@PonyPon
 
welp
 
@Background Pony #C14B
 
Of course she would. They’ve worked together for years. There’s a difference between Faust saying that she’s reluctant to watch because it won’t be what she imagined and Faust saying that it’s bad.

@Background Pony #A06A  
It’s not that she was afraid they would change her ideas, it’s that she knew it was going to happen. I don’t blame her for feeling that way at all. Still, I’m not surprised she’d defend McCarthy.

@Background Pony #66FC  
I believe it was here, way back when: >>266297

@Background Pony #A06A
 
Prove it.

…says the lady who hasn’t watched the show since Season 2 for fear that they’d fuck up her creative vision.

Personally, this video does a good take on the action in MLP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUxfO2ZsDVU
 
And King Sombra? Well: http://matt0044.deviantart.com/journal/In-defense-of-King-Sombra-342109535
 
The Crystal Empire two-parter didn’t really have “filler” so much as it wasn’t meant to be what we were “expecting” it to be.

@Millennial Dan  
I prefer this ending.

@Background Pony #A0D9  
Twilight didn’t think Queen Chrysalis was an imposter, she thought she was the real Cadence gone bad. It wasn’t until the real Cadence did some fast talking that Twilight learned of the switch.

@Millennial Dan  
So she talked Twilight out of it by convincing her she was really Cadance. Which means that Twilight wasn’t perfectly willing to blast Cadance to bits, but what she initially thought was another imposter.

@Background Pony #A0D9  
 

@Millennial Dan  
How did Cadance talk her out of it?

@Background Pony #A0D9  
Only because Cadence managed to talk her way out of it. It was a close one though.

@Millennial Dan  
If she was perfectly willing, why didn’t she?

@Millennial Dan  
Hint  
This scenario

@SeraphimDawn  
Now that is a moral difficulty I can get behind. Could she attack her own brother? Then again, she seemed perfectly willing to blast Cadence to little bits…

@Millennial Dan  
Had they added a Mane 6 battle against Sombra, it would’ve been more acceptable.  
Honestly, I was expecting Sombrero to brainwash Shining through the crystal “herpies” on his horn, forcing him to duel against Twilight.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
I think The Crystal Empire would have been better if they had simply managed time more efficiently. When all you have is 22 minutes to work with, excessive filler should be avoided. That failure/success song in particular was ridiculous. Half the lyrics are Twilight singing about how great she is, and the rest of the song consist of her mumbling something about being unprepared for Celestia’s crazy mindgames. Add in Sombrero and scenes like Ninja Pinkie and that absurd jousting match, and the whole thing ends up feeling like they’re just being kind of random, but also trying to tell a serious story.
 
The Fear Door was a nice touch, but even Twilight’s moral dilemma at the end was a bit contrived. I mean come on, Twilight really didn’t have any choice about getting Spike to help. It was either that, or become RAWR RAWR CRYSTAL dude’s plaything, which would you choose? Don’t answer that.

@Millennial Dan Both her and Merri do seem better with just the building/running aspect, not so much the writing…they should really stop with the round robin meetings. Maybe get a better scheduling setup done with Top Draw so they don’t have to ‘lock in’ scripts so far in advance. Far as I know only SAYS has ever been edited after the process.
 
@Millennial Dan I find Crystal Empire at least had potential, if they’d gone with making it authentically crystalline. Though, toy and marketing may have killed them if they blew the budget that way and made it impossible to meet kids’ expectations of the playsets.

@SeraphimDawn  
Heh, you should have heard my review of Frozen.

@PonyPon  
Seldom are things in life both good for you AND easy to do.

@SeraphimDawn  
That might be difficult and a mite bit painful to do after a period that raised them.

@Millennial Dan  
Perhaps your expectations are dangerously high for a kid’s show. Maybe lower it a bit, and you may not be as disappointed.

@Millennial Dan  
Well I disagree. I liked S3 more than S2, and S4 so far is feeling better than both of those.

@Background Pony #78B7  
She’s been civil, I certainly wouldn’t deny that.
 
However, when it comes to the quality of the show, I’ve been less than impressed with the writing of quite a few episodes, starting with season two. Now that we’re full-swing in S4, everything seems to have gone straight up bananas.
 
Some episodes I still like very much, but many of them are definitely not above criticism. Princess Twilight Sparkle was an abysmal bit of storytelling. I’m sorry, but McCarthy’s track record just isn’t all that spectacular.

@Millennial Dan  
>The show did get G3 insipid with MMC, and The Crystal Empire’s not much better, if you ask me.
 
And nobody did. I can already tell this is going to be a matter of opinion.
 
>When did McCarthy ever do us any favors?
 
How about continuing to do a good job on the show and resisting the urge to chew us out after all the shit we’ve put her through?