HereComesTom

I haven't been celebrating my anniversary for joining this forum---I think the act of joining the forum was when I joined the fandom per se. I was a fan probably since the fall of 2010: I was browsing youtube for G-1 footage for a parody of G-1 that I never actually made, found a clip of Twilight introducing herself to Fluttershy, got curious, watched the pilot, got hooked HARD. I probably should start celebrating my anniversary, but not sure how I'd do it...

Personally, I feel like the timing is correct: alicorns were baked into G-4's world so deeply that the day/night cycle couldn't function without them. So if G-5 is in the same universe, and is going to start answering some questions about how G-4's Equestria turned into G-5's Equestria, then they're going to have to bring an alicorn or three into the picture somehow or other---they could've done so through flashbacks or journals in theory, but having the alicorn as a character in the show can work, too.

These days I'm watching G-5 a lot more---there are plenty of G-4 episodes I've not yet seen, and I think I own the whole series on iTunes. Probably because I want to see where G-5 is going; there's a lot of mysteries about how the world got from G-4 to G-5, and I'd like to see them solved.

I agree with you that Posey's (that is how you spell her name, right? I've been doing it "Posie" for a while now...) attitude changed alongside her getting magic, instead of because of it. I suspect it was only at the end, when magic vanished, disaster struck, she nearly was lost in a dimensional void, and she was saved by magic and the very pony she resented, that her attitude finally shifted. And it was shortly after that that Earth Ponies got plant-based magic. Plus...let's not mince words: Posey had a few legitimate reasons for not liking, or at least distrusting, magic. Unicorn levitation magic failing unexpectedly or getting in the way might've been a mere nuisance, but it's a wonder pegasi didn't die from magic-loss-induced crashes! I'm not sure she was even "spoiled" in the first place; "fed up" seems more accurate.

I'm with you on this; the characterization between ANG and MYM is strong enough, but between those two and TYT... ANG!Izzy would never be this disrespectful of other ponies' property and safety, at least, she doesn't seem like it. I understand why the writers had Izzy act the way they did; it was typical cartoon slapstick hijinx, and it did make me laugh in a cringy way. But I really wish they could provide that kind of humor and still keep the characterization consistent. Heck, TYT!Izzy and ANG!Izzy don't even look alike to me; TYT!Izzy's mane has too much volume to it; ANG!Izzy's mane hugs her head fairly closely. Though Izzy feels like the only one whose character design is that different between her incarnations.

I like the idea of having character development happen, but be incomplete by the movie's end: it keeps the door open for future stories. Some things I forgot to mention about my re-write: it'd make the split-up worlds feel a bit more world-ish if there were other species besides just ponies. I dislike how G-4 ended with ponies living in harmony with lots of other races, and the G-5 suddenly showing us just ponies---with the three tribes living apart from one another, no less. In my G-5 concept, I'd planned to have Dragons living in the Earth Pony world of Volcland, along with a couple more fire-themed creatures from G-1: Salamanders and Lava Demons. (Lava Demons weren't necessarily evil, by the by, nor did they look it; imagine Grimer from Pokemon made of lava, and you'll get the right idea what they looked like.) The Pegasi in Cumuland, with the sea and islands beneath their cloud home, would live alongside Sea Ponies and Kraken, as well as Ice Orcs---another G-1 fantasy creature. Unicorns in Unicornia had a mishmash of leftover races in their forested, volcano-abutting home: minotaurs and cat-folk were there, as were lizard-folk who were, you guessed it, also from G-1. I even had all different accents for the different races, inspired by how the creators wanted better diversity in their casts: Earth ponies had American accents, Salamanders had Jamaican accents, dragons had (of all things) Hawai'ian accents, and lava demons had eastern African accents. My goal was to pick a diverse array of accents from hot environments. Pegasi had Australian or New Zealand accents, Sea ponies had Mexican accents, kraken had Japanese accents, and Ice Orcs had Italian accents. I chose, again, a diverse array of accents from countries that had a lot of coastline, since Cumuland wasn't just a cloud-world, but an ocean-world, as well. Unicorns had British accents, minotaurs had Chinese accents, cat-folk had Russian accents, and lizard-folk had German accents. I wanted older, established civilizations with a lot of history for the Unicornian accents, again from a variety of locations. ...I wonder sometimes if I put too much thought into a fanfic project I never really invested the time into to actually write it, but you can tell, I was aiming for vibrant, living, pre-existing worlds that already had a lot of diversity of thought and diversity of peoples in them. But each world was meant to be incomplete---missing something that the other worlds could've provided if they had been connected: Volcland has ample food, and Cumuland has little farmland and starvation was a problem. Unicornia had frequent and unpredictable fires, but pegasi's weather-control was good at controlling them, and earth ponies could walk through the fire unharmed to rescue anyone trapped by the fire. Cumuland's meteor problems could render a pony homeless and orphaned with no warning, but unicorns' magic could stop meteors in their tracks. Volcland's unpredictable weapon could kill an unprepared earth pony, but pegasi could control that weather and make it a controlled and predictable means of irrigation. And that's not getting into how effective the three pony tribes and their allies are in combat, or what they can do economically when they team up. Once Twilight accidentally went from one world to another, she and the earth ponies with her weren't shunned at all; in fact, they were accepted almost immediately---like a fish takes to water. In fact, the more the three sub-worlds connected with each other in terms of friendship, economics, and even mutual defense, the more it felt like them-being-connected was how it was always supposed to be, which calls into question the Princesses' decision to split up the world in the first place. Friendship would still very much be Magic in that world, and it'd have a lot of continuity with G-4. I just worry that my treatment of Celestia and Cadence would've done to them what Last Jedi did to Luke Skywalker...

I wouldn't call G-5 matching G-4 likely, either. They'd really have to work for it and build up to it, but it can happen in theory.

The latest MYM showed some deep flaws in Izzy; the MYM version of Izzy (at least in this episode) showed very little respect for other ponies' property or boundaries, and this isn't the first time she's done so. Plus, having a joke in it that'd sail over little kids' heads (and the kind that'd never be in FiM) gave me hope for MYM. I doubt it'll reach FiM's heights, but who knows? Some adventure, the writers/director getting better at humor and timing, some worldbuilding, some character development, getting us to love these characters like we did the G-4 characters, and it might turn into a match for FiM. I wouldn't call that "likely", but it can be done!

If these are the price of a used car, I'd have to say "hard pass".

I'm with Megas on this one: right now, the G-4 ponies making a comeback is not a good idea, and as Solstice said, G-5 needs to be able to stand on its own right now. Once it's had a few decent story arcs, then it'll be time to think about an epic crossover. That'll take at least a few years, but if the writing and characterization and comedy are good, then G-5 could last long enough to have that crossover. The question that's going through my mind is: would the crossover draw in G-1, G-2, and G-3 ponies as well?

The subtitles just called her "Alicorn" when I was watching on Netflix. I'm not sure we know her name, yet.

Why does the name "Misty Merriweather" jump into my head? I mean, Merriweather was a G-3 pony character, but I know this is the first time I personally have seen the "Misty" name associated with My Little Pony.

Repeating G-4's success is easier said than done; I can only speak for my own introduction to G-4, but it was watching the pilot that got me hooked---the first episode caught your attention with an epic story of deities fighting, then quickly turned into something more mundane that bordered on self-parody, with Twilight meeting eccentric pony after eccentric pony, all while she kept the epic story first and foremost in her mind, only for that epic story to break out into the mundane world and surprise everypony but Twilight. Then the second episode was an adventure, still watchable for girls and not much violence, but with enough action to keep adults interested. It's hard to imagine G-5 succeeding at being self-parody, even for one episode, considering that G-4 came on the tails of G-3, which was one of the most preschool-ish incarnations of the MLP franchise, which gave G-4 plenty to mock. G-5, by contrast, is coming at the tail of G-4, which is hands-down the most epic incarnation!

That's a pretty elaborate concept, Solstice, but it sure has a lot of potential. My idea for G-5 sort of rotated around the idea that we'd still have Twilight, Pinkie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy as main characters---seeing the character design sheets was what gave me that impression. The backstory was that, at some point, Twilight and her friends were up against a foe that was too powerful for them, and they only save Equestria at the price of their lives. Flurry Heart and Shining Armor also died in this fight. The loss drove Celestia and Luna out of retirement, and it caused both Celestia and (especially) Cadence into a somewhat darker personality change---they became largely joyless, tough-but-fair authority figures in the end. In the aftermath of the tragedy, they concluded that Equestria's prosperity was born from their harmony---but their prosperity kept attracting villains, and it was no longer worth the risk of attracting them. So they separated themselves: Cadence took the pegasi with her, Celestia took the earth ponies with her, and Luna took the unicorns with her. They used their cosmic power to literally break the world they were on into pieces, and each pony tribe ended up living on a different planet in the same solar system. These planets were partly natural and partly artificial; weather and nature largely took care of themselves on these worlds, though pegasi still had some of the same weather control abilities they had before the world was split. Of course, there was always the potential for stragglers, and it wasn't unknown for one kind of pony to give birth to another kind. The three princesses set up a system that eventually filtered all the earth ponies to Celestia's rocky, desert, volcanic world (called Volcland), that filtered all the pegasi to Cadence's cloud, island, and oceanic world (called Cumuland), and to Luna's woodsy world of shooting stars (called Unicornia). Their system was two-pronged: one half of their system was to provide each kind of pony with different immunities and weaknesses: earth ponies were utterly immune to heat, allowing them to walk through a desert without water, and even giving them the ability to swim in lava the way dragons can. The cost of this immunity was incredible weakness to cold and wet conditions; getting caught in a downpour for even as short a time as ten minutes could cause an earth pony to die of pneumonia. Pegasi were immune to cold and wet conditions, even able to survive in arctic wastelands. But the cost of this immunity was that the passive magnetic magic of shooting stars would cause the pegasi to go limp and become paralyzed---if they were in the ground zero where the shooting star was about to land. Unicorns were immune to these shooting stars' effects, and in fact their magic was strengthened by being near a shooting star's ground zero, to the point where they could use telekinesis to catch the shooting stars. However, the unicorns were unbelievably vulnerable to heat, to the point where they couldn't be within 100 feet of a burning building without their skin breaking out in burns and blisters. The other half of the princesses' system was to create a kind of portal-mountains in each of their worlds. The idea was that the mountains had hazards on them that were deadly for the usual inhabitants of the world the mountain was on, but the mountain also had gemstones on it that could be used to teleport to another world: there were mountains that magically generated thunderstorms in Volcland, but these mountains had Rainbow Diamonds on them that could transport a pony to Cumuland. Cumuland had mountains that attracted shooting stars, but there were Star Emeralds on these mountains that could transport a pony to Unicornia. And Unicornia had volcanoes on it that were full of Mountain Rubies that could transport a pony to Volcland. The idea was that each princess, every time a pony was born on a world where they didn't belong (at least, where the princesses thought they didn't belong), that pony would be sent to one of these hazard-mountains, where there was a runestone that explained how to recite the magic spell that sent a pony to another world. With enough time, the dormant genes that enabled ponies to give birth to other tribes faded, and the memory of ponies making these trips also faded. But then an enterprising little earth pony mare named Twilight Sparkle and her blacksmith big brother Shining Armor got their hooves on some cloaks that had been waterproofed with tar, a decided to explore a stormy mountain and bring diamonds back to make money. Eventually, Twilight took her rival Applejack and her brother Big Mackintosh (who was also Shining Armor's best friend) with them to gather diamonds. And one fateful day, Twilight found a runestone, tried the spell, and they found themselves on Cumuland, setting in motion a chain of events that led them to rediscover the harmony they'd lost, also forcing the princesses to make a decision on how to respond to this reborn harmony---not to mention how to respond to the fact that these little ponies seemed to be the Mane Six, reborn. I'd had in mind bringing back quite a few characters and fantasy species---in particular, I'd wanted to bring back some villains from G-1, but make them mayors of the cities the Mane Six are from: Lavan would be mayor of Rainbow Village, where Applejack and Twilight live. Squirk would be mayor of Shooting Star Village, where Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie live. And Katrina would be mayor of Light Fountain Village, where Rarity and Fluttershy live. I could go on, but...wall of text, innit?

They've done things like this before---choosing to have parts of a pony's body that are distinctive or expressive be exposed, even when covering those body parts ought to make more logical sense in-universe. One thing I've noticed is that ponies' tails in G-4 were always showing, even in contexts where it'd make more sense for a pony's tail to be covered up: Return of Harmony, Part 1: Rarity's raincoat didn't cover her tail, even though that'd be a part of a pony's body that could absorb a lot of water if it got wet in the rain, and would therefore be much more logical if it were covered. Read 'Em and Weep, and It's About Time: Rainbow Dash, and Twilight/Pinkie Pie respectively, were wearing black outfits to make it easier for them to sneak around unnoticed at night---but in all cases, their brightly-colored, easily-spotted tails were showing, and not covered up by their black outfits at all. I think the designers are choosing expressiveness and identifiability over practicality and logical safety when they're designing things ponies wear. Of course, I think I'm biased toward paying closer attention to things ponies wear than other bronies, because I've spent about a year putting together a system in my fangame that lets you change the ponies' clothes. Even now, I spent almost a year augmenting that system so their wings can be covered up by clothing! (You'd be surprised how involved that was!)

I just hundred-percent-ed it just over two and a half hours. There are about five areas total, and the gameplay consisted of fetch quests, minigames, and in between those was some platforming and exploration. Honestly, there were some aspects of the game that felt really unpolished, like facial animation, the way characters animated or popped into/out of existence as cutscenes were starting or ending, the way some equippable cosmetic items were animated, and there was a patch of confetti on the ground that disappeared or reappeared depending on how close/far your were to it. There were a few moments that made me chuckle, though. I'm thinking about uploading my Let's Play of it to youtube... EDIT: Aaaaand I managed to lose the second half of my game footage ><

Reading a few other reviews here made me remember how much I liked the beginning of the episode: having Zipp conflicted over where she's going to stay, partly because she's the crown princess of Zephyr Heights and theoretically should be living there, was a wise move on the writers' part. I liked her characterization about how she felt like she needed to distance herself from the other characters early-on, and the character development of her growing out of that over the course of the episode. And I agree with cmarston1 that it was also good (and believable!) that the three tribes haven't automagically gotten along after centuries of mistrust just because magic is back, and how the use of magic is itself causing some problems; those are believable conflicts that extend from ANG, just like the question of where Zipp is staying. I also liked the fact that Tell Your Tale appears to be canon as far as Make Your Mark goes; the Mane Melody salon and the Brighthouse were good concepts from TYT, and I'm glad they carried over. Now for the middle of the horseapple sandwich... Around the climax, there were some things I didn't like: Zipp got a great deal of focus throughout the episode, which by itself is definitely a good thing, considering how underdeveloped she and Pipp were in the movie. But when you juxtapose how much focus she got next to the fact that it was Sunny, not Zipp, who saved the day in the end...it felt like Zipp was what tvtropes calls a "Pinball Protagonist": someone who gets a lot of focus, but doesn't really do much to affect the plot. At least, that's how it felt the first time I saw the climax; when I watched it again and paid closer attention, Zipp at least figured out what was going on and informed the other characters, and without that information, things could've been a lot more disastrous. But it still felt strange that Zipp didn't have more of a role, or at least more screentime, in the climax. That said, some of the last scenes of the first episode focus on Zipp and cap off the character development she got during the episode; that, at the very least, tells a good, continuous story within the episode. Plus, it gives Zipp a solid role going forward: Sunny sells smoothies for a living, Hitch is Sheriff, and Pipp has her salon: we know how they make money, and what role they have in the community of Maretime Bay. We still don't know how Izzy makes a living, but since it's implied Pipp is now a detective working for Maretime Bay, it gives her a permanent role in the town---not to mention excellent characterization. Also: thanks to this episode, I think it's safe to say she's not a Mary Sue. Mary Sues, at least by my understanding of the term, are characters who the universe bends over backwards to show how awesome they are. Zipp had her share of failures, setbacks, and moments she could've handled better during the episode; Mary Sues generally don't have these things. (Again, by my understanding of the term "Mary Sue".) Now, personally, I don't like the fact that earth ponies' super-strength was left out of the picture: there are some sources both in the G-4 cartoon and in its peripheral written material that say earth ponies have super-strength, often comparing that to pegasi's flight and unicorns' magic. I figure super-strength ought to be enough magic for earth ponies; while adding the ability for them to conjure plants seems like it could make the show more interesting, I feel like the writers should've remember the super-strength and made that part of the story from the beginning of G-5, the same way flight was pegasi's magic and levitation was unicorns' magic. Then again, if there's an in-universe reason why earth ponies' magic shifted away from super-strength toward these plant-based powers, I'd be okay with it. I'd say the part that has me thirstiest for more G-5 content is the evil alicorn we saw toward the end; we don't know who she is, but if there's anyone who knows who created the crystals, how the tribes got separated, why magic has shifted the way it has with the sun and moon and clouds appearing to move on their own, it's her. She doesn't look like Flurry Heart or Luna or any of the other alicorns we know; if anything, her color scheme seems like Chrysalis. (There's a creepy thought!) I also like the fact that the writers keep mysteries like "what happened between G-4 and G-5" in front of us by bringing them up during the first episode; solving those could give the first season of Make Your Mark a good story arc. Hopefully, the writers have figured most of it out, themselves, and have a good story to tell us while unveiling those secrets! ...Revealing them at the right pace, of course...! Overall, the first episode could've been better-done; the animation was another problem (at least at times), and the lightning left a little to be desired. But at least it's got me wanting more, and every pilot should do that, so...that's something!

Thanks for pointing all of this out about Zipp; she and Pipp got way too little screentime in the movie, and it's good to see she's getting characterization and turning into a rounded character!

I think what'd make me quite G-5 would be if they did something uber-disrespectful with one of the characters, having them behave in a way that makes no sense based on what we know from the show. I don't mind the Mane Six being long-dead---everyone dies eventually!---but if they were made to act in a way that didn't make sense, e.g. they themselves were responsible for the separation of the three tribes with no explanation (or a bad explanation) why, then that might make me ragequit. ...Unless I suspected deception on the part of whoever was saying the Mane Six did something awful; then I might stick around for the intrigue of unraveling the mystery!