gingerninja666

I think a few of your points and examples are somewhat exagerrated to sound more extreme, honestly. I agree with some things. Sunset is a lot more charismatic that Starlight. I actually put a lot of this down to the actress. Sunset's actress is incredible and commands more presence than Sheridan ever really did with Reformed Starlight. Sunset's arc is immaculately crafted to engender absolute sympathy towards her. Although, I think it also comes at the expense of taking away any feeling that she was ever a real villain. People are mean to her as if she's still a bad person, but what we see of Sunset in RR is just the kindest, sweetest little put-upon puppy dog ever. We don't want the school to be mean to her, because we can clearly see she's changed and will never do anything bad ever again. It's such a simple story and they tell it really well, but Sunset is NOTHING like her villain self anymore. It feels like she's a new character who's been saddled with all of Villain!Sunset's baggage and past and forced to suffer for it. It isn't cathartic and it doesn't make me feel like justice is being served because these two Sunset's are nothing alike. And it takes a while for her to develop proper character flaws again. I felt like they were trying something different with Starlight, but the execution was iffy in a few areas, not helped by the fact that the fundamental idea of Starlight is that she's a character who will sometimes relapse, which is already a risky idea. She didn't get rainbow'd out of a super evil super form. She stopped of her own free will and had to put her life back together, but she stumbles along the way because her core flaws (her tendency to overreact and her inclination to sidestep problems rather than actually confronting them) were never resolved. It's a part of her, but I genuinely do think she improves as the series goes on. She goes from flippantly using magic and being annoyed by the idea that she might have done something wrong, to making a mistake due to stress and sleep deprivation, then realizing she's made the mistake on her own and working to fix it. The thing about Starlight's power is that it's always brought up by people as if it's consistently done a damn thing to help her. In all her appearances, her magic has solved exactly one conflict. A Royal Problem. In every other story, Starlight's power is a harbinger of her making some kind of catastrophic mistake due to her overreactions. Her magic exacerbates conflicts or brings them to a head, it almost never resolves them. She's been jobbed out by plenty of characters. Despite her banishing spell, she was no match for Discord. She was easily detained by Cozy Glow offscreen. She was beaten handily by Chrysalis. Starlight's power is grossly overstated. I think the same is true for certain spotlight-stealing episodes like Marks and TWABA as well. In TWABA, Starlight doesn't get to save the day because she's better than the mane 6 (and nor does the episode insist that she is in any way) She gets to be the hero because Chrysalis didn't care about her. If she had, there's no reason to believe she couldn't have easily replaced Starlight like she did everyone else. Chrysalis left the opening (like she always does), and Starlight was just the person who happened to be there. The episode IS constructed to give Starlight the spotlight, but not by making her the only competent person in the room. And in Marks, Starlight doesn't do anything Twilight couldn't have done. She doesn't figure out something Twilight missed. Cozy came to HER, and spilled the beans about what she did to the CMC. Starlight is given information Twilight is not given because Starlight's role in the school is to be a counselor and hear this kind of stuff from students in distress. Besides, any moment for Starlight is inevitably soured by the fact that Cozy is playing the hell out of her. Starlight helping Cozy is pretty much a bad thing in the long run because it all feeds into her plan to ingratiate herself within the school. I think your list of Starlight's "relapses" is the most unfair section to me. You list encouraging Twilight to reopen the School of Friendship as a "relapse". No. Neighsay was wrong. Anything he was correct about is undermined entirely by the fact that he himself clearly didn't care about any of Twi's transgressions, and was using them as an excuse. He literally says: But even granting that the EEA was completely in the right and Twilight was wrong to reopen the school, Starlight's still not relapsing here. She's not impulsively overreacting. She's calmly and earnestly trying to help Twilight, a person she looks up to and genuinely cares about. She doesn't want Twilight to give up on her dream and uses her own experiences with Twilight to inform her decision to stick by her (noting that Twilight never gave up on Starlight). When she age-regresses Sunburst she also undoes it seconds later when it becomes clear that he's freaked out. And she only goes ahead with it because he was impressed by her spell and wanted to see it in action. It's still somewhat of a backslide for her, but it's nowhere near as egregious as something like ELTSD. In Road to Friendship she doesn't turn back because the wagon is too heavy. She'd already made it most of the way back home, through deserts, alligators, swamps, and fire pits. She realizes her mistake after hearing how the mail ponies were inspired by her and Trixie's friendship, which reminds her of how much she cares about Trix. She then turns around and treks back through the alligators, the swamps, the fire pits, and the deserts to find Trixie again. Saying she just found the wagon too heavy is ignoring context for no reason. And one last thing, I don't think a character needs to necessarily be hated by people in order to feel guilt for their actions. If Sunset only felt bad about what she did because people were angry at her over it, then I think that's a shame. You shouldn't refrain from doing bad things solely because you fear punishment for doing them. You should refrain from doing them because you understand that they're bad.

I don't like the idea of sidelining the Villain Trio, honestly. That's kinda the ultimate problem with the finale no matter how you slice it: Someone has to be margianalized. Either Grogar is sacrificed for the Villain Trio, or the Villain Trio are sacrificed for Grogar. And since the season has put far more emphasis on developing the villain trio, and they're the ones the audience is already invested in, they're the ones who make the most sense to get all the focus in the end, I think. Cramming everything to do with them into part 1 does them really dirty. And bringing Luna and Nightmare Moon up out of nowhere feels a bit forced to me. She didn't really have much of a presence throughout the season like, say, Discord did. It could work, but you'd need to build up to it.

I know she got taller after her ascension, but did she continue to get taller throughout the later seasons?

Was Twilight actually getting taller as the series went on, or was it a trick of the mind by fans who thought that was what they were seeing? It seemed to come up every season or so, people making comments like: "Is it me or is Twilight getting taller?" or "Twilight's horn is slowly getting bigger, right?" Was that actually a thing? It was pretty consistant.

Her power almost never actually helps her though. If anything it's the cause of a lot of her problems.

Rockhoof and a Hard Place was weak? Huh, that was one of my favourite episodes in season 8.

I always liked The Crystalling for the Starlight stuff (shrug)

It was underwhelming, but I also noticed that when you look at the fights in order, the heroes actually do better and better each time in ascending order. The Pillars were curbstomped by Tirek. Starlight gets a hope spot against Chrysalis before being wrecked. The Mane 6 beat Cozy and she needs to be saved by the other two. I don't know if that means anything, but there at least seemed to be some kind of pattern to it.

It was that sea side town from PPOV I believe.

Chrysalis was technically on the loose. She was in the middle of a slump, but she was hardly harmless.

Honestly, I think that alone is a testament to how strong Grogar is. When the full combined might of three different sets of ultra friendship lasers could only crack his artifact.

I think this is a thing that has enough wiggle room to be up to interpretation. Discord said he was concious, but other characters refer to the spell as "stone sleep", implying that you're NOT conscious when under its effect. That was Rockhoof's plan. Discord is also the type of person who would lie about something like that. He mentioned being conscious when he was still a villain. So he could've just been saying that to mess with them or make them feel bad about stoning him.

I do get why people were annoyed by the Discord thing. But I liked it. I actually thought it made sense when you look at Discord across the entire season. In all of his major appearances they've been reinforcing this idea that he allows bad things to happen just so that Twilight and her friends can handle them. It's flat out said that Discord could've stopped Sombra whenever he wanted, but he allowed Sombra to run rampant and brainwash everyone. That was just in the premiere. He got so much screentime there, and all of it is spent manipulating the cast. He didn't need to be in Summer Sun Setback at all. His only purpose is to NOT help out when he easily could've, just to teach the gang a lesson. Then at the end he cryptically talks about them being "ready for whatever comes next." I get why some people are dissapointed that we didn't get Grogar, but I have to object to say that it DOES make sense. It's paying off what Discord has been doing all along. It's his trollish, trickster mentorship coming back to bite him in the ass. And I think jamming in Grogar along with EVERYTHING else in that finale would've made it even more bloated.

As I said in the original post: "What are some songs that you don't think get enough love by the fanbase? They don't have to be the best songs the show has ever produced, just ones that maybe clicked with you more than they seemingly have with others."

What are some songs that you don't think get enough love by the fanbase? They don't have to be the best songs the show has ever produced, just ones that maybe clicked with you more than they seemingly have with others. I'm not a music expert by any means, but some of mine would include: Pinkie's Present (A Hearthswarming Tail) - I think this one IS liked, but I actually consider it to be almost as good as Smile. It captures the same raw essense of what makes Pinkie a good pony that that song does, and I think it's her best appearance in the show's later seasons. Her final line of "And the reason is to be with your friends." is delivered with such earnest warmth that it gave me chills when I first heard it. I often dislike Pinkie, even in the earliest seasons, but songs like this and Smile highlight what Pinkie is like at her absolute best; bubbly, kindhearted, andwanting the world to be a happier place. The Midnight in Me (EQG: Legend of Everfree) - This one is very short, but I'm an absolute sucker for "Characters ruminating on the darkness inside them" songs. Like, "Confrontation" from the Jekyll and Hyde musical. You feel for Sci-Twi in this one, and the arrangement I think is genuinely beautiful in places, especially when it crescendos at the end before peetering off. Open Up Your Eyes (MLP: The Movie) - Not only is this a great villain song, with all the dark intimidating atmosphere that implies, but it illustrates a tragic sense of self-deception aswell. Tempest is singing at Twilight, trying to convince her that her way is the right way, but it sounds like she's partly trying to convince herself of all these things she supposedly believes, that the world is cruel and cold. Which is a writing technique I always love. It lends a note of bitter sadness to the ominousness of the song. Your Heart is in Two Places (Surf and/or Turf) - I think this is my favourite CMC song. It feels like Ingram is just showing off at certain points. Especially in Sweetie's first verse. The whole song though is this neverending barrage of wordplay and internal rhyming and I find the entire thing utterly delightful. It's pretty, it's grand. Sweetie and Scoots contrast each other well, and Apple Bloom's sole opening line might even be the best sung part of the song it's that good. It's got a different vibe to the rest of the CMC's songs, and I love that. The Spectacle (The Mane Attraction) - This one is just a straight contrarian. I always thought this song was better than The Magic Inside. There's this internet music reviewer called Todd in the Shadows, and long ago he reviewed the Hannah Montanna movie. His problem with the final song in that film is supposedly it's an example of Hannah singing from the heart after a whole movie (and arguably a whole series) of being a fake pop singer. This "heartfelt song" though was incredibly cliched in it's own right and just didn't sound as earnest as it should've been. I'm like that with TMI, though I do like the song. It wasn't quite as good as the build up in the story implied it would be. The Spectacle, though, knew that it was a pile of shclock (being a parody of vapid pop songs) and completely rolled with it. MAking it really fun. It also has an absolutely perfect title for describing what it is. A Changeling Can Change (The Times They Are A Changeling) - I've heard people describe this song as really cringy, sappy, and riddled with holes. And it is, but I always felt like that was kind of the point. Spike, desperate and riddled with guilt, is just singing from his heart, trying to win over a bunch of furious ponies to keep them from harming his friend. And for the most part he fails at this. Only two people seem to be truly won over by the song. Starlight (her moment of self awareness in the background when she realizes that she's jumping to conclusions about a former villain is one of my favourite Starlight moments in general) and Twilight (where what mattered was that she believed that Spike believed in Thorax, and that she trusted Spike's judgement). The song itself not being great doesn't totally matter. What's important is that Spike is really trying, which I totally buy. And that vibe alone makes the song enjoyable to me, and makes it one of the most unique songs in the show's entire run. I feel like all the weaknesses of the song become strengths when put into the context of it being sung by a child trying to make ammends and being completely out of his depth