I'm still alive, just checking in.

I'm watching Rarity takes Manehatten now and (while it's certainly no season 2) it's better than some of the earlier episodes in the season.

I'll have new stories out soon.

How have you been? Tell me about your day.

Comments

[Blade Star]

First day back at university. I now have three months to write a 12,000 word dissertation, plus three other 2,500 word essays for my other modules. I fear I may have to cut back on writing pony. Still, I spent most of the holiday writing ahead of publishing, so hopefully I can keep up a steady stream of chapters, without compromising my academic studies.

I'm also now reminiscing about 'Rarity Takes Manehatten'; good solid episode, one of the best of the season, and of course our first glimpse of the new form of the Elements, the 'Rainbow Power'. Still, gotta say 'Leap of Faith' was better, simply for its excellent portrayal of Applejack, and of course 'For Whom the sweetie Belle Tolls' is automatically up there due to Luna. Only really bad one was 'Three's a Crowd', should have been called 'Return of the Pink Alicorn OC'.

[ErraticOverlord]

2748725 Sounds rough. What University are you going to?

As far as the only really bad one being 'Three's a Crowd', I haven't seen that one yet but I absolutely hated Daring Don't. It was boring, and predictable, and the Mane 6 were OOC, and the episode in general just didn't make sense in terms of canon or simple logic. For canon, was Daring Do writing her next book when NM returned? Changelings attacked? Sombra returned? For logic, there just isn't any reason why she would write novels about her adventures, there's no point and it takes away from whatever world saving mission she's doing that apparently nopony hears about because magic, I guess. Besides that, her character is obviously a parody of Indiana Jones and that's fair enough. But Indiana Jones was a history professor and what he did required knowledge of history and Daring Do is an author? It doesn't even make sense from a storytelling perspective because there's no purpose to this encounter: RD didn't learn anything, she just found out her idol is kind of a plothole (literally and figuratively).

Sorry for the rant, I was just really bugged by that episode.

[Blade Star]

2748748 I'm at a university in the UK called Aberystwyth (aber-ust-wi-th).

I kind of agree with you on 'Daring Don't', it felt like the writers had thought 'eh, why not?' and just gone with it. The little fan battle between Twi and RD made me laugh though. I actually got some answers about some of the plot holes from Polsky himself whilst I was at BUCK.

For the whole 'Where was Daring during the MLP finales?', he suggested that she was kind of a backup for the Mane Six, and that Celestia has quite a few other agents to boot. Basically, when there is an issue that the Mane Six aren't around for, or is a lower priority, she sends somepony like Daring instead. Because let's be honest, Ahuizotl's plan was kind of dumb, given Celestia controls the sun. This kind of ties in with Indy, who often gets recruited by the government or other important figures. The books therefore are just a bonus for Daring.

As for the whole Why doesn't anypony realise that these stories are true?' that pretty much comes under the same umbrella as the Mane Six. The only real stink in that episode was that RD didn't really learn much except maybe 'never meet your heroes'.

[ErraticOverlord]

2750488 I do agree, the fan battle was pretty funny. I found it hard to enjoy though, because it was happening while someone was being beaten up and not even Applejack was like "Hey, maybe we should help"? It just felt wildly inappropriate for them to just stand there while someone was fighting and it really broke immersion, contributing to my whole OOC vibe with the episode.

Looking at the way the Mane Six found out about it, though - oh, what was that? They never told us? That's an odd tidbit to leave out of the episode, innit? Anyway - if we assume she asked Celestia and for some reason Celestia was replaced with Trollestia for a second and she just up and told her then that raises even more questions with this reserve force she apparently has: can any of them ask for the identities of each other? Does no one find this to be a humongous security breach? Haven't any single pony in the upper reaches of Canterlot heard of compartmentalization? Or, if we assume she got it another way, how? If she asked someone, how do they know? Did she crystal ball Google it?

The crux of the episode is based on two things: one, Daring Do is real and she writes books based on her own adventures. Two, Twilight somehow gets access to this information and the Mane Six find out. Hijinks ensues.

But from what I've seen, there's no reason Daring Do should be real or author her own books and there's no way Twilight found out about this if literally no one else has already. Is RD really Daring Do's biggest fan? Because, I've seen fans of The Lorax movie who are more devoted.

[Blade Star]

2750816 I'd say it's a pretty good move by Celestia to ensure her agents don't know each other, standard MI6 procedure. If captured, you can only reveal so much, plus Daring may not even report directly to Celestia and may have a handler of sorts. Even if the impossible were to happen and the Mane Six completely failed with no deus ex machine ending, Equestria has a fall back option. As much as I am loathe to say it, the pink alicorn OC may be one of these agents, as may be Discord, since both were used to combat villains (with mixed success).

You should consider taking this headcanon and writing about it. A previously unknown shadow network would certainly be an interesting problem for Edward and his cohorts to deal with, no identifiable leaders or command structure.

In any case, I think we should stop whining about 'Daring Don't' since these massive walls of text are filling the comments section.

[ErraticOverlord]

2751066 Eh, I've more or less said my peace and as it stands now, Edward will face his share of shadowy networks. That's all I'll say for now.