Unpopular opinion time

@QueenCold  
It’s episodes like PYHD that destroy all continuity, character development, and sense that the characters are anything except 2-dimensional cutouts.  
Fluttershy became a terrible bully, physically and emotionally harming multiple ponies. All because of, what, a pep talk? Yet everyone forgives her and tries to comfort her, even when she shuts herself away from her friends.
 
Yet ironically, Gilda gets ostracized for just raising her voice. And when she runs off to seclude herself, her only friend, Rainbow Dash the element of Harmony doesn’t console her, and completely ends their friendship.
 
And yea the connotations of Dragon quest are terrible, no matter what group you parallel dragons and ponies to. I’m amazed a group of adults could agree to put this on television to teach anyone a lesson.
 
It seems like someone just thought “dragons are inherently bad” while creating this. Which contradicts everything the shows about.

@MadVillan  
And the funny thing is, the 1st gen episode - the one DQ tried to rip off - did the moral better.

@QueenCold  
“See how messed up this is?”  
What’s messed up about it?  
Again it was based on their idea of what [insert group] is, as anyone and everyone does. Griffons do it, Dragons do it, ponies races do it to the other races.  
Can you honestly say that’s their’s one way to be a part [insert group]?  
The problem came to fruition because Spike took it personally and held the factors of his being (being a dragon) over the most important thing who he actually is. Flight to the Finish and Apple Bloom has similar morals.
 
Also don’t that this scene is meant to be friendly banter gone too far. Me and my friend say the same stuff about each other, though none of us are like Spike so we aren’t upset by it.
 
One last note:  
“Putting Your Hoof Down was a terrible episode  
“the one DQ tried to rip off – did the moral better”  
Again, this is a discussion. Please be mindful of speaking in absolutes. Also it’s kinda ironic in bad way to say an episode is just plain terrible in an unpopular opinion thread.

Gotta mention that for all the badness of Dragon Quest, the IDW fixfic of it was terrible and I’d rather take DQ. Again, I think DQ is a regret among writers on the show, which it probably should be.
 
It’s incredibly annoying that when talking about this, people always expect you’re going to say that ponies should check their privilege or something. But they’re interesting parts of the franchise that give some great insight to the world.

@ColdhardSilver  
Spike didn’t feel like he didn’t belong with the ponies, he felt like he knew nothing about himself. It’s not as simple as a different ethnicity or gender, Spike is a completely different species from everyone around him, and no one knows anything about his species.  
So Spike went out to the Migration to find out more about himself, by learning from the direct source, other dragons.  
When Garble is joking about Spike being a pony it’s simply a joke,meant to haze him since he’s new.Because it’s absurd that a dragon could ever be anything else, despite whatever mannerisms he may have, he’ll always be a dragon. There’s no sliding scale where on one end is ponies and the other are dragons, there too vastly different.  
And Spike did find out things about himself, he liked playing with them and learned that he could swim in lava.  
The dragons didn’t need any actual convincing that he was a dragon and not a pony, nor did they ever give him an ultimatum, they always saw him as as dragon they where just teasing him since he’s young.  
Also, he was the one that decided dragons as a whole group are bad and therefore must be avoided. Pretty strange since he only encountered a handful, and of those handful only 3 he didn’t like.  
In total Spike learned a tiny bit about himself before he was content with never learning anything about himself again

@Itsthinking  
“It’s incredibly annoying that when talking about this, people always expect you’re going to say that ponies should check their privilege or something. But they’re interesting parts of the franchise that give some great insight to the world.”  
But don’t forget, IT, not everyone follows, interpreted, or accepts the things you found interesting; especially since can it cause some individuals to say things along the lines of “people always X”.

Can we just please get a Spike growing up episode? And a single Celestia episode?

@MadVillan  
Didn’t feel like those around him?  
Felt like he didn’t know much about himself?  
Trying to find that missing element?  
Going to group that he think well make him feel whole or teach him something?  
In the end learns that he is himself, damn what other may say?  
This is the standard “spiritual journey based on what you are” idea, and yes I argue that race and gender very much can be applied here.  
When someone says something like “not having X or doing X makes you not a woman” they don’t literally mean that you aren’t a woman just that you don’t fit their criteria that makes a woman. I’m not saying that they are calling him a pony to mean that he is an equine physically.
 
“Pretty strange since he only encountered a handful, and of those handful only 3 he didn’t like.”  
Think of it through my interpretation. Spike was constantly told what is a dragon, he was obsessed with it, and again when the group calls for him to compromise a moral of his he wouldn’t budge because who is was stronger than what his is and what they’ve been telling him he is (again in a connotative sense not literally).
 
“In total Spike learned a tiny bit about himself before he was content with never learning anything about himself again”  
Allow me to bring forth this point: what would learning about his being do for him?  
Sure it would’ve given him peace of mind, but that storm in his conscious only happened because he placed so much emphasis on it. He learning about being a dragon alone wouldn’t really tell him anything that would affect him and who he is; it would be the events not the knowledge that would change, based upon how these situations pan out in fiction and real life.

@Itsthinking  
Aw, but I like Spike being small, it fits him. Also in the same way he would need a real good reason for spontaneous growth to be justified for me.
 
I’d love a Tia episode.

Horses are terrible people.

@Background Pony #7CD9  
Oh course, they’re not people.  

@ColdhardSilver  
I don’t feel you can compare just being a different gender/ethnicity to being a different race. Also this wasn’t a spiritual journey but an informative one based on facts and truths about what dragons are.  
Also it’s odd how then the dragons know more about ponies then the ponies do dragons.
 
Spike wasn’t ever told that he wasn’t a dragon.Also I don’t think it was ever implied that smashing the eggs was a requirement to become a dragon, and the group already accepted him before that. He didn’t need to succumb to peer pressure to make friends and learn more about himself. He also didn’t need to completely disregard his own species just because he disagreed with a few of them about a single thing.
 
“Allow me to bring forth this point: what would learning about his being do for him?” A lot, for starters Secret of my Excess would never have occurred if he knew more about dragons. He could also learn how to grow wings, and a number of other things only dragons can do.  
What a happy coincidence that ponies just happen to know dragons eat Gems, there could be dozens of things like that they don’t know.  
That 100 year nap the other dragon was taking? Sure would be nice to know more about it don’t you think?

@Itsthinking  
No more Spike episodes EVER, too much of a risk of fans hating them. And a Celestia episode?That would involve creating flaws for her to learn from, and that would be blasphemy.
 
@Background Pony #7CD9  
Un-popular opinion thread, not facts.

I’m not really looking forward to the rest of season 5 after Friendship Games due to the simple fact that there will be a crapton of songs (compared to the beginning of the season. We’ve gone 9 episodes without a song) and here I am trying to find the EQD post about it, but I’m coming up dry in my search
 
Now, I don’t HATE the songs. But they’re certainly not my favorite part of FIM. It doesn’t help that I don’t really enjoy musicals in general. Last Christmas my mother dragged me to see Into the Woods which, while technically and visually pretty impressive… the songs were actually rather repetitive and sometimes downright difficult to either understand within the context of the movie or straight up hard to hear.
 
FIM songs tend to occur in impossible space/time, which also tends to bug me a bit for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like the character singing is plucked from the episode, inserted into a song related to the episode and then at the song’s conclusion actually has to deal with the conflict as if they didn’t even just sing a song about it.

@MadVillan  
“Also this wasn’t a spiritual journey but an informative one based on facts and truths about what dragons are.”  
Many spiritual journeys do teach what they consider to be facts and truths. Also wasn’t Spike’s crisis about finding himself? Feeling like a stranger solely for not know his heritage? That sounds like standard spiritual journey course to me.
 
“Spike wasn’t ever told that he wasn’t a dragon.Also I don’t think it was ever implied that smashing the eggs was a requirement to become a dragon”  
Again I’m not talking about being a literal dragon.
 
“A lot, for starters Secret…”  
I was talking about Spike’s personality and outlook.  
Yay, Spike grew wings, but what about Spike did that really change? He changed physically but without some lesson, experience, etc to give it impact then what is it but cosmetic? And even if he is a dragon that has wings to grow.  
Yay Spike learned more about Dragon greed, but by that point he’s already been through it and already knows that greed is a taboo, but in the case of Secret Excess he also learned a lesson about greed through experiencing and its havoc.  
Yay Spike find out about certain foods, but he’s been eating them for long while now and it’s not like he hasn’t eaten anything but gems.  
Yay, Spike learn about taking a thousand nap (if he does need to talk) again what does that do for Spike? You can have episode about it, but again it would be the experience that would shape him not just the fact.  
All this does is give Spike trivia and tidbits, and I think he would act the same way he did at the end of Equestria Games, not sulking, but not really any better because the problem is more internal than being about a solely external factor.
 
I understand that the comparison of race to dragons and the sort doesn’t connect with you, but to make sure that things are good between you and I, I just want to make sure that you do understand the points I’m conveying and my interpretations, yes?

Its fun to see people on this site get so worked up over little things sometimes

@ice1517  
It wouldn’t be a fandom if we didn’t get worked up over the insignificant.  
Though I can’t really say I see the joy in seeing people do so. Sometimes folks just need to let it go.

@Background Pony #7CD9  
“let it go, let it go..” damn it, ya got me singing it again.
 
also, I will never understand why people keep getting worked up over the lyra/bon bon scenes from slice of life

Never mind I misunderstood

@ice1517  
The Secret Agent Sweetie Drops thing was pretty ridiculous. I mean, I expect that kind of thing to be in a silly writer’s prompt over at EQD or something. Not something that would be part of an episode.  
Granted it was kind of a clever solution to the Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops name thing.

@Background Pony #7CD9  
I like it.
 
Be the scenes, I ment when they said that they were “best friends”

@ice1517  
Oooh, yeah. I dunno. I didn’t have a problem with the scenes themselves, but the shipping/anti-shipping “war” in the comments got to be too much for me. I’ve since avoided Lyra & Bon Bon images (screencaps specifically).

@Background Pony #7CD9  
I mean, if you want to see them as friends do that, if you want to see them as lovers, again do that

@ice1517  
How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends? How can we start over if the fighting never ends?

@Background Pony #7CD9  
Michael, just go home. It’s over, man.