FimFiction Link - Short ID: 33472/the-color-purple
Published: Jun '12
'The Color Purple' is a one thousand and fifty words-long oneshot.
So what could make a fic of one thousand words interesting enough to review? It's not the story, since that could quite literally be summarized as Twilight has red eyes. It triggers her OCD, so she wears contacts. Rather it is the way the author went about portraying this otherwise fairly simplistic situation. Nine-tenths of the one thousand words are spent in one sentence, which features only commas as punctuation and depicts a single, continuous flow of thoughts from Twilight's own body, to Ponyville, to her friends, and then back to herself. This unique approach gives the fic a certain feeling of paranoia and urgency as well, as the thoughts keep stacking on top of each other and make a less focused reader to stumble as they read through the story. This is further played into by the purplish prose, which doesn't shy away from such expressions as "a crimson unseen behind a veil of violet and synthetics" and other similarly roundabout, yet ultimately understandable sentences. This an elegant way of putting the reader in Twilight's place and providing them with a look into what her train of thought could be like. Sadly, however, as much as I am impressed by how the author was able to keep things logical and together through such a long sentence, the story is also very cumbersome to read and provides little in terms of actual narrative.
Overall: 6/10 This is an early, experimental fic nothing more, nothing less. Aside from its evocative depiction of feelings, there is no use expecting a very deep story here, however, the way it is presented is worth checking out, even if for nothing else, but to see why the usage of periods and other punctuation is so important for easy reading.