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@Background Pony #02EF  
It might be worthwhile in the long run, that’s true, if only to keep everything organized and to help people avoid things they may want to avoid.
 
Right now I don’t think it’s needed, but it may be a good idea to keep on the back burner, so to speak.

Okay, so this character here keeps attracting one-person tagging sprees, so I figure we might as well bite the bullet and settle on a name.  
 
So far, the, um, “proposed” names have been Merrie Melodies, Meadow Rain, Green Drops and Blue Emerald. I’d prefer the second and could live with the third.

So, I got around to starting up with the G1 show. I got through the first two specials, couldn’t find the movie itself (well, I did find a version of it, but it was in Russian or something similar, so that didn’t much help), and just finished up with “The End of Flutter Valley”.
 
At least so far, I have to say it’s pretty good. Genuinely so. The stories are interesting, the characters fun, the villains either genuinely chilling or pleasantly amusing, and the backgrounds to die for.
 
Scorpan and Rep were easily my favorite parts of their specials. They’re very nicely nuanced characters.
 
Gusty is a bitch. I really like her.
 
It’s interesting to note that the tradition of offering a hoof in friendship to anyone who looks slightly redeemable is something of a franchise tradition – so far I’m counting Scorpan, Catrina and Rep, and Queen Bumble among the villains who got at least talked into ending hostilities.
 
I like how this show doesn’t fall into the trap of ugly=bad that Friendship is Magic did. Scorpan and the stonebacks being cases in point – they look entirely monstrous, but are both genuinely decent underneath.
 
While I’m aware that “The End of Flutter Valley” is a definite outlier in terms of total length, I think it easily proves the idea that Friendship is Magic would have benefited from more stretched-out premieres and finales. A lot of those episodes really felt like they could’ve used a three-part setup, and the way G1 here gives itself time to work things out over multiple episodes’ worth of runtime really helps sell its own stories.
 
EDIT: Watched the next two episodes. Squirk was a delightful villain – I loved how expressive his design is – and Crank’s constant abuse was definitely good slapstick. Pluma was terribly endearing as well – her hesitant stammering came across quite nicely form me. The look Megan gives Squirk when she’s about to flush him away was also pretty memorable. I know the fandom generally tends to overemphasize both shows’ hardcore moments, but that was stone. Cold.
 
The gizmonk episode wasn’t as memorable, but it was funny enough for what it was. The trope where the villains beg the heroes to take their captives back at the end of the episode is always good for a chuckle.
 
I will say that I don’t really care for Molly and Danny too much so far, to be frank.

@icey wicey 1517  
Hmm.
 
What are they like? I’m not asking for a full character analysis, necessarily, but what sort of personality or story role do they have?

@TexasUberAlles  
@Mildgyth  
Literally, the cis- and trans- prefixes just mean “on this side/the near side” and “on that side/the far side”; “Transylvania”, for example, means “beyond the forest”. “trans-” has consequently come to have connotations of crossing over or moving from one place to the other, hence its association with transgender people, and cisgender evidently got called that by extension.

If it’s accurate to official animation it’s accurate to official animation. If we use the one tag for every show I don’t really see that Pony Life should be different – and as Derpy Whooves said, juggling a show accurate tag for every show there’s been or will be would be too difficult to realistically handle with success.
 
The easiest way to sort this particular issue would, strictly in theory, to just search for “show accurate, [desired show/movie]”. Of course, that would require a comprehensive tag for Friendship is Magic, which… won’t really be happening anytime soon. For the time being, just using “show accurate, -pony life” should probably work fine.

@Korora  
Good. I’ll have a look one of these days, then.
 
@Korora  
 

I mean… raising and lowering the sun and moon is something that unicorns can do, in a group and at a cost, so it’s a fair assumption that what the princesses can do is simply the furthest end of the pony bell curve rather that something entirely distinct and unique. Dream walking could then also be something regular ponies could do, although it probably wouldn’t be extremely common.
 
Hmm. I remember Luna mentioning something in “A Royal Problem” about needing her own cutie mark to be able to do anything in the dream realm. Perhaps, then, while any lucid dreamer could figure out how to go from dream to dream, you would need a specific special talent to be able to actively manipulate others’ dreams.

@Latecomer  
Yeah, this issue always stuck out to me as well. In large part it’s probably a symptom of the show’s… sometimes confused continuity, let’s put it this way.
 
Even more so than the dreamwalking in and of itself, a big issue is that Luna just doesn’t do much with the night sky. She raises the moon, and several hours later she sets it. That’s it – her moving or arranging the stars or any other celestial phenomena may be a popular piece of fanon, but it’s not actually something she ever does or is said to do in the show. So why does she feel invested in people liking a night she doesn’t really have much to do with? And why is she upset about people sleeping through it when her primary activity requires people to be asleep for her to be able to do it?
 
In fact, without knowing anything about the Nightmare Moon thing, I would probably have assumed that ponies would know and appreciate Luna a lot better than Celestia – after all, Celestia has very little to do with the daily lives of anyone who isn’t her student or works in her palace, but Luna is essentially all of Equestria’s emotional counselor. Realistically, who are you more likely to think well of and appreciate – a competent and benevolent but very distant ruler, or the kind woman who visited your dreams and personally helped you overcome your fear of commitment/arachnophobia/low self-esteem/mommy issues/whatever else?
 
It doesn’t really make that much sense that Equestrians would ignore and be unappreciative of Luna, given what we know of her now. Introducing dreamwalking was a narratively useful decision for a number of reasons (chiefly it helped her be something besides discount Celestia, since with it there are plenty of stories where she’s objectively the more useful or appropriate of the two to include) but it played merry hell with her backstory.

@StarStorm1  

 
For her, I’d say Rocketstar or Starry Dreams.

@StarStorm1  
Okay, it’s great that you’re enthusiastic about this, but maybe you could slow down a tad? That’s plenty of ponies for the now; it’s probably best to just let people see if they can come up with names before posting more.

So, I’d have a question. I have never actually watched G1 beyond the first two shorts – which I found in multiple disconnected parts on Youtube – and I was thinking of watching my way through the rest of it to while away the wait until G5 eventually comes along. Does anyone know where I can actually find it? It’s not on Netflix like the G4 cartoon is, I know that much, but beyond that I don’t know if there are any sites that would host it.

@StarStorm1  
Hm. Well, I don’t actually know which three you mean, but as for the third – I think you mean this one?  
 
I don’t believe she has a name yet, no. Not sure what a good one might be… can anyone tell what her cutie mark’s supposed to be? Seems to me like some sort of animal.

@Selaphiel  
There seem to be a few late-evening events here and there. The stand-up comedy bit in the opening of “The Maud Couple” definitely takes place after sundown.
 

 
I dunno, as I recall it there’s definitely a fair amount of nightlife in Italy. It’s generally much too hot during midday to get anything useful done, especially in the summer, so most people there sleep or rest during the early afternoon and compensate by moving bedtime several hours past sundown.

@Markiz93  
Sunny Days and Sunny Smiles, respectively.

Apologies is this counts as necromancy, but I’ve been thinking about this issue as well and reanimating an existing thread seems the most efficient way of bringing this up again.
 
Anyway, I agree with the overview that there’s no practical difference between these tags as they are now. That being said, as far as I can tell PT2.0 seems meant to refer specifically to the form Twilight takes in “The Last Problem”, whereas UT broadly covers any image where Twilight’s larger and older. However, the first tag has been added very broadly to all instances of the second type of image, and there’s no real distinction between the two as is.
 
Now, having two tags for the exact same thing is not generally peak tagging practice, so something should probably be done. Broadly, we’d have two options – alias, or make the tags more distinct than they are.
 
I’d be opposed to aliasing, personally, for two reasons. First, PT2.0 implies the last problem, which obviously should only go images pertaining to, well, “The Last Problem”. Second, while that would be fixable by just removing the implication, the intent seems to very much have been to have a tag for Twilight’s canonical “ultimate” form, and I do think that having a tag to refer to that form specifically is a valuable one to have. In my mind, it doesn’t seem that different from how daybreaker and nightmare star are separate tags – a tag for a thing from canon, and a tag for a thing from fanart only.
 
Also, ultimate chrysalis, ultimate luna and ultimate cadance exist and ultimate twilight gels well with that theme. A secondary consideration at best, but there it is.
 
Anyway, assuming that we do not alias, the next question is implications. If PT2.0 and UT stay separate, should the former imply the latter or should they be mutually exclusive? The nightmare star/daybreaker precedent would suggest the second option, but I could very well see a case for the first as well.

@DanielTepesKraus  

 
Seconded. In-universe classification aside, lumping a bunch of very visually different things under the same tag does not a useful tag make.
 
Personally, I’d be in favor of making a split between siren (as in the first two rows in the OP), half-siren (third row), eg-ified siren/humanized siren (fourth) and ponified siren. disguised siren could be something to add to the last two groups if the character is intended to be, well, a disguised regular siren instead of a “true” humanization or ponification. The thing with eg-ified siren and humanized siren would be that given the current policy re: Euqestria Girls and the human tag I feel that they’d probably need to be separate tags.
 
@DanielTepesKraus  
Yeah, umbrum could stand some cleaning. I agree that most pictures of Sombra shouldn’t be tagged as such unless they’re actually showing him as an umbrum in some specific sense – like here or here.
 
I don’t even understand why the Luna and Celestia picture got tagged with umbrum, honestly.

So! Just to breathe a touch of life into this thread between now and whenever it is that official news will be released, I decided I felt like making a general overview of where we are now in terms of info and reasonable guesses, and what my personal hopes for the new gen will be.
 
The main thing, as I’m sure has been repeated ad nauseam by now, is that most if not all of the leaks we got were little more than a generic collection of concept work, sketches, and explorations for potential themes – there was some really interesting stuff there, but we can’t really know for sure that anything there will actually make it into the final product.
 
So what do we know? Not much. We know that there will be a G5, we know that it will open with a movie and continue with a cartoon, and we know that the movie is planned to air on September 24, 2021. We also know that Tara Strong said that she won’t voice Twilight Sparkle in the next gen. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Twilight won’t appear – but it does make that a more doubtful prospect.
 
We can make some guesses from that, mostly pertaining to what schedule we can expect. We’ll probably be getting more announcements over this coming fall, but I doubt that specific information on the setting, story or characters will be released before 2021 – we’ll probably have to wait until next spring for that. We’ll certainly have concrete info to work with this time next year, though.
 
As for hopes, I’d… honestly be a touch disappointed if the current set of characters will not make it into the next iteration in at least some form. I’m aware that G3 and G1 had different casts from G4 – but that was due more than anything else to legal limitations on trademarks. The original plan for G4 was very much to use the G1 cast, and traces of it still made it in – Twilight, Applejack, Posey-with-wings-on, Spike – together with central characters from G3 – Pinkie Pie, Sweetie Belle – and mixes thereof – see Rainbow Dash. I still fully expect G4 characters to reappear in at least some capacity, even if as secondary characters or as clear inspirations for new ones.
 
Another thing, more generally, has to do with plotting. Friendship is Magic had two big issues, I feel. Firstly, its writing crew cycled out entirely at least twice over its run – the teams working on it in Season 1, Season 5 and Season 9 shared almost no members with one another – which is… not ideal for maintaining solid continuity in story and characterization over a long-running work. I’m not really in the mood for going into the details, but let’s say that it’s pretty clear that late-season writers were clearly not always that familiar with things that happened before their runs. Secondly, the show also underwent a fairly abrupt switch in focus over its run. Early FiM is largely a day-to-day slice of life show with little in the way of overarching narratives and some light adventure here and there; late FiM is much more focused on overarching plots, and on trying to weave narratives across several episodes and seasons. Either of these things, in isolation, would not necessarily be that bad, but trying to juggle a big change in narrative focus while also changing head writers every couple seasons…
 
My point here is that I hope G5 will learn from G4 in this regard – I would hope that either it keeps a consistent core team over its run, or that at least a clear story focus is made evident and stuck to over the show’s course. If the G5 show is meant to follow a long narrative, that’s fine – if shows like DuckTales and She-Ra have proved anything, it’s that it’s entirely possible for good, well-made children’s cartoons to do this – but it probably shouldn’t try to reinvent itself halfway through its run.
 
I’ve also got to say that I’m looking forward to experiencing the new show’s early years. I jumped into FiM about halfway in, well after the early-fandom hype and uncertainty was over and done with, and I’m kind of excited to see what that’s going to be like for its successor.

Those are all fair questions, but we’re getting a touch off-topic. Perhaps we should move this to the image’s comment section?
 
Regardless, as far as I know:  

@Wiimeiser  
Three Trixies? Three Trixies is nothing.  
 

@Background Pony #1356
 
Issue is, Celestia’s guards don’t actually look identical – or at least they haven’t for a while. We’ve had clearly individual ones with distinct personalities since… Season 5, I believe.  
 
And we know that guards can and do leave service and take up different lifestyles, interests and careers once their tour’s ended.  
 
This guy and the blue-maned guard above are the same person.
 
Afterwards, when large numbers of guards are on-screen at once it’s common for them to look distinct from one another.  
 

@LightningBolt  
I wonder – going with the view that bat ponies are distinct from pegasi and don’t share their weathercrafting and cloudwalking, what would their innate magic be?

@Background Pony #C80C  

 
Most sources I can find spell it as just one word.
 
On the subject! We seem to have a cowplant tag as well, with five hits, although only one image has the actual thing as something besides a cowplant pony’s tail. What should we do with it? Cut the tag, or add it to the implications for cowplant pony and mass-add it to the relevant images?

I hate the new Deviantart layout. So. Much. It’s ugly, it’s clunky, it’s impossible to navigate, and every option for doing anything useful is buried beneath layers of artsy pretentious nonsense.
 
Then there’s how the art and favorite galleries have been arranged. Used to be that you could move and drop an image anywhere on a page or move it directly to another page entirely, but now you can only move it up or down one space at a time – so if you want to move anything for more than a couple spaces you need to manually swap the image with every. Single. Item between where it is and where you want it, one a time. If your gallery has maybe a dozen items in it it may work, but if you’ve got more? A hundred, or a couple hundred, or a thousand? Then you’re just plain out of luck, I guess.
 
I swear, it’s like they’re actively trying to discourage people from using the site.