Things I won't do in a story. · 4:24am Dec 22nd, 2014
There are plot devices and storytelling ideas in fiction that I don't like - never have and never will - and will consequently not use myself under any circumstance. One idea is brainwashing, mind control, enslaving a character and effectively turning them into something else. It's worse than killing them - the body's still there, everything physical is still there, but everything that made them them is either gone or buried so deep that it's next to impossible to dig it out.
Another thing I don't like is the idea of an unbeatable enemy. Call it optimism, idealism or whatever, but I like to think that challenges can be overcome with the right tools and the right way of thinking about the problem, especially if you know they've been beaten before. Case in point, with MLP:FiM, all the big villains that have appeared were scary and dangerous and difficult to put the smackdown on, but the heroes won in the end. And better, we knew in most cases (Chrysalis being the big exception, with Sunset Shimmer being a so-so) that they'd been beaten down before. The audience and the characters had reason to hope.
Why do I bring this up? There's a story I was following for a while, "The Siren Song: Razzle Dazzle". It's a follow up to an earlier piece, "The Siren Song: Dazzle Dazzle Little Stars"; read that, knew what I was getting into. Still, it went and did both of the above-mentioned things I like to avoid. The latter I could excuse, as it was built up and adequately explained, but the former?
And yet, I'm drawn to it. I want the villains to get their butts kicked. I want to know how it ends. Feels like Discord's intro all over again...
