Winter wishday spoiler :-
This was posted before Winter Wishday was released and it aged darn well like fine wine in the first five minutes of the special lol ! Take that haters !

@Jonny Manz
I interpreted Alphabittle not being depressed because he’s constantly winning bets. He has a job and a hobby to devote himself to, and he’s good at it. He doesn’t seem to be just naturally happy like Izzy, but he actually lets himself have things to care about.

I mean, does anypony have a license at all?

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
Fair enough.

I don’t think it’s all that much of an inconsistency - remember Alphabittle (so there might have been other unicorns who weren’t all super-depressed), but fair enough.

Comedy…?

@Jonny Manz
I think outside media did say that Sunny ran the smoothie shop, like a magazine or something, so I think it was less a change and more that the movie made the mistake.
As for the Pippsqueak Trio, yeah, they were definitely changed, though I like that the three fillies from the end of the movie actually showed up in Chapter 2! That’s the attention to detail I’m talking about that I love about the show, that I want so much more of.

When I was talking about inconsistencies since the movie, I was mostly referring to characterization. But yeah, there are inconsistent details in other areas, too. Bridlewood, for example, was characterized as this forest where the ponies were terminally depressed and non-functional. But both Tell Your Tale and MYM say that they have these past long-lasting friendship bounding traditions, like T.U.E.S. Day and the sleepovers.

That SUUUUUUUUUCKS Hasbro robbed us, those two definitely needed at least one episode to really bring forth their redemption arc. (And I say this as past of the 1% of fans who didn’t buy into Diamond Tiara’s redemption arc–)

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
Eh, that’s fair - the only thing that comes to mind for me is, in the movie, I thought Sunny was just an employee of the smoothie stand (the delivery pony), while that other pony we see owned/ran it. But the opposite seems to be true - maybe that’s just a part time worker that Sunny can call in whenever she has a big delivery/wants the day off but doesn’t want to close the stand. I mean, sure, that one could also be forgetfulness, but if that wasn’t the original intention (to have Sunny own the smoothie stand from the beginning), I could easily see that being an edict from Hasbro (since it’s not just an accessory, but an entirely separate toy to buy)

That, and those 3 foals we see in the after-credits scene of the movie, who I thought the Pippsqueak Trio might be at first (but then saw they weren’t). That’s a more obvious case of forgetting, or plans changing.

And yeah, it was Jim Miller (I believe) who mentioned in an interview somewhere along the line that various writers (as well as himself) had pitched Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon centric episodes at various points along those last 4 seasons, but they were all turned down by Hasbro with the basic reasoning boiling down to “their story is done”.

nice

@Jonny Manz
Maybe Make Your Mark couldn’t have tackled it directly, but they could’ve at least alluded to it with a comment or two. Make Your Mark, especially Chapter 2, have a lot of attention to detail, especially concerning references to the movie. It’s one of the things I love about it. Such hints could’ve given an episode like Ali-Conned even more flavor. But yeah, Tell Your Tale would’ve been the perfect place to tackle it, especially for comedy. Though I’m not too surprised–Tell Your Tale has less character-based humor, and more based on slapstick and ridiculous situations.

Did Hasbro actually say that for Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon?! Hasbro what the fuck, that lessened their redemption arc, why are you like this?! 😤

Maybe it was a edict, but it could also be forgetfulness. I mean tackling it in a single Tell Your Tale episode would literally only take 5 minutes, in what’s going to be a 70 episode series in an ongoing, multimedia generation. That basically is giving the ponies phones right away. And G5 has been inconsistent with what the Movie has established in many other areas.

I think it’s more of a writing issue and less of a character issue, ‘cause again, Izzy is not the only one who has this problem of the writers disregarding Bridlewood and Maretime Bay needing to adapt to the newer technology that they can now access. So I’m not really holding this against her.

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
I can see where you’re coming from, for sure - while I don’t think Make Your Mark would have tackled it, or at least not directly (since it’s more focused on the central conceit of what bridges the gap between G4 and G5), it is somewhat odd that there wasn’t some sort of TYT episode at the beginning that did tackle that (since I could see that series doing it).

It’s doubly odd since apparently Gretchen Mallorie wrote all the podcasts, and she’s also the head writer for TYT. Maybe it was an edict from Hasbro corporate, that they wanted the ponies to have phones right away (more accessories to sell). Or perhaps it was just them meddling in the storytelling, for whatever reason (like how they ensured Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon didn’t have so much as a speaking role after Crusaders of the Lost Mark, because in their opinion, those two’s story was “done”)

FWIW, though, I think it’s a minor issue, and I can’t get at all upset about Izzy having those abilities - I love her character way too much.

@Jonny Manz
That could all be true, but it still feels jarring everytime Izzy comes out with this sudden knowledge of more technological stuff. If she’s really been studying up on modern technology, and THAT quickly, if she’s gifted with that kind of stuff, I think they could’ve made her mention it. But they just have these advanced, loosely-art related abilities for Izzy come right out of the blue. Izzy can not just fix a rusty, broken cart, but also completely rebrand it with shelves and a trunk. Izzy can remix songs. Izzy can build these highly advanced detective visors. She can just do that.

And to be fair, the shows in general have had this problem, where they rarely address how earth ponies and unicorns have adjusted to having more technology than they previously had. They’re all well-versed on the Internet and phones, and we don’t get to see how they’ve adjusted to these technological changes. So it’s not just an issue with Izzy. The only times I distinctly remember them referencing how unicorns and earth ponies have had to adapt to more modern technology are in the podcasts. (With how Sunny, Izzy, and Posey haven’t been to one before Pipp’s)

It’s a shame, ‘cause I think they’re missing on a lot of further commentary on Equestria’s now uniting cultures. And also comedy.

Ah, anti-humor, how… fun

@NicoThePinkUnicorn
Maybe she’s just naturally gifted at understanding how various mechanisms work, as well as taking them apart and putting them back together, and coupled with her innate creativity, she can build things that one might not expect her to.

I mean, some time is implied to have passed between the end of the movie and the beginning of both series - it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Izzy could have picked up a lot of that knowledge during that time, especially if she’s a quick study (which I could totally see).

But even remember the movie - a lot of Izzy’s furnishings seem rather low tech, but there are a couple of things that are decidedly more modern - remember her projector, which seems to not be a slide projector but a more modern digital one (am I remembering correctly?), and then the mane dryer she holds during “Fit Right In”? Both seem to be running off electricity, which means either Bridlewood was not as stuck in the past as it first seems (though the Just Prance game would seem to undercut that), or we were getting hints at Izzy’s skill level even then, and just missed it because we didn’t know to look for it.

Or maybe out there is a town of unicorns that’s more technologically advanced, but I don’t see them going that route.

G5 is just really inconsistent on Izzy’s artistic abilities. In the movie, Izzy is good with arts and crafts, decorations, paintings, stuff like that. But in both Tell Your Tale and Make Your Mark she’s a full-on inventor. Like the picture says, how is she so technogically advanced, if Bridlewood wasn’t?
Izzy being the one who made Zipp’s detective visors is probably the biggest offender.