Pony Venting Thread

PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
There’s a big ol’ multiple-user meltdown in the comments of >>2879250 that’s like if someone took this thread and then removed all traces of critical thinking.
@Kiryu-Chan @Dustcan
Yet another missed FiM opportunity caused by the insistence at keeping Twilight & friends as the only protagonists.
  1. How would the first few seasons still being remembered as good mean the entirety of the show gets forgotten?
  2. It was never “everyone” who disliked everything after Season 4. That strawmare exists solely in your head.
@Background Pony #3456
That wouldn’t make any sense to include in the list: “everything after S9 sucks because the show is over”. That’s not really a jumping-off point anymore.
Mr.Myoozik
StarTrix Forever! - Derpi Supporter
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Hero - Went above and beyond for the Solar Deity, drawing from the power of the sun itself to bring balance to the fight against the Lunar Insurrection (April Fools 2023).
Flower Trio - Helped others get their OC into the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
King Sombra - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Crystal Empire!
A Lovely Nightmare Night - Celebrated the 12th anniversary of MLP:FIM!
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event by contributing art.
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab

Music Connoisseur
>We could have had episodes that gave Zecora, Cheerilee, Shining Armor or Cadance more development
>Instead, we got Starlight Glimmer and the Student Six
Why did the writers keep adding new characters instead of developing the ones they had?
I don’t know, I like the new characters, but it would’ve been great if the preexisting ones also got developed but oh well
Mr.Myoozik
StarTrix Forever! - Derpi Supporter
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Hero - Went above and beyond for the Solar Deity, drawing from the power of the sun itself to bring balance to the fight against the Lunar Insurrection (April Fools 2023).
Flower Trio - Helped others get their OC into the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
King Sombra - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Crystal Empire!
A Lovely Nightmare Night - Celebrated the 12th anniversary of MLP:FIM!
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event by contributing art.
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab

Music Connoisseur
There’s a big ol’ multiple-user meltdown in the comments of >>2879250 that’s like if someone took this thread and then removed all traces of critical thinking.
I commented there being my usual funny, snarky self, I just never thought it would devolve into that mess. Thank God I unsubscribed cause that got way too serious for an obvious joke post
Latecomer

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
Did someone lock the comments? I wanted to reply to someone in there, but it didn’t seem to work…
Anyway, put me down for “no original lead should have ceased to be one, and anyone who says they couldn’t have been written well to the last is making excuses for their own lack of imagination”. Now does that mean I’m against new characters? Of course not! But they can get their own spinoff or they can share, like the CMC always did.
Background Pony #23C0
@Myoozik
I disagree, they show a fascinating insight into how the show was being run, the plans that were abandoned, and the direction things could have gone. Plus they sometimes help explain certain oddities in the show’s writing.
Latecomer

@Background Pony #0737
I do think there were satisfying ways for her to choose a different path to the Wonderbolts. (No, they wouldn’t have pleased everyone, but neither did how things turned out.) Now, as for if those paths would have been preferable, I don’t have a strong opinion.
DerpyFast
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.

Zecora and Cheerilee
Probably because once you add the details that turn a stock character into rounded character, you’re basically stuck with those details. If it wasn’t broke, they saw no reason to fix it. I would imagine that as more time went on, new writers were less eager to tamper with the “Faust Era Stuff”.
Cadence and Shining Armor
You can blame the writer of “The Crystal Empire” for that one. That would have been the time to flesh them out more, but most of the stuff in that episode is woefully underdeveloped.
after the M6 had largely achieved their series-long goals
I really need to do a huge writeup on the structure of Season One. To make a long story short, Twilight has her arc in the pilot, where she learns the value of friendship. Beyond that, The Mane Six learn lessons, but they don’t fundamentally change as characters over the course of Season One. Instead, the audience’s perception of them changes as we gain a more nuanced understand of them. That way, they could have all accomplished their goals in “Best Night Ever”, and we the audience would have gone
“Well of course they accomplished their goals. These ponies are awesome.”
But that didn’t happen. When The Mane Six finally accomplished their goals, it wasn’t the culmination of anything. It just arbitrarily happened one day. I think it’s fair to say that G4 needed a new narrative throughline after Return of Harmony, regardless of what direction fans wanted the show to go.
Background Pony #895B
I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of Rainbow Dash.
>Massive ego
>Tried to sell Fluttershy
>Dumb as a rock
>Destroyed a weather factory because she didn’t want her pet tortoise to hibernate
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
@Hollowfox The Worst
Now I’m just confused. How are “it is statistically unlikely that there exists a single person who enjoys every single episode after S4” and “everyone hated everything after S4” remotely similar statements?
By way of illustration, it’s possible for the consensus on the first two seasons to be that they were loved by everyone but committed contrarians and that there were individual episodes within those two seasons that are either boring or “yeah, that kind of sucked”. That doesn’t make the first two seasons any less loved as a whole.
@Background Pony #895B
Two of those things happened after she had already established a fanbase
@Latecomer@Latecomer
If the writers had known that nine would be the number of seasons by the middle of S5, much of the later-season problems with series-wide pacing could have been avoided. Those were mostly from the M6 achieving what other shows would use as their “lived happily ever after” moment with two or three seasons remaining. IMO, if they wanted to transition the M6 out of the spotlight in favor of a new crop of protagonists, Dashie & Rarity were the two obvious ponies to offboard. Rainbow Dash is now a full-time Wonderbolt and no longer lives near Ponyville as her primary residence and Rarity is incessantly off on business. Actually, they wouldn’t even need to be booted from the protagonists’ club: FiM could’ve followed them in their new locations and dealt with the issue of reconnecting with old friends who moved away for career reasons as an ongoing topic instead of cramming that lesson into the series finale.
once you add the details that turn a stock character into rounded character, you’re basically stuck with those details
Or you have fans making inane fanon from sight gags and insisting they were more than a quick visual joke.
I really need to do a huge writeup on the structure of Season One.
I’d like to read that.
They don’t fundamentally change as characters during the first season
IIRC, one of the goals of the original three seasons was for TV syndication. It’s why S3 is short: 26+26+13=65, which is the magical TV number. That’s 13 weeks of 5 days/week episodes that can (mostly) be shown in any order and repeated four times each year.
I do agree that such an arrangement is unsustainable. Perhaps they could’ve gotten a second season out of it, but the show did need some form of lasting continuity. It’s not a sitcom where resetting any and all changes between episodes is the expected genre convention.
Latecomer

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
I’m actually kind of in favour of not holding off those sorts of things to the end? The execution could have been better, but “so you got your dream - what next?” seems preferable to me to “happily ever after” or using it to write them out.
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
@Latecomer
I’m in $💯% agreement with you on this one. Much of the criticism of S9E26 can be boiled down to a root cause of the show being given “they lived happily ever after. THE END, seriously it’s over so go home watch something else already” ending instead of a more open-ended “the adventure continued” ending. It’s the difference between “their stories have ended, there is nothing more to say” and the camera crew simply leaving Equestria because their budget ran out.
Further, “so you got your dream - what next?” would’ve made for a great theme for the final few seasons if they didn’t have the restriction of keeping everypony in Ponyville for the entire run of the series. Dashie is with the Wonderbolts full-time, AJ & Rarity both technically still live in Ponyville, but they’re frequently on the road with business trips. Twilight splits her time between Ponyville, the Crystal Empire, & Canterlot when coordinating with the other Princesses. Fluttershy & Pinkie are happy lifelong Ponyville townies.
Latecomer

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
Now, I approve of it for the finale! But I think having them reach their “goal lines” well before was probably better than the alternative.
And I don’t think them living together in Ponyville was an insuperable barrier to applying such themes well.
Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Ponies Online! - April 13-14

Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!

Syntax quick reference: **bold** *italic* ||hide text|| `code` __underline__ ~~strike~~ ^sup^ %sub%

Detailed syntax guide