What did MLPForums think of the Dash micro?

[Dulset Tarn 441]

Back where I came from, it was almost universally panned as terrible, but I'm curious about what you guys thought. Later on I'll give my own opinions.

[Guest90210 3,568]

I loved it. I thought it was silly and entertaining. The dialogue was great. I enjoyed the villain's concept, and while there were a few wishy-washy parts, overall those didn't spoil the comic for me. I really don't know why its so hated.

Edited February 20, 2015 by Rivendare

[Eloquence 2,076]

It was silly, didn't make a lot of sense, and wasn't one of the more entertaining micros IMO, but that doesn't mean I disliked it per se. It isn't like I got no entertainment value out of it or it made me upset or anything. Besides, if they're going to try out more hit or miss ideas, I'd rather they use the comics for that, especially the micros which were just a short series of unconnected stories. I feel like the comics are a good place to try more unusual new things.

 

Did I think it was it as good as the Rarity micro or the Luna micro? No. Was it something I wished I hadn't spent my money on? Also no. I thought it was cute, and honestly I'm just happy that we have any good comics at all, even if they can't all be stellar.

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,162]

Ugh, I thought that it was terrible; easily the worst comic of the entire IDW line, IMO. To me, it just looks like the author was tasked to write something about Rainbow Dash, and they had no idea who the character was, so they just Googled the name, saw a few things, and ran with it.

 

I mean I couldn't get into it at all; just...felt so grating.

[Megas 27,769]

I'm probably the most bitter person you find in regards to this comic. 

 

To me it was incredibly lazy with really stupid dialogue by a writer who either didn't know anything about either Rainbow Dash or FiM or could give two shits about. Terrible artwork and completely devoid of any passion, heart or soul even the weakest offering of the show, comics, and both EQ movies could offer

[Guest90210 3,568]

To me, it just looks like the author was tasked to write something about Rainbow Dash, and they had no idea who the character was, so they just Googled the name, saw a few things, and ran with it.

 

 

To me it was incredibly lazy with really stupid dialogue

 

I hear this often, but have yet to come across specific examples. What in particular about the dialogue did you feel was out-of-character? Earlier I re-read the comic, and as I went through I read Rainbow's dialogue in her voice, and it fit with her character very well to me. My only issue is that she was a bit too self-centered, but its not like that's a new trait for Dash

[Megas 27,769]

I hear this often, but have yet to come across specific examples. What in particular about the dialogue did you feel was out-of-character? Earlier I re-read the comic, and as I went through I read Rainbow's dialogue in her voice, and it fit with her character very well to me. My only issue is that she was a bit too self-centered, but its not like that's a new trait for Dash

My biggest issue with the dialogue was how corny and how little to sense sense it made, like whoever wrote it was just making up words and lines with little thought whatsoever. Not to mention the comic was loaded with tons of blunt, obtrusive and distracting memes and pop culture references

 

Classic line includes:

"Dangerous like eating a sandal or dangerous like splitting your infinitives?"

"This is more frustrating than the time I tried to clip your toenails Tank"

I'm not even gonna touch on the overuse of the "20%" memes

and then there's this

 

 

Edited February 20, 2015 by Megas75

[Dulset Tarn 441]

I agree with the critics here that the silly story, clunky dialogue, and grating overabundance of memes and catchphrases made the story quite hard to tolerate.

 

HOWEVER!

I would say that I enjoyed it overall, for exactly one reason. The ending went somewhere great that I never expected the comics to go, and that I never do expect the show to ever go. Rainbow Dash realizes that she's been holding herself back, and not for some petty reason like simple fear. You can always push yourself harder, but the truth of the matter is that it eventually reaches a point where you're hurting yourself and the results could be catastrophic. Dash knows that she can try harder, but she also knows it's likely to cost her everything. And what she doesn't know is if it will even work. But that doesn't matter, because Ponyville is more important than anything to the Element of Loyalty, and the mere possibility of saving it is worth more than her ability to fly. She's entirely willing to give everything for Ponyville because she feels Ponyville deserves everything from her, and she wouldn't be Rainbow Dash if she didn't give everything to protect the town.

 

I normally hate the characterization in the comics, just about all of them, but this is the only one that I find just as believable as the show.

[Sidral Mundet 1,666]

I liked it.  Wasn't anything special IMO but not bad either.  Though I have to admit I absolutely loved the Blade Runner reference!  That is one of my favorite movies! 

Edited March 2, 2015 by sidral159

[smitty121325 64]

After having reread the comic, I have to agree. The dialogue was terrible. Like one user said, it was as if the writer was simply putting words together without any thought or logic. A lot of the dialogue didn't make sense and the constant rhyming was painful. The only thing I liked about this comic was the mental image of a fattened up Rainbow Dash from having eaten her body weight in apples.

I normally hate the characterization in the comics, just about all of them, but this is the only one that I find just as believable as the show.

Aside from this comic (and Applejack's since I haven't read it yet), I think the characterization is spot-on. Though, keep in mind I've only read the micro comics once, so my opinion may change if I were to read them a few more times.

[AlbaTross 1,586]

I unfortunately have to agree with the masses. I could deal with corny dialogue, among other things, but the entire story just feels forced to me. Why are the cloud demons only Rainbowdash's problem? Because she was the one who crashed into that cloud and discovered them? That's not a remotely adequate reason to try to pin the whole thing on her. If Mayor Mare's way of dealing with disasters is picking a name out of a hat to depend solely on to put a stop to it, then maybe she should step down.

 

Sure, I buy that Rainbowdash would try to go it alone, but the entire town pushed her towards that decision. Even the local media is in on the whole thing. Nopony but Applejack opted to offer her any kind of support? WTF?! Why aren't other ponies remotely interested in trying to help solve a problem that is affecting all of Ponyville? Rainbowdash could have used the support of other Pegasi, and maybe the local Unicorns could fire their magic skyward. Maybe the Earth Ponies could find a way to help through the use of tools like canons and catapults. Above all else, why aren't the rest of the Mane Six supporting Rainbowdash? Even Applejack's involvement is minimal at best.

 

Whatever happened to the magic of friendship? The series is called Friendship is Magic, and that isn't just a random subtitle, though the writer of that issue may not have gotten that memo. Good thing I forget who wrote it. Sorry, but even though I generally like even the most divisive of the comics and am especially fond of the Micro Series, I don't like Rainbowdash's issue, and have to agree with the consensus that it's a pile of goat feces.

[Dulset Tarn 441]

Whatever happened to the magic of friendship? The series is called Friendship is Magic, and that isn't just a random subtitle, though the writer of that issue may not have gotten that memo. Good thing I forget who wrote it. Sorry, but even though I generally like even the most divisive of the comics and am especially fond of the Micro Series, I don't like Rainbowdash's issue, and have to agree with the consensus that it's a pile of goat feces.

Actually I have to ask, has friendship ever, EVER been a major theme in the comics? They don't seem to even try to pretend theiy're about friendship...

[AlbaTross 1,586]

Actually I have to ask, has friendship ever, EVER been a major theme in the comics? They don't seem to even try to pretend theiy're about friendship...

Hmmmm....good point. The Nightmare Rarity arc is about friendship but I guess most arcs don't tie directly into that theme. Then again, I've only read the first four volumes of the main series, the Micro Series and Friends Forever Volume 1. The latter series does have more of a friendship theme, but none of the issues are anti-friendship and I don't think that needs to be the only theme explored in spinoff media.

 

Ok, one issue is anti-friendship and we're talking about it. It's a story about how Rainbowdash has to save the day alone because she has terrible friends and lazy and idiotic neighbors who also don't seem to care much for her. On the other hand, after reading your first post I do have to admit that there was a good character moment in there at the end. I still don't think it excuses her friends deserting her, but the theme of self-sacrifice is a good one.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Tross

[Simon 4,557]

I don't hate any of the comics, I've enjoyed all of them that I have read.  However, this one is probably my least favorite of all of the IDW pony comics I've read... the whole thing didn't make a lot of sense, and really sort of came off like someone who had a very limited knowledge of the show and characters was given a 2 sentence description of Rainbow Dash and told to go write a comic. 

 

And I think that's not far from the truth either... in an interview Ryan Lindsay did a while back about the comic with Round Stable, he talked about how he got into the comic and basically explained he had no knowledge of the show at all, was approached by IDW and told they had openings for pitches on MLP comics, he watched some of the show, and came up with a pitch based on what he saw.  I think it's obvious he saw the first episode of the series, and maybe one or two episodes after that where Rainbow Dash was still very much being pitched as a weather pony and didn't have much other development, and he ran with that to an unfortunate extreme without any of the knowledge of how her character developed throughout seasons 1-3.

 

The problem with that sort of an approach with MLP is that it's far less static of a cartoon than most.  What I mean by this is most cartoons don't have characters develop a whole ton throughout the course of the series... the character you see on episode 1 and episode 100 are usually roughly the same character with a few minor changes.  Here, however, if you watch the season 1 opener and then compare it to a season 3 or season 4 episode, the characters are hardly even recognizable... I mean heck, Twilight isn't even recognizable between the beginning of episode 1 and the end of episode 2. 

 

Beyond just the fact that the character seems off, the other problem here is that the writer came into a series with an active fandom, and one that is obsessed with canon at that.  So you end up with a lot of nitpicky problems with the comic, like the fact that it introduces an entirely new species and a new villain that we know we will never hear anything about again.  And it introduced us to some summer festival we've never heard of and will probably never hear about again... that's just annoying.  

 

Plus you have canon mistakes like the whole news crew thing that's going on despite having never seen a pony news crew on the show even during some huge disaster or a big event like the summer sun celebration.  Parasprites destroying a town?  Eh, not newsworthy.  Discord turning all of Equestria to hell?  Nah, there's bigger stories out there.  Rainbow Dash can't clear a cloud?  YEP, that's what we do a breaking news story for here at Pony News.  And where did they even get this technology of video cameras and televisions?  Nopony has a television in their house that I can recall seeing... even Photo Finish has to use a pony equivalent of our antique non-electric cameras, so why does this news crew get video cameras, microphones, and even computer generated image overlays on the television screen?  (I could also go on a rant about the fact that the newscaster has a PNN cutie mark, and how much little sense it makes that a pony would be branded at birth with the company she'd work for, but I'll leave it at this)

 

Really I think that's what it comes down to... there's just far too many nitpicky details that are messed up for us to rant about... the fact that AJ's apples randomly turn into Zap Apples cuz Rainbow Dash advertising joke, the fact that every 2 seconds Rainbow Dash has to make a 20% reference in this comic cause someone at IDW told the author the fandom eats that up... or whatever that line was about the spell being broken by the 'collective happiness of Equestria's ponies' (what in the hay does that mean?) 

 

Is the comic an enjoyable read?  Sure... it explores a fun story with Rainbow Dash and it's a harmless story.  But it's definitely the comic with the most to nitpick about, and probably the least polished of the IDW comics.  It just doesn't have the feel of the other comics, and it was really a shame in a series where each character would only be represented one time to have one of the main characters get their character really screwed up.  A comic in the main series or friends forever is annoying, but in this particular series, you knew this was the only time we'd get to see that sort of a close look at Rainbow Dash's character so it was a huge shame to not leave it with some feeling that you understood her character more...

 

So that's pretty much where I stand on it... it's enjoyable, but by far the worst of the IDW micro-series comics and probably the worst of all the IDW comics released to date.

[FlutterDash4072 189]

It's terrible and never should have been published.

[Dark Qiviut 22,447]

From a technical writing perspective, it's objectively the worst one.

1. So much of the dialogue is so stilted, the characters don't feel like actual characters, but puppets that the writer penned down in the first draft. There are so many poorly written jokes that the humor comes from how bad they were written rather than from the situations themselves.
2. The conflict is extremely contrived. Up till season three, Dash underwent some extremely serious situations, like being Discorded and getting her plot kicked by her friends. Here? The whole conflict is about fighting off a cloud that feeds off negative emotions. Given how pegasi are capable of working with and manipulating clouds even in S2 standards, this is extremely trivial.
3. There's no subtlety in their references, and they're there just because. The brony pandering is three times more obnoxious than in EQG1. The CNN reference is not only obnoxious, but makes zero sense given canonical context.

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

 

The conflict is extremely contrived. Up till season three, Dash underwent some extremely serious situations, like being Discorded and getting her plot kicked by her friends. Here? The whole conflict is about fighting off a cloud that feeds off negative emotions. Given how pegasi are capable of working with and manipulating clouds even in S2 standards, this is extremely trivial

 

 

 

Yeah, the weird thing is, the cloud gremlins aren't subtle: EVERYPONY knows they're behind it and that they're causing trouble. The fact that everyone just leaves everything up to dash doesn't make sense. You'd think that Celestia and Luna or the royal guard would come by and just punch the heck out of the gremlins.

The only reason they could operate would be if somepony in charge had said "Yeah lets ignore that and leave it to dash". I mean, I can't imagine Twilight not having written a letter to celestia about it.