The soapboxes continue! 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
- The G4 Purist Insult
- Putting Together Alternate G5 Movie Beginning
- What Happened Between G4 and G5
- A Different Conclusion for Scootaloo's Family
The G4 Purist Insult
By: Anonymous
Recently, I've been seeing a lot of bronies throwing around the term "G4 purist." While the term seems to have been around since G5 was first unveiled back in February 2021, it didn't really become popular amongst the fandom until A New Generation was released on September 24. Supposedly, a G4 purist is someone who refuses to give G5 a chance simply because it's not Friendship is Magic, and harasses anyone who likes it. Ever since A New Generation came out however, I've been seeing more and more G5 fans use the term as an insult against those who still like G4 and have anything remotely critical to say about G5. At this point, it's basically a reverse version of the "Hasdrone" insult that was popular around 2013-2014, where instead of people using it to say "stop liking what I don't like", it's being used to say "stop disliking what I do like."
I feel like a major contributor to this problem is the excessive amount of praise that G5 has been getting. Despite only consisting of one movie so far, I've seen many people, especially on Equestria Daily, quick to declare G5 a flawless masterpiece that's better than G4 in every possible way. Then whenever someone questions this line of thought or shows any signs of disagreement, they're quickly written off as a G4 purist. I personally enjoyed A New Generation, but I will admit it definitely had some flaws, and is far from perfect like a lot of people are saying it is. I'll even go as far to say I liked the 2017 G4 movie better. That does not make me a G4 purist however, because like I said, I still enjoyed A New Generation, and I'm looking forward to what the upcoming TV series has in store for us.
Overall, it saddens me to see G5 fans being so intolerant of criticism, regardless of how constructive it is. I can understand if someone is being rude and saying you're a bad person for liking G5, but to actively bully and namecall anyone who doesn't think G5 is the greatest thing to come out of the My Little Pony franchise is just flat-out wrong. One of the core messages of both G4 and G5 is to accept those who are different from you, and this is a message that I wish more of the fandom would take to heart.
Putting Together Alternate G5 Movie Beginning
By: BliSer
It feels like part of those alternate storyboards and concept arts for My Little Pony: A New Generation fit together quite well if placed in the right order.
The alternate story begins after the scene from Sunny's childhood. We see that adult Sunny works at Maretime Bay factory. We see pictures of her being late for work, her locker and her workplace. We also see that the factory is different: it has a generator in its center that converts magic of earth ponies’ crystal into some kind of energy used by the town, similar to electricity. That generator also releases excesses as a giant rainbow beam.
Next, some incident happens at the factory. We don’t have concepts for what it is, but we have the consequences: rainbow beam shuts down, then Sprout finds Sunny near the generator and screams at her. What possibly happened before that is Sunny (intentionally or not) interfered with the generator, which caused damage to the crystal and essentially left the town without power.
After that, Sunny sits on the top of her lighthouse observing the blackout that she caused. But thanks to the darkness she sees the same rainbow beaming into the sky in the distance. She realizes that unicorns also have a magic crystal and decides to bring it to Maretime Bay. (Concepts of Bridlewood forest indeed have a building with a rainbow beam shooting from its top – the unicorns’ museum.)
Being convinced that she can repair all that she caused, Sunny heads out of Maretime Bay. However, she encounters some obstacles. First, Sprout tries to stop her, and second, she needs to overpass the wall surrounding the town. (Some concepts of Maretime Bay do show it being enclosed by defensive walls.) But with the help of encouraging song and a tree conveniently growing near the wall she escapes from the town.
Afterwards, Sunny gets to Bridlewood, where she meets Izzy and visits her house. Later Hitch finds the girls there and together they head out to Zephyr Heights.
This is where alternate beginning halts, unless there will be more concepts released about what could happen in pegasi city.
However, there is still one thing to be mentioned: Zephyr Heights also has its generator. Pegasi use its rainbow beam as a background for their amphitheater. But more interesting, they use the energy produced by the generator to power the weather controlling machine that they have.
Does that mean that in this alternate story unicorns also have a machine that controls day and night cycle? Can ponies control other heritage left from alicorn princesses? We can only guess for now. And we can only guess if this alternate story even has an ending or it got rejected before it was completed.
In any case, it would be interesting to hear from movie staff why this story was dismissed.
What Happened Between G4 and G5
By: nopony
No, I don't mean Pony Life. Let's not talk about it, OK? Also I haven't
read the Season 10 comics yet, so if there are any clues there, they are
not taken into account in this article.
I mean the events that caused the state of the world as we see it at the
beginning of the G5 movie, where the three pony tribes live separated
from each other, and have a bad opinion of each other. If we try to
reconstruct what happened, there are two important facts that we must
take into account:
1. None of the races knew that the others didn't have magic, which means
that the loss of magic must have happened after the separation.
2. The station in Zephyr Heights shows us that there was a period of
"friendly separation", when the ponies lived in the same places where
they live now, but there was friendship between them.
So here's what I think: First there must have been a war between the
races. Maybe Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow managed to escape their
stone prison and tried the same thing they did earlier. Or maybe it was
some other villain, what's important is that the ponies were fighting
against each other. The winners of this war are clearly the Pegasi, who
captured Canterlot and renamed it to Zephyr Heights. This is not a
surprise, because, since the times of Commander Hurricane and Flash
Magnus, the Pegasi were highly militaristic, so the warrior spirit is
probably still strong within them. The losers were the Unicorns, which
is surprising because they had powerful magic. Maybe Pegasi and Earth
Ponies teamed up against them? Anyway, the result was that they had to
retreat to the forest, and make it their new home.
After that, the villain's schemes were uncovered, and the friendship
between the pony races returned. But the separation already happened
during the war, so they continued to live in their own parts of the
world. This is probably the time when the Three Crystals were created,
and the station in Zephyr Heights was built. What happened next is
probably just politics. In all of the three tribes, the ones who rose to
power were using populist propaganda blaming the other pony kinds for
all the bad things, which resulted in the loss of trust and
communication between the races, and, as a result, the magic was gone
too. Because, you know, friendship is magic, so no friendship means no
magic. But why didn't the magic disappear during the earlier war? Well,
maybe the process takes some time. But it could be getting weaker during
the war, which is another possible explanation of the Unicorns getting
defeated.
A Different Conclusion for Scootaloo's Family
By Alexrioponylover95
Hello everycreature!
So this was a topic I always wanted to cover, but never got around to it and well despite this topic being discussed a lot already, I still want to cover and provide my point of view on it!
So I think we can all agree that Scootaloo’s parents, Snap Shutter and Mane Allgood are the absolute worst parents in all of Equestria, like seriously… They’re even worse than Spoiled Rich and that’s putting it nicely too! I mean their appearances in The Last Crusade and issue 93 of the main IDW FiM comic line showed that they don’t really take poor Scoots’ point of view into consideration and only care about what they want instead.
The Last Crusade had them trying to take Scootaloo away from her home and friends she has known for a long time now without considering the depression Scootaloo might face if they had succeeded. And the IDW issue had them trying to get Scootaloo to follow in their hoofsteps without taking into account that she already found her calling, what with having her cutie mark already.
To me, Scoots’ real guardians and maybe even rightful parents are her two aunts, Holiday and Lofty, (They were my most favorite parts in The Last Crusade and remain top notch lesbian couple!) they seem to have taken care of Scoots longer than her real parents, actually encouraging, comforting, and taking her feelings into account.
And so I want to offer a different headcanon with these things in mind…
Just get rid of Snap and Mane, but keep Holiday And Lofty, maybe even have Scoots’ parents like Apple Bloom’s parents. (Although I guess doing it twice would be a little boring…) Holiday and Lofty would of course retain their personality, nothing to change here, only now they’re taking care of Scoots all the time now, treating her like their own daughter. And well we can have a conclusion that many of us have theorized about… Have Scoots officially become Rainbow Dash’s sister, giving Scoots what she has been missing all this time, an older sibling to help guide her as she grows up.
Now I know what some of you may be thinking… That I really don’t like The Last Crusade… And that’s not true! I love The Last Crusade as like the official last episode for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, a final hurdle for our trio of fillies who have gone through so much development and love from nearly the very start of the show. The only problem I have is Snap and Mane, there’s just no redeeming them at this point and they really hurt the episode in my opinion.
However that’s just my take on this topic, you’re free to of course disagree with my headcanon as well as my strong dislike for Snap and Mane… (Again, could have said so much worse about these two!)
