Welcome to the last week of my Month of Negatives. While doing this ‘Month of Positives’ and ‘Month of Negatives’ has been fun and neatly organised, I do not feel I will be doing it again. Why will I not be doing it again? Because after writing about pairings I wanted the following blog to continue discussing pairings or I had a sudden interest in MLP games ideas in which I think it would be fun to debate which video game company would be best to develop one. Basically, I found myself being motivated to write about certain subjects which I did not because I wanted to keep to the schedule. Anyway, before I move onto my Fanfiction progress and then my bottom ten least favourite characters of MLP:FiM, I would like to explain something about the character list, namely, that the characters on the list will only be ones who canonically have names or have generally recognised fan-names, so despite how much I hate nearly every one of the teenage dragons in ‘Dragon Quest’ you won’t see them here.
Now for the Fanfiction progress which I will go over quickly as I have different, fanfic related discussion for this week’s segment. My progress on ‘Magnetism’ is not what I’d call great, 4-5 pages, but it’s a lot better than the previous two weeks. As I write though I get the sense that the second chapter of this fanfic will probably be the weakest of the eight, partly because as I write it I’m constantly feeling eager to start chapter 3 which will have some of my favourite moments that I’ve thought of for the story. Anyway, as I mentioned last week, I would like to get the opinion of my small numbered blog followers on the current summary of ‘Magnetism’ which is as follows; ‘When sorting through a horde of artefacts Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash accidentally activate the magical powers of a pair of bracelets which force the wearers to be in constant physical contact with one another. Stuck together until Twilight manages to find a way to remove the bracelets, the shy and timid pegasus must cope with remerging feelings, while the athletic and rash pegasus must cope with the various antics of a bunny rabbit out to get her.’ So this is the current summary, and yes, I have already implemented some of the ideas I received from Ugugg93 last week when he mistook the posting of the short summary for today’s long one but I still feel it could be better and such I would like to hear what you all think about it and ways you think it can be improved.
10) Daring Doo – Those of you familiar with my opinion on ‘Read it and Weep’ probably won’t find the listing of this character to be a surprise. I find her to be bland and I could never invest any interest in the character, leading me to not care about what happens to her. Really, the only thing I care about this character is her colour scheme.
9) Vinyl Scratch – What infuriates me about this character is her popularity, popularity unwarranted by a character who until the last episode of season 2 had a total screen time of four seconds. FOUR SECONDS! Also worth taking note of is that in those four seconds most of her face is obscured by her sunglasses, she has but one facial expression on her, and she never talks. The majority of other background characters are usually somewhat warranted in their popularity due to multiple appearances, wordless interactions with the main cast, and facial expressions and actions that present possible emotion and character traits but Vinyl Scratch has none of that.
8) Celestia – This will come as a surprise to one of my blogs readers in the fact that I have criticised Celestia many a time in the past and yet she is only at position number eight. To be fair, for a long time she was in the bottom three, managed to move up to bottom five, and after ‘A Canterlot Wedding’ managed to move out of that zone and into spot number eight.
Celestia is an immortal ruler of her country with seemingly no personality flaws, the power to raise both the sun and the moon, and is liked by everyone. Does that make you think Mary-Sue or is it just me? The character comes across as too perfect, she doesn’t have the emotional failing of her sister (Luna succumbing to her jealous emotions) and was apparently able to raise the moon no problem after her sisters defeat. She was also to wield the elements of harmony by herself, seemingly the strongest weapons in all of Equestria, on her own. There is nopony who dislikes her, and there has never been a case where somepony has disagreed with her (with exception to Luna but in that case she was evil). As far as more canonical fan depictions go she is also often casted in an enchantress role, and in cases such as ‘The Best Night Ever’ this does seem a fitting role, but then that is another reason I dislike her, I have never liked enchantress characters.
The reason why I have softened my dislike of this character is thanks to her failings in both parts of ‘A Canterlot Wedding’. In part 1, she was wrong about the fake Candence, and in part 2 she got beaten by Chrysalis showing she was not an overpowered god-like entity (they also had a good explanation for why someone as strong as Celestia lost to Chrysalis). In fact, if she had apologised to Twilight at the end of ‘A Canterlot Wedding’, instead of saying Twilight learned a lesson about trusting her instincts (this moral makes absolutely no sense given the episode, and why would Twilight, the one who was right the entire time, learn a lesson from being correct the entire time) she would have gone up all the way to spot number ten.
Overall I just dislike the character of Celestia and the role of her character. For me, such characters exist for only three reasons, for backstory, The Worf effect (check TV tropes for the explanation), and the “Did you just punch out Cthulhu?” trope (again, check TV tropes for the explanation). Though I will say, an episode where Princess Celestia learns a lesson and writes a friendship report to Twilight will certainly be an effective means to make me dislike the character less.
7) Twist – Surely, while I feel there is nothing about the characters personality to dislike, I find myself displeased with her character design and pained by her voice. I feel like they were trying too hard to make an adorkable character, and Twist is the result of this, a character without much substance and a voice that would simply be hard to understand if it didn’t sound so very painful. Many people state ‘The Cutie Mark Crusaders Song’ as being unbearable to listen to, my equivalent is the voice of Twist.
6) Snails – One of the first recurring male characters of the show, and he looks and sounds like this. To be fair, he does come across as seeming like someone with a mental handicap and this does deter most criticism, and his stupidity does lead to some frequent but below average humour. Ultimately though I am left wondering, what kind of talent does a snail cutie mark represent?
5) Philomena – I will give her this, she was funny, however she was a jerk who went too far in her desire for humour. Depending on how you interpret the character’s actions, and the reasoning behind them changes how you’ll see Philomena and though I can easily see someone arguing Philomena’s as a lack of choice (Fluttershy did take her away in the bird cage, and some of her reactions were simply the medication and medical methods failing on her) I see her trouble making and foolery as a matter of choice thus, if Philomena was ponified she would be the incarnation of the fandom’s Trollestia. I know she wanted some fun, but the moment Fluttershy began crying while holding Philomena’s ashes in her hooves is when you realise the phoenix took things too far.
4) Silver Spoon – With ‘Ponyville Confidential’ Diamond Tiara stepped up from being a bully to being a villain, Silver Spoon has not made that advancement and continues to play the role of the follower to Diamond Tiara in before episodes. Usually the assisting character has some quirk which makes them likable but Silver Spoon does not, she acts based upon Diamond Tiara and in turn doesn’t have much character herself (there was that one exception in ‘Family Appreciation Day’ but that strays her from development into an antagonistic character which the show really does not have enough of).
3) Hoops and Dumbbell – Just because a character is a bully does not mean they can’t have some depth to them…this is not one of those cases. Again, these characters have so little to contrast or even tell them apart that I once again have them sharing a spot, and other than offering backstory/development to the characters of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash they don’t serve any other purpose.
2) Snips – Think of the faults of Snails, stupid voice, stupid design, and just being plain stupid, but don’t do it to the extent in which humour may arise from it, and you have Snips. I find there is nothing interesting about this character, and he offers nothing in the comedy department either, he has also now been overshadowed by plenty of much more likable colt characters with much more interesting designs (Pipsqueak, Rumble, Featherweight, even that one chubby pony at the back of the class).
1) Owloysius – This pet feels like nothing more than a plot device, he exists so Spike could be jealous of something, and in turn made to look bad. The “who” joke has a slight dab of charm, but only towards the end of his debuting episode where it is overplayed to a comical fashion. Also, in one of the most WTF moments of the show, this owl is apparently able to take on a fully grown dragon, seriously undermining that race, and just overpowering a seemingly ordinary animal with seemingly little personality (at least in comparison to the other pets in the show).
Something I feel is worth mentioning for this list of disliked characters are those that could not be placed on the list due to my ruling against having characters who have no official/commonly regarded fan-name, and characters who were formerly on my bottom ten least favourite list but have managed to escape it’s clutches. Those of you familiar with my views on the episode ‘Dragon Quest’ will know that I hated the teenage dragons for their lack of depth and for being stereotypical jocks.Garble I find as a slight exception, but even he is close to being in my bottom ten, the other teenage dragons I did not consider due to a lack of consistent fan-names for them. Another group I’m not fond of is the royal guard, an army so pathetic, I seriously debate over who would win in a fight of Equestria’s royal guard and Goombas. One character formerly on my list and one who I’m still not overly fond of is Trixie. In fact she was even at one point in my bottom three though I soon found that almost the entirety of my dislike for her arose from her bizarre popularity that undermined several other characters. True, I still feel the other one-shot antagonists of Gilda and the Diamond Dog trio are better than her, and I still find Trixie’s voice annoying, but otherwise I like her canon personality and role, it is only when I consider fanon that she begins to reach levels of dislike rather than neutral zone. Another character, who for the briefest time I disliked enough to consider them my tenth least favourite character, is Big Mac, all because of ‘Ponyville Confidential’. His scolding of the Cutie Mark Crusaders still infuriates me, and my disdain of him would remain today if his appearance in the opening of ‘MMMystery on the Friendship Express’ hadn’t amused me so. I then went back and watched some clips he was featured in as well ‘Hearts and Hooves Day’ and ta-dah, he regained my liking.
Well, with nothing left to say concerning my least liked characters I believe this is a good point to end things. What will be here next week? Well, as the next season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has not started yet it means I still need to think of topics for discussion. Perhaps I will talk about game ideas or things I wish to see in the third season or future of MLP. Maybe I’ll go back to babbling about pairings, analyse the current state of a pairing like I once did for FlutterDash, another neat thing would be to list my favourite FlutterDash/OTP of your choice moments from the cartoon. A discussion on the antagonists would be a good one to have, I could always analyse the Brony community, or even share my thoughts on what I have seen of G1, and I have plenty of opinions concerning the possible character roster for Fighting is Magic. There are tons of things I could decide to discuss as next week’s topic, my one problem is deciding on one, the positive to this scenario is that I am unrestricted in what I choose to discuss. Whatever I end up discussing I hope you can all look forward to it and I hope you will all be able to enjoy it but until then, cheerio!
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