Yup, I always tend to view the characterization as the most important aspect of a story; I love when you hit that moment where you stop viewing the characters as elements of a show and start thinking of them like people. There aren't many shows that can do that; where you get to know the characters well enough that you start to be able to know how they'd react in certain situations.

Yep, characterization is my favorite part of this series. Which is good because I have never found the humor in this series to be all that great.

YMMV of course. I generally like season two less then one, and that includes humor.

edited 20th Sep '12 8:54:04 PM by Mio

I like the humor. I think it was actually better in season 2.

There are definitely points it's very funny, but I agree the characters are drawing point of the show. They also seem to make points I would find unbearably corny tolerable just because of the actual personality they put into it.

Not me. I don't really like all the occasionally corny moments. The end of Hearth Warming Day and BBBFF song made me cringe.

Sometimes I wonder; will I keep looking back to this series long after it ended? There are many series I enjoyed, some up until only a while ago. When they ended, though, they all just melted away in my memory, like tears in the rain. Will this series be one of them as well? The way my impression goes, I think it probably will. Maybe, maybe not.

edited 20th Sep '12 8:55:39 PM by dRoy

Do you think having multiple writers actually makes the characters more rounded?

I will be hitting the bed. I suddenly feel awful for no good reason.

Good night, everyone.

To a degree it probably does. Though that has it's own set of drawbacks when writers vary too much.

edited 20th Sep '12 8:57:42 PM by Mio

Multiple writers on something is a mixed bag. It's good in that certain writers can look at the same character elements in different ways, but at the same time it makes it easier to accidentally derail them by overdoing it. It basically depends on whether the writers are all on the same page with how they want to handle the cast.

as long as they all talk to each other and make sure they stay within the same framework, yeh it helps. Anmd as long as the people over the writers stay the same and take the time to make sure it all meshes.

So far only found one writer that really has issues with writing the character how they want, instead of how they've been shown to be, and we all know who. Though reading an interview with her a while ago pretty much spelled out what her issues are, she's done some amazing stuff, but all on cartoons with little to no continuity, where the jokes and gags were the only important part, and she straight up admitted she likes to add touches of cynicism into her works. Which is just so so so WRONG to do to a show, that one of the biggest draws is it's utter LACK of cynicism.

Where did you see this interview? It sounds interesting.

i'll try to find it gimme a few

Eh, I don't think the show has a complete lack of cynicism; like one of the things I liked most about "Griffon the Brush Off" was the fact that it resolved the episode with "Some people are just jerks" rather than having Gilda be won over by Pinkie's kindness. In fact, that was probably the first point when I was watching the show and actually noticed how it had twisted the idea. But yeah, on the whole it's very much optimistic, and this isn't a show where you can sacrifice characterization for a quick gag; even Pinkie's shenanigans are generally within her character. Half the humor in the show isn't from the jokes themselves, but seeing how the characters interact.

Like in the pilot when Pinkie held the party for Twilight; the things that were set up as jokes (like Twilight drinking the hot sauce) weren't nearly as funny (to me at least) as seeing Twilight's general reaction. It's something that works only because of the characters involved; you couldn't swap out Twilight or Pinkie without losing a lot of what makes the scene work.

edited 20th Sep '12 9:10:44 PM by JapaneseTeeth

While it did have some cynicism to it's message, it never really closed the door completely on Gilda if her final parting words to Dash are to be believed.

Well yeah, it didn't write Gilda off entirely. I just mean that I was surprised that Gilda didn't turned good by the power of friendship at the end of the episode. The idea that being nice to someone doesn't necessarily mean they'll return the favor doesn't crop up very often in this kind of show.

I think it might be that Dash used to be a jerk, too, like in flight school or something.

Like, she and Gilda were the Jerk Jock s but Dash just grew out of it.

hmmm all i can find is this.

Well to be honest, if I was in Gilda's situation I wouldn't take what happened at the party as being very "nice". Still the only reason she was probably there was for the free food and attention, so yeah.

edited 20th Sep '12 9:16:00 PM by Mio

Too bad they kind of flipped that in A Friend In Deed.

Yeah, that's one of the main reasons that episode drives me crazy. I honestly think it would have been better off as a "Not everybody is going to like you, and that's okay" rather than "as long as you're persistent, you can make a friend out of anyone!" The moral the episode gave was awesome (I'm one of those people who needs my space), but that's not what it actually showed.

But he wasn't just a jerk, he had a heart of gold!

edited 20th Sep '12 9:22:30 PM by condottiera

@Seraphem: The article is an interesting read. Though I found it weird that they say that Merriweather portrays Equestria more like our world. While her works were a mite more cynical I wouldn't call them a mite more realistic though.

The problem was never with Cranky. It was with Pinkie and how she managed to succeed mostly because of plot convenience rather then effort at fixing her problems.

edited 20th Sep '12 9:25:52 PM by Mio

PALINDROME PAGE!

I think the main issue she runs into isn't that she inserts cynicism, it's that she does so in a way that's inconsistent with how the characters and setting had previously been established. Using MMDW for an example, I don't think many people had issues with the idea of the cast doing something passive-aggressive, it was that the action they took wasn't in line with how all the previous episodes had portrayed them. Whether or not her changes made the setting more "realistic", I don't think it matters if it sacrifices the internal consistency of the setting. One of the things I really appreciate about this show is that consistency. I like the fact that it doesn't run entirely on Rule Of Cool or Rule of Funny and because of that it bugs me a bit when stuff like that gets included.

I don't think it's a bad way of writing, but I also don't think it's appropriate to this show.

@Con: Yeah, I sympathized with Cranky. My main problem with the episode is basically that Pinkie can't get Cranky to be her friend because she refuses to just give him some privacy, she recognizes this, and proceeds to keep pestering him even though she claims to know better. And then in the end she ends up getting what she wants anyway without ever having to change her approach because Mathilda just happened to live in Ponyville. The entire episode is about "some people need their space" but Pinkie never actually leaves Cranky alone until he says he's her friend.

edited 20th Sep '12 9:31:39 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Onto Return of Harmony part 2.

I gotta say, I like Discord's laugh.

edited 20th Sep '12 9:31:29 PM by Steventheman