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Niggoslav_Krawczyk
Duck - Niggoslav_Kwaczyk
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
A Perfectly Normal Pony - Drinky_Butt
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

#ChanYe2028
They didn’t pull the plug on the show. They ended it. They reboot the franchise every ten years or so, hence why we got G5 in the 2020#. In the 2030s, we’ll get G6.
WELP.APNG
Smitty1991
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).

Not to mention it led to the show’s wasted potential on being mainstream.
Not sure what show you were watching because this show was in the mainstream for a number of years.
@GargantuanBass
I can assure you that you Are in the minority on that point. There was nothing wrong with that episode.
I just want G4 to be well known outside of the fanbase. Just like Star Trek.
The fact that it wasn’t well known really made the MLP movie lesser-known than Frozen or the MCU.
What the hell are you going on about? G4 was very well known outside the fandom. The reason why the movie failed is because 2D animated films are a rarity nowadays.
And the fact that critics disliked it (not just for the whole “they’re not fans” thing, but for the fact that the film was a “standard/cliche/generic” animated film while ignoring the fact of it being faithful to the source material compared to other Hasbro films)
It’s na adaptation. Nobody cares about how faithful it was to the source material, especially seeing as how the film was stand-alone.
and the underperformance at the box office (and Hasbro’s disappointment with the domestic BO performance not exceeding their expectations (despite its worldwide gain to make more money than its budget)
Dude, it only made $60,000,000 at the box office. Not very successful.
leading to assumptions of this being the reason why they pulled the plug on the show), doesn’t help either.
They didn’t pull the plug on the show. They ended it. They reboot the franchise every ten years or so, hence why we got G5 in the 2020#. In the 2030s, we’ll get G6.
Even Maud really only got a few lines here and there.
Clearly we weren’t watching the same show. Maud got a lot of episodes dedicated to her, certainly more than just “a few lines here and there.”
Even worse is when you just make up reasons why people don’t like something instead of just asking them, like in the last bad take from OP when it was deposited that the reason the finale generated such a shitstorm was because people didn’t get their hyper-specific fan theories being proven true, when the reality is that the finale didn’t provide a satisfactory conclusion for many characters and as a result the investment that the audience put in them never received the proper payoff. They felt cheated, not because they didn’t get everything, but simply because they wanted something and the episode gave them nothing. This is not an unreasonable criticism, if you tell me to give a shit about what happens to this character, I except my investment to have a payoff.
Funny, because several people loved this finale precisely because they felt that it gave the characters a proper sendoff.
hell, anyone who has stuck to this show right to the end clearly finds value in it despite the drop of writing quality (myself included)
The show didn’t drop in quality writing was. You just want to pretend like it did because you’re desperately searching for an excuse to complain.
So, how did the Apples react to Granny Smith’s passing?
You know, that named character that has been a staple of the Apple Family since season one? Did she get to live to see her great-grandson? Did they choose to honour her in any way beyond AJ looting her corpse for her scarf?
You mean that old fart that we knew next to nothing about except that she was there when Ponyville was founded? And it’s likely that she gave Applejack her scarf as a keepsake just before she died.
So, how is the now presumably teenage Flurry Heart doing these days?
You know, that character that was stated to have such significance to the state of alicorns in the story? Twilight’s own niece, the daughter of the only other Princess in power by the end of the series? Is she adventurous? Reclusive? Funny? Boring? Compassionate? Impetuous? What was her canon character beyond “Baby”?
You mean that character that nobody cares about?
How did she turn out after being nothing but a living breathing plot device for two whole seasons?
Uh, no. She was only a plot device in the opening to season six. Try again.
So, about the Pie Family?
Are Pinkie’s Parents still on the farm by now? Have they retired? Are they dead? Did Marble and Limestone Pie stay on the farm or have they decided to look for other careers as well?
Again, you’re talking about characters we knew next to nothing about. Why should we acre about characters we know nothing about?
What about Maud Pie and Mud Briar? Did they decide to become parents or are they just enjoying each other’s comapany?
You mean those two random ponies nobody cared about, one of whom was only introduced in the penultimate season? Again I have to ask, why should we care about these characters when we don’t know anything about them?
Failure to resolve these threads leaves viewers who actually bothered to get invested in these characters unsatisfied, as I explained in great detail on the previous thread. I’ll just give you a link to the entire thing instead of repeating myself word for word again.
If you where satisfied by the ending then hooray for you, stop being so dismissive of people who desired the conclusion to the show to actually conclude loose plot/character threads instead of setting up a story that will never exist.
How is asking that anyone outside the Mane Six get any closure whatsoever asking for “hyper-specific headcanon expectations”? Why is it headcanoning for me to ask the writers to give a shit about the characters they themselves set up and just give me a simple answer.
Because none of the above are loose plot threads/characters. Nobody gave a shit about these characters because they weren’t important to the story. They’re called background characters for a reason.
I never had any particular expectations of how Flurry Heart would turn out, I just wanted to see how she did. I wanted the writers to do their job and answer the point that they themselves opened.
No. You just wanted the writers to do what you wanted. People like you are exactly the type of people OP is talking about.
but I wasn’t expecting the likes of Troubleshoes Clyde and Hoo’far to get a page long ending slide.
So why were you expecting the same thing for minor characters like Mudbriar and Maud?
To go back to Flurry Heart, how about just a scene where she gets to show what her character was like? Didn’t have to be long, it could have just been a few well written lines that indicate what her personality was like, that would have done.
That’s what fanfiction is for.
Scootaloo’s first flight was something I really wanted to see, as well. I suppose disability inclusion is what they were going for, but she wanted it so much - it just seems too cruel. 😪
Tough. That’s life. As. A disabled person myself, I like that they made it so she never filed, that she managed to find fulfilment working as a teacher at the School of Friendship.
@FeatherTrap
Hence why the writers didn’t bother with telling us what characters like Mudbriar or Flurry were up to.
They introduced a pointless character, who could have been cut out of her episodes with a simple re-write and the plot would have been the same.
Wrong. You do realize that Flurry Heart was the catalyst to kick off the plot, right?
“Hey, see these ponies? We’re going to go to the trouble of giving them an entire character and show you how they have repeatedly have an impact on the stories and lives of the main cast. But you’re not supposed to be invested in them or anything, that would be inane”.
Wrong. Characters like Flurry and Mudbriar did not have any kind of impact on the stories being told or the characters. Stop making up bullshit.
Don’t give them a major impact on the development of other characters-especially not the MAIN characters.
Again, these characters didn’t have an impact on the main cast, because, as you yourself said…
They don’t appear because they have no impact whatsoever on the stories being told, therefore there is no reason for the audience to be invested in them.
Supes

@FeatherTrap  
Wow, the only way you can feel like you’re “destroying” something is if you put your hands to your ears and essentially go “la la la can’t hear you” to pretend that a point that I never intended to have is super important to me. That’s pretty pathetic. No, once again, I never meant it as “specific headcanons got disproven”, and the longer you try to grasp onto that idea the more desperate you look. What I’ve always been saying about the whiners’ reactions to the finale, is that all of their arguments against it come down to them wanting to see specific things and the show electing to show different things, or having things go in a different direction from what they wanted, which they can not accept.
 
And what a ridiculous statement about not having any non-important details. That is in no way a rule every story should always follow. You’re essentially claiming that every story owes it to the audience to tell them everything about anything interesting it ever mentions, or otherwise it shouldn’t even mention it, and that’s beyond absurd, especially for an episodic TV show, which does not abide by the same expectations of self-containment or planned structure from beginning to end as, say, a standalone book would. And even literature does it all the time, to enrich the world it depicts. I couldn’t name a single book I’ve read (and read classic literature basically all the time) that did not have superfluous characters or ideas that only exist as extra details and don’t play significant roles. You can claim to be a writer all you want, but if you truly think that that is something all good stories HAVE to abide by, I have huge doubts about your competence in the role. You only have an incredible amount of arrogance to your name right now, without anything to base it on, making arguments that have to be right “because I said so”. The hilarious part about it all is that it’s very evident that a lot of people, I would even claim a majority of the fandom, do not share your bizzarre opinion that every side character ever introduced in an episodic tv-series needs to be fully explored, and yet all your claims hinge on pretending that “people” want the same things you did. Yes, I do think that being so invested in obvious side characters and expecting the show to go through all of those characters eventually and make them all super meaningful, is ridiculous. Granny Smith was perfectly fine just being an extra family member who provided a wider context for the Apple family and had a lot of roles throughout the show. Same with all the others. Their role is to flesh out the world, make it feel more rich and alive, to provide actors other than the main cast for some of the show’s stories. Not every character or idea is a “plot thread” and yes, not everything that plays a role in the show needs to play a role of the same caliber as the main characters and setting details. Sure, for some shows having a skeleton crew works out well, but shows like MLP are not about a very contained plot, it’s a slice of life series, and of freaking course slice of life series are gonna show a bunch of things the main characters encounter that aren’t a big deal. Maybe you just don’t understand that stories can be different?
 
And no, just because they were eventually going to make six more seasons, doesn’t mean they knew so ahead of time and were putting all those one-off things into every second episode at the beginning of the show with the intent to bring them all back eventually. Need I remind you that the show was originally supposed to end after three seasons? Yet only the third season meekly starts to look back onto its pool of characters and ideas already introduced. To claim that there was barely any continuity in the first seasons because the writers had long-term plans is pretty ridiculous too. And the fact that you either pretend not to understand or actually don’t remember anything from the early seasons says a lot about the validity of your claims regarding their comparative quality to the subsequent ones. But just not to look like I’m avoiding putting down specific examples, even though you REALLY shouldn’t need them, how about we barely scratch the surface here. Pinkie’s family and Rarity’s family, as the closest to the things you’ve mentioned yourself: just shown for a while, were never going to be significant. Zecora: showed up a few times and was a pretty pointless, by your standards, character right after her initial episode. Yes, the buffaloes count too, because by your logic you should have gotten invested enough in them that you’d want to see what was going on with them afterwards (what’s that? You didn’t care to see more of them? Hmmmmmmmm, could it be because you only had specific things you actually wanted to see, not literally everything you’re claiming the show “set up”? Oh, if only I made that exact argument at some point!). Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon only exist as minor reoccuring bully characters without anywhere they’re going to go as characters at that point. Gilda, former friend of Rainbow Dash, has a falling-out with her and never shows up again until the better seasons, because apparently it’s not worth it to patch things up with a friend if they were a jerk once. That ridiculous pony-pulled train shows up once and then gets promptly replaced with a more reasonable train, just like Luna’s original design, showing you that they were not designing things for long-term and then had to go back and change them. Since you brought up Photo Finish, how about Hoity-Toity or Sapphire Shores or Fancy Pants or Fleur, all one-off (at that point) characters with no other roles than to be relevant in one episode. (Of course, I don’t even remotely consider such things an objecive writing flaw, but you brought up Photo Finish so I didn’t want to let you pretend she was the only one.) Fluttershy’s stare gets introduced and then never brought up until season four. Rainbow acquires a pet who doesn’t show up again until the better seasons. The baby cakes are born and serve their role for one episode and nothing important ever happens with them afterwards. Minotaurs introduced with Iron Will. etc etc etc. This is just from a brief glance over the episode list. Now, you can claim that not all of these things are on the same level as “granny smith or the pie family”, but that’s an arbitrary line you yourself draw between what you wanted to see more of and what you didn’t, again, just like I was saying all along.
 
And finally, based on what passes for “discussions about the show’s quality in earnest” with you, which amounts to you not being able to contain your arrogance and peacocking about “listen here, you duckie plebs”, “I have utterly destroyed you” and so forth, of course I’m not interested in that, since it’s plainly obvious you yourself are not. Did you forget what tone you entered this comment section with in the first place? You never wanted to engage in a discussion, you just wanted to strut in here and “put everyone in their place” because despite having a minority opinion you think yourself to be an arbiter of all things storytelling, apparently. I’m only replying to you to insert and support an opposing opinion so others can see it and don’t have to assume yours is undisputed and somehow correct.
FeatherTrap
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
Dream Come True! - Participated in the MLP 9th Anniversary Event
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2019) - Celebrated Derpibooru's seventh year anniversary with friends
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation

Gone to Ponybooru
Had to do something, what did I miss-
 
@Supes  
Oh wow, there is a lot of unpack here.  
Oh yeah, one not 100% accurate usage of the word “headcanon” is all you can grasp onto, eh?
 
Well it was the entire basis of your point, so yes I am going to draw attention to it. The extrapolation of “you constructed a whole list of very specific and arbitrary things you wanted to see” is too vague to mean anything, but I’ll get to that in a minute. No need to repeat myself.  
If I was a perfect human being, I likely wouldn’t even be tempted to engage in these ridiculous discussions in the first place…
 
Nice humblebrag! 10/10! Perfect execution! :D
 
And now for the main body of your point: You are conflating expectations with headcanons. This is why I drew attention to it, because they quite different and you bloody know it. This is why you didn’t mention it again even though you insist your point is the same, because I thoroughly destroyed the idea that it was invalidated headcanons pissing people off in both this thread and the last one and so now you’re trying to weasel your way into saying your point was something different while it was the same all along…and in the process you made it even worse.  
I had expectations because, and I want you to follow me on this one:  
The writers wrote these plot points into their story. They wrote these characters into their story. They where the ones that told their audience they where important. I expect them to do something with that.  
Was there anything I said there that you didn’t quite follow? No? Good.
 
I am going to say this as a writer. As someone who is working on his own series at the moment, who is developing an understanding of the craft. And I am going to put it in bold to highlight it as important, I want to make sure there is no misunderstandings or miscommunication:
 
If a detail means nothing, if it’s not going to be resolved, don’t put it in there. The onus is on the writer to ensure they don’t draw attention to characters or plot points that don’t mean anything. Don’t ask your audience to invest in an element of your story if it means nothing to your story.
 
Your argument amounts to being fine with loose threads because you had no investment in them, then getting angry with other people when they say they did have investment and now feel cheated. This is a fault in the writing, if they weren’t going to resolve it they should have cut it out.  
It is disingenuous to equate investment with a character or plot point that the writers actively went out of their way to say was important to the story, and disappointment that it had an inadequate resolution with “headcanonning”, yet that is the very baseline of your argument. Audiences have expectations when they read a story, the expectations are formed by the writers and what they establish. The writers might give a pay off for them exactly as the audience expected…or they might fall short…or they might exceed them. Or, maybe they’ll even cleverly subvert them, largely depends on what the author does with their story and how clever they are compared to their readers.
 
This is not what the MLP finale does. In it’s case, it all just stops. It comes to a screeching halt, leaving them without closure. Don’t question it, everyone is singing about how this is where the magic happens, what more could you ask of us?
 
These where not promises made to “me”, they where made to the audience by the writers.  
“Hey, see these ponies? We’re going to go to the trouble of giving them an entire character and show you how they have repeatedly have an impact on the stories and lives of the main cast. But you’re not supposed to be invested in them or anything, that would be inane”.  
If I’m not supposed to be invested in them, then give them a role in the story equivalent to a background pony. Don’t give them a major impact on the development of other characters-especially not the MAIN characters. This is why there are shows about children like Ed, Edd and Eddy in which the parents never appear, even though we as the audience are aware that these children must have parents, because otherwise who is paying to keep them sheltered, clothed and fed. They don’t appear because they have no impact whatsoever on the stories being told, therefore there is no reason for the audience to be invested in them.
 
Those where the ones I remember off the top of my head, I could go back and watch them again if you’d like or you could provide some examples of errors in the first season, rather then just say “Nuh uh! Your stupid!” but given how you’ve been conducting yourself this far I’m not holding my breath. =_=  
Ah yes, “Nitpicks”. Of all the terms used by holier-than-thous to dismiss criticism, this is the one that keeps coming up over and over again. This one amounts to:  
That thing you consider to be a problem is something I don’t consider to be a problem. Therefore I’m right and you’re wrong
 
Even if you do think it’s just a “nit” in the writing, do you really want to ignore nits? By calling it that you’ve acknowledged it’s a flaw in the writing, even if you only consider it a minor one. Even if I where to 100% agree with everything you call a “nit”, I will still say “Well they still could have done that better”.
 
Excuse me, what the fuck? What the hell are you talking about, they had an entire show’s worth of content left at that point to revisit old characters. Are you referring to Princess Luna? Because she made several significant appearances after she was introduced in the debut. Do you mean the Buffaloes, whose entire conflict amounted to needing an open migration route that was resolved by the end of the episode? I’m going to have to ask you to quantify that one.
 
Both your defence of OP’s point and your Behaviour throughout this discussion have demonstrated that just like OP you’re not actually interested in engaging in discussions about the show’s quality in earnest and how that could effect people’s enjoyment of it. You’d rather take the insufferable hipster approach of simply insisting you’re too smart to consider these to be problems and talk down to everyone who disagrees with you.  
I truly am sick of this style of dismissal, it was the impetus for my original post here. You know, that one where you made an ass of yourself and you’ve spent the entire rest of your posts here trying to polish it by painting a false version of your original claim?
Supes

@FeatherTrap  
Oh yeah, one not 100% accurate usage of the word “headcanon” is all you can grasp onto, eh? I still meant the same thing: you constructed a whole list of very specific and arbitrary things you wanted to see, and when it wasn’t satisfied, you were disappointed through nobody’s fault but your own. If I was a perfect human being, I likely wouldn’t even be tempted to engage in these ridiculous discussions in the first place, but at least I don’t claim that secondary characters that we don’t learn the entire life story of are “broken promises”.
 
If you see promises everywhere and then expect them to be fulfilled, where there were in fact no promises being made, that’s also your problem and yours alone. Having extra characters show up and fulfill their roles within their episodes, maybe having them mentioned or shown again, is not a chekov’s gun. Learning details about our MAIN characters, such as their family members, is also not a chekov’s gun. Flurry Heart is the only instance of it seeming like they were going somewhere and then didn’t, the only plot point that could remotely qualify as a chekov’s gun, and even then it’s a minor one. I never claimed the show became flawless, so admitting that her situation was kinda weird doesn’t contradict any of my points about the show’s general trends. Absolutely inane stuff like “how did the apple family react to Granny Smith’s passing” and “what happened with the Pie family” are in no way promises that were made to you, they’re things you personally wanted to see but didn’t get to.
 
It’s also kind of hilarious that you pretend “diamond dogs and Photo Finish” were the only things the early seasons made up for one episode alone and never developed. That stuff kept happening to a degree that was unmatched by any later seasons, which finally started bringing some of the old stuff back. You’re welcome to try and compile some sort of error list, though knowing your arguments so far, most of the “errors” are either going to be ridiculous nitpicks that depend on your personal assumptions about things to contradict them, or something obvious that did not need in-depth addressing. And on top of that you’re then likely going to dishonestly pretend that the earlier seasons were better about that sort of stuff, while in reality if you applied the same level of scrutiny, there’s no way in hell you would find a greater concentration of undeveloped or dropped ideas that went nowhere in the latter seasons than the former ones. No matter how you cut it, all your “this character was introduced but then didn’t appear enough afterwards” nonsense applies stronger to the show’s beginning than its end.
FeatherTrap
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
Dream Come True! - Participated in the MLP 9th Anniversary Event
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2019) - Celebrated Derpibooru's seventh year anniversary with friends
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation

Gone to Ponybooru
@CaptainGrumpy  
Ooooooooooor, you could post more passive aggressive GIFs to try and shame ponies that are having a conversation to stop~ ;3  
C’mon, I love passive aggressive GIFs! They’re fun~ ^^
FeatherTrap
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
Dream Come True! - Participated in the MLP 9th Anniversary Event
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2019) - Celebrated Derpibooru's seventh year anniversary with friends
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation

Gone to Ponybooru
@Supes  
At best that would be an argument for using a smaller character pool next time around. And no, asking for them to resolve unfinished threads is still not asking for specific headcanons, you are still wrong.  
Let me help you out here, the definition of headcanon is:  
Used by followers of various media of entertainment, such as television shows, movies, books, etc. to note a particular belief which has not been used in the universe of whatever program or story they follow, but seems to make sense to that particular individual, and as such is adopted as a sort of “personal canon”. Headcanon may be upgraded to canon if it is incorporated into the program or story’s universe.
 
Oh look, you removed that term from your new definition that you claimed was right all along. I wonder why.  
Probably because you are aware that your claim was wrong but you’d rather just read whatever you like into my words to lick your own bruised ego rather than simply admit you made a mistake. If you want to rephrase a point you thought was poorly constructed then fine, I’ll happy for you to rephrase. But you claiming you where right in the first place even as you change the goalposts in the most obvious way reeks of dishonesty.
 
Since it is lost on you (whether it be you being unable to account for your own bias or a wilful act of ignorance to assure your own superiority I cannot tell) it is clear that what I am asking for is for the writers to give pay offs to elements that they set up. This is basic bitch storytelling: Set up > Pay Off.  
You might have heard of this concept in the principle of Chekov’s Gun  
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
 
When you as a writer bring up a detail or element, you are telling your audience that this is important information. You are making an implicit promise with your audience that this is going to be important later on, so they need to commit this to memory. This, for the record is why we don’t get into explorations of what background ponies are doing with their days, they’re not relevant to FiM’s story, so the writers don’t bring them up.  
So when that promise is broken, the audience’s investment in an element the writer brought up goes unfulfilled, this tends to make people upset. It is an admission on the writer’s behalf that they didn’t know what they where doing, or that they cut corners (or both). It is an admission that entire characters or plot threads could have been removed entirely and the story would have been the same. It is an admission that you wasted your audience’s time.  
Believe it or not, that tends to piss people off. And it is under the umbrella of “Bad Writing”.
 
In your very rebuttal you meekly acknowledge that Flurry Heart was underdeveloped, a problem that the first season didn’t have with the exceptions of Photo Finish and the Diamond Dogs. This, by the by, is an issue with Season One’s writing, but it’s a fairly minor one because their narrative purpose was to be antagonists for one episode. So although it is an issue, it’s not a huge issue.  
Flurry Heart’s introduction went like this. In it they established her very existence as a natural born alicorn was without precedent (I’ll put aside the Diary of the Two Sister’s claim to the contrary since it’s not part of the show, let’s stick to working with the show’s canon) and they spend the lion’s share of that scene drawing attention to the significance of it. In writing terms, this is called a “set up”, and it’s a big one too. Introducing new characters is also a set up, since the writer is telling his audience that this character will be important to the story.  
And then it just goes nowhere, it is never addressed again. Flurry herself is simply reduced to being a baby with no character so she can be-as @daniboyi95 put it-“A literal plot device”.  
It is a plot point that goes nowhere. A set up with no pay off.  
They introduced a pointless character, who could have been cut out of her episodes with a simple re-write and the plot would have been the same. A set up with no pay off.
 
This is not the equivalent of the Diamond Dogs or Photo Finish from Season One, this is a significant change to many pre-established rules of the worldbuilding (which they even highlight in that scene) and thus a change in the stakes, especially as it relates to the status of alicorn. And it was all pointless. I don’t know how you could consider that anything other then an example of terrible writing, which you insist I haven’t brought up examples of at all. If you want me to spend the rest of the week re-watching every episode in every season past “Seasonwunn!” and compile a list of every error that was enough for me to note without being enough to completely kill my investment in the show then fine, I hope you like being here for a week though.
 
But to insist that no evidence has been provided even when you yourself are begrudgingly acknowledging writing errors like this (albeit downplaying the significance) is foolish.
Supes

@FeatherTrap  
Yes, in a show with this many characters, and a pretty well-established pool of MAIN characters, it’s kind of silly to have expected all of them to get some “closure” (most of them don’t even need any closure as far as I’m concerned - the only one who feels like more could have been done is Flurry Heart). Otherwise your list is exactly how I called it, very specific things that you wanted but didn’t get since the episode’s focus was different. That’s not bad writing, that’s you having set yourself up for disappointment with unrealistic expectations.
 
Also,
an overall trend of the writing being more prone to contrivances, contradictions and now finally abandoning plot threads (ie: set ups that had no payoff) as the Seasons went on
This is just not true at all. Before season 5 and onward started bringing some actual continuity onto the table, nobody ever even expected the show to come back to any of its weird ideas or characters that got introduced for one episode and were never seen again. The first two seasons were chock-full of that shit. Trixie coming back in season 3 was a big surprise because we didn’t expect the show to remember anything at that stage. Same with the timberwolves. The standards of continuity, consistensy and establishing plot threads that actually go somewhere have definitely improved (if not outright appeared) in the later seasons and it’s ridiculous to claim otherwise. Again, just because you personally wanted to see certain things go further, doesn’t make them not going further bad writing. I may have wanted to see grown up Flurry, but acknowledging her in the stained glass window was enough. She had no relevance to the plot and shoehorning her into the epilogue wasn’t necessary. Same as most of the other things you claimed the show needed to do to reach your ridiculous standard. Sure, the later seasons have their own stinkers, but you have yet to provide any evidence of general bad writing at all.
FeatherTrap
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
Dream Come True! - Participated in the MLP 9th Anniversary Event
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2019) - Celebrated Derpibooru's seventh year anniversary with friends
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation

Gone to Ponybooru
@daniboyi95  
Okay, so you are not as unreasonable as @Supes, good to know. Broadly I tend to agree with that statement, even as far back as Season One there where some bad episodes. I would acknowledge an overall trend of the writing being more prone to contrivances, contradictions and now finally abandoning plot threads (ie: set ups that had no payoff) as the Seasons went on, hence why I state that the quality has overall declined.
 
You appear to have misunderstood, so let me clarify: I was referring to the event that was causing drama in this episode, the titular Last Problem. That would of course, be Twilight moving to Canterlot and thus “leaving her friends behind”. It was a conflict with an obvious solution, which they spend most of the Episode acting like that can’t figure out themselves.
 
See, if Twilight moving to Canterlot had actually created some kind of distance between her and her friends, then there would have been a real consequence. But no, the writers just made the characters idiots for most of the episode so we could have drama.
 
If she had no importance at all, why did the writers make such a big deal out of her? You could literally cut her out of her own debut episode with a tiney bit of re-writing and the story would have proceeded the same. It is a set up with no payoff.
 
Yes onto Big Mac, who had a wordless blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo where the writers at least establish that he had a foal, but we don’t even get to hear his name. One word, literally one word (or two since many pony names are made of two words :P), no-one would have cared if it wasn’t the one they picked for their own Sugarmac Foal OC, just a name. That’s all.
daniboyi95

@FeatherTrap  
“are you on team “The writing is Amazing and anyone who says otherwise is just a toxic hater”.”
 
I am on the team ‘the writers can be bad or good depending on circumstances and nothing is black/white like you claim to’.  
some episodes are good, some are bad. Some are awful and some are amazing. Each season has amazing writing and awful writing, neutral writing and good/bad writing depending on the episode. To claim that ‘later seasons are worse than earlier seasons’ is dumb, because earlier seasons had just as many flaws.  
I find this episode within the ‘good if not close to amazing’ part.
 
Also there is no ‘present a fake conflict’. It is simply a teacher teaching a student a small lesson in friendship and life. That is not a conflict.  
But yeah, don’t act like Flurry is important to the show. She had just as much importance as any other background character. Hell less importance than some. Big Mac? Way more important than her. Lyra and Bon Bon? Again, more relevant.  
Hell Cadance is borderline unimportant. And Twilight’s parents? They barely even appear in the show and barely get a speaking role. Literally any pony in ponyville deserves attention more than them.
FeatherTrap
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
Dream Come True! - Participated in the MLP 9th Anniversary Event
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2019) - Celebrated Derpibooru's seventh year anniversary with friends
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation

Gone to Ponybooru
@daniboyi95  
No, I am well aware of the theme going on there. They wanted a Full Circle ending, where Twilight sends her most talented but socially reclusive student off to find Friendship as Celestia did with her (Hell, they even have the book from the very first shot in the entire episode closing again as a literal bookend to the series).  
The problem is that this came at the expense of the many significant changes in the timeskip and the closure that was needed to resolve these loose threads. The put the theme over the substance, yes I agree. That is my complaint. That is what I find to be a problem, and I explained why in great detail if you follow the link I left a few posts prior.
 
You acknowledged that she was (in retrospect) nothing but a literal walking plot device? Sorry, I’m confused, are you on team “The writing is Amazing and anyone who says otherwise is just a toxic hater”, because that sounds like a point I would bring up to highlight flaws with the writing. :I  
Perhaps I misunderstood where you stand, so if I might ask for clarification: Where do you stand on the issue of the quality of the writing?
 
Asking for closure about the first natural born alicorn in all of Equestria, that point everypony made such a big deal about, Cadance’s Daughter, Twilight’s Niece…is like asking for a personal ending slide for background ponies like November Rain or Caramel.  
Um…no? That is such a ridiculous strawman I don’t even know why you thought typing that was a good idea. :x
 
There was no meaningful conflict that would have topped the climax, that’s why it is the climax. It is the peak of the tension and drama, and now the story is winding down. Now is the time to wrap up loose ends, not present a fake conflict with an easy resolution.