Dakari-King Mykan and Starfleet Magic Cleanup

It definatly dosen't fit since readers seem to like the story despite the sweet ending.

Is it me, or do a lot of these Flat Character entries in his work seem kind of snarky?

this entry from Fanfic.Cyborg Davis for example:

• Flat Character:
  • Davis angsts over Kari and becomes a cyborg. That's it.
    • Cyborg Davis is a total jerk when the concept of love is brought up. That's it.
  • Veemon ish Davish's partner and speaksh with 'sh' shoundsh as opposhed to 's' shoundsh. That'sh it.
  • Yami Ninji is evil and runs a rival noodle company. That's it.
  • Guardromon is treated horribly by his boss. That's it.
  • Izzy is smart. That's it.
  • TK and Kari are Happily Married and therefore must suffer. That's it.
  • The rest of the DigiDestined are there. That's literally their entire personality.

Flat Character might become def only soon anyway, so I'd just chop them.

Now that he's been released, do we call him?

If we do, we'll have to make sure he follows all the rules.

Yeah, let's call him here.

~Dakari King Mykan:

This is a cleanup thread dedicated to your works and works based on your works (like any AU starfleet fics). We know you can't touch YMMV stuff, but we thought you might be interested in helping us rewrite or remove any overtly negative and bashy tropes on the main work pages, as well as to clear out any unneeded bashing on the other pages. We've already started removing tropes that refer to Starfleet as the story's villains, for instance.

Very well.. I am here...

We will address issues, but only one at a time, and not so-so many in one day please (I am rather busy with my fics and vids you know)

Hey, contribute on your own schedule mate, drop in when you can if you want to pitch in. If you're busy, no big, we'll still be here doing cleanup as well.

Just know that you can't really control the speed or rate at which cleanup gets done. You can just choose whether or not you want to participate at any given time.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 15th 2022 at 6:05:26 AM

Okay, guys. There's one example about the main protagonists I cut out.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Characters.MyBravePonyStarfleetMagicSpacePonies#edit33133506

Do you think it's a good start? (To be honest, I put it up a while ago.)

Yes, you were right to do that...

What they turn out to be in practice. They think that committing genocide on supposedly Always Chaotic Evil races (like the Insectos) and forcibly converting other races to have their body type (like the Equestrians) are okay simply because they're "better than them". And when anyone has words that goes up against the Space Ponies (most notably Ace Ray), they're more than happy to either arrest them or send them to an asylum.

-Firstly: They don't think genocide is a good thing, and like all heroes and forces, they only resort to it if they absolutely must— when there's no other way to stop them

-Turning the Equestrians humanoid. Well, being humanoid is actually better than being on all fours. It's way to improve yourself, and be able to do more than you ever could before. So why should it be judged as bad?

-Ace Ray was arrested for committing felonies (Assault, battery, public rage, disturbance of the peace, openly slandering the crowned heads, and assaulting officers.) He was "proven" to be mentally unstable, and unwell, which is why he was sent to the asylum.

Yeah, that's a good cut, it's based on audience interpretation more than actual authorial intent.

I have been *constantly* explaining that to those people over and over, but like all bad-tropers, they refuse to care and are only in this for the lulz.

Anyway, Next Idom please...

You have to understand, Mykan, these pages have been up for ages. Our standards weren't so strict back then. You'll see similar stuff on things like My Immortal, actually. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be irritated, but just to consider that a lot of the people who added bashing about the work might not even be on TVT anymore, and that it's more productive to just focus on the cleanup than Complaining About Complaining.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 15th 2022 at 6:21:31 AM

Understood...

Another example from Fanfic.The End Of Ends:

• Hypocrite:
  • Beast Boy calls out the other Titans for not being grateful to him for all the nice things he's done but he himself never shows gratitude to them for taking him in, being his friends, and trying to figure out what's troubling him, going so far as to ignore all that in favour of all the moments they were mad at him.
  • His biggest point of contention is that he's upset about things changing... Not only does he cause almost irreversible changes as Count Logan, but even tries to change the status quo of his own team by running away.

Do we still not have a YMMV item for unintentionally making characters hypocrites?

Nope, we don't.

I'll just remove these example for now.

• Evil Is Petty: Count Logan. Being dumped by one girl and thinking everyone's against you are somewhat petty motives for destroying all of existence.

I forgot, isn't Evil Is Petty supposed to be acting evil in the small things too, not subjectively petty motives for commitying evil? Also, I'm in the process of removing all the DP potholes on the page since that's actually describing Karmic Overkill, which an entry is already on the YMMV page.

Speaking of the YMMV page:

• Ron the Death Eater: It's hard to tell, but the author was aiming for this portrayal of the Titans, even though Beast Boy's Wangst, stalking, descent into outright villainy, and eventual death are behavior commonly associated with characters who get this treatment... And this is his Creator's Pet.

I don't think it counts if the author unintentionally made him an evil jerk in the process of making everyone else seem like a Jerkass.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 15th 2022 at 8:49:21 AM

Fanfic.My Brave Pony Starfleet Magic

• Palette Swap:
  • A particularly lazy example; as seen on the author's YouTube video on the characters, as the cast consist of just recolours of Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Scootaloo. Made even more obvious by the fact that, with the exception of Lightning Dawn, the author never actually bothered to recolour their eyes.
    • Heck, Rhymey isn't even a recolour; just Fluttershy with a horn, clothing, yellow tail, mane and different hairstyle.
  • invoked Starla Shine is, according to recent videos, just a Rarity clone, but not invokedas shallow as the original. He has tried to cover this up by... slightly darkening Starla's coat, which he feels "ruins the design".

Oh boy... did this example really need Word Cruft and natter?

Taking Beast Boy in is one thing, and being his friends (for a time) is another, but when they start to show less love and respect towards him, those things are null and void...

A home means nothing if there is not love to go round...

The Titans were also never truly trying to find out what was bugging him, or even care that he was bothered; they ordered him to "Snap out of it" and "Get over it" just like that, without any regards to how hurt he feels. (No one likes to be commanded to move on, and cannot just get over something like that)

As for Things Changing— BB has a long and history with that subject. Every time things would change it would always affect him and his life... and it was always disastrous. (It kept taking things away from him... things he held dear... replaced with either nothing, or useless stuff he doesn't like and can't use)

Here are examples that I'm not quite sure of...

• Hypocrite:
  • Starfleet destroys Titan's minions (or, in the original, leaves them to die) on the grounds that they're evil, artificial beings. However, with the exception of Celesto, all Space Ponies are descended from artificial beings. And then there's Goldwin, a statue given life who's a protagonist.
  • In Ace Ray's debut chapter, Twilight told Spike it wouldn't be right to force the ex-Wonderbolt to think like others in order to cure his "attitude problem". Guess what happens in Ace Ray's second appearance (in the original version)? For extra hypocrisy points, Ace Ray trying to force his point of view on his sister Skye is treated as a bad thing, but Starfleet locking him up until he decides to submit to their philosophy is A-OK.

This also applies to the Space Ponies...

• Hypocrite: Practicing what they preach is a foreign concept to them.
  • They insist on making the Equestrian ponies drop terms like "everypony" for the sake of political correctness, because not everyone's a pony. Not only are they referred to as "original space ponies", but they also look down heavily on their Equestrian counterparts, which is the opposite of politically correct.
  • They happily criticize any aspect of other cultures that they don't agree with, but if anyone voices complaints about their culture, the complainers are looked down on as degenerate and wrong.
  • When a hero is the last member of a dying race, nearly everyone around them feels sorry for them (see all the times Lightning being the last living Harmonian is wheeled out for cheap sympathy points). When a villain is the last member of a dying race, Starfleet will kill them (or possibly send them to one of their Hellhole Prisons where they must serve multiple life sentences), thus rendering said villain's species extinct with Starfleet feeling absolutely no remorse.
  • Prior to the start of the fic, Starla's dad claimed that Starfleet is a group of violent, overly militant, Knight Templars with Black-and-White Insanity, and Starla, Lightning, and Krysta diss him for it. However, they've readily admitted that they think Violence is the Only Option, condemned entire species as evil while praising themselves and their allies as noble and innocent, committed genocide multiple times, dehumanize non-living enemies even when said enemies are shown to have personalities of their own, and incarcerated and tortured dissenters at least three times over the course of the series.
  • In the third chapter of the rewritten Season 1, Lightning suggests blowing up the Dark Planet with Titan on it, but dismisses the thought because, to quote the text, "Starfleet was not a murderous force. They couldn't go around blowing worlds up without good reason or cause." While they do bring down a few enemies through non-lethal means, they mostly don't display any particular reluctance to kill enemies they consider irredeemable (including Titan, ironically enough), and they actually chew Twilight out for having an issue with killing.
  • A particularly notable example is in season 3 where they don't go after Raven because she's potentially too strong for them to handle. Except she's pretty small potatoes compared to the likes of Titan before her, several villains afterward, and King Sombra in the same season, whom they fought with no hesitation. Additionally, she is an Equestrian, which has been stated several times to be incapable of matching the strength of even the weakest Space Pony.
    • Speaking of which, this decision led to the death of Twilight Sparkle. Despite the fact that they could have swooped in and fought like they did with all of the above-mentioned villains but chose not to, it's her that's at fault for not following orders not to go after Raven. Not the supposedly superior Space Ponies, no siree. Also, back in season 1, Abra-Kadabra and Lightning Dawn both stepped out of line to attack the villains at different points, and they didn't get so much as a slap on the wrist.
  • They called the Insectos genocidal, but by season 5, they've already canonically rendered at least one species - the Elixians - extinct, and by the end of season 5, the Insectos themselves become their second (known) victims.
  • They are furious at Tan Shi's misandry and proclaim that they truly care about gender equality. But looking at all of the times they dismiss a female character's suffering while crying rivers over a male character's suffering, look down on women for trying to act ladylike while not batting an eye at men for similar behavior, and being much quicker to reward male individuals for stepping out of line to help people, like Lightning and Abra, than with female individuals, like Twilight and Pinkie, it's very easy to see how Tan's points resonate more deeply with them than they realize.
    • In particular, certain individuals, like Lightning and Starla, have a track record of belittling any woman for offenses ranging from "being too silly" to "takes issue with their misbehavior", and the former even brushed away Cadance's grief over her lost brother in favor of his own tragic backstory, and seriously thought of hitting Twilight when they switched bodies and she complained that she can't control his powers.
  • In the seventeenth episode of the ninth season, they learn that, when settling disputes, Vistulans compete in a series of games and competitions, with losers getting banished and shunned. They consider this requirement of settling disputes to be a barbaric law, even before finding out what happens to the losers. However, in the third episode of the same season, Applejack and an Earth Pony named Apple Spice find out they're engaged to be married by a certain time and the contract cannot be changed at all. They must get married, although they don't want to and Applejack's parents, the ones who arranged the marriage, changed their minds or they will be penalized according to the law.
  • Lightning Dawn calls Specter a coward for attacking him while he is a child. However, Starfleet fights only when they are sure they can win.
  • In the Season X episode, "Faith of the Blind", Starfleet reprimands the Blisstonians for thinking that their belief can heal their planet...despite the fact that belief was what brought back Equestria and Unicornicopia and combined them into one planet way back in the first season.

...well, I get that most of it is more at home in YMMV, but I'm not sure if we should cut everything out... what do you think, Mykan?

I'd just say cut it until we have a YMMV item for audience interpreted hypocricy.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 15th 2022 at 9:26:21 AM

Really? Some points seem kind of legit to me, like the artificial ponies thing...

Wish I knew how to cast the red border box

• Evil Is Petty: Count Logan. Being dumped by one girl and thinking everyone's against you are somewhat petty motives for destroying all of existence.

It's not just the dumping, BB has had a horrible and rough life ever since he was 5. Finally, after all this time (and yes, people are against him in the story) he finally just snapped (Anyone would) and thus he was cursed by the book and ordered to destroy all things whether he wanted to or not. (The whole revenge thing was just his insanity)

• Ron the Death Eater: It's hard to tell, but the author was aiming for this portrayal of the Titans, even though Beast Boy's Wangst, stalking, descent into outright villainy, and eventual death are behavior commonly associated with characters who get this treatment... And this is his Creator's Pet.

BB was driven to his "wangsty" by everyone being cold and harsh with him (Pushing him over the edge) and yes... I was aiming for making it look like it was more the Titans fault, which I did...

BB didn't choose to become Logan, the book sensed his rage and cursed him. And what was it that drove BB over the edge...? Everyone being bad with him. The heroes quite literally created their own villains, and they are indeed largely to blame for all the chaos and destruction.

I didn't mean cut all the examples, just the ones that the narrative and the characters don't call out or have their actions portrayed as in the right for.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 15th 2022 at 9:30:27 AM