FimFiction Link - Short ID: 507023/unrepairable
Published: Nov '21
'Unrepairable' is a one thousand and six hundred-word G5, AU oneshot. In this story's timeline Sprout causes the death of her mother by running her over with his war-machine. As the rest of the world slowly returns to normalcy, now in unity, Sunny and Hitch decide to confront Sprout and try to give him some consolation.
Let's be honest, it was only a matter of time before fics like this would start popping up and I'm pretty sure soon enough we'll see all variations of "X's Y died and Z tries to calm them down." Not that there is any inherent problem with, mind you, it's a self-evident source of drama. However, to make a story like this feel a bit less cookie-cutter, it has to be either very well written or do something that's beyond the norm in these fics. In this story's case, ultimately I wasn't left disappointed rather just disinterested, largely because I got exactly what I expected. The narrative goes through all the expected motions: Sunny and Hitch reflect on how nice things are now, decide to visit Sprout, he's a mess, they try to tell him it's okay, he breaks down but shows slight hope. In a vacuum, it's a perfectly good story, but if you have any experience with drama, you can precisely guess what will happen next.
What doesn't help this situation either is that the prose feels very rigid at times. For instance, Phyllis' death is discussed as part of one of the narrator's paragraphs in a fairly matter-of-factual tone, which sort of downplays the weight of the situation and allows us no peek into how the rest of the town really felt about their de facto protector and leader's death. Not to mention the other tribes, whose conflicting feelings could've served as nice drama. I understand that this story is ultimately about Sprout and thus the majority of the fic should focus on him, but portraying others would've worked as a nice contrast to his own extremely personal grief.
To say something good too, I like that in this story Sprout takes responsibility for his actions. It's a nice bit of character development and something you can approach from many angles in a fic.
Overall: 4/10 Another fic that could have really used a few thousand extra words. I don't want to harp too hard on the author, because I think he has potential, but this story is sadly entirely forgettable.