QuickLime here with my thoughts on a popular Brony Short... You know it, you probably love it! It's the tear jerker animated short by SillyFilly Studios!

SnowDrop!

Where do I begin..?-rubs face-

Alright let's start on a positive note and then work our way from there! Let me start this off by stating this is MY OPINION and I have the right to express my opinion, you do not have to agree and are free to watch it and gather your own thoughts on it! I would however appreciate no long preachy comments about how I am wrong and that this is a great work of art and I am blind for not seeing it for the masterpiece it is.

Now as said we are starting positive! So let's look at the bright side, and what makes this short stand out.

Well for one it is BEAUTIFUL to look at! An absolute feast for the eyes and the ears! The voice work and animation are beautiful, rich in detail, and a lot of hard work, sweat, blood and tears went into making this project see completion! The music is also very beautiful! Overall it is a lovely bit of animation and something that obviously tried to emulate the shows appearance to the best of their abilities which is HARD to do.

The problem is more effort went in to making it LOOK good, and not enough work went into it being a good story

Spoiler warning by the way

The Story is about a young blind filly pegasus named Snowdrop whom feels she is useless in the world. A thought clearly backed up by those around her who have NO ISSUE OPENLY INSULTING A BLIND FILLY and calling her /useless/ Even her TEACHER doesn't care or tell the bullies to stop when they whisper things like "But she can't even see" and "'But she's useless" loud enough for her to easily here.

She was unable to get a partner for a important celebration coming up and lies about it to her teacher saying she wanted her project to be a surprise, and then promptly leaves the school

Unattended

during a blizzard

WHILE SHE IS BLIND

And the teacher just lets her go!

My main issue with this story really is the focus and the constant reminder that SNOWDROP is /blind/ she literally has no other personality other than 'Oh I am sad, blind, and adorable, are you shedding tears yet?"

She goes on about wishes and stars, honestly it didn't make a lot of sense to me, but ended up making the first decorated snow flake, and presents it to the princesses...followed by more mean and nasty snark by the ponies around her while adults do nothing as this handicapped filly is ridiculed.

She gives a speech about how snow is good, and that it's not useless (Something explained at the very start of the short so why?)

The worst part is that LUNA is so moved by this that her and the filly are apparently the best of friends after this incident, and that her absence caused Luna to turn into Nightmare Moon, with lines like "She was the only one to truly know my night"

And Luna still depressed and grieving even a thousand years later...

There was a lot of potential in this story but the main issue is the worst offense I personally feel you can do when you write a character.

Making them SYMPATHY BAIT!

SnowDrop's entire purpose is to manipulate you into feeling sad for this tiny filly, and then crying tears of joy when she gets her cutie mark, and then it skips forward and implies she is gone....It's not fair to us to insult our intelligence like that, it really isn't! Instead of putting the effort into making a deep story they cheated, using common overdone tropes, shoddy character personalities, and just tear jerking moments to get their message across.

The Message of SnowDrop is that "Even if it looks useless it can still have a purpose"

A message that is very good, but also explained in the first 5 minutes... SnowDrop feels useless like how the other ponies think WINTER is useless, but the teacher explains right off that Winter is important and is needed for a healthy and happy Equestria..

But at the end SnowDrop says this exact same message, but instead makes it about how you should be able to wish on snow , instead of focusing on what it already does... It's just fluff!

Snow Drop in essence is Cotton Candy. It is beautiful to look at, cute and fluffy, sugary sweet..and then utterly void of substance.

To me the most important thing about MLP is the writing and the stories that the writers tell, the animation, voice talent, and other such things are wonderful add ons, but at the meat of it I watch it because of the stories that it tells me...Snowdrop often gets a pass because it's beautiful visually..

But it's just not enough..substance is more important than appearance, what good does a perfectly beautiful and elegant meal serve if the food is nothing but inedible plastic?

What good is a beautiful and ascetically pleasing OC when at their core they are shallow with no real history or purpose?

In the End Snowdrop is beautiful, it is a beautiful little bit of love that a team put a ton of effort into making looking attractive...however they focused too much on LOOKING like the show, and not hard enough on FEELING like the show.

And when it boils down to it I'd rather have a poorly animated, one voice actor short that has a very well written story and touching characters, to the most beautiful practically show quality animation and voice acting with a poor story.

But that's my opinion feel free to have your own After all we are all unique in our own way, and our individual opinions are what shape the world around us, and it would be pretty boring if we all thought, felt, and interpreted things in the same way, we are all varied as the snowflakes that fall in the winter.

Till next time this is the Queen of Ravens signing off.