A MLP FiM parody of TGWTG's 'To Boldly Flee'.
This is the sequel to my other story Equestrian Knights.
A year has passed since the events of Equestrian Knights, but now strange things are happening in Equestria. First, Prince Blueblood gets put under house arrest by an angry mare from his past, then Princess Luna shows up in his house speaking gibberish, some kind of cosmic portal is discovered in outer space, and strange 'anomalies' start appearing all over the land. After it all gets to be too much for the Prince, he once again calls upon his only friends, Trixie, Gilda, Lightning Dust, Dumbbell, Hoops, Score, Flim, Flam, Jet Set, Upper Crust, Iron Will, Surprise, and perhaps somepony else, for help. Together, they set out to figure out just what in the world is going on, and how to stop it before it’s to late. But they’ll have to be careful, because somepony out there doesn’t want them to succeed. Can our team of anti-heroes defy the odds and boldly hoof it to where no pony has hoofed it to before?
Can I do the prequel to Equestrian Knights, Kickflankia? I have to use the main cast of MLP for it though.
Gee I wonder if their house will get blown up?
4340927 Sure.
"That fifty shades of grey was also a lie. It had nothing to do with the color grey!"
The problem is, after four seasons, there are simply too many
Oh boy I hope they use the improbability drive more often, I want to see what else they turn into.
4537639 You got that right
Well I'm not entirely sure Winry knows how to assemble a hyperdrive, but hey it's good to see her in this story.
I wonder what will happen when Winry/Sunset builds a grenade similar to the thermal detonator.
An excellent, but oddly disappointing story.
While the rouges gallery of MLP explore space, I am left wondering just why Rarity is suing B.B years after the gala - and why the courts felt the need to impose a humiliating and disproportionate punishment prior to sentencing.
Also, I cannot see Rarity acting in such a manner.
Of course, I am writing the initial portion of the review with the assumption that this is not some sort of strange meta-story that will suddenly make perfect sense later down the road when it is complete.
But if it is, good on you, and I look forward to it.
4666058 Firstly, I'd like to thank you for leaving such a well detailed comment on my story. I'm not getting very many comments on this story, so it brightens my day to see yours.
Second, have you read the prequel to this story, Equestrian Knights? If you haven't, you might want to go back and check that out. It might clear up a few of the questions you have about this story.
You see, my favorite characters in any story are the antiheroes (characters who aren't evil, but they aren't 'good guys' either), like Seto Kiaba from Yugioh, Vegita from DragonballZ, Bulk and Skull from Power Rangers, and Jayne from Firefly/Serenity. That's why I'm using the 'rouges gallery' as you call them of MLP as the main characters of this story. They're my favorite characters in the entire show, and I just really wanted a story or two about them where, for once, they get to be the heroes. Also, to be honest, I don't really care for the mane six that much. They're just too 'goody two shoes' for my taste, and the show makes them all out to be too 'perfect' then they actually are.
Anyway, thank you again for your comment, and I hope you continue to enjoy this story. I look forward to hearing more from you.
Well we know that Lightning Dust is going to be this story's Darth Snob.
4759126 Actually, I got the idea for the labyrinth from Yugioh. The pharaoh's soul room.
img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090521211428/yugioh/images/d/da/Dark_Yugi%27s_soul_room.jpg
Wow. I thought that would be a dead giveaway.
So is Celestia going to throw hot coffee in Lightning Dust's face?
4712978
Funny, I thought Gilda was supposed to be Snob?
Am I the only one who commented?
That was awesome
5163547 Thank you. I'm glad you like this story.
In Lethal Aurora Mage's only Halloween special "A Lethal Halloween". Lethal Aurora can just leap out of Mage's body, decapitate Mage, AND ACTUALLY EXIST OUTSIDE OF MAGE'S BODY!? When all who know a bit about the two characters know that if Mage dies, Lethal dies as well. That makes NO SENSE MAGE!
In the second part to Friendship is Magic, when the mane six went into the forest and encounter the trees with the scary faces, Pinkie didn't really have to do anything. They're just trees with scary faces! They're weren't alive or even growling at them, they just stood there, menacingly!
So, I liked Equestrian Knights. It wasn’t perfect, mind you; there were a number of spelling errors, I think the number of characters in the story should’ve been cut down, and it probably went on a little longer than necessary. But on the whole, it was a pretty good story with a lot of good humor that earned a place in my Favorites. I mention this because I realize I never left a comment saying I liked the story on its story page, so I figured I might as well do that here. So I was interested in a sequel, though unfortunately it fell into the trap of me putting it on “Read It Later” and then forgetting about it. But I rediscovered it very recently, and luckily this had recently finished by that point. So I just read through the whole thing.
Unfortunately, I thought this one was a significant step down (I also thought To Boldly Flee was a big step down from Suburban Knights; not sure if that’s a coincidence or not). I kind of wish I had been reading along while it was published, because there’s a whole lot of comments I had about it along the way.
Now, I didn’t watch all of To Boldly Flee. I saw I think the first two videos and was kind of bored with it and never finished it. So maybe some things I’m criticizing are from To Boldly Flee, though in that case maybe that’s a sign it should have been adjusted for this story. At any rate, I’m going to try to review this story as its own entity.
I’ll start with what I think is the biggest and most blatant problem with the story: Celestia’s representation. She seems really out of character. And I can’t even really say it works as a parody because it doesn’t seem to be actually parodying anything about her. If I was trying to parody Celestia in a non-AU fic, I’d do something like make fun of her general uselessness in a crisis, not by forcing her into this weird role of wanting to brainwash everyone. It’s not an exaggeration, it’s not a deconstruction, it’s just a blatant changing of character.
But at least this might have worked if it were suitably played for comedy, which unfortunately it isn’t (on the contrary, it’s treated quite seriously). But even more problematic and almost impossible to play for comedy is the forced retcon that Celestia inadvertently created the Changelings when trying to force friendship onto the flutterponies and then brainwashed Luna into becoming Nightmare Moon to cover it up. That’s actually some pretty serious and dark stuff.
And this brings us to a much bigger issue this causes. All this contrasts way too much with the whacky crazy comedy that’s in the rest of the story. It is possible to combine comedy with seriousness, but that’s generally with more typical comedy, not the kind of off the wall comedy this story frequently indulges in, which makes the far more serious parts feel completely out of place. Too many times when I read what could have been a funny joke, it fell flat because of the serious nature of other parts of the story. And then the whole thing gets a kind of bittersweet ending with Celestia and Luna getting killed at the end, again in way too much contrast to the craziness of the comedy. This sort of dark content doesn’t work in a story where you have crazy comedy like Sunset becoming convinced she’s Winry from FMA or the computer somehow requiring you know French to make it work or where the main McGuffin is actually called a "plot hole."
Equestrian Knights worked because it was a zany comedy the whole way through. Yes, it took a more serious turn towards the end, but even then I don’t remember it ever getting so serious it worked against itself. Nor did it basically rewrite a character’s personality just to make them the villain. This story, on the other hand, really hurt itself with the dissonance.
I really didn’t get what the purpose of changing Celestia’s character so dramatically was. Was it to make there be an antagonist? You could’ve used another villain; heck, if there weren't any good ones left, you could bring back Sombra and/or Chrysalis from the previous story. Okay, fine, they died in the previous story, but they could’ve been revived somehow. They could’ve easily taken the role of the antagonists (instead of forced friendship they could’ve just been trying to use the power of the plot hole to take over the world) with little trouble. So why write a character in such an OOC fashion and unbalance the story’s tone just to make Celestia the antagonist?
Apparently the reason for this is, according to the author’s note in the final chapter:
The phrasing is a little unclear here; I’m not sure if you’re saying you wanted Celestia revealed for the corrupt ruler she is because you think she’s a corrupt ruler in the show or if you just don’t like her character and thus wanted to see her revealed as a corrupt ruler.
If it’s the former, the story doesn’t really do that. It just makes her act different than she did in the show and throws in a bunch of completely invented backstory to make her unlikable. That’s not a demonstration of her being corrupt in the show; that’s just changing her character. If it’s the latter, then it’s still not good because it’s just turning a character into someone else just because you don’t like them.
And that decision REALLY harmed the story. Even ignoring the fact that I find the representation problematic in and of itself, it also caused the problematic tonal shifts I made reference to, having an adverse effect on the story in total. I really can’t stress enough just how much I felt this hurt the story.
Even if you absolutely needed to have Celestia be the antagonist, there’s much better ways to go about it than the story did. You could’ve made her be obsessed with friendship and getting along to humorously absurd levels and play it all for laughs rather than drama. Think the Buddy Bears in Garfield & Friends. That would be a lot more funny and fit in with the rest of the story rather than the all-too-serious characterization and plot she was used for.
I still think it would have been best for the story if you used a different antagonist entirely, but even if you had to have it be Celestia, it could’ve been done much better.
There were some other suggestions/commenrts I had. This is where I wish I had read along and could’ve made note of them in multiple comments rather than lumping them all together, but…
Rarity getting Blueblood put under house arrest didn’t really make much sense. It could have worked if this simply took place after The Best Night Ever, but this being a sequel to Equestrian Knights (in which Blueblood saves Rarity) makes her actions implausible. The only reason it seems to be there is because that was in To Boldly Flee, but while it made some sense there, it doesn’t make sense here because it’s so forced. And then that plot point doesn’t really even amount to much of anything, making me even more confused as to its inclusion.
The gag with everyone pointing out plot holes late in the story worked at first, but it just went on for too long. This also had the problem of meaning you had to come up with more alleged plot holes, and some of them seemed to be pretty big stretches to me and could’ve easily been answered. If the weaker ones were cut, it would’ve been improved and also been more funny due to not belaboring the point.
I mentioned how in Equestrian Knights, a problem was the overly large cast. That’s also a problem here. I think it really should have been cut down. I don’t really know why Iron Will was around; he worked fine as a gag when he didn’t want to come, and that bit with the play was funny. But then he gets brought along later and… I don’t really remember him doing much of anything. So why bring him when you gave an explanation for him not coming? I also can’t think offhand of anything Flim or Flam really contributed. Jet Set and Upper Crust at least did have a story of sorts (the pregnancy), but honestly that was so irrelevant to anything else in the story I think they could have been left out too. Speaking of problems I had with Equestrian Knights that apply here as well, I feel this story should have been a bit shorter than it was as well. And it probably could've used an editor due to a number of typos, but it wasn't too bad in that area.
There were some other comments I had I had, but this is probably too long as it is so I'll try to wrap things up.
Now, for as much as I’ve criticized, it isn’t all bad; some of the jokes were pretty funny, if unfortunately neutered due to the tonal shifts. But the bottom line is that what I think hurt this story a lot is the problematic contrast between the off the wall humor and the rather dramatic and sometimes rather dark plot. And a huge source for that is Celestia’s characterization. I know that said characterization was apparently the reason you wrote this story, but the basic result in my eyes was that an extremely promising story suffered from forcing it in.
5342746 Thank you for your comment. I really appreciate your input. I always look forward to comments that really analyze and critique my work. They're so much more interesting than just plain 'This is great' or 'Awesome job' comments.
I know I have a lot of spelling errors. I try to go back and correct them all, but I still end up missing quite a bit. Sorry about that. I'd get an editor, but I don't know where to find one.
I do agree with you on some things. I was trying to make the story comical while also trying to convey some serious messages to the readers, but I guess I just don't really know how to balance it well. Guess that's something I'll have to figure out for future stories.
Rarity getting Blueblood under house arrest was intended to be another anomaly created by the plot hole. The plot hole was what caused Rarity to become obsessed with getting vengeance on Blueblood, and was inspired by many fanfics I've read where Rarity is uncharacteristically obsessed with wanting to get vengeance on Blueblood. I tried to drop subtle hints of this fact throughout the story, like in the part where the characters were listing off things that didn't make sense:
But I guess I didn't make it clear enough. My apologies.
As for making Celestia the antagonist, you are correct that my personal dislike for the character is a big part of the reason why I chose to make Celestia the villain in this story. I suppose I might have made her a bit out of character, but my intention was to make it that the way Princess Celestia acts on the show is all just an act she puts on while in public, and secretly she is the monster she is in this story when none of her subjects are looking, much like Father Cornello from Fullmetal Alchemist, one of my inspirations for this story.
But honestly, I really do believe Celestia would cast spells on ponies to make them friendly with each other, and my reason for believing this is because she is perfectly okay with Princess Cadence doing pretty much the exact same thing on the show, only with love instead of friendship. And this was always something that bugged me ever since I watched that episode 'A Canterlot Wedding'. Using magic to effect someone's state of mind without their consent, even if your intentions are good, is just wrong, and anyone who would allow that is also in the wrong.
Also, have we ever seen Celestia be a good sister to Luna on the show? After Luna got back from the moon, Celestia apparently never filled Luna in about modern Equestria, and just let Luna go out in public on Nightmare Night without knowing times have changed. I'm convinced Celestia is a terrible sister, and I think there's a possibility Celestia might not have told the truth about the whole Nightmare Moon thing, seeing as she locked Luna away for a thousand years when clearly the elements could have just simply turned her back to normal instead.
Like I said, I always wanted to write a story where Celestia gets taken down a peg, but perhaps you are right and there could have been better ways of making Celestia the antagonist. However I'm unfamiliar with the Buddy Bears from Garfield & Friends. I never really watched that show. But personally I'm satisfied with my way, and whether Celestia is corrupt, or just lazy and useless, either way I think Equestria will be better off without Celestia sitting on the throne.
I suppose I could have cut down the number of plot holes characters pointed out a bit. It's just, being a bit of a critic myself, things that don't make sense in a story drive me nuts, and I personally believe that the most important thing in any story is the plot making sense while still being entertaining. But I suppose you're right. I could have shortened the list.
Thank you again for your review of my story, and I look forward to hearing from you again in my future fanfics.
... Hallowed are the Ori.
In To Boldly Flee, why did Mechakara just trap Linkara in the closet instead of killing him? Mechakara's made it pretty clear that he wants Linkara dead.
How did the Rainbow Powers activate in Rainbow Rocks?
(I have nothing else.)