Kay Dreamer

@@Miles, I'm not 'advocating' people do anything. But a lot of people will lose resect for him over this, and I think that's fair enough. It's a natural consequence in response to what he did. He'll need to earn that respect back through legitimate hard work. I will say this in his defence; the apology he wrote is mature, contrite and it doesn't make excuses. That impressed me a fair bit, and if he proves his words are sincere, he'll earn back that lost respect. @, Selling a large volume of prints at cons does actually have an effect on the financial success of the other artists selling there. If everyone's giving their money to one guy, there's less to go around. If that one guy is getting all the attention because his artwork is phenomenal, that's fair enough. He obviously worked hard for it, and deserves the reward. But when that one guy is selling quickly traced work, that's just plain wrong. I know he is capable of drawing his own original work. I don't think his original art is particularly good, but it's certainly preferable to tracing. It's actually a fact that Hasbro (or at least their lawyers) feel more threatened by traces and show-accurate art than they do by the sale of more original art styles. The reason some of the biggest fan projects such as Button Mash and Fighting Is Magic were CMD'd was because Hasbro felt these projects were too accurate, too polished, and could therefore be mistaken for legitimate MLP spinoffs endorsed by Hasbro when they weren't. This threatened the integrity of their brand. By choosing to value show-accuracy over everything else, especially to the point of blatantly tracing work, artists like Drawponies actually threaten to draw the ire of Hasbro's lawyers and could, by association, threaten other fan artists with the same. Anyway, disregarding all the legal voodoo, he did was wrong. Whether you think it's being blown out of proportion or not, profiting off traced artwork is unethical and the repercussions he is facing now are a natural consequence of that dishonesty and laziness. Hell, he admits that in the apology he wrote on DA. That apology is a good step in the right direction toward fixing this, and I'll say it again; I was actually impressed with that. @@Aurelleah, Problem is, he basically was tracing a drawing line-by-line then filling it with colour. He'd add some sparkle to it, sure, but artistic terms it is very much considered theft. To further your analogy, drawing is assembling a variety of parts - colour, form, shade, line, etc - and assembling them on a canvas. 100% of what you use has been used before, but the art is in how you put them together. Tracing is like taking a popular song, changing some of the lyrics around and trying to claim you wrote it.

@@Miles, By "lose his livelihood", I don't mean that Drawponies should be turfed out onto the street and made to beg for handouts. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But he made a substantial income from this. To be frank, he doesn't deserve that. If he needs to go back to a part time job to make ends meet while he rebuilds his reputation and fractured fan base to the point where he can once again make a living off original art, I think that's fair. I'm not saying he should never agin be able to make art his career, but he'll need to work hard to regain what he's lost. Yes, people deserve to be forgiven for their mistakes. But that doesn't mean one gets to dodge the consequences of one's decisions. Bad consequences are a natural result of bad choices. For Drawponies, the loss of his fan base and some income from his art is a natural (and probably unavoidable) consequence for choosing to trace his art. I certainly advocate forgiveness, but it will take a while for him to earn back the respect he's lost today.

@@Lil'Cinnamon, @, @@Miles, The real issue isn't that he traced his art. I have no respect for people who trace, it's absolutely useless as a method for improvement, but it harms no one when done for personal use. However, the line is crossed when you start making money off your traced works. This guy took his traced art to conventions and sold it there. He's traced art and profited from it. That is unethical and dishonest. His ill-gained popularity also drew customers away from artists who were doing the right thing and creating original work, siphoning profits which might have otherwise gone to people with genuine talent. It is true that all fan artists who sell their work exist in a legal grey area. We know that. Most companies turn a blind eye because the growth of a fandom depends on fans generating creative media, and a big fandom will spill money into official merchandise. (In short; our existence boost the value of that company's IP. That is true of fans who create art, host fan sites, make plushies, make videos, write songs and write fan fiction. By saturating popular culture with all things MLP, we help Hasbro make more money!) However, we artists maintain standards among ourselves. One standard is that artwork is expected to be original, and created entirely by the artist selling it. Directly copying show assets line-for-line and selling these slides outside of that grey area we exist in. We are tolerated by companies like Hasbro because we adapt existing IP into original work with it's own artistic merit, in such a way that doesn't diminish the company's profits. Making a quick buck by tracing elements directly from screencaps has no intrinsic artistic value whatsoever, and being traced from a screenshot out of the actual show places it on morally dubious ground. The 'art' wasn't drawn by him; it was drawn by the animators on the show. Why should he profit at all? Fan artists put their metaphorical blood, sweat and tears into creating original work. These things take hours. Creating art is not fast, nor is it easy. So for someone to claim cheap traces as original creations and profit from them spits in the face of legitimate artists. (For the record, I don't particularly care for art which resembles the style of the show to the point where it's basically indistinguishable. Part of the point of fan art, in my eyes, it that it's supposed to offer a unique interpretation of a character which wouldn't exist otherwise.) While I think it's wrong that people are harassing and tormenting Drawponies to the extent that they are, what he has done is wrong and he certainly deserves to lose his fanbase and livelihood for it. It's a hard lesson for him to learn, but perhaps in the future he will come to appreciate the value of hard and honest work.

I'm extremely curious about Starlight Glimmer, actually. For a few reasons. She's one of a few unicorns we've seen whose special talent is magic. This can be assumed by looking at her cutie mark, as well as the fact that she mentioned having studied the shield spell she used, and the sheer amount of various magics she was throwing around as she fled. The only other unicorns we've seen like this are Twilight and Sunset. (Not counting Trixie... she's an illusionist.) Her cutie mark has a star on it which bears similarities to Twilight's. Her name shares the same pattern as Twilight Sparkle and another former student of Celestia, Sunset Shimmer. (A feature of a time of day + a word which describes sparkling light.) Finally, her mane has similar features to that of Twilight and Sunset. (A dominant colour offset by a streak of a brighter colour.) There's no way the writers and designers made all the above decisions by coincidence. Starlight is being deliberately set up as another foil for Twilight. There's something deeper going on here, and if she doesn't become a recurring villain, or at least return once, I'll eat my foot.

I'm hoping the episode doesn't create too much controversy. I loved it. It was probably one of the darkest, spookiest and certainly deepest episodes we've had so far. I like the post by @@Antidaeophobia. I don't think the episode was outright attacking communism as a political ideology, but was illustrating the horrors of fascism as a whole. (Though I disagree that Equestria is communist, as we still see a wealthy elite in Canterlot. Socialist is more likely.) Any regime where freedom is curtailed, where citizens are brainwashed and where fear is the order of the day is terrible. The whole setup of the town was deliciously Orwellian. But despite the degree of thought and care placed into the setting, it was really just window dressing. The core of the story was again about friendship, and how you don't all need to be exactly the same in order to be equal. True friendship, (just like true social equality), is about embracing your differences and using them to help each other. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." That's as Marxist as it gets, but you need special talents in order to make that work. Starlight Glimmer's town was pure fascism under a front of false equality, simple as that. Thing is, I really don't think most people, upon a surface viewing, are going to get that. At all. As since the town was painted as horrible and wrong right from the outset, I highly doubt many parents are going to kick up a storm because "MLP supports communism, OMG". The whole point of the episode was illustrating why forcing everypony to be 'equal' was a bad thing.

A foal who has yet to earn their cutie mark is different to an adult pony who has, then has it stolen away. The foal is simply in its natural state, and the magic inside them which will become their cutie mark hasn't 'settled' yet. Presumably that magic could still be stolen by a being like Tirek, but Starlight Glimmer's spell is probably cutie mark specific. The shock of being stripped of your cutie mark was shown to be extremely traumatic. It actually reminds me of the intercision process in The Golden Compass. Basically, Starlight had stolen an intrinsic part of that pony's soul, which explains the personality change. Twilight's botched spell just switched their appearances. Starlight ripped them off. As for the spell, yeah, probably dark magic. A very dark magic. The fact Starlight could perform a spell like that indicated a talent for magic almost on par with Twilight's. I can almost see her in a position much like Twilight feared in Boast Busters; she might have had an extremely powerful talent for magic, which ended up inspiring envy in others and caused her to be ostracised. That would explain her motivation for building a village with 'no special talents', and why she thought she was justified in what she was doing. She actually thought, despite the lies and oppressive atmosphere, that she was doing the right thing.