MLP FiM - 'Stranger Than Fan Fiction:' A Review

Yay! More ponies! I was ready for some new episodes.

Anyway...it's not hard to see where the writers got their inspiration for this particular episode. I have to wonder if the timing for airing the episode was deliberate too, seeing that all these real world conventions have been taking place during this past summer season as usual too. In fact, didn't BronyCon take place not so long ago?

I wouldn't know, I've never been to a convention of any sort in my life. One reason is because none are ever in the area of my homestate of Idaho...because nobody cares about Idaho apparently. The other is actually that I see all these pictures of conventions other people have attended and what sort of things can be found there, and though I can get pretty geeky myself...I don't know if I ever could be quite as geeky as what I see going on at some of these conventions; no offense, of course, in fact I think it's cool there's people out there that are braver about advertising that to the world than I am...it's just a line I haven't been able to personally cross myself.

My point being with all of that was that there were moments from watching Rainbow and newcomer Quibble Pants going around this Daring Do convention where it got a little too geeky for me to swallow in one go and I had to stop the video and shake my head in good-humor before proceeding. But once the episode got going and I saw where they were going with all of this, I quite enjoyed the episode. In fact, I like this episode a lot more than the last big Daring Do episode we got, "Daring Don't."

In fact, this episode demonstrates nicely what is still my one big problem with the whole A.K. Yearling/Daring Do routine; if Daring Do's adventures are really supposed to be so secret and stuff that word isn't supposed to get out to the public at large, as reaffirmed in this episode, then why does A.K. write the darn books with word-for-word truthfulness, accurately retelling her real-life adventures in precise detail? As Quibble himself points out at one point in the episode, one merely needs to be an "avid reader" of the books to know Daring Do's whole deal in startling accurate detail, to the point that one could practically step in and do her job for her. But worse still is that it was precisely because of Quibble and Rainbow's knowledge on the matter that gets them caught by Doc Caballeron in the first place. So for a pony who is supposedly so determined to keep her job as Daring Do secret for the protection of the pony public at large is actually endangering her fans, potentially greatly, by writing the books based on her adventures in such precise detail.

You'd think A.K. would deliberately write the books in such a way so to fudge some of the finer details and prevent precisely that. Indeed, I fleetingly thought that when Quibble started going on about the "inferior quality" of the later books that this was what was precisely happening. But no. At the very least though, it's implied that the secret that A.K. Yearling and Daring Do are one and the same is still kept secret from Quibble through the course of the episode as this is never verbally established to Quibble, so there's that.

Nonetheless, what the episode is really about is Rainbow and Quibble and their little flame war over what Daring Do books are better, and how they came to resolve it. I enjoyed that a good deal, largely because I could relate to it. It reminded me a bit too much of the various disputes I have gotten into over recent years with fellow Trekkies who just abhor the rebooted films and continually talking trash about them and how I am continually trying to get such Trekkies to see that the rebooted films are really not as bad as they'd like to make them out to be.

So I can feel your pain, Rainbow Dash.

But that said, I could also relate to and like the intended moral of the episode; that fans sometimes like different elements of a franchise from one another, but that's no reason to get into continuous fights over it, or to let that stop them from being friends. Sometimes it's just better to agree to disagree and leave it at that. It's a lesson that can be applied on a much greater front than mere fandoms too, in fact. Sometimes I wish the world at large could practice that "agree to disagree" tactic a bit more often. T'would solve a lot of certain countries problems with certain other countries...but let's not get politics into this.

I liked how when Quibble realizes RD and Daring are buds and Rainbow drapes one wing over Daring as if to emphasize that, Daring sort of shrugs it off with an eyeroll as if to say "we're friends, but we're not that good of friends Rainbow" because I just know there's still a large part of Daring that sees Rainbow as just another of one of her more empathetic fans and can only dredge up so much patience to deal with that at a time.

I know it probably wasn't anything more than death and danger, but I can't help but wonder what might have been behind some of those other locked doors protecting the treasure.

Quibble asks at one point if Daring always has to escape through a hole in the ceiling, but so ancient ponies liked to build their temples with holes in the roof; Daring doesn't have any control over that.

Loved how Quibble kept calling out the questionable quality of Caballeron's accent.

And the grin at the 1:10 minute mark is the absolute best scene of the episode.

I wonder what Twilight would have to say about missing out on the adventure after Rainbow had downplayed it so much prior to...