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No Rest for the Weary · She-Ra Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
Show rules for this event
Safety In Your Arms
Back in the Fright Zone, brushing your teeth was the height of personal care. But now, far away from her homeland’s sharp edges and looming shadows, Adora loved holding Glimmer close and brushing her hair. She wasn’t great at it. She brushed the wrong way, and never knew how to untangle a knot without help. But it felt good to take care of someone instead of blowing them up.

And Glimmer seemed to love it too, leaning into Adora’s touch, guiding her hands through tangled waters, humming and smiling so warm that it had to be magic.

But ever since Adora rescued her friends from Shadow Weaver, Glimmer had changed. She barely smiled. She didn’t let Adora brush her hair anymore, even when Adora insisted. She just sat in her bedroom, staring off into space, flinching at the lightest sounds. Adora didn’t know what to make of it.








Adora woke to screaming—Glimmer screaming.

She scrambled in the dark to grab her sword. She carried it down the hall, then kicked open Glimmer’s door.

“Glimmer!” she shouted, swinging her sword haphazardly. “What’s going on?”

When her eyes finally adjusted to the bedroom's light, she found no intruders and no danger—just Glimmer, sitting up in bed, staring at her with bleary eyes.

Adora lowered her sword. “Did you just scream, or...?”

Glimmer’s cheeks reddened. “You heard that?”

“I think the whole kingdom did,” Adora said. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Glimmer turned her whole body away. “I had a bad dream. It’s fine.”

“Must have been a seriously bad dream,” Adora said, chuckling. “Sounds more like a nightmare to me.”

Glimmer didn’t move. “Yeah.”

Silence hung between them.

Adora swallowed. “Do... you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“You sure? I bet I can—”

“Would you just leave me alone?” Glimmer hissed. She shot Adora an ugly glare. “I can deal with this myself. Stop being so obsessed with me.”

Adora winced like she’d been kicked in the gut. “Oh. I mean, sorry. Just trying to help.”

Glimmer's scowl faded. She covered her eyes with her hands. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you, I just—I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

As Glimmer trembled, Adora dropped her sword and climbed the steps to her bed. “What’s up?” she asked, sidling up next to Glimmer.

“Nothing.” Glimmer shook her head. “It’s stupid. I just... can’t relax.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t stop thinking about the Fright Zone, and Shadow Weaver, and”—Glimmer shivered—”the feeling of her magic inside me. It was like having lavawurms in my skin. I was in so much pain, I thought I might pass out. And I always knew you’d come, of course, but there was still some part of me that was sure I would die there.”

She looked up at Adora. “I thought that when I stopped glitching it would all be over, but it’s not. I don’t feel any better. I still feel Shadow Weaver. When I close my eyes, she’s all I see.”

Adora laid an arm over Glimmer’s shoulders. “That wear and tear from battle, it lasts. I totally get it.”

“Thanks, but...” Glimmer shrugged her off. “No, you don’t get it.”

Adora frowned. “What do you mean? You think I wasn’t scared of Shadow Weaver? If she found out we were having nightmares, she’d lock us in a dark room until we got over it.”

“Exactly!” Glimmer said, throwing up her hands. “You grew up always fighting, always in danger. I didn’t. I grew up safe. Even after my dad died, even after I became a commander, I never knew what war was. I only heard about it from guards.

“I was safe here,” said Glimmer, looking around her room—from the old finger-paintings on the walls, to the closet overflowing with dresses. In a choking voice, she said, “Now, I—I don’t know how to feel safe anymore.”

Her words melt into sobs. Adora sat awkwardly to the side, frozen between wanting to help her friend and the fear of making things worse.

“Fix me,” Glimmer said through gasps. “I can’t sleep, can’t think. I can’t live like this. Please.”

Adora stared, shaking—then reached out and took Glimmer’s hand. “I don’t know how to do that. But maybe I can help, even a little bit.”

“How?”

Silently, Adora leapt out of Glimmer’s bed, over to her desk. She picked up a hairbrush.

Glimmer fell back asleep in Adora’s lap, loving fingers running through her hair, traipsing along her arms. Safe.
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#1 · 3
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Ahhhhh, delicious Glimmadora fluff. Nothing like some quality hurt/comfort to quench one's thirst.

I think you picked a really great subplot to explore here, one that we were kind of just left hanging with because the season ended. I like to think that Glimmer isn't just magically "fixed", at the very least she has some trauma or unresolved issues because of her experience. Gotta work those kinds of things out, kiddo.

That said, my main piece of feedback would be some of her lines and characterization seem off. "Stop being so obsessed with me" is a bit incongruous here, because it's not like we've had enough of their interactions outside of the scope of the scene to know that Adora is acting "obsessive." Plus, Adora's kneejerk reaction to that seems a bit too doormat-like for her at this stage in the story. Instead of apologizing, I think she'd push back a little (i.e. "Glimmer... how could you say that? I'm your friend.")
Feel me?

Well done overall, I'm definitely glad that this ship got some love in the contest!
#2 · 1
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Ouuuuh fluffy Glimmadora, i always think about characters psyche after such traumatic events, and how often nothing is explored further from what happened.

I wonder if glimmer holds any sort of trauma that may pop up later in the show.
My interpretation:
Its a glimpse in to the mind of Glimmer and how the event of her kiddnapping really messed with her mind, being perhaps the most sensitive of all characters, she was put against shadow Weavers torture, the kind of torture that marred Catra, imagine!

The word limit really hurt it to get stablished I could see this spawn a nice slow burn psycological story about Glimmer and her PTD, i havent seen many fics like these, and i remain hopeful that somehow in the end Adora and Glimmer over come the trauma with LOVE.. MNNHNHH YES im a fuggin softie Dx
#3 · 2
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and here i find yet another well-written entry. i like your choice of subject, as seemingly does everyone else, since the aftermath of glimmer's time captured by shadow weaver was something we all wanted explored, and you did just that for us. (some glimadora added to the mix never hurts, either!)

i'm pretty sure both meadows and bearpigs have covered the two topics i noticed myself i. e. the "obsessed with me" bit and how, given a little more time (and a higher word count limit) this story could have had more detail. besides that, i have no criticism to give :)
#4 · 1
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First time commenting on a She-Ra round, as I just finished watching the show. Since we have a lot of newcomers, I'll put this header on my comment for every story, since I don't know whether the new people will read the whole discussion thread or just the one for their story.

The write-offs were originally from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom, which has an unusually high caliber of writing standards. Or at least it used to. Sure, there's plenty of bad stuff here, but when you attract that large an audience, you attract a proportionally large number of very good writers, and those tended to congregate in a couple of key places. One, in reviewing groups that helped writers develop, and two, in places like this, that at their best function more as a writing workshop than a competition.

Since I haven't actually started reading any of these as I write this intro, I'll say I don't know how the average writing quality of any given fandom compares to MLP, and it's possible that the critiques given by the MLP veterans will come across as harsh. That's not the intent. I wouldn't spend the 15-30 minutes it takes per minific for me to read, digest, and write up a response if I was just trying to be mean. We all really do intend to help you improve your writing.

I'll put all this above a break so people reading the whole thread will know where to skip down to on subsequent posts.

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The opening paragraph does one thing very well and one not so well. The good thing is anecdote. Rather than just say something's been off about Glimmer, you give me a specific instance of it with the hair brushing. That's precisely how to bring the concept alive. What doesn't work is that it's told more as a summary after the fact, so it leaves me distanced from it. Don't tell me about "that one time Adora brushed Glimmer's hair." In some stories, where the present action is important and the past is needed to justify it, that kind of structure can work, but here, this is the climax of Adora realizing something's wrong. Don't give me a summary after the fact. Show it to me as it happens.

Well, there's one other way. As a later summary of Adora's memories of it, you can still make that powerful if we see how Adora reacts to the memory of it. Either way, tie the event to the emotions surrounding it. You're almost there, as some of the word choice in the narration describing it does imply her mood about it, but it's on the understated side. Unless you want to create the effect that Adora's become inured to it, but I don't think that's the direction you're taking the story.

One thing I'll say about the dialogue: it's very show-appropriate. The show itself is obviously aiming for a young-ish demographic, and that comes through in how it deals with certain situations or what tone it takes. And how comedy slips in here and there, of course. An adult audience might wish it took things more seriously, but what you have here is very much what I could see the characters saying in the show.

Oh, Glimmer has steps now? Did she add those to account for what happened when she was glitching? Or for Adora's benefit? Eh? Eh?

Moving on...

The obsession thing is kind of weird, as we don't have the context to feel it's justified, even through Glimmer's possibly warped perception of things.

You've got a spot where you lapse into present tense.

The ending's a bit pat, and it's confusing whether you've switched to Glimmer's perspective there. Assuming you haven't, it dodges a bit of the pat-ness, just by virtue of it being what Adora hopes is true, not what actually is. And because it would mean Glimmer's problems aren't just instantly and miraculously solved by a tiny bit of obvious psychology.

This is another one that's just a slight reasonable extension of events already in the show, but the depth to it at least hints at a different kind of relationship between the two. But see, here's where I bring in the uniqueness thing I talked about in an earlier review. This is such a standard kind of story and such an expected take on events that doesn't branch out much from what actually happened in the show that it could easily be forgettable, if still up there in quality of writing. But that one image of brushing hair gives this the kind of signature it needs to stick in the reader's head and do something to surprise. I really appreciate that for its inclusion. It just needs to be a little clearer which perspective you're using at the end, and if it's Adora's (which, once again, would seem to be the stronger choice), getting a hint of Glimmer's reaction to it would say a lot.
#5 ·
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Soft, but heavy on the emotions, Safety In Your Arms is easily my top contender for this round. This piece hits almost every note, and I don't have all that much to complain about. I could talk for hours about some of the strongest parts of this entry—establishing the hair-brushing motif via juxtaposition with an immediately-dropped tooth-brushing motif, the immaculate emotional arc from Glimmer, that little aside detail on the finger-paintings in Glimmers room—and I suspect the author knows full well that I could do that, and doesn't need the ego boost. This writing is good, author. You'll get very few complaints from me if you keep writing like this for future rounds.

My only slight concern is your final paragraph. I adore the way you end the story, here (did someone say bookend structure?), but the actual writing at the end is some of the weakest throughout the piece. Like I said in my last review, a weak ending isn't the best for leaving your audience with a good feeling about your entry, and it's taken me most of the week to process just how much I love the rest of this piece because of the weakness of the ending! You've taken a gamble ending on that fragment, author, and I'm not convinced it's paid off.

There's little else to say: perhaps some of the dialogue could be less distant, after that initial gulf between the characters has been established, though I'd understand why you'd want to maintain that given the nature of the ending. Overall, though, a powerful piece with a powerful message. I loved it!