TStardust Bridge

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Thriller

The stars did aid in her escape... now what?

• Celestia
• Luna
• Nightmare Moon

Ice Star · 7.5k words  ·  80  4 · 2.5k views

The stars did aid in her escape... now what? Celestia only wants to apologize to her sister for everything that happened so long ago, no matter how dangerous she seems, Celestia would know her little sister anywhere.

She's still Luna, isn't she?

I got a new laptop So let's break this thing in with a new review!

Setting and Plot

In short, Stardust Bridge describes Luna's escape from the moon and subsequent confrontation with Celestia. When looking past all of the prose (and yes, I mean all of it), it's a rather simple story that surprised me with both how long it pushed on for and how little there is contained in it.

There's not really much for me to say about the story given its short word count and even shorter timeline of events as a standalone. There was time spent on the moon, more time spent in space, and a brief time spent in Canterlot, and then a teensy tiny bit of time spent in the Sun For what little there was, the story's plot and setting was decent, if not a tad too saturated in purple prose for my taste.

I do have to point out the disclaimer about the fantasy pony space at the beginning. I understand that, for some reason, some people believe that our physics = Equestria's physics and that it's for them, but wow, it kind of... took me out of the immersion before it even began. Ah well

Rating: 6/10

Character Exploration

Oh dear, there's not much to this section, I'm afraid We only have two characters, being Luna/Nightmare Moon and Celestia. For each, there's only a brief bit of characterization hidden in the prose in the form of memories and stray thoughts. There are hints of deeper thoughts, perhaps included in the earlier installments of the series/fan-made universe.

Rating: 4.5/10

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

Pretty well done on grammar! There were a few moments here and there that must've slipped through the edits, but otherwise, the story stood well on its own grammar-wise.

Formatting was a little strange in some parts. There were a few lines that Ice Star emphasized by isolating them but didn't resonate with me with the emotions that I think Ice Star was trying to convey. To put it simply, I think the emphasis was being put on the wrong beats, at least for me.

In addition to this, there was a lot of prose, saturated to a very dark purple in my opinion. There was description for description's sake and it almost felt like it was an exercise in describing things in a creative writing class I would consider myself as a descriptive writer and even this was a bit much for me. It might resonate with other people, but it didn't vibe well with me.

Consistency was pretty well done, but I did find it a tad bit strange that Canterlot was spelled as Canterlote, though this might just be a world-building quirk from the rest of the universe. There were also some sentences that just ran on and I had to read them a few times to figure out where the dependent clauses ended and to figure out just what was going on in that sentence. The prose muddled the clarity of these sentences, unfortunately, so I would recommend reading them aloud after taking a break from writing to see if the sentence makes sense, or getting a friend or two to go over the story with a fine-tooth comb.

Grammar: 9.5/10
Formatting: 7/10
Consistency: 8/10
Average rating: 8.2/10

My Little Nitpicks

Space Disclaimer
Oh, my. Oh, dear.

Sentences, oh sentences

"Chains of magic that leaked from seals she couldn't wrench herself from and snagged drifting lights, [...]

I can't lie, it took me several tries to figure out how the sentence was supposed to be read.

"Hello again."
It's jumpscare night, Celly!

Building and Burning
Ohhhhhh, I get it Building a bridge back to the world, burning the bridge she once had with Celestia (and sending her to the sun). Clever!

Final Thoughts

A short story that I struggled to keep my attention on and figure out the story beyond the purple prose. Recommended for the poetry-goers!

Final rating: ((4.5+6+8.2)/3)/10 = (18.7/3)/10 = 6.2/10