Zero Blogs: Not so Harmless Villain · 5:16pm May 28th, 2015
We all know them. We've all seen them. The villains that no one takes seriously. Either they're too hammy, too ineffectual, or too short-sighted to be dangerous. Characters like the Box Ghost (beware), Dr. Doofensmirtz, or in our case the Diamond Dogs. Sure, they have the potential to be dangerous, but they'd usually end up thwarting themselves instead of needing a hero to do so.
If you ask anyone to rank their favorite mlp villains, from favorite to least favorite, Sunset Shimmer's demon form (Searing) is usually dead last. Mainly due to only appearing in the climax, having a evil plan that smashed right through the suspension of disbelief (using twenty brainwashed teenagers to conquer an entire nation will fall flat as soon as Cadance uses the Crystal Heart), and being anticlimactically defeated in less than two minutes. By contrast, the Dazzlings were there at the beginning, had a much more dangerous powerset, and spent the whole movie three steps ahead of the Rainbooms. As such, they were much better received.
When I decided to put Searing in Shine, I admit to needing to chew on her for a while. Even though she only appears in one chapter, I had to figure out how to establish her confrontation with Sunset. Here, since it's an inner turmoil conflict, the battle is more verbal than physical; Searing tries to convince Sunset to turn back and then becomes violent upon being rejected.
But if she was to appear in the flesh again, either in the source material or in one of my works, what would I have to do to make her a legitimate threat?
Let's see what we have to work with.
Flight: Twilight and apparently Sunset can already do that. So not much of an edge.
Claws: Great for slashing and grabbing, especially since Twilight's not very good with her hands.
Fire attacks: Got a lot of mileage here. You have fireballs, fire breath, ring of fire, giant sphere of fire, and ground eruptions.
Mind control: I doubt she could use it to subdue the bearers, but it would be useful for a psychic attack a la Gorilla Grodd.
And I suppose you could add a stronger manipulation of magic too. Maybe the problem is the mind not the matter.
Anyway, as always let me know what you think. How would you make Searing more dangerous as a villain?
Searing wasn't more dangerous than Glimmer... I'd say that she's the weakest of the villains. But Sunset is still my favorite.
Most of my ideas for Searing would probably require the movie to have an age bump and possibly lose the whole high school bolt on it had when being made. Out of the villains I've seen in the MLP series, probably the biggest threats of the group have been Discord and Tirek followed by Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis, Chrysalis' personal threat being lessened some by the fact she had a horde do most of the heavy lifting after the reveal and zapping Celestia, who was probably restraining ninety-odd percent of her power, but she still did a fair amount of damage overall.
With regards to Sunset and Searing, I think the two main problems are somewhat interlinked. Firstly Sunset's more a school bully than anything, both due to the fact the human world has no magic and that Hasbro, or whoever, decided to compete with things like Monster High. In and of itself, that actually weakened her because she spent too much time being overbearing and not enough being actually legitimately threatening. If the writers had taken hints from how characters like Lex Luthor, David Xanatos and Magneto are written, it would have made more sense for her to be a less laughable and less obvious threat, but more defined threatening overall.
The second part is the use of Searing herself. She's supposed to be end-game, meaning a lot more powerful than Sunset, but between lack of time, lack of minions and lack of actual threatening attacks, she loses out on a lot. We really should have seen more of Searing's style coming through in Sunset, which is where the major link is. Sunset's too in your face petty, not enough world killer to really take seriously next to the other MLP heavies.
Searing herself is pretty much a variant of Nightmare made human in that all she really seems to be is a colour change and a size boost on Sunset. Making her more unique in herself, possibly giving her more interesting abilities would have helped there. It would have also helped to have her, instead of simply lobbing one fireball at Twilight and the others, have her do more in an attempt to take them down, but do it more subtly. For one thing, the Fall Formal should have (budget needs not withstanding) roughly two hundred to twelve hundred students potentially around, along with up to two hundred staff. Having more of them on screen when things went down and having more of them on Shimmer's side and turned into minor demons or being chased around and subverted would have made her seem more threatening, particularly if they were then used instead of left standing around doing bupkiss. It'd also make sense that Searing, since she seems to be a fire elemental demon, would use flames to block exits, forcing the school populace together where her minions can grab them. Going along with that, maybe more of a real fight between Twilight and Sunset before Sunset gets the Element, and maybe before the human five trigger, Twi is the first to go super form and clash, actually with a physical and magical battle along with one of wills where they're claiming and purging the 'bystanders', with only a select few not being affected by lower tier things. (Cele, Luna and the human five being among that group). Maybe actually at one point have it so that their elements trigger through them fighting mind control, like Dash actually proving loyalty by refusing to harm a friend or trying to get one out of the way (or taking a hit for one).
Actually, going back to the minions thing a minute. It'd probably have been better if Sunset had five or six minions that aren't the twit twins, Snips and Snails, but actually people that can think and act by themselves and are actually capable of being nasty rather than simply being stupid and blinded by showy displays. Would make the end time more interesting if the mane six had to tackle an equal number of foes that are equally if differently capable.