Pony Venting Thread

@Background Pony #EB52  
I think on sites like Equestria Daily there are, but even there it gets muddy.
 
As for my stance, yeah I’m in the camp where I dislike the mentality of having a strong negative opinion towards something even if they haven’t actually watched it or experienced it. If it’s just someone preferring one over the other or losing interest and dropping it, then so be it, I can accept that.

It was too soon for bootlegs.
 
In the end, there’s nothing else.

I’m going through my moods again where between me and my first three brony friends, I’m the only one who actually watched the show all the way through. And it pisses me off.

Yeah… it’s rare in some circles to find anyone who hasn’t watched all the way to the end and I legit can’t understand it. Ever since I joined the fandom a decade ago I’ve never been more than one week behind with new episodes, without exception as far as I recall, and almost always watched it the day OF airing. If anyone can’t spare just 22 minutes a week to watch the show of the fandom they’re in, they may need to find a new fandom.

There’s a few philly episodes I never really watched.

I mean it’s totally fine if people don’t wanna watch all the episodes I guess, I’m just the sort of person who wants to see literally all new content for something I’m interested in asap, and as such find the other viewpoints somewhat hard to identify with

It was a struggle to watch some episodes, I authentically loved the show.

@EquusStorm  
Well, that’s probably what those people did? Like, I got the impression tjey had quit the show, not just couldn’t be bothered to finsh it.

@EquusStorm  
There’s 222 episodes, plus the movie, the TV movies, and all the Equestria Girls stuff. That’s 20+ hours of content and not all of it is interesting. Some people prefer adventure and lore-focused episodes and don’t care for the slice-of-life stuff. Some people only watch the show for the waifus. Some people are just ‘fans of the fandom’ who lost interest in the show and only keep up with it out of obligation. I myself shifted from bingewatching three seasons in two weeks into the latter category over time after the novelty of the show wore off.

Well I still don’t get it, 20 minutes a week even for the shittier episodes is barely much at all. If people don’t wanna watch the show of the fandom they’re still in, that’s certainly fine, but nobody better dare ask me what x or y character is when there’s a whole episode about them that they refused to watch.

@EquusStorm  
I don’t think most people who have stopped watching care much about later characters. And if they do, there’s the wiki.

@EquusStorm  
I’ve stopped watching the show vehemently around the time after Equestria Girls came out.When I would get nostalgic, I would watch some of the newer episodes to see how my childhood show was doing. But I understand what you mean, sometimes it’s best to do your own research if you’re confused, cause I know I was when I found out Starlight Glimmer was a thing.

@EquusStorm  
I’ve always been present whenever a new episode premiered. But one of the three friends who I have an obsession over has so many mental issues in his life that felt that there was a decline in the show’s quality starting in Season 6. I get filled with depression whenever he finds the rest of the show to be an unsatisfying chore to watch. Thinking that he has enough content for whenever he does MLP stuff.  
He’s also told me that he’s done with fandom dramas and controversies over every little thing the show does. But I always got the most enjoyment whenever we debated over those!

If people wanna stop watching that’s totally fine; watching a show you don’t enjoy anymore is certainly a waste of time. One may suggest the perceived quality may improve past that cutoff point and be missed, but really life isn’t long enough to struggle through every unenjoyable show ‘just in case’ it improves I suppose.
 
My issue is the select few - I know some in person! - who make a massive deal out of starting every convo with OH HAHA I STOPPED WATCHING WAAAAY BACK IN SEASON X, SHOW SUCKS NOW HAHA AM I COOL YET and that just makes me want to punch people. My favorite season is 7, and honestly I loved most of s9, so I guess I’ve never personally understood what people mean when they say decline since I’ve enjoyed most seasons as a whole.
 
This, however, is extremely subjective on both ends. Feeling like the show declined is a very valid opinion, though nothing more than that. My generally lukewarm feeling to anything before S4 aside from a few great key episodes is likewise entirely subjective and not a fact. I just wish people wouldn’t be so aggressive with their insistence that things apparently suck, unless asked. I’m guilty of being negative af too but it really brings the mood down lol

@EquusStorm  
I’m in a weird zone where I lowkey worship the vision and attention to detail in Season One, but I also think the show got better the more it experimented.

@DerpyFast  
It was sometimes better and sometimes worse - that’s how experimenting works, you win some and you lose some. I personslly felt that outside of Season 7 they lost more than they won, but then I don’t know if that’s down to experimentation or just poor-quality product.

My beef with the earlier seasons is probably more due to me making myself sick of them repeatedly watching them rather than their objective quality, but then again since I’m a fan mostly of the expanded lore and universe and later-season characters it does feel a bit stifling to go back to the beginning. S1 is of course the season that got me IN to the show a decade ago though so I ain’t complaining too much.

@EquusStorm  
I thought the lowest point of the show was Season 8. That season was just boring to get through. It felt like the apex of executive mandates and fan-pandering, and I hated it.

@EquusStorm  
Could be - I’ve never really rewatched them, and my opinions on them haven’t changed much.
 
I do like the show’s expansion of scale )for the most part at least), but I felt that in “return” average episode quality went down.
 
 
@Penguin Dragneel  
I thought it was the nadir too (though still with plenty of solid episodes)… but then came Season 9.

@Penguin Dragneel  

 
S8 the writers admitted they had a lot of creative freedom…..which really speaks volumes.
 
S2-4 were the ones where Hasbro were really breathing down their necks while everything after had tons more freedom, which is probably the worst part given how many things felt blatantly toyetic despite never getting major toys

 
This is almost as crazy as saying you have to consume every piece of X-Men media or you’re not a true X-Men fan. I’ll be honest I haven’t watched all of Pony Life (watched up to Discord’s Peak and saw some scattered episodes here and there), but I generally feel I’ve seen enough to get it and have an opinion.

The second part of s8 picked up with some excellent episodes imo (kirin ep mainly) but much the first half is among my least favorite of the franchise.
 
 
@Helix988  
No one is forced to watch the show they’re literally in the fandom of, I’m just saying I personally can’t understand not wanting to do so. If I stopped liking a show I’d be gone from its fandom in a heartbeat so I don’t understand how people stick around for years and years long after they hated the show. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I just personally don’t understand it.

I’d still take S8 over S6. It has a lot of the same problems as that one did but the bad episodes don’t annoy me as much(since I didn’t expect much from them compared to, say, Newbie Dash), and most of the episodes in S8 I was looking forward to usually delivered

S6 is probably my least favorite overall, despite being a major Starlight fan. Plenty of good eps but plenty of completely forgettable ones. That said it’s quite hard to rank seasons.

@EquusStorm  
I think what you might be missing is that fandom and time has a bit of an an odd relationship. Just because there were a lot more seasons after Season 1, doesn’t make Season 1 itself any less valid a thing to be a fan of than when it was the only FIM around.
 
 
@Kiryu-Chan  
Eh, they’re about even in my book.