Read it Later story count: 255 (-1)
Three Hundred and Fifty by Void Chicken
Twilight and Sweetie Belle
Sci-Fi/Slice of Life; 48k words; Dec 2012–Mar 2013; Everyone
The future has everything that any pony could ever want. Twilight Sparkle wants to go home.The setup for this fic is pretty grim: Sweetie Belle is diagnosed with a terminal heart valve condition. Desperate, Twilight throws herself into researching a time machine – and succeeds just in time to take Sweetie with her 350 years into the future. It soon becomes clear that they'll be in this strange new Equestria for a long time. Sweetie gradually finds new friends, not to mention being adopted by Twilight. All does not seem well between Celestia and Luna, though... I enjoyed this, since plenty happens aside from the overarching plot. We get to know a few characters, see something of the scientific advances (maglev trains... magical levitation!) and eventually discover a few old friends. There's also some emotional pull and a few twists I didn't see coming. I felt Sweetie was a little too level-headed on occasion, and that one character was dealt a very tough hand. Still, a high three as a good read, with the little bonus of the author's regular chatty chapter endnotes! ★★★
More detail on this story, including lots of spoilers, past the cut.
As Void Chicken points out in their final A/N, there are a few clues to what's going on scattered through the story. Early on, we're told that Celestia had been drinking tea to calm her nerves for a decade. I wondered at the time why it was for such a short period, but I shrugged it off as unimportant. It wasn't – it was the length of time Twilight was away (from the present's point of view) before her final return. Also, Spike's mission to the dragons won't have a break for... ten years. That was quite clever.
The pony who suffers most in this fic is one who isn't present for most of it: Rarity. Considering she's never going to see her little sister again, I'm a bit surprised by how well she takes the news that Sweetie Belle is staying in the future. Yes, she may have come to terms with Sweetie being given up for dead, but then to find that she's alive after all – but is not going to return – must surely hurt dreadfully. It's not surprising that she needs a little time to herself after Twilight tells her.
This fic shows its age from time to time, as you'd expect. It doesn't hurt things too badly, though. Twilight being a unicorn isn't especially important given the development of the amulets, while the Dragon Nomads could be a different group from Ember's lot. (They'd have to be, as Spike and Ember can clearly travel between each other's domains without excessive effort.) Princess Luna seems a bit more withdrawn than she is now, but her new argument with Celestia could account for that.
I enjoyed many of the bits and pieces of future tech we were shown, but I was a bit frustrated by the author's disinclination to explain how some of them worked. I don't think we were ever told how the shower functioned, for example. Nor was I that impressed at Luna's explanation about the moon's position being skipped over. It also seemed a little unlikely that the fire in the theatre could take hold so fast, with apparently not much advance in fire-fighting techniques over the last 350 years.
Sweetie Belle's growing up was a charming tale, nicely told in a series of scenes as she got older. It was cute to see her accept Twilight as "mom", and wonderful to see her achieve her dream of getting her cutie mark, even with the sadness that Apple Bloom and Scootaloo weren't around to see it. (I did think Sweetie would be sadder at being away from them forever, though.) The Cutie Mark Crusaders Organisation was a nice touch, something I could see happening in real (show) life in the far future, too.
There are a few references in this fic to Bok's story Hybrids, which was being written at about the same time. This wasn't a particularly successful thing from my 2019 point of view, partly because Hybrids is now much less well known than it was six years ago, and partly because that story's ending was apparently not its best feature – something acknowledged by Bok in a comment. As such, I may have missed a few references here and there, particularly regarding the play.
Oh, and finally? With her artificial heart valve, our starring filly is, in a way, Sweetie Bot almost throughout!
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: If you're really good and eat up all your greens, I may actually review a story or two.
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