Rant about Friendship School :P

[dead account 2,703]

Well explained and well written, @TomDaBombMLP.
I still can't come over the fact that Starlight literally and completely took over Twilight's place there. Starlight stays in Ponyville, will take care of the Twilight's castle and also lead her school. She can always meet the other mane 6 in her freetime. Imagine - really - imagine there was a season 10 afterwards (without the time skip at the end), this is what it would be like. Twilight is gone, Starlight replaced her and they are the new mane 6. It is canon if you think about it, it is their new life from this point onward. Super weird.
I really enjoyed all the episodes, always will. But some small changes would have made a big difference, it could have easily been so good and there are so many missed opportunities too.

The school of friendship is a bad idea in any case. Because...if they make Twilight the headmaster (naturally), it is obvious that her 5 friends must be part of it as well. Especially from a company's perspective. So if you invent a school with Twilight as the headmaster, there is no way around it.

I'm glad that the last two seasons exist, I enjoyed them immensely. Without all this in mind, I still enjoyed the new characters, the humor and songs - everything. I never hated it. Again, this is just from logical point of view. It definitely could have been better and it would have been easy. Everything was already there. I don't know what was going on at Hasbro, but I genuinely think that the original crew did have other plans for the last few seasons.

1 hour ago, TomDaBombMLP said:

I remember even on my first ever watchthrough, I naively thought the School was a good idea but even then, I didn’t find the Students interesting. They were so dull, so lifeless and just plain uninteresting. Bit like where G5’s going! 

That's a good comparison. Hasbro's change already started here. I also falsely assumed that Pony Life was just a small thing for inbetween, not a serious addition. But by Celestia, it was! Everything that came afterwards proves it. This always was their actual, serious, new direction ever since. Hasbro's greatness with FiM was really just a one time thing, it's not what they typically do, sadly.

The way you feel about the student 6 is what I feel towards G5 as a whole (without the hate ). I don't like a single character here, they are all boring and uninteresting. MLP lost it's appeal for me since Pony Life, I'm not able to relate to it anymore at all.

1 hour ago, TomDaBombMLP said:

and they sometimes even dumb the Mane Six down to make the Students look good! 

True. They act sometimes like they did in season 1, which makes no sense at all. They already made those experiences, learned from them. Everything was fine in the other seasons, so why do they act completely different all of a sudden? You already said it: It's because of the student 6. The school.

[StitchandMLPlover 930]

As someone who briefly taught autistic adults and kids in my field I can tell you the "social skills" classes they are subjected to are nothing but artificial scripts and the instructor doesn't teach them the deeper meanings behind social behavior. I wish people who had autism were exposed to Twilight's friendship school instead because I think Twilight's school teaches that friendship applies to every single aspect of life, school, fashion, cooking, etc instead of "act like an able bodied non autistic person because I told you to".  

[Megas 27,070]

When I first heard of the Friendship School, I assumed it was going to be created by the Pillars as a way to pass their wisdom, history and lessons to a new generation, and really that would have made a ton more sense

1 hour ago, Sven Seelenherz said:

I also falsely assumed that Pony Life was just a small thing for inbetween

That's because it was, both the show's staff and Hasbro didn't exactly try hiding it

 

 

[Sparklefan1234 161,904]

I thought the School of Friendship would be cool...Until we met the boring students (IMO) and they barely did anything with the concept. 

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

I never had an issue with the Student 6 but I did find it to be odd that the rest of the Mane 6 were forced to become teachers/councilors and work their day jobs, too. Poor things must've been so exhausted, especially AppleJack. I also found it odd that there was so much emphasis on creatures going to the school, as if they couldn't make friends on their own. I get the magical aspect of the friendship but I think if the school had more time to develop, it would've had more depth to it, as well as the Student 6.

[Will Guide 21,325]

On 2018-11-22 at 3:56 PM, Literatel said:

And you disappoint me for not accepting that people have their own opinions. I didn't mean to say that the Friendship School is a terrible idea; I was just stating that the concept makes no sense to me and that I don't like it. Just because I say I don't like something doesn't mean it's a bad thing; we're not a bunch of yes people, we don't have to like everything.

Don't you go putting words in my mouth that I never actually said!

I never said I don't accept their opinions, but I wish people would be more open-minded and accept the fact that just because they don't like the idea doesn't mean "a terrible concept like the school" can't be enjoyed by people like me

EDIT: I just realized I already responded to this quote a long time ago.

My Point still stands I wish people would be more open-minded and accept the fact that just because they don't like something doesn't mean there's not other people out there who do like the idea

[AppleButt 8,669]

As more time goes by I dislike it more and more. Perhaps it’s because I was one of the show worshippers who for awhile thought the show could do no wrong, and  it’s the reason that for the first time in the entire show that I was proved wrong, and legitimately hated an episode that I’ll never watch again.  (On more than one episode).  They sacrificed character development to prop up the stupid students that came along with it, and pushed aside The Mane Six who were the sole reason I became obsessed with show in the first place.   Like Non-Compete Clause.  I don’t know who the f*** those two ponies were in that episode, but it wasn’t Rainbow Dash or Applejack.  


That’s all I have to say.

[Ring Team 119]

Didn't expect this topic to go back, but I could share my thoughts here.

I'll start saying that it's a great idea but poorly executed. I love the idea of Twilight being a teacher. Considering how she is, what she loves and what her hobbies are, you'd expect her to be a teacher at one point. However, I think the execution was very half-assed. There are some of the changes I'd like to make in order to nail it:

-The friendship school should be built and prepared for season 4, not season 8. By the time the show was almost finished, you wouldn't explore enough the possibilities.
-Twilight speaks to Celestia that she prefers to be a teacher rather than a princess. Celestia understands her concern and Twilight starts working on a new school.
-Twilight should be the ONLY teacher out of the seven main characters, since some of the main cast were not written to be teachers, such as Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and especially Starlight Glimmer. That way you would avoid episodes such as Non-compete Clause, A matter of principals, Student Counsel and A horse shoe-in.
-You should not write an antagonist who wants to cancel Twilight's school out of spite. The main conflict has to be Twilight's struggles to make it work, since she genuinely cares about knowledge and education.
-While the Mane 6 episodes will still have adventure and character driven episodes, Twilight’s episodes will be about meeting all these students, how to deal with a complicated bully, how to make one average student to be better and passionate in getting better everytime, how she would deal with a subject that’s complicated for her, how Twilight gets stressed with her work, etc. There are so many possibilities with this idea.

I think this attempt was half made in season 8 because many fans are afraid of new ideas in the show. New conflicts, new worlds, new challenges, etc. So they kinda do a new idea but they don’t embrace it enough, which is a pity. Some of my favourite MLP episodes are based on completely embraced new ideas for the show.

As a result, School Raze and School Daze aren’t either interesting enough or good enough. But I think the school of friendship could have been great if done properly.

Long story short: I don't like the execution, but I don't hate it and I think there was potential.

Besides, it could have been worse. It could have been Starlight manipulating other ponies once again.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Ring Team