I just reread .out.of.character. and it's... okay. Like, it still has some good stuff, but it's a lot emptier than I remember. This used to be one of my favorite fanfics, so it's a shame that it dropped so much.

(SPOILERS IN CASE YOU CARE ABOUT THAT)

First let's talk about the good stuff. I like Rainbow's characterization. She is supposed to be the only one who's in character so it's important to get her right. If she's out of character too, the whole story and its message falls apart. She does spend a lot of time just reacting to characters being out of character, but it's cool to see her resist the story and she still gets good moments to show off her virtues. She stands up for Fluttershy when Fluttershy runs out of Twilight's library in tears and still shows compassion for Twilight while Twilight is taking out her anger about her immortality on others. She tries really hard to stop Fluttershy from killing herself and Rainbow's bond with Scootaloo not only provides some of the few senses of hope, but also makes the "ending" even more tragic. The ending is definitely the most disturbing part of the story, but in a good way. It also gives more weight to the loop back to the first chapter, which is a nice touch. But the ending also brings up one of the story's biggest issues.

This story is so heavy handed with its message. It's both a call out on shitty writers who corrupt the characters (think of stuff like Cupcakes or Rainbow Factory) and on readers for giving these stories an audience. The ending is so blatant about it with Rainbow calling out for someone to help and end it that it honestly comes off as more comical than sad. And then there's the part where Lyra just explains the point of the story and what's happening to Ponyville to Rainbow. 

Many of the call outs work like Rainbow having her wings broken and what's done with Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Twilight, but others don't make sense. Like making Applejack overtly horny doesn't make sense. I've never seen that as being a stereotype in fanfiction and I read a lot of ship fics. She's usually either oblivious, the normal one, or brutally honest. But never overly flirty or horny. Also, this is supposed to be a call out for grimdark stories and bad clichés, but there's a reference to Past Sins. That isn't overly dark and clearly has a lot of effort put into it. I don't think it should be put on the same level as Cupcakes and Cheerilee's Garden. 

I've been mentioning the message of the story a lot, but that's also a big issue with it. The story ultimately doesn't have much to say. We know that stories that only exist for shock value are bad. We know that dumb clichés like Rainbow always breaking her wings are bad. This isn't going to stop people who enjoy those stories from reading them, so calling out the readers doesn't work. There's nothing here that says something new about the topic. There's a lot of style and it has some positives, but .out.of.character. is not very good overall.

Score: 6/10