Author Topic: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)  (Read 60582 times)

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Offline Ziel

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #375 on: April 25, 2012, 05:32:41 pm »
I think the idea that there aren't love spells in Equestria actually comes from the very two love spells that you site, Hoagiebot.  Both of those spells went horribly wrong and wouldn't have been used in the first place by a wise, clear-thinking pony.  So, that suggests that -- perhaps other than for Cadence -- there aren't useful, successful love spells in Equestria.

Exactly what I meant. Those other spells weren't love. Heck, one was a potion, not even a spell. The enchantment spell caused anybody who saw Smartypants to lust after it, not love it. There is a huge difference there. The potion was actually a love poison, and the episode quite well displays that it doesn't create real love.

article on "Magic" on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic wiki
I believe I've mentioned my issues with this site in the past. They have presented various things as hard fact, which were, in reality, conjecture based on how the show was interpreted by a very small group of people.

In Hearts and Hooves day, while the CMC state their lesson, they say "Nopony can force two ponies to be together. It's up to everypony to choose that very special somepony for themselves." From this you could draw the conclusion that nopony has the power to create love (see first half of the quote). And it has just as much evidence from the show to back it up as some other things that wiki states as 'fact'.

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Offline aspect

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #376 on: April 25, 2012, 11:20:45 pm »
That was a pretty entertaining review, Hoagiebot! I really like Production Person #1,  though I doubt anyone on the production team is actually sensitive about what bloggers and forum-dwellers say, since I'm sure somepony somewhere tears apart every episode as if they're ruining the series.

As far as retconning goes, I would be okay with it if Shining Armor only effectively existed for this one episode. I prefer to think of Twilight Sparkle as an only child and I don't mind the reality being a little different for one episode; there's a long tradition after all, that movies made of TV shows exist in different continuities; and this episode was certainly something like a movie. Unfortunately such reasoning also allows the other two-parters to be in different continuities, which would explain why there has been little effort to conform to the prehistory given in the season premier.

I really liked your analysis of villainy too. I think Queen Chrysalis (where do we even know her name from? I can't find it in the episode) really was kind of overpowered; besides shapeshifting, love absorption, and apparently magic beam powers, she also had mind control abilities, which she was able to use on at least Armor himself plus her three bridesmaids. It seems like she could have just mind-controlled Twilight and there would have been no problem. And her overconfidence at the end... but anyway my point is that I agree power balance is an important and interesting issue.

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It's like trying to find a way to have a villain stand up to the all-powerful Old Testament Hebrew God and somehow survive-- just ask the Ancient Egyptians of the Exodus story about how well that worked out for them!

Well that's a pretty good example of how to maintain some dramatic tension without de-powering the all-powerful being (like they did to Celestia). Have the all-powerful being follow a long plan so that the suspense comes from finding out how it's going to work; essentially, we would want there to be an enemy Celestia does not want to "incinerat into his/her component molecules". Or some limitation on what Celestia's willing to do could be revealed. Celestia is obviously reserved about magic anyway; she doesn't teleport around like Twilight and in fact rarely even flies.

Actually I'm willing to question the idea that Celestia is even very powerful, magically speaking. I mean, she does theoretically have control over the sun, but that really doesn't have to mean that she can lift other objects of the same size. And I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that she has all the same powers as Nightmare Moon either. Nightmare Moon had basically joined the "dark side of the Force" as far as magic goes; it's a common theme that evil magic can be more powerful (though I don't have a handy tvtropes link, "the dark side" and "black magic" not mentioning it explicitly).

Which goes back to this interesting question of overpowered heroes and/or overpowered villains. To me it's a question of preferred worldview. If you think evil is 1) very powerful and 2) of very clear-cut negative ambitions but 3) inevitably stupid, you'll have no problem with villains like Discord and Queen Chrysalis, who come on the scene with all the tools to win but end up losing from overconfidence. And you'll have no trouble writing this sort of villain if you think your audience should be warned that with great power comes great overconfidence, and modesty and goodwill to your fellow pony will keep your head clear and win the day. I tend to prefer villains who at least lose through a more realistic but equally stereotypical fault, having idiotic minions; because one of the chief disadvantages evil faces is getting along with people, so the quality of the average minion willing to go along with evil plans is bound to be low. But there are some good arguments that someone trying to take over all Equestria rather than slowly infiltrating the villages is probably pretty overconfident.

But number (1) is the one I intended to discuss, not (3). See, I happen to think evil is not inevitably physically stronger than good. However, even the weakest of evils can destroy something valuable. The whole world doesn't have to be at risk in every epic storyline; the characters just have to be genuinely invested in preserving whatever is at stake. This, of course, is how some of the other adventure-oriented episodes of FiM have proceeded; in Dragonshy, the only real threat was a dark cloud over Ponyville, and in Dragon Quest the conflict was over Spike's view of his identity. So in my view, the way to make a credible villain in the face of an all-powerful Celestia assisted by an also overpowered crew of ponies wielding the Elements of Harmony is to do a little less than threaten all of Equestria. An equally epic quest could follow from a villain mysteriously kidnapping somepony or eating all Celestia's cake.

I'd better stop trying to brainstorm potential plots though, it leads to a lot of staring at my keyboard.

As for the argument about love magic... "nopony can force two ponies to be together" is certainly predominantly a statement of what's advisable, not what's possible. Given the show's repeatedly loose treatment of continuity, I'd say there's not much point in analyzing whether love magic is supposed to be possible. Besides this, we don't know much about what kinds of spells unicorns tend to have since we haven't seen very many unicorns' special spells. I would say that since Cadance's love ability wasn't specifically shown to be as central and important as presiding over day and night is, it wasn't intended to be on the same level. The main point of Twilight's line about the uniqueness of the ability was to show that Twilight really likes Cadance and the wedding was a good thing after all.

I don't think it was the strength of Cadance's love spell which allowed Shining Armor to defeat the changelings. The love spell broke the mind control, but Cadance's non-magical love strengthened Shining Armor. (No love is really non-magical in a world where Friendship is Magicâ„¢.)

Offline Ziel

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #377 on: April 29, 2012, 09:01:54 pm »
Okay, with season 2 over WE'RE DOOMED, I mean, we need to find something to do to keep ourselves busy between seasons.

I figure we should start by discussing Season 2 as a whole. Do you find it better or worse than the first one? Best episode of the season? Any changes in favorite characters? Or anything else you can think of.

Go!

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Offline Narei Mooncatt

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #378 on: April 29, 2012, 09:22:14 pm »
*sings* Season wrap up! Season wrap up!!! :D

Ok, over all I think it's better, but I also think it's because the creators are more in tune with what works and seem to be stepping up their game knowing that the bronies would be more critical about things such as animation quality and continuity.

Favorite pony is still Vinyl Scratch over all (yay for re-appearance!), and Fluttershy for the mane 6. Fave episode is still Luna Eclipsed. Awesome as the finale was, I don't consider those and premiers for favorite episodes because those are meant to be over the top.

Will be interesting to see what season 3 brings.
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Offline redyoshi49q

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #379 on: May 03, 2012, 09:20:59 pm »
Some of you guys may or may not have noticed my absence for the past couple of weeks.  I've been really busy with school, but I binged episodes 19-26 Wednesday evening.  I had heard a lot of good things about the finale in particular from multiple sources (including a thread on this subforum).  The hype was not disproportionate; those episodes were well worth watching.

I *haven't* read through the past few week's posts in this thread.  I tried, but since I abstained from reading this thread until I had seen the episodes, I didn't have the benefit of reading the thread's contents in weekly chunks, and you guys make *REALLY* long posts.  I think it might have taken me about a full day to actually read all of that.


...Does anybody know if/when Season 3 is coming out?
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Offline Ziel

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Re: MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)
« Reply #380 on: May 03, 2012, 11:33:33 pm »
...Does anybody know if/when Season 3 is coming out?

October if I recall. 1st or 10th or something like that maybe? I've read it somewhere but can't seem to find it now.

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