Friendship is Magic

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

What's the plotline?

i don't want to give out spoilers. they're Rarity episodes.

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

anyone here keeping up with new episodes? season 6 is looking good so far, i'm really starting to like ... no spoilers ... that character who played a really important part in the season 5 finale! yeah, that character is back and i hope to see them more often! episode 3 didn't feature them but it was still a lot of fun!

[Corva]

I've only seen the first two episodes of S5 so far... The One Where They Get Captured By A Cult.

[Tempest]

Okay, no rumor. I haven't seen any episode of season 5 and only one Equestria Girls movie because it had some sort of... continuity (?) with the series. Can we claim that?

Still going to watch them, soon. But I guess I'm just a bit wary with Twilight's powers sometimes reaching DragonBall levels (ex: at the end of season 4). I mean, at what point you have to selectively ignore how easy it would be to solve most problems if you have the same magical powers as Twilight. She's gone from an OCD unicorn pony who kept a checklist for a slumber party to somepony with more destructive power than Liberty Prime (not a critics, just an observation that there is always a risk to eclipse the abilities/usefulness of the other mane six).

And I guess it's a good time to introduce the spoiler (you shouldn't be able to see this text unless you place your mouse over it) and Youtube BBcode tags... Because it makes discussions simpler without having posts looking like we are trying to talk about the Dark Lord in a Harry Potter novel.

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

i haven't seen the season 4 finale, actually. i only got into the show in the latter half of 2014. i've seen most of the past episodes, but still need to catch up on season 4. i've seen little clips of the season 4 finale, and i don't remember Twlight's powers playing that big of a part in season 5. i'm pretty tired right now - they might have made an appearance or two that i forgot about, but that'd be it.

overall, it seems the fandom was generally really impressed with season 5. i personally would say it was about half and half, which i found surprising since i liked the past seasons so much. i'm hoping season 6 is better, and so far, it definitely looks like it will be.

[Corva]

Oh hai Tempest.

She *did* have the power of all four alicorns at the end of S4... and even then she was evenly matched against someone with the combined power of the rest of Equestria plus Discord. Which means that the average alicorn is half as powerful as all non-alicorns combined (Discord appears to be matched against two alicorns, hence why the elements were required). So, 4A = D + R, where A is the average power of an alicorn, D is the power of Discord, and R is the power of the rest combined. We know that D >= 2A, because the sisters needed the elements to defeat him, hence R =< 2A.

So it's more that the alicorns are overpowered...

[Falconer]

Now see, you didn't even need a spoiler for that, because I understood exactly nothing in that entire paragraph.

[Tempest]

Well, we can't reduce this to a mathematical formula, after all, both opponents must not only possess the physical capability but also have the motive and will to instigate and sustain a battle. So it's doubtful that Celestia or Luna would voluntarily put themselves into a position where they have to resort to desperate acts of attack/defense while disregarding the inevitable consequences of such actions.

But that's the thing, alicorns aren't that powerful (but I guess a super-alicorn doesn't really count). Well, they are compared to common ponies (I mean, anyone able to lift a large rock with their mind and just squash me under it would qualify as being powerful in my book) but their powers are shown to be limited.

I mean, Celestia, the self-declared ruler of Equestria, was defeated quite easily whenever she was challenged (be it against Nightmare Moon (in season 1), Queen Chrysalis (in S2), Discord (in S4)).
Idem with Nightmare Moon against the mane six in S1.
And I don't think Cadance was ever involved in a serious fight, she fought some sort of worm thingy in Three's a Crowd (S4) but that's pretty much it. And even in a life threatening situation, her spells were more of a concussive nature than a destructive one.

Then for the S4 finale, the writers escalated that to a whole new level.

Ideally it would have been more interesting to have them use some sort of rock-paper-scissors zero-sum strategy where over-specialization leave you vulnerable to a forms of attack in the opposite direction to your strength. Tyrek being extremely strong against magic (he sucks magic out of living things, in fact it seems one of the basic rule people can quickly understand in these two episodes is that: don't use magic when fighting Tyrek) and as such he was strong against unicorns, Discord (to some extend) and alicorns. He would have a lot of difficulties dealing with creatures such as earth ponies who don't really have any magic (Celestia claims they do, but we all know they don't). The moral of the story could have been more about everyone has a role to play while throwing a bone to earth ponies at the same time (i.e. validating their usefulness aside from farming and harvesting).

But they ended up having Twilight basically dueling him with magic, which sounded to me when I watched the shows as a very risky strategy considering that everyone who tried doing that ended up having all their magic sucked out of them. And then there is also the thing that if that was even a possible "end game" then there is really no reason for not having all four fight together. All thing being equal, their hits wouldn't be as powerful but there would be four times as many of them forcing Tyrek to deal with multiple opponents at once rather than focusing on a single more powerful one.

Nor did it made sense to transfer the alicorns' magic to anyone else. I'm not even sure if Twilight being a princess can even qualify as an "open secret" and even so, there is always a blabbermouth somewhere (we all know one). Not to mention, if you are trying to avoid any confrontation in order to gain time, you're better off using Voldemort's horcrux strategy than putting all your eggs in the same basket.

Well, a rather long post to say that the episode was good... nice over-powerful Twilly but not well thought through. Which lead me to fear a lot about where the series was going. So I just waited a bit to see if the fans were royally pissed before watching S5.

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

the newest episode "Gauntlet of Fire" should definitely be of interest to you guys

[Tempest]

No need to censor episode names... unless it's called "The Death of Twilight Sparkle" and she actually dies in the episode, which considering that the show is rated "General", will never happen. Though, Hasbro killed Optimus Prime a few times back in the '80.

Yeah, this:


The '80 were a different world, planned obsolescence wasn't invented yet, PC Principal wasn't born and so they had to use drastic measures to sell a new line of toys to kids even if that means brutally killing major characters just like that.

But I digress...

[Falconer]

I'd think the network censors would have less trouble showing a robot missing an arm than a living being missing an arm.

[Tempest]

It was still a bit inappropriate to do that just to sell a new line of toys to kids. I think I have read somewhere that kids didn't took the death of their hero and fatherly figure lightly (I'm speaking about his first death, in the Transformers movie of '86).

Back then many kids' cartoons had "educational advisors" on their board. Even one episode of the series Dungeons and Dragons was almost shelved because the characters merely contemplated to kill Venger (their nemesis). Which is ironic considering that the tabletop game is a good part about combat rules, killing monsters and eventually defeating/killing the evil overlord.

But more on topic, apparently there will be a MLP movie next year and it was going to be like the Smurfs movie (2011) with CGI and real life actors. Fortunately someone realized that it was an horrible, terrible idea and the people responsible of this were fired and turned into Torgo's Executive Powder. Okay that last part isn't real, but they apparently got fired before unleashing this nightmare on us. Their replacements decided to keep MLP movie as a cartoon but it will be done with Toon Boom Animation instead of Adobe Flash so, expect the quality to go up a notch.

There will also be another EQG movie and that probably means Season 7 will most likely be an half season.

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

the MLP movie should be interesting, but i'll wait until i hear more about it to say too much.

i actually need to catch up on a few episodes (the ones from after the mid-season hiatus). i can't very well watch the episodes on TV because there's usually too much commotion on Saturday mornings, and when i get the chance to watch them at night, i'm just tired. i see Starlight Glimmer was in (at least?) one or two of the new episodes, so i really want to see them. i really like Starlight.