Opaline's plan in a nutshell · 8:49pm January 5th
OPALINE: I want Sunny to embrace her alicorn magic so that I can steal it, somehow!
OPALINE: Actually I want the magic from the Unity Crystals! That's the real source of the ponies' power!
OPALINE: Actually I want the Prisbeam power from that magic lantern!
OPALINE: Actually forget all those things! I want that baby dragon's dragonfire!
OPALINE: Don't be silly, Misty! We can't steal the Unity Crystals because those are the source of the Prisbeam - the very power I want to possess!
MISTY: I thought you wanted the dragonfire?
OPALINE: Shut up!
OPALINE: Misty, I've got it! We need to steal their cutie marks! That's the evolved magic that's powering their silly Prisbeam!
MISTY: I thought you said the Unity Crystals are the source of the Prisbeam?
OPALINE: Don't contradict me!
MISTY: And didn't you want the dragonfire, not the Prisbeam?
OPALINE: No, look, I need the dragonfire so that I have the energy to steal their cutie marks. Obviously.
OPALINE: I need the Dragon Stone so that I can power it up with the dragonfire that I don't have yet!
MISTY: Why?
OPALINE: For reasons!
OPALINE: At last! I have my full enhanced fire powers again! With more dragonfire, I'll be able to steal all of the magic in Equestria! Including Sunny Starscout's!
MISTY: Do you mean Sunny's cutie mark, her alicorn powers, or her innate earth pony magic?
OPALINE: Go to your room!
OPALINE: All right, it's time to enslave the dragons!
MISTY: Yeah, we - wait, what?
OPALINE: Oh, you didn't know? Me and the dragons go way back.
MISTY: How am I supposed to help you with your evil plan if you don't tell me stuff like this?
OPALINE: Finally! That tree I planted decades ago has connected with three other trees that didn't exist at the time to form a magical tree portal network at the exact time I need to travel between several different locations in Equestria!
MISTY: What the actual hay.
OPALINE: Now I can steal all the cutie marks! And all the dragonfire too!
MISTY: Okay look, I'm really confused. Are cutie marks the source of all pony magic or not? Like, if I don't have my cutie mark, can I still levitate stuff?
OPALINE: Misty, you're ruining my big moment!
SUNNY: Actually, Opaline, it's not your big moment at all! While you were putting your plan together, I was also working on my own counter-plan that barely makes any sense! Eat this Rainbow of Light I found!
OPALINE: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH NOT THE TENTACLES
Aaand now I don't have to watch G5 at all, am I? Everything is right here
Got a hearty laugh out of this. Hope Opaline will return, she is the only highlight of the show so far
Sunny's plan:
BREEZIE MERCHANT: I stole this off a human girl-child back when we were Flutterponies. You'll need it later.
SUNNY: ... Thank you?
later
ZIPP: I did it! I figured out Opaline's plan!
MISTY: Opaline is currently enacting her plan!
ZIPP: Oh. Darn.
SUNNY: I'm going to mope and let my friends get taken out one by one before I actually confront the big bad.
SPIKE: Not the best way to emulate Twilight, but it technically counts. Also, I'm here for some reason.
(cut to Rainbow of Light eating)
There's a reason I assume Opaline went insane centuries ago.
There is some evidence that the G5 scripts, like most G4 ones, are shortened for broadcast time (despite streaming, yes). And G4 episodes did sometimes create plot holes from such. But that at best would explain a few minor inconsistencies. Not how often the show switched tack on what Opaline was after. I gave up on that front after Opaline abandoned her lantern-chasing plot after two episodes for no reason. Which really stands out as, once the Mane 5 acquired the Manestream, it became that much easier to nick, not being in the Brighthouse anymore.
Also, the first line really honed in the motivational writing's "quality" with how much Opaline's last stand pivoted on her waxing monologue on her and Sunny not being so different when that had never being touched outside of that one early episode.
Sooo... Opaline was driven insane by her isolation.
Or, she's a somewhat fun Villain in Name Only whose plans kept changing due to the writing team's minds constantly changing.
Honestly, I don't know which is true.
Oddly enough I was planning a G5 blog today and this works perfectly with it, so I'll link to this blog from mine
Opaline: But you're an alicorn. Don't you want power?
Sunny: My friends are my power!
Opaline: Alright! I give up! I'm not facing down Kingdom Hearts logic!
G4 had its share of pivots with abandoned plotlines and tacky features at Marketing's behest to sell toys, but at least those were worked in as separate events/characters that didn't directly contradict each other. Mostly.
G5 seems to have the problem of tying all of its ideas to Opaline, which just makes her seem schizophrenic. And I'm not sure if that's even due to selling toys this time; it just seems like the writers are just pulling the plot in whatever direction they fancy without an overarching plan.
this reminds me of some cartoon, i can't remember the name, involving a magic school, and one girl who apparently had dragon fire in HERSELF, powering her magic, and some evil witches were trying to steal it.
part of their plan involved making the girl angry enough to shoot fire at them...
they managed to capture SOME of it, but the device broke before they had a change to do anything with it!
Hah. :D
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"There's a reason I assume Opaline went insane centuries ago."
There are pretty good grounds to support that, yeah.
(Meanwhile, Queen Haven and/or the Shadowy Pegasus Council take over the world so competently that they stay in the background while doing it, and the fae play their own inscrutable games.)
(...And then a winged snow leopard thing and her mysterious-voice brother showed up, still not sure what's going on with that.)
In the field of military intelligence, it is standard procedure to have numerous plans running at the same time. That way if one goes pear-shaped you can switch to another one and abandon the previous plan. Furthermore, these plans and information work on a 'need to know' basis; this prevents information from getting passed to the enemy as if somebody attached to one plan is captured and talks, they won't expose the other operations as they won't know about them.
Opaline is working on the exact same principle; she has numerous schemes in motion at the same time and switches between them as required, only informing those who need to know of the critical information connected to each plan. Let's say she did fill Misty in on each plan at once, and then Misty got captured and blabbed. That would blow her entire operation out of the water. By operating from the shadows the heroes were largely unaware of what Opaline was up to,
As for Sunny... remember what was discussed in the Breezie Night Market?
Despite the cryptic nature of the conversation, Sunny and Zipp clearly figured out the ruby was important and would come in handy later. Considering how the world is out of options by the end of Chapter 6, Sunny bringing it with her makes perfect sense.
THIS. THIS is exactly my biggest problem with Opaline; she's constantly changing her plan on a dime.
I blame the show for constantly introducing new plot elements, but I also feel like there's a way you could've made this work? I feel like maybe if Opaline wasn't written as a villain who always has a plan, and was instead written as indecisive, like she actually is, it could've worked. Opaline has been isolated from Equestria for ages. It's understandable that she'd have to figure out how Equestria now works, what are its real sources of magic now. And I think it could work that she takes magic from various different sources to be powerful enough to steal magic from the Unity Crystal. But we rarely get to see the gears in her head turning in the show. Her changing plans wouldn't be as jarring if the show admitted she was changing plans, instead of pretending that all these different plans are a coherent whole.
This wouldn't fix the problem that the show is still confusing with the connection between the Unity Crystals and individual magic, but it'd at least make Opaline's schemes more consistent.
This is a thing of beauty.
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Oh. The Winx Club. Their later stupid plan involved trying to kill the same fire elemental by shoving her into something called the Vortex Of Flame. That worked as well as trying to kill Superman by exposing him to sunlight.
At least she wasn't trying to find and steal the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses.
Ha! I love it! Early on Opaline reminded me of Rita Repulsa. But I think now she gives me Professor Calamitous vibes. The dude from Jimmy Neutron who was a genius villain but could never finish anything so his plans and inventions always fell apart.
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yes, that's the one!
you also reminded me of a crazy comic book i read, where Superman and Wonder Woman had become very close friends...
the god Apollo, a SUN god, got mad at Superman for some reason, and zapped him with lots of sunlight...
yes, Superman then beat him up badly.
BUT, Apollo later got even by zapping ZOD with sunlight!
oh, and there's also a mini-series, "all-star Superman", where Superman is slowly dying from absorbing too much sunlight.
Luthor set him up for that, by sabotaging someone's spaceship, so that Superman had to stop it from falling into the sun.
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https://m.The shock therapy help them both get to the point they could finish sentences.
(As a kid I didn’t realize how cute they designed Doctor C.)
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I totally interpreted All-Star Superman as haven gotten skin cancer from too much UV exposure.
MISTY! MISTY WE NEED TO COOK!