Time to Resolve · 6:10am Mar 4th, 2022
This, then, is truly the end of G4. No doubt it's not entirely the last time we'll hear about the Mane Six—Sunny remains a huge fan, after all, and while it's unlikely that Twilight is still around it's not impossible—but it is the last time they'll be the primary focus of a story. It's time to move forward.
So let's talk about Generations #5 before we're done.
Our final moral is that you shouldn't get jealous, you should get your own stuff. Or, to put it less in terms of questionable aphorisms, energy you devote to resenting what others have and trying to tear them down is energy that isn't helping you with your own problems. It's not productive or helpful to anyone; it's just an endless cycle, since no matter how much you drag others down it'll never make you forget your own failure to get up. And once you realize you do want to stand, those whom you pulled down are likely to want to return the favor.
That said, I was expecting it to take longer for Grackle and Dyre to let go of their desire for revenge. I didn't realize how susceptible they would be to the sweet siren song of sugar.
Of course, pretty much of all of this story has failed to follow the pacing I was expecting, and I don't mean that as a compliment. It wants to linger more on things than will fit in five issues, and so it periodically scrambles through transitions and events to compensate.
I feel compelled to point out that AJ's rainbow lasso is solid to her and to Minty, but intangible to the barrier containing the poor test subjects.
Also, I'm sad we never saw Dash use her rainbow jetpack.
I'm surprised that Carousel Boutique was taken over by snakes in the past two days, given that Fluttershy is perfectly capable of politely asking any snakes who arrive to look elsewhere since this building is pretty much at capacity with a dozen ponies using it as their base of operations.
Did you notice that both of the best friend shirts say "ST ENDS"? They've got different heart halves, but they cannot "BE FRI."
Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed in the Smooze for tossing out a "uniquely ungifted" barb. That's a low blow, even for it.
Another observation: when Twilight confronts Smoozed Violet, she opens up wide cracks in the floor. Those cracks then promptly disappear, except they make one last cameo so Twilight can climb dramatically out of one of them immediately after clearly not being in a hole.
Out of all the missing transitions, I think the most bothersome has to be the immediate jump from the S'monies fading away as everycreature says their tearful goodbyes to the S'monies abruptly being entirely solid and nocreature even commenting on their sudden recovery. And what even pulled Shadow Storm back, anyway? He never made a connection to Ponyville like Violet and Belle did.
I do think Dyre and Grackle are being a little unfair to their moms by not going back to the volcano. They shouldn't have to come home to find their daughters have mysteriously disappeared; Dyre and Grackle owe one more brief visit to leave a note about how they've left forever because they hate this place and they hate their moms. It's the polite thing to do.
