I'm older than your average brony, but then I've always enjoyed cartoons. I'm an experienced reviewer, EqD pre-reader, and occasional author.
Poneas Fogg recently returned from his much-celebrated eighty-day journey around the world, but a new challenger has arisen, and a bet with Prince Blueblood will slash that time significantly.
Sometimes winning isn’t the point.
My entry in horizon’s invitation for 80 Days crossovers.
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ANOTHER!
Will have time to read through this properly later tonight, but for now: wow. Horizon succeeded beyond all reasonable measure.
I ... wow. I'm genuinely not sure what to say.
How about: This story pulls off a remarkably audacious derail. I'm grateful it's the last 80 Days story I'm reviewing, because like its protagonist's journey, this is (by design) almost impossible to top. And like its protagonist's journey, I'm not sure this accomplishes the goals it started out with, but it sure does something remarkable along the way.
The rest gets into spoilers, and I don't want to do that in the first reader comment. But this was quite a read, and worth engaging with.
(Also: I figured out with the line at the end of the first scene what the protagonist's plan was, but I didn't think they'd be crazy enough to try it under the pretenses they did. "Audacious" describes a lot of things about this story.)
Yesss, it's here at last! :D
7563206
Hey, is this thing over? You got a list of all the entries? :B I been waiting...
So... how exactly did she do this without the Elements of Harmony? I remember them being rather vital to the process.
7565103 It's unclear. Perhaps the elements only allowed her to overpower Nightmare Moon, not exile her. Plus Nightmare Moon managed to exile Celestia without use of the elements. I think there's enough wiggle room in there to make it work.
7565129
That's true. The show left itself open like this, enough room to work with it.
Well, that was a trip. Every time I read an 80 Days story, I find myself both regretting my choice to bow out of the contest and relieved that I did so. On the one hand, I chose not to use what is clearly a deeply inspiring prompt. On the other, I'd be competing with stories like this.
In any case, a magnificent emotional and physical journey. Thank you for it.
7565129
I always figured each sister could more easily banish targets to her respective celestial object. Of course, sending somepony to the sun might carry its own complications, to say nothing of making it much easier to keep track of time.
Coming back to this story again as I write up my reviews (like, literally, I'm taking a break from that to type this), what gets me is the starkness of the emotional shift here. It's the only 80 Days story of my bunch (unless one of the continuing ones takes a huge swerve) in which the protagonist completes the journey and then bails on the wager before claiming the prize.
And that choice both is and isn't about whether the journey was worth it. There's a fairly common theme in both the game and some of the other crossovers: questioning the value of winning the wager against the experiences that the travelers have to sacrifice in the name of speed. This, instead, questions the value of winning the wager against the ethical sacrifice the traveler has to make. That's a very odd question for a travelogue. Like, I'm not sure I've ever seen another story ever in which travel had an ethical cost (although I suppose it would be simple enough to make one in which e.g. engines were powered by the lives of the crew). That's the core fascination of this.
7566861
For the record, I did not intend this as a competition -- I'm not picking winners (nor did I ever suggest that I would). But, yeah, I get how it can be a little intimidating standing shoulder-to-shoulder with heavy hitters writing stories like this.
I think I'm going to call the official event over once today's reviews drop, but if the crossover urge takes you later, I did create a group into which future stories can go (and I certainly can signal-boost stories I enjoy ... and I consistently enjoy what you write).
7567677
Oh. Whoops. I guess I'm so used to prompts being linked to contests that I assumed that that was the case here. Sorry.
7567723
No apologies necessary — it's a totally understandable thought. I'm trying to think of the last prompt I saw 'round here that wasn't linked to a contest, myself!
Welp. This was, to put it mildly, unexpected. But brilliant, both the extra-cunning plan of the protagonist, and what you did with it. Well done!
What an incredible twist.
[ Meanwhile Blueblood is sitting at the club, sipping a brandy and gloating out loud to an empty room of how he outsmarted his rival, and already feeling lonely that his best friend is missing.]
7565129 Tut tut! We only saw the 'exile' of Celestia in one of those alternate futures.... you know, the one where it was night time but the plants were still alive and everything wasn't frozen solid.
I don't tend to put much stock in writing pays so little attention to obvious details like that.
Apart from that, we have no idea where Celestia was way back in episode 2.
It's one of those annoying dangling plot threads which should have been cleared up by now.
7683993 True, but you can't say that she wasn't exiled, either, so I wouldn't begrudge an author who played it that way.
7684005 It bothers me since we've now seen that Celestia used the Elements to do the banishing. And they were also needed to stop Discord.
So, I have a hard time buying into the plot convenience that NMM can do something only Super McGuffins can accomplish... considering they're clearly way more powerful than she is.
It annoys me the way DBZ power levels did. Which is why I love DBZ: Abridged for so frequently pointing it out.