FimFiction Link - Short ID: 483615/timescales
Published: Dec '20
Timescales is a pretty good 5k words romance one-shot. Sadly, it's trapped in a terrible 11,5k words story.
To summarise the middle part. Starlight finds out Maud is terribly ill and tries to find a cure, to no avail. When there are no alternatives, she choose to go to a different dimension where she died and takes the place of her double. Sadly, it's still too late to save Maud. Nevertheless, they grow closer as a result of the experience, and eventually start a relationship. Most of this chapter is just Maud and Starlight talking, but their voices are portrayed so well, and their conversation is so dynamic, it's still enjoyable to read. I really enjoyed this.
However, the first chapter of the story is a really weird and somewhat experimental narrative that explains the neuro chemical process in which the brain parses visual information. What it tells is interesting, but the way it's presented made it really hard for me to care.
And finally, the last chapter is shit. It's the most concise way I can put it. We lose all semblance of narrative and now the narrator talks directly to us, the readers, while telling the story of how millions of eons pass, and how Equestria becomes a barren wasteland from which new creatures come to be and those are human, and yadda yadda yadda. Who cares.
If you're curious. Read the second chapter. That's good enough.
Neither the first and certainly not the last chapter are worth reading.