Status Quo and Scale: A ramble by CGL

Note: the following is copy-pasted from a discussion on another forum, and was written during a period of general incoherency. I've probably left a lot of thoughts out, and I apologize if it just makes no sense. You have been warned.

To be honest, I have some very mixed feelings about that. I was introduced to the show during the summer of 2011, after Season 1 had ended but several months before Season 2 began. When people refer to the heyday of the fandom, that's what I tend to think of, when the world of Equestria was still mostly unknown, when the fanart was detailed, the fanfics were like Lord Of The Rings, and the people were nice. Looking back on things now, I can see the fandom was... well, pretty far from perfect, but I didn't really come across the darker parts back then, and I still think the majority was pretty great at that time.

I wasn't as present or involved, though, when Season 2 began to actually air, partially due to fade in interest, mostly due to school. When I came back into things a few weeks before A Canterlot Wedding aired, something had changed, but I was still having a great time. Chrysalis proved a most effective muse, and I was pretty prolific during that following summer as well.

Then came Season 3, and things just kind of went downhill. A decline in the show quality with episodes like Spike At Your Service and Keep Calm And Flutter On, and of course the great Twilicorn flame wars Debate. I was starting to come up with some original concepts to boot, and despite Sunset Shimmer catching my interest, the first Equestria Girls was a pretty solid disappointment, compounded by a long hiatus. I've never had a particularly strong investment in the community aspect of the fandom (no offense) but the constant arguing still bred a pretty darn toxic atmosphere, and the fanfics which were my bread and butter were less enthralling.

Season 4 was something of a return to form at first, but the overall zaniness turned me off after a while, and that horrible waste of time calling itself a Season finale was the straw that broke the Camel's back. I went through something of a 'midlife fandom crisis' at that point, and for better or for worse, have been able to distance myself from the show since then. That's not to say I've given up on it entirely, though I may have were it not for Rainbow Rocks. I don't think I need to tell anyone how fantastic that movie was, and it went a long way toward restoring my faith in DHX.

Season 5 has somehow topped that, and with the amazingness of Amending Fences, is honestly the best season of the show yet, a relief after the stupider aspects of Season 4. I am honestly looking forward to Season 6 and the eventual theater movie; fingers crossed.

But to answer your question, yes I do still miss the early days of the fandom. While I think the show is back on the right track again and I think I've personally matured a great deal by now, I am not so fond of the majority of the fandom in its present state, and to be perfectly frank, I just miss the days when Nightmare Moon was the one and only antagonist, when the mysterious Canterlot hadn't yet been supplanted by the obnoxiously gaudy Crystal Empire, when our interpretations of Equestria varied wildly but the tone of the various fanworks was consistently epic.

(And part of me hopes that the upcoming movie can bring back that sort of feeling.)

EDIT: Further musing on this, I think part of it (to me) is a matter of scale and specialization. Maybe it's hypocritical of me to lambast Twilight's Kingdom while praising a fanfic like The Empty Room or Within and Without, but I feel that the show writers' specialty lies mainly in the down-to-earth slice-of-life stories that stuck to Ponyville and the Everfree Forest, which mainly defined the first two seasons. And to be honest, I feel like the mere concept of the Crystal Empire is a huge mistake in a lot of ways, and undermines the more mysterious aspects of Canterlot. With a smaller, more ill-defined world in canon, it gives the impression of a very big world beyond the borders of what you know; the more of that you define, the more that feeling of mystery (and openness to interpretation) is diminished.

As for the specific case of Twilight's Kingdom, part of my problem with that was in terms of the simple vibe of it. As many have observed, that felt like an episode of Dragonball Z, a show I've never been particularly fond of. That episode calls for heavy metal and edgy black and red, where the kind of 'epic' I'm thinking of is more the Peter Jackson or HP Lovecraft -esque style. That kind of thing wouldn't work well in most episodes of the show, but with the movie I think they have a chance to return to the kind of feeling that the series pilot brought us, opening with a book and the legend of two sisters. On some level, I think that initial lack of a strong status quo is what attracted me to give MLP G1 an honest shot during the latter half of 2013, as my enjoyment of FIM began to diminish.

Idunno, maybe I'm just spouting nonsense. I can't really decipher what I just wrote, myself.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

It's an interesting tradeoff. On the one hand, the mystery of the unknown offers a wide-open area to explore and innovate, to fill in the gaps with whatever the author wants and the story needs. On the other, greater information and structure provide a strong foundation that offers new possibilities to explore and new sources of inspiration. I joined the fandom around when you did, and I have to say, it's been fascinating to see the canon evolve. Frustrating at times, yes, but fascinating.

That being said, I have no idea what you mean by the "mystery" of Canterlot. It's the capital, Twilight's home town. It never really seemed that mysterious to me.