FimFiction Link - Short ID: 343376/white
Published: Aug '16
White is a 9500 word long story starring Twilight Sparkle. Its about how she, after being ridiculed for beleiveing in other worlds takes it upon herself to prove its possible anyways. She does this, and finds a seemingly empty white realm that stretches on forever. She does some experiments and its clear that the long hours and the stress are getting to her. after barely a few minutes of getting the portal to work she sends some apples in to see what would happen, and since they seemed to be safe she thought it was a good idea to go in herself without further testing, she spergs out. The story doesnt do a good job of explaining necessary context and the glaring lack of understanding hurts whats going in the story and the understanding of the reader.
Charachters
Twilight Sparkle: initially i felt that this fic did a good job of capturing twilight spergle at her worst. But after reflecting the fic doesnt do nearly enough work setting up twilight to be at her worst with what we know about her. The main conflict of the story depends on her not thinking things through and not spending more time playing it safe. That can work in a twilight fic, but this one doesnt spend nearly enough time setting it up. Lesson Zero works because the person she's afraid of disappointing is her mentor. Here its colleagues that she doenst like or respect that live in canterlot, i have a hard time imagining show twilight would give a shit especially when its outside of her current studies as this is pre-ascencion twilight.
Overall the story does an okay job at setting up a somewhat suspenseful atmosphere. but it relies too much on twilight picking up the idiot ball to move its plot along. Its something that i enjoyed listening to in the moment but if i stop for two seconds to critically think about anything the story presents its immediately ruined for me. 2/10
'WHITE' is a nine thousand and five-hundred word horror shortfic. Twilight, despite much ridicule from the research community, finally makes a breakthrough and creates a portal to a pocket dimension of sterile whiteness. Her joy is cut short, however, because immediately after crossing the boundary a certain dread starts to creep up on her. Against her better judgement she continues her investigation which ends in tragedy.
This fic has a very clear divide in quality. The pocket dimension, its eerie atmosphere and even the creature in the first chapter is done very well. It's hard to be unnerving in text, but the seemingly innocuous questions the fic keeps asking keeps the reader on the edge especially when you re-read certain sections and realize that indeed, things went bad long before Twilight thought. I also liked the misdirection the fic utilized, when Twilight read about "three triangles and a smaller circle" I was certain the pocket dimension was actually scoured clean by nuclear fire and yet this turned out to be false.
However, sadly, everything else in the fic feels at best rushed, at worst silly. Not only does it seem very implausible that ponies would ridicule Twilight for trying to further science, but even if they did, I can't believe Celestia would give her such a cold shoulder. Also, while it's been shown that Twilight can act very irrationally at times (think Lesson Zero), her absolute recklessness when it comes to crossing the portal is just unbelievable. Even if I accept that she's willing to cross into the other dimension, doing so before knowing whether there's breathable air or even a floor to stand on over there (the apple tests were not even close to being exhaustive) is completely out of character for her who makes checklists of checklists.
Then there's the Luna chapter. I assume the author used the second-person perspective to be more personal, but it felt jarring. Especially when Luna herself, despite being an ancient and wise leader completely clowns Twilight's rescue. I'm not arguing against the story having a tragic ending, that part is fine, rather that it doesn't even feel like Luna tried anything, she just stood around, completely disregarding Twilight's warnings, despite her obvious distress, which ultimately leads to the death of both of them. Also, giving the monster an actual presence and making it react in anger took away a lot from the fear of the unknown, the story weaved nicely until that point.
Overall: 3/10 An excellent horror concept put into a very weak narrative frame. I'd personally advise not reading the second chapter, as that way you're left with a story that's still somewhat silly, but at least ends in a far more satisfying way.