The soapboxes cvontinue! As always, these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.
Have some headlines:
- Addressing the Luna Bias
- Mother and Father Day Specials
- What if The Major Villains (FiM) Won? Part 1
- FiM and Seasonal Rot: When Did It Start? (Part 1)
And get articles below.
By: Hononoken the Samurai
When a show runs for a long period of time, at one point or another, it can and will go through some amount of decline in quality. Often it happens when a writer gets burned out of working through the show for so long. Other times it happens due to a change of writer and the new writer makes one or more controversial decisions. Or perhaps it's because a show runs long enough that it's simply gone past its prime.
One of the most debated aspects regarding "Friendship Is Magic" was when it got hit with that seasonal rot. After nine years, nine seasons, 222 episodes, and tons of spinoff media, there had to have been a slip in quality at some point, even if the overall show is still good. Many S1 purists would say it happened after Lauren Faust left, others with S3's shorter length and decision to make Twilight an alicorn princess. Or perhaps it was during S4-5, which featured stories focusing heavily on side characters and stranger plot lines (Daring Do being real, the ponies getting sucked into a comic book, etc.).
Many would say S6, which focused on the controversial Starlight Glimmer and Flurry Heart and saw the departure of several beloved writers including (but not limited to) M.A. Larson and Amy Keating Rogers following S5. Others say S8, which introduced the Student Six and the School of Friendship, something that was comparable to the introduction of Starlight and the Castle of Friendship, respectively. S6-8 were also guilty of flanderizing the Mane 6, with half of their individual arcs having ended or were ending by this point. Don't even get me started on how split fans are about S9.
I hold the belief that it all comes down to the writing and how the characters and morals are handled. An overall season can still hold up even if it has a few bad episodes here and there. Even though I despise "Rainbow Falls" and "Somepony to Watch Over Me", my overall reaction to S4 was positive. While S3 suffered from a shorter length and had "Spike At Your Service", it still managed to put out worthwhile episodes like "Wonderbolts Academy", "The Crystal Empire", and "Magic Duel".
So, at what point do I say the rot began? Well... I'll save that for next time.
Until then, discuss below. When did you think FiM began suffering from seasonal rot? Do you think it ever managed to bounce back from it?
By Alexrioponylover95
Hello everycreature!
Yeah, the title is very weird right? That’s because I decided to start a multipart series on well… If the villains won instead of our heroes. And thinking of also covering the EQG villains and even the minor antagonists of FiM later on if I do want to continue that is!
However first, lets start with the major villains of FiM and well no better baddie to start with than Nightmare Moon!
From the very beginning of the show came Luna turned evil and her intention to defeat Celestia and bring Equestria into eternal night. Now lets say that Twilight and the Mane 6 failed in defeating Nightmare Moon and either perished or were imprisoned, in turn Celestia was stuck wherever she is and maybe sent to the moon like with the alternate future in the Season 5 finale. With her main opponents defeated, Nightmare Moon can then take over Equestria and never let the sun raise up over the land again.
The question is, what comes next after Nightmare Moon wins? Well, to me, it would be a lot like, again, the alternate future from Season 5 and to be honest, compared to other villains, Nightmare Moon’s reign would not be that bad. Yes, Equestria is essentially a dictatorship now and all must answer to Nightmare or suffer the consequences. However as long as no one steps out of line, I don’t think Nightmare would be harsh and brutal towards everypony.
After all, Nightmare’s problems are not with the common ponies, but with Celestia and to a lesser extent the elements of harmony, once those are gone, resistance, at least for the time being, is no more. And maybe with time, ponies might come to fully accept their new society, maybe even Equestria would be somewhat stronger in a military sense and would be able to defend their land from any invaders.
Moving on to our next major villain, someone who is a direct opposite to Nightmare Moon in every way, the Lord of Chaos himself… Discord!
Lets say that Discord was able to defeat the Mane 6 in The Return of Harmony and turn Ponyville into the capital of chaos, with that goal done, Discord, like in the future we saw in the Season 5 finale, could go after Celestia and Luna and defeat them next and maybe turn Canterlot into another chaos center. Once that’s done, Discord now has free reign to turn all of Equestria into his chaotic playground.
However… Is that really bad? Yes, everything is disorganized and wacky, but it’s better than having your library completely blown up by a huge magic blast (Oh… Too soon?) One of my friends once said that if Discord existed in real life, he could in fact help solve world hunger, with, well as Pinkie said it, “Eternal chaos comes with chocolate rain, you guys. Chocolate rain!” And yeah that is a valid point, Discord’s powers aren’t magic sucking or mindless destruction, but having fun and could even prove useful in some ways.
So yeah, Equestria wouldn’t be an orderly society, but one filled with humor and craziness that’s not harmful mostly and ponies might indulge in their new messed up way of life, but what do you think about these two villains and what would happen if they won? Next time, we’re going to cover the Queen of the Changelings, Chrysalis and former King of the Crystal Empire, Sombra!
Addressing the Luna Bias
By IronYoshi
Oh, how I'm not going to be making very many friends with this one. But I felt like I needed to get this off my chest for a long time.
So Princess Luna. The one character every brony seems to fawn over and treat like an untouchable god who could do no wrong. As much as I hate to admit, I use to like her, mainly because everyone else did. But things change, and I grew to appreciate Celestia more, and see how much of a disturbingly massive bias there really was for Luna. Let's talk about that.
You can pretty much look everywhere across the fandom and see that Luna gets more attention as opposed to the other Princesses. Who is always shown in a positive light all the time? Luna. Who has the most images out of all the Princesses on Derpibooru? Luna. Who wins almost every single poll she's in, no matter the context? Luna. Who gets so many featured images dedicated to them? Luna. Sensing a pattern yet? I know it sounds like I'm being petty here, but all you need to do is look around and see what I mean. Also need I remind you that Luna got her discussion post for her day and Celestia didn't. Real fair there.
And then there's the whole thing of treating Luna as this flawless god and thinking Celestia is just this awful monster. I understand within the canon of the show that Celestia is treated well while Luna is often overshadowed, but its the exact opposite in the fandom. I've heard the excuse that "Luna isn't loved in the show, so we're gonna give her love here!", but does that really mean completely ignoring Celestia and/or outright bashing and hating her while treating Luna as someone who could do no wrong? Plus, Luna got plenty of screen-time in the show, and even got 2 whole episodes dedicated to her way before the writers finally started to care about poor Celie.
And don't get me started on some of her fans. Now, I want to be as crystal clear as possible when I say this, but not all Luna fans act this way. Heck, some are even good friends of mine. But the vast majority of Luna fans I've encountered over the years were very toxic and took their Luna passion a bit too far. It gets to the point that you criticize Luna or say you prefer another Princess, then you've basically just signed your will. It's this and other reasons why I've to really grown to think Luna is very overrated and harbor a dislike towards a good chunk of her fanbase.
Now, I'm not saying that we should stop posting Luna altogether, heaven forbid. But maybe we can give her a bit of a break? I mean, Celestia and the other Princesses are completely overshadowed by Luna, and I think they deserve their due in the spotlight. Maybe someday that'll happen.
Mother and Father Day Specials
By Double C
We’ve seen many special holiday events that are heroes have celebrated except for either Mother or Father Day. It would have been fun to see what these events would be called in MLP or just keep it the same. But it could have been fun to see what the Mane 6, the CMC, and the Young 6 celebrate with the moms and dads separately. However there are some who hate both these events that it is considered both a friendship and family problem.
In my opinion their two characters that IDW should look at their possible problems, Spike and Gallus. Both characters are orphaned since birth but with different outcomes throughout theirs will growing up. Even though he is adopted, we still don’t know if Spike ever bonded with Night Light and Twilight Velvet. He fits in stories where parents prefer their biological children then the kid they adopted. Gallus will never meet his real parents either because they died or they were horrible. This would have caused him to believed that parents are unnecessary and doesn’t what to be one. So yeah both Spike and Gallus probably have parent issues that their friends and for Spike his adopted family will have a challenge.
Maybe in my opinion this is why Spike didn’t go with Twilight on that zeppelin cruise because her parents never treated him like their son and have said horrible things to the Sparkle family. Also if what Gallus did to the Hearts Warming tree was bad, just imagine what he would have done on both events.
Would you guys like IDW to make both Mother and Father Day Specials? If so which other characters would you like to see celebrate with their moms and dads? Who else besides Spike and Gallus do you think has problems with their parents?
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