First line, and I thought "well, this is bold." That question has been broached by so many fanfics, so in my mind I was more or less daring this story to show me some new take on it.

It did.

And it got to me, it really did. The answer was so simple (but still new to my experience) and yet it was the fallout that sold me on this story. You've done a great job with Sunset and Dash reacting afterwards. Both feel incredibly genuine and real. There's no wise sayings forced into it, or needless gibbering either. The two talk, in voices that sound spot on, and it just... is. Definitely the most emotional story I've read so far!

Genre: Don't Go Looking For Human Shimmer

Thoughts: My attempt to write a review that differs in any material way from >>Xepher has failed. Story is both good and heavy, with an opening bit that looks cliche but an ending bit that hits hard.

Tier: Strong

Either the answer would be the simplest or would be over the top.
It's the first one and, instead of just writing to give that answer, you spent words to actually tell how two characters react to it. So yeah, >>Xepher has said it all. I won't be as enthusiast as him/her/Apache helicopter, but I'm still enthusiast nevertheless.
A strong story, without a doubt.

I'm going to have to be the minority report and say that this story didn't quite click for me. While the characters and pacing is largely on point, the premise itself doesn't really feel like the big emotional thing that it clearly wants to be. I thought it was pretty clear where things were going by the end of the first section, so the reveal really didn't do much to me. Maybe I'm just being a butt-head, but I think that having a bit of a personal emergency over the fact that your friend's alternate self has been dead for a while feels a bit overblown. It might be disorienting, sure, but not worth having an identity crisis, IMO.

Again, subjective opinions in droves here, so I'll definitely take that into consideration while voting.

I swear I left a review for this story earlier, which made a joking reference to Fractured Sunlight, but it seems to... not exist...

...Weird, man.

Anyway. Moving, with characters who are true to their canon selves. But I'm not too sure what I'm supposed to take away from it in the end. Maybe that's the point. RBD and Shimmyshammy don't seem to know what to take from this experience, either.

A good entry, overall.

Like >>Bachiavellian, I'm not convinced that this story clicked for me the way it did for others here. I reached the conclusion feeling as though I should be more emotionally touched than I ultimately was. Perhaps that's a case of unfair reader expectation, particularly given what you set out to achieve within the word limitations of the round, but I guess the story itself does have to have a hand in setting up and maintaining those expectations.

It felt like it wanted to be about Sunset, and I think that was the stronger element at play here. I get using Dash's discovery and reaction as a foil to maybe explore Sunset's own thoughts and feelings, but Dash's reaction feels a bit overpowering within the space this story has to work with, and it loses some impact as a result. At least to me it does.

Solid characterisation though, and you manage to get significant mileage out of such a low word count. This is a technically very good story, even if it doesnt quite land all of its emotional blows.

Thanks for sharing your work.

Competent!

The characterization clicks well for the EqG setting, and there's a lot of little touches emphasizing it: the regular presence of smartphones (including the format of the text message), Dash being a bit oblivious and impulsive, and Sunset's reflex response to what she gets asked.

There's one comparison that sticks out like a splinter: "her face as grave as the stones around her" is far too whimsical a comparison (due to the dual meaning and the sort-of-pun) for the serious tone of the surroundings. That has to go if you want to keep the tone.

Rainbow asking "Why tell me, though?" feels a little off, because there's an obvious answer, but that could just be her being a bit oblivious again.

The arc isn't all that satisfying; it's not bad as a slice of life per se, but it has dangling emotions around the edges. If it dug into alternate Sunset's past beyond the surface, or just had any kind of more solid catharsis, that might be better. (It's realistic for this to be their response to things, but not satisfying narratively.)

I wonder if this sentence: Rainbow just stared, her face as grave as the stones around her. was meant as a pun or not. It somewhat threw me out because it was both unexpected and unsavoury in this context.

Otherwise, good dialogue, but I’ve not really connected to it. The situation seems contrived and that setup a bit sappy. I definitely concur this is great technically and the characterisation is good, but the plot seemed hokeyed to me.

As a saving grace, it reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh, who (you may not know this) had a deceased older brother named the same, and whose parents often brought to the grave of that brother, who was, in a way, himself.

I saw the reveal coming but I was fine with that. Overall, I found it to be an interesting take on a subject that has been broached in a couple of other stories I've read. Personally I think this was handled quite well and even if it did at times get cutesy I had fun reading it.

Like several others before me, this really didn't work for me. Maybe I'm different from other people or whatever, but I don't buy that Rainbow or even Sunset would have been that upset at the long-ago death of someone who's basically an identical twin. And since the entire story consists of 1) just this one idea 2) the characters telling each other how tragic that supposedly is, I couldn't find anything in here that appealed to me.

Not a bad piece and an interesting take on the prompt. It's solidly-written and has an interesting subject matter, and I thought the dialogue was well-done.

On the other hand, the story is a little on the flat side. I think maybe it would have had more impact if we'd learned more about Human!Sunset, like if she had any surviving family or friends (maybe Sunset had tried to visit them), or if there were any unsettling similarities between the two Sunsets. As is, Human!Sunset is just a cypher who's only impact is provided by the shock value of her being dead.

Anyway, a good read and thanks for sharing!

Interesting take on the idea and solid writing, but yeah, I have to join the echo of voices who don't quite manage the emotional connection here. I could see getting a bit weirded out by it, and I've certainly been upset about odd things before, but to have this much of a reaction to it just strikes me as hard to understand and connect to, making it feel incredibly overwrought.

i can't believe sunset shimmer is bucking dead

Gonna cut to the chase on this one. People, friends, everyone: please stop killing kids to buy Writeoff sympathy votes. It's less common in pony rounds than original rounds, thankfully, but still a trend that runs rampant. This is, to me, a very egregious example.

Human Shimmer is dead: so? Why do we care? She's demonstrably not connected to Pony Shimmer. There's no followup, nobody thinks about, for example, trying to connect with the human Shimmer family. The whole scene after the reveal is Dash hanging a lampshade on this and saying "I shouldn't care, so why do I?" Well, yeah, why DO you?

The last few comments covered all this, and why it makes for a weak piece for anyone who doesn't buy into being sad about a dead kid by default. What they didn't cover is the actual reason, which is that this is a piece of fiction written for a competition and manifestly trying to elicit an emotional reaction from its readers. Nothing in a story happens without a reason. Sunset died because you, the author, decided she was dead. You murdered her, and then you gave Rainbow Dash and Pony Shimmer magical depression about it, in order to try and make us readers feel the same sort of pain and react to your story.

... okay okay, no, come back, stop crying, I'm not completely serious. That's obviously a hyperbolic and extremely uncharitable interpretation, and there's nothing wrong with killing characters in stories, and to this particular author, apologies, nothing against you in particular, this is admittedly a tame example in terms of content, you're just in the right spot to be the object lesson for me soapboxing a little here.

Because: have you read the slates in other writeoff rounds? There is SO MUCH child death (and general death, and alzheimer's/identity death, and suicide, and...). Last round, a schoolteacher shot one of her students in the face, for the sake of a "Mist ending." Last pony round, Flurry Heart had her volition magically cut off and was doomed to probably eternity as a dessicated, immobile but still living and presumably conscious alicorn filly skeleton. It is out of hand, and vastly, orders of magnitude more common here than any other fiction community I have seen anywhere ever.

And when I ask myself why it's so common here, well. There's a pretty obvious answer. Shock value and dramatic subjects get votes. Check out the first couple of comments on this entry, compared to the later ones. Not that those people are wrong to like this piece. There are no criteria for voting, certainly nobody's wrong for being affected by reading something dramatic. It's also hard to point to any individual entry and say "author did this to get votes" instead of "author just happened to have this idea and felt it would make a good story." They aren't even mutually exclusive. But look at the bigger picture, in aggregate, and the trend is pretty clear.

So. Yeah. Shock value exploits are actively negative (imaginary, metaphorical) points to me now. They're overdone, they're relatively lazy writing in terms of the impact they garner vs execution, and in aggregate their prevalence has a tangible negative impact on my enjoyment of writeoff rounds.

This particular piece is not that bad on the shock content side. It's not really important that human Sunset died young. It is important that she's dead, though, instead of never existing or any other outcome. The distilled essence of the piece is still "someone is dead; therefore be sad," and there's very little else to it. That is why I say it's egregious on the "death in general for audience sympathy" respect.

ANYWAY, ALL THAT ASIDE... it's certainly not an unreasonable outcome if we consider the question of "what happened to human Sunset" in a vacuum. The execution's really quite good. I love the presentation of the gravestone, and Sunset's note, and the character voices in the first half. The second half suffers some in comparison - I think it's simply too long, with not enough going on. Overall a pacing flaw, the pre-reveal section should be longer, the post-reveal shorter. Though not too short! Ending the piece on the reveal would be even worse, to me; there should definitely be a conversation about it afterwards, but it probably doesn't need to be very long, and ideally would have some more engaging content than "Hm, I am sad about this, but don't really know why."

This is actually heading for a rather high place on my voting slate, third place at the moment with only a few left to review. Thank you for writing, author, the piece's pretty good, and I dearly hope you will take no personal slight from my use of this piece to talk about a sitewide issue.

But seriously, everyone: next time you're considering writing something shocking for your entry here, take a moment and think honestly about why that idea is calling to you and if it truly is the best writing you can do. Try and test yourself with "I think this will be a good Writeoff idea, because ______ and the people reading it will think/feel/see _______." Sometimes it will turn out to be a great idea! Sometimes you might find something better.

>>Ranmilia

Last pony round, Flurry Heart had her volition magically cut off and was doomed to probably eternity as a dessicated, immobile but still living and presumably conscious alicorn filly skeleton.

Which story are you referring to? Last ponyfic round was Rising from Ashes, and I don't remember a story about Bony Heart in that one. Unless you're referencing the last pony minific round... because I didn't actually read all the entries from that one...

I did murder Spike in the last ponyfic round, though, and I suddenly feel very bad about it.

>>Ranmilia "please stop killing kids to buy Writeoff sympathy votes...."

Can we just wing them a little. Just a few tendons, and perhaps a minor limb? Let loose Scootaloo with a Red Ryder BB gun, maybe?

"Ow!"

"Oh, sheesh! Rainbow Dash, I'm sorry! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, good thing I had my sunglasses on, or you could have put out an eye."

Scoring this one an A, even though I had to read it twice due to preconceived plot notions. (Seriously, I thought Sunset had killed her mirror twin by running her over with a car or something. My bad.) The choice of RD for emotional idea bouncing is epic, because few characters could hit that note with less grace. A road well trod but still leaving behind a nice drive. Well done.

>>Posh
This one, from Rising from the Ashes.

The individual callouts are just more examples though. Nothing particular against those either, they were just ones that came to mind immediately.

>>Ranmilia ...Oh! Oh, that one! Sorry, I didn't really make the connection going just by your description...

>>Ranmilia
Wow, guess I touched a nerve.

Seriously, though, I didn't kill a kid to "buy Writeoff sympathy votes."
I did it because it's a situation in which the characters are quite understandably shaken and the only thing they can do about it is take a course of action that fits the prompt: Ignore it, and eventually it will go away.
What Sunset knows and what Rainbow Dash discovers is jarring.
And there's no "why" to it. Some things are just that way. There's no rationale, no bigger purpose, no reason at all.
There is no meaning to reconcile and come to terms with.
One of the Sunsets is dead. That's just how it is and there's nothing to explain.

The narrative might have been more satisfying to those with itchy curiosity if I had explained how human-Shimmer died, but that wasn't the point. That wouldn't have addressed the prompt. I very deliberately stayed away from writing anything about that because it was a sidetrack that didn't take the real story anywhere.

It also might have been more satisfying for those who demand closure if I had given Sunset and Rainbow some sort of emotional process to work through to a tidy conclusion - the whole bit about denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, life goes on - but again, that's not the prompt, or the point. Or, as I saw it, even remotely realistic.

In circumstances like this, there's no pseudo-wisdom to wedge in that helps, or philosophical rationalizing that's just going to magically console everyone and make it better. Sunset and Rainbow talk, but don't get anywhere, because there's nowhere to get to.

I just wanted to capture that messy part of how things are sometimes in real life, because to me, that's what the prompt was just begging to deal with.