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I’m wondering why the royal family is still the royal family. Even if everyone is happy that magic happened to return, the royals are still frauds. At the very least, sideline them as figureheads and run the place as a parliamentary democracy.

@IvanSatoru  
Cross-cultural learning for stronger negotiations.

If Zephryna is supposed to become queen of Zephyr Heights, then why is she allowed by her mother the queen to just leave with her sister on some “adventure”?

@IvanSatoru  
I believe it’s supposed to start later this month.
 
 
@Anonymous #EB22  

@FeatherTrap  
I wouldn’t use such strong words here, but I agree a movie it’s better off making sure it gets the important details on itself. Even if it’s a pilot is a good idea to wrap up things as much as possible. Granted, Clone Wars also commited the same mistake although they redeemed themselves by the end, maybe in this aspect G5 can still work around, but still, it’s better if you simply try to cover the most important aspects from the get go. (Although this one wouldn’t dissapear the other problems. And also keep on mind the show to an extend was created to promote some lessons, so understanding the non-verbal implications it’s actually somewhat important here.)

@πʊßƛįϰ  
Including the points @Anonymous #EB22 made while I was away, I will simply add one final note:
 
If you can’t pull off the message you want to tell in the format of your media, here’s the proper solution: don’t put it in there.  
The onus is on the creator to make sure they’re not fucking up their own story and moral, not on their audience to lower their own standards to allow people who aren’t qualified to talk to their kids about subjects they’re not able to communicate properly.

Has the actual g5 “show length” show started yet?

@πʊßƛįϰ
 
Bleh, equality, is like S5 premiere all over again.
 
But ok, seriously, there’s some problems there. First, it’s often implied the racism it’s what caused the magicless state, no the other way around. Ponies ruined their own lives because racism. So now, what caused racism if equestria was composed by the three races and didn’t have important problems back then? Sure, maybe one or two assholes would be racists, but all the ponies? How it happened? It never brings any reasons for it, a lot of people mention racism it’s inherently irrational and all, but that’s not necesary true, at least it doesn’t explain why Equestria felt into division despite not having major problems about it at the ending of G4 because for something like that some event must have caused the division, something happened, and if that’s true, then pep talks from a random pony wouldn’t have done jackshit in the first place, or alternatively if it’s true that the hatred was irrational and the pep talks were indeed enough, then either the ponies must have been stupid enough to not remember the actual reason and still never make ammends or bothering reaching others not even if only for sheer boredom, or they just simply got generation by generation having their brains replaced by hamsters on wheels.  
And while the S2 episode of the play about heart’s warming eve play also showcases a similar situation, the context it’s very different: prior to the wendigo incident there’s not really that much of a story that mentions ponies were friends before that so the lesson does make sense, but G5 if it tries to make a continuation to G4 then narratively should be able to at the very least give an explanation about why it happened, not that it just happened and leave it like that.
 
Second, the idea you would loose your power because of the whole world getting into conflict it’s really nasty, specially if the idea is substained in that some of them might get into conflict, but others would not, essentially punishing anyone who just happened to be a pony at the wrong time. Basically it takes away talents and skills just because others were being mean. That is actually a bad message, it means your actions are worthless if the whole world is nasty and you deserve to be punished even if you did not agree with the fight nor you wanted to be involved at all. Essentially, they are all equal…equal in misery.

@FeatherTrap  
Handling it realistically would require far more than one movie to pull off. G5 did better than most other fantasy racism = bad stories. How? They took away magic so the unicorns couldn’t cast spells and the Pegasi can’t fly. It avoided the unintended xenophobia is good (even if racism is bad) message by putting all the ponies on equal ground.

@Anonymous #EB22  
@Fleur de Lis  
Also would have helped if it was handled in any kind of realistic way, to give the children watching it a helpful blueprint for how to deal with racism when in manifests in the real world.
 
Instead of just “the ponies now all hate each other because, and here’s this one that builds a mec suit and destroys the town and then everypony feels kinda bad about that”

@IvanSatoru  
@Anonymous #EB22
 
FIM had “anti-racism” messages too.  
The difference is that there it was one of tens (maybe even hundreds) of themes; while in G5 it is the one and only theme.

@IvanSatoru  
Worse of all, the message itself it’s actually a rather good message to teach for a lesson-driven show, but the way was executed plus the current division between people nowadays means that a lot of people wouldn’t really have any of it to say the least.

I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the muh reecism themes didn’t cause me nausea

I watched it.

@πʊßƛįϰ  
I wouldn’t really call myself a G5 fan, I kinda hate it to be honest. Which is the main reason I never posted here before.
 
But a couple of my friends thought it was alright so G5 related subjects come up from time to time, and I had a take on it I wanted to get off my chest. Not really sure where else I was supposed to put it.

@FeatherTrap  
The quality of a fan base is a useful metric to gauge whether to engage with their arguments or just dunk on them. The #1 red flag I look for are tells that I’m about to step into a well-rehearsed docket with an obsession with dictionary definitions if I attempt to discuss in good faith.

@Anonymous #BFA0  
Never said Sprout was blameless, merely that his mother’s involvement with turning him into what he became was severely downplayed and she was let off too easily. “You’re going a bit far, honey!” and smiling with the other ponies when the day is saved is not a substitute for actual characterisation and redemption arc.
 
As for “throwing his mother’s opinion aside”, only in the sense that he didn’t care that he was causing inconvenience to her business, in all other senses he was still very much a product of his mother’s teaching and eternal codling. It’s just that by then, he suddenly had another method for gaining respect and appreciation, which incidentally required playing into the tribalist fears that his own mother adamantly drilled into the whole town. Yet another way in which she’s culpable.
 
Which incidentally, I consider to be further proof of my original point that Hitch could have prevented this by taking him on as a spiritual/adoptive little brother and being a role model to him instead of a perpetually frustrated frenemy/rival. The speed with which he was willing to ignore his mother as soon as another source of admiration was provided leads me to believe that if Hitch had actually pushed him to be a proper, respectable stallion and shown appreciation for his efforts-and even more so for his successes-Sprout could have become a respectable figure in Maritime Bay, leaving him no longer dependent on his mother’s approval for his own self worth.
 
As for that last part, that’s entirely a meta reason and you know it. Sure, pony fans can be really creepy, what else is new? Hate them if you like, it certainly doesn’t bother me that you do.  
I simply don’t think that’s really a point against the idea that Sprout is more sympathetic that a first appraisal might seem, and if nothing else that his mother eludes far too much responsibility when she is at least 50% to blame for that whole fiasco.
 
I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s “power hungry to his core”, he clearly didn’t care about power until his mother put the idea in his head and didn’t care for trying to keep it after everypony lost respect for him. I think it’s yet another expression of his need for appreciation, which again he wasn’t being shown until he took power. I still believe it’s fair to say he is a people-pleaser at his core, taking his sense of self worth from how much respect others have for him. He never developed any kind of healthy mindset for earning it, so he latched onto a destructive way of doing it the moment it presented itself.

@FeatherTrap  
All good points, but I would add that as soon as Sprout had power he very quickly began to throw his mother’s opinion aside after having been so eager for her approval up to that point.
 
As for Sprout himself, I’m reluctant to give any slack in universe for the above mentioned reason of showing himself to be power-hungry at his core, in out of universe because most of the people who’ve taken to him are really, really creepy about it. No faster way to turn me off a character than for them to have a bad fanbase.

Does anyone else feel a little bad for Sprout and/or act like his Mother was let off way too easy?
 
I know he has a grating and whinny personality, but honestly he seems to me he just wants appreciation from others. An egotist is basically the dark mirror of a people-pleaser, if somepony like Hitch had taken it upon himself to act like a spiritual big brother and masculine role model for Sprout, he probably would have turned out to be a really great guy.
 
But the only pony who does is his coddling, controlling mother who undeservedly gets a free pass for that fiasco that happened in Maritime Bay, as if Sprout was a creature born in a vacuum that just so happened to be an extreme version of her own tribalist fearmongering. Rhetoric that she pushes so strongly she made the lighthouse keeper and his daughter into social pariahs for simply entertaining the notion that unicorns and pegasi weren’t inherently hostile…so imagine how hard she’d push it on her eager-to-please son.
 
But nah it’s fine, cause she said he was going too far after he actively started making good on his threats of violence. Look, she was even smiling at the end when the crystal came together, in direct contradiction to her entire character up to that point. That’s totally the same thing as a redemption arc.

@RavenandWritingDesk  
Ok, now I feel even more resentful against G5 now.

@RavenandWritingDesk  
You know what I find hard to believe? So soon after the final, only what, two to four decades at most I assume, Twilight technically taking away magic that way seems like considering the horror that Tirek and his dark power was portrayed as. Feels like a violation of basic rights and something that would be taboo.

@RavenandWritingDesk  
I just love that in the end, Twilight was the biggest villain of G4. She literally brought about the Equestrian dark age.

Just read the comic; So you telling me that when a random unicorn came along and said “Hey lets be racist again!” no one was like “Yeah, we tried that when Chrysalis, Cosy Glow and Tirek attacked like twenty years ago. They still won and we also had wendigos to deal with on top of it. I’d rather put up with Zebra’s than freeze to death”.
 
I mean it is cannon that background ponies are utterly retarded, Maybe Twilight got sick of their shit and took away their magic because they were clearly too stupid to have access to such power.
 
I choose to believe that Twilight, Cadence, Luna and Celestia are still alive on a beech somewhere realising that without magic their idiot subjects can’t cause trouble anymore so they can safely ignore them.

@ANoobis  
His nose is a little more squared than theirs are, but yeah. Much less pronounced.

@ANoobis  
IRL horses aren’t known for extensive dimorphism, either.
 
That screenshot does make Hitch look really short, though I believe that’s a perspective truck, as he’s standing slightly behind Sunny.