My Response To Jarvy's Response To My Review of Crusaders of the Lost Mark · 4:35pm Oct 19th, 2015
First off, I would like to thank Jarvy for taking the time to read my review and writing an incredibly long and detailed essay on it. I am thrilled that somebody would take an interest in my analysis to that degree as to point out the mistakes I made and produce some strong counter arguments. Nevertheless, like you found my initial review to be flawed, I find your counter argument to also have some major problems.
First off, you keep on saying that the episode isn't rushed because it mathematically had more time to play out than Amending Fences, and to that I say that math does not wholly determine an episodes pacing. You used Amending Fences as an example and said that mathematically it had less time to play out than this, but that followed one cohesive narrative. Yes it did have 6 segments but it had really only two main ideas in the story, for Twilight to meet up with her friends and the whole thing with Moondancer. It manages to tell those two subplots in a detailed way and doesn't seem rushed. In Crusaders of the Lost Mark, they have to cover Silver Spoon splitting off from Diamond Tiara, the whole school pony president thing, Diamond Tiara's reformation, and the CMC getting their cutie marks. Now each of those plot points feels rushed because there is not enough time for 4 different major ideas in one episode. It doesn't matter how many segments the episode has, Amending Fences stuck to a small number of ideas and therefore developed them well throughout it's 6 segments, whereas COTLM had too many ideas to develop them properly, even if it had less major segments from a strictly time and math perspective.
It doesn't matter if it mathematically didn't have that many songs to constitute it being rushed. In musical episodes like Pinkie Pride the music moves the plot forward, but in this it slows it down. For example they could have had an emotional scene with Diamond Tiara reconsidering her attitude towards the CMC, and then it could have moved more fluidly as she still slowly reconsiders it, and that could have happened in the time of the song. But in the song she just shouts the same thing over and over again, without really giving us any proper and realistic development which we would have had if it had been replaced with what I'd said. That's what makes the songs slow it down, they don't make the plot move forward, they do in fact, suck all of the realistic pacing out of the episode. And that song is just one example, all of the songs do the same.
About Diamond Tiara's reformation, you do the same as with Sunset Shimmer, you come up with this whole physiological theory and then use it to justify the episode. To be honest, I don't care if there is some scientific study to show it would have happened like this, the fact of the matter if that it felt rushed and lazy from a narrative standpoint, and I couldn't relate to the characters. If I can't identify with a character in a realistic way as a critic, then some wacky scientific theory of how it relates to the real world is not going to change my mind. And Diamond Tiara's reformation WAS badly done, mostly due to how rushed the episode was, but also to do with the choices they made and the unimaginative nature of them.
About fanfiction, I understand that the writers are under creative control from Hasbro, however, this does not excuse lazy writing, because Hasbro's restrictions are really only this.
1. To keep it age appropriate
2. To make sure they can still sell as much toys as they can
Hasbro openly encouraged ambitious and creative writing when Faust came to work for them, so what Amy Keating Rogers did here was her own fault only. They could have spend multiple episodes doing all of the stuff in this episode and didn't have to make it a rushed musical episode, Hasbro made no demands to do it like this. Hasbro are to blame with a lot of things, like EQG and certain decisions that were made to the show, but as I said in my Who is to Blame For The Drop In Quality blog post, ultimately a bad episode/movie lies in the writers hands, because they choose how the idea is executed, and this is NOT the way this should have been executed. And I bring up fanfiction because, now they I've explained the dynamic that Hasbro has, I am stunned that fans that write stories in their own spare time can have so much more imagination and creative talent than the show staff.
And finally, we will talk about what you said about the cutie marks.
You said that if they'd followed through with Faust's vision then they wouldn't be the CMC anymore, and I have a lot to say about this.
First off, they still aren't the CMC anymore, their entire stories are now going to be based around helping others find their cutie marks, which will be very boring as opposed to them splitting off and running into new conflicts of their own. And secondly, is that if they'd followed through with Faust's vision it doesn't mean their wouldn't be any conflict anymore, the conflicts would just CHANGE, they would grow like real people, and they would work towards new goals relating to their separate cutie marks. This just ties them to being to finding cutie marks forever, and not even for themselves so we can hope that new conflicts will arise, no, just for OTHER PEOPLE. So actually, your completely wrong, they don't have any conflicts anymore their just going to be solving conflicts for other people, whereas if they'd done it the way Faust wanted it they would have had new conflicts. The reason why this choice was made is because the writers don't like change and character progression and want as little of it as possible, it's that simple.
In retrospect, my argument was about as flawed—if not more—as your initial argument, and I do apologize for that.
Still though, it is absolutely gracious of you to have taken the time to have written a much more detailed response to my response. In the end, what I really wanted out of this whole plethora of discussion and responses was achieved—that is, I wanted to have a very critical and thought-provoking conversation. To say that I am very happy is an understatement, but I won't bother you with larger synonyms that are cumbersome. Regardless, I am glad that you decide to write your own response.
Here's to hoping we get into similar discussions in the future!
I feel like every single damn time something important is going to happen the writers always rush the story down, taking all the wrong choices possible to keep the changment to a minimum
3482249 Yes, let's hope!
You impress me, man. Bravo.
I would LOVE to add on to this some time in the near future. I hope I can get around to it, because there's a few points you guys missed.