Yule Muse · 4:49pm Nov 30th, 2015
Firstly, as per The Descendant's traditional annual request, I have updated my avatar for the holidays.
The personal blurb that went along with this: "Derpy, with your horn so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
Go check out The Descendant's blog on the subject for all your Santa hat needs.
What follow are some thoughts on the finale and the season as a whole. If you're concerned about spoilers, read no further until you've seen the whole dang thing. Otherwise, scroll past the wall of awesome faces.
I love seeing how much fun the animators had with this season.
I realized something while rewatching "The Cutie Re-Mark": Consider Twilight’s lecture at CSGU. She insisted on it being perfect, but when she was disrupted, she accepted that, went to her index cards, and carried on from where she left off. She didn’t let a single unexpected development throw everything off track. I don’t know if that was intentional foreshadowing to contrast her with Starlight’s scarifying friendship with Sunburst and the first friendship lesson she'd teach, but it’s a fascinating parallel.
Now, for the meat of this blog. This season has been called many things: The Season of Pancakes, of Eyebrows, of Cutie Mark Magic, of Background Ponies, and so forth. Whatever you call it, it's been astonishingly dark and complex. Don’t believe me? Let’s break it down:
The Cutie Map, Part 1: The Mane Six awaken an artificial intelligence. Too late do they realize it has guided them to the commune of a soul-mutilation cult.
The Cutie Map, Part 2: While her friends are sealed in the propaganda hut, Fluttershy infiltrates the cult and destroys it from within. Starlight Glimmer narrowly escapes her enraged dupes.
Castle Sweet Castle: Twilight struggles to cope with the loss of a beloved friend. Her friends help with the wake by taking that friend's corpse and turning it into a chandelier.
Bloom and Gloom: Apple Bloom undergoes an existential crisis that needs the direct intervention of one of the local god-queens to resolve. (Or, Judy Blume meets Inception.)
Tanks for the Memories: Rainbow Dash goes through the five stages of grief, industrial sabotage, and nuclear winter.
Appleoosa’s Most Wanted: A drifter finds three little girls in his home and is then arrested.
Make New Friends but Keep Discord: A jealous god unleashes a primordial menace from before recorded history, nearly banishes an innocent hippy to an alternate dimension, and causes a scene of full frontal nudity.
The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone: The First Great Headcanon Massacre of 2015. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash travel to a second-world country in the name of Equestrian imperialism friendship. They change one molly’s life and leave, expecting her to reform her entire civilization single-taloned.
Slice of Life: The Second Great Headcanon Massacre of 2015. A stallion dies and is cremated over the course of the episode, and Steven Magnet is the world’s worst sassy gay friend.
Princess Spike: Spike’s abuse of borrowed power… has no consequences. On the other hand, the cascading outcomes of his genuine attempts to help would have resulted in an antiroyalist rebellion in a less forgiving species.
Party Pooped: After a flurry of international incidents, Twilight literally incites a war. Pinkie has to clean up after her and gets minimal recognition for it.
Amending Fences: A sincere look at accidental cruelty, guilt, and emotional scarring.
Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?: Luna’s psychological self-harm mechanism achieves self-awareness, escapes its confines, and tries to take its directive to its logical conclusion. (Or, A Nightmare on Elm Streeet meets Friendship is Optimal.)
Canterlot Boutique: The equine embodiment of everything wrong with treating art like a business nearly kills Rarity’s passion for her work.
Rarity Investigates!: A bitter old man sabotages a rising star in the name of preserving his legacy.
Made in Manehattan: Small town idealism runs up against big city cynicism. Poor park maintenance claims the life of one of the show’s most beloved, iconic figures, which the writers try to reverse in the last few minutes of the episode.
Brotherhooves Social: Attitudes towards transvestitism straight out of the 1950s.
Crusaders of the Lost Mark: The Fourth Great Headcanon Massacre of 2015. Diamond Tiara goes through a premature mid-life crisis, and the episode shows how elected officials have far less power than well-connected special interest groups
The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows: The closest the show will ever come to directly mentioning sexual intercourse.
Hearthbreakers: Applejack makes an ass of herself in front of ponies who, whether by choice or because of economic necessities, live a much more humble life. Also, not one of the Pie siblings has anything even resembling a healthy emotional balance.
Scare Master: Angel Bunny is given free rein to frighten the horses, Applejack is confronted with her grandmother’s impending demise, and several really messed-up manga are shown to exist in Equestrian pop culture.
What About Discord?: Discord confronts Twilight about how her OCD and paranoia are impacting her friendships with all of his usual tact and delicacy.
The Hooffields and McColts: Once again, Twilight escalates simmering hostilities to open conflict and a friend must undo her mistakes.
The Mane Attraction: An alicorn-operated surveillance network reveals a stallion’s darkest secrets to pony Lady Gaga.
The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 1: Scarring, limb loss, mind control, outright war, and the death of whimsy, all in the name of spite.
The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 2: A progressively worsening series of bad ends, culminating in implied omnicide.
Equestria Girls: Friendship Games: The Third Great Headcanon Massacre of 2015. A young woman tampers with forces she doesn’t understand, is driven mad with power, and nearly destroys the universe.
Wow, that got dark.
I like those thoughts!
After watching the season finale, the first thing that I said to anyone about it was:
That Fancy Pants image. Geeze man, eat more fiber!
The Fourth and Third Great Headcanon Massacres of 2015 being out of order threw me. i understand why you did it but seeing four before three made me stop and search for three.
When I read this I thought of the common joke about "His/Her OCD is so bad they rearrange the letters to be C D O." and then I thought of a viable meaning for that acronym! Chronic Disorganization Obsession.
This one also shows that even among the ponies there can be a generations long hate-filled feud because of an issue no one around today even remembers. So much for being a race of forgiveness and understanding.
Yeah, it got real grim at times, huh?
Best season.
It's been a hell of a season, to be sure.
I love posts like these. Poking around an inch or two beneath the surface like this and then running wild with the implications is a favorite activity of mine.
This season has been surprisingly dark and deep (and not in the way a lone hexmage can use to usher in an apocalypse). It's definitely been my favorite season so far, with "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" beating out "Sweet and Elite" and "Filli Vanilli" for my top favorite episode.
We've been given a lot of great worldbuilding and fanfic fuel by this season, as well. Heck, "Slice of Life" got me to write something entirely new! We've got more than enough material to get us through the Hiatus, whether it's a few months, or an entire year. (Personally, I believe that tweet from DeLancie meant it would be a year before the particular episode he was recording at the time would be released.)
Happy trails, FoME! Here's hoping we get to see that rewrite of Phthisis is Magic before the next season begins.
You should do something like this for the sum-up of every season: it's super interesting to see the bottom line underneath the whimsy and spontaneous song outbreaks
That being said, this season was pretty mature for little kids o.O Perhaps Hasbro has finally realized and acknowledges that an older audience watches?
Oh god, this was hilarious. It took me a few minutes to remember that Made In Manehattan did kill AJ's hat. The cremation link was giggleworthy too. Your headcanon on the linked page: accepted.
FTFY
And yes, this season took an awful lot of risks. Some of them paid massively off (CMC marks holy crap) and some just produced winces (transvestite Mac) and some were mixed (the season finale, with fantastic time-travel bits and a horrid redemption of convenience), but overall I was way more hyped for it than I was for seasons 3 and 4.
That was very funny
I just have two objections: I honestly think that's too harsh on "Brotherhooves Social", and not harsh enough on "What About Discord". Try this: A serial abuser who is a master of emotional extortion drives Twilight to a psychotic breakdown. Her friends blame her for it, but it's okay: they forgive her. 
3581908
Heh. Yeah, it'd be nice, but I've got about more than a dozen other ideas to address, including a possible way to work G4 Tirek into the Elementals of Harmony setting. Hint: It involves two pre-Mending planeswalkers, neither of whom is Pinkie Pie.
3581927
I'd need to stretch for most of the other episodes. This season has been a major standout in terms of dark and mature themes lying just under the surface, or even being explicitly present.
3581931
Clearly, we have established a much needed update to the outmoded Kübler-Ross grief model. And remember, Donnie was a good stallion.
3582002
There really wasn't much else I could do with "Brotherhooves Social." As for "What About Discord?", it's pretty reprehensible, yes, but Twilight doesn't quite hit breakdown levels. Well, not psychotic breakdown levels. This is only about a tenth as bad as "Lesson Zero." Emotional breakdown, on the other hand, that definitely takes place. Basically, I just didn't care enough about the episode enough to really tear into it.
3582124
This can only end well!
3582124
Oh
The only thing that would have made it darker is if somepony put on Ray-bans and declared that she was the hybrid destined to conquer Equestria and stand in its ruins.
Oh, shit.
Someone's going to have Doctor Hooves do just that, aren't they?
I'm with you on the Yule avatar!
And great points on the foreshadowing.
Funny, I didn't watch a lot of the episodes this season...
Princess Spike
Party Pooped
Amending Fences
Made in Manehattan
Brotherhooves Social
The Hoofields and McColts
and
The Mane Attraction
...I wonder if I should have. None of them seemed to have much point.
3582696
"Party Pooped" shows Pinkie at her best, "Amending Fences" is one of the best episodes of the series, "Made in Manehattan" has gobs of continuity and great Rarijack interaction, "Brotherhooves Social" needs to be seen for its ending, "The Hoofields and McColts" has great visuals and Twishy interaction, and "The Mane Attraction" is all-around solid entertainment.
"Princess Spike" is so bad that not even I have anything nice to say about it.
But seriously, if nothing else, see "Amending Fences."
3582730 Ok. Now do you want the negatives? By the way, is the new avatar alright?
3582773
Santa Snake is fantastic. And unless you've been taking photos of me, I'm not sure what negatives you can offer. You haven't seen the episodes, ergo you can't judge them.
Best Season by far. And every description was perfect!
This season was really fun to watch.
I still have to see part 2 of the season finale though.
I'll get to it eventually.
I approve so much.
Also, Lemon Hearts's face in the flask is still the funniest thing ever, oh my god. :D
I'm gonna have to thank you for this avatar. I knew the second I saw the picture in your post here, I had to give it a try. And I think it works!
3582804 Ech, preshow negatives.
Here are some alternative titles.
Spike once again making a fool of himself
Foreigner Cultural Controversy,
the episode that I missed and have nothing negative to say about
The Lessons in Giving Up
Really Base Gender Comedy
Family Blood Rivalry Rooted in Civil War History Reference,
Lady Gaga Pony
Of course, only three of which I even turned on for second before I was stopped from watching. 1, 5, and 6.
edit: not my fault for failing to finish them, family stuff. I'll probably have to set aside a time to finish them. I did actually want to watch #'s 2&3 on my list.
3583017
Glad I could be of assistance.
3583067
Understandable positions on several of them, especially "Brotherhooves Social." That's a divisive one, but I promise it's worth it.
3583154 K.
Oh geez that coffee can. I really need to watch the big lebowski don't I?
3596793
I strongly recommend that you do. It's a fun and bizarre movie.