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Meeting Room
Star Sailor: And here we are, Red.
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The president of the Unknown Worlds Alliance introduced the crime lord to the people in the room. "The one with the umbrella and the big frilly dress is Yukari Yakumo, representing the Youkai Stars and standing in for the representative of the Scarlet Domain. The dwarf is Kudush Eshimilid, president of the Unitas Republic. That catgirl maid over there seems to be a viceroy somehow. As for our newest arrival, well, she claims to be an alternate version of Skyla."
Hallo.
Howdy, how's your day?
Red: My name's Red, Red Herring, I work as an info broker, and it's a pleasure to meet you all. Now that we've dispensed with the introductions... Pray tell what matter of business we're going to discuss?
I definitely know it's about what happened not too long ago. Armetesia may have gone into virtually complete disarray, but so is the entirety of the Alicorn dominion that's fractured with multiple extremist militant factions already making rapid expansions for their newly established nation states.
The unrest before, truly swells up their numbers with a side of propaganda and more dubious methods of recruitment.
The dwarf harrumphs. "I would hardly call my Republic an upstart nation-state, and if that Scarlet girl were here, she would also love to object to tha' statement." He sighs, then says, "Look, lass, the fractures were already there. The removal of the ol' Empress and incompeten' Armetesian management just removed the very thin' keeping this whole bloody mess together."
Skyla then speaks up, "The whole reason for this meeting is to forge a basic plan for the new order after the Armetesians are crushed and the Blackguard are neutered, as well as the groundworl whole political map of the Imperial sphere to be redrawn. Destroying the loyalist factions are easy. Deciding what happens after will not be so."
Draggy will be on Skype in about an hour or so if anyone wants to chat.
Trotterdam, you know it's not a good tactic in a debate to just not respond, right? I mean, there are dozens of answers you could have to that question; I'd even accept "I don't know, I just do." But just straight-up not answering helps neither of us.
'Tis not a good tactic to make ad hominems, either. Debating the ups or downs of any episode, fine. Telling me I shouldn't be watching the show is just an attempt to end the debate by kicking me out of the room, and you won't get rid of me that easily.
Anyway, not my fault you aren't paying attention. I've already mentioned a number of things I liked, even though I wasn't trying very hard because that wasn't the topic of discussion. That doesn't change just because there's also a lot of stuff I don't like. "The show" is a kinda big thing, I can't sum up everything that's good or bad about it in one post and I'm not going to try.
Really, the problem is more a lack of quality control than a lack of quality. The writers come up with some very good ideas, but they also come up with some very bad ideas and can't seem to tell the difference (or are on too tight of a schedule to fix it).
We've been done with that previous debate; I've already ceded that we both have differing opinions that have the same base argument, so we won't be getting anywhere by continuing. This is a different debate altogether - one about your stance on the show.
Please enlighten me as to what, because clearly I haven't been paying attention.
Well, from the taste I've been given as to what you do and don't like about the show, the "don't like" pile seems to be substantially larger than the "do like" pile.
I mean, you straight-up called the writers incompetent. That's not something you can just sweep under the rug.
I wasn't asking for lists of everything good or bad, I was asking about your general idea about the show: whether the good outweighs the bad, or vice-versa.
Honestly, when I said "If you think it's badly-written, then there's no reason to watch it", it was meant as an invitation for you to elaborate; correct yourself, even. Because judging by the fact that you watch the show, you do like it. It's just that every bit of evidence you've displayed has been to the contrary, so I was giving you the opportunity to say what you really meant. (I know I frequently say what I don't mean, so I assumed you must have too.)
What actually happened only gave the appearance that you didn't want to answer the question, showed by how you waited 11 days to respond to my first asking of the question (and then by a snarky comment), and 13 days to respond to this one, both times by repeated prodding.
I don't believe you hate the show, but you've repeatedly acted like you do.
Does the good need to outweigh the bad? Even diamond mines generally have a lot more dirt in them than diamonds. And the dirt-to-diamonds ratio tends to increase as you keep mining the place.
Like I said - you disagreed, but that doesn't change the fact that I did state my opinion - I thought the earlier seasons were better. Back then, the good probably did outweigh the bad. In season 5, not so much. But then, the show's always been scattershot, so whether you think the average quality has been going up or down, each season (and even each individual episode) has had its high and low points. There's also a certain force of habit. By now I'm emotionally invested enough in the characters that I care about what happens to them, even if their new adventures aren't as good as the old ones. Plus, I'm still hoping they'll bounce back up to their earlier quality. (That's one reason I've been slow to respond - I keep hoping for an episode that I can point at and say "yeah, see, THIS is how it's supposed to be done".)
It was a snarky comment but it was also a factual statement about one of the things I like about the show.
You didn't answer my question either, by the way. Do you know a better show about magical talking ponies?
See, that's the response I was waiting for. I was inviting you to elaborate on and organize the ideas you had previously scattered throughout your posts, since clearly I couldn't do it myself. (I have a tendency to get tunnel vision when I'm debating, which is why I keep making myself make people restate their thoughts.)
No, but I thought it absurd that that would be one of someone's primary reasons to watch the show.
Just to quickly throw in my two cents on this solitary point, a cool concept is one of the main draws of any show or movie. That's why films like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, despite being terrible, have people watch it. Execution is secondary. Execution has to be consistent for a show to be enjoyable, but a cool concept will keep drawing you back even if the show isn't good, thinking "Maybe this is the episode where they get it right. Maybe this time..."
Post self-deleted by Our town restored.
I understand, I just didn't think of "magical talking ponies" as something that someone can do wrong. I mean, you could have FiM be set with humans and it would still be the same thing, just less needlessly-girly. Remove the hearts and ponies, and fill it with wizards and angels (or whatever a decent substitute for fliers would be), and it could be on prime-time. The magical talking ponies are just a, for lack of a better word, casting choice.
For whatever reason, when I read this, I thought of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184135/, which are two ENTIRELY different things.
Not really. They add a more innocent and childish element to the show, allowing to escape the constraints that your run-of-the-mill prime-time show would encounter, i.e. confusing love triangles and fake character deaths. Substituting them would remove, for lack of a better term, the show's unique magic.
This one seems like it'd be a bit more interesting, though.
I primarily got interested in the show because I was wondering how a girly show with ponies could possibly be any good. Had it been wizards and angels, I probably would have passed it up in the first place.
In fact, a unique premise is really one of the things that helps bring me into a show or video game. There's the anime/manga Daily Life with Monster Girls for example. You could switch out the monster girls for regular ones, but then it would just join the sea of all the other harem stuff I would never bother with.
See? Someone understands.
Right off the bat, the show throws out one of the most basic assumptions in fiction: that the main characters have hands. Considering how many fantasy settings rehash the same formula of humans, pointy-eared humans, and short humans, that's pretty refreshing. And then it actually shows the effects of this, at least some of the time (when the writers remember). Ponies are different from humans and do things differently from humans. The goal of the show is still to use ponies as a commentary on human friendships, so these differences tend to get used more for humor than as a plot foundation, but who doesn't like a good laugh? I like clever plot points, whether you're using them for comedy or drama. And there are definitely episodes where, while you could rework the broad plot outline and moral to work with non-ponies, it definitely wouldn't be the same story anymore.
One thing I like is how magic is normal and permeates society, used even by average civilians for everyday stuff, rather than supposedly existing but only ever getting used by the main heroes and/or seeming to have no application other than combat. Magic weather control as a means of irrigation isn't just used that one time to end the Legendary Drought of Plot-Relevance, but is standard procedure to the point that many ponies are confused and scared by the notion of weather that isn't under their control. Induced lightning strikes are used as pranks. Telekinesis is so mundane that you don't notice half the time.
Also, they are adorable. Uniquely adorable, in a way fundamentally different from, say, human children. Originality is good, but it helps to be original in an appealing way.
Everything is something that someone can do wrong. No matter how terrible something is, there is always a way it can be made even more terrible.
Not really. For one, wizards and angels don't have cutie marks.
Horses are just plain faster than humans. Even a winged human wouldn't convincingly pull off the same grace in the skies a powerful and streamlined pegasus. Rainbow Dash, arguably the least girly of the main cast, would actually lose the most from not being a pony.
For that matter, are you really going to have a humanoid character named "Rainbow Dash"?
Applejack competes in rodeos, which generally requires there to be ponies involved somehow, either you are one or you're riding one. Footraces exist, but they're not as iconic as horse races. Various ponies are seen pulling carts. The ponies on the show clearly do, at times, do horse-y things, because they are horses and are fundamentally better at doing those things than humans (or angels or wizards) would be.
This extends to basic body language. Like Rainbow Dash bucking thin air to vent frustration in Hurricane Fluttershy. Sure, you could convey exactly the same emotion with a human making a fist, but the fact that they actually did draw things the pony way rather than just having Rainbow Dash rear up and awkwardly try to make a fist with her forehoof is a clever touch that reminds you "oh right, ponies!". Even something that small is entertainingly novel and clever.
And, pretty importantly, there isn't a show about a society composed equally of humans, wizards, and angels, that I know of.
Well, you could do a show about innocent and childish humans, but if their personalities are girly, why not make their bodies girly too?
Terrible.
Alright, I'm withdrawing this nation from the WA. I'm entering the defending business!
Good luck.
Not that the WA actually does anything except enforce bureaucracy and exceptional stupidity.
I've managed to blend in with the crowd enough that the only times that the WA recognizes my existence is through those endless telegrams. They can't enforce their ideas over twenty-eight THOUSAND nations, after all. So for the most part, I only abide by the "laws" I agree with.
Ok, I'll give you this one.
You can substitute all of these things for equivalent human actions and events too. And of course you wouldn't name them the same, because it's a different setting(-like idea). The struggle for Hasbro was coming up with equivalents for human actions with ponies, but with humans you wouldn't have that problem.
And honestly, the "magical talking horses" is something that, for the most part, drives people away from MLP. It's a rare few that are actually attracted to it because of that detail.
And there wasn't a show about a society composed equally of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi before MLP either. Your point?
We're talking about if MLP:FiM didn't exist and was instead created with a humanized setting. Not much would change; it would still be the slice-of-life-comedy/adventure show we all enjoy. It would just be less prejudiced against.
Duh. Good writing is hard. That's why it's more impressive when you succeed.
(And no, the writers don't always succeed. But they do often enough that it gives the show its own unique charm, that can't be found somewhere else.)
So? Almost every story becomes dreadfully boring if you boil it down to its most basic plot elements without considering the presentation.
And nobody would have come up with the idea if not for the fact that unicorns and pegasi are the two best-known mythological horse variants.
That's actually a pretty rare division. A fair number of settings have a more-physically-adept species and a more-magically-adept species, but flight generally either gets left off or gets lumped in as a secondary ability of the magical species (whether it's natural flight, or magical flight on broomsticks or something). It's actually pretty unusual to force you to decide between either flight or magic without being able to have both. (Which is why I feel that the one pony type that actually are able to have both, alicorns, should be used extremely sparingly, and handing it out to losers like Cadence and Flurry Heart is cheating.)
Same goes for many of the other things that are original about Equestria. Maybe you could implement all of those things in a humanoid world, but if you're already changing so much from the standard formula, why not go the last step and change the "humanoid" part too? Your setting barely resembles standard humans anymore anyway.
It has just now struck me that because I have not been paying attention to the RP, I have absolutely no idea who anyone is on the forums. I know Alicorns, Ventaion, and Dragoria, but aside from that, I'm not sure who's who.
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