@toxicitzi  
I’d say it’s fairly concluded, yes… but not “concluded” in the positive manner, more of a “we agree life sucks and then we die”-sort of conclusion.
 
Such is concluded with ritualistic drinking of tea.
 

 
… I hate tea.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
Unless you’re also taking into account The Journal of the Two Sisters, which, personally, I thought was pretty good but not very deep or nuanced.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
I’d be interested in reading your reasoning behind that conclusion, considering Celestia had a role in only 4 of those episodes, and her role in 3 of them was so minor they could basically be called cameo appearances.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
You know, I remember this comment I’ve read a few years ago by a Celestia fan claiming that if Amy Keating Rogers had wrote A Canterlot Wedding, Celestia would have gotten more involved or something like that, all I remember is that this fan also thinks Amy is the best candidate to write Celestia.  
I later told this to Amy when I met her at Everfree Northwest in 2013 but she was unsure if she agreed with this or not.

@Background Pony #0112 You kinda just proved my point about why she should always write Celestia

@ShimmeringStallion  
I guess you have a point about that, we can always infer too much, but then the writers can always hide under these things as an excuse, don’t you think? can’t do better but you had all the resources to make reasonably better written stories? blame the fans for expecting too much, it should always work.
 
To me, the writing and how little it understands about holding the reader’s interest is more apparent than anything. In this issue alone, the villain is not memorable or funny, the new characters may seem interesting, but their king being a complete and utter d*** bag ruins that too, the conflict is completely convoluted to the point of not making sense from any logical angle, the characters act very irrationally and lastly, these two are being rendered useless for a gag.
 
I can just infer a few things from here, for one thing, if it were me making the decisions for the writing in this I’d at least make the conflict more about the morality of the issue, which is essentially the main tread of the story’s content, the actions of Well-To-Do and Celestia trying to reason with King Aspen, or, trying to help the forest from growing out of control and attacking innocent bystanders from Ponyville, in the case that you need them to be in another part and have the main cast of the franchise be the ones solving the issue like usual. It doesn’t change much of anything towards what the main characters have to do (except maybe preventing Twilight from looking stupid in front King Aspen’s absolutely insane and genocidal thought process), so the story can pick up from there while we conclude what these other characters are busy doing and understanding what the problem is, as well as maybe just how severe it is.  
Will it solve everything? probably not, but it doesn’t have to solve everything if it can solve most things.
 
The thing is also that I do put emphasis on these two is because yeah, I’m biased towards them first and foremost, I really kind of dig their beautiful and royal power that they have on the land, something I don’t think good writing should ever need to sacrifice if you try giving them more of a personality, but also because the story isn’t a complete throw away. If the whole idea of the story was something that you tossed in the bin without thinking twice about it like last issue, then yeah, that’s unfortunate, but it’s not too bad. Take the issue before this one, nobody cares anymore about those characters at all, or god forbid, the story.. I’m sure some people still hate the problems that story had, those are some really serious problems that almost reach MMDW levels of unintentionally(?) conflicting moral standards, but whatever the story was trying to achieve wasn’t to offer anything other than retreading stuff we already know, maybe with the exception of introducing bulls into the world. This story though? it goes back to the foundation of the Everfree Forest and revises it in many ways that we didn’t know or see before.  
It’s much like if Meghan McCarthy completely flubbed the story of the Season 4 Premier when she introduced not just the Tree of Harmony, but everything else that the two parter provided, I think screwing that up would have had a much more lasting effect on most fans because it’s easily more recognizable from say, Over a barrel.
 
 
and now that I’ve hopefully managed to conclude this discussion, what do you say, would you care to join me for a drink?
 

Okay, I only JUST got to the comments directed to me from the notifications. My bad.
 
@ARchy4288  
The show’s appeal is highly regarded as relation to its audience. Most people don’t have an all-powerful authority figure in their lives, so giving the character who we were lead to believe was the original ‘main focus’, Twilight, an all-powerful mentor, would lose most of the audience’s relation to her, not to mention cause several questions when it comes to why they always need to solve her problems, if she’s so powerful. And I’d never tell you to “go die”: You’ve got passion for your argument, and that’s a positive. The problem is just how you choose to express it, specifically how you react around those who may be against your opinion.
 
@toxicitzi  
Kinda going based around that, it depends how deep you want to make the argument. If it’s “The writers don’t know what they’re doing”, well, they do. As much as Celestia’s power can hold inconsistencies or not be treated as people EXPECT, it’s what the writers and developers choose to do with her power that ends up being questioned in the end, but it’s at their disclosure, and that includes all alicorns. Remember, it can be assumed that Tirek stole the magical essence of hundreds, possibly thousands of ponies; who’s to say that ‘scale’ is used to determine magic?
 
Going a bit off the rails, Dragon Ball Abridged actually brought up a good point about power levels that holds true to most franchises. I bring this up because for the most part, that’s the final note for these arguments. People want to get deep and engaged in something, yet contradictions keep popping up when it comes to that which relates directly to the story or plot devices, etc. In the end, the reason ends up being “because it’s what is used to move the story a certain direction”, and like it or not, that’s the right of those behind the story itself.
 
They really CAN do whatever they want, and they don’t HAVE to explain it, but sometimes people try explaining it, and produce a contradiction someone else notices and exploits, which tries being explained with another contradiction, et cetera, et cetera, et-motherfucking-cetera.
 
But here are some half-assed explanations to cover for them:
 

@Background Pony #0112  
never realized just how many great episodes AKR wrote, that’s a very impressive list she has.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
AKR’s episodes: “The Ticket Master”; “Applebuck Season”; “Bridle Gossip”; “Fall Weather Friends”; “A Dog and Pony Show”; “The Best Night Ever”; “The Cutie Pox”; “The Last Roundup”; “A Friend in Deed”; “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”; “Pinkie Pride”; “Filli Vanilli”; “Testing Testing 1, 2, 3”
 
Personally, I think her resume shows a pretty good understanding of Pinkie. Opinions on this topic can differ, of course, but it’d be interesting to see whether the fandom in general has a positive or negative opinion on AKR’s ability to write Pinkie Pie.

Hello! Just your friendly neighbourhood dancing Tobi here today with the news.  
It seems this storm is still going out and I’m not sure whether it will stop anytime soon. But in the meantime, sit back, relax and grab some popcorn because farmlands are being torn and flying cows are in today’s forecast.  
Also, here’s some pictures from Derpibooru that when mashed together, pretty much summarized this conversation.  

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
niggoslav.. people like you are the reason I can’t ever truly leave this place, you blasted temptresses you!.. :p
 
thing about what you say here is, much to dismay with the show the writing staff have been trying to try different things in hopes of fixing the leaky faucets of any episode and in some cases, it did work to their advantage, like a completely refreshing take from a new writer in Pinkie Apple Pie from Natasha Levinger, where as in other places, you get Castle Mane-ia from Josh Harber, or in a similar example, you have also new writer Natasha Levinger bring It ain’t easy being breezies..  
Other times, they had duos try their writing in an episode to complete on missing aspects and even though it should have worked in full (like in SayS), I think something still went horribly wrong for one reason or another, which doesn’t really make sense because Merriweather Williams hadn’t written terrible episodes for Spike, in fact she had one of most liked episodes about Spike with Dragon Quest which is why I think she was brought up, but then again I’m not even sure what she did to contribute in that episode as a writer and be credited for it.
 
Idk what the problem is, but it’s really strange, because you can’t say they haven’t been trying to make collaboration between writers, some writers contribute to the story without being accredited according to Dave Polsky in this livestream (26:20-29:07) then again, maybe they’re not doing enough of a strong collaboration to fix all those leaky faucets for each character, or they don’t prioritize on that at all (unless in extreme circumstances like Spike at your Service’s original script), from what we’ve been told we can only assume that they’re offering their input of the other writer’s characterization.  
or if we’re being realistic and focusing on the entire package, some things might not be able to change in the entire scope of the episode’s story and have to stay like that with being made to work as best as they can.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
I seriously doubt that every writer wants to write Celestia poorly on purpose.  
But since the writers have talked about which characters are the easiest and the hardest for them to write, I think each of them should be responsible for writing the characters they’re good with. One of them writes the story while the rest help out with the rest of the cast.
 
@Jarkes  
Yeah, that whole fiasco still baffles me.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk
 
Honestly, Filli Vanilli was Rogers’s only real stumbling block with Pinkie. She otherwise writes Pinkie very well. Heck, some of Pinkie’s best episodes were written by her, so I don’t know what the heck happened there (though I’m with TUA and Silver Quill on this; it’s not really out-of-character at all, but it DOES make her unlikeable in the episode, which is just as bad).

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
great idea batman

@Red-Supernova I have a bit of a theory about that, being that when they bring new writers in, they actually encourage Celestia to be poorly written, because the older writers complain so much about her themselves that writing Celestia poorly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy no matter who takes it up.  
The two best episodes were written by Fullerton and AKR. PERHAPS instead of this nonsensical ‘round robin’ style of writing they’re doing, they should assign people towards specific characters, and have them head-up character-specific episodes or scenes. AKR doesn’t get Pinkie. Alright then, so we don’t let her write Pinkie. She writes Celestia instead. Badamboom badabing, we’ve solved 80% of the writing fumbles right there.

@CronoM  
Well said. Personally, I wish we could all settle on an acceptable compromise for how Celestia should be written that takes elements from how Lauren, Meghan, and IDW see Celestia.
 
This is why I’ve been putting part of my fandom focus on other characters I love so I wouldn’t overwhelm myself on just Celestia.
 
@Jarkes  
I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the writers (both the show and the comic) admitted that writing Celestia is a difficult task. And I bet they would prefer to write Celestia in much better situations.
 
@Background Pony #0112  
Since I’ve been talking with ARchy4288 lately, I can ask him your questions if you don’t mind.

@PonyPon  
I think they have a point though. no one is ever going be able to show self-control in one fell swoop, if he does come back we should at least give him the benefit of a doubt and allow him to talk more than defend himself.

@Jarkes  

This I agree with wholeheartedly, and yes, I find it incredibly frustrating. Especially since they’ve used her to such good effect in “A Bird in the Hoof”, “The Best Night Ever”, and the Celestia/Spike FF issue. If ARchy4288 could hold off on accusing (nearly?) all the official show/comic writers of hating Celestia every time he comments in a thread, and accusing people of hating Celestia for liking stuff like >>743645, I’ll gladly tolerate and even support his comments, as we actually have quite a bit of common ground. As it is, though, he not only annoys me but drags down the reputation of Celestia fans.
 
And ARchy4288, if you’re willing to answer a couple of sincere questions from me:  

Oh this is still going?  
I’m already out of popcorn though.

@Jarkes  
If he’s gonna keep coming back and doing it again no matter what anyone says, regardless of how many people try to help him, more people are gonna lose their patience.

@ARchy4288
 

 
Dude, seriously. Unfortunately, I don’t doubt that it happened in the past, but in the past few months, maybe even the past year, I have never once seen anyone call you a “sunfag” or tell you to kill yourself.
 
And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t believe for a moment that the writers hate Celestia. I think the idea behind keeping her out of the action is sound. The problem is that they can’t seem to think of any other ways to do it other than have her get her ass kicked, get captured, or both. What’s particularly annoying about it is that they’ve gone about it in other ways in the past, so to see them going this route so frequently nowadays IS rather frustrating.
 
@Everyone else:
 
Guys, seriously, stop picking on ARchy. When you say things like, “Oh no, not you again!” or dismiss his complaints as whining, or any of the other things you did in this thread… is it any WONDER he gets pissed off?
 
…Goddamnit, why did I come back to this thread?

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  

 
I see you show some sense after all.. :)
 
 
@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  

 
USELESS?! I’ll show you Useless!!
 

@toxicitzi Those are so baaaaaaad around plushes! Especially the salty kind!  
Personally aaaall about the cold m’self. I main frosties when in doubt!  
 
oh well hello there! How unexpectedly elegant, a frosty gryphon!
 
Wait, what is that?  
>>Uselesstia  
This is a tag? This is a beautiful tag! >>657049  
This is severely undertagged and probably needs to be added quite a bit! :D

@441TheSecond  
You are literally fucking retarded.