Tirek's a sort of variation on F*ck You, Got Mine where it's more like Got Mine To F*ck You. As is typical of Generic Doomsday Villains, spreading destruction and suffering everywhere is his only real goal. His life's greatest ambition is to drink all of Equestria's magic so that he can wander aimlessly about the Equestrian countryside punching trees in the face.

Power isn't so much his goal as it is the means to a really, really stupid end.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 13th 2019 at 4:30:07 AM

It was that post that started the avalanche

That was always the thing I found kinda interesting about Tirek. He's a rather intelligent cunning villain, who seems to greatly prefer being just a big dumb brute. Like, he's smart when he's small and weak, but his aim is clearly to get strong enough that he doesn't have to be smart anymore. Get so big he can just punch his problems away.

Post of the Day #2425

Posted by L Mage on Mon, 6th Feb '12 1:15:06 PM - Post #89143 in the old thread

That is true. He's not stupid, he's simple. It's a dynamic that often gets mistaken for "dumb brute".

Fighter McWarrior from 8-Bit Theater comes to mind as an example of the archetype. He likes swords, he wins fights by hitting things, and he has a very simplistic worldview in his capacity as The Unfettered. But he's also kind of brilliant. It's easy to write off people with simple desires entertained by simple pleasures as stupid people, but just as often they're like that because they just figured out what they want out of life way sooner than the rest of us.

Pinkie Pie and Fighter would get along well.

With regards to villains, I'm also reminded of this quote from Order of the Stick's Xykon. Paraphrasing from memory: "In any situation, there is a level of brute force against which no tactics can prevail."

I was considering writing an FF 1 x MLP fanfic where Discord transports them into World A, they're all the different classes (RD = Fighter, AJ = Monk, TS = Black Mage, FS = White Mage, R = Red Mage, and PP = Thief), and they progress through the campaign normally. The ponies from equestria appear (Celestia as king of Cornelia, Luna as Princess Sara, etc.).

And then at the end, it turns out to have been an immersive OnO adventure from Discord, who remarks "Oh, and if the readers think I'm doing Final Fantasy II, do you know how long this took me to put together?"

I really like that class assignment. Especially Rarity as the Red Mage, since Red Mages are notoriously generalized to a fault. She can fight but not like AJ and Rainbow Dash, and she technically can cast magic but nowhere near the capacity that Twilight has. It's a solid pick.

So what you're telling me is that Tirek is going on the ultimate Huge Quest.

Also, the Red Mage is known for his impeccable fashion sense, and this is Rarity we're talking about.

Another example◊ of the "Simple, not stupid" dynamic.

Compare and contrast with Cozy Glow. Who, despite harnessing Tirek's knowledge of magic absorbtion, specifically only used it to level the playing field so that her natural smarts would give her an edge.

Cozy Glow, "Stupid, but not simple"?

Arrogant intellect. Cozy is one of those people who think that being smart is a magic "I Win" button. That "more complex" automatically equals "better". Some people have trouble seeing the forest for the trees; Cozy can't see the trees for the forest.

She comes up with a master plan that involves draining all of the magic from Equestria forever. And for most people, that would be the evil plan. Or it wouldn't because it's horrible. But she just moves right along like

• Step 1: END ALL MAGIC IN EQUESTRIA FOREVER
• Step 2: Get rid of the teachers.
• Step 3: Somehow be in charge of the school.
• Step 4: Popularity!
• Step 5: ???
• Step 6: Profit?

Like. Her ultimate end-game is "Friendship equals Power" but we never even really get a chance to find out what that means because that one individual step of the plan totally overshadows anything and everything else she was trying to accomplish.

It's very similar to how Starlight Glimmer destroyed Equestria and killed everyone in a petty attempt to take Twilight's precious friends away from her. Except for Cozy Glow, the batshit insane part was deliberate, not an unforeseen consequence. And she doesn't even seem to notice how insane it is, because she's just thinking about her endgame that nobody cares about.

• Cozy Glow: Soon, I will have all the power and—
• Gallus: We're here to stop you from ending magic!
• Cozy Glow: And also the other nefarious things that I'm—
• Smolder: Seriously, ending magic? What the hell?
• Cozy Glow: Ending magic is the first step in a 59-point plan to—
• Silverstream: Hey, everyone! Cozy Glow is trying to end magic!
• Cozy Glow: Okay, stop. You're not seeing the big picture here. I—
• Ocellus: Let's all work together to defeat Cozy Glow, the Magic-Ender!
• Cozy Glow: FOR CELESTIA'S SAKE, I'M DOING OTHER THINGS TOO.
• Yona: Yak will remember this day forever as the day Cozy Glow tried to end magic.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 13th 2019 at 9:56:53 AM

"Drain all magic from Equestria forever"? Oh yeah, because that worked so well the first time.

So, until a couple months ago, I had only seen the first half of the first season of Friendship is Magic. But then I decided to finally see what all the fuss was/is about and started watching on Netflix. I'm now up to season six. Here is my semi-definitive pony ranking:

• Applejack
• Rarity
• Pinkie Pie
• Twilight
• Fluttershy
• Rainbow Dash

Also, me whenever I finish an episode:

I always took her "friendship is power" line to mean that if she gets everyone on her side and willing to listen to her she'll functionally be able to do anything. As we saw with her getting rid of Neighsay. Something she couldn't do on her own.

With magic floating around, someone like Twilight could stop even an army, but with that out of the way then the strongest will be whoever has the most followers. The most "friends".

Edited by GNinja on Feb 13th 2019 at 2:57:15 PM

YES! WE GOT ANOTHER ONE!

So I can go and be a shill, I'll utter that discord's idea of freedom probably reflects that of the Iron Republic in Fallen London where there is freedom from all laws.

All. Laws. Yes, even the laws of nature. Here is a little excerpt from Sunless Sea, which is set in the universe of Fallen London (you can even explore it in Fallen London) to give you a taste:

"To record the Republic's events - it's like trying to sing wax or believe water. You do what you can. The third paragraph buds eyes. The date is fundamentally wrong. The full-stops bite. You do what you can."

(No, really, the writing of Fallen London is flippin' phenomenal. Go find it and play it right now.)

After all, that's pretty much what discord does as the Master of Chaos: warp reality around him to whatever he wants, if it be a pink sky, dancing oxen, or tap-dancing grandmothers.

If he so wishes, so it will be.

However, the problem is that tirek is offering this freedom to him. It's the point of their unholy alliance: if discord helps tirek absorb all magic in Equestria, he can go be the Master of Chaos.

But tirek can't actually offer this to him because discord can already do that. Being the Master of Chaos with nobody to stop him was always possible ever since the Elements of Harmony were gone. Our little monkey-centaur-demon thing can't give discord what he can already get by himself with ease.

I made the comparison of this version of tirek (before he get's discord's help) and Semi-perfect Cell with how he got an amoral former villain to help him become more powerful by playing to his base desires.

But Cell didn't tell Vegeta "let me absorb Android 18 and together, we can rule the universe!" Cell only wanted Vegeta to stop smacking him around so that he can absorb Android 18 and give Vegeta a proper tussle. It wasn't an alliance, merely a short respite of Vegeta kicking Cell's thorax so that they can really go at it later!

Our little monkey-centaur-demon thing has nothing to give or offer discord for this alliance to happen. If discord wants to be the Master of Chaos, with nobody around to stop him, all he has to do is go rampant because nobody can stop him already!

It would be enough for tirek to convince discord to backslide but an actual alliance has no basis.

...I've also noticed an oddity with their unholy alliance: discord is not really doing his thing.

When we see the montage, discord is using his chaos magic but it's really only to help tirek absorb more magic such as using a fishing pole to snare Earth Ponies for tirek to absorb their magic.

But that's almost all the extent of his chaos. He's not turning the drained ponies into talking beds or turning the sky into a vivid shade of cosmogone or even messing with the architecture so that it does resemble Neo-Gothic architecture.

I know that discord is supposed to be helping tirek but discord is...discord! He should be taking every opportunity to do his chaos shtick, even when it won't help tirek! It's the very reason he's helping tirek!

When two villains usually work together in fiction, each villain has their own ideas and goals and will usually try to get them done, even if it's behind the back of their "compatriot". But discord isn't doing his own thing even though he's the one with all the power as the Master of Chaos.

It's odd to see discord being cooperative and helpful and not trying to go beyond the limits of whatever relationships he has.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 13th 2019 at 7:10:46 AM

What I'm seeing is that Tirek read Discord like an open book. Sure, Discord could have a merry romp though Equestria turning buildings upside-down and making it rain chocolate milk, but he doesn't because Discord craves friendship, and his friendship to a pony is stopping him from doing just that. So Tirek offered a sort of friendship to Discord that also allowed him to be an unfettered spirit of chaos, in exchange for a few services here and there.

But of course Tirek was never really offering friendship, it was a manipulative ploy to get Discord on his side as long as the alliance remained advantageous. And when the opportunity presented itself, he betrayed Discord by stealing his magic, because Tirek didn't really need him anymore by that point.

Post of the Day #2426

Posted by Seraphem on Sun, 29th Dec '13 7:04:46 PM - Post #33556 in the new thread

Equestrian butterflies, and Applejack. Let's not forget that.

And then DEATH BATTLE! used his research to determine that Starscream stood no chance against RD.

Starscream is an idiot that's why

Yeah, but even with that, Dash was too fast and defied the laws of physics, so even if Starscream wasn't a complete and total buffoon, he couldn't win.

And then she ate his immortal Spark. That was great.

Great. Now we're going to get a My Little Pony version of Rampage. x_x

You mean where ponies get +2/+2 for every blocking creature beyond the first?