#batponiesrule28

The first two pages of this little comic mini-chapter! I’ve been making slow progress on this for maybe a month? Only four more pages to go! I’m gonna upload them two a time.

Unfortunate truth the first movie is really disorganized in terms of plot I think. You can kind of tell they didn’t have a strong idea for what was going to happen going into it, and the cast is a bit bloated in a way that doesn’t allow any of the supporting cast more than a couple throwaway lines each (including the twist “villain”. it’s kind of crazy that Creek only gets like. probably less than ten lines of dialogue. It just makes him sort of a weak character.)

The second movie has a pretty solid plot and a lot of enjoyable characters! The history of music song that Prince D sings is imo the best one in this movie, and probably better than any of the ones in the previous movie. the end song is sort of weak in that it doesn’t incorporate the other genres very much or very well. It just fails to be like, the grand “bringing everyone together” song that it wants to be. the worldbuilding in this one is great, it leaves a bit to be desired, which could have been addressed in the subsequent 2d animated show (but i don’t really think it was?) and I think they could have done a better job portraying how genres overlap and feed into each other. (Some character designs are also kind of lacking? the techno and classical trolls are kind of samey within their species. The rock trolls could afford to be more visually distinct from pop trolls (gargoyle wings. give them gargoyle wings and also claws.))

the third is probably the best in terms of production, it has the best casting and imo has the best score (in the sense that the scoring was actually noticeable even outside of dramatic moments, we hear a lot of musical cues and there’s even like. a little brozone leitmotif???) the plot is pretty backstory-focused, but i think it works well. We get introduced to a lot of very very likable characters in this one (Crimp is also there. I fucking hate Crimp.) The songs in this one are good. The jukebox musical thing is done well here and I really like the unique bits of mixed animation they put in this one.

Part 2 of this ask from @sonof1gor

Trickee:

He's skilled at MMA fighting, but he tends to only practice when he's pissed off.

Out of everyone in kismet, he and Boom are the most versatile (and generally the most skilled) musicians, Trickee can play keyboard (his main instrument), trumpet, clarinet, sax, guitar, and harmonica. He also probably understands music theory the best out of all of them. In college he works at School Of Rock for a while, he's best at teaching the teenage students.

He's the only one of them who can cook, he learned how to feed himself and his siblings pretty young, and he's good at it! He makes a lot of Mexican dishes.

When he's able to, he likes doing graffiti, the rest of Kismet do kind of shitty tags (except Poppy, she's pretty good at it) but Trickee likes doing the fancy shit.

Trickee's home life is kind of tumultuous. His parents are both military (air force), and he has two younger siblings, Mikey and Cammie. Because his parents are rarely home he ends up being his siblings primary caretaker.

Outside of kismet, he's a really smart kid and pushes himself to stay on top of everything at home and in school. He finishes out high school with a full year worth of college credits in AP and Dual Enrollment classes. There's a lot of story stuff for kismet that I am totally struggling not to reveal so I'm going to end this one here. Branch is next!

I'm going to answer this question in parts (I'm going to go through them oldest to youngest) because I have too much to say so expect five more posts after this (I'm including Poppy in Kismet just cause I can lol)

Starting with Ablaze:

He skates, he's tried teaching the others how to skate, Boom and Branch both skate with him sometimes too, and Poppy rollerblades with them at the skate park.

He also does concert photography! He has a good camera for low light, and likes to get action shots. He goes to a ton of local shows and gets pictures then stashes his camera bag by the stage or hands it off to one of his friends and gets in the mosh pit.

This is a bit of a silly one, but he's a gamer. He likes roguelike games a lot, and gets easily obsessed with them. He fucking loves Balatro.

He builds contraptions. Not sure how to explain this one just imagine like, homemade flamethrowers, improvised instruments, definitely not legal car upgrades, etc. He's very resourceful.

He makes moonshine with his uncle, it is absolutely delicious and makes quitting drinking incredibly hard for everyone because it tastes like peach cobbler.

Ablaze places a lot of his sense of self on his connection to his friends. He's an only child who lives with his uncle, and he gets a job as a mechanic apprentice after high school. He feels like he's just kind of a bum when he's apart from his friends. He's really protective of them because he feels like they're all he has.