My Thoughts on Fucking Things Up.

There is a lot that we take for granted in today’s world. We are so used to seeing the most basic things work out okay that we forget they are there, so we never acknowledge them. It’s like we take the merit of what works fine and without a hitch because our attention is focused on what we think doesn’t work and needs fixing. We want the things that don’t work to work so well and to our will that we forget to appreciate the things that are already working well. And this isn't so obvious as it is in the entertainment world.

The reason why I am touching upon this subject comes from the reaction people had to the most recent My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode, “Castle Mane-ia”, which was deemed by a few of the community’s reviewers as flat, simplistic, wasted, not really all that interesting, and other lovely big words that are just there to make their soap box bigger. I acknowledge that as their opinion and I respect it, but it’s coming from a place where I think it’s doing more damage than it is doing good. Analyzing something is good, when there is something to analyze. Just because you don’t have anything to analyze doesn’t mean what you are watching is trite.

Try get some substance out of this. Come on, I dare you.

But I am getting out of topic here.

What I mean to say with this long-winded intro is that people disregard the most basic stuff on the movies and TV shows they watch. They fail to notice how, at their core, these movies and TV shows are well done in that they don’t fuck up what they are about. In this day and age, where Hollywood will throw twenty million dollars to two asshole man-children to make a shit and piss gross out comedy, to do something and not fuck it up is quite a feat.

Let’s take a movie that was released this year as an example, Pacific Rim.

I feel the fanboys sharpening their pitchforks.

I liked Pacific Rim alright, and I thought it was a good movie. It did have a lot of problems though. There was too much dialogue, the characters didn’t get enough development and were just one-dimensional cardboard cutouts of Godzilla movie stereotypes, and it wasted a few concepts that could have been really cool to see fully fleshed out. However I won’t deem Pacific Rim to be a bad movie because, at its core, it does what it’s supposed to do really well. It’s a movie about giant robots punching giant monsters and that part was done perfect! The action was well shot, there was no shaky cam, the robots all looked different and interesting, the monsters all looked cool and had awesome powers, and the fight scenes were varied and very imaginative. I am happy to ignore all the bad stuff because Guillermo del Toro made a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters, and in the important parts he didn’t fuck it up!

This image here to segue into the next paragraph.

So how does all this tie up with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Well, like I always say, this is just the way I perceive the show and how I take enjoyment out of it, so if someone else sees it differently then that’s okay and that’s their opinion. The way I see Friendship is Magic is as a show that’s very light in story but really strong in character and setting. When you get down to it the plot of each episode is downright one-liner simplistic, and the real conflict and drama comes from throwing these really well developed, deep and complex characters into it to see how they will get out of it. The characters are the biggest strength of this series, and one of the biggest reasons for it to be so successful. If this show is here today is not because it had a story to rival that of a Christopher Nolan film, but because it has really good characters that allow us to see these classic stories from a completely new perspective. So just having the characters be in character is enough for me to give each episode a very positive rating, and we all know how easy it is to fuck this up! I know I keep beating on a dead horse with this, but look at any episode written by Merriwether Williams and you will noticed how wrong the characters can be portrayed. This doesn’t necessarily hurt the entertainment value of the episodes, but they feel polluted, and somewhat wrong.

Mmm, what smells like "Spongebob"?

That’s why I give kudos to every new writer that comes to the show with an episode that doesn’t fuck it up. Corey Powell had an amazing debut with “Sleepless in Ponyville” and that was thanks to her not fucking up the characters and the way they interact with each other. She even went a bit further and expanded upon their personalities, and gave them mare character traits, like Scootaloo being Rainbow Dash’s protege or Princess Luna being able to walk into ponies’ dreams. Josh Haber did also have a great debut in the show, and even though he didn’t give the characters anything new at least he didn’t fuck up their established personalities! He kept the characters in character, gave them great interactions between each other, and it all felt really natural and organic. That is such a little thing to ask just to keep the characters in character, and nobody ever fucking notices until there comes an episode where a character does something it’s not supposed to do, and people start screaming “OUT OF CHARACTER! OUT OF CHARACTER!” like a bunch of whiny unfed babies!

"Aww, my dream walking powers ruin your head-canon? You are so cute."

We have to appreciate the hard work of the writers, especially newcomers that step in after three seasons of character developing, world building and fans creating their own head-canons. Just to keep the core of something intact and portray it properly and fairly is very important and it should be worthy of admiration. Nobody can deny that it is a great feat in a time where people can wipe their asses on a piece of paper and at least have someone to tell them that is brilliant! And then give them twenty million dollars for that idea and call it “Epic Movie”.