Friendship is Magic review by Obake

(SPOILERS!)

I admit going into this episode with skepticism. Daring Do episodes have mostly been split between great (Read It and Weep, Stranger than Fanfiction), to downright terrible (Daring Done?). Daring Doubt is in the middle. I enjoyed it, despite its less than stellar writing.

Dr. Cabellaron writes an autobiography to discredit Daring Do, lamenting how he and his team have only tried getting artifacts to display in museums, yet Daring Do steals them away. Of all of the scenarios they could use for the Dr., having him write an (albeit false) story of his life is unique.

Cabellaron convinces Fluttershy to see his side of the story, and go on an adventure with him and his team. Their goal is to get the Truth Talisman from an ancient temple. The Doc's motives start out just to use Fluttershy's ability to fly to get the talisman, but over the course of the adventure, she proves to be far more useful than anticipated.

This is cool. Despite Flutter's naivety, she genuinely helps and befriends Cabellaron and his goons, which is not what I expected. She uses her ability to speak with animals to calm down a gang of wildcats, helps one of Cabellaron's goons escape from bees, and in general motivates them.

Rainbow Dash and Daring go out to stop Cabellaron from abusing Fluttershy, but the teams eventually bond. Flutter is even able to calm down Ahuizotl, who we learn has tried over and over to protect ancient artifacts from being stolen, only to fail.

Though the “everybody becomes friends” cliché is overused, I feel it works better in this episode than perhaps it should. Something about Daring Doubt feels wholesome. Despite a slow start, the episode ends with exuberant energy and genuine optimism. The Doctor and Daring even join teams!

Perhaps it is just that when compared to season 7's dreadful Daring Done?, Daring Doubt at the very least is competent. It has the same energy as episodes of old had, though the writing still lets it down.

That said, this is so far my second favorite episode of the season.

Extras:
Did not expect the George R R Martin reference. How strange.
Ahuizotl has a bizarre line, something like "If I wanted to play games, I'd get out my peanut (something)." I genuinely thought he was going to say "penis." I still can't figure out what he actually said.
As dumb as it is, the ending of Ahuizotl writing his own biography is heartwarming.

What really kills this whole thing for me is that it shows that neither side of the Daring vs Doctor rivalry is as black and white as Daring herself has made it out to be and is a rather sobering conclusion to the entire “Daring Do is real” subplot.

Even if the Doctor is still a greedy raider, Daring herself is only slightly less morally ambiguous while causing widespread irreversible archeological damage in her escapades and hoarding the treasures in her own house instead of donating them to museums. It’s Azihoutal or whatever is the closest thing to a good guy in this subplot is, just doing his duty in keeping these artifacts protected from greedy tomb raiders. And if Daring Do was really that concerned for the well being of such sites, surely a branch of the royal guard is more than capable of handling it. But we all know why she really handles everything she does. It’s the treasure, not the moral superiority.

This ultimately shows why Rainbow likes Daring Do so much. They’re both hedonistic glory hogs who like to make themselves look good and often don’t care about the consequences of getting what they want. Daring really is a less violent Generation 1 Lara Croft for all the good and ill that entails. What’s the moral of this episode? Never learn too much about your heroes?

I never liked this subplot and am sincerely disappointed by Daring Do turning out to be not as blameless as she’s always portrayed herself to be. Good riddance.

Flutter is even able to calm down Ahuizotl, who we learn has tried over and over to protect ancient artifacts from being stolen, only to fail.

BULL.... SHIT.... we SAW him doing his best t STEAL the rings of Scorchero and burninate that one valley! He tries to murder ponies every chance he gets!

Clearly, no one remembers hard canon anymore!

Talk about revisionist history!

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This ultimately shows why Rainbow likes Daring Do so much. They’re both hedonistic glory hogs who like to make themselves look good and often don’t care about the consequences of getting what they want

It proves how the writers see in RD, in all of their retconning bullshit.
She's supposed to be the Element of Loyalty, and yet she's a selfcentered prick.
Actually, this could be said for most of the Mane 6, with the only exception of Fluttershy.

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Inconsistent continuity. That’s been an issue with the newer writers for years.

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There's 'inconsistent'... and then there's this. This is a sheer travesty of bad fanfic-level writing and character assassination.

No doubt the EqD crowd will be mindlessly cheering it on, as their collective memory for detail tends to be worse than the writers'.

I think this episode serves as the final proof that making Daring Do actually exist in the show was a terrible idea, as I've said all along.

6967752 Fluttershy keeps learning the same lesson for all 9 seasons, so yeah

6967742
You seem surprised by this.

Honestly, at this point this kind of stupidity is exactly what I expect from the writers so I'd only be surprised if they managed to keep continuity.

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Yeah, that was what drove me away from the show back in season 4. I can forgive a bad episode or two because everyone makes mistakes, but that consistent flanderization of the entire cast (especially Rainbow) destroyed everything good about the show so I eventually just gave up.

Why does Daring Do keep getting episodes? Do people actually care about her?

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Don't forget about the fact the writers redeemed yet another villain.

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Don't forget about the fact the writers redeemed yet another villain.

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Worse, two villains.

"He's not evil! Just misunderstood!" said the naive pony as the pony she was defending sipped the blood of her best friend from the skull of the meddling pony he finally got the best of, atop a mountain of stolen treasure in his mansion he got from selling the corpse of the guardian trying to preserve history.

Everybody wins, but the fans lose

6967846 And this is why Discord is happy to just sit back and watch. Not even he could create such thorough narrative chaos as this!

6967888 An apt illustration of about where I am with the series at this point.

6968731 Also mine and the whole fandom's reaction to the leaked finale.

6968741 Wait... the part of the fandom that saw the leaked finale... hates it?

My god... even the most obsessed part of the fandom... akin to the Star Wars fans who still defended "The Last Jedi"... were displeased?

Is something so awful even possible?!

Dare I watch it?

6968947 It must be if it had turned the fandom into Hellsing's burning London.

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When I said give it time a few years back, I never expected the general consensus to shift quite that hard so fast. Damn.

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Well, the series finale is kind of the definition of "no take-backs". They can't fix it next season. When the show-runners insert stuff that comes across like "because fuck you" at the very last second, that's a bit of a shock to the obsessive fans.

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Then that means at the end of the day, we won. We called it and time proved us right. Wow.

With these final 3 episodes triggering a borderline fandom revolt, very soon we will likely have everyone in the fandom reevaluating all of the criticism the show has been getting since 2012. Vindicated by History indeed.

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...And now for the dark followup question. Given how obsessed those people were and how much of that was a result of mental health problems, how many suicides will this cause?

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According to one of the /mlp/ threads, mods were mass-deleting posts for even mentioning that topic. So... non-zero, most likely.

On the flip side, we have Big Jim locking down his Twitter due to threats and/or lots of "kys" messages (it wasn't clear which was which), so we've got people going to both extremes.

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Big who?

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Supervising Series Director (MLP:FiM)

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I guess that’s what happen when your sense of foresight is 0/20.

I don’t respect or condone death threats/demands, but I also have no sympathy for anyone who is absolutely complacent or inept in their craft to the point of pissing people off. Do it well or not at all.

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Then that means at the end of the day, we won. We called it and time proved us right. Wow.

Unless I've misunderstood you: No, we haven't won! The name of this group is "We hate what's happened to MLP". In other words: MLP's gone downhill, and we hate that.

The show going downhill is a defeat, not a victory. The show staying downhill is a defeat, not a victory. The show's last episode sucking is a defeat, not a victory.

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What I mean is our arguments and analysis have been validated. In the end, we had not been mistaken at all. I get you don’t understand that, but the rest of us do.

It’s basically a massive “told you so” to the entire legions of hardline fans that unwaveringly praised the show until now. We never saw it coming, but it is satisfying nonetheless.

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I think I get what you're saying. That said: Speak for yourself. I take no joy in MLP sucking.

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Considering that emotional attachment is probably the single greatest driving factor behind most hardline fans due to MLP FiM famously providing a type of outlet for difficult times in their lives when it first aired, (I distinctly remember reading a story about it giving hope to a young homeless woman at one time) I’m not ruling out the possibility.

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That reminds me of something from the "Monk" episode "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show". If I remember the episode correctly: Mr. Monk had a miserable childhood. He was treated badly at home, and at school. But there was one bight spot in his life: His favorite TV show. The show aired once per week.

I think it was one of those shows about a family, like "The Cosby Show". And Monk said that they were his real family. That whatever happened, he just had to hold out a week. And then he could see them again.

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I see where you're coming from, but this is a flawed argument. It is entirely possible for a series to be great or mostly great throughout its run only to crash and burn in the final couple of episodes. Game of Thrones is only the most recent (and notorious) example, for one. Therefore even if the entire fandom collectively decided that the finale sucks, that does not in fact validate any complaints about any previous episodes or seasons.

Additionally I think that seeking validation for your dislike of a show from the show's fans is a bit silly and reeks of insecurity. Discuss it, analyse it, share it, sure, but having an agenda to make people stop enjoying something they enjoy is just plain wrong.

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And conversely: Even if the ending is good (and I haven't seen it yet, so it could be for all I know), that doesn't change that the later seasons really had their problems!

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I never said anything about convincing anyone to dislike something. It’s just that to the mainstream fandom, detractors like us have long been frowned upon as a vocal minority who don’t really know what we’re talking about. It’s fine to enjoy something regardless of quality, but not to defend it in spite of its failings.

What I meant to say was the final three episodes seem to have shattered the rose tinted glasses the majority of the fandom used to wear, which should prompt a more critical second look at the series as a whole.

6970164 They'll join ANTIFA and try to storm my hometown... which is essentially them all committing suicide by proxy.

6972104 It's actually rather a sad state of affairs when something one knows to be pure fiction, written by people who can end up ruining the show or leave it unfinished, is the only happy thing in one's life.

It's like me having an imaginary date with Renamon… then having her proposition me... and me being like, "OH YEAH, FOXY DIGI-LADY!!!" And then it gets weird...

6972173 Actually, with GoT, many fans ARE going back and seeing the validity of criticisms in earlier seasons (especially seasons 6 and 7), now that the rose-colored glasses have been smashed.

The Star Wars prequels and then later the Jar Jar Abrams and Sith Lord Johnson movies did much the same thing.

People still greatly enjoy the older and better movies/episodes, but now they can also see that their idol was always tarnished... it's simply that what came last is nothing but a pile of tetanus-ridden rust by comparison.

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I can also personally confirm that I gave some things in MLP more leeway than I should have up until the season 4 finale convinced me it wasn't just a string of bad luck. Admittedly I had the integrity to see and acknowledge the problems, but that doesn't change the fact that I was judging the overall episodes and series more favorably than was warranted.

6973430 I think we give shows leeway at the start because there's the POTENTIAL to do so much more, and at that point we can see the creators are pushing themselves.

With Pony, there was this vast fantasy world with enormous numbers of unanswered questions and interlaced worldbuilding which a competent fantasy fiction writer could have spun into a grand narrative (as we've seen in thousands of fanfics spanning every possible genre, subject, and tone).

But as it went on, it began to sink in that the ambition was no longer there. And that, if there had been a grand plan, it was lost when too many of the original creators were gone. When continuity began to lapse in obvious ways most fans could pick out while they were watching the initial episode broadcasts and plots were being re-tread with characters experiencing random bouts of Plot Amnesia over major developments or continuity in one episode while recalling minor, relatively unimportant details from 4 seasons or more before in subsequent episodes, I think that was when the majority finally understood there was no concerted effort being put forth any longer and the writing had become haphazard without a clear single direction.

And, as that /mlp/ viewer graph demonstrated, the fandom took an almost immediate and critical nosedive.

I'd say, for me the point at which I knew nothing very interesting would come of it was when Starlight was so horribly squandered in her second appearance. Her backstory was ridiculous, almost a comical farce of a villain origin with an exaggerated overreaction to a very minor life event almost everyone has experienced (how many of us have lost touch with a close childhood friend without deciding to immediately turn evil and take over people's minds?) She was turned into a Villain Sue who had all the magical knowledge without explanation, and who was then guilt-tripped into reforming in the most hyperbolic way possible: if you don't stop being bad, EVERYTHING WILL DIE, INLCUDING YOU!!! Gee, I wonder how she'll react.

I think there really was a setup for reforming Chrysalis, especially after Thorax was a thing. Yes, she still needed some kind of history to explain her animosity. But, for better or worse from a narrative perspective, all the rest of the changelings are happy and thriving now. If her motive had been, at any point, shown to have originated from a genuine desire to improve her species' lives, even if over centuries it had become selfish and corrupted, there was now a seed of hope she could have gradually been led to. Or, she could have continued to reject goodness and down to a tragic end all alone. Buuuuuuut, that would take the skilled hand of a competent writer to develop well.

Tirek was just a typical bad guy. From what we know just in the show (excluding the comics, which actually back up this viewpoint) he was a bad seed from childhood, lusting for power and dominance over everything else. The rest of his family seemed to be quite decent folks. So his very core nature is selfishness, callousness, and cruelty. As presented, I don't see how a proper reformation for him could ever take place.

As for Cozy Glow... she's literally nothing. She's just 'villain', because whatever. She's just a complete blank slate you could suddenly reveal that she's... I dunno… the Rani from Doctor Who and escaped into Equestria during the Time War as possessed the body of a poor filly and then immediately began plotting to take over the world. There is literally no reason why this couldn't be the case. Which I think rather clearly demonstrates how poorly-written a character she is. She feels like she's been cut and pasted into the show from somewhere else.

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Might as well give you guys my thoughts on "Daring Doubt" in a nutshell:

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Have you also made a review of the Mysterious Mare Do Well episode?

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Not yet.

7791147
Why would you necro this thread three years after everything was said and done? You off your meds or something?

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Just feeling a little headstrong.