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ErisPegasus

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  1. ErisPegasus
    not having dedicated history episodes early on (Shadow Play sucked). I mean actually seeing the past as it happened, so Hearth's Warming Eve doesn't count. Either do it by time travel, or Celestia/Luna telling a story about her former life, I don't care. It was criminal that we never had a crystallised view of Old Equestria.
  2. ErisPegasus
    I liked his voice. It served his new role as a braggart who was brought down by his own hubris and unwillingness to work in a team. Grogar literally used him as an example for the other villains; that was the point of him being the antagonist of the premier. One of the biggest original criticisms of Sombra was his complete lack of personality in the Season 3 opener. Season 9 rectified it and then some. Season 9 Sombra was always going to disappoint a loud minority because he's a fundamental retcon of himself in Season 3, as well as the individual mental pictures that they had built up in their heads. This doesn't have to contradict my previous post. In fact, my biggest disappointment is that they didn't follow through on Grogar 'punishing' Sombra for losing the bet. It would have made for a hilarious season-long thread if if he did revive Sombra again, but restricted his power/movement with magic so that he is forced to obey no matter what. Imagine Sombra as a true lackey: stripped of his king regalia, made to mop the floors of Grogar's hideout while muttering to himself and harbouring resentments. This was what we missed.
  3. ErisPegasus
    He was fantastic in the premier; the disappointment is that he was dispelled for good and didn't join Grogar's legion. This even contradicts Grogar's dialogue in Part 1, where he says that Sombra will do as he is told if he fails to retake the Crystal Empire. Imagine 'Frenemies' with King Sombra in it. That would've been dope.
  4. ErisPegasus
    The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
  5. ErisPegasus
    I only just found out that Larson was entirely absent in S4, which threw me into a loop because it was a good season. Best: Larson in all the seasons he's been in. Lady Writers since Larson left. Mike Vogel is underrated. Frenemies put him on the map for me, but he was also decent in seasons 6 & 8. Worst: probably Haber. In terms of episode-by-episode he's not the worst, but he's had the most deleterious effect on the show's narrative direction since several of the original writers left.
  6. ErisPegasus
    She was the villain of the episode, and if you step back and evaluate the actual events, this is evident.
  7. ErisPegasus
    I haven't even seen 200, but I know it's way better than Slice of Life. I could never understand the fandom obsession with background horses. It was one of things I always thought of as pandering and circlejerking.
  8. ErisPegasus
    I like them for being their species, but not their personalities in and of themselves. Which is fitting - it's pretty clear that they exist only to be symbols/representatives of a species, rather than unique characters.
  9. ErisPegasus
    I mean yes, in the sense that it's ephemera, it was most popular in the first 2-3 years of its existence before dropping off massively, and it'll die eventually. 'Fad' doesn't need to be a bad thing however. The opposite of 'fad' - sticking around forever - is worse IMO. Just look at Harry Potter, Disney, the Simpsons, etc. They just won't die, and it's eating up creative talent as well as airspace that could create something new. (That being said, I wish M.A. Larson &co had stuck around for Horse instead of leaving Haber to his devices after season 5. If Horse had gone on longer than 10 seasons, I would have supported Larson &co leaving for their personal projects)
  10. ErisPegasus
    How Chrysalis was sidelined in seasons 7 & 8, when season 6's finale ended on a cliffhanger that promised imminent revenge. Season 9 has since picked up the slack, but for 52 episodes there was only The Mean Six to show for Chrysalis' ""comeback"". Which was pretty pathetic.
  11. ErisPegasus
    Re: the ending, I went over it again and I really like how Pharynx's second design meshes with his voice. It's funny in a 'snappy' way. It feels like something from an MLP Abridged Series. I'd like to see him again in future eps, and have him play the 'uncle who's grumpy but loves his subjects'. He'd moan about the new generation being soft, but never as harshly as I've heard from some boomers.
  12. ErisPegasus
    I love the new designs. I think the issue is that we didn't see the original Changeling society more before it was revolutionised. That's why Chrysalis having a second hive / changeling civil war is a great idea. The recent episode reduced this wiggle room, because all of Thorax's changelings are confirmed on his side, but it's possible some dozen ran away after Chrysalis was deposed. We may see them again.
  13. ErisPegasus
    Brohoof t I'm super critical of Starlight too, but the Mane 6 are stagnant. If the writers haven't explored every opportunity with them, it sure feels like they have, because they're starting to retread the same lessons again. I mean, it should be obvious with the show recently that its about fitting round pegs in square holes. Starlight is the pinnacle of that. In many episodes, the end and the means are discordant. A character states that they learned something despite the means not being very convincing. I don't think Starlight is a 'good' character, but she switches up the show dynamic after 5 seasons. If she wasn't there, I'd hate the Mane 6 even more, because the clockwork "Rarity says something superficial + Applejack rolls her eyes and quips back" would be even more stale. More broadly, it seems that the writers have selected 'making a more coherent and peaceful Equestria' as the show's ultimate goal, and a large chunk of the episodes are a step in this, whether the events are incidental or intentional. This is why you have all the reformations, as well as the geography's constant expansion. When you select this goal and work backwards to achieve it, many episodes feel contrived, because they are. Character interactions can never feel truly 'real' because they're guided by a moral goal, and this is because it's a kid's show. This was always present with Twilight being Celestia's student, but the castle map made it more blatant, because it became a literal goal to seek out. In a decade or two, when people look back at this show, they may view the castle map as the shark-jumping moment. Not Twilight's ascension, EQG, or Starlight (who debuted in the same episode). The mechanism that gave her her presence to begin with.
  14. ErisPegasus
    Pharynx is basically your Platonic Trump supporter. Feels left behind by new, colourful culture; blames his current unemployment on said culture instead of declining economic opportunities; wants the old society back despite it being more xenophobic and repressive (which - get this - doesn't impact him personally). The difference is that the second clause is correct in the episode: his current unemployment has direct causation with the demilitarisation of changelings. Him being older also helps the comparison. If he was younger, he'd spend his time gaming and calling other changelings cucks. I just realised that Starlight was dreadful in this episode. Darn, at this rate i'm downgrading my vote to a 3/5.
  15. ErisPegasus

    love too artificially make the good side bad so i can press the middle as the best option

  16. ErisPegasus
    It sucks because teloi are inherent to kid's shows. It has to build towards something. Having amoral characters or unresolved ends is antithetical to that goal.
  17. ErisPegasus
    It seems to be gender. Males have the crystals, females don't.
  18. ErisPegasus
    Changeling 👏 sized 👏 Sunbursts 👏 that 👏 shoot 👏 Sunburst 👏 sized 👏 Changelings 👏 whenever 👏 they 👏 speak
  19. ErisPegasus
    They're worse than 1984 fanboys. Maslow's Hammer basically.
  20. ErisPegasus
    10. Until recently I liked both 'A Royal Problem' and 'Twilight's Kingdom' a lot more, but Lily Peet lowered my opinion of both in one fell swoop. Basically she outlines that, in both episodes, the writers essentially worked backwards to get the scene they wanted, thus making the earlier scenes contrived. In Royal Problem, this is the evil Celestia's debut. In Twilight's Kingdom this is the 'epic fight' between Twilight and Tirek. Numerous turns in both episodes make no sense whatsoever, and characters hold idiots balls galore. Therefore, the only conclusion is that the writers envisaged those scenes first, and bent the world (and characters) to reach them. As a writer, I recognised Lily's point instantly because I've dealt with this before. During the early stages of a story with Western tendencies, I imagined an epic showdown at noon in the dusty village, as both a homage to Westerns and because of thematic importance. When I finally reached that point in my story, it turned out utterly different. Why? Because I continued to ramify my character's actions onwards. It was no longer possible to have a 'single' showdown, because my characters were everywhere at once, doing different things in the heat of battle. I'm not super arrogant, but I think I made the right choice, because having the 'showdown' would mean pausing the character development I'd caused and making everything static again. This is the issue with those episodes. I think 'rejection of telos' is a good way to phrase this. You try your best not to guide the action; it's purely cause and effect. Of course not 'purely', but as purely as possible. 11. Increasingly I find that the Changelings are the main thing still drawing me to the show. I've grown tired of the Mane 6; their interjections of dialogue is clockwork. Even Starlight I've grown inured to (never found her 'good' in the traditional sense, but she shakes up the action, which is sorely needed). And I downright hated Trixie in this week's episode. Thorax and his hive though? Fantastic. Love what they bring. I'd never thought I'd be one of 'those' fans, but I think the show should continue to devolve to the minor characters. I hated SoL because it was unalloyed pandering, but the show's setting should continue to be explored and expanded.
  21. ErisPegasus
    minor note to add, but the 'stop hitting yourself' resurfacing in the climax was extremely cringeworthy. I've railed against this show for its relentless Chekhov's Guns before, and this is one of its most egregious examples. It was unnecessary. It did not add anything. There were 1000s of other ways they could have resolved the monster fight. It was useful before and after, to texture the brothers' relationship, but during the climax? Ughhhhhhhhh. This is why I always defend the Star Spiders in Castle Mania. Sometimes a shaggy dog story is for best.
  22. ErisPegasus
    Good episode, but not great. I'm biased towards the new changelings, yet there were some issues here. Its world-building was better than the A-story proper. I much preferred the background information about changeling society to any of its manufactured conflict. And that's what the conflict was - manufactured. The new changelings HAD to be utter wimps. Despite their training that was portrayed in flashbacks before their society transformed, the exact same changelings had to suddenly be unable to fight. Despite their structures of patrols, etc, that had been engrained in their minds, embracing friendship meant forgetting everything. Because otherwise you had no conflict. That's my big sticking point here. The first 1/3 of the episode went out of its way to play up the cloying nature of the new, 'friendly' changelings. And Pharynx had to be the exact opposite, with only blinking room for nuance. To the earlier comment using this as an example of desiring 'middle-of-the-road centrism' between two extremes...why? Isn't that basically a self-own; that the middle option is only good because you warped the left and right to parodic extremes? If the writers really wanted to broach 'centrism' regarding the changelings, they would have had Chrysalis' hive gradually change over several seasons, and much of the existing structure remain, but repurposed to better ends. But their designs drastically changed, Chrysalis was driven out, and the surrounding wasteland transformed into a rich plain. That's not reform - that's revolution. So of course you had the 14y/o Youtube chuds like Ostrogoth1488 and VeritasCrusader spouting racial slurs, as well as "le triggered" and "Pharynx is totes Milo, right fellow Kekistanis?" The irony of railing against emotion is lost on boys who watch a show about colourful ponies learning lessons about respecting each other. Also, this show's exposition problem is becoming harder and harder to ignore. The first 2 minutes were a drag.
  23. ErisPegasus
    Didn't like her reformation, but from the Season 6 premiere onwards she's easily been more interesting than the Mane 6 other than Twilight. Can't say if that's praise or criticism of the writers.
  24. ErisPegasus
    5. Sunny Flare is the best Shadowbolt. 6. I prefer 'What About Discord' to 'Dungeons and Discord'. He was genuinely evil in the latter, not the 'ambiguous force' the fandom keeps typecasting him as. He tried to seriously harm Spike and Big Mac. Not to mention that they don't enter the board game world until 2/3s through, so there was little time to explore THE PREMISE OF THE EPISODE. Even before then he was insufferable - the writers can't seem to decide if he's intelligent, or a bone-headed jock who is easily blinded by the urge to please others. The former episode lacked direction, but I believed it helped. Discord episodes are usually a built-up 'event', so to see something more mundane was a treat. He was just...hanging...with the Mane 6, and it was great considering he doesn't fraternise with them much other than Twi and Fluttershy. Underrated episode. 7. Starlight is more interesting than the Mane 6. That's not to criticise the writers: I actually think they're doing a swell job keeping them relevant, and still moving forwards in their lives (besides Applejack and Pinkie Pie). I'm just bored of their archetypes, full-stop. With Starlight you have a character that's more unpredictable. It's a treat when she shows up. The other week she fixed a friendship problem between the princesses, and earlier still she was having a breakdown because her friend accidentally teleported the castle map. That's what happens when you combine abrasive personalities and magic. 8. Most of the brony fandom's 'beloved' fan projects are not good. 9. I really enjoy the new Changeling designs; my only qualm is that we didn't see the older ones more before they disappeared. I suppose Chrysalis could still return with an army of the original changelings.
  25. ErisPegasus
    Parts of Shadow Lock's role seem genuinely interesting, but I can't stomach the unbridled edginess that he embodies. We're already getting a handful of that with Tempest Shadow in the upcoming movie. Ughh....
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