/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

>>183174
I'm still not completely done with the season yet. "Horse Play" stands out as being notably better than the other episodes in the first third of the season

>>183174
i watched 1 or 2 episodes, it was shit.

>>183174
I can't look at the diversity six without getting unreasonably angry.

>>183174
I stopped watching at season 5. I do not regret my decision yet.

Haven’t watched it yet although I heard it was shit

I have, so far, only seen the episode were maud has a got a boyfriend. I had some issues with it. It seems to be like the one episode about applejack's family, which I haven't seen but I have seen the scene were Pear Butter, or whatever her name is, tells her father that she chooses her boyfriend over her father.
I guess in some circumstances it is okay to ignore your family's wishes. If your father is a "blow up Alderan" kind of guy than I guess it is okay.
But these stories are always so contrived. The family member in question has always the one silly argument that they keep on repeating as if they couldn't say anything else. Like they couldn't possibly have an argument.
"He is not of our kind." "He is one of them."
Or in Pinkie's case.
"He's weird."
Unlike Maud?
I remember the Canterlot Wedding. In it, Twilight is rightfully indignant that her brother hadn't even told her that he had a girlfriend to marry. Unless Equestria is the most traditional place ever, I doubt that they decided to marry when they first became a couple.
How long has Twilight not known that her brother even had a girlfriend?
Anyway, Twilight's worries about Cadance not being the right mare for Shining is dismissed by Shining and in the end, she is proven right about it.
This is important to me because I think that today most people think that family members should mind their own business. This is the couple's decision. My point is that anyone who marries into my family is part of that collective. I don't want my potential daughter to marry some nigger and I won't have anyone tell me to mind my own business.

I am a bit interested in watching the first two-parter but even more so with the last two-parter. It seems absolutely bananas. So you have this child who manipulates and uses racism to her advanges. It is great. Why isn't she one of our mascots?

>>183197
She doesn't win in the end. I think she just sort of goes to pony hell.
Also she's just a lonely idiot who wants to be loved, and she decided she wants to take over the school because it's new and therefore important.

>>183182
For me it's that and the new intro. The old one told a visual story. You see Twilight riding the balloon from Canterlot to Ponyville, then you see Rainbow Dash, and BOOM, you see what a wonderfully friendly and charming place this town is. And look, there are Twilight's best friends! Each one gets their own moment to remind the audience who they are, and then Twilight sends a letter back to Princess Celestia showing her she's happy and living well in Ponyville.
Altering that intro to give her wings at some point? Fine, they're symbolic of the power friendship gave her.
The new intro? It is BULLSHIT! The camera bounces all over the fucking place as it tries to advertise the toys, the playset, the Dragon OC, the Diversity Six, and everything else the show has been bloated with.

I liked the kirin episode the most. It was a nice refresh. The ending was kinda shit in my opinion but that could be because of a longer story arc that contunies in the next season but still it was a letdown. Other episodes were hit or miss mostly. Overall it was decent i guess.

Kirin episode was best by far. Its also somewhat a redpill on free speech. After all the diversity signaling its nice to get something fresh and new.

>>183562
>>183883
Yeah, the Krin episode was the only good thing to come out of this season. I also think that it'll be the only thing that will stay around too, as it was unique enough to actually remember.

>>184389
I liked the kirin episode a lot. Only good thing to come out of this season.

Shit diversity plots aside, the colors were fucking atrocious and I couldn't stand to watch for more than an episode at a time

>>183174
Surprisingly good. The season opener was honestly the worst part so it really could no nothing but improve from there. Which it did. I still don't like the School of Friendship as an idea but the new characters have actually been used well and Yona, Gallus, and Smolder have been well-developed. The other three could use more dvelopment but whatever.

There were a lot of good episodes like The Parent Map and Sounds of Silence. I like how Applejack was objectively right about everything in her episodes. The season finale was a lot better than the last two seasons. The show was still mostly the same old fun show it has always been. Neighsay was annoying because he was just such an obvious dig but I loved Cozy Glow.

And there were a lot of good songs.

>>184990
Who is each member of the diversity six supposed to be?

>>192004
You mean like which element they are suppose to represent? I don't know but then again I haven't even watched anything with those character.

Hehe.
The element of greed - The griffin
The element of dishonsety - The changeling
don't have time to finish this idea now but it should end with, "And coukness makes it all complete.

>>183174
Season 8 of what?

>>192007
People have wanted to see an "Anti-Mane Six" since episode 1/2. It would be really interesting for Twilight and friends to try and teach a naturally-occuring "Anti-Mane Six" of students how to get over their vices and act in a properly moral manner.
I wish that's what they fully went with. Right now, it feels like the Diversity Six is a collection of bad OCs made by six different people, with no unifying themes or meaningful contrasts between them.
What's even the point of having a Griffon and a half-Griffon in the same party if you aren't going to do anything creative with the concept, like making the Griffon raised by ponies and the half-Griffon raised by Griffons? Or the other way around.

>>183174
I didn't watch most of it due to anons wailing about it combined with the fact that I didn't really want to get up that early most of the time. However I caught a couple of them and I have to say I enjoyed what I saw, I didn't really think it was as awful as it was made out to be. I will probably try to watch the rest of it at some point, I've just been busy. I don't like the Diversity Six as a concept but as characters they don't seem terrible. Based on character design alone I hate that fucking yak with a fiery passion, but I'm willing to give her a chance I guess.

It was better than most anons give it credit for. The student/diverse/burger six were probably forced into the show by hasbro but more to test dynamic character concepts for the next generation rather than corporate virtue shilling.

The burger six story arc all but glorifies assimilation over multiculturalism.

The finale is a two part exercise in post modernists go to hell with a side of moral lessons in the differences between nationalism and isolationism.

It's not the greatest thing ever but I don't get the rage.

>>192076
>The burger six story arc all but glorifies assimilation over multiculturalism.
A very interesting perspective. They must become pony-like in pony-land. maybe the show didn't sell out?

>>192010
That totally could have worked. The yak could have been for honesty/dishonesty because the yaks are pricks that are so stubborn and proud they lie to save face.
Also, it would have gotten more interaction with Apple horse because traditions and family stuff.

>>192076
>The student/diverse/burger six were probably forced into the show by hasbro but more to test dynamic character concepts for the next generation rather than corporate virtue shilling.
The impression I have of Hasbro is that they're basically a pragmatic company that is all about shekels, but in a blunt straightforward way rather than a duplicitous Jewish way. They are in the business of manufacturing cheap shitty plastic toys to sell to parents to give to their kids to play with for a couple of years until they get bored or grow out of them. The shows exist to sell the toys, period. They don't dick around with anything else; they do whatever they think will sell the most toys and anything that doesn't sell toys they don't really give a shit about one way or the other. This doesn't necessarily mean they don't care about show quality, it just means that the toy is the primary product, not the series. They don't have ulterior motives and don't care about virtue signaling one way or the other, they just want to sell toys and make money.

I bring this up because I think understanding Hasbro's attitude toward its intellectual property is essential to understanding this show and how it became what it ultimately became. This is my theory about it, based on my whopping 1.5 years of experience in this fandom:

2010-ish: Hasbro decides it wants to reboot its My Little Pony toy line the way they do with their various properties every few years, to appeal to a fresh crop of kids. Lauren Faust is hired to develop the show. She comes up with an idea for a series called My Little Pony Adventures. They like it, probably run it through some committees and focus groups, they make a few changes to it, and they end up with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Faust gives them the characters, the world, the mythology, blueprints of some episodes and an overall story arc. They greenlight it for what I strongly suspect was originally meant to be a 3 season series and send it out to be written and animated.

At some point, Faust leaves the show for unknown reasons, either because she quit or was fired. My guess is she probably wanted more creative control than was reasonable for what is essentially a toy commercial. In any case, she's off the project at this point. It doesn't really need her anymore anyway because as I said she basically gave them the blueprint of how the story plays out: Twilight Sparkle is sent to Ponyville to make friends, she does, at the end she becomes a princess. The episodes are the adventures she has and lessons she learns along the way.

This is basically what Hasbro wanted. It's a quality show, which they want it to be because if the kids are engaged with the show and its characters they are more likely to want toys and merchandise. Make a cartoon, run it for a couple of years, sell as many toys as possible, move on to the next toy property and repeat; that is basically their business model. However, with MLP something unexpected happened. It became wildly popular, not just with the adult fandom, which I think Hasbro always saw as kind of a happy accident, but with the target demographic as well.

At this point, Hasbro realizes this particular iteration of MLP has more power than they expected it to, so it will be profitable to keep it going longer than they planned. Trouble is, they basically designed the show to run through Twilight's arc and then end. Since Faust is long gone at this point, they decide to just turn it over to the team currently making the episodes to see what they can expand it into. The trouble with this is that up until now the show has been a cohesive work following a blueprint designed more or less in accordance with the show creator's original vision. However from S4 onwards it's basically a mishmash of whatever the new writers come up with. Sometimes it's a heavy-handed fantasy drama, sometimes it's le cute wacky horse show, sometimes it's diversity-pandering SJW bullshit, sometimes it's just filler to put on the air. The writers often either don't understand the characters they're writing or don't like them (Applejack) and try to change them or edge them out. New characters are brought in that don't fit the existing character dynamics (Glimmer, Diversity 6). Old characters are rewritten in ways that deviate from their original roles and personalities (Discord, Trixie). World building is done haphazardly, because as far as I can tell they just make it up as they go along. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, occasionally it even manages to be excellent, but it's no longer what it was for the first three seasons, which I think is basically why fans have such a love and hate relationship with it.

Meanwhile, throughout all of this, Hasbro is pretty much just focused on trying to sell toys. They want the show to be popular so the toys sell, but it's already running longer than expected and they know that eventually the craze will die down and it will be time to retire FiM and develop something else as originally planned. I've heard anons accuse Hasbro of interfering too much but that's not really what they do. Mostly I think they just let the creatives do what they want, they just give them parameters to work in that fit their business needs. "We need to sell a wedding playset so make an episode about a wedding," stuff like that. This can be both good and bad: Lauren Faust wants to make a fantasy adventure show; Hasbro says fine, just make sure it sells toys. New writers want to inject some pozzed diversity bullshit into the series; Hasbro says fine, just make sure it sells toys. The company doesn't prioritize virtue signaling the way other companies do because they care about making money; however if they think virtue signaling will make them money they'll do it. Fundamentally, they're pragmatists.

>>192120
This. About the pragmatism but I do wonder if Twilight's arc from the beginning really had the end-goal of her becoming a princess. I thought it happen because they wanted to squeeze in a new toy rather than it being planned along. I don't feel like more than one episode built up to it. I just feel like it was an anti-climactic episode for a show's finale, the one episode where she becomes a princess.
I also thought that her original intention for the show was to make a fantasy sitcom.

>>192144
I didn't like that Twilight became a princess, but I like that the episode tried so hard to make you feel proud for how far she'd come.
I wish, from that point on, they said "You have wings but you'll be a full princess in 100 years, now go back to ponyville until you're at least as tall and sparkly as Luna".
Twilight worked best as a rich genius fish out of water in Ponyville. Twilight as a Ponyvillanian friendly fish out of water with royal responsibilities isn't really as good. She was raised in Canterlot as the Princess's own student, so she should know everything about royalty.

>>192144
According to Faust that was the intention, it's mentioned in the show bible that got leaked as well iirc. I agree that it wasn't done well, when I saw it I remember feeling like it just sort of came out of left field. That significant a development should have been worked up to over the course of the entire third season, and the way it was done shows that the show was unfortunately already in the hands of some less than competent writers.

I feel like the way they handled the Grand Galloping Gala in the first season was done really well, and they should have tried to do the same thing with Twilight's graduation. It's mentioned fairly early on in the season. It's not a huge focus, but we know it's a thing and it's going to happen. Most of the season focuses on short self-contained episodes, but the Gala is periodically referenced as something that is going to happen, that the ponies are excited about and are preparing for. By the time it arrives, it's an event that the audience has been expecting and anticipating, and it's a good basis for a season finale episode. With S3, you just have a bunch of basically good but disconnected self-contained episodes, and then suddenly "twilight my son yuo are princess now."

>>192147
The S3 finale episode was itself well done, it just didn't fit well into the rest of the season. I actually watched it again fairly recently and I enjoyed it much better the second time around. The trouble really starts afterward, since the graduation event was basically intended to be a "happily ever after" type ending, which works well as something to conclude a children's story with, but is usually a hard point to write a continuation from. In the show staff's defense they had to begin S4 from a position of having written themselves into a corner, which is hard for even a good writer to pull off well. They did an okay job overall, but the main problem is that the story just loses its coherence and focus after S3. For the first two seasons, it's a story about Twilight the student moving to Ponyville and learning how to make friends. From there on out it's Twilight the Princess and her five friends go on assorted wacky adventures. Twilight is still treated as the effective protagonist but there's nowhere really for her story to go anymore so it's awkward.

Meanwhile they do an okay job of developing the other characters' arcs, but then pretty soon there's nowhere for those characters to go either, and it just becomes more wacky adventures. The writers are completely baffled by a character like Applejack, who basically has her own zen to begin with through her family and her work, and as such doesn't really have or need to have dreams or life goals. None of them understand her, McCarthy openly states that she doesn't like her, and she tends to be written poorly when she's written at all. Pinkie Pie is the same way; she has no real goals and mostly finds happiness through her relationships with her friends and family. However, they mostly see her as a wacky comic relief character anyway so she at least gets a role in that capacity. Rarity is probably the only character they handle well. I suspect this has to do with her being essentially an assertive single female whose goal is to get out of Ponyville and run a fashion business in big-city Manehattan, which makes her pretty much the only character on the series that the left-wing feminist writers can understand and relate to. I'm just glad they didn't turn her into a complete cunt.

>>192171
Yeah, just listen to "you'll play your part" song, it's an existencial crisis of which no writer has been able to drive away from properly, first the castle, then the map and now the school.

Horse play and parent map and sounds of silence were pretty good