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I had extraordinary expectations going into this. Did it live up to them? Find out after the break.
CURSE YOU, WILLS!
CURSE YOU, ELEMENTS!
CURSE YOU, Jetfire!
Years ago, Jetfire wrote an absolutely amazing epic. His world building was second to none. His characterization of the main six was spot on. The problems they faced, the peoples they met, the lands they traversed, all served to create an adventure of wonders the likes of which I'd never seen. Ok it was a little slow to start, and today it would meet serious criticism for its formatting, but those are the only legit things I can say bad about it.
Fast forward to today, and we have this story. It tries to be even more epic than its predecessor, with a truly horrific evil threatening all of existence. In some ways, he succeeds. The progressive unlocking of the Elements' potential is the best example of this, and were easily the best parts of the story. His world building is as strong as ever, and definitely revealed some interesting new tidbits about Jetfire's Equestria. But...Well, I'm going to quote another reader, a POLE7645, to sum up my strongest feelings on this story.
"Jetfire, what the hell happened to you. You first created a great fic with 'It's dangerous going out your door.' You made some amazing world building with this one, but you decide to pile on bleakness over bleakness and destroying characters for the sake of drama. What happened to Applejack willing to stand her ground for her friends? What happened to Rarity inspiring her friends to keep moving? What happened to Rainbow Dash confronting her claustrophobia? All for saving their friend Twilight? What happened to these great interaction and character development? What happened to all of this?"
You can tell by his awkward grammar that a lot of passion went into that comment. And despite that awkward grammar, I largely agree with the sentiment. The tone of this story is just so much darker than the original, while trying to maintain a positive 'just have faith' moral, and it fails to elegantly meld the two. I am reminded of Majora's Mask, which did much the same thing, but so much better. I believe this feeling comes from two things: Scale and Weight.
Scale mostly for the sheer numbers of the armies I seemed to be expected to imagine being absolutely bonkers, the worst offender of this being the second-to-last battle. The Crystal Empire did not look big enough to house millions of refuges, not even counting that at least as many would be fighting the army of darkness, which itself was supposedly large enough to look endless while completely surrounding this city. Not to mention Rezigar's preferred form ~halfway through the fic became incomprehensibly all-consuming-and-terror-inducing. Basically, things got too grand, and I found myself questioning if I was imagining things right or if such large things could even make sense. The scale of things might've been ok or even great, if they were given proper impact.
Which leads into the weight - Entire cities are just snuffed out, and it feels like it's done as an afterthought. During the early final chapters of the fic such wanton death is given a bit more respect, but towards the middle it was pretty bad. The main six themselves adapt far too easily to war. As in, none of them are remotely phased by it. Twilight gets some pre-battle jitters before Cloudsdale and that's it. And then we've got nameless OC's felling these horrid monsters and then suddenly with no breaks we're on the other side of the city and we've got these other nameless OC's felling terrifying abominations and then suddenly with no breaks one of the main six is making a remark on the battle from a totally different location. Stuff like that made the action scenes confusing to read and a chore to get through, while reducing the impact of characters I actually cared about triumphing in battle.
Despite all that...
I've been wanting a fic where all the main six ascend for absolute ages. And this at least does that. I'm just not sure I liked how all of them came to their revelations. Fluttershy's, Dash's, and Rarity's in particular stood out to me as not so good. Fluttershy now unconditionally loves absolutely everything, Dash's was used as an excuse to make her quickly get over killing uncountable innocents against her will, and Rarity's was absolute nonsense to justify her willingly signing over to evil.
I dunno, I guess overall I liked this. It may not have lived up to my hype, its got some pretty serious detractors, but at the end of the day, as I said, it brings a bit of fantastical epicness to Friendship is Magic, which is what I got into the series so much for in the first place. While I wanted much more from it, what it gave me is still more than most fics give me.
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