Tag Archives: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic

Dammit, Rarity!: “Rarity Takes Manehattan” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

Rarity was never my favourite character, I’ll have to admit. Not merely because she was a fashion designer, which I find to be a relatively pointless venture, but because she was always portrayed as shallow and manipulative.

Not to say she hasn’t had her moments over the years. There was the time she dressed down the diamond dogs, and the time she jumped in a mud puddle to try to win back her sister’s love. Both of which show her in an extremely positive light.

But she’s had too many steps back. For instance, there was the time she seduced a gemstone out of Spike, and the time she used Sweetie Belle as slave labour. Neither of which show her in anything other than a negative light.

The more time she spends on-screen, the less I like her, and I find that disappointing. Having a main character this unlikable is just wrong. It would be great if she got just a few more good moments, but they’ve become almost non-existent in recent years.

Can we just get one episode where she’s not shallow, inconsiderate, self-centred, and rude? Just one!? Well, apparently we can! By making her stupid and naïve instead.

Fucking writers. Continue reading →

I Was an Equestrian Vampire: “Bats!” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

Vampires may seem like an overused trope of modern fiction, but that’s only because Valve didn’t make a game about them, yet.

I really like the Vampire mythos. Take Dracula for instance, the original vampire. (Actually, he’s not the original, but who remembers Varney!?) The 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi ranks as one of my favourite films of all time. Our villain was suave and genteel, if a bit creepy at times, but he was also an evil prick, attempting to kill men, seduce women and spread his affliction like a plague.

But the fact that he acted like a virus, where many of his victims became vampires as well, was the most interesting thing. Because it made vampires one of the few horror antagonists you can actually sympathize with to a certain degree. It wasn’t their fault the prick bit them. Plus, vampires are not slavering beasts with no motivation other than: kill everything. Oftentimes, they’re intelligent, conniving, and ruthless. They feed not out of malice or insanity, but out of a nutritional requirement. If they didn’t drink blood, they would die. You can’t blame someone for not wanting to die.

In recent history, this has allowed vampires to take a brand new direction, changing from unapologetic antagonists, to sympathetic protagonists. Twilight comes to mind pretty quickly. A story about a young vampire covered in glitter who wants nothing more than to stare longingly at a female-shaped block of wood with his shirt off.

Maybe I should get around to actually watching those films.

Anyway, it’s been happening more and more frequently. True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Moonlight, even the old Anne Rice books feature vampires not only as bad guys, but as our main characters, and the ones we’re supposed to sympathize with. And in the case of Twilight and Moonlight, they even went the length to modify the mythos to eliminate their vulnerability to sunlight, turning them from dark creatures who stalk the night, into people who just hate the daytime. Which makes them a lot less creepy. It also allows them to place half their scenes during the day just because they can.

The Vampire trope can act as the foundation for some great stories, and be taken in quite interesting directions. But so few people bother to do that, it can actually get quite disheartening.

But it’s nice that they try. Say what you will about the actual books, the idea behind Twilight is actually pretty solid. A romance story between a vampire and a mortal woman. Such interesting potential here. Would she really want to make the sacrifice to become a vampire so they could live together forever? Or would she stay human and when she dies, leave him to mourn her for the rest of eternity? Or would they not even bother, realizing that the pain and the troubles are simply not worth it? Which is why I still think Moonlight was a really good show. It did deal with those issues, but also offered the possibility of Mick finding a cure for vampirism. He was a vampire who hated being a vampire. That alone adds some interesting depth.

But I digress.

The important thing here is that vampires can be taken in interesting directions, and the mythology can be messed with in interesting ways. Like, for instance, by applying it to a completely different species and having them suck fruit juices instead of blood.

Seems a bit contrived if you ask me. Continue reading →

Doing it Right: “Power Ponies” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

“I’ve gotten through a lot of bad movies by imagining a better movie. This is the first time I’ve seen a bad movie imagine a better version of itself.” – MovieBob, Escape to the Movies; Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part Two

It seems to me that most writers don’t know how to accept criticism. Specifically writers for animated series based on Hasbro franchises.

I remember once getting into a short discussion on Twitter with Amy Keating Rogers, one of My Little Pony’s better writers.

She was working as story editor on another series at the time, Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot, and tweeted a clip from one of the episodes. I found the dialogue from the clip to be lacking, and a bit awkward. So I mentioned that to her. Her response? No, you’re wrong, fuck off (I’m paraphrasing).

Now, it’s not like I expected her to say: Oh shit, you’re right, it is terrible, you caught us! But something along the lines of: ‘One man’s opinion,’ or ‘well, you can’t please everyone,’ would have been fine. Ideally she would have said, ‘really? How so?’ and I would’ve explained that I found it to be a bit stilted and off. I could’ve even pointed to particular moments. Instead she, more or less, dismissed it.

Not that I’m saying anyone’s required to listen to the opinions of random douchebags on the internet, but to dismiss it in such a fashion is just… well… rude!

Then there was Magical Mystery Cure. I still think it’s the worst episode of the series, and most of the problems I found occurred in the first 12 minutes, before Twilight’s transformation. But it was also from one of the series’ best writers, so I think disappointment and disbelief are what fuelled my desire to see an actual response from him. I was desperate to hear someone prove me wrong and give a proper rebuttal to my criticism of the episode, and who better than the man who wrote it!?

But I understand why he didn’t respond to my tweets. There were hundreds of people criticizing the episode, and most of them were just irritating fanboys upset that something, or anything, had changed.

Their opinions can be dismissed outright. So my criticisms likely just faded into the douche noise. If everyone criticized my work for a stupid reason, I’d probably do the same thing. It’s basically the Man Covered in Shit problem.

Then there’s a more recent episode: Daring Don’t, where they took a character previously established to be nothing more than a character in a book, and made her a real character in the context of the show. It is of my humble opinion that that was a stupid fucking episode. Primarily because it was a stupid fucking premise that wasn’t even handled well.

But more recently, that episode got me to realize something. It got me to realize that despite everything I said earlier, even the writers on the show know when they’ve pumped out a bad episode. I say this because a more recent episode, Power Ponies, has a similar premise to Daring Don’t, except done well! Except done in a way that makes me think it was just written with the intent to say to David Polsky, “You idiot! This is how you do it!” Continue reading →

Disclaiming Disability: “Flight to the Finish” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

I’ll be honest, my favourite characters on My Little Pony have to be the Cutie Mark Crusaders. The primary reason for this is their potential. Like every other member of the main cast, they are extremely well-developed as characters. But they’ve gotten so little screen time, that the directions they can be taken haven’t been fully utilized yet. So many potential stories here. Plus, they’re young, so they still have much to learn, and much to develop.

The same goes with Spike, one of my other favourite characters. But I’m not talking about him, today.

And the directions these characters have gone in already show great potential. We’ve explored the relationship Sweetie Belle has with her sister, we’ve explored Apple Bloom’s personal insecurities, we’ve also explored the tenacity and terrible priorities of these characters. But the one character that has gotten virtually no exposure, is Scootaloo. We’ve never met her family, and we’ve never seen her personal life away from the Crusaders. Which is probably why the fans have assumed she’s an orphan.

Last season, we got close. An episode devoted to Scootaloo’s relationship with Rainbow Dash, and her own insecurities. But it didn’t really go very far, and she ended up being overshadowed by Princess Dom Cobb there. So that was underwhelming.

And one thing they seem to avoid during the episode was the issue of Scootaloo’s wings. So far, the fact that Scootaloo can’t fly has become more of a running gag than anything.

Why haven’t they dealt with this yet? Why can’t Scootaloo fly? We know it’s not because of her age, because Rumble, who appeared to be around the same age as her, could fly. Would she ever be able to fly?

If not, it would be an interesting topic to address. Not only to deal with the how and why, but the emotional consequences of learning that the one thing that defines a pegasus, is the one thing she can’t do. It’s like being an Asian who sucks at math, or an Irish bloke who can’t hold his liquor, or another racist joke.

Thankfully it seem as if the writers were at least trying to deal with this in a recent episode. Too bad it was completely half-assed. Continue reading →

Fictional Quandries: “Daring Don’t” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

Well, that old knee jerk reaction to bullshit plot points is coming back like a boomerang with a knife taped to it.

Let’s be clear, writers: If you’re going to go against earlier plot points in a story, you’d better have a damn good reason to do it! It should either make sense in context, be necessary to the plot, or be extremely interesting. But if it doesn’t fit in any of those categories, or if it only barely fits into that last category (because I’m not even sure about that one), don’t do it!

Even if the plot point is just hinted at, like a plot point that can be taken as red because it’s the only logical assumption. Even then, you’d better have a damn good reason to go against it. For instance, if you’re gonna take a character that was previously existent only in novels within the context of the story, turning them into a real character within the context of the story, is probably a bad idea!

Which so eloquently leads me into the latest episode of My Little Pony.

You see, this week, the writers had the bright idea to turn Daring Do, introduced in season two’s Read It and Weep and star of the Daring Do books, which we’ve never seen identified as anything other than fiction, into a real character. WHICH MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!!! Continue reading →

Superstition Ain’t The Way: “Castle Mane-ia” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

People get scared too easily, and by the stupidest things, things that don’t even exist!

I don’t think I should have to tell you that ghosts aren’t real. And even if they were, what the fuck could they do to harm you!? They’re ghosts! They can’t touch you!

I guess they could levitate a knife and throw it at you. But why would they? Are they just dicks?

But for some people, every time something unusual happens, they blame it on ghosts!

A camera malfunctioned. GHOSTS! I hear a creaking noise. GHOSTS! Do you feel a draft? GHOSTS!

I got a better explanation: You live in a shitty house, and you bought a shitty camera!

There is always a better explanation. I’ve been over this before, it’s more likely that a supposed ‘psychic’ is a con artist, rather than some type of superhuman. Just like it’s more likely someone wrapped a sheet around them and decided to fuck with you, rather than there are ghosts around.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying it’s highly unlikely, and there’s no evidence.

So why do people get sucked in? Why are they so afraid of something that doesn’t exist?

Well, part of the blame goes to a little thing called ‘confirmation bias’. You hear some strange noise, or some rustling in the bushes, or something you don’t recognise. It’s evolutionarily beneficial to assume it’s a threat, so you can run away and not die.

That’s right, evolution fucked us!

But it seems that even magical multicoloured horses are also susceptible to this phenomenon. As we see on this week’s episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Continue reading →

The Dawning of the Age of MacGuffins: A review of the episode entitled “Princess Twilight Sparkle”

Posted by BlackWidower on

It’s been around nine months since, what I would call, The Great Winged Fiasco! When the decision was made to turn everyone’s favourite down-to-earth intellectual, into a princess.

I still don’t think it was a good idea, but none of that matters, since they sorta made it work. Much like the return of Trixie, a terrible idea can be overcome by excellent execution.

Which thankfully, it seems we have. Her Highness’ introduction aside, which I still think was a terrible episode, it seems as if the Princess Twilight thing is being very well executed. Which is great, especially after the unsettling implications of the Royal Wedding (nepotism anyone?) and the underwhelming missed opportunity that has been the Crystal Empire episodes.

Equestria Girls offered us a limited preview of what was to come, and while there were a few missteps, they seem to have been heading in the right direction.

And now that Season Four has had its official premiere, it’s safe to say that’s still true. Which is a very good thing, for multiple reasons. The least of which being: this is the shot in the arm the series needs. Continue reading →

Our Awesome Avengers

Posted by BlackWidower on

Sometimes, you have to know what you’re doing. Where you’re going. What your purpose is.

I never quite understood this until recently.

A matter of days ago, while writing the next chapter of Sibling Rivalry, I came to a startling realization: Knowing what I know now, I could have structured the story a lot better by rewriting everything after chapter three, delaying the actual romance between Spike and Sweetie Belle, and have his affection for her form a bit more gradually as a consequence of their budding friendship, as he teaches her magic. It would allow the story to focus on the romance, rather than the bullshit deception.

So I’m an idiot. I think I might go back and rewrite the whole story with that in mind. Or I could just say ‘fuck it’ and move on at this stage.

I don’t know.

I think the problem is, I didn’t think the story through well enough. I didn’t think it through deeply enough. I should’ve seen the plot holes before they came. But it really goes to show just how important preparation is. How important it is to plan a story out well in advance. As a writer, you might find it frustrating, not getting to the good bits. But overall, it’ll mean the story you write will be better, and much more coherent.

Which might be the reason Marvel made it work. They thought it through, and planned it all out from day one. They didn’t just make one film left open for sequels. They designed the whole thing to fit together as one giant franchise.

I am of course referring to the epic and sublime Avengers film franchise. Five films: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: the First Avenger. All tying together and referencing each other, with the purpose of reaching the ultimate crescendo, with film six, The Avengers.

The Avengers

By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, I love this film. Continue reading →