Review #119 - Sunset of Time · 2:09am May 11th, 2018

Or; Why I Disagree With PaulAsaran's Final Verdict.

Now, please don't take this the wrong way. I love the guy, I respect Paul's work, I often find myself agreeing with his verdicts, I love working with him through the SA, he's an all-around awesome dude, and 100 times the reviewer I could ever hope to be. In other words, check out his work, it's always amazing.

This is also not meant to be a counter argument to Paul. I tried my darndest to keep his review out of this one, in fact. But because this came from reading his, well... some will be unavoidable, but I promise there is very little meant to be against him in any way.

But... I do have to step up here. And honestly? I don't know why. But I wanted to do this even before Novel-Idea practically begged for it. (Okay, not really, like at all). So, yeah... I'm gonna stop boring you and get right into the review.

Sunset of Time by The Albinocorn
Twilight, Sunset, Main 6 ++ Rating: T -- Dark, Adventure, Sad
The wheel of time turns, as destiny and history clash together.
Fifty years into the future, Sunset Shimmer is Princess Twilight Sparkle's most faithful student. She is smart and eager, but doesn't always think things through. Her life had been perfect, right up to the End of the World.
With a ruined future, Sunset travels into the past to alter the course of history. With only her mentor's cryptic word to go on, Sunset and the Elements of Harmony must solve the riddle of the Dark Regalia and stop the mysterious Vesper Radiance from rising to power. But the further Sunset goes, the more she feels like she's been through it all before.
Is destiny set in stone, or can Sunset shape her own future? Only time will tell.

Review
I'm not going to have any sort of structure to this, just gonna spit it out as it comes. Fair warning.

So when Paul announced he would be reviewing this, I resolved to read it before he put out the review. Well, I failed. But I did get 1/3rd of the way through by then. When I commented on Paul's blog, I was operating under that knowledge. Because in that 1/3rd, Paul's kinda right. The identity of the villain, Vesper Radiance, was a little too obvious. The characters did feel a little off of what they should have been. They made strange decisions, were static in their approach to everything, and sometimes made choices contrary to what they should have.

But then I realized something. Not in a profound moment, or some game-changing way, it just occurred to me as I was watching reruns. These characters are correct for the time period. And by 'time period,' I mean 2013... yup, Season 3. It completely made sense. These were the characters we had in the show back then. Or, at least, my perception of them. From that point on, I didn't have any problems with them.

I also, of course, want to touch on the story's minor antagonists: the griffons. I found nothing wrong with them. The reasons they didn't win did, of course, depend greatly upon my other reading experience. They just aren't used to ponies as good as the Main 6 are. Honestly, I'm surprised they even lasted as long as they did in fights. And another reason, the Main 6, more often than not, are just trying to get away. Hell, if they were trying to kill them? Well, Twilight threw one into a mountain and then transfigured him... talk about insult to injury.

But this does bring me to Twilight's character specifically. She doesn't want to hurt others. She's not facing her enemies in a straight up fight like how the griffons are trained. She's using unconventional methods to disable and run. She damn near had a panic attack when she threw that griffon, worrying that he wouldn't be "alright."

I do, however, believe that even the inclusion of Discord was a mistake. Because he says himself he could have stopped it all. And this time, I had to rationalize it forcibly. Because we didn't get much Discord character by the end of S3. At least, not good-guy Discord. But it didn't work so well. It's just... not a good scene. What it accomplished for Sunset could have been done so many other, better ways. Or at least a better explanation of why he didn't intercede... like the Dark Regalia are dark magic, which his power doesn't work on, or chaos-based, with the same effect, or anything really.

But speaking of the Dark Regalia, let's talk about their fanatical user, Vesper Radiance. Now, I need to set something straight. Vesper doesn't want to kill Twilight, Celestia, and Sunset... well, she doesn't want to just kill them. She wants them to suffer. To anguish. To know that she could kill them, kill their friends, their family, and they could do nothing about it. Killing them... would be too short, too final. Sometimes, she doesn't because she has ulterior motives, or wants to try and get Sunset to leave 'the party.'

And then... then we find out Sunset is, basically, immortal. Unless time changes and she never existed in the first place. Which brings me to the discussion of time travel. Here, I will make a simple statement. There is nothing wrong with it, it makes sense in-universe and out. At least, sort of. There is always a paradox for time-travel related when outside of a closed loop. And this isn't a closed loop. But this also means Sunset's own time is being constantly rewritten. Why doesn't she remember it, then? Simply put, she's from an unchanged time, so the changes don't affect her current self unless she returns there. Why does the ending happen, then? She was still sustained by a 'thread' leading to her time, and when that thread's severed because time changed too much and it has nothing to anchor itself to, she has nothing to sustain herself. At least, this is my perception of it. And, yeah, it is kinda confusing. Makes a lot more sense in my head. If you've got a different one, great! If not, great!

Speaking of the ending, though being less spoiler-y about it, I didn't like it. At all. But, to be fair, it follows the laws set down by the story. Honestly, it's one of the few ways the story could have ended without contradicting itself. Still not a fan of it, though. The thread thing works here too, because once she is not anchored to a certain time, she is free to join the 'current' one.

All in all, though, this was an emotional rollercoaster. I loved it. It had wonderful worldbuilding, extraordinary fight scenes, and great internal conflict with Sunset and choice between friendship and power, which seems like an obvious choice here, but not so easy in the story.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

If you come across anything that needs fixing, please PM me :)

Does anyone else find it oddly fitting this is my 200th blog post?

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