"The first thing new students of the Great Ponyville Homecoming Holiday Riot may wish to fix upon their minds is that ultimately, Mr. Rich's intentions were good and thus it could be said that in some ways, what happened was not truly his fault."
Black Friday comes to Equestria.
Once.
Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.
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This fic made me laugh out loud so much while I was watching it. Every time I refreshed the page it kept getting worse for everypony. I kept thinking it couldn't get any more bad and then Discord showed up. Good show.
Oh my god, just remembered the implied weed joke in this fic.
I really want to know what that analogue is.
Okay, this was clever, and certainly good. oooch, though, did everything he get he earn.
I have a feeling one of those names is "Dulcinea", but that may just be speculation.
Now to reread with the identity of the narrator in mind. (Really showing why her status as Organizer could only be bested by Twilight Sparkle.)
Given the standard university-student's life and meal choices, I can't blame Sparkler for emerging out the other side with a burning desire to tell this story.
So... Overstock is an idiot.
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Ever shop there?
Heavy drugging is the only reasonable explanation.
8060363 I've long been an advocate for giving workers on Black Friday SWAT gear. And having anyone who makes them work on Thanksgiving/Black Friday arrested for employee abuse. Seriously, of all the stupid, greedy ideas that corporations have come up with...
Bleh. I'm gonna go into my 'Christmas is Winning the War' rant. I'mma stop now.
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My first reaction to the scent coming from Overstock was wondering what other hellishly powerful drugs besides red-tinge exist in the 'verse.
At least this incident eventually boosted Sparkler to a tenured academic position and a bestselling popularized social science book?
So, I see that you toned down Black Friday for the 'verse. I find this new optimism refreshing.
(Said by someone that won't go near a mall during the local version, Boxing Day Sales.)
Great story, especially the reference to the Burma Shave jingles you snuck in.
I think Overstock should have gotten his twenty two fast cookers.
One for every piece he could be shredded into, cooked in said twenty-two, and fed to the local timberwolf population. As charcoal.
I'm going to mount the line about Rarity on a goddamn wall you glorious bastard.
You keep saying Overstock, but every time he shows up I think of Zephyr Breeze...
Also, that title is golden.
The description alone reminds me of What We Wanted To Do, a wonderful story that breaks a lot of conventional narrative barriers.
Some questions spring to mind.
How long did Discord lick his wounds for before swearing off anything to do with retail?
How long was Rarity in prison for, and which one of the Bearers bailed her out?
The lack of green flame suggests Sipke wasn't there. What was the transgression that caused Twilight to ground him?
Barneigh's have adopted this sale as standard operating procedure, haven't they?
When Equestria develops a global communications network, who is going to try Cyber-Monday, and what is going to go wrong with that?
Love the story. Congratulations.
8060548 Maybe Overstock is just an alias. The story does mention that he's worked under false identities.
I've gtg now, but the rest of this is looking very promising. I'm excited to read it.
Well, this is a welcome respite after a morning full of QA feedback.
Overstock may be a one-stallion economic disaster, but he still did something truly noble. His actions spared Equestria from Black Friday thenceforth, and while I'm sure there are many Ponyvillians who would disagree with me, one riot was a small price to pay for such a boon to employees everywhere.
Still, given the other incidents he left in his wake, I'm guessing he isn't the Flash Sentry of retail.
Also, the author's tone and dedication to documenting every conceivable datum about the incident were a delight. Great work on this one. Thank you for it.
That was hilarious. Did I spot a reference to the Nintendo Classic Mini fiasco there?
8060765 To be fair, I don't think Spike was grounded. I think he preferred not missing his sleep. Plus, with as little money as he makes, I bet he used what he managed to save to bail out Rarity.
That was brilliant.
Absolutely brilliant. Extremely well written, well delivered, and satisfying to read. One of the better comedies I've read on this site, and one I'd definitely recommend.
Okay, I'm admittedly focusing on something that very likely doesn't matter, buuuut:
How did that happen?
To clarify, I'm not angrily ranted, its just.... This 'Verse has rules. It makes sense. It follows scientific law closer than some science fiction, though that may not be saying as much as it sounds like it is. By extenstion, that makes me wonder if Discord has rules and limits.
He can't alter time (And in hindsight: duh, why did we think he could) but that doesn't leave much out. His power level makes it look like he could kill them instantly. He's never been overpowered before: I'd imagine that anything that comes as close as the narration implies would scare him. Probably quite a bit, and scared people lash out. Is it late enough in the timeline that he's more used to choosing to not do things?
Or...
Is somewhere in this passage, Discords secret weakness?
Du du duuuuuun!
Also, you clearly had a lot of fun with this. Good for you!
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Note the use of "ponypile." They basically all jumped on him at the same time and buried him under their own bodies. Rather than directly strike back and risk incurring Princess wrath & reprisal, he teleported out. Yes, he would have won pretty much instantly if he'd chosen to fight -- but it wasn't worth the consequences for a parole violation.
Consider his departure as a cat who just completely blew their landing quickly stalking out of the room with a classic "And we're going to pretend that never happened" expression on full display.
That... is a scarily accurate depiction of any Black Friday sale. I shall have to share this story with all my retail friends.
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B-but my conspiracy theories? Curse you logic!!!!
Loved this
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And then he switched worlds. http://bash.org/?587801
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Consider moving to Maine. It's currently illegal for any stores to open before 12am on Black Friday (excluding L.L. Bean). It's still a bit crazy, but the population up here is small and spread out, and at least you don't have to go out at 5PM on Thanksgiving to get sales.
8062042
I CAN SO SEE DISCORD DOING THAT
This was a fun story, Estee. Thanks for writing it!
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8060911
Oh, come on now, that's hardly fair. For one, Zephyr wasn't stupid.
Got a feeling only Rarity got what she wanted with out breaking it. I would have loved to see Discord's face when he realized the mob was actually overwhelming him, the master of Chaos the "Wait, what!?" expression on his face would been princess less.
8062317
Well, you can't open before 12 AM on Black Friday - that'd be a different day.
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FINE. 12:01 am on Black Friday. It's a difficult time to be precise on! Any way you word it feels weird.
Mhmm.
*Adds "enforce order during sales with mass petrification and particle beams" to world-conquest to-do list*
I do not believe this side of the pond gets quite that bad as a matter of course - but I do know it does occasionally happen. Such as the time a few years ago when a new IKEA, I think it was, opended up with a sale on beds. I don't think it made quite a riot, but it did make the papers.
Also, Rich... You shoulda just let him get crushed flat.
Pretty sure you could also make a case for incitement to riot, come to that.
Dawwww, if this had a TV Tropes page the scholarly defense of a poor, innocent, many-named mailmare would be a perfect example of Heartwarming In Hindsight.
In Equestria, Black Friday is the pony version of Bloody Sunday.
This is absolutely, positively, perfect. Excellent job.
And I could swear Overstock comes from NotAlwaysWrong.com .
This line is almost impossibly perfect. It's a fun story, and I was smiling throughout, but this is the line that raised a genuine guffaw from me.
8063453
It is an example of a Blue Law.
The joke was that what the law actually does is ban businesses from opening on Thanksgiving.
Gee, Estee, looks like you join Kudzuhaiku as another author who writes too realistically for comfort.
Take that as a compliment; i need to go sort out my emotions and memories...
So. Equestria truly is a utopia, huh? If that's the worst they've ever seen...
8061024
Bing Bing...Bong
....because I cannot resist
For a fic of great things this was the best line.
8060911
He only worked under false identities later, when word started getting around about his true identity... at least, that's the impression I got.
Also, if it were Zephyr, he'd never have dared get close enough to Ponyville to stay at his sister's house, even temporarily.
I reviewed this story as part of Read It Now Reviews #107.
My review can be found here.
8064108
I haven't heard of Blue Laws before, so I had to look them up, but it seems like it fits. Personally, I'm a big fan of this particular law. And I get the joke, now. I misunderstood what I was reading earlier, because I was confused when I was posting it on which "day" a midnight belongs to, and wasn't sure I got it right...
I got a mental image involving this story after reading Latte89's Modern Vortexology. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/368793/1/modern-vortexology/modern-vortexology . Now we know how Filthy Rich got the idea!
I adore the narration. It hits 'indignant scholar' to such a T that I reflexively pronounced the comma after However.
Excellent work. I wonder if part of Sparkler's motivation for writing this was to authoritatively counter the writings of others. To clear her name. Given her actions during the riot, she probably is mentioned unfavorably by other primary-source accounts and secondary-source histories of the riot. Her zeal and thoroughness of documenting everything is more than just a personality trait; it is a reflection of the fact that when participants in an event later write about the event as a scholar - especially an event where they have a prominent role - the burden of proof is often higher than for authors/scholars who were not there. Objectivity about the events must be proved by the participant-scholar through an inordinate amount of documenting evidence or else other scholars will assume that you just have an ax to grind and you are letting bias and emotions cloud your judgment and influence the presentation of facts.
If this is what Black Friday is like in real life, then Humanity is truly doomed to kill itself out of greed if nothing else.