I don't remember:

How I voted on this prompt, but it's turning out to be a good one. Hopefully I can get the story finished in time to submit it... :)

Mike

I don't think I'll have a story in, but I'll at least try to illustrate what you come up with.

I'm trying to be in this one, for the record, and I invited a close friend, though I don't think they can participate in time as they're at work and I think submission ends at 8pm EST today (in 10 hours from now) if I remember how the submission deadline works.

EDIT: I appear to have been off by twelve hours, so maybe they'll submit something after all. We'll see.

I like the story itself, which is the most important thing. It fits the genre, addresses questions diehard fans all have, has a minor non-canon twist I enjoyed, and the voicing is accurate. The prompt drop is unsubtle, but as I recall most authors will ding you if it isn't clear, so I can't blame you.

The biggest issue here is how telly the first two-thirds of the story is when it honestly doesn't need to be. This would imo be a much better story if you trusted the reader to piece things together and actually showed us the dreams and the emotions rather than solely using tToH's voice to tell us what happened and what theirself are feeling. This would make it more immersive: readers love to figure things out, like whether something is real or a memory or a dream, who the dreamer is, what it symbolizes, and so on.

I do agree that much of this information still needs to be provided by the Tree, but preferably in a way that doesn't feel like a lecture. You could probably even write this in third-pony limited without stretching too much. I might also suggest separating the dreams from reality by using past tenses for the former and present tenses for the latter.

Technical stuff. There are two horizontal rules in the middle of a single conversation, which is not the right way imo to do emphasis (I assume that was the intent). Also, I don't think 'waver' works in the way you're using it.

That said, I enjoyed this. It's definitely going in the top three.

I like the story here. It fits the theme with Easter eggs for fans. The character voices are spot on, though Star Swirl could be a little more consistent. There're a lot of creative ideas inside, even if the high fantasy goes a little over the top. I was glad to see it doesn't get bogged down in emotion despite the emotional nature of the events (I feel you drew down the curtain at just the right points). I think it fits the prompt well enough, though it feels a little shoehorned in (the 'usefulness' is not totally clear) but this is probably an artefact of my main critique in the next paragraph.

I think it needs a little more focus. My main issue is that it isn't entirely clear to me what the lesson is that Rarity needs to learn, or why she can't simply be told directly. This makes Star Swirl's motivations very difficult to understand, especially given the Hinnyculean effort he goes through. I'm left wondering why this happened, and the story really needs this. It also isn't clear why Rarity can't remember much of what she experiences in previous cycles, since that doesn't seem like a power-level ability. It also isn't quite clear to me how Rarity will use what she learns to improve herself. How does this make her a better pony? How is this any different from what would have happened had Star Swirl not intervened? She really needs a clearer story arc, since this is a story principally about her and her failings and struggles.

Also, I see what you did with the picture opportunity drop. That was cute, and I'm tempted.

Technical stuff: you rely upon emdashes and ellipses waaaaaaay too much. Also, you can use bbcode here similar to Fimfiction.

Don't take my criticisms here as a suggestion the story needs a ton of work, I think you can pull this off with a little adding and not much modifying, though I might be making assumptions about how easy it is to relay the message you're trying to convey. I very much enjoyed the ride, and this is certainly going in the top three.

I like what you're going for, author! This story has a lot of promise, I appreciate the topic of dealing with disability and loss, and your writing is generally very good. There are some small mistakes that are more common in authors who haven't had a lot of feedback before, but your writing is still very strong so let's talk about the more important thing first: the story.

Scootaloo's disability is something most fans really regret the show not taking on directly, so it's a great topic for fixfics and dramas, and it's one that speaks to me personally. I wasn't expecting this to head into such dark terrain, but the transition downhill (so to speak) made enough sense that it wasn't jarring for me.

The topic of suicide is one with a very high degree of difficulty to pull off realistically, especially when constrained by time and space limitations (and, in full disclosure, one in which I have personal lived experience). This was a challenging narrative to approach, and most of what you did here was good.

My main critique concerns realism and resolution. Scootaloo's change of heart appearing to come quickly is actually normal in this situation, because her subconscious is desperate to convince her everything is okay. But she's still in extreme danger after an attempt, even if she didn't quite decide to take that last step. Princess Celestia would know this and immediately inform her guardians of the attempt, because if untreated it is very likely to recur at some point over the next year. This Scootaloo is in dire need of an intervention. That might seem like a minor thing to focus on, but not addressing the danger she's in makes the ending feel unresolved and unrealistic for me.

I do have a theory that makes the ending make a lot more sense, but I don't think it's what you intended because there isn't enough indication in the story to provide a hint to the reader. I'll come back to it.

As it currently stands, the ending didn't feel entirely realistic to me for a couple of reasons. First, Celestia's appearance felt too much like a convenient deus ex machina.

There's a simple solution to both of the above issues: have this take place in a dream, and use Princess Luna instead. Princess Celestia is an effective teacher (just like her VA's other major character), but her ability to understand the psyche and comfort ponies pales in comparison to her sister, plus Luna can commiserate with anyone.

This is precisely the kind of story Luna was designed for. Then the dream attempt doesn't necessarily indicate suicidality in real life. You might want to review s4e19 ("For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils") or s3e6 ("Sleepless in Ponyville") to see a couple of great examples of her at work. Even though the latter is literally a Luna+Scootaloo episode, I think the former is a better example with more depth.

If you do want her to be suicidal, Dash is a better choice for her rescue. The moment Dash discovered Scoot was missing she would take off to find her, she has a close relationship with her already, and she's uniquely fast enough to get there in time.

The other part of the ending that felt a bit rushed was the denouement. How did all the ponies immediately know where Scootaloo was and manage to run there, and why would Twilight grab Scoot's parents and round up lots of other ponies instead of organizing a smaller search party? It's nighttime (another reason Luna makes more sense here) (EDIT: I may have misread that) but even in daylight they probably wouldn't be able to see her far in the distance.

Honestly, Scoot's parents are such trash in the show that it seems more likely to me that Twilight would just grab her true guardians (her aunts). An entire episode was dedicated to Scootaloo and the rest of Ponyville literally fighting her parents over custody so she wouldn't have to leave her friends, so this definitely feels out of character to me.

The one theory that makes all of this make sense is if she died on the mountain, and the ending is not 'real'. That would be significantly darker than even I like to write, so I would question the intended message of the story. This is pretty random, but have you seen True Detective season 2? It has the problem of its apparent message being 'everything is awful' with no payoff for the audience's investment in the characters, so the ending of that season fell flat for me. If this was your intent, it needs foreshadowing, but also a purpose, a message, or some takeaway for the reader to feel like they learned something or experienced loss in a way that resonated with a positive takeaway.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. It just needs a little more realism at the end, or else a good reason why it isn't realistic.

Onto the writing notes! Your writing is good, but there are still a couple areas for improvement.

I was worried at first about microparagraphing which appeared in the early part of the story, but this improved so I don't think it's a consistent problem you have. Just be aware that separating sentences for emphasis doesn't work as well as it feels like when you're writing. Anything that draws the reader's attention to something unusual in the writing itself makes it a little harder on the reader's immersion.

You use a lot of saidisms. This is difficult to learn to avoid. Just like the overuse of emdashes and ellipses in the story "FOBO", saidisms are another convenient way to quickly tell the reader something complicated, but they're usually bad in practice. In almost all cases you should avoid using words other than 'asked/asks/ask' or 'said/says/say' for dialogue. If you've written the action around the dialogue properly, the reader will understand when a character is replying, asserting, or retorting. It feels weird and boring to always use 'said' (it's a tough habit to break!) but it's much less invasive for the reader. As much as I love using pulp-fictiony gimmicks like: "Saidisms are great," lied Trixie; I still try not to succumb to the temptation. They're usually too telly.

I didn't notice any Lavender Unicorn Syndrome on my first pass through, which is good. I'm a little ill at the moment, but I'll look again later to be sure.

Despite the dark topic, some of the scenes are just a little bit emotionally overwrought. I think one of the best things you can personally do to improve your writing is to try writing subtle details in the action portions of your dialogue. This is a good idea for any artist to practice! Your audience will appreciate being able to suss out the true intentions and feelings of characters when they aren't so vulgar (by this I mean direct/obvious). I should stress that this isn't a big problem here, because the topic deserves some obvious and strong emotion, but I think it can shine better if the expression is dialed back just a little. This is particularly true when the topic is suicide, because flattened affect prior to an attempt is common, though not universal.

Really minor stuff:

The reference to Season 1 "Dragonshy" was accurate, but felt a little forced. It would make sense if Scoot were thinking about how a dragon once used to roost here, and also if that thought was related to what she was doing. Although I'm not sure how she would know about the event, so that might also need a little more to make it work.

You can't stutter or stammer an 'h' sound, and stuttering and stammering are both pretty rare. I overuse them myself, as well as blushing (or showing any color), and I need to watch that better in my writing. Subtle cues are better: a tense jaw for anger, a quick tap from a hoof for nerves, a lick of the lips for concentration. This requires a little less hoof-holding for the reader and a little more effort to pull off, but it's worth it.

Also this was probably an oversight but, "They never were, Scootaloo," should be either, "They never were going to, Scootaloo," or, "They never would have, Scootaloo."

I enjoyed the ride, and would love to see you stick the landing on this. It's a sure thing for top three.