bamboozled321

Because what they usually mean is "So far the season is bad, and I'm predicting this pattern will continue". I don't think a whole lot of people honestly believe they know is an entire season is bad before it's done airing, that's a pretty big stretch. That being said though, it's perfectly valid and fine to say that one horrible episode ruined the entire season for you. That's the beauty of the subjective nature of media. You might think that's unreasonable, and to you it probably is, but to them it's not. If I come across somebody with that position, I find it interesting because then I really wanna know why they feel that way.

Not particularly. She's now akin to a naive, dumb grade-school kid who for some reason needs to literally be taught the lessons of friendship, although she is clearly a master manipulator who once established an entire village. You have to understand the idea of what friendship is to do this. Instead of framing her new arc as teaching her the sincere value of friendship, it's framed as simply teaching her about friendship. Her character seems to regress into a child who literally doesn't understand friendship. Part of this is due to how show staff decided to teach the shows theme of friendship to her. Now the idea of Twilight becoming Starlights teacher is an interesting idea in of itself, it sort of brings everything full circle, namely for Twilight, it's a nice evolution of her character and a good place to start a new arc. The problem to me is how this was executed, which comes to directly affect Starlights character. Starlight Glimmer is being taught the lessons of friendship, but in a way that's the direct antithesis of how people learn about friendship. You don't sit somebody down in a classroom and teach them a rubric on friendship, you go out and make friends by interacting and socializing with other people. Friendship is an inherent part of humanity, it's built into our genetics, we are a social species. When Celestia sent Twilight to go make friends, she made her go out on her own to do so. This is a lot more realistic and believable, the way they're doing it with Glimmer comes off to me as really quite juvenile and unrealistic. Because of this, they have re-characterized Glimmer, sort of like hitting a reset button, to be more naive to the idea of friendship, a tactic I imagine to make her appear more sincere in wanting to learning about friendship. Again though, like she has to know how to make friends, how could she have been so successful with her accomplishments in the past if this isn't so? It's clunky and nonsensical. Luckily in a few episodes this season, she still seems to retain a bit of this manipulative, cynical personality, which is awesome, but I dunno, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Hopefully they make everything come together in a satisfactory way.

It probably could work, assuming the aesthetic and writing are well received, but I'd probably have a tough time liking it as I'm a huge fan of the shows current design. I could totally see myself watching it and being like "Oh boy, this sure doesn't look like pony". If it's not appealing to my eye, I aint gunna watch it, kek.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zephyr There's more to most words, words have many definitions and they change over time as per semantic change. I don't think a laymen is going to be well researched on the etymology of Zephyr. Websters lists it as a breeze from the west, or a gentle breeze. If there's more Zephyr than a "gentle breeze", than I guess Websters needs to step up their game. It's kind of redundant fam.

Great episode this week. Zephyr Breeze has a pretty redundant name. Zephyr means a slight breeze, so his name turns out to be "Slight breeze breeze". Pretty dumb. Fluttershys parents were interesting, her dad is this male that's clearly low on the dominance hierarchy, and his wife is too low on the selection of attractive females. This is great characterization because it works very cohesively with Fluttershy and Zephyr. We have a daughter and a son who are dealing with moderate personality issues, social neurosis and grandiose narcissism. Both of these characteristics are too not very desirable, and I'd imagine that due to the lack of parents who never conveyed any reasonable level of discipline due to a lack of self-esteem and backbone could result in these sort of problems. The beta parents have messed up kids, A+. Zephyr himself was characterized beautifully, rather than explain his character through expositional dialogue, similar to Shinning Armour, we're shown his character through his actions throughout the episode. Fluttershys friends also have had a past with him, which helps to flesh out the believably of his sudden introduction. Say what you want about his personality, I found it to be quite funny and entertaining, while also being extremely frustrating, which I think was the point. I say this because by the scene with him in the forest, succumbing to his own frustration with himself, his delusions crumbling, he finally reaches rock bottom and reveals to the world what he truly feels about himself, he's a failure who can't do anything right. Quite the cathartic moment, and without the audience scorning his ridiculous behavior beforehand, this scene would have been far less poignant. Not too shabby. The song works well to complete Zephyrs arc, also very cathartic when paired with the dramatic swells of the final chorus, and too through action shows him come full circle and finally prove to himself that he can complete a task if he really tries. The heel turn isn't so sudden and jarring that he loses his previous characterization, but not so slow as to remove confidence that he is making positive changes, as showcased through the final scene when he graduates from mane styling or whatever it was. Fluttershy's character remains consistent and is further affirmed. She stands up to her brothers bullshit and even passes on advice she learned previously to her parents. There is a second moral, which is to not enable peoples manipulative behavior so that they can help themselves. Rainbow and Fluttershy's interaction has clearly evolved since hurricane Fluttershy, as Flutters is now on more even ground with Rainbow, which might show less of an interesting juxtaposition, but again, more affirmation of growth. I'll take it. Gags hit constantly for me, the flirting thing was gold, especially the final punchline when Fluttershys parents reveal that they too believe that Rainbow was pinning for Zephyr. I had to look up the word, never even heard it before. 10/10. I liked how Zephyr refers to rainbow dash and 'Rainbows", and this like very middle class art student sort of hipster characterization, very unique kind of character for this show, a lot of effort was put into his dialogue to make him stand out. Aside from this, nice little touches include Zephyr and his father sharing a similar coat color, and Fluttershy and Fluttershy's mother sharing a similar coat color, all of the pictures where Zephyr is photobombing to be the center of attention littered around the house, and Fluttershy doing the deep breathing thing to calm down. . Don't really have a whole lot to criticize, I suppose Rainbow referring to Fluttershy's parents as "Mr. and Mrs. Shy" was a bit weird and confusing. Last names are usually separated from a first name, so then is Fluttershy's name actually Flutter Shy? That's not how Hasbro markets the character. Then is Rainbow Dash just retarded? Or maybe her full name is Fluttershy Shy? That's pretty dumb, I hope not. Is Zephyrs last name Shy as well, so is his name Zephyr Breeze Shy? Whatever, can't expect Josh to get every little thing. Pretty good/10, would go for a hot dinner at Applebees with Rainbow Dash.

You have to understand that due to the subjective nature of liking or disliking things about TV shows, what other people say is not a proclamation of the shows general quality, it's simply what they think. If they have a good argument to back their contention up, then fair enough, but for me anyways, most of what I hear is usually pretty ignorant or insubstantial. But that's the beauty of art and critique isn't it, we're all not going to see eye to eye, and that's so much more interesting. I want open discourse, regardless of the leaning towards negative or positive, hell, better negative discussion rather than little to no discussion at all.

Look if you think my levels of what constitutes objectivity are too high, then the scientific method we use to reasonabley conclude what is and is not objective fact must be completely absurd to you. "Among scientific researchers, empirical evidence (as distinct from empirical research) refers to objective evidence that appears the same regardless of the observer. For example, a thermometer will not display different temperatures for each individual who observes it. Temperature, as measured by an accurate, well calibrated thermometer, is empirical evidence. By contrast, non-empirical evidence is subjective, depending on the observer. Following the previous example, observer A might truthfully report that a room is warm, while observer B might truthfully report that the same room is cool, though both observe the same reading on the thermometer. The use of empirical evidence negates this effect of personal (i.e., subjective) experience or time." Replace "a room is warm" with " 'x' character is being mischaracterized" and "the same room is cool" with " 'x' character is being characterized correctly". Oh look, we have no such tool to outside of human perception to measure characterization, well I guess this test was a waste of time, you know unlike a functional thermometer when reading temperature. We're talking about subjective feelings about a character, not factual information. We can not accurately measure good or bad characterization with the empirical scientific method, because it is predicated on subjective feelings. Thus to say that " "x's" characterization is bad" or " "x's characterization is good" would be impossible to conclude objectively, you know, as a fact, as true across the board. You should also never just assume people are going to be unbiased, that's impossible, even if they actively try to avoid bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_research What you think or define as objective does not make it objective mate. You can say something is bad, and if your arguments are strong and logical, then you'll change my mind, but again, calling it objective is straight up wrong. All you saying "This thing is bad" means, is that you think it's bad, not that it is a fact that it is bad. I guess we're not going to see eye to eye on this, and that's fine, but to me what you're saying is just completely ridiculous to me, it's like on the level of people proclaiming god is factually real because a lot of people agree that he's real, and then point to the bible to back up their claims. Or Freudian psychology simply because it was popular at the time, and a bunch of professionals got into a room and agreed that it was true. This metric of deciding what is objective and what is not has been proven time and time again to be unreliable and even falsifiable. That's not the kind of lens I want to view objectivity from.

You're misunderstanding. There is no arguing that a rock exists, this is a fact, it is objective. There is no arguing that the color of this table is red, because we can run it through a machine that will identify the wavelengths which match with this particular shade of red. We can run this test 1000 times and the result will be the same. Whether or not this plot is good, or if this character's colors are appealing is not objective because they're predicated by ones feelings. Nobody is going to agree completely bias free, and we can not measure the quality of these works through any other mechanical means, thus to say that these things could be objectively measured with any kind of consistent accuracy is intellectually dishonest and completely erroneous. I'm not contesting that there can be some sort of agreed upon techniques that have been shown to be somewhat consistent in delivering satisfying and enjoyable media in the arts, nobody is saying that isn't true, but to say that something like "This is objectively better because it follows color theory" is laughable. Please show me these peer reviewed, empirical publications proving the objectivity of literary techniques and narrative devices, I'm quite curious.

Nonsense, I don't think you know what objective means. An objective quality in writing that one could measure would be things like grammar or spelling. We can measure whether or not your spelling is correct, we can't measure 'correct' characterization or plot progressions. This would be like saying that one characters color pallet is objectively better than another characters because this ones adheres to color theory. Color theory is not objective science, just like literary devices or narrative techniques are not objective science. This episode highlighted Rainbows very blatant and obvious narcissistic tendencies beautifully, and closed on a satisfying arc. Everything she did in this episode was very much so believable because she's been shown to do similar things in previous episodes. It doesn't matter if you think it was the right or wrong thing to do, what matters is that it was consistent with her character and one could reasonably assume she would do those things. Sometimes, characters don't act the exact same way in every single situation, especially after learning lessons or even behaving differently in other contextual scenarios, that is not believable because real people don't act that way. Characterization was flawless.

I do think the writing as gotten less competent, but in my view this is a very recent thing, seemingly beginning at season 6. Now before I go on, let's establish that MLP has been a show that regularly and consistently used continuity to flesh out its characters and world, even having an effect on various plots later on in the series. Sometimes this continuity hasn't been the most consistent, probably due to the fluid change of story editors between and sometimes during seasons, and rarely has anything been retconned to any drastic degree. Let's also establish that the dialogue in this show (script wise and performance wise) has consistently been very natural, aside from a few clunky lines here and there, I haven't seen very many people criticize the show for stifled dialogue. Characterization has been very strong throughout the shows run, this is probably one of the shows strongest points, and conflicts are usually interesting enough and progress smoothly enough to keep the audience engaged, although FiM is no stranger to seemly quick heel turns and sometimes story lines that leave heads scratching, though luckily these instances are usually few and far between. Now season 6 seems to be doing something different. The dialogue to me comes off as much more precise, direct, on the nose, stifled. The writers have chosen this season, rather then have characters do more natural things, like express their thought or feelings through actions or indirect dialogue, they now seem to directly answer back to each other in a very expository sense. I've noticed the voice acting also feels a bit stifled in quite a few scenes, obviously the script will directly contribute to how the voice acting comes out, and I'd imagine this is the reason. Perhaps this is due to the addition of a new director, and Josh heading the story editor position this season. It's hard to say. Continuity wise, so far things seem okay, although Gautlent of Fires showcase of dragon culture seems to frame the dragon race as different than what we were initially shown during FiMs earlier seasons. Dragons were once regarded as extremely dangerous, instinctual, and fierce creatures. Gautlent of Fire chooses to ignore the adult dragons, and rather only uses campy adolescents to participate in an event that chooses the next lord of the dragons. The stakes are high sure, but the logical process is baffling, even juvenile, more so than what I've come to expect from this series, which honestly isn't all that much. This was clearly done for the convenience of writing Spike into the competition. This effects previously established continuity, and is a massive contrivance. Usually FiM avoids these kind of very blatant and obvious consistency issues with the writing, it was unfortunate for such an oversight to occur. These are the two biggest issues I've seen so far this season regarding the writing, there's other stuff but I don't want to write a novel over the matter lol. I'm not too concerned though, we're only in season six's infancy, so things could change quickly very easily. There was a small block before the mid season break during season 5 that had me a little worried, but season 5 turned out to be my favorite season of this entire show. Here's to hopefully another fantastic season of horse!

Spike was probably the best part about this episode, it really affirmed his character growth through the progression of the series thus far. While this was finally a very well needed thing to see, I don't think it was a very good episode all around, a lot of things really bothered me and took me out of the experience. Gautlent Of Fire tells a decent enough story about the value of friendship through the character of Ember, but along the way it's bogged down by various contrivances and tonal issues that really seem to clash with the thematic consistency that I've come to expect from FiM. Part of this is probably due to the eventual power creep lots of action-esk series suffer from, plus the loss of idyllic tone the series once possessed. On the nose dialogue, mis-characterization (particularly pertaining to Twilight), the overtly juvenile tone and baffling implications on dragon kind through the means of this gauntlet really question the previously established characterization of dragon kind in the series. If dragons are so dangerous and scary, and so little is known about them, then why do they seem to be so stupid in the process that literally decides who their future leader will be, where's the treat in this though, they seem completely goofy and not threatening in the slightest. The absence of adult dragons really threw me for a loop, and the atmosphere of the gauntlet comes off as campy and goofy rather than some kind of important event that it was initially framed as. Rather than thinking I was watching a cool competition to replace the all mighty dragon lord, I was thinking about how Torch must have been unable to find a babysitter to watch all the little adolescents while all the adult dragons were out doing their cool adult dragon things. This would usually be fine, but the show doesn't even attempt to lampshade this glaring question and chooses to ignore it. There's quite a bit more I didn't like, and if anybody wants to hear those points, I did a podcast yesterday detailing exactly how I felt and why. To avoid writing a tl;dr novel length explanation, you can just go here if you really care enough:

I never really understood the criticism of romance potentially being in the show. Like basically anything else in a narrative sense, whether or not the audience will be generally accepting of any particular character interaction, in this case a relationship, would be dependent upon the writing of that relationship. Now I'm no writer by any means, but I do know that following guidelines of literary technique, much like following guidelines of color theory when coming up with a color pallet, goes a long way in providing solid structure in a story, which obviously helps translate into audience acceptance. While literary techniques are the closest thing we have to any kind of objective criteria in writing from a creative sense, the potential to mess it up is still always there lurching in the corner. I wouldn't be against it from any sort of moral sense, regardless if the shows demographic is for young children, as I think it's clearly been proven from the proliferation of the fandom that the show more practically appeals to a much wider audience than decided on the corporate level. That's not to say theming wise the show needs to tackle more mature romantic stories, there was a book recently released about Shining Armor and Cadence trying to get Flurry Heart to bed by reading bedtime stories to her. I won't spoil the conclusion outright, but the book ends on a very sweet, subtle romantic note that I see draws a beautiful picture on what the show could potentially tackle in the near future. And perhaps this might just be the case, the dude who wrote the book is actually writing some episodes for season 6, which will be his debut appearance writing for the pony show. Anyways, I wouldn't object to romance, the show has clearly changed quite a bit from what it once was, and injecting new stories to tell can affect the longevity of the brand in good or bad ways. It all really comes down to the writing.

SWIM told me through the grapevine that it can be found on yayponies with a simple google search. As for why it was taken down, Key here probably hit the nail on the head, I couldn't find anything on amazon, but you might be able to find a used physical copy on eBay or something if you really want to purchase it.

Are you kidding, based on the people who are working on the movie, it's probably going to be one of the best things to come out of the franchise. Feature length movies have a much longer run time, and thus structurally, this enables the writer/s of the movie to adjust for many common issues that FiM has dealt with since it's inception being an episodic, 22 minute run time series. Some of the most common issues that a longer run time can fix include pacing, and heel turns that are too abrupt. Of course pacing can easily go the other way due to padding, but luckily Meghan is writing the movie, and I'm much more for team Meghan rather than Josh Haber or any other writer currently writing for the series. Meghan has been their since the beginning, has extensive experience as a story editor, and has written many episodes that I would say are great to fantastic in her run. Not only this, but she fully embraced Laurens attitude and took it upon herself to keep the series going in a similar direction, with sincerity. We're haven't even touched on Jayson Thiessen, who is currently directing the film. If you don't know a lot about Jayson, he took Laurens place as show runner during the latter half of season 2, and is credited as co-director from season 1 to the first half of season 5. If Jayson understands anything at all about FiM, he understands the tone and direction of the series. Some people have mentioned the odd direction of season 6 thus far, the most worrying criticism being unnatural feeling dialogue that's very precise and blatant. Through it's run, FiM sometimes failed to deliver complex and engrossing narratives, but it always succeeded at delivery and tone, thematically and technically (specifically the acting and writing). I'm not sure if this is due to VA direction, scripts, overall direction, or a combination of all these factors, but what has changed since season 5 that are obvious are two things specifically. Josh Haber is now the story editor, and Tim Stuby has been credited as Director along side Denny Lu. I don't think it's Denny Lu because he's credited as Director for the second half of season 5, and that portion of season 5 seemed fine to me. Now I'm not usually one to simply blame my feelings on an episode due to a writer or a director, as many other factors will go into my decision, but so far season 6 is failing to leave me with the same impression that season 5 and before have left me with. It feels like the show is trying to change direction, but it also seems to be ignoring some elements that made FiM, well, FiM. Perhaps it's me, and it's certainly too early to say for sure, but my bet is that due to dramatic change in staff, this has (obviously) directly affected the show, we have less and less people who were originally involved in the series, thus the mindset has shifted somewhat. I have high hopes for this movie, lot's of very talented individuals who have made FiM what it is are working on it, I expect good things to come from it. Here's to hoping!

You better believe it, I'll be especially excited if season 6 isn't very good, Meghan and Jayson are at the helm of this production, it's bound to be spectacular. I'm fortunate that I have a local friend who is not only into horses, but also has been apart of content creation along side me for the last 2 years in the fandom, so we'll certainly make a date out of it.

None of them, I can't stand the molds they use for these toys, gotta go with the vinyl figures all the way!

I dunno, I fell like season six so far is pretty weak, but then again season 5 was my favorite season, I'd imagine it'll probably pick up soon enough. Little worried about the direction, dialogue seems really forced and unnatural, dunno if it has something to do with Tim Stuby directing, or Josh being story editor, but something defiantly feels off to me. Regardless, I'm going to keep watching it until either I die, or the series ends, I've been a diehard fan since Jan 2014, I want to see where the ride goes, good or bad. That being said, it's up to you, if you feel like watching the show, then watch the show. If you don't feel like watching the show, don't watch the show.