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"The earth" meaning the land.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Yeah, competent enough that she dumped Twilight in an unlocked and barely-guarded prison, thus not really impeding her any, while revealing herself to be evil after all when she had almost gotten away with fooling everypony, Twilight included.
There's any number of ways they could have had Celestia, Twilight, the Royal Guard, etc. beat Chrysalis and the changelings in a fair fight (after still being a close call and still showing Chrysalis to be competent). Or weaken them in a fair fight so that using one deus ex machina or the other to finish them off wouldn't be such of a cop-out. They chose not to.
Err what?
Please no.
Television and the internet are already full of rampant swearing, obscenity, gore, and grimdark suffering. I like My Little Pony for not having that.
I'd like the show to be a little more intelligent. The nice thing about intelligent writing is that, when done well, you don't need to be a genius to understand it. You just think "oh wow that makes perfect sense now that the story laid it out for me but I would never have thought of that myself!". There is no reason a children's show can't be intelligent, especially if it's billing itself as "edutainment".
Good teamwork may be harder to write, but if done properly children can still go "yeah, I see how friendship helped in that instance". If you're not interested in showing the advantages of friendship in a believable, applicable-to-the-real-world manner, then you might as well just hang posters reading "HEY, Y'ALL BE FRIENDS NOW" around school and skip on making a full television show. I could do that.
Not when the individual skills you're combining into the teamwork include magic, flight, and general awesomeness.
If you can't do something interesting with your characters' skills, you need better characters.
Then why do they keep having villains trying to destroy the world? Slice-of-life comedies don't normally face so many existential threats in a year.
The show was always intended to mix slice-of-life comedy with adventure.
And in fact, my point is that the fight scenes in the slice-of-life comedy parts (which are, as you say, "extraneous") are better than the ones in the adventure parts. Which seems backwards.
I wasn't just talking about Tirek. The same also applies to Starlight Glimmer in Cloudsdale. Or even to Twilight's horn-first charge at Nightmare Moon (which was a feint to lure her away from the Elements, but still makes Twilight the only character to have interacted with Nightmare Moon in some way other than blasting rainbows at her).
The "fight" against Tirek was also completely irrelevant and a waste of time since they were both completely invulnerable to everything, and it was blasting him with rainbows (that he apparently can't absorb the way he can absorb every other magic, including Discord's) that got rid of him. At least in a pillow fight, there's some minor difference (to your pride) between getting hit and avoiding getting hit. The Tirek fight didn't even give the sense of that much mattering.
It was clearly introduced for the sake of "Twilight is a princess now, so she should have a castle". The castle was also necessary to bring into play the deus ex mapina, which is its central feature.
At least out-of-universe, the writers were clearly looking for an excuse to give Twilight a castle (and a deus ex mapina), and decided to destroy her old home to help the transition.
If the Tree of Harmony hadn't specifically planned it out that way in-universe (instead just giving her a new house because it's what she happened to turn out to need), then that would mean that the foundation of recent seasons' plots, presented as a major part of Twilight's character development and growing into her role of princessdom, was a complete accident.
Or if the Tree of Harmony was planning from the start to give Twilight a castle but was originally planning to just put it next to her old house (or wherever) rather than replacing her old house, then it's still awfully conspicious that the only thing Tirek seriously damaged is the thing Twilight could afford to lose.
(Okay, it later turns out that he also damaged the Ponyville school playground. Still nowhere near the level of damage of completely burning down the library. The schoolhouse itself is still fine, even.)
Rude.
Actually, yes. I feel very strongly about this, so this may get a bit long-winded.
A common criticism is that she acted out of character when she didn't have to. If she wanted to avoid suspicion, why wasn't she acting like Cadance would, and be nice to Twilight and her friends? Because of the Elements. Well known throughout Equestria (because of the whole eternal night and chaos thing), they're quite the obstacle for a coup. Logically, and through extensive research, she'd know that to use the Elements all of them need to be in operation. How do you take them out of commission? Separate one of the bearers from her friends; specifically Twilight. Chrysalis acted very intentionally, acting in a way that would seem odd to Twilight - who knew her best of all - but could be dismissed as wedding stress to anyone else. Twilight would pursue her suspicion, and Chrysalis would slowly but steadily villainize Twilight, separating her from her friends and rendering the Elements useless. She only acted out-of-character when Twilight was around, so Twilight would be the one to point it out, and (as mentioned earlier) acted in ways that would only seem off to someone who knew her. She also befriended the other 5, while making Twilight seem overly suspicious and possessive and ruining her credibility were she to discover Chrysalis. She specifically worded things that would sound rude to Twilight but could be dismissed easily as wedding stress. She used the mind control on Shining Armor with Twilight in the other room, just to have more ammo against her when Shining defended her and, once Twilight's friends abandoned her, Chrysalis would be free to do with her what she wished. Since Twilight was banned from the wedding, no one would think to look for her.
Another obstacle to overcome is Shining Armor and his shield spell, which can easily block all threats to Canterlot; a spell that neither Celestia nor Luna can cast. Best course of action? How about impersonating his fiance and sapping all of his energy periodically over a period of months. She didn't impersonate Celestia or Luna because they weren't the biggest threat.
Now, finally, we get to something that you actually talked about.
I don't know if you're talking about being out of character, or revealing herself when Twilight and the real Cadance stormed into the room. If it's the latter, then it's because her whole ruse fell apart when the real Cadance burst into the room.
As for her monologuing, quite simply she was stalling for time. Her army was chipping away at the shield surrounding Canterlot, and she thought she couldn't take Celestia alone. To her surprise, she didn't need them, but that's beside the point.
And now, just for this little bit, I'm going to quote Josh directly, as he words it perfectly.
Obviously the three unicorns wouldn't fare well against the Element of Magic and the Princess of Love, but think about this: the ponies are innocent. Chrysalis knew that Twilight would be hesitant to harm innocents. However, the guards (the bridesmaids) wouldn't survive the... wedding bouquet ex machina. Hrm.
Chrysalis' plan ultimately failed because of deus ex machina, and you can't really defend yourself against that. It really speaks leagues of the writers when they create a villain plan so perfect that they wrote themselves into a corner, requiring a deus ex machina to get them out.
I agree entirely.
"Too mundane" for the aforementioned "most bronies". Not for me.
I never disputed that. I was saying that the FIGHT SCENES aren't required.
I said the adventure fight scenes are extraneous, not the slice-of-life fights. And calling them "fight scenes" is classifying them as something they're not. They're scuffles. Kerfuffles. Quarrels.
That was Starlight singling out Twilight, not the other way around. And Twilight couldn't exactly get her friends to help because it was only at the end of the whole ordeal that she was returned to her original timeline.
Everybody else was distracted by the ANCIENT BEING OF DARKNESS in front of them. Only Twilight was headstrong enough to CHARGE AT THE NIGHTMARE ENTITY. It's not that they didn't do anything, it's that nopony else effectively had a death wish.
That's what I've been saying.
You must have misread: I'm against the adventure fight scenes, not the slice-of-life ones.
But I mean, Tirek was trying as hard as he could to kill Twilight. He was firing lasers and fireballs at her everywhere. It was her own fault that she got the library destroyed. She was on the balcony, looking at Tirek through her telescope. Tirek saw her and fired a fireball at her. Nothing more.
Every other part of the fight took place in the Badlands. It was a stupid stupid decision to bring it into a populated area.
Post self-deleted by Trotterdam.
Ponies.
That's a common side effect of talking to me.
That's equally possible. It's just that from sub-tier canon sources (the comics) Chrysalis is portrayed as a strategic genius and a master manipulator. As such, I'm more inclined to believe my theory.
There's MUCH more information on her character in the comics than. Two whole story arcs. She's easily my favorite villain, tied with Starlight.
Eliminate the one pony who can foil her schemes. Or something. Maybe just wanted to seize the opportunity to toy with her rival.
But does that make a bad villain? Every other villain in practically every other story does it and gets a free pass. Why not Chryssie?
My personal opinion is that the wall wasn't intended to break, and she was supposed to stay trapped in the cave. Or something.
I'm tired.
I'm going to go to bed.
Draggy's on Skype tonight, under the username Rauhiss.
Deus ex mapina
I'm only getting on her case because you claimed she was so competent it needed a deus ex machina to take her down.
She wasn't. She made plenty of mistakes and got lucky not to be defeated by any of them.
I have to ask: why do you hate on the writers so much? And if you think they're incompetent, then why do you watch the show? If you think it's badly-written, then there's no reason to watch it.
Just watched Episode 6 of season 6.
-Slight spoilers kinda, not really-
Probably one of my favourite episodes of the show to date, the characters worked well together and I loved the progression of the episode. Though it actually got kind of dark. Like, Trixie was about to commit suicide dark.
Overall though, great episode.
I came into the episode with no knowledge of anything in it (not even the presence of Trixie), and I've gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised. The setup, the character interactions, and the conclusion were great improvements from last season.
Over the past year or so, it felt like the topics of each episode were beginning to drift into the cliche children's show setups, with it getting so bad that I couldn't even bring myself to watch some of the episodes because of their cringe-worthy pre-title scenes (On Your Marks included). Sure, there were some diamonds in the rough, but the 30-entry Book of Didactic Madlibs still prevailed over a large portion of the season 5 episodes. However, with episodes like Gift of the Maud Pie, Gauntlet of Fire, and No Second Prances leading season 6, I think we're beginning to see the end of that cycle. The writers are beginning to take risks again, going for morals that haven't been hammered into the ground, and writing original (or copying relatively obscure) plotlines. (Seriously though, as good as GotMP was, the whole thing sort of rubbed me the wrong way.)
I hope to see more great things from the writers in this coming year.
Let me tell you, going into Season 6, I stopped after the Crystalline Part 1, because until then I had been groaning about how stupid the whole thing was.
Going back to watch EG: Friendship Games did not get me excited at all.
But seeing the positive reviews here, I am encouraged to give S6 a chance. Maybe it will be at least as good as Season 4, if not Season 2.
Post self-deleted by Alicorn princess twilight sparkle.
Trotterdam I'm waiting for an answer. You straight-up said that you think the writers are incompetent, so why do you watch the show in the first place? If you think it's badly-written, then you have no reason to watch it.
Do you know a better show about magical talking ponies?
But you don't have to watch a show about magical talking points. In fact, the magical talking ponies part (and the prejudice against bronies it causes) detracts from the reasons to watch, so the only reason to watch the show is, well, the show. The writing: plot, characters, setting; if you truly think that those are done poorly, then you have no reason to watch.
There are millions upon millions of other tv shows, movies, and fandoms to partake in. There's nothing keeping you here except for the show. So, pray tell, if you feel the show is subpar, then why do you remain?
Not really? There are plenty of people who think the cute characters/art style are one of the major draws. It's like saying that having talking lions commit regicide detracts from The Lion King. (When everyone knows it's really the garbage comic relief characters shoved in to lighten things up for the kiddies with fart jokes that does that. Seriously, who the hell thought they needed their own movie?)
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