[NO SPOILER, LEAK-FREE] Season 8 Discussion and Speculation: Discovery Family airings

@Spinny  
…K

@Spinny  
Does the fact that Starlight failed to actually improve the situation help any? If anything, she made it worse.
 
Rarity and Rainbow both acting a bit petty and childish isn’t terribly unusual for those two either. Both can be drama queens. The problem is that it went too far, to the point of them both seemingly ready to end their friendship. That much, I felt, was OOC.

@cheezedoodle  
It’s Starlight. Everything she does is wrong according to most people. :p

@rdibp  
That’s kinda because she’s been getting the credit of solving a lot of Friendship problems recently.

@rdibp  

 
Literally me every time.

@rdibp  
Word, sadly…

@100SGX
 
I’d personally count two that she herself solved this season. End in Friend and School Daze. Marks for Effort is an interesting case because Cozy came to her and just confessed everything without prodding.
 
She didn’t solve Horse Play, She didn’t solve Maud Couple. She was kind of the butt monkey in The MEan 6. Sunburst saved the day in Parent Map.

@gingerninja666  
And not counting the times she saved the day in Season 7.
 
People just hate her because she’s getting more credit than the Mane 6.
 
But well let’s get back to the topic. I haven’t seen The Washout but I’ll put it an 8/10 for no reason.

@cheezedoodle
 
I’m sorry, but the mane six should by now be well beyond any spats that have the potential to end their friendship. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that Rarity and Rainbow Dash could get to that level over something so ultimately trivial, even though they’ve had years of getting to know each other, and managing to find common ground in spite of how different they are.
 
As for Starlight, I’ll admit, I would have been just as annoyed if Twilight had been in her position instead, because it would have been yet another showcase of her being ridiculously more mature than her friends are, something that’s been bothering me since season 4. Because she just can’t fuck up on this level, can she? Absolutely not. That was clear even during PPOV, because it was obvious that the only role Twilight could possibly have in that episode is the straight man role. She isn’t suited for anything else.
 
Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed. I would have thought that this season would have been all about the mane six mostly moving past their own friendship problems and thoroughly committed to assisting others with the mistakes they themselves once made. But for whatever reason, the writers continue to keep them in these circular ruts, except for Twilight, who has long since moved past such petty squabbles while her friends have not. Seriously, if Twilight can move past it, why can’t the rest of them? I mean hell, we now have two episodes that show just how unfit Rainbow Dash is to be a teacher.
 
And frankly, Starlight seems to be just right behind Twilight in that regard, seemingly having moved past petty squabbles herself, and has become someone Twilight can rely on more than Spike…more than Applejack.

@Spinny
 
“And frankly, Starlight seems to be just right behind Twilight in that regard, seemingly having moved past petty squabbles herself.”
 
(has knowledge of On The Road to Friendship) HAH!

@Spinny  

 
The issue was that the have no common interests whatsoever and their personalities grate horribly on each other. I’ll grant that this seems like the sort of thing that would have come up already, but it wasn’t exactly trivial.

@gingerninja666
 
Eh, I’ll decide that.

@Spinny  
Yeah more or less.

never mind

The End In Friend has it’s issues but I saw nothing wrong with RD’s and Rarity’s squabbles, nor them suddenly questioning their friendship. I remember a while back when everyone was asking for more RariDash episodes(before Rarity Investigates) sometimes I was wondering why they never paired the two up for an episode, to the point where I was having the impression the writers were deliberately keeping the two apart. I mean it probably isn’t deliberate but it was a feeling I had for these this pairing unlike others
 
Actually, now that I mention it, even just by episodes that don’t focus on pairs, I rarely see Rarity with any other character that isn’t AJ

@Spinny  
Are you saying that long-time friends never break up over petty reasons?
 
As for Starlight, I think half the reason she was given the counselor job was to further her own learning. The most effective way to learn is to be immersed in the topic. Because it’s now her job to carefully consider the problems and needs of others and provide them with advice, it’s helping her learn patience and critical thinking.
 
I get no indication from the show that Starlight is considered some kind of relationship expert at this point.

It’s also worth noting that it’s far easier to analyze a problem from the outside than from within. When you look at someone with cold eyes, divorced from the intense emotions of being inside the heat of the moment yourself, it’s far easier to recognize a problem.
 
Starlight’s biggest damn blindspot is herself.

@Whomps  

And to be fair, Rarity and Applejack don’t always get along that well either, for a lot of the same reasons Rarity and Rainbow had issues. In fact it’s kind of interesting to think that the friend Rarity probably gets along best with is Pinkie Pie, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because they both are similarly driven by a particular passion. Pinkie’s purpose in life, after all, is making ponies happy through parties, and Rarity seems to thrive on a similar goal, which she achieves by helping others look their best. I think it’s the sort of thing they just “get” about each other, which might explain why they seem to tolerate each other’s rather excessive personalities fairly well.
 
Actually, thinking about it, they may be the only two who do appreciate each other’s respective passions. Rainbow really only seems to care inasmuch as she has the best of each (biggest party, coolest outfit, etc.), Applejack is mostly focused on practical (the only party I think we’ve seen her throw was to bring her family together and/or build a barn, and her clothing interests are mainly involved in utility), and Fluttershy seems to not think highly of either (lest we forget the time she became super assertive and called Pinkie and Rarity out on their “frivolous” interests). So really, they might be the only two who truly understand each other that way, which explains why a lot of their time together feels so… unforced.
 
 
@gingerninja666  

In some ways I think her biggest failing has become being too hard on herself. I mean, look how many of her problems since reforming have been caused her by holding herself to a standard she thinks others expect, rather than the one they actually do. Trying to do all her friendship interactions with Twilight’s friends at once to impress her teacher backfires on her. Trying to be the school headmare she thinks Twilight expects backfires on her. It’s really a case where she needs to learn that no one is suddenly going to revoke her friendship card if she doesn’t constantly make impossible levels of progress.

So I have to ask… with tomorrow’s Discovery Family airing being the one they did early as a preview, how many of you have already seen it? I avoided it at the time because I’m nothing if not a stickler for seeing things in order, but I increasingly wonder if I’m the only one who did that.

@Background Pony #9CDE  
I saw it when it was the Summer Surprise thing

@Background Pony #9CDE  
I’ve already seen it. The whole Summer Surprise thing DF put out. It’s an official Discovery Family airing, so it counts  
for viewing for me.

@LeoNero  

Fair enough. I’m admittedly really picky about viewing everything in order, so I decided to wait until when it was supposed to. It’s a good choice in some regards, because now I get to enjoy a “new” episode tomorrow, but at the same time I’m a bit sad because I suspect there won’t be a lot of discussion going on here.

@LeoNero  
Same, I watch new episodes on DVR and this one was there, so I watched it.

@Background Pony #9CDE
 
I did. since it was official, i wasn’t putting too much trust on people linking to it in its official air date. i still will try to screencap it through the next week, though.

@Background Pony #9CDE  
Yeah, I watched it when it aired. It was an official, regular-channel airing in the U.S., so…