FimFiction Link - Short ID: 505557/awoken
Published: Oct '21
'Awoken' is a one thousand-word oneshot featuring Zipp, who stumbles upon the abandoned Rainbow Factory. As with many stories, this too suffers from the author wanting to rush things, instead of letting the emotions and tension build up properly.
The concept itself is intriguing. The factory even in its prime was always depicted as a mysterious, almost eldritch place with nonsensical architecture and decay that the workers were seemingly never able to fully clear away. An exploration log of the factory after it has actually fallen to ruin could work as an excellent horror fic. The conflict could come from whatever monsters still live there lurking in the dark, or from the main characters having to come to terms with the horrors that the old world, they so venerated, have left behind.
Sadly, however, this fic has nothing of the sort. Zipp stumbles upon Cloudsdale, ventures inside, rushes past everything, even though common sense dictates she'd at least look into one or two homes out of curiosity before going further in. Then she ends up inside the CWC, explores its lower section in a whirlwind, before she arrives into Rainbow Dash's office. She comments on how the factory must have been responsible for rainbows, because in present Equestria there are none. This was a really confusing plot point for me. If there are no rainbows in the world, how does she even know what they are? They are living in an era that's mostly characterized by ignorance about the past, so it's unlikely that they kept the memory of rainbows alive for some reason.
Either way, she makes her way into the even more derelict parts of the factory and comes face to face with the infamous Pegasus Device. As she gets overtaken by curiosity and climbs into the input slot of the machine, it magically springs to life, gores her, and finally turns her into a rainbow. The story ends with Pipp streaming to her fans about how there is a rainbow in the sky and how her sister would "die to see one."
Overall: 3/10 As I've said, it's a pity the story is this short. With a few thousand more words it could have ended up as fine found-footage horror story, ending with the much more impactful death of the protagonist, but as-is it provides hardly more than an interesting idea explored inadequately.