Why do you guys keep saying that the show was at it's best when Faust was in charge? All the episodes that I've watched that she had a hand in making seem to indicate that this wasn't the case, (in fact, the first two-parter were some of my least favorite episodes) and according to TV Tropes she actually wasn't really that involved in making the show anyway.

If we didn’t have Lauren Faust, we wouldn’t have the MLPFiM we got. It wouldn’t have been a runaway success. History speaks for itself.

The show was very different when Faust was in charge. Honestly it's been so long at this point I wonder if I can even verbalize it correctly anymore, but I'll try.

So, the thing you have to understand is that the first couple of seasons of MLP were actually highly experimental. MLP was doing something that had, as far as I'm aware, quite literally never been done before.

1) It presented a near-utopian society that wasn't a fluffy, saccharine sugar bowl. People (ponies) still acted like people, there were interpersonal conflicts as characters clashed. Accidents still happened. People still got hurt. But the world wasn't constantly under the threat of Dark Lord Sauron or the Fire Nation or anything like that. In fact, imho, the original two-parter, return of harmony, and the royal wedding were almost unwelcome outliers in my opinion. Grand adventure and dark forces were the stuff of fanfiction rather than actual official show canon.

2) It presented a fantasy universe that managed to show the world not from the perspective of a party of adventurers or a house of nobles and kings, but instead from the perspective of the everyday citizens. This is highly unusual. Most fantasy universes will have the fighter, the thief, the wizard, the cleric, etc. Instead, we got the perspective of the farmer, the seamstress, the baker, the day laborer, the town hermit/healer, and the scholar. This gave us a highly unique perspective upon the world, where it felt lived in and real. While there may be grand adventures, political intrigue, wild and crazy magical nonsense, etc going on in other parts of the world, here in Ponyville, that stuff wasn't happening.

What these two factors did for the show, in concert, was create a cohesive, unified VISION for the show which later seasons sorely lacked.

Our insights to the rest of Equestria were all viewed through a keyhole. We only ever saw what was relevant to the lives of everyday townsfolk. Sure, it's still a fantasy world, so every now and then if you live in a fantasy world you might come under the threat of a dragon, or a monster might attack a town, or there might be a magical artifact run amok to deal with... but it was also seemingly a well-organized and somewhat utopic fantasy world so there seemed to be ways and measures in place to deal with those things (though admittedly they probably fell on the backs of the mane 6 a few too many times).

This method of worldbuilding kept the world of Equestria mysterious and interesting. We were drip-fed insights into the world at the barest trickle. We knew there WERE monsters. We knew there was the CAPACITY for this world to produce dark lords, even if the only one we'd seen (in the pilot) was taken care of. We knew magical artifacts existed. We knew there were immortal goddess-princesses but we had very little idea what they were like or how they worked because they were almost never on screen. But that was all we were given.

Consider how much more interesting the "Clone Wars" were before we actually saw them in the prequel star wars movies. Before the prequels came out, fans of the original Star Wars movies would speculate endlessly about that one line that Luke dropped in "A New Hope" where he asked Obi Wan whether or not he 'fought in the Clone Wars.' They would come up with incredibly interesting theories about what they might have been, how Obi Wan might have been involved in them, how Luke's father might have been involved in them by extension, and so on and so forth.

That's what was happening with MLP. It's a method of building interest by keeping things vague and mysterious. By giving your audience just enough information to tantalize them with cool-sounding things, but allowing them to draw their own conclusions.

This was the philosophy of the first two seasons.
- Don't go too far into high-fantasy magical nonsense, but let the audience know it exists.
- Don't make the lives of these actual townsfolk too chaotic or nonsensical. Present a hypothetical semi-utopia that (since we know very little about the actual function of the world) the audience can reasonably assumes functions and makes sense thanks to unshared information held offscreen.
- Instead, focus on well-rounded characters who interact and clash in interesting and logical ways thanks to conflicting personalities. Key word being "well-rounded."

That was another thing the first couple of seasons did well. It was subtle at times, but all the mane 6 were well-rounded and realized characters, (though admittedly they started to break down as early as season two). They weren't one-note, one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Fluttershy had moments of spine, Twilight had moments of sardonic, dry wit, Rainbow had moments of genuine compassion and patience, and so on and so forth. This would be bowlderized as time went on, with Twilight morphing into a borderline-unhinged crazy mage with a book fetish, Fluttershy morphing into a spineless coward, and so on and so forth.

Furthermore, on the rare occasion when later seasons tried to write against the stereotypes they'd turned the characters into, they wouldn't be subtle about it, but instead announce it to the world like "LOOK AT RAINBOW BEING SMART DESPITE NOT LEARNING IN TRADITIONAL MANNERS ISN'T THIS INTERESTING?!?!?!"

So let's look at what we've got here.

We've got a world made interesting through purposeful obfuscation, which is justified by limiting the perspective of the show to a select group of townsfolk, all of whom are interesting and subtle, well-rounded characters with multiple dimensions.

I think the keyword here - the thing that the first two seasons had that the later seasons lacked - was subtlety.

The writers were incredibly careful and precise about what information they leaked about the world and how they leaked it, and they started to lose that subtlety as the seasons went on. As time went on, the writers insisted on dumping more and more magical nonsense on the audience to try and keep things interesting rather than try to make interesting interpersonal conflicts. You would never see an episode like Green Isn't Your Color in the later seasons because everything would be too wrapped up in magical map shenanigans or some bullshit.

The first truly egregious example of this was in "Keep Calm and Flutter On," which I still maintain is one of the worst episodes of anything I've ever seen, even if I have slowly warmed up to the idea of a reformed Discord over the years (mostly thanks to the brilliant writings of Alara J. Rogers).

See, the writers in the first two seasons were very VERY careful with the few magical revelations they DID make about the world. They were incredibly careful to not break the image they'd built up of a semi-utopian civilization. Every revelation they made was purposeful and planned.

In later seasons, they were slapdash. Thrown in without any thought or planning, with no care as to how it might affect the image of the world Faust crafted. And the ur-example of this is the "Reform Spell."

I ask you... why did the Reform Spell even need to be brought up in KCaFO? My only assumption is that some numbskull in the writing room went "DURR WHY CAN'T TWILIGHT JUST MAKE DISCORD A GOOD GUY WITH MAGIC?!" and rather than realizing that they could've just as reasonably just straight-up not answered that question in the first place (Discord had kind of been presented in his introduction as something "above" magic due to how he no-sold Celestia's wards on the Elements of Harmony), they instead felt the need to introduce a concept without any thought or planning, with no regard to how it might affect the image of the world that had been crafted.

Because really. You've crafted a seemingly utopian society. Now add the very concept of a "reform spell" to this world. Now make it so that this reform spell is available for all to witness in a small town public library. Not even a big city, but a tiny town that has been presented as being the pony version of the boonies.

Think about that for more than five seconds and you start to see the problems that it brings up when considered in the context of the image of the world you've already crafted. But no. They didn't think about it for five seconds. They clearly didn't think about it for any seconds.

And this was a problem that would just permeate the rest of the later seasons. Instead of really working hard to try and create interpersonal conflict between the clashing personalities of a group of friends, instead they would just say HERE'S A NEW MAGICAL THINGAMAJIG THAT WILL MAKE NONSENSE HAPPEN.

It's practically the writing version of clickbait.

"A STAGE MAGICIAN FOUND A DARK MAGICAL ARTIFACT! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!!"

I guess what I'm trying to say is this:

First two seasons (with a few exceptions for premieres and finales):
- Built a cohesive fantasy world with a utopian image.
- Had an interesting, even experimental perspective as told from the viewpoint of everyday townsfolk.
- Did not overload us with fantasy information
- focused primarily on interpersonal conflict
- Subtle, three-dimensional character writing that didn't go out of its way to point attention to itself.

Season 3 onward
- Did not do proper planning or lore-checking
- Fantasy information was dropped ALL THE TIME with little regard to how it seemingly affected the rest of the world or its image
- Deigned to just overload the world with magical buggery to drive conflicts, rather than focus on interpersonal issues
- Since more focus was put on magical buggery than character driven issues, the characters themselves atrophied into 2D cardboard cutouts of themselves
- All attempts to make the characters more three dimensional had all the subtlety of a brick to the face.

TL;DR - The first couple of seasons were well planned out and subtle, while the later seasons were slapdash and clickbaity.

...
Anyway, I hope this made some measure of sense. I could probably write a whole thesis on the downfall of MLP and why the later seasons are garbage, but that'd probably take something like a couple of hundred pages of narrative and character analysis, and I hardly have the time or energy to do that. I've basically hit the major bullet points here, and given a couple of the most stand-out examples, at least as far as I see them. I hope my explanation didn't end up too disjointed.

7165586
Characterization. A show lives and dies on its characters, and they were flanderized into unlikable shadows of themselves after Faust got the boot. There are certainly a lot of other problems that popped up later (continuity, plot holes, themes, ect.), but it was the treatment of the characters that really made it unwatchable.

As for Faust's role, I'd be very wary of what you see on publicly editable sites for this kind of thing. It's exactly the kind of place rabid fanboys would go to try to warp history to avoid acknowledging reality, especially since they can use her being booted to claim she "wasn't involved". A much better place to look is interviews. There have been a few good ones from Larson posted here over the years which give some good insight, and from what I recall Faust struck an excellent balance between maintaining control and giving writers the freedom to do their jobs. Her control is what held the characterization in line, and I firmly believe the biggest problems in season 2 (e.g. Mare Do Well) would have been corrected before we saw them if she wasn't pushed out. This is highlighted by an interview which confirmed that Magic Duel was originally planned for season 2 but they couldn't get it working to Faust's satisfaction so it got pushed back and released by McCarthy who clearly didn't care that it was a nonsensical mess.

7165587
Yeah, Faust 100% built the show. All the setting, characterization, and art fundamentally flows from her so she still had a bigger influence than anyone else even years after her removal.

7165617
Three minor points.

1. Regarding the characterization issues in season 2, I think those were mostly the result of Faust getting the boot. She was there to get the ball rolling on the right track, but not to catch the problems that inevitably crop up in the writing process. She's obviously still human so some mistakes will slip through as they did in season 1, but considering how many season 2 episodes went even better than season 1 I think it would have been a better season overall if she stayed put.

2. You bring up an important and underappreciated point with regards to subtlety. It's also interesting to note see how this caused us to misinterpret the season 2 finale in hindsight. At this point I think it's safe to say McCarthy had no thought for the changelings beyond "generic evil", but since we were used to Faust's nuance, we applied that filter and misinterpreted them as something much deeper and more interesting. I think this kind of thing kept many of us from realizing what had happened for quite a while, but you can only interpolate nuance for so long before the conflicts bring the whole thing crashing down.

3. I think you give them too much credit when you say the characters atrophied after Faust's removal. I think McCarthy's "brick to the face" approach actively destroyed them as we see in the season 4 episodes that try to do more character-focused stories.

7165586
Despite not being great at writing individual episodes, she made the world, the characters, and the show bible that everyone fell in love with. I agree she's not the best writer, but as someone running the show she was the best at it.

7165586

It's not that the show was better under Faust, it's that it sucked after and it did on a very objective level: mischaracterization/flanderization, same plots over and over again, stories that made no sense, lack of continuity, so many plot threads either dropped or completed in the most unsatisfying and uncreative manner conceivable, complete change/complete reversal in tone, message, style...

Seriously, I have no clue how people kept watching stuff like this (and most people didn't, most dropped it in fact) because every episode I dared to watch in S5 - 6 - 7 or whatever was nothing but brainless little kiddie stuff.

7165755
Gift of the Maude Pie was really good. There were good ones, but there was a decline in quality. The worse ones were episodes with blatant cruelty like No Second Prances. And while I enjoyed every season before s8 and s9, even I'll admit s1 and s2 were the best. The third and fourth seasons certainly had their charms and season 7 was perfect. But 5 and 6 were the worst and it never quite recovered after.

7165854
I kinda liked the third season myself

7165998
So did I.

7165638

I think it's safe to say McCarthy had no thought for the changelings beyond "generic evil", but since we were used to Faust's nuance, we applied that filter and misinterpreted them as something much deeper and more interesting. I think this kind of thing kept many of us from realizing what had happened for quite a while

This nails my reaction to the wedding and the fandom during the break.

Immediately after the episode, I was all "what the shit, that was not FiM!" The fanfics and fanart convinced me that they had some really cool ideas planned, and it would be OK. Same with Sombra early on: "OK, this must be going somewhere. Maybe even linking up with the changelings? Love and crystals all intertwined, the two of them could work together...." And then nothing.

7166487
My reaction was similar, although I wrote the season 3 premier off as a necessary tool to integrate Cadence with the show since everyone knew she was the product of executive meddling (remember the pink Celestia toy?) and didn't worry about it too much. I did expect more exploration of that stuff which they sort of did a bit of in season 3 which kept me ambivalent to it, but ultimately season 4 ruined the show on a much deeper level so I sort of forgot about it.