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heckyeahponyscans · 2 years

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What’s your opinion on the later seasons of the G4 TV show? And does it still feel like it falls under the same MLP you grew up with? I’m curious :D

This is going to be very long, so I apologize, but Tumblr allows you to auto-shorten long posts on your dash now, so here we go.

Growing up I loved G1 My Little Pony, it was my favorite toy. But I didn't watch the TV show regularly. (I did see parts of The Glass Princess and The End of Flutter Valley, which influenced my play, but they were multi-parters and I never saw the full plot.) So although I have a lot of nostalgia for G1, it's disconnected from MLP 'n Friends / MLP Tales.

Anyway, I also collect Transformers and most Transformers shows last three years or less. And watching MLP FIM I was like, "Well, now I know why."

Most stories end soon after the protagonist achieves their goal. Like the original Star Wars trilogy ends with the evil Emperor being defeated. Disney’s Cinderella ends with her marriage to the prince.

That's because the struggle is the interesting part of the story. We want the protagonist to have a happily-ever-after but we don't want to watch it play out decade after decade. Conflict drives stories.

From what I've heard, the show runners did not expect FIM to be renewed for a fourth season. So at the end of the third season, they gave Twilight Sparkle the ultimate triumphant moment and had her become an alicorn. Great!

Except. Then the series was renewed. And they had to keep going.

There are some later season episodes I really like, for example the one with the kirins. I liked Starlight Glimmer and her arc. I loved the friendship between her and Trixie.

But looking at the later seasons as a whole, they really degraded as they went along.

The writers did not know what to do with Twilight Sparkle as a princess. They tried to be meta about it, like "whoooa, SHE doesn't know what she's doing!" (And I love the "You'll Play Your Part" song, it brings a tear to my eye.) But lampshading the problem doesn't solve it.

Also, it was becoming less and less realistic for the main cast to still need lessons about basic social skills. So they brought in a pony who DID still need to learn them: Starlight Glimmer. As I've said, I liked Starlight, I thought she was a good addition.

The writers also created the cutie mark mission table, which was a fun excuse to send the cast to new locations and meet new creatures. But for some reason they decided all the missions had to revolve around friendship. And I just . . . I don't understand why they took the name of the show so literally. Just let the friendship part be "We're the Mane Six, we're best friends" instead of "Hello griffons, we're here to teach you about friendship! You idiots." It was so weird, they felt like pony missionaries going out to proselytize to the heathens.

Why couldn't the table have just summoned them for problems like "Hey, the volcano's going to explode, find a way to stop it before it kills the endangered ferrets living in the valley below"? There are times when it's fine for problems to be purely physical. Like when you've run out of character-driven conflicts for your main cast.

As all this is happening, the rest of the Mane Six were gradually achieving their goals. Rainbow Dash joined the Wonderbolts, Rarity opened more boutiques, the CMC got their Cutie Marks. Okay, sure. The show couldn't string the ponies along forever.

But this goes back to the happy ending problem. The main conflicts / goals that had been driving the characters were getting wrapped up. So NOW what do you do with them?

Somewhere in all this the Movie happened. And I loved it. I wish they'd added Tempest Shadow to the main cast. That's all I have to say about the movie.

I have the impression the Movie toys didn't sell as well as Hasbro expected, though. I don't have any proof of this, but they seemed to reel back the toyline after it. Whatever the case, the show saw a major change with the introduction of the Student Six and the School . . . of Friendship.

Really? Really? The reason Twilight needed friendship lessons was that she was antisocial. Average ponies shouldn't need them. They should've made it a regular school instead of creating this weird implication that ponies (and other creatures) need to learn friendship in a scholastic environment. But whatever, the name of the series was Friendship Is Magic so everything had to be directly friendship-related forever I guess.

So, my feelings about the friendship school are complex. I think they were trying for a soft reboot. They knew they'd run the well dry with the Mane Six so they tried moving them to a support role. Which isn't a bad idea. Also, I always thought it would make more sense for Twilight Sparkle to become a professor rather than a princess. It fits her personality / interests. So Twilight as a teacher--yes!

But then the rest of the Mane Six also became teachers? Uh huh, I'm sure Applejack had plenty of time for that on top of running a farm full time. I wish only Twilight had been a teacher. The students could have interacted with the rest of the Mane Six after school and on weekends.

Okay, moving on to the Student Six: this is going to sound weird, but I think they would've fit G5 better than G4.

G4 was more cartoony (which I don't mean as a putdown), everything was very exaggerated. The Student Six were more nuanced. Gallus was stubborn, but he wasn't "the STUBBORN one" in the same way that Fluttershy was "the SHY one", you know what I mean? Being nuanced characters in a goofy world hampered them IMO. I never felt like I "got" them, although I did like them.

The other weird thing is they had no support from the toyline. Only two had brushables, I think. And only one brushable apiece. Meanwhile Hasbro was still shilling Pinkie Pie like their life depended on it. I would love to know what led to this situation. Maybe Hasbro had planned more Student Six toys but pulled them back because the Movie toys didn't sell well enough?

Then we get to the final season, which was just a mess. So Discord disguises himself as Grogar, purposely breaks a bunch of villains out of jail, and demands that they enact a villainous plan against the Mane Six. (And one villain is a baby pony? Why tho?) As the season progresses the writers hint that the villains (aside from Discord) are beginning to feel camaraderie for one another.

In the villains’ final appearance the Mane Six point out that they've discovered the magic of friendship--ha ha, just kidding! The Mane Six nuke them with magic, turning them into statues forever.

It's bizarre. The writers absolutely CLUNG to the idea of friendship through the whole series, we couldn't escape from it. Friendship letters, princess of friendship, friendship table, friendship school! But in the climatic moment, when the transformative power of friendship would've made narrative sense and given a satisfying ending, when it would've justified the whole premise of the show . . . the writers were like "Nah, let's just blast the bad guys and call it a day."

My guess is they wanted to "subvert expectations". God I'm so tired of that trend. If people anticipate the end of your story arc, it's because you properly set it up and foreshadowed it. The end of a story shouldn't be a jumpscare.

BTW Discord doesn't face a single consequence for encouraging a bunch of supervillains to murder his "friends", gosh no the Mane Six just can't stay mad at that scamp.

Anyway, that's how I feel about the later seasons of FIM.

#My Little Pony #Friendship Is Magic #G4 #MLP FIM #FIM #long post #I removed my previous complaints about Flurry Heart b/c honestly she showed up so little that she might as well not have existed #so she's kind of a null factor

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bronyinabottle · 3 years

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In a recent post on I Dream of Twilight Sparkle I said that I noticed asks that were not in my inbox the last time I decided to read through my entire ask box. So I did the same for my mod blog. And while there were some also that I didn't see before. Most are questions I feel either I feel like I may have already sufficiently answered enough with my thoughts on an episode and/or it'd be weird at this point to answer something that's obviously years after the fact.

But there is two I found that I feel like I may want to respond to. The person who sent it was someone who used to discuss the show with me almost all the time, though obviously they must no longer be on Tumblr as all their blogs are deactivated. But I still want to answer since it is sort of relevant to recent stuff. Particularly in their 2nd ask.

By the way, I'm always open to questions on the show or even non-pony topics here on my modblog. I still do love talking about G4 ponies and I wouldn't mind some questions if any of you would like to know my opinion on anything. Now that the show has been over for nearly 2 years , I can have a perspective on many topics about Friendship is Magic that I wouldn't mind sharing. Maybe some things have changed here and there, though I think I still generally have a positive attitude towards most things for certain. I stuck with the show until the very end, and was satisfied with how it ended. And I still have interest in doing more in G4's world even as G5 approaches. (Though I'm sure perhaps once that movie has aired that may be the focus of any questions sent here)

((My answer and more after the break))

For the most part, I think I still generally agree with what I said in my initial thoughts about the Season 6 finale. It's a solid episode with some great interactions between Starlight, Trixie, Discord, and Thorax. Though the way the ending is executed is a bit of a headscratcher. Maybe somewhat less so since thinking about it now, like even if Chrysalis did keep some things loyal. What would stop them from eventually seeing what Thorax's changelings did shortly after.

But I suppose I wanted to answer this mostly about Starlight. Since while the Season 6 finale made HomerJ get over some remaining feelings about Starlight. I'll admit it took literally until writing Secrets of the Dragon's Tear (A year after the show was over) to realize the sort of potential that Starlight had. The baggage from the Season 5 finale always felt like a cloud above her for the entire rest of the show's run. And I consider Season 6's largest mistake is not trying harder to endear us to Starlight. That's what that season's entire job was, to try to make us feel a little better of how rather rushed Starlight's redemption was by giving us a more expanded look into Starlight's character. And unfortunately, I feel like it failed at that in my opinion. Thus I basically disagree (Though respect the opinion of) with those who would say the Season 6 finale was when Starlight finally won them over.

Don't get me wrong, I like how Starlight is portrayed in the episode. But it would of been stronger if say the season had explained more about Starlight's past. How did Starlight get her cutie mark, and given her opinion on Cutie Marks how did she feel at the time?

Instead, we mostly just got Starlight reuniting with Sunburst that didn't exactly give any more details to her rather vague reasons for turning to darkness from him moving away other then finding out Sunburst's personality and how his side of the story went. And from there we had Starlight befriend Trixie... in an episode I still don't really like to this day.

Ironically, the character in the Hearth's Warming episode that casts Starlight as the story's version of Scrooge (Snowfall Frost) is given more reason to sympathize with then Starlight herself.

Starlight then just about disappears up until the episode that introduces Thorax. Where she doesn't do much other then be among the crowd that Spike has to convince that Thorax is not evil.

The next time we see her is Every Little Thing She Does. Which is something of a controversial ep from what I hear, though ironically despite my skepticism of Starlight at the time. I actually sort of liked that episode since it was basically Starlight's own Lesson Zero. Though I get why Starlight deciding to hypnotize all the Mane 6 besides Twilight against their will would not be approved of. Though it does feel like at the very least Twilight and the rest give her enough of a piece of their mind at the end.

And that's how things stood before the Season 6 finale happened. Even though I do think Starlight has good moments in said finale, nothing earlier in the season really dispelled many of my feelings about the Season 5 finale's ending. So despite a good showing, I could hardly care for it. I wasn't convinced yet we were given a satisfactory answer about the many questions that Starlight's sudden redemption prompted.

Another part of my thoughts I feel still applies is when I mentioned that Starlight's a "Diet Sunset Shimmer" (Which considering what I did to link the two for SOTDT, is a bit funny in hindsight). It took just one movie (Rainbow Rocks) for the fanbase to turn a 180 on Sunset. While an entire season with Starlight as one of the good guys goes by and she remained just as divisive as before if not more so by the end of Season 6.

Come Season 7, and Starlight appears quite a bit more often though under the assumption that the Season 6 finale was enough to warm you up to her. There were many complaints during the first half of Season 7 that she was appearing more then she should (Even in an Equestria Girls special where she got to meet the character she was so often compared to). Though another thing about Starlight in Season 7 in hindsight is besides from her meeting a few more friends like Maud. Starlight isn't actually given much to actually work towards. They dropped the whole student aspect so it's not like she was doing friendship lessons under Twilight anymore (Though I suppose on the bright side for the detractors, it lessened worries about her becoming an Alicorn). Season 8 and 9 does somewhat fix that by having Starlight employed at the school, first as a counselor and ultimately ending with her as the school's Principal as Twilight herself got promoted to sole ruler. Which I'm still unsure about if fans of her character feel that was a proper ending for her. Though probably the best that could of been done in context of not much having been done with her over time.

Still, at least for me personally it felt there was alot missing about Starlight and as time went on it became obvious I wasn't going to get the satisfactory answers about her that I wanted. So as a result, I only had lukewarm reactions when a new Starlight episode was coming up. It also didn't help that there were two episodes that raised my hopes of at least one interesting aspect that would of been cool to see. The first being the episode "All Bottled Up" which I had hoped would mean it would be an episode that's somewhat genie related. And then there was Road to Friendship where Starlight and Trixie try to travel to Saddle Arabia (which is an important location in I Dream of Twilight Sparkle)... and yet never actually get there. So even on the few times that I was hoping to be excited about a Starlight episode, it dropped the ball. Partly my fault for getting so hyped about something that wasn't promised, but I would of loved to at least SEEN canon Saddle Arabia.

I'd never say that I hated Starlight back during the show's run. But she was a frustrating character for certain back then. I couldn't hate Starlight as much as some others did, but at the same time I couldn't like her as much as others. She was in likability limbo. For every fun and or good moment that included her, it's brought right back by either lingering problems that arised from the Season 5 finale or otherwise dropping the ball in some way.

In some ways, she's still a frustrating character. Though that's just how it'll always be with the canon Starlight. It's up entirely now to fanon to give their approach on Starlight that was never done in Canon. With SOTDT, I obviously did a bit of a "Fine, I'll do it myself" when it comes to making Starlight a more satisfactory character for me. Though I'm sure there are many interpretations that are vastly different from how I approached it that can satisfy others and probably be more popular and better written then mine. (My interpretation might be understandably controversial just for Starlight being put back on a path where she'll likely become an Alicorn eventually. Something Starlight detractors feared the most. Though I think I at least try to explain as best I could that makes sense with the story, her cutie mark moment being similar to Twilight's, and the identity of her mother. And I myself sort of feared Starlight becoming an Alicorn might happen, so for me to actually write it so that it might be inevitable. That's just how much of a 180 I've taken on Starlight because of writing SOTDT)

I think I mentioned this before, but I can pretty much say that in a way that I can actually say I like Starlight now. But sort of in a "FiM's biggest missed opportunity" sort of way that it becomes sort of sad to look at how canon Starlight was done. Rather then me simply shrugging her off back when I didn't care so much about her. I also understand it's a bit cheating to say I like Starlight now after doing my own sort of fanfic that had her in a major role since that might be me tooting my own horn a bit.

Though I will say as much as necessary that I am very aware alot of what happens in SOTDT would have been impossible to do in canon and I don't plan on pushing what I did to expand on Starlight's backstory as gospel. It only applies to what I'm doing on the blog, I will not be making a case that my interpretation is the only correct one. I'd actually welcome seeing some different interpretations on things such as who Starlight's mother is, what they feel her past was like outside of the Sunburst leaving incident, and/or especially how Starlight originally got her cutie mark. (I've even said my personal guess is different then how I did it in SOTDT, as my guess is she got it the first time she discovered the cutie mark removal spell). Cause if nothing else, I've realized Starlight is a very interesting character that I think would be fun to explore all the possibilities with. It certainly could be something for those still on the G4 train to talk with one another about.

#my little pony #my little pony friendship is magic #starlight glimmer #to where and back again #season 6 #g4 #mlp g4

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