Season 9 Discussion Thread [NO SPOILERS, DF airings only]

rdibp
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@Spinny  
No spoilers just speculation, but I imagine the finale will involve the map in some way.
 
If it isn’t, the exclusion of map episodes this season will be very weird.
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@ILoveMyoozik  
One downside of the map eps is that they needed to take time to set up the mission details, limiting how much time they had to tell the actual story. Also I think they were running out of interesting pairings for them.
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I liked the map as it was an excuse to pair characters that we didn’t see very much, funny enough I thought S6 was the best at this. Still wish it was utilized more
 
i still wanted Raridash tho :/
 
oh fuck I told myself I wouldn’t come back here :p
rdibp
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.

Kerfuffle lover
I’m half and half on the map episodes. Some of them are amazing, but most others are pretty mediocre.
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@Spinny  
Some of them looked like one shots to me so I wasn’t expecting them to get more screentime. The Kirins though looked like they had a lot more potential with Autumn Blaze and if we’re lucky, Cinder Glow.
 
@cheezedoodle  
I would’ve loved to see another Rarity and Pinkie Pie episode and the map would’ve also called in other characters as well.
rdibp
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Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.

Kerfuffle lover
So why did those ponies go to A.K. Yearling’s book signing dressed up in Daring Do cosplay only to tell her Daring Do sucks and leave?
Spinny
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@LeoNero
 
Yeah, I’m definitely thinking it didn’t. Suggesting that Ahuizotl has just been misunderstood this whole time completely flies in the face of Daring Don’t, when he literally wanted to scorch the Earth (or a part of it). Exactly what was misunderstood about that?
DerpyFast
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So I just saw Daring Doubt, and it was alright. It definitely picked up in the second half.
 
The message is pretty on-the-nose, so there’s not a lot of analysis to do. As far as I can tell, the only really questionable thing Ahuizotl has done is the ring-placing ceremony to unleash 800 years of unrelenting, sweltering heat. Given that this is a setting with a theme of magical climate control, and “unrelenting, sweltering heat” is just the climate of a jungle anyways, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maintaining the climate is just one of his jobs. It’s great, because they trust the audience to infer this and don’t waste time explaining it. Show Don’t Tell, after all.
 
I think that’s about it. It wasn’t the most subtle episode in the world in terms of message, but I had fun.
Background Pony #86C3
Wait, you’re telling me that Daring Do has been the villain all along, and Ahuizotl is the good guy? Well, gee, that’s a nice way to end Daring Do’s legacy, isn’t it? (sigh)
That revelation alone makes me want to hate this episode, even though it was pretty good overall.
Except the episode isn’t saying that at all. In fact, it makes it pretty clear that Dr. Caballeron was absolutely just out to make a quick buck off of stolen artifacts (at least before his change of heart), and that Daring Do was legitimately doing what she did because she thought she was preventing some undeniably dangerous artifacts from falling into the wrong hands.  
Daring Do: “The only reason I’ve been taking the artifacts is because I thought I was protecting them.”
Dr. Caballeron: “I was stealing them to get rich.”
And as for Ahuizotl, yes, maybe asking what his deal was from day one would have worked out better for everyone, but given that by his own admission he is “a little violent and ferocious”, it’s not hard to see how the kinds of mistakes that transpired here could happen, and been reinforced over time.
 
Frankly the only real revelation here is that neither Daring Do nor Dr. Caballeron had Fluttershy’s capacity for caring about the problems of others. Which puts them in line with pretty much everyone else in the entirety of Equestria.
 
 
@AWGear  
Yes, that concept makes no sense what-so-ever, especially since, might I remind you:
Daring Do: So let me guess: Ahuizotl has put you up to this? You're stealing the ring to give to him so his hold on the Fortress of Talacon will be good for eight centuries as foretold by prophecy!  
Dr. Caballeron: Close, but... no. I'm going to sell this to him, make a bundle, and retire from archaeology in splendor.  
Daring Do: [grunting] Caballeron, you fool! You're dooming the valley to eight centuries of unrelenting heat! 
HE WANTED TO BURN DOWN THE VALLEY FULL OF INNOCENT ANIMALS, ONES WHO FLUTTERSHY SHOULD WANT TO PROTECT
Actually, that episode never says that it will burn the valley. Just that it will cause eight hundred years of “unrelenting, sweltering heat”. Which, given that it’s something of a tropical jungle, is probably not all that dissimilar from it’s usual climate anyway. What it would probably do is dissuade unscrupulous ponies looking to make a bundle off of powerful stolen artifacts from traversing the jungle in the first place which, given his newly revealed status as the guardian creature in charge of protecting that jungle, would probably be a benefit to him overall.
 
Honestly, in hindsight. there’s almost a poetic logic to the plan he came up with in “Daring Don’t”. Daring Do only really shows up because Caballeron is there to steal something valuable and dangerous, and Caballeron is only there to steal something valuable and dangerous to get paid. So if Ahuizotl pays Caballeron for the item he stole, Ahuizotl gets the artifact he’s supposed to protect back, Caballeron has no more need to keep stealing, and Daring Do stops taking the artifacts herself to prevent them from being stolen. Using the artifact to make the Tenochtitlan Basin inhospitable to most other ponies and further protect the place is probably just a bonus.
AC97
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@Background Pony #1370
 
In hindsight, Ahuizotl having no alternate timeline makes sense: he was never a national/world threat.
 
As for that first Daring Do episode, Read It and Weep, where he mentioned the world? Remember, Daring Do is an unreliable narrator, so he didn’t actually say that.
 
Daring Do: [grunting] Caballeron, you fool! You’re dooming the valley to eight centuries of unrelenting heat!
 
Remember: the area is a basin. It was always a localized area involved in that plan. Not the entirely of Equestria.
 
Is it an extreme measure? Yes. Is Daring Do apparently a self-righteous treasure thief? Also yes.
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