A thread to discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the tie-in media.
All of the usual forum rules
apply. In addition, please remember that the thread is discussing a kids' show, and it's primarily focused on the work itself, not the fanfic — in particular, we don't want to see lewdness creeping in.
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM
Exactly. This isn't the first, or even the third, time it's happened.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayMy guess is that people hate it due to it's use of Super Hero clichés, even though it is kind of suppose to be a parody of that stuff. Or it could be because more people keep getting butthurt about the lack of Slice of Life in the season so far.
edited 3rd Jan '14 7:45:28 PM by marston
I think the main issue is that while she was really funny in the context of the episode, she was very one note. Compared to say, Ahuizotl, there isn't much you can do with the Mane-iac beyond "hair themed crime". She's too gimmicky to have much potential without doing a lot of development. If they hadn't pushed the whole "hair" theme so hard and given her a bit more personality beyond "evilly insane" she might have fared a bit better. Not that she was bad; she filled her role perfectly. It's just that you can't take her out of that role very easily.
As a whole, I think the issue is sort of what Marston said. It went so heavily playing on Superhero tropes that unless you're big into that sort of thing, it could stretch a bit thin by the end of the episode. Compare it to say, "Read it and Weep" where the Daring Do segments were complimented by mundane sequences of Dash in the hospital. "Power Ponies" was all superheroes all the time.
edited 3rd Jan '14 7:48:53 PM by JapaneseTeeth
Reaction Image RepositoryIMHO, I figured "Bats!" was going to get the most hate from the fandom, due to just being... so... How to put it: lackluster.
Dakota's blog An odd agent of justiceI thought Bats! was pretty good aside from the issue that got brought up earlier.
@God of Awesome: I think you wanted to post this.
@ JT: Stop making sense! Ahuizotal (however the hell you spell his name) was just so generically boring. Sure, his character design was quirky, but personality-wise? The guy's a friggen' whiteboard.
Bats had character plot-holes big enough to sink the Titanic in. But we got Flutterbat out of it, so it all comes out even in the end.
edited 3rd Jan '14 7:50:23 PM by CDRW
It occured to me to wonder: why was the exit trigger chosen to be defeating Maneiac (from a Watsonian point of view). The best I can think of is that the issue of the comic was supposed to be about that one story and in order to leave you need to complete the story.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayI'm not necessarily saying that his personality was interesting (he has no motivation at all), but it's more that the genericness worked in his favor. He wasn't pigeonholed into a specific role like Mane-iac was; there was more flexibility. The Mane-iac was basically a characterization version of Crippling Overspecialization; she works brilliantly in the context of her episode, but there isn't much to work with outside of that. Whereas Ahuizotl isn't as interesting in his context, but he's enough of a blank that people want to fill in the gaps with fanwork.
One WMG I've seen that makes a lot of sense is that the comic as a product is designed as a roleplaying project. It was made deliberately to allow people to experience the events of the comic. It explains why such a thing would exist, and also why it would disappear afterward: whoever makes it knows they can make more money if the comics are one-use.
edited 3rd Jan '14 7:55:44 PM by JapaneseTeeth
Reaction Image RepositoryReally don't see how there were an character issues with Bats, other then the other five switching around to agree with Fluttershy with nothing changing to explain their change of attitude.
Ahui versus mane-iac, But there was still way more potential with him then with her. Her, we know all we need to, everything there is to know about her is presented, there's no mystery, it's all given. Ahui however, there's a ton of mystery left. Trying to come up with what we don't know gets our imaginations going, leads to more people coming up with stuff for him.
Mane-iac, like JT said, she only works in that one narrow context, and we know so much about her, there's no mystery to wonder about.
I like the theory the shop was just one of those mysterious little shops that wasn't there yesterday, and isn't there when you go back either.
edited 3rd Jan '14 7:56:53 PM by Seraphem
Actually, Mane-iac has a ready-made plot bunny built into her episode.
She gets out of the enchanted comic book.
After that, there's infinite ways you could take it. Comedy, drama, slice-of-life, adventure, grimdark. They all work, and each one offers tantalizing possibilities to play with her personality.
Spike will do to Mane-iac as what Fluttershy did to Discord to make him a recurring character.

I don't see how I was being 'ranty' or anything with that. At all.