Author & Editor; Chief Apprentice in Loyal's House of Fanfic; Lt. in the Army of Biscuit; Does Bad Things for Bad Horse; Runs a Nightclub on Holodeck 2.
Shipping 💖11,661 stories ·9,735 members
Sad4,351 stories ·2,622 members
The Writers' Group56,344 stories ·9,285 members
Slice of Life8,140 stories ·1,460 members
They say a life remembered is a life well-lived, and Twilight and I lived a very good life. But when there's more years behind you than there are in front, memories are all you have. Lose those and what do you have left?
That I can answer that question at all breaks my heart all over again.
Written for Oroboro's Sunset Shipping Contest: Endings.
Rated Teen for some mild thematic elements
Page generated in 0.139 seconds
Total duration
915 users online
208,587 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Bugger, I was hoping to have the most chapters of any entry, but it looks like you've snatched that away from me.
This was a gripping read, though. The formatting of it... felt a little hit-or-miss at times, early on--I think the more characters there were in one place at once, the easier it was for me to get a bit lost--but partway through when it started just being Sunset and one or two other people at a time, I thought it did a wonderful job of suggesting images through subtext. Especially towards the end, this got so effortlessly potent.
So when all was said and done, this brought me much closer to tears than any of the other entries I've read so far. Nice work, good luck with the judges
9834483
Thanks for the feedback! I very much appreciate it. :)
And good luck to you as well!
Why did you make the chapters so short?
9834570
When I drafted this it was all one long google document with a ton of scene break lines. I was tempted to post it as one big chunk, but I thought 1)it'd be a slog to mentally denote one section from the others, and 2)I thought breaking it up into smaller chunks would let the reader focus more on 1-2 specific points in time, thus giving them a better opportunity to fill in what the other side of that scene might be.
Interesting style choice... I've tried doing a chapter once with just a dialogue between two characters, just as an experiment, but this is one step further.
Honestly... it's not working for me, at least not here. It's not because of the style itself, but a symptom of it.
The problem is I can't hear almost any of this in Sunset's voice, there's nothing at all distinctive about it. And the bigger issue is this chapter does nothing. It just has Sunset talking with the girls to remind us that they exist, this seems it could have been summarized in one line in the next chapter.
All that said, I'm going to give this a go!
Cute! There were some nice little lines in here that felt more natural.
Now I'm curious if you wrote out Twilight's dialogue in an early draft and then cut it all, it's kinda fun imagining what she might be saying.
9868577
Hi! Thanks for the comment.
I'll be honest - this is a new style choice for me as well, so I definitely didn't have 'this is totally perfect' on the mind when I finished, lol. And hey, if it turns out not to work for you, that's ok. I never expect everyone to love everything I write, so no worries on that front. :)
As for this specific chapter, I mainly fleshed this out to setup some kind of backstory - specifically that they were just beginning to date. At the time I felt like just jumping right to one of their actual dates would be awkward. But, I could be wrong too. You and other readers get to judge me on that, lol.
Sounds like you're going to continue with the story, so I hope it grows on you a bit. But if not, thanks for giving it a try anyway. I appreciate it!
-GMP
Oooh! :O Kudos for taking a huge stylistic risk like this! So far, so good!
9881110
Thank you! Yeah, I went way out of my comfort zone on this one, lol. I'm sure I made a few paragraph break snafus along the way, so I apologize for those. But I hope you find it was a decent effort in the end. :)
This is so painful because I know it has to end. D:
oh no D:
For a second there, I thought this would just end naturally. You know, old age, disease, accidents, the easy stuff. ;_;
Oh shit. :O
Also, Mirepoix is an excellent name. :D
oh god, this is devastating D:
absolutely monstrous, well done ;_;
9882888
Thanks! I think that name selection is my New Orleans roots showing through. xD
9882960
Thank you for the fave. It means a lot! :)
Beautiful and devastating. Thank you for this story and showing Sunset Shimmer's kindness so well with this format. It's one I'd like to see more of.
9897690
Thank you for the kind words! (and for the follow too!)
9897912
No problem! Thanks for writing this story.
9897914
You're most welcome! Feel free to peruse my other stories as well. I hope you find some of them enjoyable also. :)
Sushi's supposed to be cold. Jeez, ya got Alzheimer's or something?
9937660
I wasn't intentionally referring to the same sushi place there, tbh. (most sushi places have hot items too anyway) ;)
But I do apologize if that led to some confusion for you.
9937665
I read the story backwards, as is my usual preference, so I was just taking advantage of the opportunity to make a deliberately tactless and cruel joke.
Friendly reminder that lesbians don't exist
You can has review!
Marriage! I... oh dear. Oh nooo... I avoided reading the summary to avoid getting any hint of spoilers but now I see why the style and...aaaaaaugh it's tainted with sadness.
This fighting hurts. So well done.
Haha, this one lost me a little bit since I don't understand the difference between wines. It's all "ruined grape juice" to me. But I get the idea of what they're saying.
Doting wife is very doting... and I'm glad things didn't end like I feared they would at first.
That said...
Aaaugh the memory loss hurts a lot. My family isn't prone to it, but my husband's is, and I'm worried about this kind of thing happening to him.
God... just the thought of having to send someone to such a place...
It reminds me of my husband's grandmother. When I first met her, she'd already started to lose much of her memory and everything to dementia, so I didn't get to talk with her too much. But she was very nice. She was a librarian, and loved books and reading. And then she lost it all. By the time she was committed to a memory-care facility, my husband said that his grandmother was already gone, that what was left was just an empty shell that wore her face walking around.
She passed away a couple of years ago, but he'd already been mourning her for years prior to that.
I feel like if his health ever declined I might feel the same way. And I hope I never have to see that.
...you magnificent bastard.
I'm not terribly fond of the format - it feels like overhearing the local half of a phone conversation, which tends to give me a headache; that happened here as well, so, in a way, good job on replicating that effect so well? (too well?)
That being said, it did still work once I got used to it, as I could guesswork the "in between" aspects fairly well as was intended. The parts that were letters in the journal also helped by giving a place to ease the negative effects of the style for me.
And beyond the formatting, it was a very good story that invoked all the feels - from the good ones early on to being nervous midway thinking it was going a different direction... to the very deep sad ones as I realized what was developing in the later parts.
So, I'm going to go cry against my big pink teddy bear now. Well done <3
smooth! i really love this line but i am also biased
haha, yeah, there's no non-awkward way to write this letter! good on Sunset for trying though, definitely better than surprising her!
oh wow, moving forward really quickly! also love this bit of cultural worldbuilding:
aww, such beautiful vows!
twelve chapters left, eh?
oh hey, they're older than me now!
Howdy, hi!
Okay, this was *very* interesting as a writing concept. I think for the most part you pulled it off but this is definitely not something I would seek out, and I don't think most authors could pull this off well. The subject and theme of the fic were also super heavy and well-executed. This brings me to the personal bit.
Oh my gosh, this was *sad*. Like you had such a realistic kind of depiction of their relationship and all the good parts then the absolute soul-crushing ending. It hurt seeing Sunset push to be there for her wife, but still ultimately lose her to disease. The build-up and pacing of everything was fantastic and the vignette-type style of the story (short bursts as it were) really worked here.
All in all, excellent fic. Thanks for the read!
oh no, it's all coming together horrifically. and with so many chapters left! just what are you going to do to these characters and then me?
oof, and it's interesting since this seems to be lining up to be the same life-stage as the Mane Six in the flash-forward scene in the finale. so a headcanon to extract from this is that pony Twilight was only spared her version of early Alzheimer's by gaining alicornhood! tragic possibilities there
oof yeah, already talking about Twilight more like a grandmother than a partner. and two more chapters to go...
oof, that last line. ooooof. i mean all this was priming me to expect some sort of emotional blow at the end like that, but knowing how this story would end didn't lessen the impact. i really appreciated the understatedness, and it's also a line that just wouldn't work with anyone else as the protagonist.
the format was something i've never seen before, but i got used to it fairly quickly enough, and it made the shorter chapters more effective with their brevity. as somepony who is for experimental formats in general, it's always nice to see a fic trying something new. well done!
11013322
Hi! I apologize for the delayed reply here, but thank you for giving this a try, and especially for adding so many comments! I truly appreciate that. :)
As you alluded to, this was definitely a style experiment on my part. I'd be lying if I said it turned out 100% perfect, but after some polishing help from a few friends, it landed in a pretty darn good place, I think. If nothing else, it encourages me to try out other styles and genres I've typically avoided over the years.
Thanks again!
11013303
Apologies for the delayed reply here. But thank you for the read and the comment. I appreciate it!
Totally understand that the style was a bit of a hurdle to get over. It was definitely an experiment on my part, but I'm glad that it didn't prove to be a total barrier for you. Thanks for sticking with it. :)
Sadly, a lot of this I drew from experience with members of my own family, so the sadness and the feeling of being unable to do anything to help is very real too. I suppose the slight upshot there is that it wasn't that hard to convey those feelings into Sunset and Twi as I wrote. But yeah, heavy stuff indeed.
Thanks again, and feel free to peruse my other stories if you wish!