@Latecomer
i kind of think they really didn’t know what they wanted their characters to be. there’s a lot of times where characters do what the plot needs them to do, rather than what you’d expect that character to do. it’s a double-edged sword: it allows them a lot more freedom to do what they want, but it also robs the show of a lot of potential emotional impacts.
for example, when you watch justice league (the animated one, just because i’ve been watching it as of late) and batman’s character as someone who will never use a gun or kill is well-established. so when deadman possesses him and makes him fatally shoot a villain, it’s a huge holy-fuck moment.
he doesn’t say a line but you feel how big a deal it is to him. if batman casually used guns it wouldn’t have mattered.
mlp doesn’t really do that. take reformations. if twilight was well-established as someone who wasn’t very forgiving and held grudges, it would have been a huge emotional moment when she forgave starlight. conversely, if it was well-established that she was very forgiving and didn’t hold grudges, it would be a huge emotional moment when she didn’t forgive cozy glow. but because she will or won’t forgive people based entirely on what the script needs, there’s no real impact on either. it’s why them not forgiving cozy felt more like a meta “let’s not forgive a villain for once” thing than anything else.
that all said, i do have to agree with you on flash. whether or not flash was muscled in at the demand of the higher-ups (which i could see happening, a barbie show has to have a ken), they really didn’t seem to try very hard with him. they actually put more effort into spiting him later, which makes me think they were never too fond of him.
@Myoozik
i do think that starlight could have been a brilliant character. if they acknowledged her flaws and bad behavior in a substantial way, having characters react more appropriately to the bad shit she does and played her up as a kind of parasitic bad friend, she could have been outright
hilarious.
@RaineV1
it’s because starlight is a very parasitic friend. she constantly makes trixie’s life harder and encourages bad behavior i find. i feel like between starlight being a bad person in her own right and bringing out worse behavior in trixie, she’d be a better and happier person without her. it’s true that trixie’s gotten more opportunities from that friendship, but that in and of itself is a pretty shallow reason to maintain a friendship: “he hits me but he pays the bills” isn’t a very healthy relationship, after all.