Huh.

I mean, this is a pretty damn heavy topic, and you didn't do too bad at it, just... I don't know what to say. I guess I just would have liked more time with the character. Yeah. A happier ending would have been nice too, but I get why you did what you did. Just give us more time is my advice.

Me too, Sunset, me too.

Something I liked:

As a moment-by-moment process showing someone who decides to commit a certain act, and then commits to it, I think this does so fairly effectively. If you've ever been seriously depressed, then you've thought about the exact same things Sunset thinks about here, and I would say it's almost too relatable if not for something I'll get into later. I don't have a lot of stuff to say that's both positive and constructive about this? It talks about a topic that hits close to home for me, and I'm assuming for the person who wrote this. Certainly a big mood with this one.

Something I didn't like:

Um... isn't it cliche for Sunset to be in this situation? There must be an army of "Sunset is suicidal" stories at this point, and this wouldn't be so noticeable if not for this honestly feeling like it could've been about anyone, not Sunset in particular. Like I never really got the impression that this should apply to Sunset and her character, and how she handles depression. Sure, she asks a lot of questions about it, but anyone can do that. It doesn't help that we're not really given context for why Sunset feels this way aside from a very general sense of impending doom, and again, that can apply to anyone.

Verdict: As a mood piece it's fine, but as a character piece I feel like it's a bit... empty?

Genre: Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Thoughts: Well, that was massively depressing. D:

As a longtime fan of Soufriere, I’m definitely not opposed to some Sunset Shimmer sadfic. Taking it all the way out through an actual depiction of suicide is a really rough thing to spring on a reader, though. I mean, this does a solid job of executing on the depiction of a suicidally depressed Sunset ending herself, and I can’t really argue with this on the basis of the writing at all. The Ophelia reference could’ve been cheesy but it wasn’t, so props for that. Props as well for getting into the headspace as deeply as you’ve managed.

If I’m going to complain here, it would be more about the meta-problem of not having content warnings on Writeoff stories. I could have personally done without the super-dark head trip to the void. And granted, I could’ve stopped reading, but the big gap thing offered quite a bit of pull to see what happened after. That was another thing that could’ve easily been cheesy, but that ended up being very effective.

I think, in the end, this is a very strong story, albeit one that laser-focuses on walking a character down a short path that I personally didn’t want to go down. I don’t think that’s a basis for dinging the story, though; it hits hard with what it’s doing.

Tier: (All of the stories this round are good)

This one almost, almost hits the mark that I so desperately wanted it to hit, though I should say it's definitely not for want of trying from you, dear Author. Were it going up against any other batch of entries, it might just crack the top of my list. Of course, with all the entries here being good to some degree, it just means my level of criticism for every entry in this particular round had shifted to a higher standard than usual.

Before I get into it, I just wanna say that I don't mind how the story went down. I don't mind that it's Sunset Shimmer either, though that may be in part because I had written and published something similar to this on FimFic so it would be hypocritical of me to say that we shouldn't add to the site's swollen supply of suicidal Sunset stories. I just think that at a fundamental level, the prose and overall structure lacked the focus or refinement it needed to truly convince me that this ending was the conclusion the narrative was going for from the start.

I agree with >>No_Raisin that the moment-to-moment process building up towards the suicide conveyed Sunset's depression rather effectively, up to a certain extent. Overall, I think Sunset's train of thought as it went along meandered a little, taking a few extra swerves when it really should've just been a straight line. It's something I'm willing to overlook as just Sunset having a stream of consciousness, especially since she had just woken up when the story started. In that case, I would wish the structure and cadence of the story reflected that a little more.

It's really when she starts thinking about death and about committing the act of suicide itself that I think the story starts to lose its grip. I feel like all these jumbled thoughts about how she would enact her suicide should've been something that Sunset thought about over a long period of time instead of it all just surging in like an epiphany when all the other options should've been tossed into the bin months ago. There's also a big dramatic shift between hoping your life would end and actually ending your life that I think the story skimped out on. To be clear, I don't need to know or be hinted about what triggered her to commit suicide. I just feel like, with the story's phrasing and cursory lack of narrative focus, I'm not buying that such a train of thought would lead her to choose suicide as a means of escape.

I think it's nice that you've stuck with the water imagery throughout, dear Author. It's the one thing that I can say you were definitely gunning for from the start. I think maybe expanding upon it into more aspects surrounding Sunset might definitely help out with driving the story home altogether. After all, if Sunset thought her end to be poetic, why not show it from her eyes? If I may be so bold, sell us the idea that drowning oneself in a bathtub is a beautiful thing.

Overall, despite its subject matter, I like the story for what it's trying to do, though I think the story's focus incapacitated the poetic end it was going for. A change here and there, you might just have something that'll elevate this story from good to great for me.

Thanks for writing, and good luck!

This piece is a bold/risky play in more ways than one, so I'm definitely tipping my hat to your ambition. I also really like the stylistic choice in the first half of having so many sentences in a row start with "She". It gives the piece a feeling of uneasy repetition, and kind of drives home the inescapeability of Sunset's mood. Overall, some really well-crafted stuff.

Now, I will have to say that the ending didn't quite land for me. For a subject like suicide, it's really hard to have it consistently play out strongly with a lot of readers, because some readers are going to see a character death and immediately think that this is a play at the heartstrings. For me, I've probably read more than my share of "be sad because X character dies" stories, and while this piece is certainly a distinctly higher caliber than those stories, they do have similar flavors to me, personally.

For instance, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the transition from "Sunset is depressed" to "Sunset is ready to take her own life". This might be a pacing thing, but just when I was ready to learn more about the ways and the reasons behind Sunset's depression, she's filling the bathtub. It's not quite going from 0 to 60, but it might be something like a 25ish to 60. I find myself agreeing with >>WritingSpirit that it didn't feel like something Sunset has been thinking about for a long time.

So overall, while I definitely think that the first half of this story is solidly constructed, I just wasn't quite there for the ending and payoff. You still have quite a bit of your word count left, so I do wish that it was used to foreshadow or ease into the ending a little more.

Thank you for entering!