GuillermoGage

At this point any pop-culture reference (pandering?) can happen. Hopefully something that is not just a crossover-interest stereotype like this. That would be excessive even for the comics. First and foremost, most pop-culture references are for things from before a show began, not after. A Five Night's At Freddy's reference would be even more contemporary and stereotypical than TF2 or Minecraft in that regard.

Indeed, I don't see the point of talking about "ratings" in the context of how many teevees were tuned into Discovery Family while that episode was on. It sorta makes sense for, like, gamers to talk about sales figures because that actually affects if they will continue to get certain games, but not here with My Little Pony. Not only does a significant amount of the grownup/adolescent fandom that follows a current season not watch it on Discovery Family (often from simply pirating, or the stream-pirating of it, but hopefully some of us actually buy the show via iTunes, Google Play or Amazon if we can afford it)... But even little kids don't even have the same Saturday morning cartoon habits of yore like that. Lots of little kids just start watching episode when they come across them wherever. Sometimes when they show up on Netflix, for as long as MLP stays there (if S5 ends in September, I guess we can expect it on Netflix circa January 2016) I wonder how many parents buy season passes/whole seasons of kiddie TV shows for their kids in digital format. Do digital purchases of media get announced to the public? I wonder how many people buy the show.

I actually try to be a good, loyal consumer and purchase them via some digital media store. (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play have it, altho I'd like for more/essentially much all digital content sellers to carry them, such as Sony Entertainment Network) I got a $50 iTunes gift card five months ago and bought the second half of Season 3 of Littlest Pet Shop right off the bat. Then I decided to save the rest for MLP whenever it happens. I dislike it that they failed to provide a discounted Season Pass (usually six bucks less for every thirteen episodes, $19.99 vs $1.99 times thirteen... I'm settling for the 480p downloads) I've caved and bought all seven episodes now (part one of the premiere was free, so I paid for six 22-minute units) ... so yeah, I'll have enough up to episode 14. Then I'll run out of iTunes balance there. I initially thought of pretending the episodes happen once every two weeks to make it last twice as long, but I don't have that patience/self-control when I know there are new episodes. So anyways, I am okay with the recent week-skip, and the one coming up. Gives me slightly more time to save up money. But the iTunes episodes don't show up until Monday morning on iTunes. It is kind of dumb that there is essentially a two-day delay. So... I have been watching them on Dailymotion and YouTube (usually Dailymotion), within the same night of the day it premieres, maybe Sunday, then immediately clearing my browser history and cookies out of extra caution. I make sure to never be signed in to any of the accounts for those sites. I like to not relish in it. I'm not sure when I'll get more money, but I don't wanna be cheap. I actually am planning on being conservative about purchasing more episodes until I'm sure I have enough money for the whole rest of the season secure in my iTunes balance. I don't know if there will suddenly be a harder crackdown on Dailymotion (the little website which gets cracked-down-on less than YouTube due to lack of attention), and I don't wanna visit those dirty websites, just what I am familiar with. I however, do intend on fully purchasing episodes I watch, and pretty much using up all my remaining iTunes balance supporting this show financially. If I were to only use legit sources to watch it, I'd run out of money and it could be months before I scrape up enough for the last twelve episodes (at this temporary transient point in my life, in no more than a year affording 40, 50 bucks for an entertainment purchase will be a non-issue), and it would damage my devotion to the show if I am away that long while it is currently in season. EDIT: I've got 10Mbps Internet, but the major MLPFiM streaming sites still splutter out for me as for S5E5 Tanks for the Memories, so I don't even bother.

Wow, look at Twilight flap those and hover perfectly! I didn't catch this when watching the episode! This animation, and the scene in general, looks really pretty! Actually, most winged ponies don't fly like this, She is doing it so casually; usually I only see Rainbow Dash casually hovering like that. Fluttershy and background pegasi are hardly ever depicted hovering like that.

mkay there are quite a few fans on these boards that supply criticism for when they feel the show becomes less fun/interesting/cute/sweet/cool.

I moreso meant SOME people. This particular forum community only represents a small sample size of MLPFiM fans, and the community here is probably less critical of the show in general compared to a lot of other places. So...the poll here just indicates a majority here. There's plenty of neighsayers for nearly every episode. Of whatever people whom it shall rub the wrong way, it's quite plausibly for the reasons I described. Also... I guess... pandering. I guess that would be another thing that would turn off some people. But then again, pandering only bothers the major fans of the series who know when pandering is happening because of their inside knowledge of the fandom and other popular-culture-type things. EDIT: several minutes later: I finished watching this: It looks like someone on YouTube does a CinemaSins-style thing for this episode really fast, on the same day even. This seems to be an impressive fandom. I don't agree with every criticism however.

I can tell that this will be an episode that people will not like and will consider an "inevitable seasonal rot" episode or an episode where the writers were having an "off-day" or a "dud episode". The humor and plot of this episode is quite different from what we usually see on the show, and this episode is really not an episode you should show to people to give them a first impression of what FiM is like. A few minutes into the episode, I was wondering if the odd, extra-cartoony vibes would indicate that it would be an out-there, seasonal rot episode, but when it got to the Gala, despite getting even more out-there, I realized that this episode does a good job of showing how adults can be childish/immature. This episode's plot was more like a live-action sitcom than a cartoon targeted toward little kids. I think the message was more aimed at the grownup fans than the little kids. Discord very much reminded me of some sort of male sitcom character. They even managed to get some level of characterization out of the Smooze. (I indeed am aware of the G1 character... have been for at least a few months, via stumbling upon screenshots and such, and no, I don't know much about the G1 character, nor did I know that anything called Smooze was appearing in MLP:FiM) I like how they didn't go the route that is often made with nonspeaking, vaguely sentient characters (especially ones that don't look like organic creatures), such as the Carpet from Disney Pictures Aladdin... characters such as that often have too many cutesy animal-like gestures... or have that that trope where the audience finds out what the character is thinking via the other characters inherently understanding what they are saying, Lassie-style. A good deal of the characterization of the Smooze was in Discord's treatment of the Smooze, especially him being sorry to him.. or it.. this was an indication that the Smooze has feelings and a personal history with Discord.

Luna's voice sounds so unique and we don't hear her very often, so it just sounds different to me in general compared to all the other voices on the show and in cartoons in general, whether she is excited, angry, hammy, or calm.... *checks Luna scene again to see if it sounded like Tabitha may have been phoning it in/having an off day... Naw, she wasn't. She wouldn't slack off on her Luna voice on the pretense that Luna is just some goofy side character that doesn't matter much which many VAs are guilty of doing even for main/major characters. I guess maybe Luna's accent is not as exaggerated as much because she has had more time to adjust to modern Equestria now that we are in Season 5. Her voice may sound like it has different intonations because this lesson just wasn't as urgent as the other two, "face your fears" and "I was jealous once also". I'm still liking the CMC voices here. They are still cute. Also, the rotating camera animation of Apple Bloom near the end was fantastic. Does Flash animation sometimes use polygonal 3D models? I've seen this bumpy, roundish effect before, such as when Spike was singing in part 1 of "The Crystal Empire".

Instead of naming characters that are "underrated" in the sense of being "over-hated" or "under-utilized" in regards to potential not being used... well, my opinion is that just saying "Celestia is underutilized, or "oh noes has too much of a hatedom" , she needs more love"... is not very original or interesting. Sure, some of us would like a whole episode or two-parter where she gets lots of dialogue and ... I dunno, gets some backstory giving her Dumbledore-like nuance (Even tho the comics already did this), but the show is centered on having Twilight and young ponies learn lessons from people in her own age group. And mainly she is only underrated in the sense of apparently not being appreciated enough by some relative-ness, even tho she is usually one of the first ten characters that people think of if you ask them to name ten characters off the top of your head (Mane 6, Spike, and then usually the two royal sisters... but sometimes people will name the CMCs depending on the time of day). Anyway, I like this rendition of the word "underrated" as in, characters that don't get recognized much. Princess Celestia gets recognized a lot in the show. She's in the opening theme. Here's my underrated, under-recognized character: "Moooar ROOM for mah PUPEHHHHTS!" Claude, the puppeteer from Inspiration Manifestation. Apparently he didn't even have any physical description of what he looked like when he was first written, other than that the was a unicorn stallion. The design was made only after they heard the voice by Jay Brazeau.

Okay, okay I'll reply to this topic to make you feel better. I do acknowledge how you point out point out that the CMCs have a habit of trying out the same activities together at the same time. While they might not specifically be planning to get the same cutie marks at the same time, they kinda prefer to imagine that there isn't a big gap in between when they all get them. They sorta see themselves as equals in terms of potential. Having many ponies have the same special talent instead of no special talents would be a more mild version of the Equality system of cutie marks. Perhaps there would be only like a dozen or so different cutie marks, kind of like the factions in that Divergent novel. They would have special things about them, but a sizable portion of the world's ponies would have the same thing, so there'd be a sense of order. ... But Starlight Glimmer being a presence before she was revealed isn't a headcanon thing to me. I do understand that you posting this topic after Bloom and Gloom is pretty much a coincidence and that you were thinking of this before that episode. I personally did suspect that the and I don't feel as if it was explicitly proved not to be. I did not read the synopsis of Bloom and Gloom before watching.

I wonder how it would look then? If they went with a similar Disney-like art style as Paperman, then... well, simply imagine the Manhattan setting of Paperman. The focus of that story was on people, but I'm sure we can imagine pretty well what horses would look like in that setting, people sometimes ride horse carriages on the streets of Manhattan to this day, and probably also in the 1940s-1950s setting of Paperman. And ponies probably also exist in that universe. Perhaps a Paperman-hybrid techniqued MLP would resemble the unicorn and pegasus scenes from Fantasia, except with less donkey-like muzzle colorations (back in the 1940s donkeys or equines with donkey-like features were very popular and were considered to be cute) So... apparently the advantage of Paperman hybrid technology is.... that the animation can look more fluid or have more depth and roundness? That's kinda the takeaway I got from watching Paperman. If they attempted to make that film solely hand-drawn, all thw wind blowing and hair-flapping and rotating camera would've been toned down it the point where the film wouldn't be anything special animation-wise. Even the best, most hard-working frame-by-frame animators ever have limits when to comes to drawing hair blowing, since it's such a random, unpredictable series of movement, so a lot of times hand-drawn animators just have to settle for it looking as smooth as possible, but the end result is usually that stuff like hair moves generically in an obvious pattern. That's why animators need some sort of reference material for more precise stuff. In some older Disney movies, they rotoscoped over footage of people acting out the script. The people who did that stuff were actually really into the process and even wore costumes that closely resembled the animated characters. http://www.visualnews.com/2013/05/01/1950s-disney-live-models-combined-with-cartoon/ But those were human models/actors during a time when human Disney characters were somewhat realistically proportioned and the rotoscopers didn't have to adjust their tracing over the actual reference footage too much. The Paperman characters were very stylized and moved in a stylized manner and were set in a more dynamic setting, so the had to use CG puppets. And talking ponies are not the type of thing you can reenact with real animals or props. So... yeah, if they made a new incarnation of My Little Pony with the Paperman technique... the biggest improvement would be that characters wouldn't look like flat vector images in quiet or tense scenes where the ponies are just standing around. Intelligent physics engines (or just experienced CG model puppeteers) would allow the ponies to subtly shuffle or something instead of being stock still. And speaking of Manhattan, they could probably make settings like Manehatten look more real and like the buidlings are not just made up of flat Flash assets that you can pick up with a tweezers and throw away like playing cards or cardboard structures. I wonder how well mouth movements look with this technique. Not a lot of them in Paperman.

You want G5 to look like the 2012 animated short film Paperman? ...I'm looking forward to full-length animated features that use the technique used in Paperman (which is essentially rotoscoping/tracing over unpolished CG one frame at a time as far as I know.) But Paperman doesn't have any animal characters....So we'd hafta kinda guess at how animals would look like in that setting. How would the ponies look? In a similar style to that style presented in Paperman? I didn't see any people walking any dogs or anything in that.. (I'll watch it again). I honestly think that G5 is.... it should be a long time from now, possibly many years after G4 "ends". It definitely won't practically end from a business standpoint even when MLP:FiM eventually has a series finale (if our show does end up formally having an ending) MLP isn't Pokémon Or video game consoles. It wasn't a pop culture phenomenon designed to have new entries every few years in an inevitable cycle. If there is a "G5", it will be the first Gen that will be anticipated by anyone other than mostly adult women toy collectors (because little girls didn't really follow the previous gen changes being announced before the products officially "launched" and then go to comment on them on the Internet on My Little Pony Trading Post or whatever other overall MLP brand centric communities) As for the topic title.... It might as well be anything. Thw exact same art style, something different. I'd prefer something more realistically-proportioned equine. But that doesn't mean I need G5 now. I actually want other people to make shows about talking equines. Maybe that Bella Sara series of illustrated cards.

I made a thread about that: http://mlpforums.com/topic/126219-should-the-my-little-pony-show-just-continuously-timeskip-instead-of-reboot/ As little as I know about Doctor Who, I do know those facts. I also know that they replace the Doctor every few years. When compared to The Simpsons, MLP:FiM is a show with character development. This is pretty much not the case with the Simpson family. Their personalities don't really change like true character development, they just tweak and react according to their surroundings of Springfield and the Simpson-universe's satirical version of America and the world. So it doesn't matter if they constantly get retconned into being stupid and fail. The entire premise of FiM however is about doing the right thing, and Equestria doesn't really change much. Largely , I'm afraid of them suddenly introducing previously-non-established elements of the characters rather poorly, such as in "Simple Ways". The episode "Maud Pie" did a good job of introducing a new character or thing, that was connected to a major character. I actually do believe that Season 4 had some fantastic episodes also. But it also had "Simple Ways" and "Somepony to Watch Over Me". I'd rather they have more "pointless dumb adventure" episodes such as Castle-Mania and Power Ponies instead of more those types.

Another worse combination is that both will happen: We'll be subjected to a lot of crap episodes and only after we've loyally watched two full seasons of crap, we finally get rewarded with the Cutie Mark Crusaders getting their cutie marks, and then the show will continue with a barrage of crap, and then end without following up on any more interesting potential. And I don't mean fan-inspired potential, I refer to the show hinting at new ideas that the audience hasn't even considered, and then the whole show suddenly not following up on that in the form of not getting renewed for any new seasons ever.

I wonder if it is economically possible for Hasbro to end the show once they feel that it will lose it's integrity instead of running it into the ground. Has this ever been done with a property as easily commercialized as My Little Pony? Well, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic experienced a miracle in the form of it being really good, perhaps it can maintain it and the series can wrap up character development and story lore arcs for everyone and end the show on it's own terms? I was also wondering if we can avoid unmarked spoilers in here, including premises for upcoming episodes. For example, if the Cutie Mark Crusaders get their cutie marks, I'd like it to be an utter surprise that I have no idea about even based on the synopsis or title of any episode, something that I only see when I see it happen in the show as I am watching it, not something that gets announced or leaked or anything.

Under the control of lesser creators, the show could've started out being a roughly equal ensemble in the theme song and some of the two-parters/The Best Night Ever, but then ended up as a show like SpongeBob where there were essentially three or so characters where the main protagonist interacts with regularly (In SpongeBob's case, that would be his next-door neighbors, one of which is a co-worker, and boss), with other characters only appearing when they happen to cross paths with him (such as Sandy and Plankton) In MLPFiM, the other five ponies have roughly an equal chance of interacting with Twilight. It's not like some are particularly more close to her than others. FiM easily could've made the show a girl version of a dumb buddy antics show with Rarity being her Patrick(SpongeBob and Patrick are both childish, Twilight and Rarity could be BFFs because they are both unicorns) AJ, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Rainbow having various shades of pridefulness combined with straight-man voice of reason, or nuggets or wisdom, like Squidward and Sandy... ...with Rarity being directly involved if not the catalyst of the events that Twi gets involved in on a regular basis for at least half the episodes (just like how Patrick is alongside SpongeBob for many antics, and Patrick never interacts with other characters of his won accord without SpongeBob being involved) with Princess Celestia or some Ponyville authority character such as the Mayor appearing much more often, possibly moreso than a "Sandy" (Mr. Krabs) and a consistently reoccurring nuisance antagonist (like a young mare, non-filly version of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon).

Are pegasi who live on the ground inferior to those that live in the clouds? Are they weaker?

The obvious answer is that some ponies had multiple cutie marks, which made the philosophy of demarking all the more urgent. Or perhaps there was just a random twister that come through and swept away half the town or some volcano or some other random tragedy. To imply that some ponies survive the economic and lack of resource conditions and some don't is to imply that "some ponies are more equal then others", in that case, then technically even without their cutie marks some do have the "special talent" or surviving; it is just not displayed on their flanks. But really the obvious reason was the animators didn't think this through.

Maybe they are in the sense that they predict the weather, and if they don't like the way the weather is going to be, they change it. With human-like science, an Earth pony or even a non-pony with no magic can predict the weather. But perhaps there are no meteorological radar tools in Equestria right now and you have to be at a high elevation or in the clouds to detect naturally occurring weather, and pegasi just so happen to live that lifestyle by default. it could also be that their wings/feathers detect weather.

Even if this thread does turn into a "set of screenshots of the week" thread... this one still stands on it's own in the series in general. Not sure if I wanna add that to my rotating wallpapers, it might be too sad. Spike's little teardrop might be too much for me.

It happens in the first place so that all ponies can know what their special talent is just by looking at their flanks. I think in the days of caveponies, cutie marks were less hobby-based and identified the most fertile or powerful or protective mates and served an evolutionary purpose. I don't think that any entity voluntarily created the concept of cutie marks. At least, pony society did not all agree on it. I wouldn't be surprised if a sizable portion of ponies cover up or disguise their cutie marks because of fear of being judged by them. But I think the biological reason it happens is was originally to attract mates, you know, for mating. The fur bristle follicles change color in that area. it has been established in the show with Snips and Snails that cutie marks are not underneath their coat bristles, but entirely made out of their hair bristles.

As long as my opening post was, and how excited I may have sounded, what you just posted is still my preference for the ultimate fate of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to be a negative nelly and say "that's not realistic", but I just cannot find any example of anything as commercialized and toy/cartoon based having a dignified ending. If FiM does have a formal series finale on it's own terms while it is still a good show, it will be an unprecedented event in the history of the "family-friendly television" industry. What I was suggesting is the only halfway okayish (but still very much a gamble) alternative to running the show into the ground in the traditional manner (altho some people would define what I suggested as simply another form of running the show into the ground). I would still much rather prefer that the show end when they run out of ideas for the existing characters. I don't know how they are gonna even have enough ideas to keep the Mane 6 afloat for a (literally confirmed on the Hasbro press release site) sixth season, especially if it is a 26-episode season (most likely), but the writers of this show are more talented than us. Any television series with over 100 episodes (or even less, more like 65) can earn money through syndication, home media sales, and merchandise even if there are no new episodes being made. Little kids who weren't even conceived or were too young to even watch MLP or weren't exposed to it until later don't require new episodes after enough have been made. Releasing crappy new episodes does not reel in little kids, and even if it did, syndicating and promoting old episodes does just as good a job for a lot less money. For the grownups, releasing crap episodes damages a reputation severely enough that people won't bother do dive in if they hear through an overwhelming consensus of pop-culture osmosis that their hearts are pretty much guaranteed to be crushed when the show takes a nosedive, especially considering that not all shows have a solid cut-off point (such as the season finale of a certain season or a Movie) and adults hate hopscotching around episodes they hear are crap when they could be good to them. I can understand why it was a good business decision to keep making SpongeBob episodes. The earlier episodes were not as merchandise-driven (to such a strong degree that in a scene where the live-action Patchy the Pirate gets rid of all his SpongeBob merchandise "SpongeBob betrayed us!", none of his stuff is real merchandise that you can actually buy. SpongeBob's tie is a bowtie, and his eyes are more off-model and an old-school larger pupils.) ... and little kids don't get the humor of Rock Bottom, Employee of the Month, Band Geeks, Shanghaied, and Texas. You might think that "well little kids will watch anything as long as it is colorful and you park them in front of they TV" but remember that they have so many more options and they will gravitate and ask mom and dad for stuff they can relate to. As backwards as it seems to us, they can relate to New SpongeBob more than Old SpongeBob. When Krusty Krab Training Video comes on, they don't desire Krabby Patty themed toys, they flip the channel to Ninjago or Ninja Turtles or whip out their kiddie tablets to play Candy Crush. This is a non-issue with My Little Pony because Season 1 is every bit as relatable to little girls and little kids if not moreso than what's happening now. Of course, since little girls also like Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, and Toy Story (with equal intensity as little boys) which are similarly adventurous as the adventure themed MLP episodes, S4 did not alienate them in the slightest. I don't even know if it is possible to alienate little girls away from MLP, even if it was rated TV-PG and starred Derpy being in an offensive manner and literally being named Derpy. The only thing stopping them would be their parents, and that's if their parents notice it or are even bothered.