So how 'bout that finale? [spoilers] · 4:58pm Oct 13th, 2018
If you don't want to read lots of whingeing, skip this one. :V
So like... This finale adequately sums up what this season has been all about: a show staff who do not have two shits to rub together throwing things at the wall in the hope they will keep the audience distracted for an hour and more willing to buy toys. That's it, that's all this show means anymore. It's no longer about there being more than one way to be a girl, it's no longer about bridging gender and generation gaps, it's no longer about making sure girls have media targeted at them that is actually worth watching with their parents.
It's a kids' show.
It's for little girls.
It doesn't have to be good.
And this fandom has eaten this shit up.
You don't have to take my word for it. Here's some analysis of all the bullshit that doesn't make sense in these episodes. Here's some more, along with pondering just what they were thinking.
Halfway through the season, I said to myself, okay, this is it. I'm done with MLP after S8. And that resolve actually wavered after On the Road to Friendship and one or two other episodes toward the end of the season that actually weren't bad. That were actually good, and not just because I ship the characters featured in them. But no. The show staff obviously do not give a shit about this show -- as Twitter should prove, if you've been paying attention to EQD -- so why the fuck should I?
It's no big loss. The fandom has always been more important to me, after all. I am a little upset and disappointed at how many people like this garbage, but you can't control people. But yeah, I'm done, this show sucks ass nowadays, and if you all can't see it, I dunno what to tell you.
It was worth it all for this little in-stream comment at the end of the episode, though:
Arcane Thunder, I don't know who you are, but you made my day. :D This was fun, too.
Band-aids, they hurt.
EDIT: Oh yeah, this is a good analysis of the season.
It's okay for people to like entertainment that isn't necessarily good. I unironically like Power Rangers. The X-Men movies continue to exist. Hell, People still like G3 even though that was terrible
There is nothing wrong with liking things. No, it's not good. No, it doesn't matter. And no, it didn't matter as much as you seem to think it did in the first place.
I don't recall all the show posts about S8, but the recent one I remember raising an eyebrow at is that one of the EqG staff was surprised that "Ray" exists and notes they have no Flash elements of him to use him.
Like, seriously? This isn't something that's being communicated, that a new character was introduced? The writers and animators on two separate projects don't talk to each other? Who the hell is providing oversight? Imagine if this wasn't something innocuous like Ray, but a new supporting character, and part of the staff were entirely unaware they existed.
But yeah, this season has been a total mess. Here's my detailed thoughts on it.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/825641/an-autopsy-of-season-8
Do you ever take a step back and just think; "Maybe I have entitlement issues to a children's show, and should reassess the degree to which I allow it to continue to influence my life"?
I skipped most episodes related to the school, and don't see the need to change it for this. >_>
EDIT: Out of curiosity, did this season have any winners for you other than StarTrix and Parent Trap?
4952548
That is simply absurd and deep down you know that. It is not "entitlement" to be upset that a show you've followed for almost a decade is starting to noticably decline in quality. It is not "entitlement" to expect a show that has been great for several past seasons continue to at least be just as good as it has been up until now.
4952539
Yeah, see, you're not wrong in that sentence itself, but in the context of Season 8, that doesn't work as much of a defense. Yeah, if something is bad but you like it anyway, fine. But that doesn't mean it wasn't bad in the first place.
4952554
I'm not saying it wasn't kinda sucky. I just...
People are allowed to have fun. People are allowed to make Micheal Bay millions of dollars, and ensure there were five Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Maybe they weren't good, but maybe the people seeing them didn't need something good. Maybe they needed an easy movie to take a first date to, or an escape from pressure at school, or troubles at home.
You don't have to like things, but you don't have to try and keep other people from liking things too. It's just TV, and it's okay if it's not always doing it's best.
4952565
And in his own wording, PP acknowledged he can't control people, just that he was disappointed. So then, you agree with him.
4952569
I was expressing that I didn't like the insinuation that people shouldn't like something. No more, no less. This isn't a fight, or even an argument. At least it's not meant to be.
You seem to be taking this weirdly personally.
...
No comment.
4952570
You're the one who commented first and passive-aggressively mocked PP. Please climb off your horse before you fall and hurt yourself.
4952550
Some of the episodes were good. On the Road To Friendship showed that they can make a good episode. The kirins were really cute, and the episode with Cheesy was a lot of fun. There were also a few nice lessony episodes relating to the school.
Otherwise, looking back, this season is a total structural mess. No consistent theme, no consistent direction. It felt like they had multiple show-runners swapping in and out, each leaving their job half complete for the next one to pick up. I legit still don't know the names of a lot of the student 6 (5?). I had to ask what they were during the stream, and that's after seeing every single episode (good or bad).
They didn't spend enough time with these supposedly important characters (should have dedicated the season to them, imo) and instead wasted precious run-time on plot-lines that, though cool in the moment, ended up not really going anywhere.
On top of that, bringing back the pillars, although also cool in theory, rips the lore of the show a know new one. It's something I'd only imagine seeing in a fanfiction, never in actual canon, and they have characters like Starswirl, who have been built up since seaon one as being this magnificent genious of the ages, running around like a damned fool getting played by the Flim-Flam brothers.
tl;dr Everything's off the rails, but don't just believe me; I'm a talking horse.
(sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. This season basically continued the trend, and a problem, that has been evident ever since Twilight grow a castle out of the ground)
4952587
Parent Map, Road to Friendship, and I friggin' adored the Kirin ep. I think a dozen-odd other eps made for fun-if-not-groundbreaking servings of pony, and the whopping two eps that actually explored and developed the Student 6 (Lies Beneath and Hearthwarming) demonstrated they could be interesting characters when actually given screentime. It wasn't all bad, but the ratio is more than a touch worse than usual.
As for the overarching plot or lack thereof, I'm just going to quote myself from another blog:
This just convinces me more and more the show will go out with a whimper rather than any sort of fanfare. Heck, the crew has probably already almost finished the last season, what chance is there of anything really special coming out of that? Knowing Gen 5 is going to be the focus now kills me, because the only thing it can possibly be is manufactured to chase their current success.
Ah well. The show was what it was, and soon it will be no longer.
The finale was unforgivingly dumb at places because the writer wanted to 'subvert expectations'. Still, I had some good fun with nearly every episode this season and will be looking forward to the next one.
Flanks don't lie after all.
And that guardsmare we saw certainly looks like she has a fine one.
Eh, I enjoyed... 8 episodes this season. That's almost a third of them.
I'm satisfied that there's only one season left. I really hope I like it.
4952539
There's nothing wrong with liking things. There's something wrong when the thing you liked stops being good and yet you still continue to watch it.
4952548
Do you ever see "If you don't want to read lots of whingeing, skip this one" and think, "I should definitely go read that whingeing now!"
4952550
The answer is yes, but I can't remember what they are too well. <.< I liked the one about Rockhoof, I liked The Mean Six even if it wasn't actually a good episode. I liked the one about Fluttershy being dumb, same caveat, and I enjoyed Grannies Gone Wild. But even the stuff I enjoyed is kind of forgettable. :/
4952644
Sounds about right.
4952648
Y'know, that guardsmare is about the only thing I got excited about in either of these episodes. <.<
ffs, they should've just gone and made the Student Six another set of Elements/Pillars/whatever and been done with it. They were quite obviously going that route, then pulled back just at the last minute, creating a moment of absolute disinterest instead of something I could rightly be pissed off about. I'm so tired of just having no reaction to what's happening on-screen, I'd rather hate than feel nothing. :(
4952586
I went back and edited out the passive aggressive bit.
4952652
I feel like there's a difference between something being objectively good and something meaning something to people. Rescue Heroes wasn't really great but it helped me get over a lot of stuff when I was a kid.
Is it a good thing that the show's ending? Probably. I just don't want to see the "Love and Tolerance" fandom be turned into something where people aren't allowed to be a fan unless they like certain things.
i stopped watching at mean 6. That episode showed that the staff has no idea how to craft a narrative anymore. Let alone a good story.
4952652
The way I've kept up my enthusiasm for the show is by making sure I always treat myself with a few good beers and lots of popcorn whenever a new episode airs, and always watch it with others (stream groups, friends, etc.) We tend to have a very.... adult sense of humor.
Now, you could argue that the show should be good enough that you don't need to set up an artificially good environment to enjoy it, but I'd say it's a smart idea to make an effort to stay positive. I think you'll get the most enjoyment out of the fandom that way as well.
Well for me personally, I'm fully aware the show isn't as good as it used to be. I saw a shining beacon in season 7, though apparently that was just false hope, as most of season 8 was pretty bad.
Either way, I don't think too hard about it. For me, I'm not terribly invested into the show, but I feel I have to see it through to the end. MLP brought about a huge change in my life, and introduced me to a lot of new people and a lot of new friends. Yes, it's important to me, but to me the show was never what was important about MLP. It's about the people I met through it, and though the show may take a dip in quality, ultimately such dips can be rectified through fan works, and there's always the option to ignore canon if you want to do something more interesting. Eventually, G4 is gonna end, and the stories told about these ponies will end, but the fans will keep it going for quite some time, so to me the spirit of MLP is very much alive.
/skip
4952680
Yeah, me neither.
4952770
There never was a 'Love and Tolerance' fandom. That was just 4chan sticking a cheeky meme over counter-trolling the weebs who were freaking out that anyone liked colorful horse show.
That said, they went ahead and showed a 'put the child in prison' ending while the US is up in arms about kids in cages. If you want any further evidence that Hasbro doesn't even care enough to try to do PR for the show, much less ask what's being written...
Edit: Lol, it's worse. Jim thought that bit would be 'fun and subversive'.
https://twitter.com/TheBiggestJim/status/1051269705061687296
i.imgur.com/I9cgpzT.png
4952800
More pointing out the 'real fans like X' thing goes both ways.
And oh shit, I hadn't even thought of that. D: gj on the timing, holy fuck
4952587
I will say that I do like the Student Six, and I hope they get a better shake in future generations.
4952843
Yeah, I figured it was just a bout of bad timing until Jim ran his mouth off and revealed that they were quite aware it could be a reference.
I mean, you could also ask questions about why this when Starlight's still walking around free, but they'd desperately like the fandom to stop asking questions about why the Mary Sue gets to be consequence free at all times. :D
While I still think the show has enough bright spots to keep me invested (I actually enjoyed quite a few individual episodes), I do agree that Season 8 is a noticeable downgrade from the past few seasons. While I personally thought Seasons 4 and 5 were the heights of the show creative-wise, Seasons 6 and 7 at least kept the show at sea-level in terms of quality. But Season 8 was just weighed down by the Friendship School, which was just distracting us from the characters we did enjoy and came off as ungodly forced into the narrative. Almost every time the school played a significant role in the story, the episode itself fell flat (save the Hearth's Warming Eve episode, which actually made the Student 6 have some kind of character, and the episode where the CMC tried to get into the school). There's an unofficial rule that says television series can only run seven seasons effectively before they start becoming tedious, and I'm wondering if that's what we're seeing with MLP now.
I really hope Season 9 closes this series off with a bang, but the show makers need to get their act together if that's to happen.
4952857
I'd like to see that, yeah. Done right they can be a great alternative to the regular mane six. Heck, if they were more on the ball, the show staff would have made the connection between them and the artifacts as being the next line of
toysElements of Harmony.Wow. I did not anticipate how bad that would be. I think it's reached a new low for season open/ends. Too much to feel good putting it in a comment, and I'm not sure I would want my first blog post in over a year to be a liveblogging consisting of all negatives like this. Sure, I did that with the one awful comic (24?), but... Jesus, nothing in the entire episode made sense, there was no thread of logic connecting things, I can't even follow how the events were supposed to play out, on multiple occasions significant events hinge on multiple characters not being aware of the fact that there are easily visible windows in the room, how is any of this magic supposed to make sense, what was the point of bringing the pillars back to have them contribute to like 1 1/4 episodes over the course of the season (granted, there's precedent with this in S4 Twilight, but that has the excuse of not knowing there would be an S4 when the princessing decision was made), ...
Also Cozyglow's voice is an abomination and severely detrimental to every scene she's in.
4952800
Here's the thing: it is in no way comparable to the real life children-in-cages situation. Sure, it's inconsistent and arbitrary that she's in prison while various other villains have been willingly allowed to go free because reasons. But by almost any standard other than Equestria's before literally right now, she belongs in prison--or hanged, or in front of a firing squad, etc. Drawing a connection to child detainees is disgusting, unless you think they've knowingly and maliciously done something comparable to abducting a bunch of high government officials and somehow causing 1/3 or more of the population plus most people outside the country to become disabled and I guess also destroy the electrical grid or some shit. In which case, why don't you think they should be in prison?
4952652
Yeah, one of the most baffling things about this season has been that they decided to add two new groups of six thematically linked to the Elements, right about at the same time, and then do almost nothing with one of them, and allow the other to languish for most of the season. And it's even weirder that they stuck with the one with the weaker links to what we already have! I guess that's not entirely fair, though, since it's harder to get forward movement by bringing people in who were basically at the end of their plot arcs, rather than new characters learning who they are and how to be friends and all that for the first time.
You should try Hilda on Netflix.
4952917
This one, I will argue with you on. :V Especially once it's revealed she's up to no good, her ability to play up her own cuteness to make others lower their guard is actually pretty endearing. She may be a crappy villain, but she was a fun character, and one of the few bright spots for me in S8.
4952955
...This frightens me, for reasons I do not entirely understand. c.c;
Some additional observations:
Cozyglow's plan is basically Sunset Shimmer's, but with normal students instead of interdimensional zombie students, and lacks the backstop justification that maybe she was going to have a zombie army of everyone in human Canterlot/Equestria rather than just Canterlot High.
Bearing in mind her idea seems to be to put herself at the head of a mob (as she does a couple times), not actually have a bunch of friends, the source being the school of friendship seems arbitrary unless it was chosen on the basis of having an unusually weak-minded and easily led/worked up population. Which in fairness seems like it might be the case. So is the school kind of a cult, or at least attract mostly people who would end up in cult-like situations?
If the "friends" plan were the real thing, by all indications the hippogriff/griffin/changeling/yak/dragon group, with at least some of them indicated as having connections to the leadership of their respective communities, would be the most valuable to translate friendship into power. Yet she cuts them off the first chance she gets. And why does Cozyglow have the racism thing like Neighsay does? Why did she apparently learn nothing from What Lies Beneath?
Given the take over the school, "friends," ???, power!!! plan, I get the need to remove Twilight and the rest. But 1) who is going to stick with the school after Twilight's gone and not coming back? Cozyglow pointed this out when Neighsay tried taking over; Twilight is the draw. And 2) why would you choose basically the maximally disruptive means of getting rid of the Mane 6 + Spike and Starlight if the goal is to take over her school and use the relationships developed/mob drawn from the school to propel yourself to power in some way? Who's going to stick with the school during a massive worldwide emergency rather than go home to their families and communities--or in the case of (for example) pegasi from Cloudsdale or Las Pegasus, go there to help the refugee resettlement to somewhere on the ground? Even if they do stick with you, how is a bunch of students going to propel you to power in a time of crisis, and probably martial law? Maybe there's some leveling done by removing the magical powers of those who would stand against you, but that leaves the fact you've got a bunch of students, many or all of whom aren't even adults--when they're up against police and the guard, how is this supposed to go your way? And that's if we say you're playing a short game and can wave away the whole "wait, why are we staying at this school again?" thing.
What's your plan for the coming eternal day/night?
4952917
Including the standards of Equestria in Seasons 1 (Nightmare Moon--brain blasted away with magical lasers, then it turns out after that Luna decided she also needed to mentally torture herself), 2 (Discord--re-stoned, Chrysalis--violently expelled, possibly (until later proved otherwise) killed), 3 (Sombra--mostly disintegrated, Discord now gets released for some reason*), and 4 (Tirek--returned to a cage in Tartarus, but for some reason allowed mail?).
*Read: marketability.
4953073
Starlight Glimmer : Tampers with the timestream and is only barely prevented from causing multiple apocalypses because Twilight is too good to hold it against her. Engages in massive, systemic, and casual mind rape and depersonalization because she's bitter over a friend (who she never bothered to reach out to) having to move.
Punishment : Joining the main cast and apprenticing under Twilight, despite continuing to use mind control whenever it suits her.
In some ways:
I've been at this point since the "Canterlot Wedding" episodes. I mean, suddenly Twilight has a brother whom she's never mentioned and whom she calls her "best friend forever" when her whole character arc is built on her never having had a real friend. Suddenly there's a third alicorn in the world. Suddenly there's this unknown race of magical monsters invading who "eat love," a concept that the show has never even come close to explaining. I still consider the whole second season to have largely been a train wreck.
And yet? I've enjoyed quite a lot of things about the show in the six years since then...
Mike
4953497
And unfortunately, pretty much nothing that's happened since then has adequately explained anything about that episode. <.< I still have a couple in-depth post-wedding fic ideas I'd really like to explore sometime.
4953501
I ended up doing:
Over 40,000 words trying to sort it the wedding episodes, and while I enjoyed the story I ended up with, I only managed to address about half my questions.
Mike
4953497
And let's not forget that the newly-introduced alicorn is also a never before mentioned best-friend Twilight used to have.
It's interesting to me that you feel that way about S2 as a whole, since I think I've tended to hear (and personally feel) that more directed at Canterlot Wedding specifically. With you on there having been a lot to enjoy since then, but for me Canterlot Wedding was where the feeling of a coherent world really started to crack. Granted, I'll cop to some of that surely being due to a high attachment to the two-alicorn (and alicorns are remote and special) aesthetic it had going.
4953501
That's totally unfair! The Season 6 finale explained negative stuff about that episode! :V
*Goes back to read Favourites list* "There, there. It's okay. Ponies are still cool. MLP doesn't suck, MLP doesn't suck, MLP doesn't suck..."
On a more serious note, I suspect that sites like Fimfiction and Derpibooru have been absolutely crucial in keeping the fandom numbers up past Season 4 or so. I've been getting iffy vibes about the show for years now, and each time it was sort of mitigated by the next amazing story or artwork I stumbled upon.
At this point, I'm sure that at least 80% of my internal conceptualisation of MLP's world and characters consists of headcanon hastily patched over nonsensical canon.
4952800 4952843
The timing's awful, sure, but I'm not sure if it's fair or beneficial to compare Cosy Glow's imprisonment to real children.
Cosy Glow is over-the-top, inexplicably competent, has plot-mandated success (and failure) in her schemes and seems to exist in a vacuum that cannot reasonably account for the presence of a supervillain's mind in the body of a foal. For all the flimsiness of the backstory they gave Starlight, at least they tried with her and gave her something that could account for her journey from innocence to a warped mindset. Cosy Glow doesn't even get that; she just popped out of thin air, fully cute and evil just because.
In short, Cosy Glow isn't a real child. She's a caricature. A monster of the week. An obstacle for the characters to overcome (which the tree-god-table-thingy still did for them anyway, lol). She's too paper-thin to be viewed through the lens of serious world-building and doesn't deserve to be analysed like a sincerely-written character.
4953847
I know that feel. >.<
Given how much executive meddling went on to force the school to happen, I think the show handled it admirably and the finale was as good as it could have been. I like Cozy Glow as a villian and the fact that so much of this episode happened in god damned hell was constantly cracking me up. I guess the episode hinges on how much you enjoy those two facets.
Have you ever stated why like EqG so much more than the school of friendship? At least I've never been to a friendship school. The highschool shit is old news.
4954224
I've actually been putting a lot of thought into why I like EQG but not where MLP has gone.
And I think the answer is along the line of
tiddiesEQG never having any importance when it first came out. The actual first Equestria Girls movie was pretty dumb, bad in a lot of ways, but the series became endearing. Rainbow Rocks was a real hit for me, and Sunset grew on me quickly, from essentially a blank slate. Once the series stopped being about Princess Twilight, it got even better, though it definitely rollercoasters from special to special in terms of quality.I guess what I'm saying is, if the season one pilot hadn't been so good, if seasons one and two hadn't represented so much culturally, then I wouldn't be decrying being unable to approach season 4 or 6 or 8 with the same mindset. EQG is easier to just have fun with, because it's morally bankrupt. :B
4953847
4953900
Wait, were people not doing that? That's always been the reason I'm a brony...
So that's why people are so upset! I wasn't getting it before. My bad.