• Member Since 28th Apr, 2012
  • offline last seen Mar 4th, 2022

Darth Link 22


I'm a mysterious man with a large Viewer list, despite being very self critical of my work. Looking to write professionally someday.

More Blog Posts521

  • 109 weeks
    Where I've Been

    Wow... it's been a while.

    So... yeah. Where have I been? I've been at home. And I didn't realize it until this weekend, but I've been pretty unhappy since this whole mess with the pandemic began.

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    17 comments · 3,295 views
  • 130 weeks
    My Little Pony: A New Generation

    Well, the last month has been a nightmare of overtime and fixing up my house, but today I managed to see the premiere of G5.

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    7 comments · 971 views
  • 141 weeks
    Look Before Your Sleep

    Well, here we are. Another inevitable episode about these different ponies who had little in common now having to put up with each other after having a mutual friend in Twilight. I can picture this already having happened between Rarity and Rainbow Dash, having learned to live with each other after having a mutual friend in Fluttershy.

    Read More

    5 comments · 509 views
  • 142 weeks
    Dragonshy review!

    ...Wasn't I doing something? Oh yeah, I was.

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    6 comments · 486 views
  • 146 weeks
    Where I've Been

    Yeah... I'll bet you're wondering about my absence lately. I swear I didn't mean to take one.

    Until the pandemic actually ends (and I mean ends, not just when everything opens back up) I'm going to be working overtime. I'm hoping it's coming to an end, but there is still mandatory hours for June.

    I have a lot in the pipes, and I will still rereview the series. Just... please be patient.

    9 comments · 364 views
Oct
7th
2014

IDW Comic Issue #23 review! · 2:48pm Oct 7th, 2014

This one’s a bit hard to talk about, because I’m not sure how to summarize it. It’s told entirely in silence until the last two pages, and in comics that makes for a breezy read. The best you can critique through most of this is whether the no dialogue aspect works, and it does... mostly.

Angel Bunny wakes up one morning to find that Fluttershy hasn’t made him coffee. Now, Angel’s an evil cuss, but he seems to be the only one who notices that Fluttershy is gone. And while the other animals freak out, he keeps a cool head and starts looking for clues.

Angel suggests... something. His rubis balloon is a trophy and two butterflies, so I’m not sure exactly what. I think that it’s to look for Fluttershy. The others congratulate him on this, then kick him out. More on this in a bit.

Angel looks around the town and finds it deserted except for the pets. Using Winona, Angel tracks Fluttershy’s scent to the outskirts of town. There he finds all the town’s citizens (and Trixie, Coco, Hoity Toity, and Octavia, because IDW needs their cameos) under the control of a mysterious song, and destroying the city’s dam, which would flood the city. Personally, I think the dam looks way too small to flood anything. It looks nothing like the one in The Mysterious Mare Do Well either. Yay! I have something to whine about!

Winona, too dumb to know any better, just runs up to the hypnotized Applejack. This leads the pair face-to-face with our villain, a sea pony-esque creature. It orders the ponies to attack them, but they’re saved by Owlowiscious and Tank.

They gather Opal and Gummy (in the best gag in this issue, Owlowiscious carries Gummy by the eyelids) and meet at Zecora’s hut. Angel fills them all in, which Opal does not care, and in fact seems amused, until she realizes she’ll get wet too.

This is what I wanted to note: Angel and Opal tend to have conflicting personalities. Exactly how much of a jerk Angel is varies from whatever episode he’s in. Here, he seems to be the most sensible of Fluttershy’s pets, as opposed to the “It’s All About Me” attitude he usually has. And Opal, who acted as Rarity’s conscience in Sweet and Elite, is pretty amoral.

Luckily, Angel has a plan that involves using Zecora’s potions. First, Winona lures the ponies away with a speed potion, then Owlowiscious drops in Opal to fight them off with a growth potion, then Tank drops in Angel to hit the creature with a potion that’ll destroy its voice.

Sadly, the creature has Twilight catch him before he lands. But Angel has planned for that and tells Gummy (who has hilarious expressions again) to bite him in the tail. Despite having no teeth, this hurts it enough that it lets out a yell, freeing Twilight, who drops Angel and lets him administer the potion.

Now free, the angry ponies gang up on the creature. The creature, finally identified as a kelpie named Cassie, begs for help, explaining she was trying to get a load of water sprites to the ocean. Twilight justifies this, proving that IDW listens to the fans and let’s all villains come with their leather pants already on.

Seriously, why didn’t she just ask for help? Was she afraid they’d react negatively? Then just put them under your spell then. And why not just tell the ponies to do whatever it is they ended up doing while free? I wouldn’t mind so much, but with how much the villains are already whitewashed in the fandom, plus stuff like Wicked, Maleficent, and maybe the upcoming Dracula Untold turning established villains into the real victims, I’m starting to think this is a dangerous trend to follow.

The ponies, not remembering anything, so the pets go unrewarded. But they’re friends, and at least that’s something.

Oh, and the amoral one is now giant and is likely to do thousands in property damage. Yay.

Next time, The Journal of the Two Sisters: The Official Chronicles of Celestia and Luna.

Report Darth Link 22 · 298 views ·
Comments ( 12 )

Maleficent

That was a good movie, but I still wish it had just been a prequel to the Disney classic, not a retelling.

From the trailers, "Dracula Untold" doesn't look like a victim-villain story. It looks more like "how the mighty have fallen."

Aside from the fact that what Cassie did was downright evil, it was also stupid. The destruction of Ponyville would have made her an enemy of the Realm. It would have killed thousands, and the ones most likely to survive would have been the ones most able to punish her.

Then there's the way in which she was absurdly overpowered. Among the Ponies she overcame with her song included Twilight (an alicorn, and one of the most powerful mages in Equestria), Fluttershy (one of the most powerful mind controllers in Equestria) and Spike (member of a magic-resistant species). This was across a much wider area than all three of the Dazzlings accomplished a similar feat with related powers.

This is like one of the old Star Trek episodes in which a ridiculously powerful antagonist would be introduced simply to require a clever way to defeat them. It's a poor technique of world-building -- ST had to eventually retcon most of them into one race, the most prominent member of which was played by the fellow who plays Discord -- the Q.

turning established villains into the real victims, I’m starting to think this is a dangerous trend to follow.

How is this a bad thing, exactly? Aside from people who have a bias against whitewashing, reality is a helluva lot more complex than 'there's the good people, and there's the bad people; you're either one or the other'.

People don't just become evil out of the blue, because a person is defined by their experiences in life. Depending on those experiences, a person will grow up in one of many different ways, some of them being more favorable than others, but never into a black/white good/evil mindset.

While I agree that Cassie's role was poorly conceived in this comic, the idea of showing villains in a mixed light is something we don't see enough of in western society, so I applaud their willingness to delve into that territory here, even if it wasn't done so well.

2514464 On the nature of Evil: Most of the worst evils in the world are committed by sincere people who think they are only doing what needs to be done for the good of some group, and regardless of reality or facts, they continue unless successfully opposed by force (or losing an election). Only in rare cases (and rainbow friendship cannons) can one of these people be convinced otherwise.

2514542 That's true, but there's also cases where people do evil things because they've been led to believe that everyone around them is garbage, whether by their parents, or bullies, or whoever. A prime example of this would be Porky Minch from the Mother series.

2514464 There's sympathizing a villain and darkening a hero to raise complex moral questions, and then there's completely rewriting and whitewashing a villain. I'm fine with tthe first, but not the second.

The original Wicked worked to an extent, because Ellphaba was still portrayed as a villain by the end, but after reading the original Oz books and finding the Wizard was actually pretty benevolent, despite his deceptions, it soured it. The play is even worse, because The Wicked Witch goes from the completely unrepentant villain to a complete personality change.

Maleficent completely rewrites a villain with no redeemable qualities to be a hero. And Dracula Untold seems to be the same.

It disturbs me seeing what justifications fans come up with for some villains utter atrocities. Seeing that Hollywood is beginning to encourage that is scaring me.

2514714 Then again, this could be Hollywood's attempt at finding some original ideas to work with, which they definitely need more of.

I think what western media, including MLP, needs more villains that, while villainous through and through, have backstories which make you feel sorry they turned out the way they did.

After all, that's the case with Nightmare Moon, so who's to say Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra, and Tirek didn't become evil through unfortunate circumstances/poor upbringings as well?

2514782 "...needs more villains that, while villainous through and through, have backstories which make you feel sorry they turned out the way they did."

Prime example: Trixie. Second example if you read the comics: Sombra (Excellent 4-issue arc. I cried. I really did.)

2514829 Trixie's not really a villain, per se, rather, a minor antagonist. Even then, her brief time as one was just a one-off deal and isn't likely to happen again.

As for Sombra in the comics, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. What I mean is, have more villains whose evil nature is inherent to their character, not something they just gained because of a hard decision or curse or whatever. I will admit, though, that Sombra is a great example of, what I've come to term, an 'evil hero'.

Note: When I say 'inherent', I mean it's the result of their life's experiences, not in how they were born.

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