About "Javelin" · 3:49am Jul 11th, 2012
(Contains spoilers)
I wrote “Javelin” back in September of 2011. The story stands alone, but it immediately inspired a whole series, Betwixt Silver and Gold, so I held off on posting it until that series was done, and now it is, so here it is.
The first question I imagine you’ll have after reading it is “Where’s the story that comes before this?”, because the “Gang of Six” spend a lot of time discussing that expedition to the Barrier Peaks they had that led them to getting all of those “presents”.
I decided I didn’t need to write that story, because you’ve already read it or something very like it a dozen times already. Tell me if this sounds familiar: a normal kid is visited by a bunch of magical creatures. He has to hide them from the adults, or something bad will happen. They have all kinds of wacky adventures together, and along the way the kid learns to stand up for what he believes in. Finally at the end, the creatures have to go back home, and he gives them presents so they will remember him—ordinary objects that they treat as just as magical as they are to him.
See, I told you that you heard this story before—it’s one of the most common fanfiction plots out there. Heck, if you’re ever seen the 1991 cartoon series Bucky O’Hare, you got that plot in the pilot. So I thought it would be much more interesting to explore the potentially-devastating consequences of breaking Princess Celestia’s strict rule against smuggling contraband into Equestria.
The other question I expect to receive would be about Vinyl Scratch’s blindness, given the Season Two finale. To that question, I would point you at the date when I wrote this again. I figure this is kind of a small point, so I didn’t put an “Alternate Universe” tag on the story just because of that. Unfortunately, I’ll be forced to do precisely that with the later stories in my series.
