FimFiction Link - Short ID: 416482/remnants-of-rainbow
Published: Aug '18
'Remnants of Rainbow' is a five thousand and seven hundred-word oneshot. Rainbow suffers an accident and is mentally reduced to a child.
This is a chilling story and the best thing is that the author achieves this with no torture, or death, or even blood (except for a little), rather just a very tragic situation one can fully empathize with even without experiencing it. The story's biggest achievement in my opinion is how tactfully it portrays how Rainbow's accident broke everyone. Instead of melodrama, tension is slowly built in the reader as the author begins to show the small cracks in the characters' composure. While Twilight's and Rarity's reactions are a vital part of the story and provide much needed alternative approaches, the way Fluttershy's internal turmoil is depicted takes the cake. It is heartbreaking, yet fully believable. Her slipping is so natural, that when the emotional high-point does happen, it doesn't feel out of character for her to act the way she does and neither does the one very precisely timed swear of the fic.
The fic doesn't disappoint in terms of writing either. All this tragedy is accomplished with prose that manages to be mortifying without needing to be any purple. From the unfinished sentences implying an alive world, where events happen beyond the ones we've shown to the careful attention paid to depicting the morbid duality of Rainbow having an adult body, yet behaving entirely like a problematic, yet innocent child is praiseworthy to say the least.
I also appreciate how the story ends. Rainbow somehow coming back would have defeated the mood, so the story understandably leaves her situation hanging. While this makes sense, it would make the ending feel very unsatisfying, but the author cleverly substitutes in concluding Fluttershy's own arc instead, thus giving us a resolution without resolving the main plot. It's not a victory, but it's a "victory." Her realizing that caring for RD is too much for her and deciding to ask for help is a positive ending that still leaves the reader feeling sour.
Overall: 9/10 I seriously miss Pinkie from this story, her approach could have been very interesting to see and similarly I would have liked if the author puts some lines in about the crash into the story as right now it is only mentioned in the description. Still, despite these minor issues, this is a very well accomplished story, that I can easily recommend to anyone who likes down-to-earth, everyday tragedies and how characters are forced to cope with them through no one's real fault.