Izzy deserves a hug

Izzy may be cheerful and quirky, but there are many things that set her apart from Pinkie Pie.

On tell your tale there is an episode focused on Izzy feeling lonely for that reason. If you think about it, even in her old life she was alone.

Izzy’s not the only unicorn who lives in Maretime Bay, is she?

Or is she? That would explain why she feels alone.

@Jonny Manz
I’d love to know why you think that, as outside of Hitch and Opaline I can’t think of how the other characters are sillier than in canon, buuuuut I know how moderators can get when you get ‘too off-topic’ in an image–

I don’t know, I feel like when they’ve dropped the ball with Izzy, they’ve really dropped the ball with her, it affected my enjoyment of her character. While Make Your Mark seemed to show more care for who Izzy is outside of the wacky humor, and didn’t present her as someone hard to be around, a flaw that Tell Your Tale completely pulled out of its ass.
But I don’t blame you if you disagree on this ‘cause of Izzy bias. I mean I have a massive Hitch bias and I’m willing to defend a lot of his appearances, even when he’s very inconsistently written nowadays. Who am I to judge? 😆

Yeah, I feel like when G5 becomes MLP history, and others are looking back on it years later, I could see them wondering how to place Tell Your Tale in G5’s importance, especially if it goes on for longer than Make Your Mark. Kinda like how, as someone with very little knowledge on G1, I don’t know what’s the defining piece of animated media for it amidst all its content. Unlike how for G4 it’s obviously Friendship is Magic and for G3 it was the movies and specials.

I don’t know, the way in which the episode presents that Misty was there the whooooole time when the Mane 5 came back to the Brighthouse, and the different way they see The Wishing Star, to me it looked like the episode was distancing itself from Make Your Mark’s canon. But I’ll concede that I’m the complete opposite of you, I tend to distance different types of media related to the same franchise if they’re not direct sequels. Even with G4 I still see the comics, Equestria Girls, and Pony Life all as their own things despite the evidence otherwise and my varying opinions on all of them.

@Mr.Myoozik
Probably has to do with the description.

I like that this is literally just a short clip of Izzy being sentimental while the comment section is about the state of the current generation for some reason.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
On that point, we’ll have to agree to disagree - I definitely think they’re sillier in TYT.

Maybe it’s just that I’m a massive Izzy fan with massive Izzy bias, but I feel like she did play an important role in those episodes and others, and that it more than made up for any (minor) errors in the first two episodes mentioned. Different strokes and all that

Perhaps it’s because I’m an old fart (relatively speaking, having hit the big 3-0), but I see a big difference between a half-hour (well, 22 minutes without commercials, granted) TV episode and a 5-minute web short. I realize, however, that line has continued to blur, with Netflix being a streaming service that releases the episodes together in bunches, rather than a traditional linear TV channel that airs them weekly - or even daily - and YouTube being commonly available on streaming devices, such that it can be watched on TVs instead of computers easily, not to mention other devices. So on that point, I will concede that I can understand why people would start to see TYT as a main series. Obviously, that’s not even factoring in what you and northern haste brought up, about the more regular release schedule.

I dunno, I don’t think it changed all that much from the Winter Wishday special, since it basically just showed the very ending, and made it more slapstick-y (a la Posey summoning a flower for the first time) to more match the tone of TYT. After that, it continued on where the special had already ended. But then, I want things to match up, to consider it as canon as possible, because 1) I really enjoy TYT, and 2) it’s a habit I got into back in the G4 days, where I would try and reason as much official material as I could into being canon. If you don’t want it to match up because you’re not as big a fan of TYT, that’s fine too.

@northern haste
Tell Your Tale still has 43 episodes and counting, though, compared to Make Your Mark’s 10 (counting the specials). Even if Make Your Mark has more runtime per episode, I wouldn’t be surprised if Make Your Mark didn’t get as many episodes as Tell Your Tale will when all is said and done. 70 episodes for a series of 5-minute shorts is a long and pretty good run.
But I do agree that Tell Your Tale coming out weekly without hiatuses compared to Make Your Mark’s sporadic binge releases does add to TYT being more than just a side series, though.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
I feel like I should mention that including the specials so far make your mark has given us roughly 4 and a 1/2 hours of contact ^{But that includes credits}.
And the 43 current episodes of tyt are roughly 3 and a 1/2 hours.
Reason I said it’s in the public eye more is that The 3 and a 1/2 hours was spread across 43 weeks. Even when make your mark gets a batch of episodes it’s on one day and most people would watch All the episodes around the day

I don’t think it’s been consistent between the characters. The only character whose really different is Opaline, who is flat out written as a parody of herself. Every other major character–Sunny, Pipp, Zipp, and Queen Haven in particular–are about the same as they are in Make Your Mark. Hitch sometimes gets over-exaggerated too, but only sometimes.

I definitely think there’s been more instances where Izzy has been done dirty in Tell Your Tale other than those episodes, even if those two–especially Dumpster Diving–are the worst offenders. There’s been some improvement, but I feel like to fix a mistake as bad as Dumpster Diving you’re gonna need several AMAZING Izzy episodes to compensate. And they should be about her, not about someone else, like the episodes you mentioned.

And like I and northern haste mentioned, taking these kind of liberties with the characters wouldn’t be so bad if Tell Your Tale really was the side show, but given that it gets more consistent releases and might legitimately end up getting more episodes than Make Your Mark, it doesn’t feel like just the side-show anymore.

As for why Tell Your Tale has deviated from Make Your Mark’s canon as of late, Hasbro could be to blame for that, but I’d rather believe it’s a conscious choice. Because, y’know, I don’t like the show, I wouldn’t want it to be canon 💀
I can chalk up Taking Flight having a different explanation to the Marestream as lack of communication due to strict deadlines, but how would the Tell Your Tale writers not be told that Misty and Opaline didn’t appear in Winter Wishday? And how implementing them would end up re-writing the special? I’d much rather believe Under the Mistytoe was a conscious decision of the writer making a What-If story.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
I disagree, I feel like Tell Your Tale has been pretty consistent about taking the characters and situations, and turning up the goofiness dial a couple notches, to fit in with the tone of the series (this was especially noticeable with Grandma Figgy in Foal Food, compared to her appearance in Winter Wishday), and doing it pretty evenly of late. Granted, that wasn’t always the case, I will concede, especially with Izzy - the same guy wrote the only two episodes where I’m even willing to entertain the argument that Izzy got pushed too far, to being out of character (Nightmare Roommate and Dumpster Diving), but then you compare that to Izzy in his next two episodes (One Trick Pony and All That Jazz) - big improvement. Izzy’s a bit of a silly character, so it’s only natural that when the goofiness dial is turned up on her, she becomes a little cartoonish.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
I chalk it up more to Hasbro giving the separate teams the same prompt on certain things to write, but then giving them tight enough deadlines that they can’t properly coordinate with each other, so they write what fits in with the tone of their series, and hope it matches up closely enough. But if that helps you to stomach Tell Your Tale better, then more power to ya

@northern haste
Exactly. I think Tell Your Tale has been trying to distance itself from Make Your Mark lately however, with the episodes that directly contradict Winter Wishday, and pretty significantly. Which I definitely think it’s for the best.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
There’s also the fact that this isn’t like pony life where it was obvious it wasn’t in the same universe from the start.
Some people even think you need to watch it to understand make your mark

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
Can’t argue with that

Like northern haste said, yeah, Tell Your Tale is barely even a side-series anymore. It’s gone on a lot longer and has come out more consistently than the main series, inflating its importance. Thus, there’s only so much you can say ‘Oooohhh it’s just comedy who cares about the quality and characterization’ when the characters appear more on this side series than the main one.
There’s also the fact that most characters are written more seriously than Izzy, so it comes across less like the show upholding a tone and more like it’s choosing which characters to write well, and which ones not to.

@Background Pony #8972
The problem is that side show is in the public eyes more

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
Well, what did you expect from a comedic side-series?

Me too OP. Make Your Mark Chapter 2 actually writes Izzy…like a character. Tell Your Tale is a Pinkie-like menace who’s there mostly just for comic relief.

One day you will

I dunno, I like both aspects a lot, because I really like Izzy a lot.

@Anon-a-Miss
Honestly I think izzy in Tell Your Tale is one of the few things are genuinely dislike about it.
She’s almost a completely different character compared to the movie and make your mark

This is why Misty needs to join. She can help make Izzy feel less lonely!

This hit me right in the feels.

@Anon-a-Miss
I kinda feel like Izzy’s ‘Pinkie Pie’ moment’s should seem annoying in a way, as it demonstrates the symptoms of her social depravity. Like the episode where she was messing with everyone else’s stuff because she was trying to blend in with them was pretty good if you ask me. It conveys how she has room to grow as a character. Some of the best characters in TV shows have started off as characters that make you hate them but by the end of the series they end up being the most liked character.