teygrim

I'm the same way; I wrote pages of analysis on Season 1, but I was talking more specifically about Season 2 in my reply. Anything that elicits a strong emotion (whether positive or negative) compels me to analyze it until I can figure out why it makes me feel the way I do.

That definitely sounds like a reasonable explanation but I know that, for me, that is definitely not the case. I'm not disappointed with Season 2 episodes because I'm picking them apart, I'm picking them apart because I'm disappointed. While, it is true that I watched Season 1 over only a few days, after almost every episode I felt a very stong positive feeling (something between inspiration and joy). A lot of Season 2 episodes, on the other hand, just leave me with a feeling of emptiness (with the shining exception of Sweat and Elite). I can't choose how I feel about an episode, all I can do is try and understand why I feel the way I do. And so I pick the episodes apart, because I'm disappointed, and I want to know why.

Don't get me wrong, I love Twilight and she is one of my favorite characters in the series, but I still think the difference between Season 1 and 2 is the switch between a friendship focus into an individual focus. In my view, we rarely ever see the characters interact as friends in this season. In the Discord episodes, all the characters had their personalities switched so, although the interaction in these episodes were fun, they weren't interactions between the characters we'd grown to love. Lesson Zero was probably the closest we've gotten to an episode about friendship this season, but Twilight and Rarity were so ridiculously exaggerated that they might as well have been different characters. These were the interactions between cartoon characters not the friends we know and love. In the luna episode all the characters interacted with Luna (which was fun) but not really each other; the Sisterhooves Social had a little but it's main focus was on family and not friendship; the Cutiepox (my favorite episode of the season) was all about Applebloom and her friends might as well have not been there for all she interacts with them; and both of the Rainbow Dash episodes were just Rainbow Dash with very little input from her friends. So basically, my problem with this season is the lack of friendship. And although some of the individual character focused episodes are entertaining, that's not what this series was about. This is Friendship is Magic afterall, not Individuality is Magic.

While that is technically true, I think that the lack of Twilight Sparkle is more of a symptom of the real problem. In Season 1, Twilight and Twilight only wrote the letters to Princess Celestia, which forced the writers to make the mane six interact. In order for the shows formula to work, Twilight had to know what her friends were up to whereas now each character can be dealt with in complete isolation from the rest of the cast (eg the last two Rainbow Dash episodes minus a couple of very superficial exchanges). Now that any one can write a letter to Celestia, the writers don't have to deal with friendship at all. I remember some people saying that the change in the letter writing was a good thing because it allowed the writers more freedom, but I feel that it has only allowed the writers the freedom to write stories abouts individuals and cut the friendship out of the show. It's just easier to write about one character than two, three, four, five or six so it's inevitable that the writers would take the easy option when the show's formula no longer forces them to make the characters interact.

That may be the case but I feel that they went way too far. I don't think superhero's or citizens in peril belong in a FiM show, there are other shows for that. FiM is about friendship not action, so I hope that they don't focus too much on gaining a new audience at the expense of their old audience.

I can second that. The level of disrespect is increadible. I'm actually amazed that they banned you for getting "huffy" after reading some of the nasty things people are allowed to say when someone expresses an unpopular view.

Well, from what I hear, it was a new writer so they were probably unfamiliar with the world. Thus, instead of Equestria we get tired and cliche "citizens in peril" settings.

Plus steel beems were clearly being used to build a high rise, which is extremely out of place in a village like Ponyville where houses are generally no higher than three stories. Actually, the whole world was changed to contrive a story that had no right calling itself My Little Pony.

@Dessa Yeah I miss that too. But what I miss most of all is the friendship. I loved the friendship of the mane six in Season 1 and the way each character played off each other. I really miss that. Now they just focus on characters individually. Even when they're together it feels more like a group of individuals than a group of friends.

I'm stunned. I may have had problem's with previous Season 2 episodes, but this wasn't even My Little Pony. It was just a dumb superhero show, and a badly written one at that. I think I'll leave it at that for now, I need to go to bed.

I see a lot of people arguing that Rainbow Dash still learnt a lesson because she chose a pet that wasn’t cool but I disagree. For one thing, I don’t think that a tortoise is any less cool than a butterfly. Certainly, you wouldn’t see a Hell’s Angel taking a butterfly as a pet for its cool factor. But, in a world where butterflies are cool, the audience can only infer what is and is not cool by the way the characters see them. Obviously Rainbow Dash initially sees Tank as uncool but she is the only one in the show that thinks this way and her attitude changes by the end of the episode. With no one left to judge Tank as “uncool” we can the tortoise who could not fly but suddenly can, is also a tortoise that was not cool but suddenly is. The only way I see the uncool argument working in the context of the episode would be if there was a character who continued to see Tank as uncool, even when Rainbow Dash accepted him (maybe Dash could have even stood up for Tank so that their relationship would be more give and take rather than take, take, take). You could argue that there will be characters who continue to see Tank as uncool but they just weren’t in the episode but I say if the conflict is not contained within the episode then neither is the lesson. Therefore, I don’t think that Rainbow Dash learnt a lesson (or at least not a good lesson). It's just a story about a selfish pony getting what she whants. But, I guess you could still say that the lesson was "don't judge a book by it's cover". Well, if that were the case, then they didn't do a very good job of it. Just look what happens when you apply that lesson (to the same degree) to real world: "Hey kids just because you don't like strawberry cake doesn't mean you shouldn't eat that cake just because it looks like a strawberry cake and everyone tells you it's a strawberry cake because it might just magically taste like a chocolate cake even though it obviously isn't one. You can't just assume that a strawberry cake tastes like a strawberry cake just like you can't assume that a flightless animal can't fly."

Tank spends the whole episode trying to be what Rainbow Dash wants him to be and Rainbow Dash wanted a flying pet. Every animal in the competition was a flyer except Tank. He was a tortoise and tortoises don't fly, that is part of what they are. You can't make a flightless animal into a flying animal in the real world just like you can't make a black man white. It might seem fine in the context of a cartoon but when you apply the same logic to the real world then you create a standard that very few can live up to. A tortoises value doesn't lie in it's flying ability so it should have been up to Rainbow Dash to relax her policy of "flyers only". By sticking to this policy and making the non-flyer conform to an impossible expectation, the writers have inadvertantly legitimised discrimination (ie, it's not up to the employer to remove racist policies it is up to the employee to conform to them, even when this is impossible). This might all seem trivial but let me put it into context. There is a famous study that takes black and white girls (aged, I think, around 5) and presents them with a black doll and a white doll. They are asked to pick the doll they prefer and tell the experimenters why. The majority of the black girls picked the white doll and told experimenter that they picked the white doll because it was better. And when the girls were asked to tell the experiment which doll they were most like, they pointed to the black doll. It seems from this study that coloured people in America are conditioned to believe they are less good than others from an early age and I believe it's because of shows like this.

Okay, I think I need to tell you something about myself for you to understand where I’m really coming from and why this issue is so close to my heart. I am half Pilipino and half Irish living in Australia. Growing up, I was conditioned to believe all the stereotypes about Asians so I came to identify strongly with my Irish heritage and completely reject my Asian blood. I believed that everyone was right. I believed that Asians were only good for math and lacked all social skills and that Asian men were impotent. But I believed that I was an exception. I wasn’t one of those Asians who hung out with other Asians speaking in Asian. I was better than that. I was white. But later on in life I came to realize that although I saw myself as white, others viewed me differently. I still remember the reaction of one of my white friends when he found out that I was half Asian: “I knew there was something off about you.” He said it in a joking tone but it hurt all the same. I started to accept myself for what I was and began to hang out with more Asians. But when my white friends noticed this one of them asked me, “do you identify as an Australian or an Asian?” it was very clear from the tone that she was trying to determine which “side” I was on but the context and wording of the question made it very clear that you can’t be both. Either I’m an Australian or an Asian and Australians apparently only associate with white people. And currently I’m trying to find work. During an interview, I was told that the interviewer believed that I could do the job but he still said that I was not suitable. One reason he gave was that I was too “smart” (that was the exact word he used) and that I would get bored. He went on to recommend that I find a more academic and less manual job. So basically, no matter how hard you pretend to be something that you’re not and no matter how much you want to be that something, you can only really fool yourself. I can’t change the way that others perceive me so I can’t deny my Asian blood any longer. I’ve come to embrace my multiracial heritage and when I see someone (or something else) in a similar situation, I believe that they should embrace what they are as well. An Asian should not be ashamed of being an Asian; a Black should not be ashamed of being Black; and even a tortoise should not be ashamed of being a tortoise. (I’m probably going to regret saying all this here because I know that people who have never dealt with racism like to fool themselves into believing that it doesn’t exist in modern society, but I feel it must be said.)

That's all right everyone's entitled to their own opinion and own interpretation. But I think I might not have explained very clearly. The best anology I can come up with is a relationship. You see young teens pretending to be something that they aren't for the sole purpose of impressing the object of their attraction. But even though they are happy in the short term, the relationship never lasts because they were never a match in the first place. This is what I feel happened here and that is why I don't see this as a possitive outcome. Because, although things seem to have worked out here, and help but think of the consequence so such actions in the real world. You can magic away consequences in a cartoon but you can't in the real world. My feelings exactly. I feel that this problem has occured in a few episodes in this season. They establish an interesting conflict but then they turn around and resolve a completely unrelated conflict and ignore what really mattered.

That message just makes me even more uncomfortable. Fluttershy established that Tank wanted nothing more than to be someone's pet so you can only assume that he was doing all the things he did just to impress Rainbow Dash. Remember the song when Rainbow Dash described what she wanted in a pet and Tank did his best to change accordingly. In the end he became what Rainbow Dash wanted but I don't think this is a good thing considering his motivations for doing so.

Does it make logical sense? yes, but I think there were better ways around the problem of the flightlessness. Rainbow Dash could have left him with Fluttershy when she slept in her cloud home, or visited Cloudsdale, and she could have carried him around on her back during the day. My problem is that I feel the writers have inadvertantly sent a message with this. The message that pets need to fundamentally change what they are in order to suit the wants and convenience of their owners. Throughout the episode they've established that Tank can't fly but when it becomes a problem for Rainbow Dash then magically he can. Instead of teaching kids about responsibility they've used a magical solution that can't be applied to real life.

Yeah, I guess I can see that. My real problem is with the sudden flight. It's just that I believe that people need to learn to accept others as they are and a tortoise is a flightless animal. Throughout the episode, Tank couldn't fly but, in the end, he made up for it with his loyalty. I wanted Rainbow Dash to realise that he was just as good as the other pets but for different reasons, but instead they went with, he's better than the other pets for the same reasons (ie he can fly) and more (and he's loyal). That's what I meant when I said that the tortoise might as well have been one of the birds.

I don't want a surprise ending I want some originality. I didn't just suspect what would happen when I saw the tortoise, I knew exactly what would happen and how it would happen, and I was right. And I didn't say that Rainbow Dash needed to ruin her life for her pet. Owning a pet is a big responsibility and you have to take a lot of time out of your day to excercise and care for it. Your time and energy is the sacrifice you make when you own a pet but the effort is definitely worth it. A flightless animal would have been more difficult for Rainbow Dash to care for but it could still be done with a little effort. This episode actually reminds me of the "Twilight" book series in that the protagonist experiences all of the rewards and none of the consequences or responsibilities. Of course life is not perpetual tragedy but it is filled with challenges that must be overcome. As far as I'm concerned, if you remove the challenges, you remove the meaning, which is what I feel they've done here.

Thank you, I'm tired of being the only neighsayer on this forum. But I didn't think it was so much the righting as it was the painfully predictable story. As soon as you see that turtle you know exactly what's going to happen and exactly how it's going to play out. There is no surprise in the slightest and it becomes boring to watch a story you've seen a million times play out for a million and one. Worst of all is that they tease you at the end of the episode. One of the ponies says that having a tourtoise as a pet would force Rainbow Dash to be more grounded and it makes you think, "Wow, Rainbow Dash is really going to have to compromise to find a balance between her ambitions and taking care of her new pet. Now that she has to think about Tank and not just herself, she'll have to learn to make sacrifices for the wellbing of her pet. This could really be interesting." But then the writers magic away all these problems with one of the biggest copouts I've seen in this show. If the turtle can magically fly at the end of the episode, the eagle might as well have won. There are no consequences for Rainbow Dash's choise so, as far as I'm concerned, there is no lesson worth learning here. I was hoping that the last episode would mark the beggining of a series of episode that were on the same level as Season 1 but, from this episode, that doesn't appear to be the case. It's not a bad episode by any means, it's just very disappointing. I'm actually surpsrised that so many people like this episode in particular because, as many hangups as I've had with a lot of the previous episodes, I feel that this one is the weakest of the series so far.

@Ginger Mint We'll just have to agree to disagree on this episode because I don't believe that Sweetie Bell learned anything except that Rarity needed to change. And as for the Luna episode, that's not what Twilight wrote in her report to Celestia. In fact, the frienship report made it sound like the episode ended the way I thought it should have: "one of the best things you can do with friendship is to give it to others, and help them find it themselves", "... all of Ponyville has learned that, even if somepony seems a little intimidating, even scary, when you offer them your friendship you'll discover a whole new pony underneath." I believe that if the moral had been that you shouldn't try to change people then the report should have been much different.

@Ginger Mint What do you mean? Of course it was a trick. They intentionally mislead Sweetie to believe a falsehood. I'm not saying that their deceit was malicious, and I understand the need for deception in science but my point still stands. Sweety Bell didn't "overcome" anything; she was just proven wrong. As for the Luna episode, well, I don't agree that it was about Luna. Really, it was about Twilight and her efforts to help socialize Luna. She got Fluttershy to teach Luna how to speak and she got Apple Jack to teach her how to act (and she would have gotten Rarity to teach her how to dress if the scene wasn't cut). The logical conclusion would be that Luna eventually learned how to become less intimidating so that the other ponies could finally give her a chance and eventually accept her as part of the group. Maybe end with Luna enjoying the holiday with all her new friends. Instead, she remains an outsider and just has to accept that she is feared and demonised because that's just what the ingroup does and who is she to interfere with that.

I don't know about that. It's not much of a compromise is Sweetie has to be tricked into working with her sister. That's just it isn't it. They made the episode about "the true meaning of halloween" instead of about friendship. The more I think about it the more I feel sorry for Luna. She comes to Ponyville looking for acceptance and leaves learning that being feared is a good thing. Not a great start for her.