Unpopular opinion time

@monika hacks my account  
Back at the Hive - they have some cameos.

@Latecomer  
They did

If they made a spinoff based off of the Student Six, I would’ve watched the hell out of that.

@Myoozik  
The, let’s say “controversial” reception EqG got is why I think they were hesitant to make more spin-offs. Plus, they’d only make a spin-off if they thought it would sell toys and I don’t think the other races would sell quite as well as the pony toys. I could be wrong, but Hasbro is a toy company first and foremost so that’s where their bottom line is.

I’d happily watch a student six spinoff, even as someone who absolutely despises EqG to an unhealthy obsessive degree. At least they’re not humans

@monika hacks my account
 
These are her parents.
 

 
Ocellus was likely born unto them….however, it might also be that the Changedlings formed family groups once they changed. Either option makes her related to Chrysalis, and she was obviously born during a time when the Changelings were still evil.

@Spinny  
They really didn’t know, or at least want to say, anything about changeling culture. Most we got was the Pharynx episode and the student six talking about their holiday plans. I think we might know more about yaks and hippogriffs than changelings.

@Brass Beau  
Changelings in a nutshell were shown as trying to adopt pony ways, and that’s salt in the wound that was never knowing much about changelings in the first place.

G3.5 ended far too quickly. It consisted only of one movie (Twinkle Wish Adventure) and three 3-minute shorts (Waiting for the Winter Wishes Festival, Pinkie Pie’s Ferris Wheel Adventure, and Sweetie Belle’s Gumball House Surprise).

@Brass Beau  
I mean I know that a spinoff of them would’ve been very unlikely even if EQG would’ve been far better received and like you said, toy based purposes, but if there was such a possibility in an alternate universe, I would’ve been all up for it.

@Myoozik  
At the very least one would think that they’d test the waters with a “special” or mini-series or something.

@Brass Beau  
A special would’ve sufficed

We got annoyingly few specials for FiM; I can’t believe it took until between S8 and 9 to get a full-length special (not counting the movie ofc)
 
Then we got Rainbow Roadtrip half a season later and it’s like, y’all coulda been doing this all along but waited til the last season to start

@EquusStorm  
Never actually noticed that. Of course, it may be because Equestria Girls kind of made it look like there was more.
 
There is also the fact that there were also interseason shorts between seasons 8 and 9; which is the only time shorts happened for the main series.

Yep, only toward the end. I wish we’d gotten shorts and specials to the degree that EqG got, but guess it does little good to wish for more now.

@Algebroot Neogears
 
Yeah, I definitely wish we had gotten more FiM shorts at the very least.

@Algebroot Neogears  
Some would say that was too much in the first place, given how watered down it was. Of course, what replaced it was even worse, so…
 
 
@Spinny  
As long as they were better than the average EQG shorts.

The Best Gift Ever was well received as far as I know (save for the very unfair Marble scene) but Rainbow Roadtrip I’ve heard mixed reviews, I like them both but I do wonder what the quality of any potential specials for FiM woulda been like

@EquusStorm  
Loved BGE, found RR just utterly grey and boring.

@EquusStorm  
Depends on who would write for them.
 
I found Rainbow Roadtrip for the most part okay.

That sounds about on par with the general consensus. Rainbow Roadtrip I liked a few of the individual characters (Kerfuffle is a precious) more the story and I liked seeing that animation style again before G4 ended. A lot of problems in the late seasons honestly I blame on the revolving door of new writers.

@EquusStorm  

 
This we can agree on. (Though to be fair, many turned out great eps.)

Yeah not ALL the problems are due to writers alone but it’s definitely a part of it.
 
I had memorized the writing staff and familiarized myself with their styles in S1-4 or so; not choosing to commission the same writers in later seasons led to us getting repeated ideas and episodes that felt out of character with the writers not knowing the characters well. Case in point, that one awful AJ/RD competition episode that was a vastly inferior clone of Fall Weather Friends. Also writers who jumped on and weren’t there in the begining; there’s something special about writing staff that had always been there.
 
However the latter seasons gave us Berrow and Lewis/Songco who helped balance out some of the awful writing a little.

I blame the show’s decline more on poor leadership than the writers. A lot of them didn’t do their research, sure, but under the right people they were still able to make some decent episodes
 
||And yes this is just another way for me to call Josh Haber a hack again ||

Even in the final season, we got a new writer who I thought was pretty good. The one who wrote Starlight’s last episode, A Horse Shoe-in.