Hawki said:
I'm in a similar position. Sunset is easily one of my favorite characters in the entire setting, but beyond her, there's little that interests me in EQG, and the chances of her becoming a regular in FiM are slim, considering that Starlight is effectively the same character. Also doesn't help that the EQG franchise is in a different place from where it started. I'd argue that the first three films form a good narrative arc for Sunset, whereas the fourth film is really a launching off point for EQG to do its own thing with the shorts and powers thing (perhaps not coincidentally, my ranking of the EQG films goes 2>3>1>4). I'm betting that this is intentional from a marketing point of view, but from a narrative/character point of view, EQG seems to have become its own thing. Sunset included.
I'm personally warming up to Starlight, and I sort of agree? I think the only reason why I'm warming up to Starlight is predominantly because I hope it leads to more Trixie. The poroblem of Sunset in Equestria proper would require shifting Starlight off to do her own thing. Much like Celestia did for Twilight.
Gotta say ... that's awhole lot of reformed unicorns at this point. Kind of due for an Earth or Pegasus pony villain to antagonise the group as if a Pony-threat from within their own by now, surely?
In fact the reason why I really like Trixie and Rarity is the fact that they're unicorns that apparently only have a selective degree of magic at their disposal. Trixie relies on practical magic effects and Rarity has sufficiently tailored them to being able to move a chaise fainting couch perpetually off screen and being incredibly adept at wielding an ice cream spoon and a thread and needle. They aren't obsessed with it, they aren't just magically good at it (how exactly does one simply just be good at magic? Is it like Mage: The Awakening?), and Sunset (in the comics) is painted almost as if merely a more callous Twilight Sparkle in terms of her study-centric lifestyle when she was studying in Celestia's school.
And in both the comics and the show, Sunset is at least a few good years older than Twilight. Which takes the chronology and throws it under a bus. Perhaps even more than a 1000 year old school principal given she actively lives on the otherside of the mirror. But naturally we won't address the problems of EQG ... just don't think about it.
I can only assume there's another Sunset out there thinking she's going bonkers after watching herself appear in the Daring Do movie.
Because that wouldn't be emotionally traumatizing AF to realize you have an honest to god doppelganger. As it stands, the only reason why I assume Sunset hasn't been confronted by her other half is because she's either dead, or in a mental institution trying to convince the police a doppelganger is living her life and trying to replace her. I do like in Forgotten Friendship how Sunset finally got a chance to do what she should have done after the first movie ...
I will also say she's awesome in the Fall of Sunset Shimmer.
As for ranking the EQG movies ... I ehhh ... eh. Probably
Rainbow Rocks is my favourite. I feel like it's the one movie where people actually begin to recognize they often treat Sunset like garbage.
I am really enjoying the specials and the shorts, though. And the last one, Forgotten Friendship, actually ticks off boxes I wanted to see in Sunset's character development. Which I won't really spoil, here, given it's fairly recent.
But it does inject more Sunset development which is kind of important... and more helicopter parenting (friendshipping?) Twilight Sparkle, which is always fun. If incredibly creepy and awkward, how is she the Princess of Friendship again? Sunset as a
reformed villain is a way less creepy pony.
I think the biggest disconnect for me in EQG is the fact that I don't understand why they took established characters. It tells methat they definitely weren't going to market this to the cross demographic appeal of FiM. Which strikes me as a massive big question mark over the showrunners who pushed the story editor to make it so.
Meghan McCarthy ... She's a damn good story editor if given the licence and the freedom to collate the ideas together. I can only imagine that the showrunners themselves probably were like; "Gotta be like this, don't ask questions or change characters. You get one new villain to play with, be grateful."
They could have shown new people which makes more sense. I do not see Rarity as a teenager. Did her parents in Equestria just give her a business loan? Rarity makes sense in Equestria ... she doesn't make sense in a high school as a teenager. Maybe a teacher. I could totally see her being the school's Design & Tech teacher, teaching kids how to use a sewing machine, make handicrafts, draw up patternmaking templates, etc... not as a
student.
Because being a professional designer actually requires
study. It means understanding the machines of the trade (and there are a lot of them) ... it's about understanding colour theory. Understanding materials science of the fabrics you're working with, etc. It is not something a teenager can simply 'get' ... being a designer is like being an engineer
AND artist with fabric. Knowing the tools to get stuff done, knowing the maths, knowing the materials you're working with, understanding the science behind fabrication ... and you have to package all of that into an outfit that will
sell.
And frankly that goes for the rest of the Mane 6 barring Rainbow Dash ... who I see as terminally unemployable in any less magically, less socialist agrarian paradise run by the benevolent dictator, Premier Celestia of the Union of Equestrian Socialist Republics.
Regardless, if they took Sunset out of Equestria Girls, my interest in EQG would plummet.
Adventure Time aside (to put it extremely mildly, I'm not a fan)...okay, MLP does have reasonably consistent worldbuilding, even if it's done in pretty broad strokes. I'd cite Avatar as an example of a kid's show that does have excellent worldbuilding (and characters, and plot, and...), but I'm guessing you're going to be waiting a long time. Doesn't help that Celestia seems to have succumbed to the Worf Effect, that she exists mainly to highlight how the villains are more powerful, despite her own power being enough to MOVE THE SUN.
Yes .... Celestia and Luna together used
6 elements at once to seal away Discord. Who is effectively the biggest counterbalancing
deity of Equestria. Celestia, in particular, suffers the Worf Effect eggregiously. Which is a problem when all you get is snippets of a distant past showing how powerful she is, and then querying why exactly she doesn't seem to reflect that power. I will say that you don't actually need a Celestia and Luna to move the Sun and the Moon. Unicorns, collectively, could move the Sun and the Moon. It's just that it was incredibly taxing on all of them.
She can still appear incredibly threatening...
But then again, if you're almost three times taller than the average pony and can move the Sun AND the Moon if you need to (like for a thousand years...) you're going to be fairly threatening regardless whenever you're ticked off. Luna at least has the excuse that she had been somewhat stunted in terms of experience given her sentencing to the Moon.
It's
nice that what is effectively early Equestria you actually see what would have been fairly young Celestia and Luna actually imprison Discord. Which at least cement the idea that there wasa time they were perhaps more proactive with their magical power.
As for Star Swirl ... Yeah, I'm being facetious. But it doesn't help that in the FIRST ENTRY of the Journal of the Two Sisters, it mentions Star Swirl. It mentions Star Swirl before Princess Platinum... Or Amore.
In the
The Journal of the Two Sisters, Clover the Clever, Private Pansy, and Smart Cookie were representatives of Star Swirl, who had effectively worked hisway to achieving the respects of all of them in turn... it was Star Swirl the Bearded that encouraged Celestia and Luna to basically claim dominion to Equestria. The first of Celestia's drawings in the FIRST ENTRY OF THE JOURNAL is a picture of Star Swirl.
Star Swirl is Gandalf with all the most
egregious bullshit of the Istar(i) and their relationship to the Maiar and the
very dawn of creation.
After the
Perfect Pear I was happy the show actually dealt with concepts of death and passing on. And in the episodes closing up the season, I loved the fact that Luna and Celestia had accepted Star Swirl had departed. Had passed on. The only thing they wanted to know was
how did he die. What
happened to him in his final moments.
It's
touching.
It actually made Star Swirl seem like a real character, a good teacher, that left an indelible mark on his students that resists the deterioration of time, and as a former teacher
that got me right there. That's what any teacher wants. To leave a respect for academia and the pursuit of truth, one that is passed on from teacher to pupil, and from pupil to the next generation... and so on. It's why a teacher can rightly proclaim themselves a
defender of civilization. A torchbearer in the
otherwise only darkness...
But to
bring him back ... REALLY!?
I think it's a testament to the show however that I'm actually this invested to be this angry... but I can't help but miss a heartbeat of pointng out why it would have been better if the gang found out Star Swirl had passed away helping Equestria, that he had departed in an honourable way and through the illumination of his departure realize just how fully he helped Equestria ... and that can be something that we can actually see Celestia, Luna and Twilight actually
bond closer over through a shared (if in Twilight's case,
distant) relationship to the pony.
But no ... none of that.
Is it too much to hope for that Chrysalis isn't reformed?
Might be a slim hope, but there's only so many times the show can play the reformed villain card, even by the standards of a show literally titled Friendship is Magic. I don't think it would be that hard, to have a villain/villains that stay villains, to show that 'friendship wins the day' or whatnot. I mean, in Care Bares, Lord Noheart never got redeemed (not that I really remember - what I do remember is that the show seemed to make Shrieky the villain more than him because...reasons).
I do like villain Chrysalis. In the comic books she's deliciously devious and almost flirty with her machinations and plotting. In the show she's also marvelous as the 'simple villain' ... that the reasons for her eggregious actions arises from a need, a simple need, not some convoluted idea of (inevitably portrayed) simplistically rendered concepts of power(tm).
Which would be the movie's biggest failing if the story wasn't actually about Tempest coming to terms with herself and both her and Twilight actually getting a bitter taste of medicine concerning a lesson of friendship that ultimately leaves the pair of them better off.
Sometimes the best antagonists are the ones from which serve as a platform to a bigger story or moral in and of themselves.
Villains don't necessarily need to be the principle antagonising or challenging aspect of what their machinations bring about. Which is why a Canterlot Wedding is a fucking amazing pair of episodes, and why I still like Pink Horse even if she was purely originally conceived to just sell stuff to 6 year old girls. Seriously, have you seen her toy commercials? .... . Like 80s girly toy commercials cancer.
Argh ... I feel like my soul is dying ...
But yeah, Chrysalis is awesome in both the show and the comics. In the comics she's downright murderous simply because she
can ...
Plus despite it's garbage relationship to Star Swirl (Again) the big reveal as to her creation is kind of wonderful. "Do you really want to know!?" A segue two pager of protracted, dark birthscene of magic, the corpse of a pony, a Discord chaos seed, and the blood of a unicorn later, and you have Chrysalis and the start of her brood ... and on right the next page, whispering into Twilight's ear with an almost flirty sinisterness; "I was just born this way...."
It's beautiful because you feel for a moment that Twilight is simply holding out hope for a chance that she won't need to hurt her ... and that act stirring Twilight's darkest impulses to pulverize her with her magic only for Chrysalis to use that momentary inconsolableanger to slam her against a walland escape.
Chrysalis in the comics is just way too much fun to ignore. And in the show she still channels some of that villainy I fell in love with. I will say the show ruined Changelings though. Seriously ruined changelings ... and if that's in store for Chrysalis, yeah I don't want to see her ever be reformed.
It's been ages since I've seen Rocko. I liked it, but TBH, I didn't really get the same themes. Might have been too young to appreciate them (I would have been 4-7 over its run), but I can't say I got the things you mentioned above. I know Rocko's a wallaby from Australia, who's sent to what I assume is America, but I don't recall that ever really coming up as a cultural/societal issue. Cows, turtles, frogs, etc. aren't quintisentially American animals after all, and even then, I don't recall Rocko being taken advantage of. Heffa was a doofus, Filbert was a nervous wreck, Mr Bighead was loud and obnoxious, Mrs Bighead had the hots for him, but Rocko seemed to make do by being perhaps the most sane character there was, at least in the main cast. I remember when Heffa moved in with Rocko and started taking advantage of his hospitality, but even then that seemed to come down to more Heffa being ignorant of the harm he was doing rather than being a jerk per se.
But like I said, been ages since I've seen the show. But I would put it above Dexter as well, so there is that.
Couple of episodes.
S2E7 I think? "Kiss Me, I'm Foreign" ...?
Due to a clerical error Rocko may possibly be deported. And maybe 'jerks' is a bit strong, because I still hanged around lot of them for the most part. I will say
inconsiderate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Magic_(film)
Ooh, like that?
Never seen it, but going off the tagline ... yes?
