Ask Avaya

Avaya Answers - Daring Do/Side characters their own episode?

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:27:00 +0200

My honest opinion would be no. But realistically, yes. Why? Allow me to explain.

I would prefer there not to be entire episodes dedicated to side characters. This is because I find those to be fillers. While side characters may have a very distinctive personality, you do not feel attached to them. Attachment is gained by showing up more often, playing an important role in episodes, having things to offer to the story and the cast and by building relationships with established lead characters. Side characters are designed to play a supporting role in the stories of the Mane 6. It’s hard enough as it is to make an interesting episode dedicated to only one of the Mane 6. I can’t imagine being interested in watching 22 minutes of a character that had nothing of importance to offer, has no properly established relationships with the Mane 6 and have only been shown once or twice before.

More specifically, Daring Do. Why not an episode dedicated to Daring Do? Firstly, because even in Friendship is Magic, Daring Do is a fictional character, a full-length episode about a fictional fictional character just screams lack of creativity. Secondly, I’ve had enough of her as it is. She basically already had her own episode: Read it and Weep. With Rainbow Dash reading the book half of the episode, she had sufficient screen time. Not only did the cliche Daring Do stories have a boring plot, Read it and Weep, because half of the episode was Rainbow Dash overly obsessing over a book, made for a terrible Friendship is Magic episode plot.

But why realistically yes? Because if we want many seasons, with many episodes each, we have to accept and embrace filler episodes. It takes a lot of effort to write a good story that balances the involvement of every character in the show. You can’t expect 26 episodes per season to have a full story with a lesson at the end. None of the other seasons have and none of them will. It’s only a matter of time before we get bored of Mane 6 and Cutiemark Crusader filler episodes. On a certain point, the writers will have to branch out to side characters that have already been introduced, including Daring Do. Might as well be in season 4 and be done with it.

I hope I haven’t upset you, @LoyalSpectrum, or anyone for that matter. But apart from my personal dislike towards Daring Do, I just don’t feel attached enough to her to enjoy a full episode about her.

AskAvaya: Favorite Pony

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 08:19:48 +0200

Sorry for the blue background, it’s a big image file!

1) Get 1 partner2) Go somewhere nice3) Gaze at the stars4) Talk...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 06:57:00 +0200

1) Get 1 partner
2) Go somewhere nice
3) Gaze at the stars
4) Talk about it and other life experiences.

Celery stalks. Ah’ll be darned if anypony gets this...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 04:33:00 +0100

Celery stalks. Ah’ll be darned if anypony gets this reference.

It /is/ what ah’m here for! (That grass render!)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 01:18:00 +0100

It /is/ what ah’m here for! (That grass render!)

It’s been a while but ah’m alive! Just noticed ah...

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 07:32:00 +0100

It’s been a while but ah’m alive! Just noticed ah had these questions in mah ask box for over a month by now… figured ah’d answer them! And how!

Can you figure out what ah’m trying to tell ya with mah formulas?

It’s been a while again… and after a lot of manure...

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:15:42 +0100

It’s been a while again… and after a lot of manure ah had to cope with… hoovin’ this to Wavey as a birthday present was one of the better moments in mah life lately. They were grateful.

The paper drawing was done by DigitalDevik (Digi; Iggy). Ah digitalized and colored it. The picture depicts Cavaya and Shockwave having fallen asleep cuddling. Zecora checks up on the two, probably already aware that her love potion has been drunk. What the effects of the love potion were ah leave to the imagination, since in mah head a lot of things conflict. The Soul Eater moon was Digi’s idea, because Wavey likes Soul Eater.

The original concept was six-panels worth of drawings, telling a story of a day out with the two. Obviously that did not happen. In before ah ramble on about the picture, just enjoy it… although it means more to me than it prolly does for y’all.

As requested by mah big brother @Wonderb0lt, our mutual...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:28:00 +0200

As requested by mah big brother @Wonderb0lt, our mutual friend @DigitalDevik drew Otto and Cavaya hanging out with Berry Punch at the bar! I think we had a great time, ah can’t remember, really. Ah sure do like a drink from time to time, but ah’m no match for a German and an alcoholic…

Thanks DigitalDevik for the wonderful art and thanks Wonderb0lt for asking for it! SOURCE.

There ya go. Back to answering questions. <3

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:01:24 +0200

There ya go. Back to answering questions. <3

Cavaya’s blind bag card… now only if he had a blind...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:58:00 +0200

Cavaya’s blind bag card… now only if he had a blind bag… :<

So yeah, the reason why I haven’t posted anything in a...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:39:00 +0200

So yeah, the reason why I haven’t posted anything in a while, once again, is because of two reasons: I had a very diligent plan with the story, but as it turns out, I can’t find the proper vectors/renders to work with and it’s too much for me to grasp by myself. This is something I’m not patient enough for to make from scratch. Anyway, the idea was to make an animated story based on the tweet that tells you how I got dragged into depression, why, how I got out and what lessons I’ve learnt. Instead, I’m just going to type the storyboard out.

“So I’ve been in depression for a while. Surprisingly enough.”
“I thought I was invulnerable to depressions. I thought I was unconditionally satisfied and happy with my life.”
“Turns out I hadn’t lived yet.”
“It was unexpected. A relationship filling you with genuine happiness. My first real love…”
“The biggest pain I’ve ever felt.”
“What seemed like a beautiful relationship… got clouded by paranoia and stubbornness.”
“We drove each other into depression, yet we never hated each other. We fought, yet we never stopped loving each other. Painful months, not knowing where you stand.”
“Are we partners? Are we close friends? Am I just a friend? Am I bound to be thrown aside? I needed to know.”
“I turned impatient. I turned paranoid, a stalker if you will.”
“The last few months have been the most awful months in my life, right on top with my year of teaching at primary school.”
“But as it always turns out, the most awful times in your life turn into the most instructive ones.”
“After all this time, I’ve learned so much.”
— list things I’ve learned —

And from here on it was just explaining that we’ve been okay. I’m still weak for them, I still want to mean the world to them, but at least I know what things are like currently. I don’t think things will ever be the same anymore. But at least now I know. We’re still good friends though, even though conversations are superficial. We /know/ what we’ve meant for each other and still have each other things to offer. We /are/ good friends because we know how we both work. We respect each other’s needs and we can be very open about and to each other. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s priceless.
I’m still sad over what happened. And what adds up to that is that I’ve also had to take distance from other close friends because I wasn’t getting through. You can’t keep fighting if your message isn’t getting through, and as long as the other isn’t hurting anyone else, you should just take your distance. You can’t force someone to tell you what you mean to them. It’s better you accept the position they give you and make the most out of it. Find others that fulfill your needs, but never forget to stay in touch who were closest to you and taught you important stuff, it means just as much to them as it means to you. If they care about you, they like seeing you grow up as well. So much, so incredibly much I’ve learnt the last few months.

And the most sad thing, some people will never learn these things, because they either decide to finish things before they come to realizations by themselves, they are traumatized or they’re too unintelligent to cope with it all. That’s why I feel it’s important I share my story. They might not come to realizations themselves, but if they’re being told how it is, they actually learn things.

Anyway, regular posting should from now on, continue. I have recovered my Formspring account to answer questions. If you are interested in getting your questions answered, submit me a question on Tumblr or go to my Formspring.

Thanks for sticking around,
Avaya Ridatrane.

I have been great friends for a short while with her now. Life...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:39:34 +0200

I have been great friends for a short while with her now. Life has not been kind to her, and I recognize a lot of what she’s saying. This answer got to me since it’s exactly one of the messages I’ve been trying to spread with this blog, and one that I first-handed have experienced lately too (although I got out of the depression). I normally don’t reblog things or take screenshots from stuff and post it, but while I’m trying to figure things out with the story, I had to blog this because I hear her. Do you?

Yay mah first fanart! Thank you @BoomaBawx !! Love ya...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 04:05:00 +0200

Yay mah first fanart! Thank you @BoomaBawx !! Love ya brother. <3

Zen knows. Been awhile since proper updates, but don’t...

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 23:21:00 +0200

Zen knows.

Been awhile since proper updates, but don’t worry, I’ll be back shortly, with a story~

Avaya answers: 25 deep questions

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:47:00 +0200

1. What is more difficult for you, looking into someone’s eyes when you are telling someone how you feel, or looking into someone’s eyes when they are telling you how they feel?

Definitely looking into someone’s eyes when they are telling me how they feel. From experience I can tell that my reaction to a confession, or rather, lack of, has been a disappointment for folks. A lack of physical response while looking each other in the eyes is one of the most unsatisfying, worrying and painful feelings in the world for many. I, on the other hand, can look into someone’s eyes without a problem when I’m telling them how I feel. If I ever get as far as being willing to confess, it means I deeply care about them, and looking them in the eyes enables me to read their reply better. Albeit I might not like the reply, I can handle any reaction to my confession if I have the right people to take care of me to begin with.

2. Think of the last time you were REALLY angry. WHY were you angry? Do you still feel the same way?

Real anger lasts until I regret saying what I said to the first person I spoke to/with when I am angry. Mostly, this is the person I’m mad at. There’s only a few things in the world that can make me angry, and in the last case of severe anger, I’m guessing it was stubbornness that got me mad, probably by simply not giving me anything to work with or flat-out not taking proven things into consideration. Sadly enough, although I do not feel angry about it anymore, the reasons why I was have not been, and will most likely not anytime soon be resolved, so it is only a matter of time before I get really angry again. The sourest part is that it’s caused by the people I care about most.

3. You are on a flight from Honolulu to Chicago non-stop. There is a fire in the back of the plane. You have enough time to make ONE phone call. Who do you call? What do you tell them?

First thing that comes in mind is… why Honolulu to Chicago? Do I have to assume I had a great time vacationing at Honolulu? Anyway, I would call my home, give them the password to sign in on my computer, and thank them for giving me the freedom they did, that I love them and that they are responsible for informing everyone I care about that I’ve passed away and that everyone that shows any interest in me is invited to attend my funeral. If I had the time to name everyone I cared about most, I would, but otherwise I’d tell them they will find plenty of clues on my computer to figure that out themselves.

4. You are at the doctors office and he has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? What do you do with your remaining days? Would you be afraid?

I’m not an attention seeker, so I probably won’t, not everyone. I don’t care for sympathy by people I hardly know, or whenever I kind of force it out of them by giving them such news. I wouldn’t tell my closest friends/family either, and I’d stop spending time with them when they get suspicious. I’d move on to the next thing on my meet-before-you-die-list. Probably, the day I die, I’d want to collect all the folks I care about and give one last celebration of my life before I pass away, probably right in front of the eyes of some of the attendees. I’d leave plenty of clues to figure out I already knew a month in advance so they can quickly find out this is how and with whom I wanted to spend my last month.

5. You can have one of the following two things. Which do you choose? Why? Love and Trust.

Easy. Love. I live for loving and caring for others. It’s a shame I wouldn’t be able to trust folks, so I probably wouldn’t be able to tell them as much as I do now that I can, or I’d get screwed over more often, but if I’m in a loving relationship with someone that can fulfill my needs, I can push everyone that betrays me away. If I can’t trust my lover, it would be a shame, but I’d force myself to outsmart them with sensitive information and my money.

6. You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late even once more, you are fired. Do you take the time to save the dog’s life? Why or why not?

I would. Even though I realize I have almost nothing to work with and don’t know the circumstances, if my own safety is not at risk, I would save a life. If my boss is that much of a prick, I don’t want to work for him anyway. That said, even though the dog might die later for whatever reason (he has to be put to sleep because of his wounds, his owner abuses him once more and kills the dog, I don’t know), at least I can live with the fact it wasn’t me who let him die.

7. Would you rather be hurt by the one you trust the most or the one you love the most?

I would rather get hurt by the one I trust most. Trusting someone does not mean I cannot live without them and does not disable me to leave the person behind. If I truly love someone, I cannot back off and would probably go through hell in the times I haven’t made up with them. (Oh, look at that, that is exactly what is going on in my life right now.)

8. Your best friend confesses that he/she has feelings for you more than just friendship. He/she is falling in love with you. What do you (or did you) do/say?

I would appreciate the honesty and embrace the feelings. I am not the one to friend zone, so if it is my best friend, and I am not already in a stable relationship that excludes loving others, I might as well give it a shot. The lines of loving and caring for deeply are thin, and I’ve crossed them before.

9. Think of the last person who you know that died. You have the chance to give them 1 hour of life back, but you have to give up one year of yours. Do you do it? Why or Why not?

The last person I know who died, died peacefully and had successfully achieved everything they wanted to in life. I would not ever in my right mind mess with their peaceful and eternal sleep. What is that person going to do anyway in that one hour? They’d simply be gazing at how the world has developed in the meantime, and all it would cause to us would be another painful time having to say goodbye to them again.

10. Are you the kind of friend that you would want to have as a friend?

I try to live up to that, but I’m afraid that if there was a copy of me I’d befriend with, I’d soon want to do too much with him and push all my other friends aside. I’d literally be obsessed with them, and not even out of love. I cannot love the person I am. I do not fulfill my own needs and I need someone around that is different than me to fulfill the needs I cannot fulfill myself.

11. Does love = sex?

I have been pondering about this question for a while now, and in the end I have to answer with yes. Albeit that I will never force the folks I love into what they don’t want to do with me, I am genuinely interested in causing and taking care of the powerful feelings that the idea of sex and having it brings up in people. In my opinion, sex definitely is a symbol of love and it would be an honor handling my lover during the process. Male or female doesn’t matter to me, I’m bisexual anyway.

I’m perfectly aware of how overrated having sex is when you look at it from a different point of view, so if the person I love thinks of it the same way, I don’t WANT to have sex with them because it’d only be a disappointment… but in all honesty, if it makes my partner happy, it makes me happy as well. Oh, and for many years to come, I want to express my love by having sex, so if the person I love does not want to have it, I’ll probably have no choice but to love someone else as well.

12.Your boss tells your coworker that they have to let them go because of work shortage, and they are the newest employee. You have been there much longer. Your coworker has a family to support and no other means of income. Do you go to your boss and offer to leave the company? Why or why not?

It depends on a lot of factors. If it ever happens, I’ll have to look at everything very closely, but in the end I think I wouldn’t offer to leave. There is one exception to this: if the other employee does a much better job than I do and cares considerably more about it, I will offer to leave immediately

13.When was the last time you told someone HONESTLY how you felt regardless of how difficult it was for you to say? Who was it? What did you have to tell the person?

I tend to tell that a lot, every day to most people. I have to to not drive myself insane during the depression. That, and I don’t want people to find out about me lying about how I feel afterwards, for a lot of reasons you can probably come up with yourself.

14. What would be (or what was) harder for you to tell a member of the opposite sex, you love them or that you do not love them back?

Easy. Telling them I don’t love them back. Whatever sex. It would be devastating for the both of us. If I really love someone, I’d tell him and take the hit if it’s not returned. Having to tell someone else I don’t love them I know will hurt them. Getting friend zoned in a world where true love is hard to find is incredibly painful.

15. What do you think would be the hardest thing for you to give up? Why would it be hard to lose?

Something concrete (albeit digital): my money. Without my money, you’re either screwed in this world or are a charity case, limiting my freedom.
Something abstract: my freedom. If there is one thing I am grateful for, it’s the fact I can go wherever the hell I want to go. This allows me to, hopefully in the future anyway, be with and visit my closest friends.

16. Excluding romantic love, when was the last time you told someone you loved them. Who were they to you?

Probably a few days ago, and they were a caring friend of mine on Twitter whom I personally consider to be my parent. Haven’t told them that yet due to the circumstances, but by now I’m not sure if I ever will.

17. If there was one moment and one time in the last month what would you change and why?

I would change the last moment I had the feeling I seriously messed up with rebuilding the relationship with one of two folks I care for mostly. The thing with that is, I can’t pin-point exactly when that was or which one of the mess ups was the worst.

18.Imagine it is a dark night, you are alone, it is raining outside, you hear someone walking around outside your window. WHO do you wish was there with you?

… either one of the two people I care about most so I can protect them. Both if who can be plural.

19. Would you give a homeless person CPR if they were dying? Why or why not?

I have been asked this before, and I said no to it for one good reason: I cannot perform CPR. Even though I’ve seen it being performed many times in the movies, have read the booklets, I block learning CPR because saving a human life that way is not my jurisdiction.

21.You are holding onto your grandmother’s hand and the hand of a newborn that you do not know as they hang over the edge of a cliff. You have to let one go to save the other. Who do you let fall to their death? What was your rationale for making the decision?

I’d ask my grandmother. Her choice is mine. (And she’d probably choose saving the baby.)

22. Are you old fashioned?

No, and it hurts me to see how many people are.

23. When was the last time you were nice to someone and did NOT expect anything in return for it?

That is a VERY good question. Thing is, every time I have my first conversation with someone, I’m nice to them and expect nothing in return, but quite frankly, in a lot of the cases, I got things in return that made me very happy. The better question is, when do I start expecting/caring for things in return? I guess that is where I divide my friends. If they make me happy/smile often, I expect them to continue doing so and call them friends, the closest ones making me the most happy. In return, I give them caring and loving in return, nothing materialistic. In the end, it’s their decision how close they want to get with me, and I just tag along. 

24.Which would you choose, true love with a guarantee of a broken heart, or never loved at all? Why?

True love with a guarantee of a broken heart. I’ve always been for going for things until you can’t any more than to never have gone for it at all but always missing out. Thing is, true love comes with broken hearts, but if you can fix it or replace it, then the broken heart is only temporary and you have experienced every aspect of love.

25.If you could do anything or wish anything, what would it be?

Something that could actually happen? Be with them without being limited by the system and other people in our lives. Otherwise, magic, you know.

Photo

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:19:00 +0200

// Now both pictures.

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:15:00 +0200

// Now both pictures.

"I’m 99% truth and only 2% lies."

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:34:10 +0200

“I’m 99% truth and only 2% lies.”

- Avaya Ridatrane [Skype]

Ah actually had to reflect with several of my best friends to...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:28:00 +0200

Ah actually had to reflect with several of my best friends to try and pin-point what made me unique. That was quite the thrill.

"I would take that as a compliment, if it weren’t an insult."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:57:00 +0200

“I would take that as a compliment, if it weren’t an insult.”

- Avaya Ridatrane [Oovoo]