I think I will start by describing some of my favorite things.
My favorite song: "Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me" by Oingo Boingo. Almost all songs describe either a relationship or something sad happening. With some exceptions, there's not a song quite like "Nothing Bad Happens to Me," about a guy who hears about tragic events, but asks the much-needed question: "Why should I care?" In addition to its grim yet hilarious lyrics, the music adds cheerfully to the joyride.
My favorite movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off. While I know there are many better movies out there, this is the film that left me completely satisfied. It had philosophy, humor, tragedy, redemption, and much more. I even found myself loving it more than John Hughes' magnum opus, The Breakfast Club. Don't ask me why; I just found Bueller to be a much more well-furnished movie.
My favorite TV show: Ouan Highschool Host Club. The minute you start watching one episode, you have to painfully will yourself to stop. The humor in this show makes me have laughing fits every 15 seconds, or at least that's what it feels like. Even when the show isn't funny (I prefer to watch the dub where I can understand the hilarious boxes), you still have to smile at the beautiful visuals and the concept alone.
My favorite book: The Fault in Our Stars by the masterful John Green. Every page of this book oozes hilarity and tragedy. The book starts with hilarity, takes up residence between hilarity and tragedy for the middle part, and ends in tragedy. The book is a masterpiece throughout, and is one of those books you can find yourself coming back to time and time again, where everything is still as hilarious and sad as before.
And finally, my (former) favorite YouTube Poop: "Revenge of the Mad Madman" by Deepercutt. Every single minute is hilarious. The amount of times you watch it does not make it any less funny. It uses the amount of exploitability that Spider-Man 2 has and does not squander a single moment of it. I'd like to see the day when Deepercutt manages to make a Poop that's twice as good as this.
With the exception of my favorite book (just by a hair, though), "Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me," Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ouran Highschool Host Club, and "Revenge of the Mad Madman" do not equal a hundredth of the divinity of "The Extended Weekend of Sparkle." YouTube Poop is an art form, and this 17-minute "YouTube Poop" is proof.
The Review
I never really considered Combuskenisawesome to be all that great. In fact, I think his Frollo poop from back in March was the first thing I saw from him, which I put at #10 on my first Semiweekly Moments. My thoughts about him were that he was a really good sentence mixer who was like a better version of ThemOldaBoys. I enjoyed "West B*tches Treason Sue Episode N(ine)," but I guess I just wanted more out of it. The sentence-mixing was superb, yes, but it just didn't make me subscribe.
I subbed almost immediately after his 199th YouTube Poop finished. If his account somehow gets terminated, I think I'll terminate everyone of my channels in protest. Even if someone were to reupload "The Extended Weekend of Sparkle," it would feel unclean to watch the poop on any other channel.
The "poop" uses its main source, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, in a way reminiscent of TheSleepingSleuth. By this, I mean that Combuskenisawesome chooses to use multiple episodes of her main source to tell a story. There's a difference though. TheSleepingSleuth made more simple stories out of multiple SpongeBob stories, which usually ended up being Spadinner. Combuskenisawesome makes a more complex story of sorts. (SPOILER WARNING)
The best interpretation of the plot I can make is that one day, Twilight receives a short visit from her future self, saying that next Tuesday morning, she will die. This version of Twilight seems to be a more sinister one, but she turns more insane after taking drugs to try and help herself calm down from her depression about tying next Tuesday morning. She proceeds to do the following: terribly hurt Rarity's feelings; have vague dreams about why this is happening; have a flower pot fall on her courtesy of Pinkie Pie getting back at Twilight for humiliating her; send Spike on a brutal mission to find a brand-new quill, only to get one from her put owl (which breaks almost immediately); call her brother "gay" when he cries over her nearing death; get punched in the eye by Luna to the tune of "That's Amore;" try to get the Elements of Harmony to work, only to die just before starting them. As each day passes, Twilight wakes up to Pinkie's loud musicbox, which causes Twilight to do a number of violent acts. I refuse to say the plot twist, because even though I've recapped a lot of information, everyone needs to watch the video to find out the hilarious plot twist. The "poop" ends with everyone celebrating the death of the horrible pony known as Twilight Sparkle. Well, except Spike, who is the only one to really mourn the loss of his friend.
The ending alone is a good enough reason to watch it, as it does something that nobody thought possible: make someone cry at a Youtube Poop. (unless you're Sarevol and the poop was made by SterTube)
That's why I call this video "divine": it manages to make you feel actual emotions other than laughter, confusion, or disgust. It makes you feel emotions like surprise, pride, and most importantly, sadness. I remember how I wanted to make a Michael Rosen poop with a depressing ending a long time ago, but my procrastination led me to do otherwise. So really, "The Extended Weekend of Sparkle" has an ending I've wanted to see a YouTube Poop accomplish for a long time: genuine sadness. Sure, the ending does have some of the biggest laughs of the video, which I've seen YTP endings do as well (a twinge of sadness but mostly hilarity), but this video has an ending with more genuine sadness. I recall MechaWeegee91's "Link and the Hyrule Gang (episode 12, part 2)" to be the last time a Youtube Poop's ending made me feel a genuine emotion other than amusement.
There's not a single complaint I can make about it. I may have minor criticisms, but in the grand scheme of things, my complaints would be heresy. I cannot state enough my complete respect for this masterpiece. The plot is engaging, the sentence mixing, though at few times hard to interpret, is spectacular, the sources are used expertly, and above all, it makes you feel more than you would regularly feel about a YouTube Poop. Every solitary millisecond is worth watching multiple times over.
This is how YouTube Poop can be, and is, art.