Tag Archives: Reviews

One Ordinary Mongoose: “Super Sunil” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

Why are superpowers such a common fantasy trope? I know it may seem like an obvious question, but it’s still worth asking.

And yes, before you ask, it is extremely common. Jedi, Magi, super soldiers, mutants. Generally, every fantasy franchise that has ever existed, featured characters who are more than human. But why?

Some may say it’s an ego thing. We like to imagine ourselves as having these great powers that we could use, and that’ll show everyone! But that’s not really true, is it? No, a proper ego trip would involve you imagining yourself as you are. If you’re already awesome, why add to that?

So if I had to guess, the real reason to fantasize about having superpowers, is due to feelings of inadequacy. One imagines themselves as being better than the shitty human being they are now. Imagining one has superpowers can really boost one’s self-confidence.

And there’s really nothing necessarily wrong with that, it can be a fun creative exercise if nothing else. For instance, I kinda wish I could jump 50 feet in the air. It’d make getting around town much easier. And like any fantasy, it’s perfectly harmless, unless the person starts acting like they really do have superpowers, but that’s a different category altogether. That’s not due to low self-esteem, it’s due to egotism and mental illness or LSD. Or a friend, tricking you in the most contrived way possible, as displayed on a recent episode of Littlest Pet Shop. Continue reading →

The Canine and the Frog: “To Paris With Zoe” review

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The weird thing about romance in your typical, modern-day, Saturday morning cartoon, is that it’s not often portrayed on-screen.

This can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. In the case of some shows, like Littlest Pet Shop, or My Life as a Teenage Robot, our main cast is composed of teenagers. And generally, teenagers get involved in romance, whether they want to or not. Obviously this is not true in all cases. But I remember when I was in high school, around fifty per cent of all students were in some type of relationship. Not only that, even if you’re not in a relationship, at that time of your life you tend to want one. So in those shows, a lack of romantic sub-plots, would feel like they’re actively avoiding it for no reason.

On the other hand, having every episode feature that kinda thing would actually be… kinda sad. And it would get stomach churning pretty quickly. Imagine every episode featuring our main characters doing nothing but talking about the opposite sex. And even if it didn’t make you sick, there’s no way to make likeable characters out of that. If they’re girls, they’d come off as vapid stereotypes; and if they’re boys, they’d come off as slimy pickup-artists. Continue reading →

The Theory of Apple Relativity: “Pinkie Apple Pie” review

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Genealogy is the study of family history, essentially. It allows you to know who your ancestors were, what they did; and it allows you to know exactly where you came from.

Now, how does this affect the individual who learns about their family history? In no possible way.

It’s an old fallacy that still exists in the minds of many. That who we are is determined by who our parents were. But it’s not.

Some may mention things like genetics. But we know so little about how DNA works, and how it’s passed on, that we can’t reliably say that. Not every trait that is coded in our DNA, is expressed all the time. We don’t even know what’s actually coded in our DNA, besides certain superficial stuff like melanin levels and face shapes.

There are certain genetic diseases which are a concern. Which is why our family history is of great interest to doctors. That which might have killed our parents or grandparents, could also kill us. If there’s a family history of cancer or heart disease, it’s something we need to watch out for.

And of course, we are raised by our parents, and the child-rearing techniques of our ancestors can be passed down throughout the generations, and that can influence us. But we already knew that. We already know how we were raised. Genealogy doesn’t teach us anything about that.

And it shouldn’t take people that long to realize just how meaningless genealogy is. For instance, you can be a brilliant scientist, who worked with the frontiers of energy and electro-mechanics, while being born to a pair of superstitious clergy members (see: Nikola Tesla). Or, you can be a highly successful, self-made business tycoon, while your son is a complete dolt and cunt, with no perspective of reality (see: Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump).

And just to show how much damage this can cause, you can be a walking disaster, who’s every last business venture ended in failure, and be elected President of the United States only because your dad was. Do I have to tell you whom I’m talking about in this case?

In Japan, they understand this. Oftentimes so-called ‘family businesses’ are inherited by adopted children. Either because, A: the owners don’t have a son that can inherit the company, or B: their actual sons are ponces. Remember, we’re talking about a country that’s still predominately male-dominated. But the point is, they don’t care about actual familial relations. They understand that blood-relation really doesn’t matter, even among family.

The most genealogy can be to the layman, is as an intellectual curiosity. Which is why it should surprise no one that it is one of the many fields that Twilight Sparkle is a patron of. Time for more ponies!!!! Continue reading →

Dammit, Rarity!: “Rarity Takes Manehattan” review

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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

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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

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“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 →

Tales from the Panda: “So Interesting” review

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Writing is hard. Writing prose is even harder. Anyone who says otherwise has never written a goddamn word in their fucking life.

Coalescing ideas into words to put on paper is not easy. First you have to find the right words, then you have to structure them so they make sense, then you have to double-check to make sure it sounds right, then you have to ensure the whole thing doesn’t contradict itself. It requires a special skill that takes years to develop. And it’s one I still haven’t mastered.

And writing fiction gets harder. Does the scene make sense? Does the tone match the events? Is it well paced? Is it well phrased? Are the characters consistent? Are the events consistent? And the whole thing can get quite overwhelming.

This is why most writers have editors.

So what does this have to do with the latest episode of Littlest Pet Shop? Absolutely nothing! What are you talking about? Penny really is from the land of faeries and goblins. Continue reading →

The Human Chameleon: “Commercial Success” review

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Littlest Pet Shop, as a show, has always been a bit lop-sided.

For all intents and purposes, it seems as if we only have one character on this show; Blythe Baxter. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Most shows feature one central character that we continuously follow, and it tends to work. My Little Pony did this for the entire first season, having Twilight Sparkle be a central figure in every episode. On occasion, when the episode featured a different character, her role would end up being a bit shoehorned in, but you didn’t really care since it still worked.

On Littlest Pet Shop, however, Blythe’s central role comes at the expense of proper characterization for everyone else.

Yes, the pets have gotten plenty of screen time, I’m not arguing that. We’ve had plenty of episodes about them, as one would expect. But even then, Blythe seems to overshadow all of them. Even the one episode that had plenty of reason to let her take a back seat (after all, she was out-of-town at the time), focused on her almost entirely. They could have opened the season with a single episode featuring the pets having a grand adventure without their human friend. Wouldn’t that have been nice? Instead, we got an episode focusing on how much they missed her, and how miserable they were without the main character.

Then we have the human characters. Last time I called Blythe’s friends the three stereotypes, and I wasn’t kidding. They’ve gotten nothing in the way of characterization, just enhancement of prior stereotypes, or in Sue’s case, establishment of her creepy-stalker side.

I’m still not sure what to make of that. And I even remember early episodes hinting at Youngmee’s love of exotic foods; but since then, it hasn’t really been utilized in any way, or even brought up.

Then there’s Jasper, an empty shell of blandness. I try to think of anything he’s done, any key moments, and all I can think of are his attempts to open Blythe’s locker during the première, him screaming ‘that sucks!’ in the season one finale, and the time he turned a photo of Sunil into a meme.

Not much to work with. But thankfully, I think this character is on the verge of a turnaround. Especially since last week, when we got an episode establishing him as being halfway interesting, when he turns into a douche.

This is gonna be fuuuuun! Continue reading →