FimFiction Link - Short ID: 507955/the-roses-of-princess-celestia
Published: Dec '21
'The Roses of Princess Celestia' is a one thousand-word oneshot. The princess descends into an isolated chamber which contains a single desk and a vase of roses. Each rose signifies a different tragedy in her life and as she gazes at each of them, she thinks of the events that transpired.
Or at least that's what the story is supposed to be about, but hardly manages to deliver, due to the author stopping at a thousand words. The concept of a mourning immortal, while perhaps not exactly unique, is a strong one and I really like the idea of using roses as a kind of visual metaphor for each event. If each of these events had their own chapter or perhaps several, which slowly revealed the extent of Celestia's failings, this would be a deeply dramatic and perhaps even tragic fic. As things are, however, all of these happenings are just summarized in a paragraph or three and then the story urges the reader forward, as the narrator hastily delivers some shallow conclusion about why this rose is sad, instead of allowing the princess to think or speak for herself. Reading this story almost felt like I'm looking a synopsis written in prose.
This is further underlined by the frankly bizarre choice of starting each rose's paragraph with merely mentioning its name and putting colons after it, like "Red rose:" It's such a missed opportunity to impart some flowing prose about each individual flower's appearance and then slowly phase into the memory they represent. Instead, the change is jarringly abrupt and not interesting in the slightest. Also it feels like the author actually didn't even really know what to write, because almost every paragraph begins with sentences that mean the same thing and are just phrased slightly differently. It feels really forced and immersion-breaking.
Overall: 2/10 An interesting concept absolutely stunted by a baffling lack of substance. I can't recommend it.