It’s better when Sunset does it.

@Background Human  
S5 showed that with his jealousy of Tree hugger. He’s still learning, and despite being reformed is still capable of unintentionally causing trouble.

@Beau Skunky  
In theory, yes. In practice, nyehhh. I mean, he’s (probably) not gonna betray them again the way he did with Tirek. But his understanding of friendship is still decidedly iffy.

@Mildgyth  
Indeed, didn’t help at one point even after being shown the bad furture, despite showing some sadness over it, she was still willing to risk that future happening just to spite one person/pony. That moment alone might’ve made her one of the show’s most petty, and possibly dangerous villains. So it’s easy to understand why it bothered most people. If she showed more remorse, or something, or had something backfire on her, fans probably would’ve accepted her redemption at the end.
 
@Background Human  
Technically, wasn’t Discord’s redemption already handled in the Tirek arc?

@Background Human  
So basically, instead of jumping the shark, the show went to plaid.

@Mildgyth  
Well, yeah. By the show’s own standards, Glimmer’s redemption arc was played out at ludicrous speed. Luna was still feared in Season 2 and guilt-ridden in Season 5. Sunset Shimmer was still hated in Rainbow Rocks and ashamed of herself in Friendship Games. And at the rate things are going, Discord won’t be fully redeemed until a few seasons into G6. But with Glimmer, it was pretty much “Sorry I killed the world all those times. We coo’?” “Yeah, we coo’. BFFs FOR LIFE! CUE THE SONG AND DANCE!” They even montaged through her reunion with R-Town. What should have been her big emotional moment was instead shuffled off in approximately ten seconds.

@Background Pony #CE4F
 
I think that people got irritated because Starlight was redeemed too quickly for the scale of things she had done previously.

@Beau Skunky  
Campy is dead at the same time as escapism,when nerds became arrogant as well as the majority of the comic/cinema audience.Now it’s all about making plot as complicated and grimdark as Neon Genesis Evangelion or post-ironic/self-aware/“lol we are so original because we’re deconstructing” tropes copypasted garbage and shunning everything that dont follow this mold is shunned.Yes,even MLP is not safe.Just look at S6 finale,it followed the “forgive and forget,plummeling your adversary to a bloody pulp is stupid,friendship power” mindset it always followed SINCE DAY 1 and people lost their shit because this is not a tales of woe and bloody betrayal a la Games Of Thrones.Honesty in entertainment is dead burried unded post-ironic garbage and people taking entertainment as seriously as a matter of life and death  
tl;dr People dont know how to chill anymore

@Beau Skunky  
American Dad, when it hit is stride in season 3 through about season 10/11 was usually at least very good and sometimes great. Definitely had the best Christmas episodes of any animated show.
 
Agree about Brian; when he went from being Deadpool/early Spiderman to the writing staff’s whipping boy the show went from mediocre to shit; i doubt anyone watches it for Peter or Lois or any of the other characters, except Brian & Stewie. And one of the writers on the show really think it’s funny to make jokes about killing animals, especially cats, which isn’t funny, and a big indicator of the mental level of the show.

@kircher  
I haven’t watched any Seth Macfarlane show in forever, so I wouldn’t know about how American Dad turned out. One thing I’ll give that show is, it was a li’l more politically balanced (as in, mocks both sides) then FG was. Which is ironic, considering I heard Seth made the show out of anger of Bush Jr. being relected, and wanted to use it to keep FG from getting to political, and preachy.
 
I used to be a huge fan of FG, but I started finding the show a bit annoying, and preachy as time went on. I must say, I miss Brian being a deadpan snarker, and straight man, as opposed to what he is now. (Even the others are barely likeable.)
 
I will admit, Seth’s recent “1,000 Ways to Die in the West,” was quite funny, if you can stomach it’s more vulgar humor. (Granted some vulgar humor can be good if done right.)

@Ardashir  
Thank you, you said it better than I could convey.
 
 
@Beau Skunky  
American Dad has done the same thing since leaving Fox; it was actually promised to be “edgier” in advertisements, and instead has become even more stupid than Family Guy. FG has been junior high school level gross-out humor since it came back from being canceled the first time, and has just gotten worse with animal abuse subplots and Brian’s assholish liberal mouthpiece/punching bag. I wish he had stayed dead.

@Ardashir  
Got to have balance, I say.
 
SpongeBob, and Family Guy are 2 prime examples of going overkill with edgeyness. Both used to be good, but now they feel like they’re trying to hard to be edgey. (Like killing off Brian temporarily to get sympathy/ratings, and make those who feel his character got to preachy/political look like jerks for getting him killed off, but oh wait he’s not dead now, so all the fan-drama over it was in vein…)

@kircher  
I do think I get your argument. I’d say that ‘all grimdark all the time’ can be just as childish and immature in its way as, say, the worst excesses of those MLP 3rd gen stories where it was all tea parties and the like.

@Beau Skunky  
I agree about the edgy/innocence, cute/dark duality. I wasn’t really clear about what I meant by the IDW comics being grimdark; it’s more they try to be too complicated, too heavily realistic at times, instead of being fun. Something that’s affected nearly every comics since Crisis on Infinite Earths and Frank Miller. I guess instead of grimdark, I was thinking more edgy. Edgy isn’t bad, but when everything is edgy, everything becomes dull. Innocence and simplicity are still nice things to have, at least some of the time.
 
I’m a lot more incoherent than I think I am, sorry.

@kircher  
I dunno, the MLP comic may have some dark moments, but it hasn’t yet gone the route of Archie & Friends’ violent/grimdark horror line of comics, and such. Plus, to be fair, the show has it’s dark/edgy moments to. (And it’s nothing new as G1 MLP had it’s “nightnare fuel” villains, and such too.) Heck, we even saw the skeletonized remainings of an off-screen/backstory villain/monster this season.
 
I like how MLP is edgy, but still retains an innocence about it. I like stuff that can be both cute and dark. (Such as Nightmare Before Christmas, Zelda:Windwaker, and Don Bluth movies.)

@Ardashir  
but what about the deconstructionist subtext of MLP? Not since Paul DeMan has there been such a fundamental delving into the semiotics of little pastel horses.
 
No, you are exactly right. Fun, without the going into grimdark territory that seems to affect almost everything else (including the MLP comic).

@kircher  
I’d say that’s exactly the reason behind much of MLP’s popularity, both the show and the comic. It’s fun, period.

@Beau Skunky  
That’s true, just wish they had picked an artist that could art. Squirrel Girl was right, glad so many old EC comics are being reprinted. Everyone has to be super-serious and dark now. We need more escapism (that might help explain the appeal of MLP, actually).

@kircher  
They probably used a different art style to differentiate it from the more light-hearted versions of Archie. Like the continuity where Archie dies in the end. :P (Well, it’s less violent in comparison.)
 
To quote Squirrel Girl, whatever happened to good ol’ campy fun comics of heroes battling giant apes on the moon, and stuff?

@Ardashir  
Exactly, like absurdist humor played straight.

@kircher  
The Predator meets Archie series used art like Dan DeCarlo’s classic style as well. Which makes it all the odder when you see Pops Tate or Dilton getting their heads torn off and blood flying everywhere.

@Ardashir  
What’s funny is the dead Archie series looks like it was done in true Archie style, which works better. The art in Sabrina is sub-Deviant Art.

Hail to the Queen, baby!

@kircher  
UGh. Yes. It looks worse than I thought.

@Beau Skunky  
Here
 
Gotta say, I think the art is pretty lousy. Would be better if it was done in real Archie style, at least to me.