Lady Moonlight Meridian Lulamoon was an absolutely terrible mother, and weeks after my last interaction with the Manehattanverse, I can't let go of the fact that she seems to get off the hook relatively scot-free in the end of Mother Shows Best.

I mean, seriously. Moonlight may genuinely care about her daughters (albeit in a very cold and destructively misguided way), but her sins are nigh-unforgivable. She shows throughout Mother Shows Best how she cares about House Lulamoon and their standing in Equestrian society more than the actual well-being of her family's individual members. She misses the forest for the trees so fcking hard and neglects her daughters' own feelings and desires in service of her perceived notions of what's best for her family to the point that she practically abandons one of her own daughters - Trixie - out in the wild with Hoofdini (who was arguably a better guardian and even straight up parental figure to Trixie than Moonlight was) for 15 whole years because she was such a rebellious filly that didn't fit in with what Moonlight wanted her to be. And then just when Trixie was content with her life as a travelling showmare, Moonlight shows up out of nowhere forcing her against her will to come back and be a pawn for House Lulamoon and their plans to win in a scramble for power and influence in the midst of some political chaos Trixie couldn't have given two shts about.

Of course, however, these are just Moonlight's character flaws, so you might be asking, "What's the problem then?"

The problem is the lack of a powerful enough closure of drama, baggage, and unaddressed wronging between Trixie (as well as Checker, I guess) and Moonlight.

I'm a bit irked at how Moonlight seems to (intentionally or unintentionally) stubbornly keep her dignity in the end of Mother Shows Best even as she is admitting how she screwed up. She maintains an air of detachment and keeps up the appearance of a matriarch, focusing less on how she wronged Trixie and more on her own mistakes as a matriarch. Never once does she truly openly break her cold iron mask even after her views on magic were proven wrong in a spectacular way (though she does hug Trixie in the train station later on and tells her how she's grown as a strong mare which is pretty sweet, but that's about it). Trixie even sort of kowtows to her mother in that scene although I suppose it's Trixie showing her mother how mature she can be and thus taking the moral high ground.

Now, again, there isn't necessarily a problem with all that. It's simply part of Moonlight's character. She's new to the whole "being wrong" thing. "Baby steps" as Fluttershy would put it. However, that doesn't change the fact that it feels like the ending of Mother Shows Best is lacking in the catharsis department. Oh, how I would have loved to see Moonlight finally crack and show genuine warmth and sorrowful regret to Trixie, letting the elusive softer side of hers that her husband swears is there actually show up in the fic.

Nevertheless, this isn't really a detriment to the fic itself. That could all easily be fixed by following up on Mother Shows Best's loose emotional thread with another fic that would address the issue and hopefully give a more fitting closure to the drama in Trixie's relationship with her mother.

However, we bump into another problem. The Manehattanverse is dead, and it's been that way for... a while.

Now, to wrap this all up, if you haven't already pieced it together, the problems I have with Mother Shows Best's ending is a major reason why an episode idea that involved Trixie and Moonlight and an emotional moment between them was the first idea I posted about in this post right here.

Anyway, I hope you found my ramblings interesting. Hopefully, I'll come back here soon with a Manehattanverse-related idea to post after I get some real life things sorted out first.

Keep calm and praise the sun.

This is so well said that I quite literally can't think of anything to add to this.

Except, of course, that I wish you luck on real life AND on your projects.