Misty Shadow

Although IDW has not been doing the best business-wise lately, it seems they will not be halting production on G5 content any time soon. This comes straight from what Hasbro has disclosed about their licensing developments. Apparently, Tell Your Tale will be getting a new comic series or at least some form of adaptation from IDW as part of MLP's 40th anniversary.

Everyone is calling this episode one of their favorites and I am no exception. Misty using hand (hoof) puppets to express her inner conflict of good and evil is just too good. The evil Mane 5 are just too good. Misty getting to be the hero of the episode is just too good. I was not expecting them to tackle something this big in TYT and make so much progress like this so soon with the destruction of the necklace and increased distance between Misty and Opaline. Misty being so desperate for love from Opaline, even being happy with just five minutes of "love", is honestly darker to me than her weep-over line from MYM. Even though we only got to see Opaline once, contrary to what I initially hoped for, I was glad by the end we didn't see her again knowing how mad she would be about the necklace breaking. The ending gag with Hitch was awesome too. It's funny how it actually makes sense for him to be evil without the necklace's influence. He was a minor antagonist at first in the movie.

I actually want more of him now. Same with Phyllis. I wasn't really hot on Sprout and Phyllis in the movie, but now...I don't feel they've been given much of a chance in the shows. Phyllis could easily be utilized more in Tell Your Tale and I really wish Sprout could just appear in said series already too. I want the explanation for why he's apparently doing community service in Make Your Mark to be shown onscreen before he gets a redemption arc.

Something tells me that this chapter is going to be better than Chapter 2. I don't expect the Bridlewoodstock special to be better than Winter Wishday, even as I expect some great fun and some baller music from it. However, I'm very excited for this new batch of episodes, primarily because I can feel it in my bones that Misty is going to be at her peak.

It's magic. Remember the time in FiM when magic turned an inanimate object into a living animal? We've also known since the "retconning" of Dumpster Diving with Izzy's uni-cycling cart and lantern recreation that TYT and MYM have two separate continuities.

That is a pretty cute toy you have there! Did you know that it's a best seller? Yeah, Izzy Moonbow merchandise is still selling really well!

The way she "harms others and destroys property" is accidental and done for comedic effect. Cartoon invulnerability, no one is actually getting hurt. Izzy doesn't understand that, she lacks comprehension of the concept of personal space. It's also a possibility that Izzy has no parents. Tell Your Tale's Foal Food showed her being at Alphabittle's tea place instead of with her family as a kid and in the movie, you can see a birthday card she wrote to herself in the background in her house.

First time doing an essay for a G5 character, these are some thoughts on Izzy I've wanted to get out for some time. https://www.deviantart.com/mistybrightshadow/art/MLP-G5-Understanding-Izzy-Moonbow-971323873 Opening I believe that Izzy Moonbow is the most misunderstood character of the fifth generation of MLP. Despite having been a fan favorite character from the moment she was introduced in a teaser that was released many months before the G5 movie premiered and being the most popular main character from the movie, Izzy’s popularity began to experience a downward trend following the premiere of the G5 shows, Tell Your Tale and Make Your Mark, with more viewers calling her “annoying”. The former is more often cited than the latter when people speak negatively of Izzy’s character, however, Izzy behaving in a way people perceive as obnoxious is not the only reason for her waning dominance in popularity contests. As we received more content from both G5 shows, Izzy was hit by strong competition from Zipp Storm, a character who has been nicknamed “the true G5 protagonist” because of fans loving her character development so much, and Misty, currently the most popular character on the show with many fans being enthralled by her potential to become the franchise’s best reformed villain, with reformed villains in MLP like Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, and Tempest Shadow having always been popular characters. So that means everything’s doom and gloom for Izzy, right? No, very wrong. Merchandise for Izzy is still high-selling and there are still not just G5 fans, but MLP fans who only regard the quality of G5 as fair who would go so far as to call Izzy Moonbow a better character than Pinkie Pie, her “G4 counterpart”. Izzy is indeed a strange case when it comes to fan feedback, feedback that definitely gives me the impression that she’s more misunderstood than anything. She’s always been surrounded by positive reception, yet it’s also not uncommon for positive reception for her to have a tint of disdain for the way she is occasionally portrayed, especially in Tell Your Tale. My personal opinion on Izzy does align with the popular opinion of her being more likable in Make Your Mark, with her feeling more like a real person rather than a cartoon in said show. However, I have honestly never been annoyed by Izzy in Tell Your Tale. In fact, I generally find her over-the-top antics amusing. I know very well that what I find funny is not going to be funny to everyone. However, these over-the-top shenanigans are the root to some of the misunderstandings about Izzy’s character. How Izzy is Misunderstood The most notable example I can provide for a comedic exaggeration leading people to get the wrong idea about Izzy is one of the most infamous gags from an episode of Tell Your Tale, Dumpster Diving, where Izzy chases Posey on her moped in an attempt to get one of her earrings. This led some outraged viewers to go as far as to decry Izzy as a sociopath, and even a G5 reviewer who is known for reviewing G5 positively saw this moment as “Izzy becoming a terrible person”. Why are these comments reproaching her untrue? It’s already a wild claim, calling her a sociopath over a joke, but more importantly, what viewers making claims like this do not understand is that this kind of joke is faithful to Izzy’s character. Izzy, since her debut in the movie, has always been “the innocent space cadet” of the main cast. She’s known for lacking awareness of what’s going on around her as well as lacking awareness of the impact of her actions. Posey, meanwhile, is known for bearing spite towards unicorns, loathing Izzy especially, spite that Izzy doesn’t reciprocate. Her motivation for chasing Posey down purely stems from a desire to do something nice for her friend, believing that she needs one of Posey’s earrings to recreate a lantern for Sunny. Looking at the full picture, doesn’t it make more sense now? Izzy does stupid and reckless things with pure intentions so that we don’t harbor animosity towards her when other ponies, especially ponies known for being mean, end up the butt of a joke. Another episode where Izzy’s actions are often wrongly misinterpreted is Nightmare Roommate, where again, people don’t see that Izzy is simply unaware of the effect of her actions while only meaning well. Mistaking an electric toothbrush for an ear cleaner may seem hard to believe without context, but with context, it makes sense. Izzy has lived in Bridlewood Forest, by far the least technologically advanced part of the world, all her life. Telling her friends that she didn’t like their gifts was not her way of showing ingratitude. She flat-out explained that the way she was inadvertently inconveniencing her friends was her way of trying to be like them. The gifts initially had her worried that her friends didn’t appreciate her admiration of them and were trying to distance themselves from her. Even disregarding what people often misconstrue though, there is still much people don’t comprehend about Izzy because of what they don’t notice. Understanding Another Side to Izzy Another episode of Tell Your Tale, Foal Food, reveals that Izzy even made imaginary friends out of objects when she was little, with Señor Butterscotch not being her first. This is done to imply that Izzy has always been alone, never knowing what it was like to have friends before she met Sunny. This is also consistent with how there were no friends wishing her goodbye when she left Bridlewood in Sisters Take Flight, the first short of the 2D series chronologically. Izzy is also a creative type, a personality type commonly associated with introverts, with her “element” being described as creativity by an official bio of her character. It’s not made clear what exactly inspired Izzy to be a creative type. An episode of Tell Your Tale, All That Jazz, shows her helping another pony get inspiration from music, and given what we’ve just discussed, a desire to fill a void in her lonely heart must be at least part of the inspiration. It wouldn’t explain, however, why she’s so invested in making new things out of trash. Unless you consider the possibility that feelings of loneliness when she was young were a detriment to her sense of self-worth, something she tried to remedy with a mentality of how “nothing is worthless”. She’s also officially called “spiritual”. There’s even an episode of G5’s podcast where Izzy recounts being lost in a ghost’s “energy puzzle” for a day. This provides the opening scene of Nightmare Roommate, when she made something that looked like a ghost float when she was sleeping, with more depth. She’s been affected by experiences with the supernatural. Of course, unicorns also have “ghost cookies” and “ghost tea” (where small souls arise from said refreshments) in their culture, in addition to traditions with crystals inspired by occultism and cursed words with real magic. So what would make Izzy different from the other unicorns in this regard? The fact that she likely has a stronger sixth sense than them. Izzy can see the luminescence, or sparkle, of other ponies, something likely meant to be inferred as their aura. She also mentions nothing about luminescence reading in Make Your Mark Chapter 2’s The Traditional Unicorn Sleep-Over, she only briefly mentions “sparkle seasons”, which could mean times when the luminescence of others glows brighter and is easier to detect. In the movie, Izzy explained that the brighter your sparkle was, the brighter it would glow. Analysts generally believe that Izzy didn’t have friends before meeting Sunny because of her upbeat personality being such a stark contrast from what unicorns were generally like, but I believe there’s more to it than just that. Other unicorns could have also rejected her out of jealousy or even fear of her powerful sixth sense and/or the brightness of her sparkle. Even more evidence of Izzy having a stronger sixth sense than most can be observed with how she describes “hoof-reading” as something that has been in her family for generations. If it was her ancestors that started the tradition, then it’s possible a prowess for sensing the supernatural was something she inherited from her relatives. On that subject, Izzy has also been shown to have the ability to talk to the spirits of her ancestors, something we see in Make Your Mark Chapter 2’s Ali-Conned. To us, it doesn’t appear weird because of our familiarity with Izzy’s behavior. However, imagine how it would look to a random onlooker. Other kids might have not wanted to play with her upon seeing things like that, finding her to be “too weird for them”. It’s incredible how many possibilities there are for what made Izzy who she is. Conclusion Although we still have no proof of what exactly happened in the past that molded Izzy into who she is today, it should be much easier to see now that Izzy’s character has far more depth to it than normally acknowledged. She’s the farthest thing from a sociopath and she never needed any piece of G5 media to redeem her. There’s no malice in anything she does and her obliviousness is a product of her upbringing. It makes sense for her to lack social skills and not get certain things growing up with no friends. It’s also awesome how disregarding that fact, she possesses both fascinating otherworldly knowledge and abilities and a heart of gold. A character like her does not need great complexity to be good, but if you’re willing to adopt the insight into her, you’ll find so much to appreciate about Izzy.

Queen Haven being better than Princess Cadance to me is another one I just remembered. Cadance lacked so much presence and personality while the fact that Haven is also a mother is incorporated much better into her character.

Surprised with how so much happened in this one! I was laughing at the beginning with how the Mane 5 were tired and messing stuff up, and then before I knew it, they were already getting ready to go to the resort, then flying to the resort, then getting stranded in that mud land, then having fun with each other playing with the mud, then missing the boat to the resort, and then finally, making their own resort in the mud land. Seriously, I almost wonder if this was a scrapped episode of Make Your Mark turned into an episode of TYT, I'd love to see this kind of episode done with twenty-two minutes of run time. This one is good enough as it is though, I was always smiling and chuckling at something in this one. My favorite part is how even those jerk animals from Lost in Translation love Hitch. I also wonder if Work Work Work is going to become the next Let Out Your Light with how much it will be played.

Many fans were incredibly quick to throw G5 under the bus after the shows came out, even going as far as to pretend that FiM was "perfect" after they went scorched earth on the last two seasons of FiM. There are also still people who want more G4 content, despite literally everything that we had been saying for like, forever, about not wanting the show to go on for too long and go downhill (which it already did in the eyes of many fans). #SaveMLP is still a thing too, and their joke movement of trying to cancel G5 and bring back FiM for a "proper ending" predates the debut of the G5 shows.

This series just absolutely rules. I love Ace Attorney, I love murder mysteries, I loved the original Turnabout Storm, and I honestly feel this series has already surpassed its predecessor. That plot twist at the end of the latest part honestly shocked me more than anything I've seen in a story lately. The effort the team behind it puts into the side content is incredible too, I loved that animated short implying there is more to what happened in Case 1 than we initially believed.

We can do this until the end of time if you want, no. Don't care how many times I have to say it, people need to be less critical of it. Bronies have never been good at being self-aware of the kind of show they love to criticize so much, and that lack of self-awareness has gotten way, WAY worse with the debut of this new generation. They don't even get the point of it, they can't let FiM go, they just want FiM cloned in their image. I have not seen ONE well-grounded argument explaining how anything from G5 is worse than fine. I just keep seeing the same spiel about how it "broke the lore", how Tell Your Tale's animation is cheap, how the plots are "childish" to them, how there are phones in it, and how there's toilet humor in TYT. I've beaten into the ground about how this is a young kids show and how MLP was never lore-heavy, so how about something new? I've been watching a lot of the internet's favorite young kids show lately, Bluey. Bluey is aimed at an even younger audience, has cheap animation, has a lot of "childish" plots with episodes focusing on Bluey wanting to entertain herself with kiddy games and the grown-ups going to absurd lengths to play along with those kiddy games, has smartphones and tablets, and A LOT of toilet humor. But I'm supposed to love Bluey and hate G5 because the internet said so, sure. Yeah, that's another thing, I am sick of people acting like these "problems" aren't just standard practice for kids shows. And do you really think the kids are unhappy with G5, "not falling" for the supposed pandering? Do you know what the most popular TYT episode of this year has been so far? https://www.youtube.com/@MLPTYTEnglish/videos YES. The kids love what so many adult fans consider to be the worst episode of the series. What does this tell you? The views expressed by the overly critical (and to be brutally honest, normally critical) part of our fandom DO NOT reflect the views of the general consensus. It is time for us to mature, stop being so bitter about something that is making people happy, and move forward.