Find the Magic... · 6:42pm Jun 9th, 2019
Is the latest Equestria Girls music video, and (I don't know if it's worth being covered, but just to be safe, it is) the Dazzlings came back.
Oh dear.
I doubt it comes as a surprise to anyone who follows me that I have strong feelings about the sirens. What you might not know is that there’s never been a time where I wanted the sirens to come back in canon, despite liking them as much as I did. Having read as much fanfiction of them as I have, I was pretty convinced that fanfiction sirens were always going to be more interesting than whatever ending they might get in canon. The lack of a proper conclusion to their story was probably a big part of why I latched onto them the way I did. And, in fanfiction, I like them the most when they’re skirting the line between being sympathetic and being kind of awful people. To be blunt, I didn’t expect anything like that to happen in canon.
So I went into this music video expecting to loathe it. I usually don’t care too much for outright contradicting canon in fanfiction, but I was so ready to utterly denounce the travesty I was so sure we’d be getting.
In the end, I guess I’m pleasantly surprised?
Not to say I like it. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s good enough to make up for compromising the open-ended-ness of their story that I found so compelling. But I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to.
(I came close when Tethered-Angel pointed out the taco dress. Is character beyond memes not a thing in Equestria Girls anymore?)
There’re even a few things I’m sorta happy about, though those mostly come down to “it didn’t do this one thing I was dreading it might do because fanfiction often does this.” It didn’t have them split them apart, it didn’t have them no longer singing, it didn’t have them suddenly being perfectly normal girls, and so on. Trying to put a more positive spin in it, I like that they're apparently managing to get by on their own terms, rather than needing a friendship laser or a round of magic-thingy-versus-Sunset-and-friends shenanigans to sort themselves out (Or that's what I assume, since there's no Sunset or anyone in the video--I guess there's technically room for me to be wrong there, since there's not much concrete narrative to read into).
So… it’s a thing, I guess? If it’s all we ever see of post-Rainbow-Rocks sirens in canon, then I guess I’m not too annoyed by it. I doubt it’ll change the way I write them, because this felt too wishy-washy for me to extract anything extremely definite from it and I like the headcanons I’ve built up for them.
Really not sure we needed this, though.
I feel like this is building up hype for the Sirens' return, but I don't know.
I agree wholeheartedly that whenever I see something I love in EqG or MLP I get a jolt of anxiety and spend time with crossed fingers whispering. "Please don't buck it up."
The song did make me wonder if they were setting up a return as the final scene seemed to imply that they managed to fix their gems. A full villianous comeback might be interesting, but its bitter sweet too? Like even if they come back and are amazing, we know in a meta-way they have to lose so the end result will just be getting blasted by a rainbow again. And if they don't they risk turning into Team Rocket to blast off again.
A middle solution might just be to keep them around for music videos. Getting more siren songs and outfits and keeping them safe from being bruised by a bumbling plot seems the best.
If I was writing the next EqG movie though...
I would write it with the Sirens in the lead. And perhaps have them compete with the rainbooms in a second battle of the bands or some big music festival equivalent. Showcase the sirens relationship with each other. Have them be like the underdogs training hard to be good and better. No big life or death struggle. Just an actual competition as a vehicle to have a ton of music and at the end? Have the sirens win. And win because they fought through it sweat blood and tears. Could end it with a trashtalk scene against against the rainbooms from Adagio and then have her in private give her
girlssistersloversbandmates a smile.If it’s for a music video, then I have little to worry about. If it’s an actual episode?
...yeah, still looking forward to it, even if the writer’s are likely to drop a bomb on our headcanons and ruin our beloved fish girls.
5071967
Ooo, hmm, good point, can definitely see that being the intent. Not sure whether I like it or not--I guess if the sirens are coming back at all, having them be in more than just a short music video makes sense, so the extra effort might pay off, but at the same time something more substantial gives more room to screw it up, so I'm awfully apprehensive.
5071968
I think the issue with them having a villainous comeback is that we've kind of already seen them at their best and most natural? It's difficult to think of an atmosphere more appropriate for fighting sirens than a music competition, so bringing them back for another battle means either rehashing the first setup to a degree or else throwing them into a plot likely less perfectly-fitting for them.
But if they were amazing enough, I guess that could work? They already had defeat hanging over them from the get-go, by virtue of being villains in an MLP series where Friendship is all-powerful, so if their personalities were good enough a second time around... I doubt it'd be spectacular, but it could be entertaining? I'd watch a whole movie of them bickering, to be honest.
But the inconsistency of EQG as a whole makes me really skeptical that they'd be good a second time around, personality-wise.
Yeah, this sounds pretty great to me, in a lot of ways. I've always been a bit leery of how the show seems to portray friendship and badness as mutually-exclusive (It makes a certain amount of sense, but, like, it'd be cool to see it subverted, y'know?), and the sirens, depending on how exactly you view their relationship, have always seemed to me like the ones who'd combine the two the best (Sonata's goofing around and Aria's bitching half the time they're hanging out... but when they start singing or doing anything else nefarious, none of the three miss a beat; compare that to the backstabbing we saw with Tirek and Discord).
And, honestly, I just wanna see the Rainbooms not be, like, world-best at something. It'd be so great for them to have to suffer a loss at some point, and I don't know if I can think of more deserving antagonists to give them one than the sirens.
5071993
Yep, fair enough! If they do come out with a full-length episode, I'll of course hope it's great and also hope that I'm at the point where I stop caring enough that a more definite canon appearance won't make me change how I write them. I just struggle so much to see a way to bring them back that's both good and something the show would actually do that I'm not getting my hopes up at all.
I agree with everything said in this blog.
+1 for Adagio's new jacket.
-10 for taco dress, with a side order of for fuck's sake.
-100 for a bland siren song.
But I agree, overall impression is that it could have been much worse. Between this and Shadow Play, this is the second near-miss for them.
Bro, do you even Equestria Girls? :V
5072138
I stopped caring about most of the Equestria Girls characters a while ago, so... no, I don't even.
5072144
Probably for the best. :B
I went ahead and watched the music video last night, and I must say I'm mostly pleased. It leads to a lot of ideas and questions, and if they leave it as is then I would have no complaints. Some topics:
Our headcanons are still in grave danger of being ripped to shreds by a heartless group of fanfiction writers who have the benefit of their work being dubbed 'canon' by Hasbro. Even so, I'm feeling mildly positive about this. While I don't expect my intuition to be accurate (Hasbro has surprised me quite often, and quite often in bad ways), I don't think this is a bad thing yet.
5072350
I don't know that there's enough concrete evidence in the video itself to answer very much of that, unfortunately. A lot of it would make good sense--them discovering a new way to feed and repurposing their magic would nicely mirror what happened with the changelings, and I think that'd make a lot of sense if they were for going for a reformation/redemption approach (And I can't really imagine them not doing that, at this rate? I think every magic-using Equestria Girls villain up till now has seen the error of their ways, and that's always portrayed as a positive, so if the sirens come back again I'd be shocked if they don't follow suit).
And if they do indeed go that route, I'll reiterate that I'm happy the sirens seem to have straightened themselves out all on their own, with no Friendship Laser Intervention necessary.
… unless it turns out their gems are cursed and One Ring-esque bad influences and need to be destroyed, or something like that. Fingers crossed.
Mildly positive sounds like a good stance to me, overall. If this is all there's going to be, I think it'd be a nice compromise between giving a little bit of closure to the sirens, in a sort of 'don't worry, they're doing okay' kind of epilogue, but not being so specific that it ruins headcanons and stuff.
If there's more to come... I'm still skeptical, because at this point I don't think Equestria Girls has a great track record with longer episodes, but they have done some pretty good ones, so maybe there's still hope? I'll believe it when I see it, though. Don't wanna get my hopes too high.
5072390
At any rate, the fact they are still together and singing and seem to be fine is certainly a big plus. I was always disappointed that the very last we saw of them was them running away in defeat at the end of Rainbow Rocks (although I'll grant that did leave open unlimited possibilities for headcanons).
5072398
Oh, yeah, totally. It's partially tied down to the headcanon of them being both sisters and very, very old (The former of which might be the one I'm most hoping isn't overruled by canon), but I don't think I could call an ending for them a happy one if they were apart or weren't singing. And, trying to detach myself a bit, there's maybe an argument to be made that their fate is a loose end and the series as a whole is better when they have some closure too. I can't fault their vanishing too much, since Rainbow Rocks was Sunset's story and her arc and stuff had been wrapped up and all that, but in a more open-ended series I guess I can see why it makes sense to bring the sirens back. I'm just glad I'd started writing them when their story and history was nice and nebulous and ripe for fanfictioning.