Thrond

I dunno, I guess having non-ponies literally save his life would have a significant impact on him, but I'm not sure I buy that this would cause him to completely abandon his prejudices. He seemed willing to twist everything else around him to fit his faulty worldview, so why would he completely change his beliefs because of a few individuals in a weird situation? It might just be that I don't find him an interesting character, though; I only really liked him because I liked seeing the mane six stand against racism.

I do mean the entire show to an extent, but season 9 doubled down on the same mistakes the show has always made with that stuff, which I found pretty galling. The truth is, I don't necessarily have a problem with alicorns, even if the mythology around them is pretty muddled; it's just that their association with Twilight's coronation has made me bitter about the whole thing. There's not enough of her personality and previous fashion sense in it. The hair is too long and wavy; all of the things that make Cadance distinct and relatable are absent in Twilight's future design.

The committee thing really threw me off with that special. At that point Sunset would need to be deliberately ignoring her, which I do not believe would happen. If it weren't for that factor, I would definitely have appreciated having Wallflower's part of that special expanded, especially because I think Sunset's part of it is pretty stale. Wallflower at least has a unique problem, whereas Sunset is just going through the motions of atoning for her past, which I kinda had my fill of after Rainbow Rocks.

I have a difficult time squaring that with the extremely apologetic Sunset of the movies, to be honest, but I guess there are a lot of students at that school, and Sunset has been there for a while. Still, I think that special really makes a muddle of Wallflower’s backstory, and it seems bizarre that Sunset and Wallflower could serve on the same committee and not have positive interactions.

I would not have had Neighsay contribute to saving the day in the season 8 finale. Let him be dunked on while non-racists do the real work. I probably would have had Chrysalis appear a few more times as a comic relief villain, and then finally give in to friendship in the finale because she's just so hungry. Remarkable that she was petty enough to stick with the bad way even after Thorax proved that changelings can live without starving all the time. I think I would have toned down Lightning Dust's villainy a bit... I just think that's the least interesting thing they could have done with her. Way more interesting to have her and Rainbow Dash come to a mutual understanding of each other, and to see Lightning Dust mature slightly. That way she could be more than just Evil Rainbow Dash. Plus it might let us see Scootaloo leave Rainbow's shadow at long last. The Friendship is Magic villains are relatively simple so I don't mind them. The My Little Pony: The Movie villains are awful but they're so generic that I just see no potential in any of them. The Equestria Girls villains are kinda hit-or-miss; mostly I just don't want them to be so easily forgiven. Principal Cinch, Juniper Montage, and Post Crush are awful though, I'd prefer they were all completely different. Wallflower Blush is the only one I would really change, otherwise. She needs a better motive than "I am mad that you ignore me, even though it's because I erase your memories constantly." Kinda hard to sympathize with her in that situation, especially since we like and automatically side with Sunset.

Now that I think about it my least favourite design is probably something from the movie. Maybe the cat dude, I really don't want anthropomorphic cats in My Little Pony. There was a period where I just thought she was naturally tall and would have been just as tall if she never got her horn. We've seen other ponies with long legs who aren't alicorns. But then Twilight became tall and it threw everything off. I remain partial to the mane six's designs, especially since the show has done so much with them over the course of its nine seasons and various specials. Meanwhile Twilight's future design just kinda bums me out. To be honest, Twilight's whole coronation arc has kinda soured me on alicorns in general. I kinda wish the show had way less alicorn stuff. Maybe things would have been better if it were just Celestia and Luna and we didn't know much about them.

I like the sisters a lot but I also like how Cadance is a little smaller and has a normal mane. It makes her feel slightly more relatable even though she's way less developed as a character than either Luna or Celestia.

I’ve always thought that Princess Cadance is pretty. Would also like to throw my hat in the ring for Rarity’s punk getup. She can pull off any look.

The weird thing about that season 2 two-parter is that he did defeat the mane six. From his perspective, he had already won. The six of them had succumbed to his magic and had stopped caring. He was defeated because he didn't understand friendship, which was (somehow) powerful enough to overcome his magic. I have to say that I was never paying attention to that aspect. To some extent it all worked out according to plan - Twilight defeated them, saved Equestria, and became confident enough to rule the country. Honestly it was a dumb idea to begin with, but I never respected his schemes to teach someone a lesson.

I feel like Discord has always kinda been like that, so I was never particularly invested in him. I was always wondering why the mane six tolerate him at all.

Yeah, I guess. That wasn't a deal-breaker for me with that episode. The idea is that Discord inspired a personal crisis in Twilight due to a misguided attempt to test her, which I think is a good idea, but I wasn't particularly moved by the specific personal crisis that she had in that episode. The thing is, because that two-parter is slightly darker than the others, because its action scenes are so good, and because everyone gets a moment of heroism, I found it genuinely exciting and suspenseful in a way that the show almost never was before.

For the series finale? Seems less than satisfying.

I would say that everything about Twilight succeeding Celestia is rushed and sloppy but that's off-topic. The show's always been kinda ambiguous on that front. I'm just saying that I don't think Chrysalis would be as likely to turn leaf as Starlight, though it would have been interesting to see. That might be a big "if," even at such an early age. At the very least it could have been fun, though I thought what we got in the end was pretty fun as well.

If anything, I would have loved to see someone other than Starlight or Twilight take on such a role - these two-parters are the show at its least interesting, but all the same it kinda irritated me that Twilight's friends never got the spotlight. Especially in later seasons they're always considered as a group, and are always the B-story to someone else's A-story. Though the season 9 finale was pretty evenly split, honestly. In any case I would have only wanted a short attempt that quickly failed, so I don't think it's important to that story. The difference between Starlight and Chrysalis is that Starlight seems to have genuinely wanted to do what's best for Equestria, as long as it was what she thought was best, whereas Chrysalis only ever cared about herself. Oh, now I understand, that makes sense. I suppose they could have tried a little harder, but she didn't seem to listen when told that her dumb ideas about friendship are wrong, and she literally took classes in friendship and was no nicer for it. Oh yeah. I was actually warming up to that possibility because those three were so silly in that episode.

I thought she was a bit funnier but I don't understand why either of them were given a second chance, they're both terrible people.

I think it would have made sense if they had tried, but it's not the end of the world to me. Kind of annoyed that they decided that was Starlight's "thing" at one point, honestly, given that it was Twilight who decided to give her a second chance. I do think that the mane six should be talking to the villains as plan A at this point, but eh, what we got was cool. Discord was always a bit weird, especially since he never really stopped being a jerk; hypothetically, Tirek would be just as useful in fending off future threats, and Cozy Glow... is pretty clever. Still, I don't think being just a child would change anything with Cozy Glow - far as I'm concerned, she's not much different from Tirek. Admittedly, though, they could have just thrown her in a normal prison. Chrysalis probably had the most chance of the lot, if only because she was presumably starving, but she's such a narcissistic hothead that she would never admit to being wrong. For a moment there I thought the show was going in that direction, but the "Summer Sun Celebration" episode went in pretty much the opposite direction. Worth noting that Cozy Glow always knew how cool friendship is, and it did nothing to make her less power-hungry.

Sure, fine, and for these characters it makes narrative sense. All the same, I do think there was something appealing about My Little Pony at its most naïve, when it tried to see the best in everyone and gave everyone a second chance. Made for nice escapism.

Fair enough, I guess; they wound up doing pretty much exactly what I expected them to do. I kinda miss the villain reformations in this show - they mostly vanished in the last two seasons - but that trio seemed unrepentant and power-hungry and I would be a bit surprised if they were sold on the power of friendship.

I dunno, I really just haven't been that excited about the two-parters, even though I do enjoy the vast majority of them. I don't find them suspenseful or exciting - in every single case, I enjoyed them for other reasons. Grogar seemed like he would be another Tirek or Pony of Shadows, some looming threat with no personality that would inevitably be overcome by the power of friendship. I didn't see any reason to expect anything special, then that season 9 finale blew my mind.

Honestly I mostly enjoyed the antagonists in Friendship is Magic. Of the ones listed from the show, Svengallop is the only one who I never had any interest in. Listing My Little Pony: The Movie characters makes the villain category easier, because that thing is significantly below the standard set by the show. But I think the really bad villains are all in Equestria Girls. Juniper Montage... worst character in either series?

Grogar wasn't part of the series until that point. I pay no attention to earlier generations of My Little Pony, so to me Grogar was just some guy who they implied was really dangerous. Then, taking this dangerous villain and making it so he turns out to be something else all along was pretty shocking, especially when the other three had already been taking up all the screen time and working to usurp him. Not sure the whole thing being a misguided test from Discord really amounted to much - I really just do not care about Twilight ruling Equestria - but it is an idea with some potential, and the Tirek/Chrysalis/Cozy Glow trio was really fun in that finale.

Also I didn't notice this the first time but this confirms a theory I've recently developed about alicorns. Some people seem to think being an alicorn makes you better at magic, but I don't think that's true; it just means you have the magic of all three types of pony - nothing more, nothing less. Celestia and Luna are good at magic because they're old, Tirek wanted alicorn magic because it's a lot of magic, Twilight was already really good at magic as a unicorn and became even better at it due to studying and practice. It has nothing to do with being a powerful unicorn.

Maybe it's just because I watched this back-to-back with the dreary season 7 finale, but I liked this considerably more the second time - consider my reaction upgraded to a thumbs up. I still think the setup in the first half is a little dry; the storytelling here is still fairly predictable. But the stuff with the mane six in Tartarus is still lovely, and on second viewing I actually found the student six stuff is not that far off, especially in the second episode. Those kids are so charming that I'm willing to forgive how much they bloat out the main cast. Plus it's nice to see the CMC contribute to saving Equestria for once. I'm also warmer on Cozy Glow here - somehow I didn't give enough credit to her true nature, though it might also be that I'm more open to this character after she was so delightful in season 9. Her motive makes no sense, but all of the other characters seem confused by it too, so it just makes her funnier. There's a lot of other things here that don't add up, but - like the season 6 finale - I find this to be so much fun that I don't mind, though this one doesn't have as much substance. In general I think the second half is really solid, and this time around I was mostly just bored by the setup, which is most of the first half but not all of it. My other main problem remains Neighsay, who I don't like and wish didn't get to save the day. I like this show's naivete, but having the racist stop being racist because non-ponies saved him still feels like a bit much; at this point I just don't think he's qualified to be in charge of education in Equestria. Celestia should fire him... if that's even something she can do, because who knows how Equestria's government works anymore. Whatever, this one is a lot of fun. Oh and Tree Ex Machina still rules. It's kinda crazy that the writers apparently wrote themselves into a corner so badly that they needed to pull that out of nowhere, but it does fit; the Tree demonstrates the power of friendship, but also seems to understand what it's really about.

Been a week and still no new thread so I'm gonna post here and then save it for later. In terms of how many episodes I liked, I would put this season on par with season 8, which is to say that it's probably slightly above average as TV seasons go. Most of my favourite episodes this season were clumped into the first half, but that led to a really exciting period where it seemed like every other episode was one of the show's best. On the other hand, the second half seemed rather weak to me - even the episodes I liked were a little awkward. But I still found myself liking quite a few episodes in the latter half more than I expected to, especially the three-part finale, which would probably be among my all-time favourite episodes of the show if I cared even slightly about Twilight becoming the ruler of Equestria. And yet in my memory this is one somehow compares unfavourably to season 8, if only because I didn't like the overarching trends nearly as much. I just don't care about Twilight's career as a princess, and that whole arc seemed clumsy and forced to me. Meanwhile, this season continued season 8's unfortunate tendency to take the mane six in baffling, nonsensical directions. Since when does Pinkie not understand her purpose in life? Why does Rarity seem to have so little respect for Spike's independence? But it also carries over a lot of the best parts of season 8 - the more creative mythology, the blunt approach to serious issues, the surprising level of continuity - that I appreciated even when I questioned their execution. Plus we got weird stuff like an entire episode focused on the villains, which was really neat. This season wasn't great but it was better than it had any right to be. I just wish that wasn't the best I could say about a show that, once upon a time, I thought was genuinely great. Favourite episodes: "Sparkle's Seven," "The Point of No Return," "Common Ground," "Frenemies," "Going to Seed," "Between Dark and Dawn," "Growing Up is Hard to Do," "The End of the End," "The Last Problem"