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The Village of Friendship (and Property Damage)
Sweetie Drops sat on the ground, in front of her house. Lyra was next to her. It had been a long, long day.
While it wasn't a complete surprise when they came back to find that the bugbear had half destroyed the place during it's rampage, it was very annoying.
And maybe she deserved this. But Lyra sure didn't.
She seemed unfazed by the destruction. "It doesn't actually look too bad," she said, "I think it's pretty much just the upper floor that's gone. The downstairs is still intact."
Of course she was. It would take more than property damage to shake her. Her best friend suddenly revealing she wasn't the pony she seemed to be—that might do the trick!
It had been a long day, and would be a long night.
They went inside. It turned out the monster had got the ground floor too. The kitchen was missing a wall.
Sweetie Drops lay down on the floor. She had limits, and that...
"I'm sorry, Lyra. This is all my fault." It took the last of her willpower to keep the words from breaking up into sobs.
"Come on, Bonnie, it's not like it's a big deal. And it's still better than that time I burned the place down," Lyra said. "Oh, wait. I mean Sweetie Drops?"
There it was. "Call me whatever you want," she said. "This is all my fault. I was the one who let that bugbear get out the first time around. I got our whole thing shut down and let a monster get out into the world.
"My last orders were to go undercover somewhere and just keep my head down. 'Wait for further instructions.'" She looked at Lyra. "But I know how things are. I know what I left everypony else to clean up. Those instructions aren't coming. That's all gone now."
Lyra didn't get it though. She just kept stroking her mane and telling her it was going to be okay. When would that damn mare see that not everything could be okay?
Sweetie Drops couldn't take it anymore. "Don't you understand! I'm a liar! A failure! You're in danger just by being near me."
Lyra was startled by the outburst. The mare who was certainly now Sweetie Drops's former best friend stood up. "I'm going to go grab some blankets and stuff from upstairs. It's getting late."
Sweetie Drops was alone now, so she could wallow in misery like she wanted to.
The wedding had been nice. No thanks to her. What had she done to make up for her first failure and stop the bugbear with her second chance? Nothing. Twilight and her friends had done all the work.
It was just as well she had gotten the agency shuttered. With ponies like that around what was left for ones like her? That was all she would have needed to do, not mess up for a few years, and she would have been able to retire. Instead she was exiled in disgrace. Way to go, Sweetie Drops.
A pillow hit her in the face. Deep instincts rolled her out of the way of the second one just behind it.
Lyra was standing in the doorway with a smirk. "Gotcha." Her horn lit up with golden light, and she rearranged the pillows side by side. "So would you believe that there was only one blanket that didn't get torn up?" She lay down next to Sweetie Drops.
The blanket spread over both of them. Sweetie Drops looked at her ex-marefriend. Despite the omnipresent cheer in her voice, her expression was fragile.
"Lyra, you're a terrible liar."
"And proud of it!" The words came out sharp.
Sweetie Drops could only wince.
"We're gonna talk about that. But you're being way too hard on yourself about the other stuff."
"How can you say that? I failed my mission."
Lyra shrugged. "So what? Look what it got you: the greatest marefriend of all time."
Sweetie Drops tried to argue, but got a hoof stuffed in her mouth.
"I know what you're going to say, but you know me. Do you really think I hate you? Me?"
Somehow Lyra's embrace was much warmer than it had been a few seconds before. There were still plenty of other problems to deal with. "Aren't you afraid I'll put you in danger?"
"More danger than Princess Twilight?"
Sweetie Drops couldn't say anything to that.
"Aha, so I do know you as well as I thought, Bon Bon."
While it wasn't a complete surprise when they came back to find that the bugbear had half destroyed the place during it's rampage, it was very annoying.
And maybe she deserved this. But Lyra sure didn't.
She seemed unfazed by the destruction. "It doesn't actually look too bad," she said, "I think it's pretty much just the upper floor that's gone. The downstairs is still intact."
Of course she was. It would take more than property damage to shake her. Her best friend suddenly revealing she wasn't the pony she seemed to be—that might do the trick!
It had been a long day, and would be a long night.
They went inside. It turned out the monster had got the ground floor too. The kitchen was missing a wall.
Sweetie Drops lay down on the floor. She had limits, and that...
"I'm sorry, Lyra. This is all my fault." It took the last of her willpower to keep the words from breaking up into sobs.
"Come on, Bonnie, it's not like it's a big deal. And it's still better than that time I burned the place down," Lyra said. "Oh, wait. I mean Sweetie Drops?"
There it was. "Call me whatever you want," she said. "This is all my fault. I was the one who let that bugbear get out the first time around. I got our whole thing shut down and let a monster get out into the world.
"My last orders were to go undercover somewhere and just keep my head down. 'Wait for further instructions.'" She looked at Lyra. "But I know how things are. I know what I left everypony else to clean up. Those instructions aren't coming. That's all gone now."
Lyra didn't get it though. She just kept stroking her mane and telling her it was going to be okay. When would that damn mare see that not everything could be okay?
Sweetie Drops couldn't take it anymore. "Don't you understand! I'm a liar! A failure! You're in danger just by being near me."
Lyra was startled by the outburst. The mare who was certainly now Sweetie Drops's former best friend stood up. "I'm going to go grab some blankets and stuff from upstairs. It's getting late."
Sweetie Drops was alone now, so she could wallow in misery like she wanted to.
The wedding had been nice. No thanks to her. What had she done to make up for her first failure and stop the bugbear with her second chance? Nothing. Twilight and her friends had done all the work.
It was just as well she had gotten the agency shuttered. With ponies like that around what was left for ones like her? That was all she would have needed to do, not mess up for a few years, and she would have been able to retire. Instead she was exiled in disgrace. Way to go, Sweetie Drops.
A pillow hit her in the face. Deep instincts rolled her out of the way of the second one just behind it.
Lyra was standing in the doorway with a smirk. "Gotcha." Her horn lit up with golden light, and she rearranged the pillows side by side. "So would you believe that there was only one blanket that didn't get torn up?" She lay down next to Sweetie Drops.
The blanket spread over both of them. Sweetie Drops looked at her ex-marefriend. Despite the omnipresent cheer in her voice, her expression was fragile.
"Lyra, you're a terrible liar."
"And proud of it!" The words came out sharp.
Sweetie Drops could only wince.
"We're gonna talk about that. But you're being way too hard on yourself about the other stuff."
"How can you say that? I failed my mission."
Lyra shrugged. "So what? Look what it got you: the greatest marefriend of all time."
Sweetie Drops tried to argue, but got a hoof stuffed in her mouth.
"I know what you're going to say, but you know me. Do you really think I hate you? Me?"
Somehow Lyra's embrace was much warmer than it had been a few seconds before. There were still plenty of other problems to deal with. "Aren't you afraid I'll put you in danger?"
"More danger than Princess Twilight?"
Sweetie Drops couldn't say anything to that.
"Aha, so I do know you as well as I thought, Bon Bon."
Short but sweet. It's been a long time since I've seen these two in a fic, for some reason, but this is a really nice reintroduction to them.
I'm a sucker for some hurt/comfort; it's like ice cream to me. The approach this story brings to that decadent little genre one feels a little thin, however.
First, some bare-bones setting description breaks up what is otherwise a dialogue-driven, introspective story. Second, said introspection isn't telling us that much about Bon-Bon's character; it mostly restates the facts of the episode and repeats variations of the same theme: "My friendship with Lyra is over."
It's... it's largely wallowing, to be frank.
Third, my concept of who these characters are to one another changed as the story went on, because I don't think their relationship was clearly communicated. They're best friends at the start, but marefriends at the end. Yet they don't really act like a couple until the end. I think some more physical interplay between them might help establish that they're a couple, without necessarily having to say that they're a couple.
(And this isn't to imply that best friends and girlfriends are mutually exclusive; just, if that's the nature of their relationship, show it. You know?)
So... um, it's cute. But it's not really doing much more than being cute, and fluffy, I'm afraid. Not yet, anyway. A little more polish, some added detail, maybe a deeper look into Bonnie, and this could be both fluffy and substantial.
First, some bare-bones setting description breaks up what is otherwise a dialogue-driven, introspective story. Second, said introspection isn't telling us that much about Bon-Bon's character; it mostly restates the facts of the episode and repeats variations of the same theme: "My friendship with Lyra is over."
It's... it's largely wallowing, to be frank.
Third, my concept of who these characters are to one another changed as the story went on, because I don't think their relationship was clearly communicated. They're best friends at the start, but marefriends at the end. Yet they don't really act like a couple until the end. I think some more physical interplay between them might help establish that they're a couple, without necessarily having to say that they're a couple.
(And this isn't to imply that best friends and girlfriends are mutually exclusive; just, if that's the nature of their relationship, show it. You know?)
So... um, it's cute. But it's not really doing much more than being cute, and fluffy, I'm afraid. Not yet, anyway. A little more polish, some added detail, maybe a deeper look into Bonnie, and this could be both fluffy and substantial.
Also known as: Ponyville
Several minor pronoun antecedent problems. (This continues to be hard to do well, but it's still important for reading flow.) On the plus side, yay, correct omissions of closing quotation marks at paragraph breaks that are immediately followed by further dialogue from the same character!
I like the character voicing, sweet and simple, and the emotional contrast comes through clearly. Very FiM. The hard “damn” feels a little out of character, though.
I wish the clarity didn't also wind up so telly, though. More indirect signaling of the emotions rather than repeating lots of variations on “Sweetie Drops is sad and feels like a failure”, which gets monotonous about halfway through the story. Oddly enough, I think the viewpoint character inner monologue section has a positive effect on the flow, even though the content of it could use some work.
I can't quite tell whether Sweetie Drops's further instructions actually won't be coming because she was politely fired before, or her further instructions actually won't be coming because she's going to be fired as a result of the current incident, or she's just feeling self-deprecating and assumes that one of those things will happen when it's not true.
I love the detail of spycraft instincts leading to dodging the second pillow.
The ending is pretty punchy, but I'm not sure even after the last line whether Sweetie Drops would actually prefer to still be called “Bon Bon”, but it's plausible and it comes across as convincing. So maybe it's a little truncated, and it would be better to show Sweetie Drops's emotional response to the last line with just one more sentence to round it out to completion.
Overall: I'd like this better if it were less one-note/wallowing and less telly/talking-heads, but the good bits string together well. I can imagine this being half its length and still being a complete story with the same impact, or this length but with more interesting scenery and details packed in; either way, cutting a lot of the more repetitive stuff would make this much stronger. Slate: 7th of 13.
Several minor pronoun antecedent problems. (This continues to be hard to do well, but it's still important for reading flow.) On the plus side, yay, correct omissions of closing quotation marks at paragraph breaks that are immediately followed by further dialogue from the same character!
I like the character voicing, sweet and simple, and the emotional contrast comes through clearly. Very FiM. The hard “damn” feels a little out of character, though.
I wish the clarity didn't also wind up so telly, though. More indirect signaling of the emotions rather than repeating lots of variations on “Sweetie Drops is sad and feels like a failure”, which gets monotonous about halfway through the story. Oddly enough, I think the viewpoint character inner monologue section has a positive effect on the flow, even though the content of it could use some work.
I can't quite tell whether Sweetie Drops's further instructions actually won't be coming because she was politely fired before, or her further instructions actually won't be coming because she's going to be fired as a result of the current incident, or she's just feeling self-deprecating and assumes that one of those things will happen when it's not true.
I love the detail of spycraft instincts leading to dodging the second pillow.
The ending is pretty punchy, but I'm not sure even after the last line whether Sweetie Drops would actually prefer to still be called “Bon Bon”, but it's plausible and it comes across as convincing. So maybe it's a little truncated, and it would be better to show Sweetie Drops's emotional response to the last line with just one more sentence to round it out to completion.
Overall: I'd like this better if it were less one-note/wallowing and less telly/talking-heads, but the good bits string together well. I can imagine this being half its length and still being a complete story with the same impact, or this length but with more interesting scenery and details packed in; either way, cutting a lot of the more repetitive stuff would make this much stronger. Slate: 7th of 13.
Good story and a nice take on the prompt with Lyra as the mirror and oh so brightly. Two things stood out as somewhat problematic.
This sentence ends in the conditional. That implies a future situation. I immediately thought this takes place before SD's big reveal. I was confused as I read on, though I figured it out within a dozen paragraphs.
The story ends at that paragraph. I was astonished to scroll up and find more. The rest is fluff, IMHO, especially considering that this isn't the beginning of a much larger story—which, incidentally, I would welcome.
Good exploration of character. Good depiction of emotions. Good work.
Her best friend suddenly revealing she wasn't the pony she seemed to be—that might do the trick!
This sentence ends in the conditional. That implies a future situation. I immediately thought this takes place before SD's big reveal. I was confused as I read on, though I figured it out within a dozen paragraphs.
Sweetie Drops tried to argue, but got a hoof stuffed in her mouth.
The story ends at that paragraph. I was astonished to scroll up and find more. The rest is fluff, IMHO, especially considering that this isn't the beginning of a much larger story—which, incidentally, I would welcome.
Good exploration of character. Good depiction of emotions. Good work.