Going Off The Rails On a Crazy Train · 10:54pm January 14th
Hello everyone! Happy 2024, and all that! Let's all do our best to make it through this one, eh?
Anyway, apologies for the lack of an accompanying blog post for the last chapter, I just... really had nothing to say, so I didn't. In any case, I definitely do with this chapter.
So, this chapter's a bit nuts in my opinion, I almost feel like I went too far with a few of the things here, but hopefully that's just me being insecure about myself. It's really hard for me to find the right balance between 'oh yeah, everything i write is gold' and 'oh no, everything i write is crap'. I mostly settle for 'oh, i guess i've written something, i guess?'
I'd also like to point out that much of it was late-minute revision. I normally like to spend a good couple weeks (at least) in advance focusing on where my story is going to go, just so each chapter doesn't start with me diving in going 'i'unno, i guess this happens?'
Not with this chapter. See, I knew I wanted Meteorite to eventually board the train to Canterlot to get the next bit of the story going, and it wasn't until she was stepping onto the train that upon rewatching an episode or two, I realised, 'oh, wait, it takes an entire day to get from Ponyville to Canterlot. ... ... ... well, shit.'
I could've gone two ways with this. I could've handwaved it, let the journey take half a day as I had planned, who would know? Certainly not Meteorite, she thought the same thing as me. Or, I could've enforced the longer trip time, let Meteorite realise how much she fucked up, and perhaps employ some authorial shenanigans during the train trip.
I chose the funnier option.
Honestly the distance to Canterlot has never been consistent. Like, in the dessert contest episode it was overnight, but a bunch of times in the early seasons it feels like it should only take a couple hours, as easy as it is for the Mane 6 to just drop everything and head off when Celestia calls. And the GGG, where they go by carriage.
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True, as it happens, after I made this decision to stick with the longer travel time I watched Littleshy's newest Cinemare Sins video on The Perfect Pear, where he happens to bring this fact up. At that point I just threw my hands up in the air and decided to stick with it anyway, since I had ideas now.
Sometimes you just can't win, because the continuity firmly says two different things at the same time.