Season 5 episode discussion (Stream & episode links in first post)

@PonyPon  
Sure seems that way.

@CronoM  
She ruled with deception. Not too unlikely to assume that she thought stories of Twilight’s importance to Equestria were deceptions by Twilight, thus disregarding them.

@Cirrus Light  
Heh.
 
She thought she was a bigger fraud than some fans.

Starlight’s backstory just made her look like Lotso from Toy Story 3. That wouldn’t in itself be a bad thing, but Lotso was handled much better.
 
And of course the equal ponies prove that they have no self-esteem and barely any sense of self-preservation when they gleefully forgive Starlight for psychologically torturing and trying to murder them. Screw “forgetting the past”. That’s not something that should be forgotten.

@HeadlessHorselessHorseman  
I find this comparison incredibly funny, because Lotso was almost a direct ripoff of the Miner guy from Toy Story 2 in terms of character and the obnoxious redheaded Cowgirl in terms of backstory, so he was just as dull and unoriginal to me as Starlight’s was :V

@ColdhardSilver  
I guess I’m just surprised her goal wasn’t to alter the timeline for the sake of spreading equality across Equestria. I’d have thought that would’ve been her primary goal, regardless of any personal grudge against the Mane Six.
 
Apologies if this post makes zero sense whatsoever; I’m typing it from the back of my friend’s car.

@ghostfacekiller39  
Huh.
 
Never put that together.

@ghostfacekiller39
 
Eh, I wouldn’t say he was a ripoff exactly. Pete wasn’t as irredeemable as Lotso.
 
And both of them had better character arcs than Starlight. Not least because they both got what they deserved.

@Crystal Neighybánya  
I was expecting that to happen - while TS is running around assuming that her plan is to ruin things, she just walks around fixing things her way (like with FS & the bullies).
 
I don’t mind it at all though, seeing the village again just bigger wouldn’t have been very interesting.

@Vree
 
Though that preview image about Ponyville being “equal” was a nice little red herring.

@HeadlessHorselessHorseman  
he was an old, fat, and seemingly nice guy who walked with a cane who felt neglected and unloved in the past and is fueled to be an antagonist by said feelings of being unwanted who then tempts the main characters to stay by promises of being loved and cared for 5ever who by the end is left in a position where no one really cares for his well-being
 
I guess the only thing that keeps him from being a total rip off, besides aesthetic, is that Pete was also a Pixar character :V They just ripped themselves off more than anything

@ghostfacekiller39
 
Well, my complaint wasn’t that Starlight Glimmer was a rip-off of Lotso. A lot of characters are rip-offs of other characters to some degree or another, and I don’t see that as being much of a flaw. My complaint was that Starlight was Lotso just done badly.

@SeraphimDawn  
calmly presses left

@SeraphimDawn
 
For once i don’t feel bad about using the fight option.

@HeadlessHorselessHorseman  
Which is why I find it humorous because I find SG’s personality to be very dull and cliche for a villain in this series and in general, and the comparison to Lotso reminded me of how he himself was a ripoff of past characters in the series xP
 
 
@SeraphimDawn  
FIGHT
 
Kill the bitch.

@Cirrus Light  
@PonyPon  
That would be pretty ironic, wouldn’t it?

I feel it prudent we revisit this:
 

@PonyPon
 
Any point that was made for Starlight here was made completely null by the end of the episode.

@PonyPon  
I don’t really agree with what I’m reading here, especially on the last comment in this picture - at least on the Glimmer side of things. I can agree with Sunset.
 
You can have as much potential for interesting dynamic as you want on the surface, but it still doesn’t make the character themselves particularly good or interesting. That all lies within how things are executed in the future and how her development takes place, and I personally am not exactly hyped to see what she brings to the table because I didn’t find her to be particularly different from the average MLP villain when she was an antagonist, and her redemption was such a fuck up that I’ve still got a bitter taste in my mouth. The “why is she even here” is going to be real for me come S6 because of the latter.
 
Maybe we’ll get an episode depicting her not adjusting well and not being instantly accepted by the rest of the mane cast sans Twilight and, if that’s done well, then yippee, the adjustment won’t feel like such a honey fuck of oats. If it gets dragged on too long, then it’d just make the characters look like assholes.
 
But…seeing all of those scenes where she was super buddy buddy with the rest of the mane 6 will kind of make even that episode hard to accept, because then it’d just make them look like two faced assholes if they aren’t adjusted to being her friend.
 
I feel like they’ve dug themselves into a bit of a pit instead of just opening themselves up to new possibilities. Either the characters are going to look dumb for just instantly accepting a former ruthless dictator into their circle on a whim like that, but they’ll look like assholes if they are distrusting and unaccepting because of the ending of the S5 finale, even though that’d be the smart thing to do.
 
Either way shit’s not looking too bright from the pair of lens that I’m seeing it through :V

@Jades  
@ghostfacekiller39
 
Like I did in the comments, there, I’d like to point out that at the end of MMC we had Twilight fly a rolling scissors maneuver at the camera while saying: “Everything’s going to be all right!”
 
Next episode, she’s struggling to get off the ground, and the two princesses disappear, and halfway through the season she almost flies straight into a helicopter.
 
So yeah, I think there’s actually still a good chance we’ll see stuff.

@Cirrus Light  
See stuff like the able to fly then suddenly not able to fly Twilight, except with SG’s dynamic with the mane 6?
 
I don’t think makes anything better, because they would still kind of look like assholes if they were all superfriendly with her one moment and then just distrusting and cold the next. The MMC thing with Twilight that you brought up isn’t really comparable to this scenario, because that was more or less an issue with exclusively her characterization, where this is a situation to where it seems like SG is just going to drag the rest of the characters down either way that it’s approached. Much less exclusive, much greater potential for harming the most important aspects of a character-driven show.

@SeraphimDawn  
[Presses the “FIGHT” button]

@SeraphimDawn  
If I have to throw away a pacifist run to kill just her, it will be worth it!

@SeraphimDawn  
Tries to fight with toy knife
 
How did that bloody kid do this!