Big Jim's Q and A on Finale and more

[Will Guide 21,360]

As shown on Equestria daily, there's a Q&A Twitter feed between Jim Miller and a fan. Which can be seen in the link below

There will be spoilers! (Can a admin or someone make sure a big Spoiler tag can be seen next to the title on Topic list?)

https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/10/big-jims-q-on-friendship-is-magic.html?m=1

For those who read through it, what did you think of his responses?

[BastementSparkle 20,326]

There's a lot of "We wanted to leave it open for fans to fill in the blanks here", which is something I personally appreciate, but it really does make me wonder why they even did the time skip at all then? By default the time skip is already erasing a lot of possibilities for how things turned out and pretty much giving us one specific canon interpretation of the future. If they really cared about leaving things open the best thing to do would be to not have a time skip at all. As is, I found the whole episode was kind of annoying with cramming answers I didn't want down my throat and killing off a lot of potential speculation. For someone who loves more open endings, this episode was kind of horrible at that.

[ShootingStar159 2,156]

All of the investment, passion, and interest of people doing a job, not creating a world. Even if they do love the job, even if they don’t mean to be uninvested...

The amount of “we didn’t plan it,” “It’s not something we thought about,” and “we wanted to leave it to the audience” in the answers here is truly disheartening.

Several months back, I posted about an interview I saw from the production crew of another show (Stargate SG-1), where the show writers and directors said that no matter what, there was no way they would be as invested in the show as the fans. They may have written and directed the episodes, but they’re so busy coming up with the next story, it’s impossible for them to dedicate themselves as fully to the show as the fans. This knowledge helped me see the show, and all tv shows in a different light.

Jim’s answers and attitude isn’t that surprising. It really is just a fact of working in the business, at the end of the day, it is just a job. But I do still think they could have tried a lot harder with the final season than what we got here. They could have given us more than they did, and expecting us to fill in the answers for them is lazy beyond words.

[BastementSparkle 20,326]

2 minutes ago, ShootingStar159 said:

All of the investment, passion, and interest of people doing a job, not creating a world. Even if they do love the job, even if they don’t mean to be uninvested...

The amount of “we didn’t plan it,” “It’s not something we thought about,” and “we wanted to leave it to the audience” in the answers here is truly disheartening.

Several months back, I posted about an interview I saw from the production crew of another show (Stargate SG-1), where the show writers and directors said that no matter what, there was no way they would be as invested in the show as the fans. They may have written and directed the episodes, but they’re so busy coming up with the next story, it’s impossible for them to dedicate themselves as fully to the show as the fans. This knowledge helped me see the show, and all tv shows in a different light.

Jim’s answers and attitude isn’t that surprising. It really is just a fact of working in the business, at the end of the day, it is just a job. But I do still think they could have tried a lot harder with the final season than what we got here. They could have given us more than they did, and expecting us to fill in the answers for them is lazy beyond words.

It's interesting I keep running into the mindset of "We wanted to leave it to the audience" as something supposedly lazy, because it's actually something I wish they did more of. One of my main issues with the finale is that it spent so much time giving answers I didn't want and actually didn't leave things nearly open enough for my liking. It seems like the writers were stuck in-between two mindsets here, those who want answers to as much as possible and those who would actually like more open-endedness, and they tried to create a finale that was kind in the middle.

[ShootingStar159 2,156]

2 minutes ago, BastementSparkle said:

It's interesting I keep running into the mindset of "We wanted to leave it to the audience" as something supposedly lazy, because it's actually something I wish they did more of. One of my main issues with the finale is that it spent so much time giving answers I didn't want and actually didn't leave things nearly open enough for my liking. It seems like the writers were stuck in-between two mindsets here, those who want answers to as much as possible and those who would actually like more open-endedness, and they tried to create a finale that was kind in the middle.

Authorial interaction with the audience isn’t inherently lazy. Sometimes authors can leave something a mystery to invite discourse or make the audience think.

Leaving out the backstory and any sort of realistic motivations for one of your primary villains doesn’t count. Many of these “leave them to the audience” decisions aren’t the result of making us think or discuss possibilities, it’s because they didn’t bother to even consider the ideas themselves.

[BastementSparkle 20,326]

1 minute ago, ShootingStar159 said:

Authorial interaction with the audience isn’t inherently lazy. Sometimes authors can leave something a mystery to invite discourse or make the audience think.

Leaving out the backstory and any sort of realistic motivations for one of your primary villains doesn’t count. Many of these “leave them to the audience” decisions aren’t the result of making us think or discuss possibilities, it’s because they didn’t bother to even consider the ideas themselves.

That's fair, then. I do think it's odd that there's some major ideas for the series they never really discussed or thought about, even if they didn't show up in show I'd figure they'd at least discuss the possibilities.

[Will Guide 21,360]

19 minutes ago, BastementSparkle said:

 

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There's a lot of "We wanted to leave it open for fans to fill in the blanks here", which is something I personally appreciate, but it really does make me wonder why they even did the time skip at all then? By default the time skip is already erasing a lot of possibilities for how things turned out and pretty much giving us one specific canon interpretation of the future. If they really cared about leaving things open the best thing to do would be to not have a time skip at all. As is, I found the whole episode was kind of annoying with cramming answers I didn't want down my throat and killing off a lot of potential speculation. For someone who loves more open endings, this episode was kind of horrible at that.

 

You can simply ignore the future segments and treat it as a "What if it happened like this" scenario. It's just one possibility. Being a believer that every possible past present and future exists in some way, I like to keep my mind open

[BastementSparkle 20,326]

1 minute ago, Wolf Guide said:

You can simply ignore the future segments and treat it as a "What if it happened like this" scenario. It's just one possibility. Being a believer that every possible past present and future exists in some way, I like to keep my mind open

Very much what I am trying to do, but my brain likes to be a stickler for canon, so it's a little hard to get used to thinking of something that way.

[Ganondorf8 11,303]

Many of the answers Big Jim provided were ones I expected, and yet I appreciate them for what they are, aside from one which I will get to shortly. The fact that they left things up to fan's interpretations and doing so intentionally allows for some interesting discussion to be had. But, it can be dangerous as it could potentially lead into conflict where some people's opinions will clash with others.

The one thing I have to take issue with is the time problem. Time constraints have been the bane of MLP and Equestria Girls from the very beginning, and even now at the very end of it all, it remained a consistent problem. I still believe that 'The Ending of the End' would've benefitted from being three parts and either have 'The Last Problem' be two parts or an extended episode so as to not leave anything significant out. Even then, would that have been enough?

2 hours ago, Wolf Guide said:

You can simply ignore the future segments and treat it as a "What if it happened like this" scenario. It's just one possibility. Being a believer that every possible past present and future exists in some way, I like to keep my mind open

I think of the epilogue as a what-if scenario myself and this is especially true with season ten being in comic form. Whatever happens in the comics could end up retconning some events in the future or even remove them entirely.

[Goat-kun 2,527]

So this is how it feels to be unintentionally validated. Congratulations Jimmy Boy, you've thrown your supporters to the goats and gave us your blessing. Not that it matters.

[Rushing cash 836]

So cozy might not be a filly? Anyway, some interesting facts he stated.