Unplanned Obsolescence · 8:38pm Apr 30th, 2016
So, it looks like Lulamoon's Castle is no longer canon-compatible.
That's okay with me. I naturally love that fic, but I also thoroughly love 99.9% of what we got in its stead.* Starlight is so Sunset Shimmer v1.01 it hurts so good
One of the philosophies I hold for myself regarding this show is that darn near anything I write for it will inevitably pale in comparison to the professional content that broaches the same scenario.** There are a lot of 25-year-olds reading this paragraph right now who will balk at what I just said because let's face it, the theme-song of 25-year-olds everywhere is Fight the Power; to you I merely advise: give it time. 
I've never stayed active in a fandom as long as I have this one, nor have I written fanfic for one alongside it for as long as I have this one. In Internet time, five and a half years is an eternity. And over that eternity, I've watched this show grow and evolve, and myself along with it.
I've stood, wide-eyed and agape at what I've seen, and wanting to make exactly more of a show I instantly fell in love with. I've been heartbroken and mistrustful of the show's direction, and wanting to "fix" it in my own tiny, silly little way. I've stood alone in--and been shamed for--my love of certain characters and spinoffs. I've stood alone in--and been shamed for--my dislike of certain plot developments. I've been scared that the show was getting too dark, I've been scared that some characters would always be dead weight, I've been scared that the writing staff was off their rocker, I've been simultaneously enthralled and disillusioned by the community surrounding this show at various points, I've experienced renewed love for the franchise, I've been broken to the point where I no longer looked towards new episodes any more...
...and I eventually realized that so many things I thought about the show, certain comics, etc. was wrong, and that there'd more or less been a plan all along. And that plan actually had fans like me in mind.
And now, six episodes into Season 6, I feel... pretty redundant, all told.
I've heard scattered rumblings of people being dissatisfied with this season. I've had friends tell me outright they've not been into this season, and had some even stop watching during the last season, which was actually my favorite before this one hit.
That's fine, I guess. I mean, what can I say to that? While such sentiments are impossible for me to rebut, I couldn't disagree with them more.
From where I'm sitting, this season's been flawless. Six episodes into Season 6, this is exactly the season I would write--except, like, there are a stable of writers and editors who are doing a much better job than I could and going places I never would have dreamed of. Any nitpicks I could possibly have come from my knowledge that they have to fit these scenarios into 22 minutes, and I'm seeing that done with a skill I never would have foreseen back in the S3-S4 days.
While I did have a few scribbles going in a Starlight+Trixie direction in a separate text file a month ago, I would not have thought of today's episode. I also feel that, were this, say, Season 2 or even Season 4, said episode would have ended very differently.
But it didn't.
It ended exactly--no, worlds better--than how I would have ended it. Those last three minutes, mang. Best emotional rollercoaster.
Every episode's done that so far, and sometimes while tackling material that was previously thought to be poisonous. The result is that for the first time since Season 2, I feel like I can turn on an episode of MLP and not feel scared of a very real risk of it breaking my heart by way of tonal whiplash or seeing a pony do something or try to teach some kind of weird "moral" that makes me hit my head against my desk a dozen times or heaven forbid, being creepy by accident.
Instead, so far, sheer flawlessness. The morals, flawless. The characters, flawless. The emotional beats, flawless. The stakes: personal, and their resolutions, flawless. And all in the style I write in.
I can't put into words how much that means to me.
I also can't put into words how lost that makes me feel.
Don't worry--this isn't a hugbox plea--I've already exhausted the one of those that everyone gets, nor am I down in the dumps about this or anything. I'm writing this on a lingering high from today's episode!
But I've always adopted a Blue Ocean Strategy when it comes to fanfic--go the places canon won't (while making them canon-compatible), write what the fandom doesn't, because I've never felt that the world needs Rendition 5,287 of Plot X or Ship X. Writing New or Different is always more fun for me than trying to write Better than what's already out there. And given the way I write and the themes I usually write about (warm-and-fuzzy, easily-shippble BFFs, earnestness of heart), that tended to make me unique by default.
But now, the exact things I do and am good at are what's onscreen, and being made at a steady clip with writers I'm close to worshipping, and an actual visual budget. And there's Friends Forever which's been trucking for a good couple of years now. If people want the kind of material I write, there are now much better places to get it, and as the pile gets bigger, the less impetus there is for me to add to it.
I honestly don't know. I'll think of something, though. Don't I always?
That said, I have been writing for other IPs as of late. Which needed to happen, really. Making creative minds work on exactly one thing for years at a time without variety is how we got Sonic 2006. Perhaps once this place becomes the lauded multi-fandom archive knighty keeps saying he wants it to be, you'll see me reach a level beyond Super Shipper.
Only time will tell.
~B
*The .1%: "DJ-P0N3" is still the worst name
**Romance aside. I really shoulda just become a full-time shipper from the outset.
Yeah, DJ-Pon3 is kind of a shit name.
But the rest of the episode was pretty good, I'll give you that.
Also Starlight OP plz nerf.
Yeah, I'm probably in no real position to comment on the season so far seeing as how I have yet to actually watch any of it's episodes. (Yeah, that's a bit of a shock
) but so far from the summaries they see to be hitting all the right notes, so to speak.
3908144
Complaining about the top tier gets you nowhere.
Join the herd.
To be fair. DJ-PON3 is probably just the name she's more commonly known by.
Besides that, I agree completely that this season has been excellent.
I doubt it'll have a single episode that's better than Crusaders of the Lost Mark, but it might come close a few times. And this is definitely one of them.
3908189 You sound like a Fox main.
Well, a.) it would seem I very much mis-interpreted your reply to me over on your front page, so apologies there. ^^;
b.) I find it endlessly fascinating that we feel like two completely-opposite pieces of a puzzle in regards to our opinion on basically everything to do with this series nowadays; you zig, I zag, and vice-versa. I'm not upset by that, either; variety is the spice of life, after all, and I really appreciate having a perspective I can bounce off of a lot rather than simply be in sync with all the time. But I do find myself more than frequently confused by it too; again, not in a negative or angry sense, but rather in a "I don't entirely get how we can agree so much about this while simultaneously feeling so differently about that" sense. Which is really just a roundabout way for me t'say that I'm struggling to reconcile how much I love your stories with how apathetic I've been to so much of the show's output of late while you yourself seem to feel the latter renders the former redundant by virtue of how similar they are to your eye. Again, no anger or sadness attached, just plain academic curiosity. X3
c.) srsly tho that episode was so good. I have my quibbles, I always do (my own personal .1% is reserved for Celestia's use here, but that's tied into bigger, more complicated feelings about her place in the show that are only sort of relevant here x3; ), but on the whole it clicked for me a lot. The emotional beats all rang true, the three simultaneous character arcs all worked together and reinforcing each other in surprising, organic, and extremely effective ways, and even the usual run-through of the other Mane Six stuff felt a bit more clever and on-point than it has in a while. I was really happy with it overall, and I'm happy t'see it made you happy too.
Well, sort of, but you get what I mean. >w>
I have to think that that's just Vinyl's stage name. No parents would burden their children with a name that actually contains a number.
In any case, I can't say I've ever seen someone be demotivated because they liked the series too much. Still, here's hoping you find something worth writing for, preferably without the season taking a sudden nosedive in your eyes.
To me, this episode was only decent. I am a huge fan of Starixie, but the way that Twilight acted was very OOC. I know that Trixie gave her a hard time, but she herself forgave her at the end of Magic Duel, so to see her still treating Trixie as a bad pony wasn't very nice of her.
Anyway, I hope that I enjoy next week's episode as well.
3908224
Nah, Twi was perfectly IC. What turns her into a stubborn moron faster than anything?
- Liking to have things under control
- Wanting to please Princess Celestia.
Forgiveness or no, Trixie's enslavement of Ponyville was something Twilight got past by the skin of her teeth, and we saw a Great And Repentant Trixie for about thirty seconds the last time she showed up. It makes full sense for Twilight be wary and watch Trixie like a hawk.
And she'd probably still have been rational about the matter if that were the end of it, but Celestia shows up to check on how good of a teaching job Twilight's been doing. A LOT'S riding on this, what with her having taken in a former supervillain under her wing and all. She probably had to pull a favor or two with Cel. An uncontrollable x-factor-that's-previously-been-a-thorn-in-her-side like Trixie showing up is the worst thing that could happen to her right now.
So yeah. Twi got stupid. Made total sense why. Didn't stop me from yelling at her all episode, though.
(If anything, I want to see what happened to Trixie between Season 3 and now to give her such a victim complex. :O)
3908223
Yeah, I seriously hope I didn't just jinx it all!
My new headcanon is that DJ-P0N3 now has the same complex as those kids whose parents were silly enough to give them shamelessly geeky names like "Sephiroth."
3908220
I'm thinking it's because I have to create this stuff, and my main inspiration is actually the official material itself. I usually look between the lines of the episodes/movies/comics to see if there's anything left unsaid that works for the kind of material I like to write.
But now the lines are all slowly getting filled, so it's backing up the muse like whoa. "Oh, wait, the show already did it, and I like it more than my idea. Welp."
3908206
Don't I just?
(If I played Smash, I'd main Shulk. But I don't, so)
3908244
She's not stupid. Stubborn, yes, but definitely not stupid.
But I can agree with you, I almost yelled at her, but I didn't want to start hating any of the Main Six, since there's been at least one episode for all of them that have made them all great characters.
3908261 Which itself is one of those things I zig and you zag on; I've enjoyed the show's handling of these things plenty, and there are even times I'd call it a draw in terms of preference (I adore "Lulamoon's Castle", but I am equally fond of how "No Second Prances" fits into the overall show), but I don't know of any case where the show has tackled an idea you've done where I've outright liked their take more than yours ("The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" is one of my favorites of Season 5, but I still feel like there's a bit more of an honesty to "Blunder and Lightning"'s take on Gilda and Dash's reconciliation, for example).
It's a profoundly peculiar, but infinitely fascinating, position to be in. XD ^_^
Still, you raise a good point; writers look at their stories differently than do readers (even when those readers are themselves writers), which means there really is a bit of an invisible gap between us in terms of what we see and don't see in regards to certain works.
I personally found the episode a mixed bag, but I loved the first half. The second half, mainly involving Trixie's emotional distress and the conflict with her and Twilight, hit way too close to home for me. Simply put, I somehow ended up relating to Trixie the most in this episode. I think that's part of why seeing Twilight acting in such a manner was tough in my view. And Trixie's final act was downright hard for me to watch.
But I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it and the season as a whole.
This was a very good and heartfelt blog post.
Starlight Glimmer really is awesome (and was never as close to being Sunset as today).
Trixie is also awesome, and has grown a lot as character today.
None of this changes the fact that Starlight's special talent is most definitely not winking.
...I'm serious. Just look at it, it's right up there.
I've only seen one character who's even worse at it.
Season 6 has been good! And I think I liked today's best of them all (despite disliking Sunset Shimmer 1, let alone Sunset Shimmer 2: Shimmer Faster!) The way they introduced Trixie was brilliant, and that moment when Twilight, Trixie, and
SunsetStarlight all screw up at nearly the same time, and each have their own private, backstoried guilt trips, was very well done.Don't worry. They'll screw it up soon enough. I don't think they plan anything out ahead of time. The times I've heard the writers speak at cons, they've never even mentioned having planned character arcs or tossing ideas around with other writers, just pitching individual episode ideas and writing them up if they get greenlighted.
3908244
All this being said, there's nothing more frustrating than someone who doesn't understand how to call out "OOC" properly, so you get a lot of people calling a character out unjustly.
A well written character, like any person in real life, is GOING to have moments that they act in a way you wouldn't expect, and the context for those actions is largely going to determine how out of character it truly was.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's when people throw the term around any time a character doesn't act how they want the character to act.
Loved today's episode. YEARS overdue for that glorious Twilight and Trixie confrontation after that whole alicorn amulet deal. Gawd, Twilight is such an ass and I loved it. This episode had so much fanfiction lvl content that it spun into its own delicious thing and now we have TRIXIE as a potentially recurring character now!
Now all Glimmer needs to do is make 4 more friends and we'll have a s7 replacement team for the mane six. :P
I kid, but it so feels like it's what they're aiming for. Who knows.
And hey, the world can use more Trimmer (Trixie and Starlight trimming the hedges)
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"So, if you wanna write a story about The Great and Powerful Trixie and her Great and Powerful Newer and NOT TWILIGHT SPARKLE WHORSE, I'd read it." - Great and Powerful Trixie, The
3908144
Twilight's a huge nerd who can't pronounce stuff properly. So of COURSE she reads it DJ Pone-Three instead of Pwn-Ee
I've always wondered if there was a name for the thing I try to do in terms of writing. Now I know.
Learn something new every day.
Also, glad you enjoyed it. Was a rather cute episode. ^^
3908189 Top Tier... is that what they call the Sues now? I'll alert the red and black alicorns.
3908254
Or poor Dovahkiin, born on 11/11/11.
Anyway, you could always explore the whole "pony main characters meet human main characters" thing. Until EQG4 comes out at least, pretty sure that one's going to be doing that.
3910634
Why are you and Bookish always fighting?
Seeing two of my favorite writers on this site fight makes me sad.
3914907
I... literally haven't talked to this guy in like four years
I'm not even talking to him now. Doesn't fighting mean interaction has to happen? :)
Hi, I wanted to chime in on this blog post because I LOVE THIS EPISODE TO BITS OMG SO AWESOME.
I LOVED Starlight as a villain. It was pretty interesting to have a villain whose main weapon was ideology, and I loved s5's premiere. The finale was also really really good, even if Starlight's origin story was really really lame. Her addition to the cast gave me a lot of hope for FiM: I felt that the writers had run their course on character development for the Mane 6, and I was so happy at the idea that we would FINALLY have a redemption arc for a female character! (As much as I totally totally love Sunset Shimmer, I think everyone would agree her redemption was rushed at best.)
So far... Starlight's redemption gets a 7/10 from me. I like how contrite she is. But for her all the consequences she experiences are totally internal: in contrast, Prances has Trixie facing visible social recrimination for her past. I also feel that the writers are defining Starlight too hard by the fact that she's a penitent: Starlight has no real character outside of that role. But! Prances gave us a little peek into her head: she's apparently the sort who uses magic as the first resort. Why this isn't resolved in the episode itself I don't understand, but maybe it'll be touched on in future episodes.
I also thought that Twilight really really came off well this episode, because Lesson Zero was like OMG 4 seasons ago now and I love episodes where they show the main character as fallible. I also don't get the comments that Twilight wasn't in character: since she sees Starlight as kind of her responsibility, it's entirely within Twilight's instincts to try to control as much of it a possible.
And of course there's Trixie. I think it's obvious to any Trixie fan why this episode was awesome, so I'm not going to bother to elaborate.
The BEST thing about this episode is how all three characters are shown to be regular ponies who make mistakes, and they all realize their mistakes at the end of the episode and feel appropriately contrite about them. SO GOOD OMG.
3908992
be careful what you wish for starlight
because you two just might end up on tour together
alone
sharing a wagon forever
3908876
I love this line, and it's something I've wanted to touch on in a future blog. Likely will soon.
3908723
...man, you are... not even wrong. Then again, subtlety was never Star's strong suit :D
3908346
That's just how you know that episode was real.
Cherish that feeling. Let it guide you in future social situations.
3936948 Coincidentally, while I had mixed feelings about the episode at first, my second viewing of it whilst also considering how Trixie and Starlight contributed to the plot propelled No Second Prances to my top ten—at least in my opinion. Sure, it's not perfect and has some noticeable flaws, but the emotional impact the episode had coupled with how much it made me think about both the world of MLP and real life itself made me enjoy it much more. It's interesting how views on an episode can change over time.
3936940 Oh, you tease!
If I wasn't so full of life crap to put up with I'd have loved to write a story along the lines of something like "A Hiccup In Time" or if I wanted to be cheesy, something like "Glimmer in Time" or so. Something that reveals to Starlight Gimmer a scene she that at first disgusted her, scared her, and above all confused her. She recalls a scene she once saw in her time-altering practice runs that she couldn't understood then to why such a powerful unicorn as herself could ever end up alone in some dingy cramp wagon haggered and cold.
A glimpse of a reality that's all but haunted Glimmer's thoughts as late. But why? We would see how Starlight Glimmer chooses between a future that pomised her all the power and friendships she was destined for or end up a mare who turn her back on it all for a life on the road in a simple wagon.
We'd find as we go Glimmer begins to feel, to see things differently, the glimpses becoming clearer for her as to why she'd go through all day to day challenges to discover a deeper connection that simple friendships can't give. A horrifying realization, a calming acceptance of the reality, and a choice she'd have to make while she still has a chance to make one. All this because of some third-pony speaking showmare.
Alas, I'm so unreliable as to when and if I could ever go through with anything writing. But anyone can do whatever they want with that. I'd read the heck out of anything Trimmer. Besides, I'm a bastard who would probably end it in a not so happy ending way.
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Who knows! xD
Who am I kidding. I'd probably make a slapstick comedy and play it as the most normal thing ever with them taking over Ponyville, and Celestia congratulating Twilight Sparkle on how well she taught Starlight Glimmer and Trixie the power of friendship in some passive-aggressive way.
3936942
Please do. Coming from you, it'd likely be a very interesting read.
3936948
By the way, here's an interesting idea/headcanon about that episode:
We all know that Twilight is terrible with working under pressure, and Starlight isn't much better (at least in most of the more mundane episodes). So I thought, maybe they hesitated a little longer than we thought... meaning it's actually Trixie who cast the spell all by herself. Adrenaline is one heck of a drug, and Magic Duel suggests that she's more than good enough with magic theory, she's just lacking the magic power for most spells.