My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

[moonsugar33]

Whoo, best thread gets a bump! Now I can post without feeling weird about it!

I love MLP:FiM so much. I have a very special place in my heart for the first season, especially the premiere. When I first started watching it I was like "Am I really doing this? I can't believe I'm doing this." I couldn't believe how much I was enjoying it. It was simple, sweet, made me giggle, and introduced a lot of really interesting lore/concepts. I feel like the show could have gone in so many different directions all forking out from the first episode; some parts of today's canon I dislike, others I'm still excited to remember are canon to this day.

I actually hated My Little Pony as a kid, along with Barbies, Care Bears, dolls in general (although I did love my little porcelain dolls and their tiny china teasets), anything pink and girly (I've since realised that it was because even at such a young age, I picked up on the fact that girls and girly interests were seen as inferior, so I distanced myself from it. Now I know that girls aren't inferior, so I embrace soft pinks and flaunting my femininity!)

My first MLP toys were a blind bag pack of Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, and the Wave 1 brushable of Twilight Sparkle, both presents from my auntie. I was so happy. Now I've got 188 pony toys, in various locations. I keep track of them by spreadsheet.

Things I'm sad about being canon:
- I miss Twilight writing letters to Celestia.
- I don't like that Cadance is an alicorn (I like Cadance, but she should have been a unicorn, to keep alicorns special and celestially aligned).
- Characterisation of Spitfire; I'm not fond of the military personality and preferred her "cool" persona as introduced in the Gala.
- I'm not fond of Cranky Doodle Donkey, Bulk Biceps (especially), Ms Harshwhinny or Silver Shill, I find them really grating characters!
- The Hearth's Warming Eve origin story. I really liked the concept that Celestia and Luna created Equestria! The two cannot coexist :c
- I think "Magical Mystery Cure" got cutie marks all wrong. When their cutie marks were switched, they merely switched occupations, not talents or drive- which is what I think cutie marks are really about. So much wasted potential :c
- I miss the Elements of Harmony. As well as being cool in concept, they also looked super good on the ponies.
- Daring Do being an actual real-life character is very strange :s
- I miss Twilight's library :c
- It was cool to see The Smooze but it would have been even cooler if they'd made it a serious threat!
- Pinkie's characterisation can be very, very off. She's supposed to be silly and hyper but also sensitive- her strength is people skills, but this gets ignored a lot and it makes me sad.
- Big Mac's crossdress episode could have been handled so much better.
- I feel like Fluttershy's family's design choices were very strange! Green...? And her brother to be tall and gangly and strange? :s

Things that I love are now canon:
- WORLDBUILDING! We got to see the Griffin kingdom, we know there are elephants, we know there are yaks, so much culture, so many places.
- Mane 6 dreams are being fulfilled! It's so good! You go, girls. Rarity and Rainbow Dash getting their boutiques and Wonderbolts memberships especially.
- Princess Luna's new singing voice is amazing, I can't wait to hear more.
- Vinyl and Octavia live together and Vinyl is mute.
- Twilight actually went back and apologised and made peace with the friends she snubbed in the first 5 minutes of the entire show.
- Luna's character insight by way of the Tantabus was amazing.
- Flashbacks to Nightmare Moon's rebellion and glimpses into alternate disaster timelines were fascinating.
- The second Nightmare Night episode was amazing. Halloween is my favourite holiday!
- The concept of Rainbow Power (even though the key system was a bit odd) was amazing to see. I loved their alternate designs, and I loved that they were basically spiritual racial ambassadors to restore harmony to the land.
- Tirek. Was. Awesome.

Things I'm excited to see:
- Rainbow Dash's parents (but then again, only partially? because I was excited to see Fluttershy's parents, and while her mum is sweet, the rest of it really seemed out of place to me. So I'm not sure that I wouldn't have a similar reaction to Rainbow Dash.
- Cutie Mark Crusaders take their secondary talents to new heights (construction?/singing/rad skooter skillz)
- Twilight learns to move the stars.
- Celestia's "god mode"/Solar Flare/evil alter ego.
- More Celestia in general.
- The movie!
- Perhaps a trip to Africa, where we can see zebras and giraffes and elephants and lions. Maybe.
- Other draconequui!
- More Fancy Pants. I really like his character- how even though he's one of the rich elite, he's also genuine and nice. Fleur de Lis is gorgeous too.
- More Everfree Forest stuff- its existence is still an enigma.
- Further bonding between the Mane 6, two characters at a time.

[Squeely]

I agree with everything you said, moonsugar, except...

[quote="moonsugar33"]
- WORLDBUILDING! We got to see the Griffin kingdom, we know there are elephants, we know there are yaks, so much culture, so many places.
[/quote]

While we have indeed seen some interesting places, am I the only one who's disappointed we haven't seen more? We spent plenty of time getting acquainted with Ponyville, then an official MLP map came out that had a lot of really neat-looking places on it, and the Cutie Map became a thing, so I thought we were building up to some serious exploration... And the majority of season 5 still took place in Ponyville.

I think that's my gripe with the show as a whole. We occasionally get glimpses of interesting characters, locations, etc. and they're barely explored. Heck, we still haven't gotten much development for Celestia. Perhaps it wouldn't strike me as such an issue if it seemed like MLP had bigger things to tackle, but it doesn't seem to. As of this point, the mane six have learned some repetitive lessons here and there, and it doesn't feel like their characters are progressing at a steady pace. I feel like MLP could be so much more, but after season 2, it got a little too comfortable with the slice-of-life formula to break itself apart from that a little more and give us something greater.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want slice-of-life to go away completely, and heck, showing a slice of Celestia's life would be a great way to finally expand on her character. I just feel like the puzzle pieces are laid out in front of the show's creators to do amazing things, but instead of building that puzzle, they just sit in the same places more often than not.

That's not to say I think the show is bad. It's still highly enjoyable. I just think so much more can be done with it.