My Thoughts on the Season 8 Premier

This is going to be short n sweet. Here is my ahead of time score. I give this premier a  4.5 out of 10.

I'm no good at keeping long rambles coherent so I'll get right to the point of why I think this premier was as bad as it was.

FRIENDSHIP CANNOT BE LEARNED ACADEMICALLY

Like seriously writers...really? Did not a single one of you watch  the show before you got hired on?
The entire point of Celestia transplanting Twilight away from Canterlot and into the po-dunk backwoods town of Ponyville was so that Twilight could have an organic real life experience to learn about friendship through her day to day life. Ponyville is a place where, despite living inside a library, she could not find the solutions to most of her problems inside of a book.

Even when Starlight became her "student", Starlight had to learn her lessons organically. You don't sit down and study honesty, generosity, or kindness. You cannot learn qualities of strong character and virtue, you live, gain experiences and grow into what it means to be a person of virtue.  So from day 1 the concept of a Friendship School is total bunk and whoever thought that was a good enough idea to green light should be fired and never allowed to work as a writer again.

The idea that entire races of creatures (people) don't understand friendship is garbage

I think this problem stems from the fatal error Friendship is Magic has sort of cultivated over time. This idea that simply being a friend or "having friendship" fixes all problems no matter how big, and that even devastating threats to one's livelihood can be defeated with hugs and songs.

I roll my eyes at this idea that yaks, griffons, hippogriffs, changelings, and dragons have no iota of a microscopic clue of what it means to be a friend. At best, perhaps the dragons just don’t care but so what THEY ARE DRAGONS. And even then they must have some clue or else how could they have  created social circles. The dumbest of animals display characteristics humans consider loyalty and friendship so even for dragons, the idea that they are just totally ignorant of the concept is retarded.

Griffons are greedy but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand friendship.

Hippogriffs are crappy and essentially too new on the block for me to really care.

Changelings shouldn’t even be here because they are reformed (through the power of love no less) and should already have a good grasp of friendship since THEY NEED IT TO LIVE.

Yaks are too dumb to live and are a joke race to make kids laugh (I guess). They are written so poorly it's hard for me to tell if they really have friendship problems or the writers just don’t give a damn. Most likely it is the later.

So this all concludes into a gaggle of OCs I couldn't care less about. While watching the premier the only time I smiled was when Ocellus turned into Rarity. Really out of all of them, to my massive surprise, I liked Ocellus the most. I was not expecting that but she is cute (despite being an ugly changedling) she is shy but also a bit of a snarky nerd so she isn’t “Complete Fluttershy clone # 4”. So bravo Ocellus.

Silverstream was my least favorite. Anyone who is too stupid to know what stairs are is going to be my least favorite...

Gallus is just boy Gilda so meh.

Sandbar should have been another character to represent another race. Like a Zebra...or a Diamond Dog (rip my doggo brothers).

Yona is...well a yak. Yaks are stupid. What else can even be said?

I LOVE HOW THE ENTIRE SEASON HAS DISQUALIFIED ITS REASON TO EXIST BY HAVING ALL THE OCs BECOME FRIENDS AT THE END.

So this bankrupt idea that non ponies don’t understand friendship is proven wrong at the end. If it was that easy then this school has no reason to exist at all. Ponies are like white-guilt liberals who think all non ponies are too stupid to figure stuff out on their own.

These characters have no value. The show isn't about them and they can't actually replace the mane six so they can't have problems that overshadow the rest of the cast. Making them nothing more than elevated background ponies. The only value they will have to the fandom will depend on how much porn is drawn of them, and already I can tell only 3 of them will get even that.

I have my own idea on how a school setting could work but more on that later. For now I’ll say this school idea MIGHT have worked if it was a cross Cultural  Educational Embassy of Equestria, where each nation sends young promising leader type kids to learn out other cultures and diplomacy, and become friends as a happy side effect. Another idea would be to just go full blown Harry Potter.

Twilight’s Friends Are Forced To Be Teachers!

Friendship Is Obedience!

This is the part of this season that bothers me the most. Absolute disregard to who the mane six are as characters, and the effort and time it takes to be a teacher. I think this development is the main cause of dissent amongst the fans and I agree with them.

Out of the mane six, only Twilight and Fluttershy would have enough time to be teachers. Despite being a princess it is likely Twilight still has no real duties or responsibilities regarding governance. That's what Mayor Mare is for. And Fluttershy is pretty much a hermit.

Rarity - Owns a fashion business with branches in two major cities, even with assistance she wouldn’t have enough time to go be a teacher and create lesson plans while keeping in touch with her boutiques. Both are full time jobs.

Applejack - I’ll give a little leeway here and say that bucking season has to be...well...seasonal.  So as long as this school stuff is going on off season she’d be mostly fine. But maintaining a farm is still hard work considering the Apple farm also keeps animals. Applejack is seen working hard every day and I doubt Applebloom is ready to take up those responsibilities and it would be unfair to hand it all off to BigMac.

Rainbow Dash - Is putting her dreams on hold. What if the Wonderbolts are putting together a new show? What is she supposed to do? Miss it? According to Twilight...yeah. Screw your dreams Rainbow Dash, just pray this school thing only lasts one season. Do as your princess COMMANDS!

The writers even go out of their way to show how unsure, uninterested, and out of their elements the mane six are. They. Don't. Want. To. Do. This.

Well up until Twilight decides to go rogue then school can be "fun". Now they are all okay to dedicating hours upon hours of their lives doing something they were extremely hesitant about mere minutes ago.

Other issues that bothered me:

• Two of the scenes feel like they were edited in the wrong order. Why did Twilight go to the EEA BEFORE confirming that she would even have teachers? Twilight must be forgetting how to be a friend, look how she vagrantly takes advantage of their loyalty to her.
• Chancellor Neighsay keeps bringing up rules but we never learn what the rules are. So the rules might as well be “Don’t play golf on wednesday”. Theymean nothing to the story. Chancellor Neighsay as a whole is a character who shouldn’t exist. (Love Maurice LaMarche tho)
• Princess Celestia is the most incompetent character in the show. Long gone are the days when I thought she was a cool character/role model. Now she is just a bumbling old woman with a crown on her head. I thought the one time Celestia would be justified in pulling rank, she would have done so. The one time we would get to see Celestia in action, to quell the angry guardians of the OCs with her thousands of years of diplomacy and political problem solving, she just goes “Lul dunno, Twitwi do somethiiiing~” .

Just....I don’t want to like this show anymore...and yet here I am. This is borderline self hatred.

Whatever. Anyway rant over!

Comments

[Vigriff]

I stopped respecting Celestia after the Canterlot Wedding and my opinion of her was further soured in Twilight's Kingdom.