Unpopular opinion time

@Sadrai  
Many friends. I forgot the “m”. He sings, collects sports cards and plays O&O. Most of that is with Spike. And since Spike is busy in Canterlot and Discord is busy with Fluttershy, that’s two hobbies down.

@Sadrai  

To expand on what WyrmSpawN said: before The Last Roundup, the closest we got to fanon was only winks and nods. During the aforementioned episode however, not only was the fan name outright said by a main character in the show, but Derpy herself spoke and interacted with Rainbow Dash. That understandably blew our fucking minds back when it aired.
 
Then some Karen took umbrage with her portrayal, labelling it “ableist” and complaining online about it. This not only caused Hasbro to pull the iTunes release and re-edit it, but also for Amy Keating Rogers to write a letter to Equestria Daily explaining the change and why it happened.
 
This is what WyrmSpawN meant by having “a victory and recognition yanked out from beneath the fanbase.” It’s also why one of the reasons why I’m not particularly warm towards season 2 either.
 
@Myoozik
 
At the time MMMystery on the Friendship Express aired, I was thoroughly beaten down by season 2. The episode came across as especially derivative at a time when I really thought they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for story ideas, and as such didn’t really connect with it. Also not helping matters was the trepidation me and an awful lot of others felt towards the then up-and-coming season 2 final, and whether it spelt the death knell of FiM.
 
After A Canterlot Wedding turned out pretty good, and we had moved on to season 3 and beyond, I maintained that MMMystery on the Friendship Express was just another sub-par episode in a sub-par season filled with them, and didn’t think about it much.
 
Upon rewatching it however, although it’s still derivative, I found it a lot more enjoyable to watch as they did put effort into making the mystery self-consistent. You can go back and see all the clues left by the likes of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity before Twilight discovers them; which at the time I wasn’t really paying attention to.
 
At the time I put the episode in the skip it category, while these days I put it in the good category.

Shining Armour and Cadence’s overall introduction was handled poorly imo
 
People just forgived it because the Chrysalis twist saved ACW from being a complete mess

@Ebalosus  
Mmmystery is kind of the opposite to me - it works better on a first time viewing, cause the ending is the weakest part.
 
 
@Don’t  
The problem is they’re too generically nice - which does work better in the aired story, because it contrast’s Crysalis’ behaviour. But developing them beyond that was slow.
 
(Plus the whole “brother/alicorn from nowhere”thing.)

To be honest that Comic that made Shining a nerd as a teen came off as too tryhard and pandering since Shining in the show is basically a Dudebro Jock, he’s just a nice one like Fred from scooby doo.

@Don’t  
I think that’s more an aspect of his role than any characterization. His introduction involves getting married, while working to stifle an invasion. When he isn’t being a guard he’s been shown to be very passionate about his hobbies and family. And considering how popular D&D is in the military (not to mention the bronies that serve) it’s not that unusual or contradictory. But that’s just how I read him.

I was okay that not everybody was in the magic of friendship grows song.

@Sadrai  
Me too.

@Sadrai  
I wasn’t

@Don’t  
Who do you think should have been in the song?

@Sadrai  
Rarity’s parents, for one.

@Ebalosus  
Derivative I can see. It’s just another Mystery On The Orient Express homage that I’ve seen done before and better, but I think it can stand on its own with the comedy, and a bright spot for Pinkie since the season wasn’t too kind to her if I can recall.
 
About Season 2 as a whole, I don’t think it’s aged all too well and the episodes are all hit or miss to me. Season 1 has the distinction for being a lot simpler with more slice of life stories and the nostalgia value, Season 3 has the value of having more interesting episodes for better or worse and that finale which was supposed to cap off the series originally. Season 2 was just caught in the middle of the fandom’s golden years and was plagued with drama and unrest alongside the show itself trying to move on after Faust’s departure and a radical shift in tone. It was just flip flop after flip flop of episodes that I find a bit hard to get back to.
 
@Sadrai  
Same, I didn’t care that some characters were left off since it was too small to fit in more characters.

@Sadrai  
You should probably know who

@Don’t  
I really don’t

@Latecomer  
Okay yeah they definitely should have been in it.

.~@Don’t  

 
I agree

I prefer Snips and Snails over Dinky.

@Sadrai
 
I don’t think I’ve ever really been interested in Dinky in my entire life.

@Sadrai  
@DarkObsidian  
I only know Dinky from that one Rainbow Dash Presents episode,Bittersweet I think,and the subsequent Dinky Shark fighter videos.

Once in a while, I see people saying unicorns are the best. But I say unicorns aren’t as powerful as they seem.
 
From what I remember, they seem to at most cast two magic spells at a time, and the magic spells they can use each have their limits.

@Algebroot Neogears  
Yeah, but how many magic spells can anyone else cast at a time?

@Latecomer  
Unicorns developed telekinesis and other spells because they lack any specialization to benefit the community. Unicorn magic is as powerful and as versatile as it is to allow them to compensate for the other two races. Then again, from another perspective, earth ponies care for the earth, pegasi for the sky and unicorns care for everything else. It could go either way depending on one’s view.

@DarkObsidian  
Because she isn’t a character who talks or does anything she is just a background character
 
 
@Dex Stewart  
I only know her because the fandom likes to give every background pony a personality and name.

@Sadrai
 
Hm, no, that’s not really the reason. Whether a character in the show has spoken or not, I don’t care. I just never saw that mother/daughter relationship with Derpy. ;-)

@Sadrai  
I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison given that the former have had more episodes and have more of a personality while the latter like you said appears in the background and doesn’t have much character to begin with.