Well, I was already booting up GTA IV to keep doing those dates and keep burning time, thanks to Rockstar for creating the "Taxi" feature I can reply to some stuff while doing that stuff.
It's just... well, there feels so much like there were major pieces of the story missing between the last chapter and the Epilogue. Why Rarity lashed out the way she did was never really explained. Why Dash got so much better so quickly was never explained. Why Applejack felt so strongly for Dash was never explained (even though the opposite was). And Fluttershy's role in Dash's backstory was never explained.
The problem was:
*The story directly alluded to all of those things as having a major effect on the story, and a few of them were implied that they would be explained at some point, and then they never were.
I haven't read yet
Confessions and Considerations, but I think that summarizes what is the problem with it.
As far as A Precious Rainbow goes... well, something had been bothering me for the past few days about it, and I finally sat down and reread it again last night. And I came to the conclusion that wasn't far off from what I had been suspecting to be the case.
I now think that that story (and to a somewhat lesser extent, On Feathered Wings), more than any other single thing, is why Applejack is best pony. Because if something as horrible as the backstory for A Precious Rainbow actually happened, I can see Applejack as being who would be the one that could be relied on more than anyone else to pick up the pieces. Especially when Rainbow Dash is involved. And I feel that way in spite of the obvious canonization problems because I truly feel AJ would do the same thing in canon if it was ever required.
I still can't highly place it or really recommend it because of what it is, but it is an unbelievably powerful story for me.
Actually I can see the problem with recommending it. I mean is good but it gets too cocky at the end, ironically what ends up screwing it up is the stuff after chapter/part 3(or four, I cant remember that well), allow me to elaborate:
What
A Precious Rainbow was at the first episodes was a story of self-recovery(or something like that) using the
Cupcakes incident as plot device, until chapter 3 is good because it focuses mainly on Rainbow and the events that followed the whole
Cupcakes recovery; getting out of the hospital, acknowledging her incapability and dealing with the trauma caused by this, also the reaction of the people around her, but notice that on these chapters the focus is more on Rainbow Dash and her characteristics which are used to manage the plot.
After that, the story starts going downhill as the recovery starts to appear and it becomes inevitably stereotypical, in the sense that the following events can be(swimming contest I think) guessed pretty easy and the silliness begins. Not that the following of such thing is bad, but in contrast to the first section it really spoils the story, doesn't follow the same trend and such change of focus is too abrupt(it goes from RD facing and surpassing the trauma, to RD just finding other area to be herself).
With that there is no more character development and the closure becomes sort of
meh for me to be honest, I would respect it if it had followed the trends from the first chapters by keep building on the trauma and try to get an RD product of such eventually, rather than the same RD but in other environment.
That is mainly the reason of why I didn't like it too much, I was thrilled until chapter 3(or four or whatever), but from that point it lost all interest as it became very stereotypical, is well written and all but there was a pretty cool alternative for that story which was replaced by the establishment of the status quo. I believe that a better outcome(like an alternative RD from such events) could have been produced from that story.
Either way all of this is my opinion about it, so I guess is a good read(not epic) but these are sort of the problems that I found about it.
