Sapphire Valley Rants: Villains in MLP · 5:10pm Oct 7th, 2017
So today was a Twilight episode. And honestly, I had high hopes for it. I mean, it opened with better treatment for Spike, it gave Twilight's parents really interesting personalities; Twilight Velvet being an adrenaline junkie and Night Light being a male Twilight of sorts, good banter between Twilight and Shining Armor, and Flurry Heart was there. Kinda hard to NOT be happy with that last bit.
But then the episode took a nosedive, with the inclusion of the show's antagonist, and I apologize for spoilers, but this seriously triggered me.
Iron Will.
Why did this bother me, you ask? It bothered me because in the last episode he premiered in, Putting Your Hoof Down, Iron Will wasn't an antagonist!
But he made Fluttershy into a bully!
No. No he didn't. He just gave Fluttershy some questionable advice, that she took out of context. It wasn't Iron Will's fault. It was hers. Yeah, I went there.
In Putting Your Hoof Down, Fluttershy was on a power trip. She felt stronger and more confident than ever, and it pushed her to go too far. Yes, Iron Will's advice was really questionable, but he did mean well. He even took some of her advice in the end when she said "No means no", thinking that would be a good addition to his seminars.
But see, he wasn't evil. He was a business man, a self help guru. He wasn't trying to make bullies. He was genuinely trying to toughen ponies up. I'm sure that there were a few ponies that got positive reception from that.
But in THIS episode, we see a different Iron Will. He's selfish, manipulative, taking advantage of the fact that Twilight happened to be there to push her around and make her do what he wanted. He became the very person that HE was warning ponies against in his self help seminars!
This isn't the first time the show's done this either. They did this three other times, one not to majorly as this person was an antagonist, but the other two are primary examples of this. I'll tackle that character first to get her out of the way.
Queen Chrysalis is a gray area in this because she was already set up as an antagonist. She infiltrated the wedding, captured Cadance, and manipulated Shining Armor. She was set up immediately to be an antagonist, and I see her as such. But the issue here is motivation. Yes she did horrible things to the ponies, but she did them for food. She wanted to provide for her hive, and Changelings at the time fed on love. She was an antagonist, but a sympathetic one of sorts.
But THEN her next entry into the show changed that, turning her into a standard villain that just wanted revenge, determined to take over all of Equestria. In The Cutie Re-Mark, she was the main villain in a future where most of Equestria was taken over by the Changelings, and in To Where and Back Again she infiltrated Equestria AGAIN, this time outright taking over Ponyville and Canterlot, capturing the ponies in the process. MAYBE she still had the same motivation and I just missed it, but it seemed needlessly antagonistic to me.
The other two don't get off so easy. And the next one is actually TWO characters in one, and that should let you know who I'm talking about.
Flim and Flam started out as business ponies trying to sell a machine that could make Cider all year round. That's a GOOD business practice. They were corrupt to a degree though, as they wanted to work with the Apple Family, but they wanted a majority of the profits. That was really the ONLY thing that made them antagonists. In the race, they only started messing up when they rushed. They were handled really well in that episode, and I liked them a lot.
Then they appeared in other episodes, and they were ruined as characters. Now instead of being cutthroat business ponies, they were cheaters and con artists. They knew that their tonic was fake, but sold it anyway, even putting Applejack in a situation where she had to lie for them. This was complete destruction of their character, as their first introduction didn't show them to be con artists at all.
And finally is the character that got this the worst. Even if she's now part of my second favorite ship, she still got this treatment the worst.
Trixie was first introduced in Boast Busters, and was shown to be a street performer. While she told tall tales, it was actually the Mane 6 who started heckling her first, so she was in the right to retaliate. Also, the Ursa Minor incident happened only because Snips and Snails took it upon themselves to find one so they could see Trixie vanquish it, only to find out that surprise, Trixie was playing a CHARACTER ON STAGE! Because you know, Robert Downy Jr. actually is a super intelligent business man with a suit of armor (Tony Stark) and Johnny Depp actually IS a super cool and lucky pirate (Jack Sparrow).
She wasn't even shown to be a bad pony. Just someone who was revealed to be playing a character as opposed to being a real champion. Later episodes however suddenly gave her this grudge against Twilight out of nowhere. She had no reason to hate Twilight in Boast Busters, but in her second appearance, she used the Alicorn Amulet to try and get revenge on Twilight. That didn't make any sense, because Twilight did nothing to her directly. All she did was save Ponyville from the Ursa Minor, but Trixie admitted that she couldn't do it, and that she made up her story of vanquishing an Ursa Major. After that episode, Twilight and Trixie made peace with each other, and it was okay, right?
Her third entry was in the episode "No Second Prances", where she became Starlight's friend. Here, all of a sudden Twilight has beef with Trixie, even though she FORGAVE TRIXIE THE LAST TIME SHE APPEARED IN THE SHOW! Also, Trixie was remorseful at the end, while here she all of a sudden wants to get back at Twilight AGAIN, to the point where she used Starlight in order to do it. Yes, it was revealed in the end that she actually DID want to be Starlight's friend (*cough* girlfriend), but the fact remained that she did STILL have a lot of resentment for Twilight, and now Twilight shared that resentment when originally she never seemed to hate Trixie at all.
See, the writers of the show are confusing rivals and foils for villains. A foil is a character that shows opposing traits to another character as a way of highlighting the qualities of that character. A rival is a character that challenges one of the characters directly by standing for everything that they don't.
Trixie was a rival to Twilight, being a pony that's of similar magical prowess as Unicorn Twilight, but had a snarky and bitchy personality and uses magic for performances rather than to help ponies directly.
Flim and Flam were foils to Applejack and her family. They were more ruthless, but had better technology as opposed to the Apple Family's hard work and manual labor.
The Changelings were foils to the ponies, Chrysalis herself being a foil to Princess Celestia. Both of them wanted to do right by their people, but the situation at the time could only allow for ONE of them to prevail. She's also a foil to Cadance, as Cadance gives love, and Chrysalis consumes it.
Finally, Iron Will was a foil to Fluttershy, being someone who had everything that Fluttershy secretly desired. He was the ideal to Fluttershy, but instead of trying to take his advice, she emulated Iron Will without hearing the message of "stand up for yourself".
This has been an issue with the writers for a long time now. It seems that their first few villains were all really good, and as such are beloved to this day. Nightmare Moon's motivation was simple, but treated in a way where she was more jealous than evil, and even then she was reformed in the end. Discord was loved on sight, because John De Lancie. He was so loved, that he was asked to come BACK as a reoccurring character. Sombra was possibly the scariest villain MLP ever made, and he's to date the only one who was killed in the show. Finally, I will give Tirek credit that he WAS a fantastic villain. Their main villains are usually pretty good it seems.
Starlight Glimmer had a good thing going, but her reformation was handled poorly. That's because her motivation for being evil at all was just... not good. Still, she was ultimately meant to be the Sixth Ranger of the group, so it worked out more or less in my opinion.
But when it comes to in show antagonists, the writers have a tendency to take well developed characters, and then ruin them for the sake of plot. Iron Will was terrible in this episode, and ultimately, it ruined my enjoyment of what could have been a great episode. It hurts me, because villains are a specialty of mine, and when I see characters turned needlessly into villains when they were originally just foils and rivals, I get really irritated. Writers, STOP RUINING GOOD CHARACTERS!
I'm Victoria,
and I need a glass of water.
Love the doctor cox photo with the wrongs. And yeah this episode was not as good when i first heard that gruff voice i knew it was iron will and hoped for a repeat in putting your hoof down but in this one he was way to manipulative
Iron Will was so painfully out of character. Really ruined what I had hoped would be a good Twilight episode. I love seeing my waifu take center stage. But not only did he manipulate and extort her, preventing her from spending time with her family, he indirectly made her cry. I wanted to reach through the screen and murder Iron Will.
On a lesser note, I also wanted to throw Star Tracker overboard for not respecting Twilight's personal space. Seriously, the way he was carrying himself just screamed "stalker fanboy that will make a shrine complete with preserved locks of hair."
No Chrysalis was planned outright to be a pure blood villain. No sad sob story to back her up she was meant to be bad. As shown with Thorax her whole thing basically falls apart when Changelings could easily love one another.
Flim and Flam I could give two less shits about as they're the blandest characters on the show.
No comment on Trixie so I can't say anything that wouldn't make my blood boil.
And honestly Iron Will could be taking his frustrations over losing his job to Fluttershy out ON Twilight. That's my feelings on the matter.... or is he just one of those characters nobody's allowed to say they don't like or say is a bad character like Luna?
Well you know they don’t care we all do as long as you watch it they get money really I see no point in complaining though they’ll do what they want but I see where your coming from though
4690000
It's just something that irked me is all. Also, they'd probably make MORE money if they paid more attention and had better writers. Hopefully now that the movie is over they'll have their full team back and can get better plots going.
4690002
Hope is a strong word with them
Now don't get me wrong, Iron Will was terrible this episode, but I have to disagree with most of your rant.
Chrysalis was potentially moral grey, in that her actions did benefit her subjects, but everything else suggested she was only helping her subjects because they were usefull to her, To where simple ran with the most likely
Flim and Flam were semi corrupt and manipulative, it's no stretch that a semi honest attempt going belly up would lead them to dirtier deeds
Trixie was jarring in Magic duel, but at the end she was sorry it went so far, but her attitude didn't change. Trixie was nowhere near as good as Twilight, and Twilight is the walking definition of privileged, so her being jealous makes sense, Twilight no trusting Trixie is rooted in her being a bad influence and her being obnoxious.
It's unfortunate that the writers don't go to more interesting places, but none of the three you mentioned were ruined.
4690062
Iron Will was a borderline con-artist the first time, attempting to intimidate ponies that were not satisfied into paying him whether they were satisfied or not. They only pay if they liked the service or if they still lacked the assertiveness to stand firm on their dissatisfaction. His latest appearance was simply more obvious that he was in it only for the money. Him relenting with Fluttershy was likely because either he saw a potential future increase in profits or that continuing might lead to lost reputation from not upholding a guarantee, which would lead to lost revenue.
Also his parachute in the latest episode had him in a pile of bits. That is kind of a strong indicator of his motivation.
For Chrysalis, her actions were self-serving generosity as shown by the line in her song that said "who says a girl can't really have it all?" For her, it was always about gaining power for herself. If her subjects were helped as well, then that is a bonus, but only so far as it was likely to make them more compliant. An authoritarian dictator like her couldn't allow them to get too strong, though.
Flim and Flam were examples of intelligent and clever individuals more motivated by greed than principle, their morals degrading when they begin to risk a loss of revenue. The second time, they played the snake oil salesmen, with Silver Shill being the "proof" needed to allow the placebo effect to work. This is really the only time they truly were anything close to con-artists.
As for Trixie, she is very prideful, and when that was damaged by the ursa minor incident, the pain turned to jealousy and when combined with her lost reputation, she grew bitter and spiteful. The amulet simply expedited the process.
Twilight's mistrust of her was likely due to the poor first-impression being compounded by the amulet incident and her own friends' opinions.
4690299
All well and good, but why did you reply to me when this looks like a general comment for this blog post?
I also think they nerfed Trixie. I mean in Boast Busters she may have not been able to take on an ursa minor but she did demonstrate some skill in magic to the point where she humiliated Twilight's friends. Now her magic is usually played for laughs like she can't teleport properly or she gets excited on using transmutation spells to turn objects into tea cups. They could have at least made her a master of illusion where she could pull off tricks that even ponies with magic would find impossible. Levitation is something any unicorn can do. Cause at the end of the day a magic show isn't that amazing when nearly a 3rd of the race can do it. Pinkie Pie's pinkie sense is amazing because even Twilight can't explain how it works. Nor with Fluttershy's stare. Hell I would consider the Mare dowell a magician because the whole time she tricked Rainbow Dash into thinking she was just one pony.
In regards to the flimflam brothers I think people keep forgetting that the cider squeezer machine legitimately works it just can't keep up to the pace of 9 ponies working together. But that doesn't even matter since only at most 4 ponies work on the farm on average. The rest were just helping they don't regularly work on the farm. Frankly I'm not too fond of the anti industrialism message the episode may or may have not been aware of pushing. It's not like picking the apples by hand or in this case hoof ha ha made the cider taste any better. If people always stuck to the old ways we'd be living in caves smashing rocks together to make fire. Point is there machine worked and they could have made some real money off of it if they patent it and sold it to other orchids. Hell the apples could probably market there products as the only hand grown produce in Equestria. Orgainic foods are like crazy expensive.
4690310
it was in general a general reply, but part was a response to your general response.
Not gonna lie, I didn't MIND Star Tracker that much, but the VOICE was what bothered me, because he sounds near identical to how I did when I was younger than to hear what sounds like MY voice from a few years back coming out a pony's voice is, surreal, to say the least. That said, I like the personalities for Twilight's parents. And we see where Twilight got her great power from. Twilight Velvet effortlessly levitated herself, her granddaughter and her son, in costumes made of (probably) either cardboard or paper mache. That is IMPRESSIVE considering Starlight only ever simultaneously levitated herself and young Fluttershy at most.
In the immotal words of Lelouch. "Forcing your good intentions on others is nothing short of an evil act. Even IF Chrysalis had meant well in her motives the way she went about it was evil. Why didn't she just show herself to princess Celestia and Luna to talk. The ponies knew nothing of changlings at the time so if she showed them they are not aggressive she would have been able to convince the ponies to help them out. But as the latest we've seen of her it was revealed that SHE was holding the changelings back, if she gave love in turn instead of just taking all the time her children wouldn't starve.
The show just needs reason to bring back characters as obstacles for the cast to overcome. At least which exception of the Flim and Flam brothers, and Iornwill. (Who is supposed to have an aggressive/assertive mindset. He's a minotaur they tend to have that kind of thing.) The other "villeins have motives." But you missed one. Tempest Shadow
4691497
I didn't forget Tempest Shadow, I didn't mention her because I haven't seen the movie yet.
I'm pretty sure morality was inconsequential to Crysalis. It's not like she was torn up about it. To her, ponies were just a Means of survival.
So... does This mean you didn't like the comics story arc "The Siege of the Crystal Empire"?
I completely agree with you, especially with the Flim Flam brothers. It always really bothered me that they came back as cliche con artists, when before they were just business ponies. And personally, I think it was the fandom that did it. There were people in the fandom that portrayed Flim and Flam as con artists in fan fics and fan art after their first appearance, and I think it just stuck, even when you go back and see that they were completely legit. I think it would have been nice in season two to see the Apples negotiate with Flim and Flam, and work out some arrangement. The brothers wanted 75% of the profits. I feel like they could have been talked down from there. Applejack could have been convincing enough. And even with the original 75/25 split, with the brothers machine the Apples could have made and sold way more cider to more than make up for it. And that would only be if the Apples even took them up on their offer. The Apples could have refused and nothing would have changed. The Apples continue doing business as they always have, and the brothers move on to find a more willing customer. I didn't mean to post a rant on your rant and I'm sorry, but I completely agree with your thoughts on Flim and Flam, and I don't find many other people who feel the same way.