Come on. You can do this. Just stop stressing about it and start doing it.
They’ve never asked this much of me before, though. A live orchestra. Eight songs, two of them with a grammy-nominated singer who’s sold millions of records. And this is the movie; it’s taken seven years of Friendship Is Magic bucking all the trends (oh, not too stressed out for puns, huh?) for Hasbro to greenlight a My Little Pony movie, because they still remember how badly the last one did 31 years before. This is a big deal. I can’t get it wrong. And that’s a lot of pressure to deal with when trying to feel creative.
“I don’t think it matters what song we play, as long as we play it together as friends!”
...What was that?! Where did that voice come from? Why is there a random woman’s voice in my head?
“You mean, maybe there’s more to making good music than just having fun? Could it possibly be an art form, requiring years of practice and understanding?”
And she’s... lecturing me? It’s Twilight’s line, if I remember rightly, but that’s not Tara’s voice...
“That to become truly good at it requires not just inspiration, but critical self-evaluation and a dedication that most music students will never live up to? It would be a bit ironic if you wrote a moral about music being as simple as the magic of friendship, and then hit writer’s block when you forgot all the other things it needs.”
“Kazumi?” I ask, “Is that you?”
I thought she was off recording for one of her other shows this week. And where’s her voice coming from? And, since we’re on the subject, what’s she on about?
“Close,” the voice answers. “She plays me on TV.”
...Right. Hearing real voices just isn’t crazy enough, huh?
It’s ok. I’ve been stressing about having to write the songs for the upcoming movie, and I haven’t slept well in days, that’s all. Hearing voices doesn’t automatically make me Sour Sweet. I’m just really strung out right now. Might as well embrace it – goodness knows other musicians have managed to find inspiration from far less healthy sources, and I’ll do anything to provide just a flash of suggestion about how to begin.
“...Octavia?” I ask.
“Very funny,” comes the flat reply. “The cellist can’t help you now.”
“Adagio.”
“Of course. I’m a siren. Where else would I be, but in a composer’s head?”
Was that deep? Or was it nonsensical, and nothing to do with the original Greek siren myths?
“Awww, you’ve internalised Adagio Dazzle,” a second voice contributes out of the blue.
“And to think, you watched the movie hoping she’d internalise you,” adds a third. That would be Aria, then, with the audible sneer. Well, I guess they always were a three-piece. Also, hey!
“...You didn’t tell Kazumi that bit, I’m guessing?” Aria finishes.
“That would be awwwwkwaaaaard,” Sonata giggles, singing the last word in a way that wouldn’t really work in reality, since her speaking and singing voices came from different actresses. Here it blends seamlessly, though, just as it would were she real and had only one larynx to use for all vocal functions.
I try to abandon the line of thought about what it must be like to have two different voices before it gets too weird. Weirder than the three voices I have in my head already, that is, plus my own, which is fairly crazy to begin with.
But I’m not crazy, I tell myself, just stressed. Although having Sonata Dusk in your head is probably enough to drive anyone loopy.
“Anyway, you’ve got bigger problems,” Adagio brings me back to the moment.
“Who, me?” I speak up.
“Yes, you. That’s why we’re here.”
“That’s not strictly true, though, is it?” Aria cuts in before I can respond.
“Yeah, we’re, like, always here,” Sonata agrees. “It’s pretty much where we live.”
I take it back – maybe I am crazy. The voices in my head all seem to think so. And given how crazy that argument sounds, maybe I should see a doctor tomorrow.
“Well, perhaps there is a lesson to be learned there, Daniel,” Adagio purrs. “We are meta-villains, you know.”
“...There’s no such thing.”
“Sure there is. The first Equestria Girls movie wasn’t terribly well-liked by the MLP fans, receiving criticism for Sunset as a villain, and her instant redemption at the end.”
“And of course for Flash Sentry,” Aria adds.
“Exactly,” Adagio continues. “And so Rainbow Rocks gave Sunset an almost entirely new personality, and revealed early on that no one else at CHS had bought into her redemption or forgiven her.”
“And while Flash was still in it,” Aria picks up their call-and-response thing, “it would have been weird if he vanished entirely.”
“So they kept him to a minimum, and made him hostile more often than not.”
“You’re welcome, fanbase,” Sonata contributes annoyingly loudly.
“But there was another criticism the first movie received,” Adagio continues, “from outside the fandom. Look at its Wikipedia page and you’ll see the big paragraph dedicated to complaints that the humanised character designs were overly sexualised.”
“All those concerned parents...” Sonata says, and you can hear her shaking her head with her eyes closed in completely insincere concern.
Adagio carries on, as if Sonata’s addition were planned just so Adagio had a relaxing moment to take a breath. “The writers addressed all the other complaints the second time around, but they were already tied into the character designs, they couldn’t really alter the animation style. And suddenly they needed to come up with a new villain. Hmmm...”
Aria says, “...And suddenly Little Miss Hair & Hips is making children confused and parents uncomfortable the world over.”
“Body image issues?” Adagio scoffs. “No one on Earth could achieve hair like mine.”
“And the world is all the sadder for it,” I can’t help saying.
“You’re finally admitting it then? You know why we’re here?”
“Because you three – one of you in particular – are my muses as a composer.”
“And what lesson can we learn from this?”
Aria snorts, and suggests her own answer before I think of one. “If you’re asked to write songs for meta-villains, don’t give them the highlights of your whole arsenal.”
“Maybe we just inspire the best in him?” Sonata asks, and I feel a flash of gratitude to her.
“Probably,” Adagio says. “That’s what muses do.”
“But we set out to make the world adore us...” Aria says.
“...And thanks to you,” Adagio finishes, “it worked.”
“So you might say we owe you.”
“That sounds ominous,” I reply hesitantly.
“It needn’t be,” Adagio says, “especially not now you need us.”
“I see what you did there,” I say.
“Although we were a bit miffed by your tweet of 2015 being the year of the villain, having written three villain songs.”
Sonata, in a voice that implies a pout, says, “There were just as many in our film the year before.”
“Four, if you count Trixie’s,” Aria grunts.
“Ooh, I liked that one,” Sonata agrees. “You’re from the past, I’m from the space age.”
“Meh, too many funny vocal noises at the ends of phrases, especially in the bridge.”
“Better than we gave it credit for at the time, I’d say,” Adagio says.
“Yeah,” Sonata says, “but we didn’t get to hear the really good bits in the movie, just the repetitive chorus.”
Adagio says, “Kind of sad though. I hate to break it to you, Trixie, but in many respects the space age is the past. Mankind hasn’t stepped on the moon in nearly half a century.”
“Maybe that’s the point?” I suggest, defending the intent of a song I co-wrote. “For all the boasting she does, sometimes she isn’t very good at it. And besides, we send more into space than ever before, just not humans beyond orbit.”
“It’s not quite the same, is it?” Adagio laments. “I keep thinking of Luna up there during her banishment, when, after 959 years, someone finally makes a small step and drops in to say hi, and yet after 1972, they stop visiting.”
But then Aria says, “Think we might be getting a little off-topic here, Adagio.”
“Maybe, but it’s a beautiful image," Adagio replies.
“I have a hard enough time as it is keeping Sonata’s tangents under control, I can’t handle yours too.”
“Anyway, I preferred the villain song from the year after, Say Goodbye To The Holiday.”
“You liked that one, huh?” I say. Figures.
“It was a bit Disney, not terribly subtle for my tastes.”
Aria interjects, again before I can think of any response other than ‘ouch.’ “Cough, ‘listen to the sound of my voice, soon you’ll find you won’t have a choice,’ cough.”
“I didn’t write the lyrics for that one!” I say quickly.
“Oh, we know it was Meghan,” Adagio says, and I find myself unsurprised. Even if they weren’t in my own head, Adagio strikes me as the type to just know, with no explanations offered. “And what she lacked in the verses she made up for a hundred times over in the rest of it.”
Sonata starts singing, almost to herself. “We’ve got the music, makes you move it, got the song that makes you lose it, that’s just the best.”
“It really is a very good line,” Adagio agrees, voice shining with pride.
“It’s suddenly got rather self-aggrandising, this whole exchange,” I say, “hasn’t it?”
“Seriously,” Aria ignores my protest, “that prechorus and chorus is the best thing the two of you have ever written.”
“The melody alternating between just two notes at the start,” Adagio says, “while the chords provide the movement around it, before the tune jumps up on ‘song’ and ‘lose,’ drawing attention to the most important line.”
Aria again, “The arrangement with the raw clean guitar and the clap snare – I cannot believe you let them bury that guitar in the stereo mix of it for the soundtrack album; I had to record the audio from the front channels of the 5.1 DVD mix to get the sound I loved from the movie.”
“Although that was so everyone could hear your backing vocal arrangement, Aria, which was both staggeringly pretty and a technical masterclass.”
“Yeah, but it worked better when it was quieter. That was the whole point; it underpinned the main melody without ever distracting from it. If it had been meant to be heard as a tune in its own right, I’d have sung it more forcefully.”
“True. Anyway, I meant the music for Starlight’s song was a bit Disney, not the lyrics.”
“But then, they all are these days, aren’t they?”
Sonata adds, “All the villain ones at least.”
“And you already did that,” Aria jumps straight back in, “Chrysalis blew every Disney song out of the water back in season two.”
“A duet with herself...” Adagio says as if fantasising out loud, “she really was exceptional. And despite both parts having same melody and instrumentation, you can always tell which Cadence is singing.”
“I wish she’d had a song in her later appearance,” Aria grumbles.
“We all do. That was the festering crown atop a bitterly disappointing return.”
“Up until that point, we’d been quite keen on coming back ourselves sometime.”
“Think how much better Legend Of Everfree could have been if we’d turned up at the end,” Sonata says.
“...Again, somewhat self-aggrandising here...” I have to point out.
“But now?” Adagio ploughs on. “All Chrysalis’ return did was take from her. It didn’t add anything.”
Aria says, “Unless you can actually improve a character by bringing them back, or at a bare minimum, have them be every bit as good as before, then they shouldn’t be brought back.”
“They got it right with Trixie,” I protest.
“And Gilda before her.” Sonata agreeing with me is the quickest way to make me doubt myself.
“Absolutely,” Aria says, and somehow I’m a bit comforted by being backed up by a voice from my own subconscious. “But Chrysalis? And on the back of that, I don’t trust the writers to handle our return.”
“I mean,” Adagio muses (much as you would expect a muse to), “how could we be as good as before? Rainbow Rocks was built for us from the ground up – of course you pick us as the adversary for a singing contest, we’re sirens!”
“...Jesus,” I breathe, “this whole thing is just you stroking your own ego...”
“But really, what other movie setup would musical villains fit into?” Adagio continues. “We’re like Sweet from Once More With Feeling. How else would we squash three songs into the plot, two of which were on-stage performances, in a way that makes sense in-universe?”
Aria says, “And that was the problem with following us, wasn’t it? You couldn’t find a way. That was why you broke the world.”
“Can we not talk about this?” Adagio says wearily, “It made me angry for days.”
“I broke the world?” I ask, perplexed.
Aria wastes no time answering, “How can you squeeze half a dozen songs into an hour and a half of movie, with the characters singing on-screen, in a movie that’s about anything other than people singing on-screen?”
“Must we bring this up?” Adagio says quietly.
“It works for a movie about a battle of the bands, sure,” Aria carries on regardless. “But what about, say...”
“Aria.”
“...A sports competition?”
How, when she’s just a disembodied voice, can I still hear Adagio facepalming?
And that’s when Aria’s fury hits me, impossible to hide from when sharing a skull with her.
“WHERE IS THE ORCHESTRA COMING FROM, INGRAM?”
“I don’t know what you...” I stutter.
“Oh, don’t you dare,” Adagio cuts in without hesitation, every bit as accusatory as her sister. “How do they all know the words?”
“How are the Shadowbolts singing in unison or harmony, when they’ve never heard the tune before?” Aria rages on.
“There is no way they could have predicted Twilight needing to unleash the magic, and so no way they could have planned a song about it in advance.”
“And yet there they go, improvising it collectively on the spot, each knowing exactly what the others will sing.”
“I’ve written about 80 songs for the series,” I try to defend, “this is hardly the first time that’s happened...”
“In Equestria it’s fine!” Aria snaps.
“Rainbow Dash even jokes about how unrealistic it is,” Sonata adds, and even she sounds sardonic. Sonata Dusk is treating me like I’m an idiot.
“But it isn’t unrealistic when there’s literally magic in the air,” Adagio says.
“Which there is not in Equestria Girls,” Aria emphatically points out.
Adagio begins, “There are two big differences between the worlds of the series and the movies.”
Sonata picks up half way through, suggesting that either they’ve had this conversation many times before, or those gems they wear sync up far more than just their singing. Or they’re all in my head, so of course they each know what the others are going to say. “They’re all human, and go to school together...”
“...And there is no magic!” Aria finishes.
Adagio says, “That’s the main plot point of all four movies to date: what happens when magic is introduced to a world without it?”
The crown, the gems, the things from Equestria, and the stuff in the forest; yeah, they might be onto something there.
“And so you broke that world,” Aria says, “when you made it a musical with no in-context explanation.”
“But even in the previous Equestria Girls movies, there are plenty of songs,” I say. Just because they have a point about there being no natural magic there, that doesn’t mean they’re right about no songs in the franchise. No suggestion of magic in Phantom, after all, but still songs; sometimes being a musical is just a staple of the medium, and intrinsic part of the premise requiring no explanation.
“All the ones in our film were sung by characters either rehearsing for or performing in the battle of the bands,” Adagio says immediately.
“Every instrument heard is shown being played on-screen by someone who really can play that instrument,” Aria follows without hesitation.
“And none of the songs are spontaneous,” Adagio says.
“They even discuss Rainbow and Fluttershy writing songs in advance, and show the group trying to come up with one together for the counterspell.”
“Ok,” I concede, “but the first movie? Did you forget the cafeteria song?”
“Believe me, I tried to,” Aria says, and I remember who I’m talking to all over again.
“Oh, I quite liked that one,” I say, berating myself for walking into her last line.
“Me too!” Sonata says. “Although I liked it more when Ke$ha did it first.”
“There’s an on-screen explanation for the song, though,” Adagio says.
Aria explains in full, “They start of banging trays and clapping their hands, yes, but once the song comes in properly, Spike is shown switching on an mp3 player.”
“And we have no idea how much time passed between the previous scene and the cafeteria,” Adagio says.
“So they could believably have had time to write and learn a song together.”
Sonata happily adds, “And record the instruments.”
“God dammit, Sonata!” Aria bursts out, before reining herself back in, “...Yeah, that might take longer, that’s true.”
Adagio comes to the rescue, saying, “But unless half of CHS were at Sugarcube Corner in the middle of the school day sometime before lunch, then the cafeteria scene could have taken place the next day, giving them a whole night somewhere to prepare it.”
“Really?” I ask doubtfully, “The plot of the movie also makes strong mention of the limited time window. And it’s seen as new when Princess Twilight has a sleepover at Pinkie’s in your movie.”
“Ok,” Aria says, “so they hang out somewhere like Sugarcube Corner during the evening, write and learn their song, and then everyone goes their separate ways for the night.”
“With Twilight assuring them she has somewhere to stay, and then slinking off back to the school library,” Adagio agrees.
“And the time window?” I ask.
“Luna says they have three days, but we only see Twilight spend one night there, from what I remember,” Aria says, “so they should be able to spare a day.”
“Ok, and what of Twilight’s lonely piano song earlier in the movie?”
“It’s just her involved,” Adagio answers, “so it can feasibly take place entirely in her own head.”
“But isn’t there one where they’re getting dressed for the Fall Formal, too?” Sonata says reluctantly, probably afraid Aria will stress out at her again.
“You never see any character sing, just hear their voices,” Aria replies calmly. “So it’s no weirder than anytime there’s singing on a movie soundtrack.”
“Ever get the impression you’ve over-thinking things?” I say, finally exasperated with Aria enough to ask the ultimate creator-fan question, especially for a show about candy-coloured ponies.
Aria’s response is spirited, to say the least.
“EVER GET THE IMPRESSION YOU’RE UNDER-THINKING THEM?!”
“It’s not his fault!” Sonata argues. “He had to do something to distract everyone from how horrible human Twilight was in that movie!”
“That was nothing to do with me!” I say, feeling a bit guilty for selling the people it was something to do with down the river, but confident that they’ll never find out, what with this whole thing taking place in my own head and all. “I’m a songwriter, not a scriptwriter.”
“But you wrote the songs,” Adagio says, leaving me no refuge. “You knew how they’d be used, and you wrote them anyway.”
“You could’ve taken a stand, man,” Sonata says, sounding like every hippie film character ever, although for some reason the one I’m most reminded of is the photographer from the end of Apocalypse Now. ...Yeah, I’m not sure either.
“Instead you sold them the munitions and sat back to watch them slaughter the villagers,” Aria says disparagingly, and not in the best of taste.
“If I’d refused,” I wearily reply, “they’d have fired me and hired someone else.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did!” Aria snaps.
“Angry. For. Days,” Adagio says.
“The backing vocals were pretty catchy, though,” Sonata says in my defence, but I worry it’ll only set the other two off again.
“Yes. They were,” Adagio says. “But, Sonata, so is avian flu.”
Aria follows quickly, “And that doesn’t make it a good thing!”
“You never complained when I made your songs catchy,” I say, wondering if that’s pushing them too far, but I don’t think it’s an unfair point to make.
“No,” Adagio says, all patience and grinding teeth.
“But they had other things going for them, too,” Aria says, starting up her back and forth double attack strategy with Adagio again.
“And, indeed, one can admire the biological purity that makes a pathogen so contagious.”
“But that’s no defence when it ruins the world!”
“...Remember when you guys said you felt you owed me?” I say, “Whatever happened to that?”
Not much to be done, villain songs are pretty much always the best in show.
I thought Trixie and her noises were cute, and her usual attitude in song form reminded me of a yapping puppy that earnestly believed it was intimidating.
...Ouch.
Pretty solid point right there. Maybe Trixie was trying to tell us something?
I see what you did there, but I still agree.
Not when they cover for it by changing the rules on a whim with pretty much every movie.
And to think, I thought I was growing sour on the character because of the way some of her fans acted!
...No, wait, that's still mostly it, but I've still got that blog post of strictly-canon reasons to not find her all that amazing either.
Another thing; I've never really seen this angle, it's just the one I've seen everyone else assume about her and saw no harm in going along with. Nothing is ever said about her appearance that didn't come from own extremely vain mouth when she was in that phase, so if you're not crazy about redheads or the 'bad girl' look (That she realistically has about as much claim to as Flash Sentry), as far as we know, she's average.
Might be indeed, I'd say she's been a better hero than Sunset has.
I think we might be forgetting Diamond I Don't Care About Feelings Tiara here, pre-whatever-that-episode-was-called. Kids can be monstrous, and Starlight remains a bit of a sociopath even when reformed.
Hearing other people say things a lot is all it really takes to get it into one's own vernacular, I think, and if they say it in the human world...?
...Kind of have to agree too, come to think of it, if only because the kind of insanity Starlight was rolling with is much harder to present to an audience of regular people.
Fun thing: Listen to Rarity's songs throughout FiM, hide the screen if you're doing so with a video, then imagine Adagio is the one singing.
Just plain hated that one. All I remember of it now was that I came away feeling like the lyrics were practically going down a You Will Now Feel Things checklist, done so cringe-inducingly that I skipped the video ahead. Sorta the same with Midnight in Me and Sunset's song in LoE, but that might just be me.
♪From the space-age♫, at that.
As someone who writes parodies and appreciates this kind of thing in general... LOVE IT!
Pretty much.
8109295
The This Day Aria, Glass Of Water, all three siren songs, Our Town, Unleash The Magic, Say Goodbye To The Holiday... Eeyup! You're right, there isn't a weak moment among them. I don't remember any of the songs from LOE, but I remember the villain one being the best at the time. And Luna's Future is sort of somewhere in between, it's not villainous but it's ominous. Even when the villains are being sympathetic, like in The Pony I Wanna Be, it still counts to some extent. Thank goodness Sunset didn't get a song in EG1 and let the side down And it makes it all the sadder Chrysalis didn't sing a second time around
I didn't mind it so much for the rest of the song, but the 'I'm here to take you down a peg, oh-weh-oh-weh-oh-woah-oo-woah' was a bit much for me, the noise bits sounded quite thin and nasal after the first half of the line was quite powerful. Great song though, especially that 'come on, you're just making noise' prechorus. I just wish the chorus had been a bit more ballsy, like how she sings the last line.
When I first read this, I interpreted it as 'ouch, that's a pretty solid diss against Trixie; but now I'm looking at it again to reply to it I'm thinking it's more about the not having been to the moon since 1972 thing?
If the latter, than yeah, that makes me very sad too. The last man on the moon died in January. And we've achieved some great things since in space exploration (the very idea of a reusable spacecraft, for example; although that's now gone too ...but if we're really lucky, Skylon will pick up the legacy). Juno and Cassini are doing wonderfully, and the latest generations of Mars rovers have been amazing. My favourite example is this one though:
i.imgur.com/YIOCIcr.jpg
But there is something about putting man on the moon. I teared up reading the bit in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality about 'The picture, if only one picture in all the world were to survive,' and I would consider it our crowning achievement as a species. And then, four years after doing it, we decided doing it any more wasn't worth the money, and...?
Too meta!
That was the point where I stopped writing it for a month or so, because I thought no one would want to read it other than me
Yeah, I think they may have forgotten the premise. And I forget that sort of thing, sometimes, like when suggesting that an EG story should explore the wider world beyond CHS, because the point of the EG world wasn't just that they were human, it was that all the important characters were reimagined sharing a class together, and that egotistical magician who turned up for two episodes in five years and nearly destroyed the town both times is now just a classmate no one really gets along with. But I think we've all done that before
Ultimately there aren't many things to set the seven of them apart, so it's largely informed. Different hair, skin and eye colour, hairstyles, eye designs and clothes, but all the same height, width and shape. And yet...
I've never known anyone say Rainbow or Pinkie are the prettiest. Best for plenty of other reasons, sure, but not that. Sunset probably has the brightest eye-to-hair contrast, so it might be that? I'd say she's probably the prettiest of the seven, personally, but I'm not certain why, but I will happily admit that her bike jacket in the first two films is awesome. In fact, she has quite the power dress code going on; mixing the black of the heeled boots and that jacket with that strong magenta and orange of her top and skirt. Also, her eyes are the only part of her that aren't either black or somewhere between pink and yellow, so they stand out all the more - I wouldn't be surprised if that factored into making her look prettier.
They can be monstrous, true, but the argument is that if the CMCs aren't, then kids can also be not monstrous, and so their youth isn't an excuse to let them off for it (it's a Harry Potter thing again, come to think of it - "Dumbledore was the same age we are now!")
To me it's one of the things that would accompany a facepalm, and doesn't stand out quite as much as "FFS..." I always wanted to have her say it, but try to avoid all mention of religion in EG stories, so this seemed a good opportunity.
Eeyup, that was those Totally Legit recap videos again, the one for A Hearth's Warming Tail. And, as in the story, I could understand it more if 'equality' was a big part of Starlight's character, even when reformed, but I don't think she's mentioned it since season five. So it just seems an almost intentionally-awkward choice to have to provide a backstory for, and I think her working more like Snowfall Frost in the show would have been more consistent (but perhaps less fun, because she really was great as the cult leader).
Hearing Adagio singing about generosity is odd! I can definitely hear her when Moondancer speaks, too. The weird one is Octavia; I like to think there was a casting director who said, "Kazumi, you've done that haughty mid-Atlantic honey voice before, I bet you can't make it even more posh and British..."
I didn't like the song or the episode the first time around, and after such a strong season, too. I thought they'd genuinely got Lady Gaga for the episode, and had basically written 22 minutes of 'Now Gaga's is awesome doing this, now Gaga is awesome doing that...' so I was quite surprised to learn it was actually Lena Hall behind Coloratura. A few weeks ago I watched the episode for the second time, and liked it a lot more, especially that song. I know what you mean about its checklist, but I liked it. I particularly appreciated that it was clearly Octavia playing cello, but only ever shown in silhouette. It probably wasn't the best example for that bit of the story, as it kind of is happy but also silly, as it takes the classic 'I'm only human' song and flips it.
I would have appreciated more in the episode though about how spectacle absolutely has its place as well, and isn't necessarily bad. People go to see a live show, after all, and from the back of one arena, one pony (or person) playing a piano on stage looks very much like another.
I saw that quote on a plaque in Iceland last Spring (on an olympic horsebreeding farm, no less, so if ponies take it to heart, they can go far!) and completely adored it. I considered having Daniel respond here that there are only footprints on the moon in the first place because Princess Luna once aimed too high, and that there was something to be said for knowing your limits, which is why the final line stipulates at least nothing lower than the sky. Decided against it, though, as I just couldn't phrase it right (and also liked the quote slightly too much to sabotage it).
Hopefully this will be the year when I have enough free time before December to record at least one siren Christmas song!
I was thinking, 'ok, I should end on something inspirational, as that's kind of what they're there for, hmmmm, but how do you actually inspire someone...? ...Of course, you paraphrase Manowar!'
So, the Sirens are having the conversation and mention that they set out to make the world adore them. Then Dan says something and we get this.
Cue me just staring blankly at the screen for several long seconds, thinking, "Was that... was that intentional?"
This is hella meta and kinda made my head spin for a bit (cause references that I understand but never was actually present for). I like it.
8133427 I would say, with this story, if it sounds like a reference to something, there's a very good chance it is. In that particular case, the very next line is:
The real question is: is it a reference to their song Welcome To The Show, or a doubly-meta reference to the story by RadiantBeam?
I'm surprised Daniel Ingram doesn't already have a headache by the end of this chapter.
8374188 "My name's Sonata, I'll be your headache for the evening..."
The movie versions of her personality do tend to be majorly defined by where the plot needs her, and they certainly haven't shied trying to push her towards an image less controversial and more marketable to parents. But while I think the best versions of her are in fanfiction, those might not exist if the authors hadn't had to integrate two movies' Sunsets, both for their map of stress points and fracture directions (retroactively so for the first movie) and a need for there to now be reasonable if not great reasons for how she got to all those points. It makes for one slight step past the usual OC creation process (which usually has only one person's worth of creative input).
You could read the results the other way: my own guess is that the initial designs were entirely about making competitively salable dolls (with tween "cheaper, sparklier copies of what your teenage sister buys" beauty product tie-ins), they realized the potential problem pre-production and tried to desexualize as much as possible (honestly, compared to the extant fan experimentation with the concept, you can't draw much less sexualized yet distinguishable bodies without dabbling in abstraction or surrealism) while still making the characters pretty teenage girls with hormones - the point of making the movie in the first place. ...And after releasing the movie, finally accepted the criticism had been completely unavoidable from the start and just gave up. I think both the Sirens and Midnight Sparkle respectively got some of the shallow seductiveness and sex appeal they'd deliberately tried to avoid giving Sunset. Could be read as a backlash, though. And it's easy to imagine Adagio reading it that way.
Unfortunately, we've had enough time since sending humans out to have suggestive if slight evidence that while the idea of exposing people to exotic and mystical cosmic radiances was a product of the times (the idea of matter-energy equivalence had as much of a grip on writers as clockwork mechanics, steam and gaseous pressures, and matter-energy-information equivalence did at other points), simply being out of a gravity well for too long may screw with our bodies in pretty deep and long-term ways. I think that in the absence of political pressures to do so to "prove something" or magic flooding into the world and changing our capacities dramatically, we won't be really sending humans out again until we're equipped and prepared to expand on the definition of "human".
I'm actually partly okay with that one, because it implies that as part of her unceasing efforts to develop her students by ensuring they acquire the tools and attitudes needed to seize the best out of life and be a credit to her school's fearsome reputation, Cinch already has a repertoire of easily-adapted "bully the stand/holdout" songs she habitually applies to students in public places, and most of her students know the melodies and her expectations enough to instantly join in. (And that she favors inflicting the lesson that you do not stand up to peer pressure or bullying in public: it Causes Lowbrow Scenes and removes your deniability.) I can even picture some of the audience, with exposure to Crystal Prep, doing the same. After that things still kind of break down.
Sort of. Bringing back what the fans liked to see from her did mean leaving her hanging in a different way: she was originally written not as a character but as a vice and her reappearance affirmed that. I think part of what made her an instant favorite wasn't just her flamboyance but her excusability. Nopony should expect the introduction to a successful traveling performer's show to consist of self-effacement, humility, and listing reasons her audience should just go home now. And if you're being heckled before you've even started, there's probably no longer an outcome in which the hecklers, the audience and you are all going to end up happy. Unless Trixie had already worked out a comedy version of her routine to switch to which can simultaneously keep her looking like an incompetent braggart and still entertain, shutting the hecklers up fast and hard was a rational choice. The episode even accidentally makes a favorable comparison of her and Twilight with respect to magic: Twilight is shown rapidly working through a checklist of "spells she hasn't done yet" to Achieve Knowledge as much and fast as possible (and we've seen that "look for the new learning experience" attitude carry through in emergency situations), while Trixie's mostly displaying a smoother, quicker casting which implies a life of constant practice and rehearsal. Not a better work ethic, but an often saner one. ...So while her reappearance was great, it did lock her into one of her less flattering interpretations. Although as the cast has expanded, she fills an increasingly valuable observational role for comedy.
Starlight... I actually think Starlight's less interesting as a villain. Sure, Starlight can break the sky and warp the earth to her whims. But her mind's too much like a chess rook: once you know where it's heading, the only remaining variable is how long until the inertia dies down. (Twi gets erratic when left alone; Star settles and focuses.) Watching our pet borderline sociopath trying to do something small and simple, while trying to believe and act like the ponies around her are real people with actual emotions and individual desires? Surround her with friends and stimuli, so there's no way to tell which direction she'll fall? Now that's fascinating.
It isn't a root, but I can see equality as an attractive fad concept for any pre-Twilight version of Starlight who's focused on doing good. She wants to be surrounded by happy ponies, ponies have an incomprehensible variety of desires and sources of unhappiness. Simplify the set of ponies, simplify the problem. Post-Twilight, Starlight and Sunset don't immediately redeem so much as lose and give up. The pressure of showing how much better they could handle ruling's off. It's easier to manage just having a group of friends and not mess up too badly with them. Don't really want to push too far into fanworks for writing this (or my own somewhat canonically invalid analysis of how the characters fit into the theme of Friendship), so I'll just agree that Starlight lacks some of Sunset's critical traits for Sueishness and fits better into the main series as a result.
Good idea. Nothing wrong with the execution, though If the sirens were really there I'd be surprised they could stay so on-topic for so long while talking with each other. And while my own music theory's horribly rusty (and not helped by its very existence mostly due to refusing to let my obvious and complete lack of talent, aptitude or ear for music stop me from signing up for more semesters of theory - this was at the point where I'd stopped even bothering to look at my grades), I do appreciate the details whether I completely get them or not.