Thoughts on 'The Times they are a Changeling'

I'm pretty disappointed that they went the 'one aberrant changeling' route. That's probably the least interesting possible way to get a friendly changeling. Plus all the, y'know, rampant speciesism it reinforces by providing an exception to prove the rule instead of casting doubt on the rule itself.

"Oh, that Thorax--he's such an articulate fella. He's one of the good ones."

Comments

[Oliver]

To paraphrase Order of the Stick, "Since the drow became playable, our race exclusively consists of True Neutral renegades, rejecting the evil of our ancestors." :)

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I like my version better. Damn it, I liked Seeker. I ain't calling her Thorax.

4161475
Chaotic Good, surely? ;)

(I was there when the Drizztomania hit, right there, man. The double scimitars! The angst! You weren't there man, you weren't there. *adopts thousand yard stare*)

[Oliver]

4161756

Order of the Stick is a 3.5 edition world, IIRC, the rules might have changed since. I kind of switched to systems smelling less of a tactical wargame after AD&D 2e. :)

[Kagitaar]

4161756 As soon as I saw the clip I was worried. Then the episode confirmed it... I mean, it's hard to live up to so many great fics that have taken real time to delve into changelings, but man, it was weak even as an episode. Oh well, I'll keep my headcanon.

[Jordanis]

4161475

I think Thorax is going to inspire fewer munchkins self-insert ficcers, though.

4161756

Seeker seemed a little smarter than Thorax. And the ponies that found her were smarter too. Then again, there were at least three idiot balls being passed around in this episode, so perhaps those involved should be forgiven for falling under its influence.

4162691

It's a particular problem for those of us on this site. We get way, way more time and freedom to delve into concepts than the writing staff does.

I notice, looking it up, that this is actually the first FiM credit for both writers. I wonder if maybe they need to be making the on-boarding process more rigorous for new writers. One of the things I thought was wrong with this episode was that they spent too much time setting it up with the exposition on the train and the walk through the empty town, and that that pinched the time available to resolve things. Not being comfortable enough with the setting is a good way to end up writing too much set-up.

[SPark]

I've already mentally re-written it so it's at least not complete trash. It can be done. You can use the exact same framework and have a workable story, they just totally failed to use the material they were working with.

[Kagitaar]

4163139 Yeah, especially this season, the first episodes of the new writers have pissed me off to some degree, just due to simple ignorance of the setting. I know you have to start somewhere, but there needs to be more oversight or something, to prevent missteps like this and the pointless conflict of Gift of the Maud Pie...

[Axis of Rotation]

Just watched it.

Yeeeaaah...it wasn't very good. They laid it on thick with the "feel sorry for me!" for Thorax. It almost felt comical. The whole thing just wasn't done very well.

It was better than 28 Pranks Later. But that's not saying much :l