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LooneyBrony

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Blog Entries posted by LooneyBrony

  1. LooneyBrony
    Let's get one thing straight. This episode clearly did not live up to the hype promised by previous episodes. All the ads and promos feel like the laziest trap to bait-and-switch ratings and viewers. But what makes this almost hilariously tragic are the justifications of why there shouldn't have been such expectations to begin with. But despite as much as I want to, this isn't a rant (for the most part; I would like to save the smack down of that terrible opinion for another time), this is about being constructive so let's do this!
     
     
     
     

    Disclaimer—these are a collection of my ideas and opinions forged into something that I thought was "good enough"


     




    Lies!! (Sort of...)


     
    So, the Equestria games are obviously the Equestrian Olympics. What can be done with this to make a good sports episode? The answer is that the F#$%ING OLYMPICS AREN'T JUST ABOUT THE SPORTS!! They are NOT just some gathering of random schmucks that compete to win medals. They are the blood, sweat, and tears of the athletes, trainers, and their families who watch their hard work come to fruition upon the world stage with victories and defeats that mean something in and out of the stadium. If you can't think of a compelling story from those concepts, then I must ask you to give up writing and isolate yourself to producing schlock for children's TV...wait.
    Except no! This is FiM damnit. THE show that took seemingly boring and "girly" gimmicks and created interesting, entertaining, and memorable stories. Why can’t the same be done for the Olympics, people?
     
     
     



     
    I'd like to paraphrase a conversation between screenwriters Max Landis (look him up; he does a HILARIOUSLY over-the-top “Death of Superman”) and his dad John Landis:
     
    John: "How do you kill a vampire?"
    Max: "Garlic...stake through the heart...sunlight...?"
    John: "No. You can kill vampires however the f#$% you want, because they don't f#$%ing exist! You can make up schticks and codes for anything!"
     
    I bring this up because the Equestria Games provides that perfect opportunity to let the imagination run wild. Making up entire civilizations by playing around with their history, the traditions and their limitations both physical and cultural and having just slivers of that play out in interactions with other made up civilizations; All you need the games for are kid friendly stand-ins for global conflict!
     
     
     




    Just like the good ol' days...


     
    But I’m getting ahead of myself. A lot of people liked the “story” that Spike goes through and I’m inclined to kinda agree in the VERY broad strokes (good idea, meh-to-bland execution). So in this version, Spike will be a central issue that fuels the conflict and will lead to a somewhat similar moral of confidence. How can this be done? By utilizing a simple fact of Spike's character: He's a dragon raised in a pony society, with an assumption that he’s one of a kind.
     
     
     




    Most of the time...


     
    Remember, dragons in MLP are depicted as ruthless, selfish, hostile, territorial, monstrous, and extremely dangerous even when just taking a nap. Now combine this with potential friction of some cultural differences and we can showcase how elaborate and dynamic the world of Equestria can be while staying true to form.
     
     
     




    See where I'm going with this...?


     
    To start off, the first Act begins in the Crystal Empire with only a few short scenes dedicated to everyone getting ready but the main focus is on Spike being treated as a national hero (not with more dialogue-heavy exposition scenes but with a few choice character interactions and imagery to drive the point home). In the next scene we’re introduced to all of Ponyville’s players as cameos but the main opening event is Spike lighting the torch. Now picture this: Spike walks out on the field waving around and feeling all the love. But as he moves closer to the torch, he starts hearing jeers, and boos and even snide insults like “Get that monster off the field!”, “Go back to your cave!”, or “Kick out the beast before he torches the place!”
     
     
     




    Stage fright lookin' pretty trivial don't it, Spike?


     
    Spike turns to hear these heckles coming from a somewhat small but vocal section of the stadium many of which bear battle scars. Now the Crystal ponies also hear this and they’re having none of it: they start counter-screaming for Spike but also throwing insults back at the scarred ponies. Around the stadium, some spectators are wary of Spike as a dragon, but others especially ones from Ponyville and Canterlot, become equally defensive on Spike’s behalf. But poor Spike in the middle of all this thinks he did something wrong and seems stuck, almost paralyzed with indecision and anxiety. A quick look at Twilight shows she’s urging him to light the torch but when he gets close to the mouth, the screaming, heckling, and uproar intensifies causing Spike to feel even more pressure and wind up being choked up. Twilight eventually lights the torch herself and rushes out to shunt Spike away into a royal VIP suite as tensions mount further. End of Act I
     
     
     




    Shining Armor: Hey Spike! I'm gonna be more relevant than what I actually am this episode.


  2. LooneyBrony
    Disclaimer: Best read in the voice of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw” Also NSFW for those who care for some reason...
    So the Season 5 ponies are finally here.
    Sweet Celestia! It’s been almost a year.
    But after giving a view, I said, “it’s one stretched to two!”
    So to me this was a quite dull premiere.
    I say this partly because I like to provide some short, concise yet poetic writing to contrast the overlong drag that was Cutie Mapless, but mostly because I need a valve for my catharsis and I cannot be asked to make my own writing style. So, seeing as you read this far I suppose some elaboration is in order.
    I think I may have overbeaten the dead horse that is my post-season 2 opinions. So much it came back alive and forced me to by a drum from Wal-mart; so i'll just sums this up with a simile: It’s like baking a cake with poorly mixed batter and trying to cover the mess with the half-eaten icing of the previous cakes. But, in the case of this extravagant premiere, it's pastry made of a pinch provocatively tasty chocolate atop a mountainous pile of expired oatmeal.
    The plot is SPOILED as thus: after Tirek’s defeat, some unspecified amount of time, and Rarity finally shutting up about how aesthetically deplorable the castle looks in Ponyville or perhaps that was just me, the magical ass tattoos summon a map and designate where the ponies need to shove their asses to, like the table is Voldemort from Opposite-land. Upon arrival, they are captured by the locals and turned into Math Eaters by the villain invoking the powers of Orwell, Stalin and Sophia Lamb. Though for some reason, only their token quirks and personalities are removed but nevermind. After some skullduggery, the villain is exposed, and then escapes and the town throws a celebration about how jolly good it is to now be a different kind of one dimensional.
     
    My main problem is that, despite the oddly precocious Orwellian themes (or more accurately imagery), it has as much loquacious padding as Michael Bay pads with explosions. Instead of providing good pacing, not a minute goes by where we’re treated to information that isn’t redundant or pointless. They all individually need to say that they agree to go on an adventure. They show us a traveling montage to only show a traveling montage. Pinkie Pie is suspicious, and Fluttershy is enamored for the billionth time. And the underwater glacier of this iceberg is that almost every important plot point is delivered with exposition so ham-handed that the Jewish orthodox would be right to call the hands unclean.
    It’s not until the last third of each episode that something in the same star system as exciting happens. And by odd coincidence, that’s when the dialogue was used most efficiently. Sadly, the setups were littered with so much stodgy non-kosher meat, I honestly couldn’t care less about the cliffhanger sequel hook for Starlin Strikes Back. In fact, the scene where the villain shushes Twilight was when I related to her the most if only because she graciously vocalized my thoughts succinctly; like taking a taser to Captain Planet before he can gab on about the environment for the scrillionth time.
     
    But what’s ironic is that if I didn’t know about the almost year long hiatus, I’d charitably say it was rushed by executive meddling! The superfluous and verbose execution speaks of the shadow of unrealistic mandates for filler (which I assume is to shoehorn in more toy commercials in the same way a snake-oil salesmans pisses in his own tonics). So “I would like to offer my sympathies to those in the creative team whose arms have been forcibly fused into your spines” ... is what I won’t say because, there WAS an almost year long hiatus which makes me question why in bleeding Tartarus was so much time wasted backyard wrestling the rule of “show don’t tell”?! The rule wasn't just broken it was harpooned, piledriven, star dropped, dragon screwed, and crossfaced while forced to act as Irwin R. Schyster reading 1984.
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