape like that, not reveal her secrets immediately. To be fair, though, the fighting afterwards is something I'm fine with. You acknowledge that Flash is weakened, Rainbow got tired after a while and Chrysalis was initially winning because of the power she absorbed. You handled that way better, and I commend you for it.
Lastly, this is not about the story so much as it's about your writing. The only thing I want you to hopefully try and improve is the moments of exposition. It's fine to explain things to the audience, but it's not a good idea to do it in dialog. Take this part, for example, that happens just as Chrysalis reveals herself.
This is not how it should happen. People don't explain things when there's an imminent danger right on their faces. And if they do, it's sharp, snappy, or just the essentials of what the other absolutely need to know. When there's no danger, it's fine to explain things, just... don't overdo it. I feel like you do it more times than it's actually enjoyable. If I may be so bold, can I recommend a way to fix it? Whenever you want to explain something, give a bit more character to the explanation itself. For example, here's this bit:
I like the way you did Flash here, but not Sunset. The way she's speaking, it feels a bit like a mechanical explanation. You can try doing something like.
... OK, this is not the best example, but my point is, try to weave the explanation into how the character feels or is usually like. You did well at times. You did Pinkie well enough. I'm sure you can do it.
Now I better shut my mouth before I talk even more. I hope you understand I'm not trying to berate you and instead am just offering as much criticism and as many observations as I can in order to see it get even better. Keep up the good work and take care.
8042499 Oh I've got a oneshot coming up that explains how Sunset and the other humans forgot about the portal being permanently active, and they didn't know that Twilight moved the mirror. Twilight didn't let them know because she figured that her human friends would be hesitant visiting Equestria on their own and that Sunset was still nervous about coming back to Equestria (she's right on both counts), so she thought it wasn't necessary to let them know. You're right that Sunset should've let Twilight know ahead of time, but she still had the 'three-day time limit' on her mind and was more focused on making sure things would work out between Flash and Twilight.
I did see the Camp Everfree movie by the way, so I know about Sunset having told Flash to move on. The oneshot I previously mentioned will explain further about that and why it clashes with her being supportive in this story.
Also Chrysalis being in here gets referenced later, her backstory is gonna come up in a future story (that will be written much later) but that's all I'm gonna say since I don't want to spoil anything.
As for Flash 'defeating her' with music, I was inspired by those sonic bug repellents and since Changelings are bug-like I thought some poorly-played music might be extra-painful for them. I guess opinions vary on this, but either way I like the idea of Flash stepping up and doing some hero work instead of simply being a victim or bystander like he was in the Equestria Girls movies so I'm gonna leave the music scene the way it is.
As for the other ponies, well, that's of course why he told them to get as far away as they could and cover their ears. Yeah the bad music hurt their ears a bit too, but thanks to him warning them ahead of time the music didn't hurt as much as it would have if they hadn't moved out of the way and covered their ears.
Also Chrysalis only gave in because she was hurting a bit too much from the bad music and didn't want to go through it again. Remember I mentioned that she was massaging her ears when she gave in and told them where Twilight was. Plus she did have the foresight of leaving the Changelings who were still loyal to her with Twilight, to make it harder for anyone to save her even if they did find out her location.
As for the explanation, well, knowing about your enemy is important when you need to defeat them. Obviously Rainbow Dash and Applejack wanted Flash to know about Changelings, especially since they already knew that some of them hadn't reformed, so that Flash would be prepared to help deal with them.
Also Sunset's line is supposed to be like that. She wanted to quickly get the subject over with and have Flash leave as soon as possible to see Twilight. Hence why she didn't hesitate awkwardly or anything.
And no prob, I can handle criticism as long as they don't have swear words or hate speeches or anything like that. Besides, I'm glad you liked a lot of details in the story even if there were some you had a problem with. :)
However, just for the record, I've already had to edit this story many times thanks to the Equestria Girls sequels as well as season five and six of the original series and I'd rather not do any more editing. Especially since season seven is coming up....
Flash used overdrive!
It was super effective!
Author's notes in the middle of chapters? The rest of the writing's passable, but that's unbelievably bad.
Ignoring the fact that Flash should be an adult who can make his own decisions, this is way too life-changing to make such a decision before spending more time with Twilight in Equestria.
There goes any chance of me taking this story seriously.
11122800
Sorry about that, I originally posted this story on fanfiction.net and I didn't catch that when I transferred the story to this site. I fixed it now.
I came here from your comment on another story saying you have a flashlight fic, and oh boy do I love myself a flashlight fic!
Admittedly this isn't the best, but it's more than enough to make me SQUEEEEEEE
Hmm this is marked as completed? That ended on an abrupt note, but that's just me saying in a roundabout way that I want more updates to this