@Background Pony #E9D7

@StormsparkPegasus
Can you just give me one example so I can at least try to understand what you’re talking about?

1. Celestia and Luna would never ‘retire’. It’s not in their nature. Celestia is so devoted to her country that she would be on her deathbed trying to take care of stuff. And Luna just got back, like 3 years before the time period S9 would cover. What she wants is the love of her subjects.
2. The ‘shipping’ is nonsense (implied or not). None of the mane 6 would ever get romantically involved with each other, they have a unique type of friendship that is “honorary family”. Same with Discord, he is not interested in romance, and bringing that in completely negates his reformation.
3. The episode devalues friendship itself. It sends the message “friendship is fleeting, people change and move on, it either dies or turns to romance”. CONFIRMED by another character (Strawman Twilight 2.0). It doesn’t matter what is said on screen, subtext is important, actions speak louder than words, and that is absolutely disgusting.
4. The tree can’t be destroyed (certainly not by Sombra, considering even Discord couldn’t do it). The elements can’t be destroyed, and they aren’t just “symbols”.
5. The book is not a “meta” thing about the show itself. Celestia wrote it after sealing NMM, to help guide Twilight in the future. It is a 1000 year old history book about NMM, and Twilight closed the book 1 minute into the first episode. Just shows the writers not only didn’t understand the show at all, they didn’t even understand the first episode.

1. So do you have anything substantive to support this claim, or is your entire argument that you somehow have a better understanding of the “nature” of these two fictional characters than anyone working on or writing for the show did? Because the show conflicting with what you personally think the characters are like is not really a valid reason to keep saying it’s terrible, especially when I could just as easily say that Celestia wanting to spend some time enjoying herself and getting to know her sister better after a solid millennia of ruling alone and waiting for her to return makes perfect sense from where I’m standing.
2. Again, not really seeing an argument here aside from “this isn’t how I personally think it would work”. And I’m also legitimately baffled why you think that, because I legitimately know a number of people who were friends with each other before getting romantically involved, and it’s not like that sort of thing is out of the norm either.
   
   As for the Discord thing, again, how do you know he isn’t interested in romance? Do you have anything to suggest otherwise? Because the character not meeting your personal interpretations is not a legitimate criticism.
3. The episode doesn’t do any such thing. The entire story (and Twilight herself) spelled out pretty clearly that you could maintain friendships despite distance and time and the complicated messiness of life changes, if you were willing to put in the work. And that it was entirely worth doing.
4. And it wasn’t. I mean sure, it got shattered physically, but it also grew back, because apparently physical destruction is more of a minor inconvenience, and it can’t actually be destroyed so long as friendship exists. So… yeah. What exactly is the point you’re trying to make here? Because this is more or less a non issue.
5. …Right. Finishing a 9 year series with a deliberate visual callback to the way the very first episode opened clearly means the writers (or artists, since the writers weren’t the one doing that part of it) didn’t understand the show or episode. Let’s just thank sweet merciful heavens that no one was playing someone’s ribs as a xylophone, or we might have had to write off the entire series as an incompetent failure.

@StormsparkPegasus
Can you just give me one example so I can at least try to understand what you’re talking about?

1. Celestia and Luna would never ‘retire’. It’s not in their nature. Celestia is so devoted to her country that she would be on her deathbed trying to take care of stuff. And Luna just got back, like 3 years before the time period S9 would cover. What she wants is the love of her subjects.
2. The ‘shipping’ is nonsense (implied or not). None of the mane 6 would ever get romantically involved with each other, they have a unique type of friendship that is “honorary family”. Same with Discord, he is not interested in romance, and bringing that in completely negates his reformation.
3. The episode devalues friendship itself. It sends the message “friendship is fleeting, people change and move on, it either dies or turns to romance”. CONFIRMED by another character (Strawman Twilight 2.0). It doesn’t matter what is said on screen, subtext is important, actions speak louder than words, and that is absolutely disgusting.
4. The tree can’t be destroyed (certainly not by Sombra, considering even Discord couldn’t do it). The elements can’t be destroyed, and they aren’t just “symbols”.
5. The book is not a “meta” thing about the show itself. Celestia wrote it after sealing NMM, to help guide Twilight in the future. It is a 1000 year old history book about NMM, and Twilight closed the book 1 minute into the first episode. Just shows the writers not only didn’t understand the show at all, they didn’t even understand the first episode.

@StormsparkPegasus

Everyone is twisted into a bad caricature of themselves, it horribly insults every character with a speaking line (plus Celestia and Luna) and manages to insult the very premise of the show. I could write 3 pages on how bad that episode is and merely scratch the surface.

I’m sure you could. Of course that wouldn’t mean the episode is actually bad, or that anything you have to say on the matter would be an objective reason to think it’s bad, or that your multi-page screed would really demonstrate anything other than “I HAVE STRONG NEGATIVE OPINIONS ON THIS!”, but still, I have no doubt you could write it.

Everyone is twisted into a bad caricature of themselves, it horribly insults every character with a speaking line (plus Celestia and Luna) and manages to insult the very premise of the show. I could write 3 pages on how bad that episode is and merely scratch the surface.

@StormsparkPegasus
I respect your opinion. All I know is that there hasn’t been an episode that has infuriated me more than Non-Compete Clause.

But just out of curiosity, what’s wrong with the last episode?

@StormsparkPegasus
This is the absolute worst episode of the entire series