EThe One Thing You Can't Forget

• Equestria Girls
• Romance
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Sunset finds a letter in her locker from an anonymous writer. A writer she has forgotten about many times before. But some things aren’t so easily forgotten.

• Sunset Shimmer
• Wallflower Blush

The Sleepless Beholder · 6.4k words  ·  71  4 · 1.2k views

Memory is a fickle thing. After all, how can we love what we don’t remember? How can we love something that we don’t know we don’t remember?

The One Thing You Can’t Forget is a tragic romance that explores this concept, following Wallflower Blush and Sunset Shimmer as the two meet again and again, using the vessels of poetry and later art as means of communication. It’s a tight and concise piece that punches when it needs to, and it comes with a happy ending that’s perfect for Valentine’s.

Let’s get into it.

The story follows Wallflower Blush as she struggles with a secret crush on none other than Sunset Shimmer. Wallflower doesn’t feel she is capable of doing so directly, so she expresses these intense emotions through anonymous poems she leaves in Sunset’s locker.

What follows is a sort of cat and mouse game, with Sunset trying to identify her secret admirer while Wallflower struggles with finding the courage to admit her feelings. When she finally does approach Sunset for the first time however, her fears get the best of her and she falls back upon the memory stone to make Sunset forget everything.

But love is a fickle thing, and it doesn’t let her get away that easily. Because somehow, Sunset doesn’t completely forget their encounter. She remembers she has a secret admirer but can’t for the life of her remember who it is. 

The story continues in such a manner, and I don’t want to lay out all of the plot and ruin the story’s charm. The ending is definitely a nice touch and one that capitalizes brilliantly on the themes of the story.

Overall though, I think this story does a few interesting things: first off it seems to break away from EQG canon to tell its story? I see that it has an ‘inspired by’ story linked in the description  but that one does not appear to be an AU either. I only noticed this slight discrepancy as Wallflower is still in possession of the memory stone yet by the end of the story appears to have become Sunset’s friend while the events of Forgotten Friendship don’t seem to have happened yet…

… unless Wallflower wiped Sunset’s memories again sometime after! I kid, that’s just speculation that goes beyond the story. And this isn’t exactly a knock on the author’s part, I still think this was a great story that was even able to work in bits of lore like Sunset retaining certain memories afterwards, detecting Equestrian magic in particular.

The pacing however felt a bit rushed at times, in particular the early parts where we have two scenes of Sunset and Wallflower respectively eating their dinners alone. There’s some good characterization and plot elements fit into here, but overall it felt very odd and somewhat sparse in the details department, and it felt these scenes could have been fleshed out just a bit more. 

It just ends up being that the rest of the story feels so tight this is the part that sticks out. Which honestly speaks for how good this is! 

Primarily the two characters are Sunset and Wallflower, and both are handled quite well. Wallflower’s anxieties are real and palpable, and Sunset’s determination shines through even in moments of confusion. 

As frustrating as it is to watch as Wallflower shuts things down before they develop, it is completely in line with how she’d behave as an anxious girl (and honestly I think we’ve all been there at times) who has grown a little too dependent on the time stone.

Honestly, I don’t really have much to say here! Both characters are handled brilliantly and portrayed in great ways. Good job!

The prose of the story was… interesting overall. There were a few grammatical ticks that gave me pause, none of which again are detrimental to the story, but hey I have to talk about something in this section.

Let’s tackle the poems first.

Using a poem in any way for a story is not an easy endeavor! Poetry is always a weird thing that’s even harder to criticize for me, but I think what’s here generally works fine. For any literary analysts out there the poems appear primarily in ABAB rhyme scheme, save for a few verses that go AABB.

Rhyming poetry is… actually a bit controversial among casual writers from what I’ve seen, and I think it has its pluses and minuses. There are definitely a few lines here that really didn’t seem to fit well, but I could see they were written in that way to keep with the rhyme.

I think the biggest reason rhymes are popular is to help with the rhythm of the piece. That’s why poems where all lines have similar syllables are somewhat stronger than those that don’t. And I think a few lines in some of the poems here feel a bit too mismatched, which sadly just makes the rhyme feel… a little silly. 

For example in this stanza:

Dawn and sunset had no meaning to me,

No different than the ones of the next day,

The day before, or the previous three,

I felt trapped in a loop, an endless replay,

The inconsistent syllables from line to line just make this somewhat cumbersome. In fact this reads better for me if the second and fourth lines were swapped, just because those sentences are closer together in structure than the ones they’re paired with. 

Overall though this is just a note more than anything. Sunset definitely isn’t going to criticize the finer points of an anonymous love letter after all.

There were a few other things I noticed grammar wise. The author used a strange notation at first that felt unusual to me:

The 10^th  of January was supposed to be a big day for Wallflower. She had decided to express what she felt in writing to build up bravery for what she wanted to say to the girl that had been in her mind for a very long time.

Namely the raising of the ‘th’ in ‘10th.’

I think this overall was inconsistent as a few paragraphs later the ‘th’s were stylized normally. I’m not certain which is ‘correct’ here but I’d advise the author to probably just stick with one, though I suspect this was just something missed in editing. 

There were a little other things here and there that felt like strange phrasing or interesting word choice but I don’t think it’s worth it to haggle over every single one, since overall the story was great. 

Overall, this was a great fic to read for Valentine’s Day. The ending was satisfying and it was nice to watch as Wallflower overcame her fears to finally be with Sunset, and it was great to see Sunset so determined as well given that her memories kept getting erased. Great stuff! 

Fans of the SunFlower ship would definitely love this one, as well as readers who are looking for a nice cozy love story. 

Great work! I’m ashamed I missed the birthday of this fic by one day but I hope you find this helpful nonetheless. 

Well, this was a pleasant surprise. I had completely forgotten I sent this for review (I'm still unsure if I sent it to you or just general).

This one has been definitely one of my favorite written pieces so I'm happy it still keeps giving people some joy, and thank you for choosing it for Valentine's, very appropriate.

As for those points in prose, yeah, I agree. Writing the poems was really hard, and I had never done something like that before so I knew they wouldn't be the best. I like to think that Wally herself isn't the best at poems but she tries her best XD

As for the rest, that's just the curse of not having English as my main language. I hopefully have been improving on it with time.

Again, thank you for the pleasant surprise and I wish you the best