Just thought I might leave this here if anyone needs to know it. :P

Apologies if anyone is against it.

7523716
Same with Luna too.
She most likely retired due to not wanting to be separated from Celestia and unable to change Celestia's mind. Her bitter line of "we always do things your way" in Between Dusk And Dawn seems to imply she's upset more than just the vacation there. And the fact the whole retirement thing is clearly just Celestia's idea since she set all of this up.

7523728
If only the writers saw logical sense though.

I mean... another example being Twilight's friends egging her on of wanting her to take on that new duty despite not taking her worries seriously. :/

It’s not too late for the fandom to start facing facts here.

7523776
And that is?

7523788
That these plot lines suck.

7523797
Ain't that the truth.

That said, I do feel the need to point out that there's nothing inherently wrong with one character deciding to stay and another to go. Everyone's situation is different so it's not unreasonable for different characters to make different choices in similar (but never identical) situations. I also can't really comment on these specific situations since I stopped watching this train wreck of a show long before season 9, but considering their default performance is "screw up everything imaginable and then some"...

7523797
Especially in the case of the plotline for Twiggles, right?

7523716
If it were possible you folks would be better off if the entire series was scrapped & started over. But this time with Lauren Faust, the head group administrator's & creator's of this website at the helm. This way we can fix the many mistakes from previous seasons that made the main cast unlikable & better handling problems among themselves & others. Not to mention avoiding the later seasons & villain's unnecessary along with the school of friendship & princesses retiring. If all goes well, this idea can end the series on a high explosive bang it deserves instead of on a low sour whimper. For being robed 10 years of enjoyment watching this series is unacceptable.

7524022
Okay....

7524448
Sure.

7524514
Yeah. ^^'

7524534
How about you? Any thought's on my idea?

7524543
It's good. :P

7524544
Though it does come to my mind, I wonder if the voice actors themselves would be on board with this. Certainly even they didn't approve on how their show turned out & would be more than happy to correct the damage been done so that their characters would be likeable again by fans & followers.

7524549
Yeah.

7524549
While I'm not opposed to reusing some of the original staff including the VAs, the timeline makes me lean towards fresh talent. We're already more than a decade out from the start of G4's creative process and G5 will have to bomb before the execs have any chance of doing some introspection and making things right. That would make the kind of show you're talking about G6, and the timeline points to it coming out in the 2025-2030 timeframe, or about 20 years after the start of G4.

Between the movie and show they've probably already paid for content through the end of next year, and even if they're aware enough to end production there (never a given) you're looking at a 2023 postmortem to try to figure out what went wrong. Between that process and figuring out the path forward, it'll be at least a year before the production process for G6 can start (2024). Assuming about two years for that, the new generation will kick off in 2026. Admittedly there's a very small chance the movie does poorly enough for them to start the postmortem earlier and they push the timeline up to 2025 to try to recapture the audience, but I think it's far more likely they muddle along losing money on G5 for longer than a year and/or deliberately delay G6 a few years to try to let the mess they made fade from the audience's minds which will push it back towards 2030.

7524596
SUPERB points you made there. Will the public even be ready for a G6 & do they even want it?
Remind me when did Lauren Faust wanted G4 to end exactly?
Did she had any idea's for spin-off's that weren't E.Q.G?
Was E.Q.G even needed? If Sunset Shimmer was the original student for you know who why wasn't she mentioned early on?

7524631
Thanks, and that was my thinking as well. With the bad taste MLP has left in the public's mouth at this point, it's probably smart to let it cool off for at least a few years. Ironically, a terrible G5 might actually be productive on this front since it would force most of the wreck of the fandom to acknowledge MLP has become terrible and kill off most of the lingering cancer. Combine that with initial insistence from McCarthy that G5 is amazing and builds on her "success" with G4 to piss off the remaining fans even more and help them correctly identify it with the end of G4, followed by execs firing her for her incompetence with an explicit acknowledgement that she ruined Faust's work on G4 and a statement that they'll be taking their time to get G6 right to make it up to the fans followed by a few years of silence to let memories fade into a general future warm fuzzy feeling among fans and be forgotten among the general public, and you get a good setup for G6.

Regarding Faust's plan for G4, the show was initially authorized for 2.5 seasons so there would be just enough material for syndication and she made her plans accordingly. I'd assume she started considering a longer run once the fandom started taking off, but considering she got the boot around the start of season 2 I doubt she got very far. That said, I know Faust was at least considering a CMC-focused spinoff at one point, although it obviously never happened.

As for EQG, my impression is that was another dumb idea rammed into the show by idiot execs. They wanted a high school drama because marketing said they were popular, so they jammed it into their most successful IP with no regard for the consequences. That's why we got Sunset Shimmer out of nowhere, and why the whole setup was a mess.

7524675
I agree that history must condemn both G4 and G5 to ensure the MLP franchise's bright future.

7524675
Cool facts once again. If Laruen's planned spin-off for the CMC'S did come into fruition, what episode would be the perfect kick-off point?
An alternate ending to P.C. where they leave Ponyville behind & go out into the world to find their destinies?
Or something completely fresh & new?

7525176
My understanding is that it would have just been an expansion of what was already there so there's no need for a specific kick-off point. It would presumably have been a mix of the early CMC episodes and new schoolyard-specific episodes focused more on Cherelee and their classmates with minimal external interactions (similar to many school-centric shows). Frankly, you barely even need a pilot since most of the characters are already established (8 existing foals come immediately to mind in season 1), although it probably makes sense to use some kind of event to bring in another supporting character or two and get the ball rolling.

7525190
All that's needed is Luna for she can have just as much airtime & expansion of her dream walking abilities when interacting with the CMC'S.

7525200
That's possible, but I think she'd be better served with her own spinoff. She has a great implied story that really deserves to be explored more fully in its own right. That might be a show, but in all honesty I think she might be a better subject for a longer continuous story like a game or novel which can use its format to better highlight her character development after returning from the moon.

7525208
Luna too is another candidate I selected for a real spin-off. Their was much about her that has yet to be discovered during the actual series not explored.

Celestia Advice was foreshadowing this moment.

LIES!! SLANDER!!

There was no logic in Season 9 at all!

7524675 "Rainbow Rocks" almost accidentally stumbled on a storyline with interesting villain monsters that had a tie to Equestria's past, and fit nicely into the Greco-Roman aesthetic of Equestria. Had that been followed up on, it would've worked much better.

But clearly, no one cared enough to even recognize they'd accidentally struck... well, not 'gold'... but at least silver.

7530185
Yeah, not caring enough to recognize they'd accidentally struck gold is a good summary of the executive handling of MLP. Faust handed them gold and they threw her in the garbage, and then they repeated the process with anything that turned out even remotely good or interesting within the IP.

7523716
Let us hope G5 can avoid the pitfalls of G4.

7531228
Yeah.

7531348
Indedz my friend.

7531228
According to the people making it, there are no pitfalls to avoid and they're going to "plus up" their "success" with G4. We've seen leaked communications and documents, and they've publicly confirmed this to a degree with their statements about preserving the nonsensical trainwreck they made of G4's world. G5 is going to be even more of a shitshow than season 9.

7531539
From what I have seen (not having seen the leaked stuff and whatnot), the situation may not be that dire. I suggest we withold statements about the film's quality until after we've seen it.

7531557
I don't have the link on hand, but it was posted here in one of the leak/release threads so you should be able to find it with a little digging.

If you want some context on how bad these leaks were, my first impression of G5 from the earliest leaks/releases was actually positive. The earth pony Twilight concept made me think they had realized their mistakes with G4 because she became a show-destroying mary sue after she got wings (and even before that her magic occasionally caused narrative problems), so making her an earth pony would be a perfect way to strip the garbage and refocus her on the old bookhorse personality we loved. The fact that they managed to 100% convince me that my initial positive impression was incorrect and G5 would be even worse than the worst of G4 should tell you a lot about just how bad these leaks really were.

That said, if you really still want to give it a chance, at least wait a week or two for reviews to come out rather than jumping in blind and giving them money/views for something you may hate.

7531751
The G5 leaks from ye olde times? Yes, I remember those.

That said, if you really still want to give it a chance, at least wait a week or two for reviews to come out rather than jumping in blind and giving them money/views for something you may hate.

That's certainly an option, although reviews and personal opinion don't always align.

7523716
You are comparing apples to oranges. Twilight Sparkle never said anything against being a ruler.

7648889
But the one thing to blame: The writers forcefully made Twilight not get a say in the matter.

7648889
Only because the plot required her to accept it in order to progress. Defying a mandate from Hasbro simply isn’t an option when they’re funding your project.

7649003
7649012
You just further explained why they are not comparable. Scootaloo's situation is in-universe but Twilight Sparkle's is out-universe.

7649061
How is it out of universe?

7649061
I'm with Humanity on this: How?

7649073
7649079
You just said it was the writers and the plot forcing it.

7649084
You do realize out of universe aspects influence in-universe developments, right? Twilight being “in favor” of her royal ascension required her to behave in ways that were not in line with the kind of character she is. The complete neurotic loon she became in later seasons is a far cry from the voice of reason she often was early on and is just another example of “out of universe” causes breaking consistent canon in-universe.

7649087
So what you are saying is Twilight Sparkle forced herself into being a ruler? That is what we call bad writing. We do not know what the royal sisters would have said if she said no, so we do not know for sure if they really forced her. Heck, they offered to give her more time to prepare after Beginning Of The End. If she said no then maybe they would have understood her. It is just a shitty storyline that was squeezed into for uknown reasons.

7649093
Like I said, Hasbro was pushing the whole Princess Twilight arc as an advertisement for new toys. Even if it meant breaking character and having them behave in ways their established logic would clash against. The Twilight of the first two seasons would never have gone along with receiving a crown without heavily scrutinizing the process.

7649097
You just again explained why this is an out-universe issue. No in-universe character forced Twilight Sparkle. It was the writers.