ShootingStar159

TLP Needs a rework, and the absurdity of Luster Dawn is why. Her parentage isn’t even really the problem. Luster Dawn knows that Spike and Twilight are still friends, but she still believes friendship isn’t worthwhile if friendships fade away. Why is it okay for her to believe that Spike and Twilight are still friends, but Starlight and Twilight still being friends is what makes it ridiculous. Luster knowing that Starlight and Twilight are still friends is hardly the strong point you think it is. And why would Starlight tell Luster about the rest of the main six? The main six and Starlight have never been shown to be close friends, not like Trixie, Maud, or Sunburst. Luster would only know Starlight is friends with Twilight. She wouldn’t know anything about the rest of the main six. Yes, and as I already stated, there’s nothing in the show that stops her from living in Canterlot full time while Starlight and Sunburst’s go to Canterlot to spend their vacations with her. In fact, she could have a room in the palace just like a Twilight did, with the castle staff or a hired caretaker to look out for her. After all, Starlight and Sunburst don’t have a close relationship with anyone permanently in Ponyville. Sugar Belle should have been the closest personal relationship she had in town, and Starlight wasn’t even invited to her wedding. The closest person Starlight would be to in Ponyville was Maud, and she’s pretty solitary. Seriously, who in Ponyville, noT Ponyville adjacent, are Starlight and Sunburst so close to that they couldn’t leave town for a couple months? There is no reason to insist that Luster Dawn HAD to have grown up in Ponyville if she was Starlight and Sunburst’s daughter. But all of this is besides the point because it doesn’t matter who Luster’s parents are, her position in the epilogue is nonsense. Twilight made a school and hired all of her friends as full time teachers. She never once invited any of them to be guest and teach at her magic school? Never had them as a substitute, or took them on a field trip to see the Wonderbolts, or Fluttershy’s sanctuary, Rarity’s fashion empire, had Pinkie throw a party, etc. etc. This episode demands that either Twilight completely cut her friends out of her public life, or Luster Dawn so completely isolated herself from everyone that she was oblivious to almost everything. The first is ridiculous, and the second one, guess what? Is a poor, but reasonable explanation for why she wouldn’t know anything about Twilight and her friends, even if she was related to one of them. Sorry, but “we don’t know” is an argument that works both ways. Which is what I’m saying there is no evidence or argument that proves or disproves who her parents are, so I choose to believe the answer that gives the character value.

I do want to point out something about the show staff’s disagreement on the subject. Jim Miller may have been the director, but Haber wrote the episode, and more importantly, wrote the character. If there’s a matter of discussion, the person who actually created the character has greater say in who and what the character is, and Haber didn’t directly confirm or deny it, he just gave a very coy “maybe.” That means Luster Dawn’s creator wants you to draw the conclusion that she’s Starlight and Sunburst’s daughter, but isn’t making it outright canon so you don’t have to accept it if you don’t want to. As for Luster Dawn, I choose to see her as Starlight and Sunburst’s kid because without that, she’s empty as a character. As their daughter, she has a connection to other characters, has built in relationships and themes. Without that, she’s just Twilight Clone #172 and that is uninteresting and entirely unoriginal (sooooooooo very unoriginal).

Says who? She could have been accepted to Twilight/Celestia’s school at a young age, and grown up in Canterlot. And there’s nothing stopping Starlight and Sunburst’s vacationing in Canterlot so Luster doesn’t have to leave her home in Canterlot. And the argument for her not knowing about Twilight’s friends applies equally to her being Twilight’s student as it does to her being Starlight’s daughter, there is no reasonable explanation. Either way, it doesn’t make sense that the personal Student of the Princess of Friendship doesn’t know her mentor meets with her friends, regardless of who her parents are.

I liked Starlight’s faces the best, they were expressive and comical without veering into absurd territory like Twilight and Rainbow often did. Rarity would be a close second after her.

Heck, we don’t know anything about dragon biology. Maybe his growth and develop event was stunted from living away from other dragons, and it took spending time around a female dragon (Smolder) to trigger puberty. Maybe he should have grown wings years before.

In no real particular order: 1.Sweet and Smokey 2.Daring Doubt 3.School Raze 4.Uprooted 5.She Talks to Angel 6.Fake It Til You Make It 7.28 Pranks Later 8.Bats! 9.Rainbow Falls 10.Non-Compete Clause

Authorial interaction with the audience isn’t inherently lazy. Sometimes authors can leave something a mystery to invite discourse or make the audience think. Leaving out the backstory and any sort of realistic motivations for one of your primary villains doesn’t count. Many of these “leave them to the audience” decisions aren’t the result of making us think or discuss possibilities, it’s because they didn’t bother to even consider the ideas themselves.

All of the investment, passion, and interest of people doing a job, not creating a world. Even if they do love the job, even if they don’t mean to be uninvested... The amount of “we didn’t plan it,” “It’s not something we thought about,” and “we wanted to leave it to the audience” in the answers here is truly disheartening. Several months back, I posted about an interview I saw from the production crew of another show (Stargate SG-1), where the show writers and directors said that no matter what, there was no way they would be as invested in the show as the fans. They may have written and directed the episodes, but they’re so busy coming up with the next story, it’s impossible for them to dedicate themselves as fully to the show as the fans. This knowledge helped me see the show, and all tv shows in a different light. Jim’s answers and attitude isn’t that surprising. It really is just a fact of working in the business, at the end of the day, it is just a job. But I do still think they could have tried a lot harder with the final season than what we got here. They could have given us more than they did, and expecting us to fill in the answers for them is lazy beyond words.

After watching season nine, just go ahead and end it now, they’ve clearly run out of ideas for half the main characters.

Hmmm... I don’t know. Other than the LyraBon proposal, I’m just sort of left unsatisfied, not just with the episode, but with Sugar Belle, and the entire relationship. The episode’s interview theme was nowhere near the level of Saddle Row Review, which is just unfortunate. It’s a bad idea to try and repeat a theme, if it doesn't measure up to the original, it’s comes across cheap and uncreative. And then the episode itself felt like another retelling of Breakup Breakdown, just Discord causing chaos and almost ruining a special moment between the two. The wedding was unsatisfying since some important characters were missing, like Pinkie and Starlight. Sugar Belle apparently had zero family that she wanted to invite, which, you know, Starlight would know why that is since she was able to convince Sugar Belle to move to the middle of nowhere and give up her cutie mark. Which leads to another thing... Sugar Belle herself is unsatisfying. We have learned absolutely nothing about her since she was first introduced. She likes baking and now apparently wants to get married to Big Mac because... she loves him, because... she just does. Big Mac lost his parents, yes, but what little we know about Sugar Belle’s past hints at a not so cheery life for her as well, an idea reinforced by her lack of family or friends at her wedding outside of Our Town friends. Instead of this cutesy but empty episode, why not an episode that developed Sugar Belle as a character, why not have Big Mac know what happened in her past so he can promise to help her with it? Why not give us something of substance instead of giving us this empty, childish romance? I want to like this relationship, but this only given it’s due to Big Mac, and has completely neglected the other side of this two way street.

Believe whatever you want, but no, I think this is absurdly far fetched.

This. So much this. You know Starlight’s outburst to Trixie in A Horseshoe-In? That’s what Sunset should have done to Rainbow Dash in Spring Breakdown. A full blown reaming with some uncalled for personal insults thrown in. Instead we got an even handed critique, and instead of “I’m coming because I messed up and drove Rainbow away,” we got “I’m coming because I’m responsible for magic in this world, even though I don’t believe magic is behind what’s going on, but it’s something everyone forgave me for years ago so it won’t harm my popularity.” Sunset had a lot of potential after Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, but ever since that potential has been squandered in the name of keeping her popularity intact.

Anyone else love that Starlight got one last Friendship lesson from Twilight?

Look... I take this attitude with a lot of things in this show. It’s a fantasy world in a fairy tale setting, so it’s fine for the most part. But the difference between two princesses raising the son and moon or bird horses controlling weather, and giving animals a “vegan” diet, is that people actually try and do the latter. This is setting a horrible example for any audience watching, no matter how much you try and hand wave the problem away with the magical setting. If an episode had a pro-antivax message, I don’t think anyone would be trying to explain it away with the setting. Veganism should always be a choice you make for yourself, it should never be something you force onto someone else, pet, child, anyone. As an aside, never, ever give an animal chocolate, it’s poison to just about any animal that isn’t a human.

“I have the magical power to levitate objects, read books, control lightning, and write fanfics, and when I get mad I lose control of all my powers!” Let’s see how many people around here still get this reference.