Stellafera

I'm really looking forward to the Discord/Spike/Big McIntosh episode.

Me too, since it was sort of what I was hoping for from the Season 5 premiere.  :-P

*Our Town finishes*

*cut to Discord butting in on Spike + Big McIntosh watching sports*

Not sure if I'm entirely sold on Sunset Glimmer becoming a main cast member. She's growing on me but, her personality traits seem less veritable than the Mane 6. Or maybe that's just a lack of creativity speaking. 

Rarity spotlights are usually the best, but it has been very Rarity heavy thus far.  However, I say that's technically not possible to have too much Rarity; it's only possible to have too little of everypony else.

This, basically. (Although I'd counter that AJ usually has the most consistently good appearances). 

To me, the worst was "The Last Roundup". Behind the Derpy controversy, Applejack's justifications with not telling her friends about her situation is rather a silly thing to get all work up for especially if her friends lives are at stake during the chase. Pinkie Pie and Rarity also being abandoned by Rainbow Dash hasn't really appealed either.

I felt like her justification was great. It was the first really cutting exploration into AJ's flaws aside from the fairly shallow stuff like "stubborn" and "overcompetitive" that you'd expect from the character archetype. "Overreaching sense of personal responsibility" is a much more interesting trait and got me to start liking AJ as a character. Now she's my favorite, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for the episode even if most of it was meh.

To be fair, when WAS Rainbow Dash appealing in Season 2 outside of maybe like 2 episodes?

 

I mean I like Dash but that season in general was just bad for her.

I would say that for Season 4 Dash, who was just out-of-character for most of her episodes. Her obnoxiousness seemed pretty in character for Season 2 at that point in the show. 

I doubt anyone any rational person would take issue with an older Twilight wearing glasses in a subsequent series.  We know that they exist in Equestria for sure, not only does Mayor Mare wear them but also Rarity, usually for close up work, so I'd assume she's a bit long-sighted.

Oh, I'd like this! G5 as a sort of Batman Beyond scenario with the Mane 6 in a old mentor role would be wonderful and a perfect way to mix the current universe with a new cast. Maybe even move the setting to a more magitech status. 

Old Rainbow Dash: "I can still pull of a sonic rainboom or two in my old age."

Young Flyer: "?"

Old Rainbow Dash: "Eeeven if my back really hurts while doing it.   " 

I mostly use the forums for PMing because I haven't caught up on the show

but

the Rarity beatific smile emote and the ninja Applejack emote have been SORELY missed in my repertoire

I wouldn't mind bringing back the background pony joke as a justification for ninja AJ 

I'm sorry, Moon Dancer. I've faced magical creatures, the end of Equestria, all sorts of things. But seeing how my actions affected you, that was one of the worst feelings I've ever had. - Twilight Sparkle, Amending Fences 

One of the best Twilight episodes ever. Other people cite Moon Dancer's breakdown, but Twilight's response was what got me.

Don't you get it? There's every color of ribbon down there. Every color... but... blue. - Applejack, The Last Roundup

This one is more of an "in context" quote, but Applejack being so devastated by the idea that she failed everyone, even in some small way, broke my heart.

Nope, I'm still awesome. They're wrong. But... then... why am I all alone? I hate being all alone. - Rainbow Dash, Mysterious Mare Do Well

It's a good RD episode, Mane 6 were jerks but gosh dang it it's a good RD episode

It's okay. You were just trying to help. It's just too bad I'm too dumb to learn anything. - Rainbow Dash, Testing Testing 123

another good RD episode

2.3? 2.3?! That has to be some kind of mistake! I worked so hard! - Fluttershy, Hurricane Fluttershy

A context based one; you're expecting Fluttershy's effort to translate into serious improvement, but instead it realistically has her only make modest gains. Fluttershy's reaction is sad and accurate. 

I can't fly. I just... can't. - Scootaloo, Flight to the Finish

Speaking of flying...

I get sad when characters who strive for goals don't reach them or especially can't reach them. I think it's because I'm a pretty ambitious person. 

I like RD's voice because I feel like it's a good balance between being distinctive but also sounding somewhat like a voice you could hear from a real person, and I love the voice crack! Rarity and Applejack have the same thing going on thanks to their smooth accents.

Twilight is good, of course, but somewhat par-for-the-course as far as Tara Strong voices go. Not as distinctive as say, Tara's role in Teen Titans.

Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie fit the characters excellently, but they're a bit exaggerated sometimes. Pinkie Pie's voice when excited in particular grates on my father, who doesn't have the frame of reference with the characterization to brush it aside. 

Appaloosa's Most Wanted had the cutie mark crusaders reveal that it's totally fine if your only talent in life is having other people laugh at you... wait, what? Just a depressing episode to me.
 
But I enjoyed this season overall. I'm even of the somewhat unpopular opinion that What About Discord was a great episode with a solid, solid moral (only problem I had was Twilight being a little too Season 2). 
 
There's only one other episode that I really detested. Some were mediocre or had lots of problems with execution of a good concept like Castle Sweet Castle or Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep, but there was only one other episode that truly annoyed me. 
 
One...
 
terrible...
 
episode...
 

I didn't really need another Rainbow Falls but thanks for asking Ms. Lewis and Songco

What a terrible misuse of a great pun. The opening was... fine even though Fluttershy's book club seems faintly out of character, but once we got to the bland, bland plot there was no going back. The Hooffields are so pissed that they... are giving the McColts free food by way of cannon launch? It might be unintentional but they're actually helping them! And where the heck are they getting this food? They must not exactly be struggling. And the McColts are on the defense the entire time! What the heck kind of blood feud is this? 

The trojan cake also came across as uncreative.

Okay, so Twilight's gonna be in the wrong, so how does Fluttershy show that a more intuitive, empathetic approach could win out over Twilight's by-the-book methods? 

...

She doesn't. She does nothing. She does nothing of value. The entire plot is solved because Fluttershy can speak with animals. Twilight was fricking right; the problem was INSTANTLY solved by figuring out the source of the dispute! Did anybody even learn anything? Why is Twilight's cutie mark flashing? At least Rainbow Dash's friendship influenced Gilda to turn a new leaf! Twilight didn't do anything! 

Oh, and this feud is solved now because... it hurt the animals? Why does anybody care about the dang animals! What about the omnipresent food that they keep wasting or the McColts' cutoff from trade? No, everyone sees the light now because

I wished I just watched this clip and wasted less time

I just watched the back half of this season with DashForever with no fandom reactions influencing my view, so needless to say I was quite taken aback when people disliked What About Discord more than The Hooffields and the McColts. Not to say that that's an invalid viewpoint, just that it's one that never struck me when I was watching the two.

To me, even if I were against What About Discord's characterization, it at least has a moral internally consistent with itself. My family's always been full of inside jokes and stuff, so to me, the Mane 5 + Discord are just having some fun with Twilight. Discord's the only one who really pushed it, which makes sense for his character. The others felt kinda bad about how it annoyed Twilight and even played along to try to show the scene of the joke to her despite thinking it was kinda ridiculous.

Hooffields and the McColts had a very obvious and cliche moral that it seemed to be building up to, but it delivered it in a really strange and to me incomprehensible way anyhow. That's why it's definitely my least favorite of the season. 

This one is pretty much spot on, but I still think she's also afraid of everything else and not just socialize.

This would be consistent with the fact that she also tends to be overly mothering and condescending at times (see; Stare Master, Breezies). She doesn't like having to say no, aka facing the problems. 

Making my first few posts on this forum in months. Finally caught up with Season 5! 

They didn't. They stated during the song that their journey together only started.

I'd add to this that since they got their cutie marks from helping others find their special talents, that'll probably be where future CMC stories will be headed. They're basically the cutie mark experts of Equestria now, which means that there's still plenty of coming-of-age stories that you can tell; it's their specialty! 

Really like your analysis, especially summarizing Fluttershy and Twilight. Rarity's a hard one to pin down, but that feels right.

I would say AJ's fear is more not living up to her responsibilities. Very similar to Twilight's, as you said, but Twilight's is more external (expectations) vs Applejack's internal (sense of responsibility). She has a lot of pride wrapped around her perception of herself as "responsible", though, so she can be rather stubborn in that way.

A lot of the good S1 episodes are nice ways to realize how far the characters have come. AJ never had to relearn Applebuck Season and Stare Master was a nice look at a different side of Fluttershy (the patronizing side shown later in Breezies). Suited For Success is classic, of course, and The Ticket Master is much funnier than you might remember it as. 

I, for one, really liked it.  Sure, Rainbow's behavior was pretty over-the-top, but I thought it was fine because it was in line with her character, and more specifically, because she hadn't had a good lesson in humility yet.  And after this episode, she never went that overboard again.  She remained Rainbow, but within reason.  She didn't need to rel-earn the lesson over and over, so I thought it worked fine.

Yeah, most of the time since then she's only been really arrogant as a joke. Sort of like how Applejack learnt in Applebuck Season that she can rely on her friends and still frequently references that moral and never really has problems asking for help afterwards. 

Are all you Celestia haters happy now? ಥ_ಥ You got what you wanted because you love your Precious Luna so much...Now they've made Celestia a jerk...And now my waifu has been ruined...T_T

I don't see Celestia as a jerk so much as being a childish sunbutt, which is pretty much what I expected and cherish about her, so I don't mind.

Well...

Let's just say I think a lot of people's favorite shippings (including mine) just DID become canon this Saturday morning.

I thought the last act really tied everything together in a meaningful way. I enjoy the fanservice and everything, but the themes really become clear during Mayor Mare's speech. I think that made this episode truly something special.

I loved that too. It really unified and justified the whole "focus on everyone doing everything" storytelling approach to the episode, as well as sort of connect to the fandom even there as a way of remarking upon what brought people to the show and how amazing it is that these characters came to life with the fans' imaginations. Just great.

What an AMAZING episode. Everyone was characterized just as the fandom would have wanted... and more (BON. BON)! They polished the ponies without turning them into something people would've hated as well as having a really fun "everything falls together" plot with a surprisingly touching ending.

So glad I avoided spoilers, every turn was a surprise!

Probably "dude" more often due to bro kinda being weird as a direct form of address to girls. I pretty much alternate between informal means of address, though ("Hey peeps" "sup bros" "dude what").

Gonna go with Rarity myself as well as definitely putting her as having the most normal childhood. Twilight liked learning from Celestia, but the loneliness and misanthropy probably didn't do her favors, you know? RD was bullied as a kid and if Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 and the "Got kicked out of any flight schools lately?" line from Sonic Rainboom are any indication, probably had a really tough time of things in school academically too.

Rarity has her personality/ambition clash with her parents and sister, but other than that she was probably a pretty OK, socially well adjusted filly.

To damn this episode with faint praise, I liked Applejack's face when everyone ignored her winning a trophy. That was funny. Also Sweetie Belle's magic developed.

Otherwise, I was just not a fan at all. 

Applejack kept handing the CMC off to the clearly unreliable Braeburn because it was more convenient to the plot to have them be able to escape easily, but this undermined any sort of impression of concern for their safety. WELL UNTIL THE END WHEN SHE PUNISHED THEM, I GUESS. BECAUSE SHE CARED THEN. Fluttershy put up more of a defense against them in Stare Master for a sleep over than Braeburn did with a criminal on the loose. OKAY.

Sweetie Belle is the only one concerned about wandering into this forest, with, again, a criminal on the loose. Fine, whatever, they tend to be dumb like this. Sweetie's concern never really went anywhere since after a little talk with Troubleshoes they now totally trusted him and so that was just kind of unnecessary to the plot I guess okay.

As for Troubleshoes...

That was pretty much my impression. The difference is that the other rodeo clowns can go home and have a nice normal day to themselves, whereas Troubleshoes' life is a joke that only occasionally will be on stage. Nice to make the best out of a bad situation, but it's actually a pretty awful cutie mark. 

Cutie marks are supposed to be for when you figure out your special talent rather than just perform it, aren't they? Otherwise the CMC would've gotten theirs already back in Show Stoppers, wouldn't they? I kind of brushed the continuity issues for Tanks for the Memories aside, admittedly, but I liked that episode as a whole and the time confusion wasn't central to the moral of the episode (accepting loss, etc.) so it didn't bother me as much. 

Overall, it just felt like it wasn't a very cohesive and tight episode. I think the outlaw angle was there in order to show that life was hard for Troubleshoes and to make it so that he would have difficulty figuring out his true talent, but the town's side of it wasn't incorporated all that well into the moral, you know? It was more of a "don't judge people, for, um, property damage, because you didn't check to see if it was accidental".

And that doesn't have much to do with the struggle of your skills not matching up to your dreams and limiting yourself.

10/10

Great colors, sharp, good composition...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7S_h5xUsjQ

It's about time, isn't it?

Though Twilight and Spike might not be my favorite characters, they do have a wonderfully rich series of interactions that always seem to intensify an episode. So here's a bit of a tribute. 

Another thing I would like to point out here is, they finally got to Rainbow Dash in the personal breakdown department. That is interesting to see. We've seen all the others so far, but she has been about the only one who hasn't really broken down until now.

I'd kinda consider her behavior in Mare Do Well in this category-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDAxhTGkvc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33kw_UxPZfE

I will ALWAYS shoehorn this reference in

-but it's sort of like Lesson Zero vs It's About Time. It's About Time had crazy Twilight, but it wasn't, like, her crazy episode.