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Aspects of Friendship is Magic that have gotten better over time?


TheAnimationFanatic

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(edited)
7 hours ago, Dark Qiviut said:

Indeed. In Season 1, she was one of the breakout characters, but from Luna Eclipsed until Rainbow Falls or Filli Vanilli, she was defined only by her shyness, oftentimes to her own detriment. Sure, you had the HF, Keep Calm, and Bats, but they weren’t always helpful to her. Season 5 was really the first since S1 to show actual progression and stick to it, improving her rep.

 

Which gave way to "Flutter Brutter", "Discordant Harmony", and "A Health of Information". All of which are some of her strongest outings in the series to date.

Edited by TheAnimationFanatic
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"Flutter Brutter" was brought down immensely by Zephyr Breeze's overly obnoxious behaviour, but admittedly the scenes focusing more on Fluttershy's increased firmness (despite the sloppiness of the surrounding episode, I find Zephyr's behaviour as a concept to be interesting as an implied consequence of Fluttershy's lack of assertiveness as an elder sibling, although the episode itself never really seems to be aware of or acknowledge this) were its main redeeming factors.

I also doubt that "Flutter Brutter" was the first Fluttershy episode to not focus on her timidity. "Keep Calm and Flutter On' and "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies" were technically the first of that specific breed of Fluttershy narrative (although "Keep Calm" portrayed her as uncharacteristically manipulative whilst "Breezies" was a decent character showcase clogged by a ton of extraneously saccharine material which felt below the show's usual target audience and tone). 

Edited by Them's Seeing Ponies
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That's fine by me. I simply felt that the episode overemphasized him and relied too greatly on the audience finding him comical to give some of the elements of the episode I found to be more solid breathing room (like Fluttershy's growth, which the episode actually portrays mostly fine). His interactions with Dash also left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable, which is not exactly the kind of emotion I tend to positively associate with a show of FiM's tonal qualities. 

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On 1/30/2019 at 2:33 PM, Key Sharkz said:

I’m actually indifferent toward gross out humor myself. However, I can see why others don’t like it.

Same. Gross-out humor is not inherently bad, there is an artistic purpose of the grotesque. It's the timing and ingenuity of a joke that makes or breaks it, not the subject matter. 

8 hours ago, TheAnimationFanatic said:

Speak for yourself. I found Zephyr to be hilariously pathetic.

I know, Zephyr is hilarious. Even if you don't find him funny, his character is an impressively deep and dark take on the decline of the moral integrity of the average college student, and being able to work something like that into a pony show takes talent you have to appreciate.  

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  • 4 weeks later...

@This Whomps @Dark Qiviut @Sparklefan1234 @Tacodidra

Bump because I just thought of a few more: The dialogue in the later seasons has greatly evolved from earlier ones. 

Friendship is Magic has always had clever dialogue, but beginning with Season 4, it massively improved. Dialogue about morals were handled with more nuance and subtlety. Humor became sharper and wittier. The characters were able to have engaging, introspective, and somewhat thought provoking conversations. Something we didn't have earlier on. 

 

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I respectfully disagree that the show's comedy has gotten better. S4's comedy is pretty thin on the ground to me (many of its episodes are great, but hardly any are primarily comic in tone save for a handful of outliers such as Maud's debut episode), S5 admittedly has Larson's signature style in the first half, but a decidedly more somber tone in its second half, S6's comedy is relatively bareboned sardonic material (save for the male characters for some reason, who were written surprisingly well), the Lady Writers' comedy is arguably the most hit-and-miss style of any of the FiM story editors' from my perspective (some of it can be witty, but I find much of it to be somewhat lame and out-of-place, particularly considering the over-the-top execution of a fair percentage of it) and S8's is good but not great. The later seasons are distinctly more dialogue-driven than the Faust seasons, and you certainly have a valid point regarding the show's progression from the clunky wording of the Celestia letters (although the ending of The Cutie Mark Chronicles is an excellent lampshading of this), which is one aspect of the series that the later seasons have almost definitely managed to improve upon, but I somehow appreciate the show's earlier ability to say a lot in a little (Hurricane Fluttershy and Lesson Zero are both masters of this effect) and the narrative shortcomings of many of the later episodes to bear otherwise introspective dialogue merely reminds me that I could be watching another show which uses more ambitious dialogue more comfortably. The ratio isn't entirely miss though - a number of the later seasons' dialogue-driven scenes do work effectively, it's simply not something I would refer to as a superior quality to the earlier seasons. 

And what's to say that the series lacked any introspective conversations earlier in its run? The later (S4-8) seasons do utilize conversations of the emotional type more by design (as I've stated before, owing to their more serious tone) and tend to go out of their way to inform the audience of this more than the Faust seasons did, but I hold to the belief that introspective dialogue isn't a conformist entity, and the character chemistry in episodes like Sisterhooves Social (which conveys the relationship between Rarity and Sweetie Belle without a single heavy conversational scene) and Hurricane Fluttershy (the Dash/Fluttershy scene in the cottage is the best example) confirms my suspicions. Even more comedic outings such as Party of One  (one of the most emblematic episodes of the earlier seasons) manage to convey their focal characters' psyche effectively without using elongated dialogue scenes. If the later seasons' dialogue works better for you, that's fine by me, and I understand your rationale, but otherwise I think we should (yet again) agree to disagree.

Alternatively, I believe that the show actually has utilized its male cast to a more effective extent in the later seasons (which Bigbertha already brought up), but I'm unsure as to whether the initial gender imbalance in the cast was even the fault of S1-2 to begin with (I sense Hasbro's involvement here), which would render this somewhat nebulous, although episodes such as Dungeons and Discords are worth commending for this aspect nonetheless. 

Edited by Them's Seeing Ponies
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@Them's Seeing Ponies To each his own.

Can we at least agree that Seasons 4-8 have done better at humanizing the members of the royal family, specifically Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.

Weather it be their brief conversation in "Slice of Life", "A Royal Problem", and "Horse Play", they became much more layered characters. Not that they were ever bland or uninteresting to begin with.

 

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