Yeah, I'm not that fond of Applebuck Season or Griffon the Brush Off and the first two parter is my least favourite of the two parters. There's a reason I advise to start with Dragonshy.

Wrtye: I'm a Venture Bros. fan, so I know that feel. I'm also, a Sherlock fan, so I doubly know that feel. :P

@bluespade: I think the first two parter works because it's corny, but it's ernest. Honestly all of MLP seems runs on that with a little tongue in cheek— "Like yeah, it's silly, but is it wrong?"

But I still consider the season two opener to be my fave two parter. :P

I remember I used to use Swarm, Winter Wrap-Up and Rainboom as my recruiting trio. I haven't tried to get anyone into the show in a long time, though, so I haven't revised it at all.

Corny, but earnest, yeah that sounds about right. I've said it before, MLP is corny in the way that sharing an emotional moment with a good friend is corny.

edited 20th Aug '13 2:52:44 PM by Bluespade

Season 3 was my favorite for Avatar, followed by 2. I think the main reason for this was that the season 2 finale and season 3 opener took some of the edge off Aang's childishness, which I found unappealing in the first two seasons, and we finally got Zuko on the right side. I also really liked Aang's costume change in s3; that yellow poncho look never did it for me.

I liked Korra a lot, too, with most of my problems with it being easily attributed to having to cram too much into too few episodes. However, I do kind of wish that there had been a plot twist when Mr. Sato revealed himself as an Equalist, and while Asami still rejected him, Mako joined him. It still strikes me as odd that they would go to the trouble of establishing that Mako, Sato, and (falsely) Amon all had family taken away from them by firebenders if they weren't going to actually make anything of that connection. It would have been a real twist if Mako came around to believing in the Equalists' ideals because of this link and his first-hand experience with how benders can cheat and destroy. And holy crap, what a victory for the Equalists it would have been if a popular young bending athlete with direct ties to the Avatar herself joined their side, let alone if he voluntarily gave up his bending.

It would have made Mako's character way more interesting, and would have had the second benefit of letting Korra and Asami's relationship be developed without their love triangle being the main focus, even if it was still simmering on the back burner.

@Starscream: I think the point of the school episode was to humanize the Fire Nation a bit. Let us see that they're not a bunch of assholes, and that the problems with the country come from those in charge, not the average citizens. That said, the season did have way too much down time.

That's a pretty good way of summing up the first episodes, really. It's cheesy, but in a very endearing way.

Of course, I thought that the way that Celestia and Luna instantly made up was completely ridiculous at the time, but I've got weird issues like that, which is why watching Rarity and Sweetie make up in Sisterhooves Social depresses me. (I KNOW that broken families don't heal that easily.)

EDIT:This.

edited 20th Aug '13 2:58:53 PM by Sereg

Not really a spoiler there. I mean it's in the trailer.

You mean apart from The Great Divide, right? I heard that everyone hates that episode (so much that they referenced it in Embed Island Players)

@Crow I get they were trying to humanise the fire nation but the thing is they just throw Aang into a school and they expect you to sympathise with the Fire Nation but it just comes as forced to me. Either way it wasn't one of the best episodes in the show's run.

@Sereg: I don't think the Rarity and Sweetie one was particularly unrealistic. I've had plenty of arguments with my sister that were just as bad and it didn't take too much to get over them. Siblings fight, and that wasn't a particularly vicious one.

edited 20th Aug '13 3:07:58 PM by Crowfall

Yeah, Rarity and Sweetie Belle seemed like a fairly realistic family spat to me. They were just both frustrate with each other and it boiled over. It's not like they literally tried to kill each other or anything. There are different degrees of family infighting, after all, with results ranging from making up the next day to never speaking again.

Celestia and Luna was more of an Easily Forgiven thing, but the show is idealistic like that.

edited 20th Aug '13 3:09:50 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Try watching Sherlock

Watching Azula trying to act like a normal person was pretty funny. I didn't bother watching the episode with the secret dance club though.

Everyone is Easily Forgiven in MLP. Except for Sombra. He gets blown up.

I quite like The Great Divide. It's not one of my favorite episodes of the season but... it is good. I enjoyed it, really, don't get the hate.

@Story: I'm just spoilerin' because I don't know who's seen what. :P

I think Luna may have been wallowing in regret for a while, while she was NMM since the S4 preview showed Luna looked shocked when she turned into NMM.I like to think that there's still an air of unease between Celestia and Luna. Since they are still rather shaken by both their actions, they just went the Easily Forgiven route, and try to sweep it under the rug so the public doesn't see; but it still haunts them and left a permanent scar on their relationship. That'd make a good episode, imo, but a depressing one.

This is why I should never write for MLP. All aboard the angst boat!

edited 20th Aug '13 3:20:37 PM by PrincessGwenevere

Chrysalis has yet to have any hint of a redemption arc either. In fact the comics had an entire arc where she was even worse than the first time we saw her.

Oh, my problem with Rarity and Sweetie is less that it's unrealistic and more that it's triggery. It reminds me of how things didn't go so nicely in my case.

I'm kind of of the opinion that the Elements of Harmony work as a big Dark Magic nullifier, eliminating any trace of negative unnatural forces. Hitting Nightmare Moon with it got rid of whatever was possessing her, and suddenly Luna was hit with the reality of everything she'd done and immediately asked for forgiveness.

And the reason it petrified Discord is because he simply can't exist without his reality warping magic, so it puts him in stasis.

#dumb theories

edited 20th Aug '13 3:28:29 PM by Bluespade

I think "#dumb theories" accurately describes my time spent in this fandom.

Yeah, I'm so pumped for season 4.

Maybe he just rolled a 5 on his Prismatic Spray.

Not that I actually think the Eo H are random like that.

edited 20th Aug '13 3:33:53 PM by storyyeller

@Bluespade: Well yeah, that's basically what I believe now (and why I have no problem with the ending of Equestria Girls) but at the time, I think I actually said "Oh, come on!" out loud! I thought, "People don't just switch from genocidal to remorseful like that!"

It's also one of the reasons I was completely on the zebras' side in Fallout Equestria. Because believing that Luna was still evil and was just a good actress would be the sane reaction.

edited 20th Aug '13 3:36:05 PM by Sereg

Ninja'd.

edited 20th Aug '13 3:36:25 PM by nomuru2d

Well the comics make it pretty clear the NMM was a separate entity from Luna.

@Sereg: Really? For me the zebra's dislike of Luna came across less as a perfectly reasonable suspicion and more as a dogmatic hatred of anything relating to the stars.

What's going on?

Oh, hi Gwen. I thought we'd lost you.