Best MLP Writer Besides Lauren Faust

[punky]

OK, let's give some credit to the great writers of this show. (and in the case of "Over a Barrel", not-so-great) So, I thought why not see which writers you think do the best job. The reason I left Lauren Faust is that I thought if I kept her in the list, the others would get very little attention.

For me, I think the best writers are Rogers or McCarthy.

I made this poll up because I feel the writers get so little attention, and I didn't think that was right.

[tacobob]

hmmm. This is a tough one. Rogers wrote my favorite episode (The Last Round Up) and a few others. Mitch Larson also wrote some fun ones...Ugh. So hard to choose. Guess I'd have to go with Rogers.

[weesh]

Great topic!

Rogers and Larson have proven that they are consistently strong writers. I will judge using these factors:

*Strength of their best episodes: Slight edge to Rogers for writing two of my favorites, Fall Weather Friends and Dog and Pony Show, but it is close.

*Average strength of episodes: Won by Larson, since I have fond memories of her strong and weak episodes, and Rogers' weak episodes are not amazing.

*Depth of episode (character development and themes): Won hands down by Rogers. Larson doesn't seem to consider this as high a priority as Rogers does.

*Creativity: This is the Realm of Larson. She has proven more willing to think outside the chimney and to experiment.

It is very close, and I have been waffling over this over the last 15 minutes.

I'm going with Rogers, because of the high value I put on the "Depth" category. She takes solid relational ideas, executes well, and follows through. Props to Larson though.

After voting, I noticed that McCarthy was getting votes too, and did a quick mental check of how she stacked up...She is strong each category, but doesn't outright win any of them.

[Rosewind]

It's hard to pick, as they've all written episodes that I've enjoyed. Merriwether has a black mark against her for MMDW, but later redeemed herself with Hearth's Warming.

[starswirlthebearded]

For me its between Larson and McCarthy. I chose McCarthy because she wrote my personal favorite Lesson Zero, along with Party of One, Dragonshy and Canterlot Wedding. Larson is in a close second with Return of Harmony, Its About Time and Sonic Rainboom. Rogers has my respect because she seems to focus on characters a bit more strongly, and has written some catchy lyrics, she is also quite creative with references I notice. But something attracts me to McCarthy and Larson's writing that I don't feel with Rogers.

I should also mention that Larson and Rogers wrote episodes that I flat out didn't like, which is not the case with McCarthy. Actually looking at what I DIDN'T like, Rogers comes out stronger than Larson... (I really didn't like Secret of my Excess) Rogers, I didn't out right dislike any of her episodes but didn't feel strongly about some(Cutie Pox and MMMystery on the Friendship Express come to mind).

[RarityDash]

I'm not sure Lauren would have actually gotten votes if you specified for voters to pick based only on the ones she had actual writing credits for. The first three episodes are okay, but I'm not really sure they're anyone's favorite.

For me, I'll go with Mitch Larson. McCarthy wrote the Wedding episode, which was absolutely amazing and Rogers wrote the best singular episode of Season 2 with The Last Roundup, but very few of McCarthy's other episodes are what I'd call favorites (Lesson Zero stands out the most) and as for Rogers while she'd probably be my second choice, she did write the weakest episode of season 2 in my opinion (The Cutie Pox).

Larson wrote my favorite episode of all time, Sonic Rainboom. He wrote Swarm of the Century, my preferred suggestion for new viewers. He wrote the significant and masterfully executed Cutie Mark Chronicles, he gave us Discord, he gave us back Luna, did the Film Flam brothers and their amazing song, took some big and exciting risks in presenting a story like It's About Time and finished the season off with Ponyville Confidential, in my opinion one of the more underrated and all around excellent episodes of the entire series. Even Secret of My Excess, perhaps his least notable episode to date is still pretty sweet and entertaining and probably the best Spike episode so far.

[weesh]

I'm not sure Lauren would have actually gotten votes if you specified for voters to pick based only on the ones she had actual writing credits for. The first three episodes are okay, but I'm not really sure they're anyone's favorite.

She would not have gotten a vote from me, the way the question was framed didn't really allow for special consideration to someone who also created the show.

That being said, the pilot is in my top five for the first season, and thus one of my favorites, and at a few points in time actually did occupy the top slots.

[Hippo]

M.L. Larson. I love all of them, but he's my favorite. His episodes always seem to be better animated too, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, lol. Often, its his episodes that we see things we've never seen before.