Slashy

I think slice of life episodes should remain relatively untouched. I think this stuff works more towards how adventure episodes work, and even then more on a conceptual basis. If you want a comparison to what I'm talking about, I think the adventure/action episodes should take cues from the Mario and Luigi games in how they crafted their stories.

Why is she impersonating her friends? Why does everyone seem like a superficial version of themselves?

Outer Starlight Part 1 The episode begins in the Crystal Empire library where Spike is managing ponies who are setting up comic books on shelves. Starlight asks what Spike is doing, to which he explains that Shining Armor put him in charge as the curator for the soon to be comic book wing. Starlight asks why such a thing would be necessary, Spike explains that you might never know what to do if somepony creates an evil duplicate of you, or some mishap with a spell makes your house want to eat you, or you shrink down to the size of an ant, or you get abducted by aliens. Starlight laughs it off as Spike overreacts to one of the mover ponies not realizing following his ridiculously geeky rules for sorting comics. The four princesses along with Shining Armor and the mane6 are discussing a series of magical surges happening across Equestria. They determined that according to a pattern the being will strike the Crystal Empire next and she wants to capture the being and prevent it from causing any other magical power surges. Our cast splits up or patrols the area around the Crystal Empire hoping to capture the being as soon as they can. Needless to say the being arrives, and immediately the pegasai lose control of their flying, spells unicorn spells start becoming uncontrollable in terms of output, and crystal apples start growing around Applejack. Amidst this chaos, Starlight manages to locate the creature near the outskirts of the town. Starlight manages to pin the creature with her magic, but it opens a portal that when her combined with her magic causes it to become a vaccum that sucks her in. Starlight finds herself on what appears to be the creature's home which seems to be a flying mettalic object and comes across the creature going over information on a display. She is completely shocked and angry when she spots pictures of her and her friends on the monitor. She then notices one of the beings giant colored wings, and how similar they are to a pegasus, wondering if a pony is behind all of this. One of wings turns and immediately Starlight notices the wings have faces on them. The wing makes an adorable squeak alerting the being that there is an intruder, and showing Starlight that this is indeed not a pony. Starlight and the alien both freak out, with the alien panicking that he cannot perform any further research since he has been by one of the subjects. AFter a moment to calm down, she notices right away that the alien has two giant wings with ridiculous faces on them. He explains they are bonded wing-shaped comrades (namded Lift and Rise) and he himself is named Simon, an aspiring intergalactic explorer hoping to discover and research intelligent life across the universe. Starlight asks what is going on and the alien explains that he has been across Equestria for several days studying the species to learn all he can in the interest of science and possibly so his race may start a peaceful relationship with the Equestrians Meanwhile back in Equestria, our heroes are worried about the prospect that Starlight might have actually been abducted by an alien. Shining Armor, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Cadance are tasked with trying to keep the Crystal Ponies calm while Sunburst, Pinkie Pie, Twilight and Spike head to the library to figure out a book that might give them any clue on how to get their friend back, Spike immediately goes searching in the comic book section believing that if it really is an alien it's probably going to be extremely difficult to find any help in old history books or guides to Equestria. Sure enough he finds the answer in a comic book that explains that even after a portal disappears it still likely leaves an energy signature, and if enough magic is blasted at it, they can force it open. Outer Starlight Part 2 On the alien’s ship Starlight Glimmer asks Simon why he was causing all of the magical power surges. Simon looks shocked as he was unaware that he was causing any problems as he was trying to recreate magical energy the ponies were using in Equestria, but however he was unable to create anything using the magic, so he felt that he just needed to generate more energy to compensate, but he over did it. Starlight Glimmer explains that the magic of Equestria is tied to the world and the beings that live there. Starlight explains that he has been causing many problems in Equestria with magical power surges. Realizing the damage he has done, Simon freaks out and tries to immediately set a course back to his home planet with Starlight in tow. Starlight attempts to use magic Simon, to knock some sense, but accidentally grabs the whole ship. She then struggles to halt the ship in place until Simon agrees to cancel the trip back home. He calms down and sets a course to bring Starlight back down to the surface, and then immediately head back home before any of the ponies decide to take action against him. The Mane Six and Spike come aboard the ship via the portal, almost immediately Twilight attempts to grab Simon with her magic only to send the ship spiraling out of control towards the ground. The crash causes the ship’s engines to shut down and the portal to deactivate. With our heroes dazed from the crash Simon opens a door and attempts to flee by taking to the skies and having his wings exhale a huge amount of air to simulate a jetpack engine, Simon is almost immediately stopped by Celestia, who keeps him held long enough for her guards to wrap him up and take him away. Starlight tries to explain that Simon is harmless, but no one believes her, thinking that Simon is just trying to appear innocent and scared to gain their trust, but Starlight doesn’t believe he is trying to deceive her. He is taken away and locked up in one of the Crystal Empire dungeons. At night time Starlight Glimmer manages to free Simon via a remote teleport spell. The two of them manage to escape and get back to his ship. This alerts the guards which in turn alerts her friends. Her friends insist that she is making a mistake and doesn’t know what the alien could be really planning and tries to use the magical energy inside of the ship to generate a force field so he can escape just in time. Once her friends realize how dedicated she is to defending Simon, they back off and apologize. Simon, grateful that she managed to defend him and that the natives on the planet are capable of trusting him, asks Starlight if she’ll help continue his research on the pony species. She agrees, but asks how she is going to do it, suddenly a bright light emerges from his back and travels over to her. When the light fades, Lift and Rise are now attached to Starlight Glimmer. He offers his goodbye’s to the ponies and hopes to see them again real soon in the future.

On the front page of FIMfiction or featured on EQD multiple times.

I only quoted you as just an example out of many, nearly all of the fandom believes fans cannot write anything that would feel like an episode or even one of the children's novels. Like seriously? Are you willing to tell me that there are well-regarded writers on FIMfiction that can't understand the characters or the world they live in, or cannot write them with the proper tone and keep it appropriate?

Right now I'm still believing everyone here is joking when you all tell me that probably 85%+ fanfic writers would submit grimdark, memefilled, or sexual stories for an episode if given the chance.

Maybe it is just my autism making it difficult to empathize, but when I do write stuff that is fanfic related I try to write is as close to show style as possible (script format), trying to best educate myself on the restrictions of the format (22 minute animated show), and try to educate myself as to what I believe would be Hasbro's demands. I don't like dark fics or stupid fics and prefer to write slice-of-life episodes or adventure stories with a clear silly tone to them. I think I'm good at it based on the feedback I've received, but I always assumed that many fanfic writers could do this and just chose not to. This is why I ask why Hasbro doesn't just hire fans because I think guidelines for execution don't take long to understand or even internalize, nor should it be that hard to understand how to write the characters (maybe not 100% in character 100% of the time, but the show suffers from this too), so I guess I'm wondering why there aren't hundreds of fans who could do this really well.

In a perfect world, yes! I think the possibility of someone who is rabid about the show may have its own problems, but I think being passionate about what you're creating could lead to some interesting ideas and possibly could solve some gripes that many fans have with the series since the writer chosen may be very familiar with those issues. However aside from the issues of hiring someone who is incredibly attached to the work, there are more legal hurdles that exist from bringing in unsolicited scripts, so that is why it likely will never happen.

Chances are if it is going to be paid work to make a living, it is going to end up on IMDB.

Some of the writers on the show didn't and still don't have very long IMDB pages.

I hope you don't think I disagree with this. I was asking why Hasbro doesn't hire fans to write for episodes.

Maybe I could, by VG_Addict's standards I sure could. Why are you putting so much emphasis on the professional part? Anyone who has a patreon writing pony fics is a professional writer.

I went to college and have a degree, am I qualified to be a writer? Do we even know that the freelance writers they bring on have a college degree in scriptwriting?

That is just a generalization, I actually do like having editors and have friends demand changes so I can get more creative on the writing. I like force limiting myself and even trying to imagine having to create an episode to sell a toy. Those are the most fun. There is a difference, but all I see is a generalization of fandom writers and nothing that shows what suggests than an inexperienced writer is better off than a good fanfic writer.

I would like to see 3 of your ideas.

He is just one voice, not everyone will tell you that. If Hasbro lost faith in the series they wouldn't be planning a spinoff and a movie.

Why not just make a movie with the minis? Rather than with characters that don't look like the toys?

Why not just cancel EQG proper and focus on the minis? I mean why not cancel the movies and replace it with the high potential of Guardians of Harmony?

Why would Hasbro not just swap Equestria Girls for it? Considering how badly Friendship Games is maybe GoH is replacing those movies.

What is the massive difference? 1. Is it script writing? There are loads of guides, there are several interviews and snapshots of show scripts online, so putting together a fanfic in the same format in the show is possible and might even be easier than the traditional form of storytelling. 2. Is it having to meet the demands of Hasbro/editors? Well, don't the professional writers have to work with in that as well? 3. Is it deadlines? Well okay, you got me there. It was given a service mark for an ongoing series. I think Hasbro is planning something animated with it. It was given a service mark for an ongoing series. I think Hasbro is planning something animated with it.

I don't think it is that hard to write an episode I tried writing detailed episode summaries and posted some attempts at actually writing screenplays of it. At least /mlp/ seemed to really like it. The show writers don't have years of professional experience either. The person who wrote this episode, Natasha Levinger, and Josh Haber had less than a year of experience before being brought on. What about the Guardians of Harmony series they are planning? And how do we know they are only there for one season?

If the writers suck so much, then why doesn't Hasbro hire fans?

Season 1 is pretty darn terrible actually, one of the worst, but I chalk that up to it being an earlier time in the show, the more serious tone the show, and needing to build the characters. I do think Season 6 has done much better at exploring existing worlds, and I think it is a huge leap over Season 5's map episodes. The alternate universes are kind of the opposite of world building, we saw them because we'll never see them again. I still would like to see more adorable creatures like the Parasprites and Twitttermites, hell more fantastical creatures in general, we are still lacking since we had them all the time in S1.

It seems like after Season 3 (and Season 2 kind of did this as well) much of the lore building and world building shifted to focusing more on characters, I feel that's a reason why we are reaching end game with characters so quickly. There is still so much of the world left unexplored, even with the Cutie Map we went to a location we already saw (Manehatten) and an undefined location that really had nothing noteworthy about it. We really don't see any unique creatures anymore in Equestria either, not even anything original like the Parasprites.

We don't actually. I guess I thought it would be a fun way to retcon them being the same as Celestia and Luna if that was ever desired.