My little brother is not too fond of AJ-centric episodes. He thinks she's far too down to earth but visually unimpressive.

As said I think she had enough 'wackiness' to her in Season One, while still remaining somewhat lucid in her overall character. A lot more humor was made from how irritable and slightly self righteous she was, without completely overwelming her nicer side.

I still maintain a fondness for her because of Applebuck Season, which shown fully she is capable of solo power and setting off a fully fledged plot on her own.

I would like to see Rogers write another AJ episode. She seemed to have a better insight of her flaws and how to make them vibrant and funny.

edited 31st Dec '12 10:11:59 AM by Psi001

As far as "messed up in the head" goes, I think I prefer The Last Roundup.

AJ's issue, though, is that the flaws you want emphasized don't exactly create many plots past what we've already had. They'd just be retreads of Fall Weather Friends and the like. The last two have looked to other parts of her character for conflict, namely her perfectionism and her pride, and I found that they worked just fine.

Applelight if you've forgotten a color code, can't you just go back into one of your old files and use the eye dropper to get it?

With the new year, Gameloft's My Little Pony game has...wet-maned grown-up Silver Spoon fanart. Does this count as Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game?

Except that AFR barely had a conflict. It was like watching Fluttershy trying to kick over the vase. AJ can't even cause a conflict properly anymore.

I think it counts as "random low-level employee is tasked with acquiring an image when only given a name, and uses the first google image result".

When they say "get her now", do they mean... you know...

As storyeller said, it's not just the particular flaws, but the execution. Apple Family Reunion may have worked in potential, but because neither her or the other Apples take the conflict to high enough level it feels too mundane, and like the plot would have worked better with another character in her place.

It's like say the comparison between Duck Amuck and Rabbit Rampage. The defining humor of the formula for each is the neuroses and tantrums that the character vents at being abused by the animator, something obviously Bugs could do a lot less than Daffy, and since they put no unique form of reaction in it's place, RR just felt like a copy of DA, only watered down. The same, but less.

A Js other flaws, while maybe not the ones primarily on display, could have helped elevate her shortcomings in that episode, her overzeal being exacerbated by her more aggressive and hyperactive temperament from early episodes, compared to later on where she is just too calm to start anything.

edited 31st Dec '12 10:40:32 AM by Psi001

Eh, to each their own. IMO, you can't have every episode be manic and high-strung. The craziest thing in AFR was a runaway cart, and I personally think the show needed that.

edited 31st Dec '12 10:39:41 AM by PerpetualLurker

A happy new year to everyone who's reached it already.

Lets see, responses:

Yes, making tiny little pictures isn't any good at all. So I won't be doing that again. Everything will be big and screen filling from now on.

Batty cute? I want him to be cute, but it's hard to strike a balance between adorable little bat pony and scary magic mutant monster knight. This will require more work.

I think I understand now what it is I'm trying to do. Y'know Mystic from X-Men? If you look past the blue skin and yellow eyes and all the rest, what are you left with? A hot and busty redhead.

Well batty is like a ponified, gender flipped version of this. If any pony could look past the bat wings, glow in the dark cat eyes and fangs, they might think to themselves...wow, he's hunky.

Does this make sense? I hope it does. I've never been good at explaining things. Anyway, must continue to strike a balance between cute and scary for him.

@ story

I guess that would have been a good idea. I'll get the hang of this thing yet.

It didn't have to be manic to work. As said the plot didn't work because there was no conflict, not because the characters weren't wacky. I could argue AJ and the Apples were acting looney enough, just not in the manner needed to make the plot form together.

I felt the barn being destroyed didn't quite do it, because it was more down to bad coincidence than AJ's overzeal. Everything was actually working perfectly fine until the bats noticed the fruit hat.

You can have a lucid character that is still flawed and capable of causing problems.

edited 31st Dec '12 10:43:36 AM by Psi001

I'm still wondering why Spike couldn't do any of the things on his list at any other time.

I mean, they're not that time-consuming... >.>

I thought there was plenty of conflict, though. It just didn't break out into a huge family shattering argument like you seem to have wanted it to. The conflict was entirely in AJ missing the point of the reunion. The conflict itself doesn't have to be the interesting part of the episode. AFR was really about seeing the whole family and watching them interact, and I really enjoyed that. Sorry if you didn't, but not every episode is for everyone.

I dunno, man. Apple Bloom's "I want to chill out with Babs, dammit" (which was basically an echo of the rest of the family's sentiments) wasn't conflict enough?

Fair enough, but I just linger over it because this likely the one chance to showcase AJ's flaws this season, with all the ponies seemingly limited to one spotlight episode this season with a couple exceptions. As such since they didn't do that great a job this time, it feels I will have to wait a whole season to see if AJ's character gets any better.

I'm sorry, but I just felt the episode was kinda boring.

edited 31st Dec '12 10:49:11 AM by Psi001

And that's fine, but AJ isn't a bad character because of it. You just don't happen to care for her. Opinions and all that junk.

Well yeah. YMMV of course. That's the whole point of this forum. But that's just my two cents.

AJ's sorta bugged me the most of the six because she is generally the most frequent to have her personality 'turn off' when not on direct display, compared to others who can often display their key traits in both flawed and positive roles, even as a side character. This again seemed different in Season One, when even her smaller roles had some amount of vibrancy to them (eg. the first half of the pilot, Bridle Gossip or The Ticket Master). They seemed to struggle a lot less at that point keeping her character 'alive'.

edited 31st Dec '12 11:00:05 AM by Psi001

Someone posited on Fridge Brilliance that Big Mac was the most shaken by the loss of the Apple parents, which was why he's always so ;_; when AJ leaves the farm.

Really? Huh. That makes sense.

So the one thing that breaks him out of his stoic demeanor is family going away?

I wonder how he'll handle Granny kicking it... *knock on wood*

Granny has had her hip operation and some meds, she'll keep on ticking for a while yet :V

@Story: I agree that the conflict in AFR was rather anemic, but I don't think the problem was due to AJ. The problem was that the other family members didn't really react in a way that made the issue seem important. The episode would have been improved by keeping AJ's actions the same, but making the rest of the apple clan react more indignantly to AJ's modifications to the reunion.

@Psi: Yeah, it's definitely YMMV because I really don't see that problem with her. She's definitely more low key than the other characters, but I still think her personality comes through just as well as it does for everyone else.

edited 31st Dec '12 11:01:37 AM by JapaneseTeeth

Bullhonkey! The Family Reunion did a perfect job of really getting into AJ's psyche, ...you're just bummed that she didn't have some kind of breakdown, ..your funeral then.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm tired of every episode including some kind of catastrophic breakdown, there's nothing wrong with a character figuring out the problem before that point, ...and frankly it's more in character for her to be like that.

Or maybe you just wish AJ was a different character altogether.

There's a big difference between a mental breakdown and making a plausible conflict for the center of plot.

As JT said, it may have worked better if the Apples all around were a bit more argumentitive about it, but the point still stands that in the end AJ didn't really get to get a good enough display of character because of it. It's like a Lesson Zero if the other ponies just submitted and made Friendship problems for Twilight before it was too late. It may not have ended with AJ going insane, but it would have at least been more interesting a conflict, and the latter's my key issue.

Again I don't think you have to be all out wacky and insane to provoke a big dialemma for a story.

edited 31st Dec '12 11:07:22 AM by Psi001