Unpopular opinion time

@Badumsquish  
Bullies also rarely are alone. They hang out in groups so that if someone is ever brave / stupid enough to try something they’ll just swarm them and beat them half to death.
 
And they rarely change once they reach adulthood. Someone who treated you like shit twenty years ago will still treat you like shit now.

@Broken Adam  
Because adults have never been children, or at least don’t remember. And from my firsthand experience I might have an idea why…

@AC97  
@Broken Adam  
Like, I’m not going to sit here and claim to be like an expert on bullying or anything. I just know that I used to get the crap kicked out of me by bullies in grade school and telling all the adults did diddly squat. Learning to box and dropping a savage beatdown on a bully that ended up landing him in an ambulance? I was never bullied again. Really, he’s to blame; he had plenty of chances to stop before it escalated to that :P
 
@Background Pony #5502  
Ambush them :P

@Jarkes  

 
I like it.
 
I don’t see what pony gender name rules it’s breaking.

Cozy Glow was a better villain than Starlight to me.

@Josh103  
Crazy Glue is probably my favourite villain tbh.

@Josh103  
Given that it seems that she was a response to a lot of the criticism Starlight got

Lightning Powder and Sunset Glare are retarded to me. Artemis too after learning that’s a GODDESS.

hey are we shitting on one bad awful? can i join in? because i have a theory.
 
so the intended moral is “don’t sink to the same level as bullies. tell an adult instead”, and that’s what applejack sells. but… that’s not what actually happens in the episode. telling an adult never actually solves anything because applejack never actually does anything. babs doesn’t stop bullying them because they told applejack, she stops bullying them because they save her from the death trap they lured her into. basically them retaliating against babs indirectly solved the issue. then the other bullies show up and hassle them, applejack again doesn’t do anything, and babs drives them away by threatening them. again, retaliation solves the bullying.
 
in other words, the episode consistently showed that retaliating to bullies would effectively solve it, while telling an adult would do nothing.
 
and okay, maybe that was all accidental and they truly did intend to sell the moral of just tell an adult. except… the writers are smarter than that. my theory? the writers had to give the moral of “tell an adult” but didn’t agree with it themselves, so they stealthily depicted defending yourself as the true solution. alternately, they just didn’t want the liability of telling little tommy to knock out little timmy’s teeth if timmy tried to steal his lunch money again so they had applejack claim otherwise so they wouldn’t be blamed for teaching kids to stand up to themselves.
 
again, i don’t know if it’s true or not. i just hope it is because it turns a terrible episode into an actually brilliant one.
 
@Josh103  
cozy glow is basically starlight except people reacted to her more realistically.

@Josh103  
Starlight was a better villain yet. But Cozy doesn’t have a quickly forgiveness, so that adds a lot of points in this “redemption” chain, specially with Equestria Girls.

@Hakirayleigh  
moral of the story: only send students who already know friendship to that school, because the ones that actually need to learn friendship lessons ain’t gonna learn shit and’ll just get into the school’s armory…

@DanielTepesKraus  
But they discarded to CMC cause “Ohhh my gosh, their friendship is so perfect”…Even some mane6 need take lessons, specially Pinkie this season.

@Hakirayleigh  
alternately, maybe the moral should be “don’t keep an arsenal of weapons in a school”. i mean, shit, the taliban does that kind of shit for crying out loud.

I was legit surprised that Crazy Glue was working for Lord Teabag rather than Chancellor Palpatine, they did an excellent job of misdirection there.

@DanielTepesKraus  
Ponies keep powerful artifacts at places like libraries, schools, museums. Maybe in the next season we able to include barber shops, super markets, a laundry, etc.

@Hakirayleigh  
we kept lead in our paint and asbestos in our insulation until we realized it was dangerous as eff.

@TexasUberAlles  
I find it more surprising that it was Cozy who was the one to reach out to Tirek first.
 
It was a pretty nice turnaround to have Cozy’s plan to be completely unrelated to Neighsay. I expected that Neighsay was going to be the unredeemable villain and Cozy was going to end up being the misunderstood lackey who gets redeemed. Instead it was Cozy who was cuckoo bananas and Neighsay who became an ally near the end. That subversion is probably my favorite part of the whole finale.

Decided to make a personal Top 10 villain list because why not.
 
10) Nightmare Moon  
9) Tirek  
8) Discord  
7) Tempest  
6) Starlight  
5) Chrysalis  
4) Auntie Eclipse  
3) Dazzlings  
2) Sombra  

@Dustcan  
Wallflower over Tirek and Dazzlings.
 
Seriously??

@Hakirayleigh  
I think it’s in descending order, not ascending.
 
Best at the top, worst at the bottom.
 
@Dustcan  
Is that correct?

@Hakirayleigh
 
She got a lot of points for just how…human her motivation was and being a real standout in her threat.
 
The fact that she’s one of the more recent and therefore fresh-in-mind antagonists help. I had to rewatch a few clips to decide who went where.
 
@Background Pony #0FAF
 
No, top worst bottom best.
 
…I actually had like multi-paragraph explanation for each but got bored halfway through.

in hindsight  
the Zecora episode makes the Ponies pretty irrational due to how many species that are much more different to ponies than zebras pass by without that much trouble

@Broken Adam  

@Vortaxonus  
what?

@Broken Adam  
The implies the ponies had problems with Zecora because of her species.