Watching Season 6, extremely short reviews so far · 9:33pm Dec 17th, 2017
The Crystalling 1 & 2: Ok, this ruined my headcanon for Sunburst and made Starlight's backstory even more incomprehensible, but I don't mind because he's awesome. Unlike Twilight, the child prodigy who continued to excel in everything she did, Sunburst is the child prodigy who failed his initial promise and ended up believing himself to be a total failure in life despite actually being incredibly accomplished. Also his very existence seems to reinforce my belief that he and Starlight are about ten years older than Twilight, because how does a guy end up more knowledgeable than the student of Princess Celestia herself, who for years was a bookworm who did nothing but read about magic? Answer: He's had longer to learn stuff.
Not thrilled with the nerfing of Celestia and Luna again, but at least my headcanon can explain why the ponies who raise the sun and moon can't dispell a storm -- magic's weak in the North, and the Crystal Heart amplifies it. Why is Flurry Heart so godawfully powerful? MLP already established that infants are absurdly powerful and she's a born alicorn. I like babies, so I have no problem with Flurry (though, why does she have normal pony eyes when Pumpkin and Pound still have infant circle eyes? Whatever.)
I liked this one.
The Gift of Maud Pie: Very predictable, but Maud Pie is always fun, and adding Rarity to the mix made it entertaining enough. I assume a party cannon is worth a lot more than a rock pouch, so Pinkie basically got totally cheated -- buying herself a new party cannon was probably not an option. Kept wondering why Rarity didn't offer to make a pouch after Maud gave hers back, though.
On Your Marks: Apple Bloom, official clingiest pony out of an extremely clingy species. "I don't want to do anything I think is personally fun if I can't do it with my friends!" I'm sorry, Apple Bloom, no one has yet invented a method of surgically grafting a pony to another pony. Maybe you should ask Discord to make a second Apple Bloom so you can do fun things with another pony who happens to like everything you like. Except the two of you would probably spend all your time moping that Sweetie and Scootaloo aren't with you. I vote Apple Bloom "Most Likely to Go Insane If She Loses Her Friends And Become Starlight Glimmer Mark Two Except With Potions".
Gauntlet of Fire: Princess Ember is great. I was bothered for some time by the fact that all adolescent dragons seem to be hideously ugly; looks like it's just Garble and his friends. Torch is kind of hilarious (unintentionally on his part, though I'm sure the writers intended it.)
No Second Prances: So far I think this might actually be the best episode I've seen this season (well, aside from the season ending). Twilight finally gets to act like an actual person would act, with definite trepidation toward the idea that the former villain she's teaching would make friends with the biggest not-totally-evil asshole pony she knows. (Discord being the biggest not-totally-evil asshole she knows if you don't specify it has to be a pony.) Trixie actually gets to demonstrate some emotions besides "I am arrogant" and "I am terrified" and gets some dimension. Starlight and Twilight actually get to have a conflict with each other! Only thing I don't like is Celestia sitting around for hours doing nothing but looking increasingly irritated and getting no lines.
Newbie Dash: This was so embarrassing I had to keep stopping and read something because there is only so much second-hand cringe I can tolerate at once. I like the lesson and how it turned out in the end, but I just couldn't take the cringe.
A Hearth's Warming Tail: This story is literally worthless. Except for Luna's song. Luna's song was great.
The Saddle Row Review: Yet another "Mane 6 all try to act like they think their friend would want rather than like themselves" story, but much less cringy than Newbie Dash, and I really like the framing style.
It wasn't just great, it was awesome. In fact, I think this whole scene with Luna was one of, if not the best thing in Season 6.
The thing that always got me about No Second Prances was the double standard. Comparing their actions, Trixie is far more benign than Starlight ever was, and yet she's treated with scorn while Starlight gets a pass, and I don't understand why.
4751605
It's because Starlight is a well-meaning nutcase whose original actions (as in, brainwashing an entire town) were undertaken because she sincerely believed that would make ponies happier and bring harmony, and her actions in revenge were supposed to be targeted at one group of friends. She didn't realize she was destroying the world by destroying that group of friends, and when she did realize, she stopped.
Trixie's crimes are comparatively minor next to Starlight's, but her motives were never good. She acquired an object of dark magic so that she would have the power to defeat and humiliate Twilight for the crime of saving her life and everyone else's in Ponyville. Twilight did her best not to show Trixie up or humiliate her; she only intervened when there was no choice. Whereas Twilight really did shut Starlight down, destroy her town and her philosophies, and turn her best friends against her. (Mind you, with total justification! But it's still far more hostile than what Twilight "did" to Trixie.)
Basically, Starlight committed greater crimes but Trixie is a worse pony. Trixie is a massive narcissist, on the order of Discord but with less power; even Blueblood shows no evidence of being as big a narcissist as Trixie is. (Blueblood doesn't seek revenge for being humiliated at the Gala.) She interpreted Twilight saving her, and the entire town, from the consequences of her boasts and her idiot fans being idiots, as an attack on her, and wanted revenge. For Twilight saving a town from the consequences of Trixie's actions. Starlight wanted revenge because Twilight deliberately turned her friends against her. Twilight's action toward Starlight was an act of hostility (and had to be, Starlight had already declared hostilities on her and her friends); Twilight intended nothing bad toward Trixie.
Both Trixie and Starlight have ridiculous disproportionate responses -- Trixie seeking out a power boost from a dark magic artifact, Starlight altering the timeline. But Starlight genuinely believed that Twilight and her group of friends weren't that significant and that nothing bad would happen; if Trixie didn't know there was a chance she would be corrupted by the amulet, she must not have been paying attention. And Starlight's assumption, that one group of friends can't possibly be that significant, is actually more realistic than Trixie's assumption that she could wield dark magic and be unaffected by it.
Also, Starlight was genuinely contrite. Trixie was plainly apologizing in hopes of getting out of punishment, and was still self-aggrandizing even then; Starlight surrendered and accepted whatever punishment Twilight thought best to mete out.
So, actually? I can see Twilight's point of view here. I think she sees Starlight as a highly redeemable version of herself who made some really stupid choices in life but wants to learn to do better, and Trixie as a narcissistic blowhard who has zero concept of gratitude. Trixie turns out in this episode to have genuine emotions and have a true craving for friendship, but it's not like she had ever shown those sides of herself to Twilight.
Also, every single time Trixie meets Twilight she goes out of her way to be antagonistic. Twilight would be a saintly pony rather than just a good one if that had no effect on her.
4751712 Another factor might be that Starlight is also a really smart pony who loves magic for its own sake, which Twilight can identify with, while I am 100% sure that Twilight thinks of Trixie as pretty dumb, and I think that effects how much effort Twilight believes should be put into reforming Trixie.
4751712
I want to state for the record that I agree with you on this point, but I would also like to point out that Sunset Shimmer was a worse person than both of them, and the sincerity of her apology is even more questionable than Trixie's given its timing and convenience, and the potential consequences of her actual actions were on the same multiverse-affecting scale as Starlight's. But again, as with Starlight, she got the benefit of the doubt while Trixie did not.
Honestly, I think 4751871 might be onto something.
Here our opinions diverge, because I don't see that. Trixie was still self-aggrandizing, yes, but I don't see any reason to assume that her remorse at the end of Magic Duel wasn't genuine. She didn't have to seek out Twilight and apologise, or perform the firework display, and I don't remember any threat of punishment ever being so much as implied. And it's not like they could have punished her for that whole incident anyway, because that would be hypocritical after nobody held Luna accountable for Nightmare Moon.
And I know it's a cliché to say "IN THE COMICS" (and irrelevant at this point, since the show has been ignoring them even harder than usual lately), but in the comics, we'd already seen Trixie after Magic Duel, and she had a character arc about seeking redemption and becoming a better person. Which she did on her own, I might add, without any hoof-holding from Twilight. I don't particularly like those comics, but they felt more congruent with the ending of Magic Duel than No Second Prances did. When Twilight and Trixie last saw each other in the show, Twilight explicitly said she forgave Trixie, and seemed more amused than anything by her exit. And by the time they first see each other again in this episode, they both seem mutually hostile right out of the gate. Maybe you disagree, but this doesn't feel natural to me at all. It's like we're missing an intervening story. But the only intervening Trixie stories that exist make this even more nonsensical if we acknowledge them.
4752263
True enough. Sunset Shimmer was a bigger shithead than all of them put together. The only thing I can think is that at the time, Twilight was comparing her to Luna, not to Trixie. And howard035's point, where Twilight has more sympathy for fallen unicorns that she feels "there but for the grace of Celestia go I" than those who are very much unlike her (Twilight, an upper middle class/possibly minor nobility unicorn, is classist against poorer unicorns and poorer students than she was? Shocker.) Also, the fact that Trixie's pretty consistently an asshole to Twilight.
I also think, maybe, Twilight might have had an issue with a just-recently-reformed Sunset making friends with Starlight. I think at this point Twilight's attitude about reformation is "trust but verify"; she's worried about Starlight making the wrong friend because she doesn't want to jeopardize Starlight's reformation. ("Reformed" individuals making the wrong friend, and thus ending up making very bad life choices, nearly destroyed Equestria when the one who made the wrong friend was Discord allying with Tirek.)
What Twilight isn't entirely getting, in her effort to be a Celestia and basically manage Starlight's life so she only has good and wholesome influences, is that Starlight is not a child and is not even younger than Twilight is (I am pretty sure that in fact she's significantly older.) Also, that Twilight herself doesn't have a thousand years of experience manipulating and managing ponies. Also that Twilight is probably inherently bad at it anyway.
4752267
Sounds about right. I think that having trust issues with recently reformed villains is pretty reasonable after Discord's betrayal. Given that history, I can completely understand Twilight's control issues with Starlight. It just bothers me that she regards Trixie as a bad influence like Tirek, because I don't think she deserves that, and I don't think Twilight has any reason to presume that at the start of the episode.