Soapbox time! We've got some interesting opinions this week, so hopefully you all can find something fun to discuss with these. As always, we are open for submissions on these. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.
As always, these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD.
Have some headlines:
- Opaline Needs Real Punishment for Her Abuse of Misty
- Why Ship Protagonist with Antagonist
- Discussing Queen Haven
And go read them below!
Opaline Needs Real Punishment for Her Abuse of Misty
By: Horserus
Does anyone else get some seriously awful feels from the way Misty is treated by Opaline? I don't know about you guys, but one of my very good friends was in a relationship like that for almost 5 years. He'd constantly string her along with rewards while being horribly abusive. She was convinced he loved her because despite telling her she was useless in one sentence, he'd buy her something flashy and tell her she was everything to him in the next. The amount of times she came to me crying puts a pit in my stomach even thinking about it and her self esteem still hasn't recovered. I see a lot of that in the relationship between Opaline and Misty, but even to a worse degree. Their entire relationship seems to be built on lies about what happened in the past, and she apparently doesn't know anything else.
I really hope there is some kind of serious punishment for Opaline in the end. Emotional abuse isn't punished nearly enough in our society and this manipulative alicorn asshole deserves to lose hard.
Discussing Queen Haven
By: Glistening Dawn
The fifth generation of My Little Pony has been going for a little while, and to be honest I have become quite fond of it. The characters are a factor I particularly enjoy, for a variety of reasons. While discussing my favorite main character later might be fun, for now I’d like to look at Queen Haven.
To be blunt, I think she is the best parent character in the whole of MLP. And that includes Generation 4.
Family bonds have always been one of the strongest attributes of the series, but parent and children’s bonds haven’t been handled as much. The Mane 6’s parents barely appear for the most part of G4, and while it could potentially be controversial to say G5 has G4 beat in this way, I think Queen Haven just exceeds them all.
The main issue, in fairness, is just that G4 barely even tried. Even the fan favorites, the Apple parents, hardly show up. We don’t even get to see them really be parents, barring one flashback and word of mouth. The other various parents get maybe 1 or 2 episodes each, of varying quality. They don’t really have as much character, no matter how much we’re told or how heart wrenching The Perfect Pear might be.
G5 mostly falls into the same thing. Argyle has maybe a whopping 8 minutes of content on estimate, and Phyllis is unenjoyable at best to me at least.
But Queen Haven manages to be the exception. She’s very relevant to the series, and I like seeing how the show balances her royal and parental duties. She is definitely a flawed parent, she isn’t always able to read her daughters perfectly and certainly makes mistakes. She told a huge lie to the Pegasi for years and was a notable obstacle to Sunny’s quest. But her flaws are outweighed by her pros, and she is easily the roundest parent by a landslide. She completely adores both of her daughters, legitimately wants what’s best for both, and respects their interests. She allows Zipp to pursue investigations, listens to every podcast Pipp makes, and was notably the first major leader to accept peace and unity. She makes mistakes but is still respected and a figure her daughters and their friends love and trust.
As such, I think she’s just a more interesting parent character. I enjoy seeing her together with her daughters, as all of them grow as characters together. And she’s still a character of intrigue as well, I would like to know what happened in the past. What happened to her husband? She’s clearly a loved ruler, but did she have trouble adjusting to solo rule? There’s plenty of things to explore with her, and she’s already been developing well as a character. She’s an entertaining and the roundest parent in MLP. I fully understand people might like G4 better and that’s perfectly fair. But when it comes to parents, I favor G5.
Why Ship Protagonist with Antagonist
By: Double C
What we like about MLP is how each villain is dealt with from being reform to killed off like other kid shows. There are even some who are more bad influences that serve as foils for the hero’s to teach others not to follow and fall for. However through the years from Friendship is Magic to Make Your Mark, there are some fans that do an unconventional method and that are shipping good characters with bad characters. I understand that romance can help someone change to be good but unfortunately some never change and will turn toxic or worse the good person would turn bad.
Applejack with Flim: To all fans we know Flim and Flam is the main antagonist to Applejack and her family since The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. Despite their feuds, some fans had shipped Applejack with Flim which is called flimjack. I guess it’s because they both have apple cutie marks I really don’t know. I’ve read many fan work of these two with almost all involve Flim working at Sweet Apple to make extra money while his brother Flam handles other affairs and soon Flim started changing into a better pony than started falling in love with Applejack. However flimjack would never workout for varies reasons. The most obvious is both hate each other since Applejack is honest while Flim and his brother are both con artist and will most likely never change.
Izzy with Sprout: Sprout has been an excellent first villain when Gen 5 started. It was a surprised to see him again doing community service in Make Your Mark and hopefully will see more of his road of redemption. One thing that some fans think can help him is Izzy. What fans like about izzysprout is that Izzy’s kind and curious personality would help him of his prejudice against the other pony races. But there would be two problems for this ship to even out work. His mom Phyllis Cloverleaf would totally be against it and would agree since he’s still a momma’s boy. Also he would see Izzy a tad crazy even though they are both loud and energetic in their own ways.
So in my opinion, seeing heroes and villains being paired by fans in any franchise is strange and even the creators would think the same way if they were interest. But I will not criticize too much because it their opinion except if it involves Twilight being shipped with a villain. What is your opinion about heroes being shipping with villains in Friendship is Magic and Mark Your Mark?
