• Member Since 21st Sep, 2013
  • offline last seen 1 hour ago

DrakeyC


Writer, reviewer, creator of Filly Fantasy VI, occasional PMV maker, and uploader of mildly amusing image macros to Derpibooru. https://www.patreon.com/drakeyc

More Blog Posts1514

  • Today
    Friends with Ponies

    Twilight and Sunset:

    Twilight: "Hey Rarity, can I borrow your hair curler, I can't find mine."
    Rainbow: *eyes widen*

    Pinkie: "Oh my god, I just thought you guys were doing it, I didn't know you were in love!"

    Shining Armor: "What? No, no no no...what are you doing? GET OFF MY SISTEEEEEEEEER!"

    Read More

    0 comments · 61 views
  • 2 weeks
    1000 Followers

    My thanks to Malcharion for pushing me to the milestone :D

    8 comments · 70 views
  • 2 weeks
    Revised Harmony Spirits

    I wanted a full set of these with proper art, so with permissions from mauroz, here they are. A couple effects have been tweaked to be consistent with modern vernacular in the card game and for my own better understanding of card design and balancing, and I also added a new "Tier 1.5" form for Twilight so she can have her own Fusion outside the ace monster, and finally added Sunset as a

    Read More

    5 comments · 133 views
  • 13 weeks
    Go spread the holiday cheer

    My Jinglemas gift was The Hearth's Warming Truce by TheLegendaryBillCipher, go give it a read and leave a comment.

    0 comments · 75 views
  • 16 weeks
    2024 will (hopefully) be the end

    The outline is done, the roadmap is drawn, all that remains is to follow it. There may be some bumps along the way, but we'll be on our way.

    My friends, let us step together beyond the horizon.

    6 comments · 332 views
Sep
1st
2018

S8E23 Sounds of Silence Review · 1:23am Sep 1st, 2018

One to go and I never need to think about Season 8 again.

Can I begin by saying how much I hate the "Fluttershy tries to speak up but the group ignores or doesn't hear her" joke? I am so happy Fluttershy angrily snapped at AJ for pulling that.

Everyone kept saying this episode was great, and I respectfully disagree, but I won't say I don't get why people would say so.

Autumn Blaze is a great character, and she definitely is, she had me laughing frequently and heartilly. My only nitpick was that, even having no idea who voiced her, I knew this was a celebrity guest voice, something about the performance just struck me that way, and yes it was. But that's a nitpick, overall she was very funny and very interesting. A pity everything else in the episode kinda didn't work as well as it could have.

The concept of the Kirin was very creative and interesting, and the Kirin had great designs. But the execution was lacking. The episode focuses on how the Kirin gave up their voices, but really they suppress all emotion, and for it they come off as kinda dickish when Fluttershy and Applejack try to act friendly with them and they just stare. How does their society function, they need some way of communicating, hoof signals, magic glyphs, carry a notepad and a quill everywhere. But, no, they just don't communicate at all. Their society has not only suppressed emotion but all communication. How does a Kirin even go about their day?

The moral of the episode is fine, but that's where the problems of the episode come in. See, this is a Space Whale Aesop - a moral message that doesn't gel with the conflict. The aesop is that you choose how to express your anger and shouldn't supress your feelings. Except the Kirin burst into flame and fly into a rage when they feel angry. This isn't "oh, your friend has some anger issues but they shouldn't supress that anger," this is "your friend has some anger issues and her name is Katie Kaboom.' But even if we presume the aesop is fully applicable with no fine print, the Kirin acted rashly in giving up their voices.

Which leads into the resolution of the episode - they can just control their anger. I question why Fluttershy and Applejack were sent at all when Autumn Breeze solved the problem herself, the only thing they contributed was finding the herbs for the cure. The reasons they were sent made sense, Applejack and Fluttershy work perfectly for a story about keeping quiet in the name of not expressing yourself, but Applejack contributed nothing to the story but to find Autumn Blaze and Fluttershy just found some plants.

Finally, the Kirin tried to forcibly silence AJ and Fluttershy. What the fuck? That's just wrong of them.

Overall, the episode had a lot of great ideas and creative concepts, but it needed a second draft to polish them up. At least Autumn Blaze was a lot of fun.

Comments ( 13 )

Ok, I gotta find this online now.

Well, yeah. But it's been said none ever really met a kirin before, by extension kirins only know about themselves. The scars of the past haunt them and for all they know they could turn ablaze like them or trigger one of them to rage. They fear conflict, conflict leads to pain and pain leads to anger which led to the destruction of their home.

They're isolated and rare. Very little is known. But I think in their own way they wanted to help two friends from hurting each other? Who knows.

Even if Autumn Blaze had solved the problem herself she'd still have not thought of searching outside her people's home turn. Assuming she even would have ever dared to try again to have her people see reason before she completely lost her marbles for good.

I was hoping for more adventure but Fluttershy not shying away from stuff like speaking up when she has good information to share was a nice bonding moment with a mare whose always taking charge she never stops to listen.

Given all these past 4 seasons have done, this flowed very naturally up until the extreme decision to rob guests of their voices forever. But it worked to get Autumn Breeze out of her hermit ways and discover and show her kind that anger can be reasonably controlled with a simple demonstration and advice.


Now if you want to nitpick anything, it'd be the cutie map remembering that the damn thing is SUPPOSED to call the Mane 6, you damn "Because I said so!Writers are lazy" table. Trying to convince the audience the cutie map is somehow not supposed to call on the same two ponies, as if trying to excuse the overly contrived plot device/shipping table wasn't biased or contrived way to write a friendship quest episode with that given writer's preferred ponies.

4929439
Actually now that you mention it, I'll nitpick the Cutie Map sending Applejack and Fluttershy to the Kirin when they've been like this for whats implied to be years.

Between that, the Starburst parents, and even back to Hooffields and McColts, it sometimes seems like the Cutie Map has a backlog of friendship problems that have been occurring for years and it has to sort through them and decide if they're worth solving.

4929448
Lol I'm amazed no one's done a Cutie Map Filing System Error type fic or a spirit that no one can see that's always inside actually managing the inner workings of all those friendship report backlogs she now has to catch up with. I can see the Kirin one having quite the 1000 year overdue request now that I look back on it. XD

It's okay to be objectively wrong.
New pony has been the best pony so far.

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My only nitpick was that, even having no idea who voiced her, I knew this was a celebrity guest voice, something about the performance just struck me that way, and yes it was.

Ooh, damn, hit that nail on the head. I knew something was up and couldn't name it. Her voice just did not fit her design or the setting.

My initial reaction after seeing this was "take it or leave it", leaning more toward 'leave'. The kirin I just didn't care about; once again, the show comes up with an interesting but unnecessary species to add in, then does absolutely nothing notable with them. (And fucking Nirik, I cannot even at how goddamn lazy they are, they do not have a fuck left to give.) Autumn Blaze, yeah, I can see why people like her, but they really overdid her personality and she rubbed me the wrong way the whole time.

I was really reminded of Mane Attraction, whose plot was also "Here's my super-awesome OC and she will sing a song now." I just never cared about her! And goddamn, the fandom's gonna be nothing but Autumn Blaze in between the Bowsettes for weeks now. :|

So, yeah, after reading this review, I think I can come to a conclusion that this was just bad. Another one for the S8 bin.

4945465
I'm sorry, but I disagree.
While the new race might not add anything to the show, I think it works very well in the episode as a stand-alone. It enhances the moral this episode tries to convey while adding a new area to the world, giving us a new concept to exploit.
Of course, you might say that very little is said about the Kirin aside for "They're Chinese ponies that lit up when angry and live far away" but honestly what else do you want to know in a twenty-minute episode about accepting your emotions? The details are for the fandom to fill, or to be filled later on.

You said that the Kirins are unnecessary, and I agree with it. It would have been easy to use, for example, the yaks and their obsession smashing to convey a similar episode. However, I see nothing wrong with expanding the world with a new magical race that in my opinion managed to deliver the message even better.

Furthermore, and this is for DrakeyC, I think the Aesop here is misunderstood. I don't think it was a simple "Your anger is good and you shouldn't suppress it" as much as a broader "Accept that feelings come with conflicts and difficulties, but they're part of you and can't live without them. Also, even if you could turn your feelings down, you should instead learn to live with them and to control your reactions to them."
In that, I think that the Kirin make for a good example, and Autumn Blaze is a well-established inspiration.

Speaking of Autumn, I see why she strikes as an unnecessary OC (let's face it, it's just Pinkie Pie as a Kirin) but again, I don't see unnecessary as inherently bad. Furthermore, her very character is the thesis of the story (while the Kirin are the antithesis) and every scene with her really made me think she was an outcast desperate for someone to have a conversation with. Wich was Deprarious, as Mr. Popo would say.

Lastly, if I had to point out something I really conceive as bad about the episode, is the cutie map. Because that is unnecessary, and a plot device that makes little sense but gives good excuses to send the characters where they need to go. However, that isn't even something that is just bad about the episode but the whole show, and it has already been addressed several times.

In conclusion, while the episode adds close to nothing to already established characters and story, it does contribute to the main theme of a friendly and harmonious imaginary world: You're not necessarily a bad person for escalating a conflict.

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Author Interviewer

4953067
Guess I'll just die now. :B

4953145
O dear Celestia why? :fluttercry:
That's just terrible. :fluttercry::fluttercry::fluttercry:

4953145
But seriously, I don't understand the implication of this answer.:twilightsheepish:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

4953719
Nothin' else left to do when faced with a wall of reasons why you're wrong. :B

4953780
Sorry to bother you again, but I don't understand what :B means.
Do you have giant mouse teeth?
Or are you double raspberrying?

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

4955830
Either of those interpretations is acceptable, and more! :D

I use :B to mean things like "well'p" or "I am being intentionally dumb". :B

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