kidcoelacanth wrote:i'm going off on this because the cmc were the last thing i gave a dang about on this show and they botched this pretty hard, so
as lazy pointed out in skype, which i hadn't considered: the fact that the whole thing with cutie marks is that they express individuality and then these three all get THE SAME ONE sails so damn wide of the goalposts. especially when you spent actual time building up the fact that they do have unique talents of their own
See, I don't think anyone actually said anywhere that the purpose of a cutie mark is individuality. It's an easy assumption to make, but it really isn't the point at all. Sometimes your special talent is in working as part of a team, and that's clearly what the CMCs' calling is. More so than singing/scootering/potion-making anyway.
If you were disappointed in these cutie marks because they negate individuality, I think maybe you headcanon'd yourself.

So I had a long and physically demanding day and after dinner I completely zonked out without even remotely having the energy to catch up on the episode (

), and then woke up at 2AM and decided hey fuck it, let's watch some ponies.
...

This idea of the CMCs all getting the same cutie mark, indeed maybe even the CMC logo as a cutie mark, is one I've seen come up a lot in fanfiction; so really the only thing that came as a surprise to me is that the show actually went ahead and did it, and did it in such a way as not to destroy everyone's fanfic ideas but really to canonize them. In fact I'm pretty sure I've seen the idea floated as far back as S1 that the CMCs' destiny was to redeem DT/SS. I strongly believe there's some fanfic writer out there right now going

HEEEEEEEY
But I like that they gave this nice bookend episode to Rogers to do, out of deference to a desire to have one of the founding staff handle it. I like that that's one of the things McCarthy and co. think about. Now, I'm not that wild about how some of the songs turned out, but I think that may be down more to Ingram's stuff getting kind of samey than to AKR's traditional lyrical clumsiness; I was actually quite impressed by DT's introspective song, which had some really nice lyrical ideas and flourishes. But I think Ingram's songs are getting this kind of "default" sound to them where they're like lazy clones of Hearts As Strong As Horses, with that mandolin/orchestra arrangement and no obvious hook in the chorus. You can't really hum these songs. They're nice, but they're not as innovative or ambitious as, say, Steven Universe songs; and they certainly don't have the earworm qualities of the Winter Wrap Ups and So Many Wonderses of S1. Those almost feel like they're from another show entirely at this point.
But hey—it
has been half a decade and over a hundred episodes. I love how they animated AB's little eyebrow-raise on "For a while now". Great way to drive home the goddamn understatement.

So yeah, about the only beef I have is with the music, and it's a minor beef at that. A small beef. A filet mignon medallion. And yeah, okay, so the crusader cutie marks aren't the prettiest things in the world, but let's be frank here: most ponies' cutie marks are nonsensical or ugly. I'm just as glad the CMCs' ones are a little on the inscrutable and ambiguous side. If there's one thing cutie marks are "supposed" to be, it's the basis for a story. As opposed to being some kind of comic-book representation of someone's life. I've never been that enthralled with the idea of cutie marks that are overly literal, except when it's used for comic effect (like Maud's rock, or Snips and Snails whose cutie marks are just like logo versions of their names). So in that sense I like that these three have some fairly exceptional ones that stand out from all the rest and look a little out of place. You know why? Because they've just accomplished something almost as unprecedented and powerful as Twilight did in MMC: they discovered a new aspect of friendship magic, the kind that comes from joint effort in service of a common spontaneous goal of helping others with
their special talents. The CMCs actually kind of
are superheroes now, a little bit, and they're following in their sisters' footsteps. This show is doing some interesting things with the idea of protagonist powers; without ever stepping up and saying This Is The Chosen One for any particular purpose, they've made our six leads and their three understudies into pioneers in-universe, discoverers of new mechanics for how the world of Equestria works, whether it be Twilight coming up with new (wrong) theories of unicorn magic versus zebra smoke and mirrors, or digivolving the Elements of Harmony into a thing that allows their bearers to project their own elemental strengths onto random passers-by, or the CMCs inventing the concept of cutie mark counseling. I'm certainly not saying any of this was planned out from the beginning—and honestly I'm lolling at the very idea that the CMCs' "arc" has been handled perfectly, since okay sure it has now been wrapped up well and in retrospect it looks like they did the best they could, but you and I and everybody knows they were making it up one season at a time and they probably didn't know they would end it at all until they got S5 greenlit, and I'll bet at the time they wrote this they probably didn't know S6 would happen either for that matter. So I'm gobsmacked that they were able to make
any part of it look like a coherent arc, and the fact that they were able to pull out this beautiful conclusion to it here, randomly, in the middle of a season, torpedoing everyone's expectations except maybe those who thought the CMCs would get this story in the penultimate episode of what would be the final season of the show (with the finale being Mane 6-focused of course), is nothing short of a coup. I love that it took
everyone by surprise.
Especially those who weren't expecting to be up at 3:30 AM crying over pony. One of the things you're supposed to do in the days and weeks following Lasik is to constantly hydrate your eyes with artificial tears several times during the day and night. I think I can safely skip this one.