My Thoughts on Misfortune

First, some background music to set the tone.

From early 2015 (when I first started looking into the series) up until now, I've always been hesitant to call myself a full-on "fan" of Friendship is Magic. My M.O. is to take a quick look at the Recap page for a certain episode at TV Tropes, check for any moments on the Awesome/Funny/Heartwarming sub-pages, then to watch reaction videos on YouTube of the episode in question if I feel it's worth my time. The bulk of the series I haven't even tried to watch; the 100th episode and the EG: Friendship Games movie are the closest I've come to just sitting down and watching something from start to finish.

Instead, I'm rather heavily invested in fanfiction and the occasional projects posted on YouTube, such as the Ponies the Anthology series or InvertedShadow's crossovers with Five Nights at Freddy's (my personal favorite being "Luck of the Lyrish"; it doesn't come across as truly 'scary' to me).

All this might make it look as if I'm not really qualified to talk about the most recent episode as of this writing, "Fame and Misfortune". In reality, it means I can take a relatively unbiased stance towards it all. Part of it is because that unlike most, the only characters in the show I can safely say I "hate" are the truly unrepentant jerks, such as Lightning Dust and Spoiled Rich. The other part... well, exercising common sense has always meant a lot to me, and I've always found arguing about unimportant stuff to be completely pointless.

I entered the series well after the initial fuss revolving around Alicorn Twilight, for example. For some reason, people didn't like it because it was too far a change from the norm, or that it elevated her above her friends in power and stature. My response to that is: "That's a good thought. Let's ask her friends what they think." If their interactions with each other are any indication, they don't care one whit that she's above them. To them, she's still the same lovable, easily excited, can't-dance-worth-a-crud, overly talkative OCD-laden dork (and it all became moot at the end of the Season 4 finale, anyway). Or, as DBZ Abridged's Piccolo put it...

"NERRRRRD!"

Do you get what I'm trying to say here? All this arguing about trivial details, over things completely unrelated to the point the episode's trying to make... none of it really matters. There are different reasons I could give to help explain things, but really there are only TWO questions that need to be asked, and I'll leave it to you as the reader to answer those questions yourselves:

#1: Is the episode reasonably entertaining from an adolescent/adult's point of view?

#2: How much of it would the average 9-10 year old enjoy? Last I checked, children---especially girls---in that general age group are the show's target audience.

The basic plot behind "Fame and Misfortune" is that after making copies of the Friendship Journal---not seen since Season 4---for her friends, Twilight suggests having additional copies made and sold so that others could benefit from the lessons they all learned. Eventually they start dealing with not only the positive aspects of that decision, but also the negatives. If you've read the rest of this post, you know exactly which negatives I'm talking about---and that's just without getting into what the rest of the Six have had to put up with.

My personal opinion? The people who worked on this episode nailed it. The part that hit me the most, I feel, was that at the end the issue involving the more argumentative members of the Six's fanbase is still unresolved. It's like that involving the show---or anything, really---in real life as well: for all those that appreciate the show's content for what it is, there are still plenty who either don't care to take the lessons to heart, don't feel it doesn't apply to them, or outright ignore the content in favor of their personal bias, among other things. All in all, when something becomes popular and you enjoyed working on it, there's not much you can do except take the bad with the good---something that I've needed to do many a time throughout my life up to now.

Well, that's everything from me. Ciao mein, everyone, and I'll see you next time.

P.S. -- I realized while watching the episode that Applejack's accent gets heavier when she's under stress. Why did I not notice that up until now?