Uploaded by Background Pony #0E8F
 1400x1350 JPG 423 kB
Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Ponies Online! - April 13-14

Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!

Description

No description provided.

safe2164647 edit172162 edited screencap89964 screencap294923 gallus9041 ocellus6778 rainbow dash278703 rarity216690 sandbar6815 silverstream7682 smolder11258 twilight sparkle356221 yona6410 alicorn312181 earth pony442131 pegasus492467 pony1592503 unicorn533582 friendship is magic3859 g42016796 the end in friend1240 uprooted1316 book43334 drama3312 female1792057 male547186 mare734578 op is a duck4862 op is trying to start shit3089 reading8059 stallion193968 student six2083 text88703 treelight sparkle219 twilight sparkle (alicorn)148578 unicorn twilight32779

Comments

Syntax quick reference: **bold** *italic* ||hide text|| `code` __underline__ ~~strike~~ ^sup^ %sub%

Detailed syntax guide

Scrounge
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Since the Beginning  -

nobody's favorite
@raakamagna  
I guess, but if this wasn’t the end I wouldn’t feel like these problems were anywhere near as pressing, because things could get better once the replacement staff members get the hang of things. There would be chances to fix things.
 
And I can’t hold out hope that the reboot will treat them better, either. The three of them might not even know each other in G5. They might not all even exist in G5 (Apple Bloom, in particular, seems to be in danger of not coming back; Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had G3 counterparts and she doesn’t, plus she has to be connected to Applejack, otherwise it’d be “we can’t use her because we already have someone named Apple and it could confuse people”). And even if they get a do-over, odds are good they’d have to start from the beginning, from when they were just the token little kids, the annoying Season 1 CMC from back before character development worked its magic on them, and they might not make any progress from there at all.
 
…Yes, I said the CMC were annoying in Season 1. Let’s face it, they kinda were. They had one-track minds and not much personality beyond “loud and over-energetic”. It wasn’t until Season 2 and episodes like “Sisterhooves Social” and “Hearts and Hooves Day” that they started being more than generic “kid sister” characters and their true personalities started shining through.
raakamagna

Ruwa is best waifu.
@Scrounge  
I honestly feel quite frustrated about the CMC thing. They deserve better. I firmly believe part of the problem is staff departures at this point. I am glad it will all end before the quality goes below what I hold as acceptable.
Scrounge
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Since the Beginning  -

nobody's favorite
@raakamagna  
I like Ocellus too, and I think Gallus and Smolder actually have a lot of potential as characters. They’re all fine as individuals (except Blandbar). I just hate how the group as a whole has been handled. How the Tree of Harmony only talks to them and not even the Mane Six or the Princesses, how there’s no real explanation for why they’re so special or what they represent, all that stuff.
 
I think my biggest problem is how having them there as a group displaced other groups that were already part of the narrative, namely the Pillars and the Cutie Mark Crusaders. The history of the Pillars was a huge deal throughout Season 7, leading up to the big return in the season finale, and then instead of them getting their proper screen time in Season 8, they get reduced to barely even a footnote. And the Crusaders have just come so far and grown so much that it kinda breaks my heart that they’ll never get to stand on anywhere near equal footing with their sisters after it looked like they had such big things in their futures; I thought Equestria was going to need them, but as of Season 8 they’ve been going backwards, their meaning diminishing, and, well, honestly, the fact that when the map called them specifically to solve a problem, they needed Twilight to hand them the obvious answer on a silver platter and in the end were barely more than messengers (don’t get me wrong, I liked the episode overall, but that specific part of it still got under my skin), I think it’s obvious that any possibility of them getting to be heroes has been tossed out so the new kids could get handed destiny on a silver platter.
raakamagna

Ruwa is best waifu.
@Scrounge  
Maybe I am too fond of Yona and Ocellus, but I think there are good things in that group. Gallus is cool in fact. He hails from a nation of disenfranchised resentful rude folks (Which explains why every griffin before Gabby was rather rude) and still he manages to be a cool guy. And Smolder barely understands friendship (As exemplified by her marveling over a tale of betrayal) but she bonds with them.  
They have weaknesses, but if you ask me it is because of the same reason almost all Spike related episodes polarized the audience so far. Different writers.  
I don’t like that production model used in America (And other Western countries) of having each episode written by a different staff member in rotation. It leads to many more inconsistencies and continuity errors as the show goes on.  
Just imagine if seven guys went to write a novel and each of them wrote a different chapter. It would be a mess! Why do we do that to TV shows in the West?
Scrounge
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Since the Beginning  -

nobody's favorite
@raakamagna  
I wish I still could. But the bottom just kinda fell out for me, and I’m seeing a bunch of problems, and some that might seem hypocritical to bring up in the same breath, like why are they even going down this road when the show’s main goal is to sell little plastic ponies and “Pony” is right there in the name, but if you’re going to do it, do it right and don’t do it like this. The non-ponies should feel like they come from other cultures, there should be some understanding to be reached.
 
I don’t know. I just don’t. My brain parts aren’t talking to each other right now. But I’m seeing hols in things that I could ignore before.
 
 
@raakamagna  
Now. In the technical sense, they are like the guys from Captain planet or the old Power Rangers. They are all token race characters, including Sandbar (The token white in the team).[
It is because the staff decided to make a team with one of each race. Not because they are actually racist one way or another.
 
I don’t feel like that makes them special. The Mane Six had things they stood for, and the CMC looked like they were meant for great things, and we barely know the pillars, but the Student Six feel like they didn’t qualify so much as got picked off a checklist. There’s no indication that their roles couldn’t have been just as easily filled by another random member of their race. They’re a shopping list, these groups exist and we need someone from this one and this one. But the other ones don’t even need to be mentioned even in passing. Like how the first group of Power Rangers needed a black one and an asian one but not, for instance, a hispanic one, or like how they needed a Planeteer from the Soviet Union and a Planeteer from South America, but not one from India or Australia or whatever. “Hey, if you’re going out, pick up a dragon and a hippogriff for us, would you? Whichever ones are on sale is fine. Oh, and don’t get a minotaur like you did last time, you know those things just wind up getting pushed to the back of the fridge and nobody remembers they’re there until they start smelling funny.”
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
@Scrounge
The passage of time seems to have been about two to four years (Which means the Cake twins might not be that old.) So time is not big deal.
 
2 to 4 years is still significantly older than a newborn foal in diapers. They may not be school-age yet, but they clearly should not be newborns anymore.
 
 
@raakamagna  
@Scrounge
He is the first to befriend them, not the only one. The thing is, generally, students tend to spend more time with the ones who befriend them first, and rarely switch their core friend group unless it is toxic.
Gallus, Smolder, and Ocellus were reluctant to be there, and Yona and Silverstream… Scared away most ponies, just like Pinkie Pie did. Sandbar contributed to their bond and actually he is the one who built that friend group.
 
I don’t remember Silverstream scaring away the ponies (but I also wasn’t paying close attention).
 
RE: students spending time with those who befriended them first—I like to say that “time and repeated interaction are the two necessary ingredients for friendship to form. All the other elements of harmony are what cement it into a friendship that lasts.”
 
 
@Angrybrony  
ya’ll really like to over complicate this show sometimes.
 
Textual coherence is important.
 
 
@Scrounge  
@raakamagna
Does anyone else even fucking talk to them? And other than the five of them theoretically being diplomats years in the future, what was Twilight trying to accomplish with the entire rest of this year’s student body? And that’s not even going into the fact that the only one of the Student Six who doesn’t have a pony personality is the actual pony who has no personality.
 
The truth of the matter is that the writers themselves don’t know or remember that there is the entire rest of the student body. It’s part of why their worldbuilding feels so flat.
 
If they wanted a message about reaching out past your own front lawn, they should have had the Mane Six go to these other countries, without waiting for the map to send them, and help out there instead of saying “send someone to us” (particularly when most of them started out not even wanting to be there). Call it something like “Habitat For Harmony” or “Friendship Without Borders” or whatever. The time and resources that went into that school could have rebuilt half of Griffonstone, and I’m not buying that moving the Hippogriffs back to Mount Arus was as easy as they made it seem, maybe they could have had somepony help with that instead of just sweeping it under the rug and pretending it was as easy as rearranging a few pieces of furniture.
 
…or why have the yaks and kirin never been seen in Canterlot on diplomatic missions? The changelings, dragons, and hippogriffs all have good excuses for never being seen as good before but you’d expect some yak or a kirin in Canterlot or Manehattan for diplomacy or business. Stuff like this is why Equestria feels like a series of soundstages rather than a living world.
Scrounge
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Since the Beginning  -

nobody's favorite
@raakamagna  
Does anyone else even fucking talk to them? And other than the five of them theoretically being diplomats years in the future, what was Twilight trying to accomplish with the entire rest of this year’s student body? And that’s not even going into the fact that the only one of the Student Six who doesn’t have a pony personality is the actual pony who has no personality.
 
I managed to take the damn thing at face value until now, somehow I went a whole year without overthinking it, and even then it was kind of stupid, but when you actually look at it, ugh.
 
International politics is a bullshit subject for a children’s cartoon. Either you have to oversimplify it to the point of worthlessness or you have to look little Susie in the eye and admit that certain groups of people are always going to hate each other’s guts for simply existing and telling them they’re “wrong” will just throw fuel on the fire and make them pissed off at you while they’re at it, which you’re not allowed to say to kids anyway.
 
Fuck all of it. This kind of shit is why I gave up on Star Vs The Forces of Evil.
 
Sorry if my tone isn’t civil, I’ve got some stuff going on, but still, the whole thing was poorly executed.
 
If they wanted a message about reaching out past your own front lawn, they should have had the Mane Six go to these other countries, without waiting for the map to send them, and help out there instead of saying “send someone to us” (particularly when most of them started out not even wanting to be there). Call it something like “Habitat For Harmony” or “Friendship Without Borders” or whatever. The time and resources that went into that school could have rebuilt half of Griffonstone, and I’m not buying that moving the Hippogriffs back to Mount Arus was as easy as they made it seem, maybe they could have had somepony help with that instead of just sweeping it under the rug and pretending it was as easy as rearranging a few pieces of furniture.