MLP G5 Discussion and Speculation Thread

Summersong
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@PonyPon
 
My least favorite of the six in G4 is Rainbow Dash. I feel they rarely if ever properly balanced her asinine side with her sentimental side, and her asinine side was never entertaining or likeable either.
 
With only minor adjustments to presentation, Rainbow Dash would be a ton more likeable without actually changing her personality any.
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@Tirimsil  
Maybe we’ll see her personality develop a bit differently in G5, mainly because she presumably would grow up alongside a cheerful pony like Pinkie Pie.
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@Tirimsil  
Personally, I always found Dash unpleasantly egocentric – I can understand some pride in oneself, but a constant loop of “oh my God I’m so fucking great” gets… repetitive. I wouldn’t need a new take on her to be less egocentric, per se – just actually addressing or discussing that in some manner would be fine.
 
Pinkie could also use some retooling, although not because I feel there are any outstanding issues with her as such as because FiM‘s always had a bit of an issue with pinning down what her character is. Is she a wild part animal? Everyone’s best friend? Happy-go-lucky and always cheerful? Actually nuts? Incredibly good at remembering what everyone likes and doesn’t? Someone with no sense of social awareness whatsoever? I feel like an important step on any new take on her would be to focus her personality down a bit.
 
Also Applejack! As has been stated ad nauseam, AJ’s biggest issue is that she already had her life entirely figured out before the show even started, which didn’t leave her any real room to grow or to strive towards anything in particular – all other characters had flaws they needed to overcome, goals they wanted to achieve, struggles they needed to resolve or generally situations where they were here and wanted or needed to be there, but Applejack essentially took care of all these issues years before Twilight got to Ponyville, which is why writing stories for her always got to be an issue. Just giving her something to want that she doesn’t yet have would be a great boon to her character.
Summersong
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@Frustration in Excelsis
 
The problem with Pinkie can most definitely be attributed to different writers forgetting some facets of her character. Basically, she needs a Personality Model Sheet.
 
My favorite Pinkie episodes are the ones where she talks about sadness, because this shows that Pinkie is thoughtful and most of her persona is basically a clown at a kid’s birthday party. (Fluttershy is afraid of clowns by the way.) She just wants everybody to be happy because she’s known some pretty heavy despair and doesn’t want anybody else to go through that.
 
Unfortunately, in some episodes, Pinkie is utterly clueless and callous, which is not good Pinkie. My least favorite Pinkie is the one that casually blurts out trusted secrets or insults her friends because “haha that’s a strange thing to say haha!”
 
My other least favorite Pinkie is the one who causes an actual, life-endangering problem by being Pinkie. That’s dumb. Pinkie’s antics are most acceptable when they are least consequential.
 
Pinkie is supposed to be The Biggest Sweetheart first and a frequent klutz second. She shouldn’t be 4chan as a pony.
 

 
I didn’t mind that Applejack was already pretty stable, but I wish they had taken advantage of that more. She should’ve always been a good rock to cry on and help her friends figure out what was important in life.
Poison Trail
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@Tirimsil
 
Pinkie’s unhealthy coping mechanisms and “fail state” definitely needed an episode, but instead we got the complete abortion that was “Yakity-Sax”, with her friends enabling said behavior. Things don’t work out your way? Exile yourself and wait for them to come to you, booyah!
Summersong
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@Poison Trail
 
Yakity-Sax had a good ending and a bad everything else.
 
I was sure there would be some deeper layer to it, but nope, Pinkie actually valued some random fad she’d just picked up more than her friends or anything else in life.
 
They didn’t even go the route of “Pinkie didn’t care about the instrument as much as she cared about how her friends confronted her about it”. That would’ve been great. BUT NOPE. It was literally about the thingyphone.
 
I did appreciate that the yaks didn’t get angry, because they cared more that she loved playing rather than whether she was good at it. I appreciate anything about the yaks that isn’t YAK SMASH or YAK BEST again. The ending is the only good part, really.
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@Frustration in Excelsis  
@Tirimsil  
I also dislike when Pinkie is overly obnoxious! I see her as somepony extremely optimistic and hyperactive, but also perceptive and understanding. As for Applejack, one advantage of making her a pony whose personality is as rough as the upbringing she had is that the production staff will have many chances of developing her.
Summersong
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@Background Pony #EA45
 
Not every character necessarily needs to have a profound change.
 
Contrary to my earlier half-joke that “she was already perfect”, Applejack does learn a few lessons over the course of the show - she merely doesn’t fundamentally move her overall place in Equestria or experience a dramatic shift in persona on the level of Twilight or Fluttershy.
 
In Applebuck Season, she’s punished for trying to take on the chores of 3 Apple ponies (one being Big Macintosh) all by herself and learns that letting people help doesn’t make her look incompetent.
 
In Fall Weather Friends, she and Rainbow Dash get too focused on their interpersonal rivalry and end up taking last place together in the grand scheme of things and learns not to treat fun as work.
 
In Look Before You Sleep, she drops a tree on Twilight’s house (and otherwise ruins her first sleepover) solely to spite Rarity and learns to appreciate opposing outlooks on problems.
 
In The Last Roundup, she boasts too soon and fails to secure the prize money from a world-class competition, and is too ashamed to face her hometown to admit it, so she tries to raise the equivalent of the prize money by working in other cities, thinking she “owes it”. She learns that, uh. Well. This one is complicated.
 
 
My main source for the “Applejack is already perfect” joke is the one Flim Flam bros. episode, where she goes “Dear Princess Celestia… I ain’t learn anythin’! Gyuh-huck, I was right all along. : )”
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@Tirimsil  
Yeah, if the show kept going we’d get more Yakity-Sax and A Trivial Pursuit until these kinds of episodes dominate the show and only episodes where Pinkie’s wiki appearance is N would be even remotely good…
 
@PonyPon  
I didn’t see any indication the rest would be retooled. Who knows, maybe Pinkie will be her G4 S8/9 self…
Background Pony #6F46
@Tirimsil  
I like Applejack the way she is too. To be honest: Her personality change is unavoidable because that is what the production team wants, but I hope that G5 Applejack will eventually become somepony similar to her G4 self through character development.
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@Background Pony #EA45  
That’s not entirely accurate. Based on the leak they want to base her off Tempest. They just wanted to have AJ have a redstreak like Sunset if they played up the bad girl idea but the character would be based off Tempest personality wise.
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@Background Pony #AFE2  
Well, they want Applejack to start bad but eventually become good through character development. I probably confused things because both Sunset and Tempest fit in this mold.
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I think the show’s biggest problem was structure. It needed to give itself more room to expand, and to breathe in general. I think there are two key ways they could have done this, and they were starting to do it in the later seasons.
 
The problem with having a moral each week is that morals are final; you’ve learned a lesson, now you’re never allowed to make that mistake again. Any stories that could have arisen from similar mistakes are lost forever, unless you want to be accused of character regression. It puts the characters on a shrinking platform. Not every episode has to end in a character learning something. Sometimes the fun is the journey.
 
If you want a really compelling character, give them an issue that a person could spend a lifetime wrestling with. IT can be a source of conflict, and it can be explored from multiple angles. That’s what made Fluttershy, Twilight and Starlight work, and also Luna, Discord and Tempest, to a lesser extent.
 
The other thing the show needed was repeatable concepts. When I think back to another show I love, SpongeBob SquarePants, I can think of a dozen episode archetypes. Who SpongeBob was paired with and where the episode was set completely changed what kind of episode it was. There were episodes about The Krusty Krab, jellyfishing, boating school, Patrick, Squidward, Sandy, Mr. Krab, Plankton, Gary, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, and more. Friendship is Magic got better at this later on. There were Luna episodes, Maud episodes, Daring Do episodes, CMC episodes, etcetra, but those were the exception rather than the rule, and I feel like the show lacked a unifying structure. I would have loved “Rarity goes on an adventure for an outfit materiel” premise, and the different characters that accompanied her would give the episode a different flavour. That’s a big part of why Season Eight was my favourite: the School gave the season some framework to hang episodes off of.
 
 
@Tirimsil  
I thought the episode did a really good job of portraying depression; all the things that normally make a person happy just stop working and everything feels grey. In that context, just telling Pinkie to just “get over” the instrument would send an extremely bad message. Unfortunately there aren’t any easy answers when it comes to depression, so the ending doesn’t really work. I think they may have bitten off more than they could chew.
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@holdmyponies94  
That’s hardly likely is it?
 
Also, I just remembered why there’s a good chance that the mane six will stick around…their trademarks. Hasbro has the trademarks for all these names, and they lost many G1 era names too. If you don’t use them, you lose them. And I can’t see Hasbro being prepared to lose them.
 
Plus, brand recognition and brand values. They’re established names with a proven success rate. Sensible companies don’t ditch those kind of things.
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shortly after Twilight & friends finish there final song in final episode the universe starts to reboot itself
Summersong
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@DerpyFast
 
Pinkie Pie’s depression / mental health was already covered in Party of One ages ago, which did a far better job. Yakity-Sax even references this, because it reuses the droopy-maned Pinkamena effect for her.
 
In both episodes, Pinkie is overreacting. However, in Party of One, her overreaction is based on something really important, longterm, and understandable - i.e. whether her friends, who are “new” from a contemporary perspective, maybe don’t like being around her - whereas in Yakity-Sax, her overreaction is based on what looks to all appearances like another throwaway Pinkie Pie gag.
 
At the end of the episode, Twilight clearly cares about how callously and selfishly she pissed on Pinkie’s fireworks… but Pinkie herself does not seem to at any point. Pinkie’s issue is the yakphone itself, which she lusts over the way she drools over cupcakes, and constantly talks about as though she’s hamming it up just to guilt-trip her friends. She fully recovers basically immediately as soon as she is reunited with the yakphone.
 
The entire thing looks like Pinkie Pie is putting on an act, just like she’s done for basically every episode of the show for the last several years… but… she’s not???
 
It’s weird.
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