Featherfall
Featherfall
is a Equestria Girls fanfic set during the Holiday Special comic.
A bored delinquent and an exiled prodigy. When a MyStable profile called Anon-A-Miss sabotages all of Sunset's hard work and leaves her friendless Sunset finds herself exiled not just from Equestria, but from all of her social circles as well. Finding herself in the less walked corners of the school, she has a chance encounter with Gilda Grimfeather.
Rather than suffering under the imposing girl, Sunset and Gilda find themselves striking up an unusual friendship and more. Both outcasts, this is their story.
This fic does contain explicit sex scenes, but it isn't the main focus.
Featherfall includes examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname: Gilda often calls Sunset "Sunshine."
- All Love Is Unrequited: Totally subverted as most of the suggested couples get together at some point.
- Most obviously being Rarity and Applejack.
- Amazonian Beauty: Gilda. Tall, muscular, and well-endowed.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Subverted when Gilda dons her plated gauntlet to block, catch, and deflect a blade.
- Beautiful All Along: Gilda isn't exactly ugly, but her temper and delinquent behavior make her a bit hard to approach. When she acts nice, her physical beauty shines through.
- Berserk Button: Sunset and Gilda are this for each other when one of them is in danger.
- Blood Knight: Aria, who has become quite the enthusiastic mixed martial artist.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Subverted, Sunset and Gilda are extremely open with saying how they feel for each other after Sunset has her legs broken in chapter 2.
- Somewhat applies to Applejack and Rarity.
- Cast from Hit Points: Sunset warns that wielding artifacts is very much this when Gilda is given the Huracan as a gift from Princess Celestia.
- Cast Full of Gay: Most of the relationships in the story are lesbian ones, although slightly subverted with the character's Penny & Helden, and references to Vice Principal Luna's relationship. Part of this is the issue of the Improbably Female Cast of Equestria Girls in which the vast majority of the non-background characters (and a high number of the background ones) are female.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Chapter 11 reveals, in one of the most tearjerking ways, that Rainbow Dash had feelings for Gilda, in the form of Dash kissing Gilda during their debate on
What Could Have Been concerning their old friendship. - Dreaming of a White Christmas: Played with since the story begins in late fall and progresses through the months with the weather changing realistically, but the snow is omnipresent.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Tempest Shadow is this when Gilda calls her 'Fizz', prompting Tempest to pull a gun on her.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Sunset finds being pitied by everyone over her paralysis is worse than everyone blaming her for Anon-A-Miss.
- Everyone Has Standards: Adagio admits she was all too happy to revel in Sunset being rejected by her friends, but being paralyzed from the waist down isn't something she would wish on anybody.
- The Fagin: The human Storm King's gang is almost entirely built of orphans that he conned away from Child Protective Services.
- Fantastic Science: Princess Twilight and Sunset have a conversation after Sunset is injured suggesting that this is very much how magic is treated in Equestria.
- Human Twilight Sparkle approached this as well, coming from the mundane side of things.
- Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Sunset decides to forgive Score for (accidentally) getting her paralyzed, but makes it clear they probably won't be friends.
- Formerly Fit: Due to her paralysis, Sunset has lost her athletic figure. Thankfully, Gilda still likes her for who she is.
- Genius Ditz: Sonata maybe a taco-munching ditz, but she's also a savvy investor who knows her way around money.
- A Glass in the Hand: Gilda does this when she learns her supposedly dead twin sister is still alive. She ends up needing medical attention for it afterward.
- Good Feels Good: Adagio admits that not having to rely on negative energy means she can appreciate life more, which is why she regards her gems being destroyed as a blessing in disguise.
- Handicapped Badass: Gilda is dyslexic, but she's good at auto repair and quite capable in a fight.
- I Can't Feel My Legs!: After an attack at her home in a dilapidated factory, Sunset says this when Gilda finds her. The doctors tell her she'll likely never regain her autonomy.
- Iconic Item: Gilda is rarely ever without her 'talon' gauntlet.
- I Owe You My Life: Sunset notes that her devotion to Princess Twilight will never rival that of her newfound devotion to Gilda, simply because while Twilight put Sunset on a better path, Gilda saved Sunset's life.
- It's All My Fault:
- Sunset blames a lot of her hardships, from losing Celestia to losing her friends, on her selfish and wretched behavior.
- Principal Celestia wishes she could've intervened sooner in the Anon-A-Miss fiasco.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gilda is a crass kid who isn't big on academics, but she will defend those she cares for.
- Kindness Button: Sunset is this for Gilda almost universally.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Gilda is revealed to be this in Chapter 8.
- Little Bit Beastly: Once Gilda gains magic, she can grow griffin wings.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Gilda is the only thing keeping Sunset from going apart after losing her friends and her ability to walk, simply by offering her love and care.
- Lonely Together: Gilda and Sunset, two social outcasts, find true love and companionship together.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Gilda. When Sunset is danger Gilda taps into her inherent magic to protect her. She tends to do this by resorting to extreme violence that Sunset generally brings her out of.
- Mama Bear: Principal Celestia towards both Sunset and Gilda to a certain extent.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Actually subverted with Sunset and Gilda who look to be the stereotype on the surface, with Sunset being the 'feminine' one and Gilda being the 'masculine', but Gilda's actual personality strays far more towards androgyny than masculinity. Her seemingly stereotypical masculine aggression and mannerisms being mostly due to being raised by a male father-figure ganglord whose habits she grudgingly acknowledges that she picked up.
- Minor Living Alone: Gilda is this, although it is justified since she is a legally emancipated orphan whose been able to support herself with odd jobs.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Score is traumatized over getting Sunset paralyzed from the waist down by ordering the Dogs to attack her.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Part of the reason Sunset forgives Score is because she realizes she was also a person who acted out on impulse and anger.
- Official Couple: Gilda Grimfeather and Sunset Shimmer, obviously.
- Perspective Flip: Played with when the author writes from the perspectives of Sunset's original friends, showing them as being flawed, regretful, and introspective rather than being villains of the piece.
- Rescue Romance: Gilda and Sunset's relationship only becomes outright love after the former moves heaven and Earth to bring the latter to the hospital.
- School Nurse: Nurse Bedside Manners.
- The Hecate Sisters: The Sirens fit this trope well; Adagio, Aria, and Sonata.
- The Power of Friendship: Subverted immediately as Sunset is abandoned by her friends when someone frames her for leaking secrets online, but later played straight with Sunset's new friends.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Adagio, once she wasn't hungry for negative energy, softened up and become a much nicer person.
- Trauma Conga Line: Sunset loses her friends, realizes that Canterlot High never truly forgave her for her transgressions, is brutally attacked and nearly killed, and wakes up to learn she'll likely remain paraplegic for the rest of her life. Despite Gilda being there for her, Sunset can't help but not cry over all she's had to go through.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Gilda was this before her parents died in a car crash and she was adopted by ganglord.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gilda is this to her Sunshine.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Subverted with Gilda who is warm-hearted and kind underneath her angry, delinquent exterior.
- Wrench Wench: Gilda is female, but this doesn't stop her from being a skilled mechanic.
