ShootingStar159

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.

@Kiryu-Chan MLP is not a super hero adventure show, it’s a slice of life show. In my opinion, the best reason they should reform a villain is because they want to use them in a slice of life setting. Unfortunately, the vast majority of reformations feel empty because nothing is done with those characters, especially in EQG.

Alicorn Flurry Heart. At least I assume we’re never going to get any kind of explanation or closure on that.

While I’ll admit that Spring Breakdown really killed most of my interest in the series, (still haven’t seen SBP) this is really disappointing to see. I wish the series had been given the send off DHX wanted to give it, instead of the end being sprung on them.

“I feel like that’s almost good advice.”

I typically don’t look very positively towards season premieres. Maybe it’s that a big part of it is to set up the rest of the season, but I almost always walk away somewhat unsatisfied or underwhelmed. The two big exceptions are Return of Harmony, which was an excellent self contained adventure, and The Cutie Map that pushed the boundaries of the show in ways I wasn’t expecting. Of the two though, I think the Cutie Map is my favorite.