UO- Pony princess education- Wisteria vs Twilight Sparkle

[Mana Minori]

Unpopular Opinions. No matter what, something is going to be considered unpopular or unsavory by someone else. Can't please everyone!

My unpopular opinion topic today is the cartoons of g3 and g4. Some love it them both, some hate both, some love one and hate the other. Some could care less either way.  For those that have beef with MLP g3 and its cartoon, my unpopular opinion is that it it has its advantages when compared to generation 4. Primarily loking at "The Princess Promenade" .

 For example, in “The Princess Promenade”, in mere moments of a single song (and a few lines after), g3 Spike teaches a Princess named Wisteria much more than Celestia has taught Twilight to benefit herself as a Princess. While g3 Spike appears to be strict in witholding certain actions from Princess Wisteria, such as “sniffing”, “digging in the dirt”, “never raising her voice”, we can determine, from his line “don’t forget the world is looking up to you.”, that he means the best by reminding her that her actions reflect upon her.

Contrasting this, G4’s Princess Twilight, even after many seasons of being a Princess, has yet to learn this basic lesson. Even after nearly starting a war with the yak nation and jeopardizing political relations of peace and open borders with Equestria, Twilight continues to muddy the water and besmirch her title as a Princess by not taking the advice of her closest friends, in spite of being sent together on a friendship mission in “The Hoofields and McColts”, stealing a valuable artifact of the Seapony/Hippogriffs that could’ve started a war between Seaquestria and Equestria in the “MLP movie”, and working herself to exhaustion, in “Princess Spike”, to name just a few.

In fact, further contrasting this, g3 Spike issued the Princess ladies in waiting, so that she could delegate tasks, and lectured her on getting a good night’s sleep, in order to be in peak mental and physical condition, because again, she was being looked up to now, and had an example to set for others.

Had Twilight ever learned to more carefully consider her actions and image, knowing that an entire nation and neighboring allies most likely look up to her, due to her status, then she would be a much better and more responsible and respectable Princess.

But that's just my unpopular opinion. A PONY unpopular opinion.

[Leave a Whisper]

Ah. I haven't seen Princess Promenade.

[Dreamer]

Haven't seen Princess Promenade but I'm here for the princess duty discussion In order to not mooch off this topic too much here's another unpopular opinion: I enjoy G3 Spike! Maybe it isn't too unpopular but I didn't even know G3 had a Spike too.

By the way, G3's lore is a bit too sparse... since when was Wysteria a princess? Is she like, the ruler of Earth ponies (because unicorns had Rarity and pegasi... ehh.....  ) or this was some kind of "princess for a day" event?

[tailrustedtealeaf]

By the way, G3's lore is a bit too sparse... since when was Wysteria a princess? Is she like, the ruler of Earth ponies (because unicorns had Rarity and pegasi... ehh.....  ) or this was some kind of "princess for a day" event?

She is called Princess because she touched a royal flower that Spike had been guarding. She isn't really a ruler of anything, maybe just Ponyville.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

By the way, G3's lore is a bit too sparse... since when was Wysteria a princess? Is she like, the ruler of Earth ponies (because unicorns had Rarity and pegasi... ehh.....  ) or this was some kind of "princess for a day" event?

She is called Princess because she touched a royal flower that Spike had been guarding. She isn't really a ruler of anything, maybe just Ponyville.

EEEE I have been reading this with DD recently!

Spike says, "the kingdom" but it is clear that a great amount of time has passed when the ponies discover him, so anything he says can be taken with a grain of salt.  :-p  He
 is ... eccentric at best.

[Leave a Whisper]

Haven't seen Princess Promenade but I'm here for the princess duty discussion In order to not mooch off this topic too much here's another unpopular opinion: I enjoy G3 Spike! Maybe it isn't too unpopular but I didn't even know G3 had a Spike too.

By the way, G3's lore is a bit too sparse... since when was Wysteria a princess? Is she like, the ruler of Earth ponies (because unicorns had Rarity and pegasi... ehh.....  ) or this was some kind of "princess for a day" event?

I kinda like him too. He's not as adventurous as the original Spike, but his design is decent.

[Mewtwofan1]

I’m not a big fan of the g3 animations, but that’s just me. They’re good I guess, but just not that great. But for a few moments, g3 has its moments when it’s better than g4 cartoons. I love/hate princess promenade. But you do make a valuable point. G3 spike taught her more princess stuff in an hour (or however long it is) than twilight ever learnt in all g4. I think I have to agree with your opinion. Twilight does have more...meat to her character? I dunno what to call it. But where twilight lacks in learning and being a princess, wisteria and spike seem to pick it up.

[WingsOfMasquerade]

It is the nature of G3 VS the nature of G4 that creates exactly what you said here.
The G3s were always "Allowed" to "learn their lesson", like the Spike/Wysteria thing you mention. G4 has this desperate forever-need for Twilight to be a fumbling 'neurotic' princess making the same mistakes over and over as she learns then unlearns her lesson a million times because we need more episodes. They're forever caught in the loop because of how they set up the show without any real "Progression Path".

(But it's not just Twi, you keep getting the 're re re re learn the same lesson' with all the Mane 6 flaws because the original episodes were based on their flaws and lessons, and the runners don't know how to move completely beyond it. You get some like the one with Apples vs Pears AJ's family learning ep where it doesn't come up at all, but it's like an old shoe that just keeps coming back when they can't think of a plot "well Rainbowdash is being arrogant/pranky/show off again...", or "oh no Twilight's trying to handle too much again, this time with baby Flurry Heart"

G3 never had a 'series for tv' with a requirement for a certain number of episodes.
They had basically infinite characters they could work with, and everything they did could be fairly 1 off, so it's easy to make Wysteria learn her lesson and keep it...because they didn't need Wysteria to come back next week and botch something else to give them a story.

Of course, all of it could have been avoided by having the G4 show set up like an anime based on a manga: It has a SET STORY for at least a season, where progression happens, then "season 2" builds on what came before. And not even stuff like yuyu hakusho levels of complexity or something where it's very progression based, stuff can have the ability to be episodic and still have progression. It just feels like they never know where to go so they re-tread everything. That, or they're AFRAID of progression/becoming a progress show because "those are harder" than just infinite throw-away episodes you could watch in any order. They "Act like it could be cancelled at any minute", which is not how you are ever able to build something good. Even Avatar Waterbender suffered from this, and that team is the top of the notch all around.

G4 show could take an example from G1 show.
It wasn't progression based, and you had a rotating but familiar cast with quirks Wind Whistler is like Spock, etc, and you could watch lots of those in whatever order but the whole thing isn't based on "so and so is dumb/bad/mistake because "personality flaw" and we'll fix it with X, then she'll do it again next week".

*The movie especially bothered me with this. It would have made a TON of sense if this movie was after like season 2 or something of the show where RD was still of the attitude "Im better than everyone and I do what I want" and "Fluttershy forgets to fly because she is so weak and sappy" and "Twilight is so over the top perfectionist that she WOULD steal the gem and endanger/drown/whatever the hippogriffs just so she could say she got her way."

The only one out of line is Pinkie...who, early on proved a HUGE point by refusing to pull a prank on Fluttershy because Flutter is 'too nice' and early Pinkie understood the value of friends and how everybody's different / has different kinds of fun. They took that from her later, (Looking at you Maud Pie moves in ep) which I hated because she has so much potential as a character rather than "oh the annoying crazy manic bothersome one", but then in the movie she stomps on the escape rope because........????????????
And jeopardizes all her friends for literally no reason. The REAL PP would never do that. It's like they force the characters to "Be bad in their specific way" EVERY single time to get the events they want to happen for the plot. "All her friends are unuseful or outright bad during the movie so Twilight's flaw will appear and make her steal the gem & then be sure nobody talks it over afterward so nobody learns anything--notice also how Twi/nobody never calls out PP for stomping, RD for booming or FS for forgetting how to fly--can't talk about it because then they might learn)

TLDR: I agree with the education statement & attempt to pin down why.

[Ponyfan]

I like the G3 animation and also enjoy some FIM episodes. G3 was more movie/special based than the current FIM series. I know there was an episode that introduced Sky Wishes and Star Catcher and I think another one where Sky Wishes wanted her earth pony friends to meet the pegasus ponies, most of whom were nervous/shy about meeting new ponies.   So all G3 had to do was establish Sky Wishes and Star Catcher's friendship, have the other Earth ponies and pegasus ponies meet and move on from there.  I think those episodes happened before a Very Minty Christmas because there's a line in that special about "the new friends, the pegasus ponies"  I'm pretty sure that Spike also appears in the "Runaway Rainbow" which means that special takes place after "Princess Promenade." So as long as G3 kept the major things that happened still established in the next special (the ponies don't have to meet Spike again in "Runaway Rainbow") each special builds a little on the last one.

I like that Twilight and her friends aren't perfect and still have flaws but it does seem like they have to re learn their lessons a lot.

In Thorax's first episode where he disguised himself as a crystal pony to try to make friends with the ponies, I was disappointed how quick Twilight was to judge him when his disguise faded just based on the fact that he was a Changeling, but that episode also established that Shining Armor still harbored anger at Queen Chrysalis and her Changelings for what they did to him, his fiancé, Twilight and the kingdom in the pony wedding episodes.


But at the end of the episode everyone accepts Thorax for what he is and don't just judge him based on what the other Changelings and Queen Chrysalis did (even though Thorax admits he was part of the Changeling army that invaded Canterlot)  and although it's subtle there are little things that show try to show that Shining Armor and Cadance  truly accepted Thorax (Sunburst sending Thorax to get help from Twilight when the royal family is kidnapped and replaced by Changelings) but since they're not part of the Mane 6 maybe that's we see more character progression in them than the others. 


Ponyfan