G5: Make Your Mark chapter 2 · 8:15pm Sep 26th, 2022
So I pretty much snorted all 8 episodes now on Netflix, and I'm genuinely... annoyed.
It feels as if they're trying to write about more "adult" social problems and situations which would suit the audience which grew up with G4, but they're also infantilizing absolutely every interaction and dumbing down writing to the level of Teletubbies. It's painfully clear that a BUNCH of situations exist only to promote toys, but without it being spread over many seasons, it's all shoveled into 8 episodes.
I was waiting for G5 in hope that there would be a living world with which I could connect my verse. During the movie, it looked possible, with ponies splitting potentially due to the threat of Corrupted over centuries, but the lazy lore writing MYM overall killed that idea entirely, or at least beat it within an inch of its life.
I watched G4 multiple times, and even now I occasinally catch a random episode on derpy.tv, but MYM offers nothing to rewatch. Maybe a background reference here and there? Sure, but why? World lore has been flushed down the toilet. Character interactions are, I hate to say it, downright moronic. Everyone acts in incredibly stupid ways so that the shallow episode plot and forced conflict can happen.
Everything bad I mentioned is true MOST of the time, however there are heights of personality depth which even G4 reached with their main characters only by the end, which makes me think that someone is pushing hard against at least one voice of reason, but occasionally there's a win for good character writing, and it is damn good. Specifically, the penultimate episode with the lost lantern. I think Zipp's investigation is genuinely well done despite the plot, of course, being a total potato. Oh, and while the episode where ponies entirely ignore Sunny when she's not alicornified shits on everything established before, it's a good social commentary.
Overall, Zipp and Queen Haven are the saving grace of MYM characterizations. Queen Haven appears only a few times but steals the show whenever she's on screen, both in voice work, lines, and animation. Unlike others, there's not a single speck of blandness on her, which can't be said about anyone else. Zipp feels much more a main character than Sunny, although that can be attributed to Zipp being a princess and able to spend more time doing things that make her herself while Sunny is stuck doing her job and has little time for self-actualization. In short, Sunny feels more like a plot device than a character, but at least she comes out neutral in my mind. Pipp is number two as far as characterization goes, mostly because she's the closest way for Zipp to bounce off ideas, but she's overall Rarity without the depth. In her defense, Rarity was incredibly shallow in early G4 too, and she got written into a complex character.
Hitch and Izzy got hit with the nerf bat HARD. In the movie, Hitch had the Chad Thundercock vibes, maybe a bit too much, but in MYM he's a babbling buffoon. No matter what happen with the low stakes plot of every episode, he's there to add nothing of value. And Izzy... she was so incredibly well characterized in the movie, but in MYM she got turned into Pinkie. And not even into early G4 Pinkie, but into late G4 Pinkie who only existed for spamming annoying gags. Occasionally, her character writing and humor hit an excellent high, but that's like twice in the entire season, and she's always around. In fact, Misty feels way more as what Izzy was in the movie than MYM Izzy.
I'm not going into detail regarding "the villain". After they flushed the world lore down the toilet along with the diarrhea of whatever group of Hasbro managers was responsible for obliterating any semblance of stakes and originality, Opaline crawled out. She has the depth of Sombra without the backstory and Maybelline hair. The crazy part is that she might actually be in top 3 funniest characters of MYM. A horrible world-ending threat for a world without lore or any interesting stakes. A perfectly fitting villain... but she's at least funny in a non-forced way unlike almost everyone else.
Damn I'm disappointed. I wouldn't care about animation done on a budget and with time constraints and the limits of 3d. The movie showed that 3d ponies can look absolutely wonderful and the way MYM is done now is absolutely fine, but the dumbed-down writing is just too much. The conflict of every episode is on the level of "Non-compete clause" or "Spike at your service", and that's brutal.
Final two things. Number one - at least they leaned into Izzy's crack habit, and the bags under her eyes are now canon. Number two - why does every elongated object they pick up with their hooves look like a dildo? Is that a 3d thing? It has to be.
I called most of this for the movie before it came out.
Didn't quite happen there, and it was mostly fine.
So I began to hope again... but deep down I knew.
I was hoping Gen5 would bring some interest and fans back.
Also, I'm not a fan of 3d.
I had a concept for the original possible info on Gen5.
Where there was multiple "worlds," and each episode focuses on 2 or 3 characters.
It was gonna be my first story...
The AU had the tree of life (tree of harmony) connecting different worlds. Kinda like Yggdrasill, but quite litterally a living tree like the tree of harmonybefore it could project itself as Twilight. Changelings live inside the tree and feed on the fruits that grow from the most powerful energy that life produces... love. The tree loves the changelings. One day, the fruits grow less... and then less... and a changeling (Twilight Sparkle equivalent) goes out to figure out what's going on. Makes many friends and unites entire worlds that are at war. Seems there is something that is corrupting the worlds, and as a result, the tree...
It was ambitious and stupid and there was no hope a pleb like me could write it...
I ended up not writing anything after that.
If you feel like you are losing heart, just know... I like your AU a lot. It is my favorite that is still going!
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Sorry about the almost irrelevant subject change...
So do you know what you are gonna do with hug bug then? Sticking to the plan? Chang(el)ing the plan? C-canceling?... ahem It's fine if you dont know yet. I'm curious.
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I agree, but not just the ponies, what about our favorite skittle-shelled shape shifters, flying-fish-pony-birbs, etc...
And I know there is a comic... but what about info on discord? Flurry Heart?
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If you enjoy writing, write what you want or what you like. Don't worry about the pace. I know I tend to tie my self-worth to my main means of self-actualization, which are my stories, but the reality is that there are roughly 10 people who interact and make the back and forth worthwhile, no matter what the like/dislike number above the story is saying. And those 10 people, probably even less, are enough. Write a vision of what you see, and if you're doing it because you enjoy it, not because your goal is to eventually be a famous writer or something, you'll find the few people who will like it and interact. Hell, my first story went like 0-10, and it was a short 1shot about Shadowstep and Cross (basically a bad version of the ending of Horn And Wings, if I recall correctly. It's been so long.). I guess I got lucky because there was a commenter who had the patience to go into a bit of a detail about what I did wrong. The story is long gone, but then I started Imbalanced without any writing experience or practice, and it somehow worked.
Just try, if you have the time. It's the only way to counteract the head constantly saying "It's shit, you'll fail, you can't do anything". Fan work will be more important than ever to keep the versions of Equestria alive, now that G5's failed fairly badly.
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3d was a gamble, but late in the season they did show they can do meme faces and fun stuff with it. Or if they have time and money, it can look fantastic like in the movie, but the writing kills it so badly for me that animators can't save it. And 2d wouldn't have helped. We have plenty of G4 examples where easier to do and more expressive 2d still hits the brick wall caused by terrible writing.
Oh yeah, I entirely forgot Sparky. I think, once again, this is about childcare, more responsibility, and greater supposed adulthood of the characters that's murdered by the overall infantilization of everything, which makes Sparky and Hitch just not land at all. As for the dragon himself, there's nothing to say. He's a walking toy commercial with zero added value to the plot, and I'm saying that fully aware of him being the plot point of the finale. I actually don't mind his dragon breath powers, since Spike's breath was magical too without any explanation why. I would just like them to establish their scale, because this smells of deus ex machina way too badly.
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1HB is canon in my head in most things, I just need a way for the crazy alicorn of suffering to work, and with how life is I don't have the time or brainpower to think about fixing it while writing "On Holiday".
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The problem with that is that we have no clue what they mean by Equestria, because from what we knew before, Equestria kinda spanned almost the whole continent, and now we have just 3 small settlements scattered all over the place. Thankfully, this can be easily fixed with several episodes about history, even if a good chunk of it was lost. I just don't trust the writers to do it right without either too much being glossed over or everything looking like a boring history lesson.
Realistically you can't expect much from G5,. The issue WAS the tilt into more modern social media programs, you can see that with their projection charts. Tiktok, Snapchat, Instagram, ect is all being used by a far younger generation than previously thought (to varying degrees of damage for society at large) and represents a huge market for aspiring execs. G4 represented a break-away from society at large. A medieval/modern setting, ponies shaped after different regions (barring the Haberverse). G5 is, simply put, purely about social media connections and weak storytelling. I'd only bank on 'Tell your Tale' when it comes to new pony content. Otherwise it's just going to be fanmade from here on out. This is where we really test if the ride never ends.
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I had the chance to rewatch G5 and I changed my opinion somewhat. Yes, it is slightly infantilized and weaker in writing, but not to the scale I wrote earlier. I think my main problem was the two final episodes, which suffer from the "all characters need to be retarded and forget everything that happened between them for the plot ot happen" syndrome (especially the last episode and Izzy pulling the worst kind of Pinkie). The rest of the season is comparable to G4 S1 (without the quality of the overarching NMM plot). My problem now is that it's more a boomer's caricature of young people (at least I, a "man" in his mid-thirties, damn hope), especially Pipp, rather than several varied personality archetypes interacting which was G4.
On the other hand, Misty has been getting better and, to my complete surprise, the last 3 episodes of TYT stepped up immensely. Also, I've kind of grown to like Opaline as a joke villain. I think she's waaaaay too poorly written to be a serious one, but it is still possible to pull a twist and make her point of view acceptable.
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It might not have been directed at me, but as a person who currently submitted his first story to it's approval and waiting around wondering how reception might go, i'm finding these words actually uplifting. So thank you on that, and for your perspective
Oh, and it's actually about Chrysalis, if you would like to check it out
So there's that
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Congratulations. As long as you write something you'll enjoy reading after the fact, then you'll be okay.
I still have to reach that stage
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I'm pretty sure that being dissatisfied that way is perfectly normal! Part of that human condition that pushes us forward, y'know
I think your stories are neat, for what it's worth ;)