My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Live Reactions & Discussion)

I always find it amusing when people who assume that Cloud is super emo play the game and find out that he's actually pretty laid back in the early parts of the game.

Also, everyone kind of forgets that Aerith's characterization isn't solely Too Good for This Sinful Earth and that she was actually pretty playful.

@CDRW: Or heck, just give him some pants.

edited 1st May '16 8:03:43 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Not to mention Cloud cheers up at the end of Advent Children after Zack and Aerith's spirits comfort him and help him beat Sephiroth.

Yeah, most of the issues with the characters is a result of stuff that came later falnderizing those traits. Not with how they were in the game itself.

The problem I have with Advent Children is he'd already dealt with that stuff as part of his character arc in VII. That was backsliding.

/#givekujasomepants needs to start trending.

Maybe Kuja had some pants at one point, but he lent them to an orphan who needed them more than he did?

edited 1st May '16 8:07:15 PM by CDRW

Not like we ever put up with stories involving flanderization or characters backsliding.

Twilight. Pinkie Pie. Spike. Celestia. Luna.

Nope. Never.

Honestly, I forgive all of Advent Children's faults for its final battle because dang.

edited 1st May '16 8:14:52 PM by LordVatek

At the least, Cloud's backsliding was justified by being infected with Geostigma - it's literally Sephiroth's will, and he was only able to retain his sense of self in the Lifestream by focusing on killing Cloud, so of course he would torment him from beyond.

And it's even better in the uncut version.

Holy crap, the thread is moving fast enough that my replies are being double and triple ninja'd. It has to have been, like, at least a year since I've seen that happen

I'd say it's the first time in almost four years.

So in my original Pony setting, Religion is Magic, and I'm trying to come up with how religious rituals (in a Catholic inspired religio) would work. Since magic works pretty similar to MLP with glowing horns and the spell taking effect, I'm not sure Ritual Magic would work.

Given the lack of anything resembling organized religion in the setting, you'd basically have to recreate the whole cosmology from scratch.

The only way I can think where you could combine them would be to make Celestia and Luna more overtly viewed as deities by the other ponies. Or maybe having them view the various magical artifacts (Elements of Harmony, the Crystal Heart, the tree of Harmony) as relics of some sort. The latter would probably be easiest to work into the setting.

Maybe they have a low-key religion like bhuddism.

The key word is original. We have an Expy of Celestia^note who, mind you is a actually cross between Brennus and Caesar Augustus who is not a current character in the setting, an Expy of Luna/Nightmare Moon^note who is, but like NMM was basically forgotten for most of the setting's history and Expies of the Elements of Harmony^note That bear more resemblance to William Blake's Zoas and Emanations more than anything, but there's no Equestria and an original cosmology that thanks to milennia of cultural exchange is basically an odd mish-mash of Celtic Mythology, Classical Mythology and Norse Mythology. I initially started with classical style Libations and offerings of various food items, but I feel that in a society with actual magic it came off as somewhat lacking.

edited 1st May '16 8:59:09 PM by SantosLHalper

Okay, time to go to bed.

Bartz and Gilgamesh, tho.

Coming in late: Although I have played a handful of FF and KH games, I have never been able to be invested enough in them to pay attention to the characters or plots. I always get cloud confused with every other protagonist, and I never have any idea what's going on with the FF stuff in KH.

@Santos When it comes to religion, ritual magic is usually the only way I think. Unless you want to introduce the concept of vessels. But vessels will require that the truth of the religion be objective fact.

Of course, you can always two-stage the magic. Vancian magic, where it is prepared through ritual then cast once later that day, Enchantment, where the magic works through artifacts created in ritual, or pacts, established in ritual that then allow magic to be cast normally later.

edited 2nd May '16 2:39:24 AM by war877

Still searching for new Fluttershy avatars. I am pretty sure I am beyond saving from Death via adorableness at this point.

....Also, something interesting that I found worth noting. It seems to be a bit popular to humanize Fluttershy as arabic for some reason (had the head wear integrated into the image). The fanart I have seen of it certainly do it justice though. A bit interesting nevertheless as I completely did not expect to see that

edited 2nd May '16 1:57:06 AM by Ecrivan

Cloud's kind of a dick early in the stereotypical "merc in it for the money" kind of way. He even makes a point of telling Barret he doesn't give a crap about the cause so long as he gets paid. And I guess this is kind of a retconning in a way, since I'm going off of characterization from Crisis Core (but Zack gets basically nothing for screen time in the original and it's all pretty bland, so...), but Zack is comparatively a pretty happy-go-lucky guy and very much the stereotypical JRPG goody-goody hero. So going off of the compilation as a whole, if Cloud was trying to emulate Zack, he was doing a pretty horrible job of it (and even if we just go off of the original, he still missed the "generic nice guy" mark).

I get why Serphem doesn't like those types of people, but Blueblood never came off as bad as that to me.

Of course, I see pre-reformation Discord as a lot worse than most do.

Also, the passionate level of my dissaproval for Sakura Kyouko, is legendary, because I also can't stand that type of person,.

Blueblood was also potentially just trolling Rarity due to the context of the meeting, though I doubt that was the intention.

But yeah, Blueblood never struck me as anywhere near as bad as a lot of fanon makes him out to be, just a bit self-important. Part of the idea behind The Colour You Bleed was to see just how much people hated Blueblood, and how much I could put him through, without deviating too much from what we saw in canon, before people got uncomfortable.

Admittedly I seemed to have gone a bit Ham on it, as most people hit that mark by the end of the first chapter. Damned good as a hook, though.

Oh yes. I'm only on episode 5 of Madoka, and I've hit that point where I'm pretty certain from experience that this character will somehow be made sympathetic later (judging from your comment maybe not) but right now cannot stand her.

Also, Bronystate just finished Nichijou, which is possibly the greatest thing ever especially when it's past midnight and you have a drink handy.

Well, with early game cloud, he was trying to act the way he thought a tough, grizzled mercenary and ex-SOLDIER would act. But his idea on that was... not all the spot on.

Re: Blueblood & Fanfics: His Best Of All Possible Worlds portrayal is my favorite, that being a hate-sink is a family business, a tradition they uphold in service to Celestia.

kudzuhaiku's Weedverse version of him, in The Perilous Romance Of Swans is shaping up to be the same concept, to my delight.

I plan to do the very same thing, setting the cliche 'OC Bashes Blueblood' scene from Blueblood's perspective. "Time to go make some enemies."

Re: Sephiroth: Ya know what I really think started his path down insanity? When somebody injected him with the cells of an alien god.

Like, if we could get a hand on his fresh corpse, bust his skull open and pull out the brain matter, I bet it'd look vvvery interesting. Like, "Holy moly, his brain is cooked" interesting.

I looked back at the episode transcript for "No Second Prances", and I realized that it's ambiguous as to who arranged the dinner with Celestia and made the rule that Starlight had to specifically bring a NEW friend. My personal guess is Celestia suggested the dinner so she could meet with Starlight but Twilight was the one who made up the rule about "bring a NEW friend" because she wanted to show off her teaching skills to Celestia.

I also had potential Fridge Brilliance concerning Vinyl Scratch and her seemingly eternal headphone music. We don't know if batteries exist in Equestria for charging something like an iPod, CD player, or even a tape player, but even if they don't, unicorn magic often substitutes for electricity (like with the Flim Flam brothers' machine) so she probably uses her magic to keep whatever she's using for music energized.