@TheQuietMan
Yeah :P

@Twi Clown
Review-bombing is honestly just a buzzword to try and justify low scores. Whether or not it’s happening just doesn’t matter. If the work is good there is going to be more than enough positive reviews to crush it anyways, especially when that dedicated fanbase rise up to defend their beloved franchise that is unfairly under attack. If the work isn’t good, then the reviews are negative anyways and the review-bombing means nothing: who cares if there’s 10 one-star reviews or 1,000,000 one-star reviews when nobody’s rating it higher anyways? Besides, most review sites used weighted averages anyways since positive and corporate-manipulated review-bombs are a risk as well :P

You know how you know review-bombs aren’t the problem creators want you to think they are? If review-bombing was that easy and effective, creators wouldn’t be complaining about it: they’d be keeping quiet about it and instead using it to boost their critical scores. There’s companies you can hire to pad your views for Youtube and Tiktok and the like; if review-bombing actually did anything there would be companies that you could hire to review-bomb you with positive reviews as well :P

@Twi Clown
Can’t change the fact that humans are bad by nature. But that one aside.

@TheQuietMan
Except that’s not cunning, that’s Far Cry levels of insanity.

@Twi Clown
Doesn’t stop them from trying. Survival of the cunning.

@Badumsquish
I mean, even if there’s a mob behind, it’s actually mostly impossible to “review bomb” as some sort of a perfectly coordinated reviewing attack to actually control the public opinion.

No one wants to be told what to watch so even with review bombing it’s easy to get dismissive when the reviews doesn’t match your enjoyment. The Super Mario Bros. Movie it’s a clear example of review bombing being a lousy tactic because no one would shy away from expressing their real opinions.

The most terrifying conspiracy theory is….that often there’s no conspiracy or that the existent conspiracies more often than not ultimately fail by their own weight rather than any external element precisely because controlling people is something virtually impossible specially on the long run.

@Badumsquish
At this point in time, there’s no difference between an unfair and fair criticism according to some creators.

@WanderingHolyKnight
:D

@TheQuietMan
There’s a marketing angle to it too. Some creators love to use arguments like “only ists and phobes hated it” and “its low scores are because of review-bombings” because it implies “everyone else liked it”. I feel a lot of it is done to outright bully critics into silence, in order to pad positive reviews. That’s less individual creators though, and more the big slimy companies like Disney that pull that one though; most individual creators tend to be fairly reasonable, and only really get defensive toward unfair criticisms :P

@Badumsquish
Also, I guess not many people want to change their flaws no matter how fatal it might be.

@Badumsquish
Well said.

@nightshroud96
Yeah. Poor Spike is basically the Yamcha of Equestria. A genuinely cool and powerful mofo, but just done dirty by the show he’s in XD

@TheQuietMan
I think talking about it is important, because I actually think it’s unfair to the creators of a show to not be open about such things. The show IS their livelihood, and being open about things that viewers just don’t like is important and necessary feedback. At the same time, that doesn’t mean being dicks: if you want to critique a work or defend a work, I think fans have to be polite, be frank, and not attack creators directly, while creators need to be humble, receptive, and not mistake fans wanting things as being criticisms or attacks. Fans may not be obligated to like things and creators may not be obligated to give fans what they want, but fans and creators have a relationship, whether either of us want one or not, and it’s only going to be as pleasant as we let it be :P

Even when creators or fans cross ethical lines, like creators use the “you’re just ists and phobes” argument to try and bully critics and consumers into buying and supporting their product, or when fans use death threats and harassment campaigns because they didn’t like the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2, I truly don’t believe in this belligerent counterattack nonsense. It should be called out, firmly but fairly, and that’s it, because these big counterattack things are incredibly unfair to everyone and just cause more problems than they solve :P

@Badumsquish
The damage has been done yeah. My real issue is for some people that really can’t move on from those. It happened. What can we do?

@Badumsquish
Its worse since Spike barely got to be the hero.

@Twi Clown
@desert2
MLP always hit runs more often than they swung and missed, but I think the biggest thing was they went through something of a Dork Age in Season 6. It struck me as if they were either out of ideas or under pressure to spice things up. They added a new character who they just shilled the hell out of to the point I think that was the biggest reason so many people dislike her, they added a bunch of “exciting new twists” like turning the changelings good, reforming Ahuizotl, new characters who they just didn’t do anything with, retcons, episode rehashes, a very weak season opener, and a very controversial season finale. Season 7 was an improvement, and it had one of the best episodes the show has ever made (A Perfect Pear) but it also had the worst season opener in the show’s entire run and the worst episode in the show’s entire run (Fame and Misfortune), which I feel cemented the idea that the show had gone downhill :P

So, the problem isn’t that the show got “bad”. The problem is people will only accept incremental negative or neutral changes up to a certain point. Once that point is reached, people will hit a breaking point and even a full return to form won’t be enough since they’ve been distanced from the thing they like. Season 8 and 9 were honestly good, save for a couple of bad episodes and a weak twist in the Season 9 finale, and you could even see where they had made active steps to fix issues Season 6 and 7 created, but the water had been tainted and it just wasn’t enough sad to say :/

@nightshroud96
True enough, but sad to say the show follows Chosen One / Saiyan rules. The only ones allowed to ultimately save the day are the special main characters, come hell or high water all forces in existence will ensure nobody else is allowed to do it even when they, canonically, are more powerful, or more intelligent, or more experienced, or more suited to, than the main character :P

@Beta Upgrade
Yep, they usually handle Spike poorly at times.

@Twi Clown
i agree with you, the show was great but it was hardly above reproach.
to anyone who dares to claim FiM was flawless i offer a very simple counterpoint
spike at your service.
that is all.

@desert2
Never said they were not good hits. I for one liked Winged Spike, Mean Twilight Sparkle and I did like “The Last Problem”, the slice of life episodes were fairly ok and in line, there are a couple of gems in both characters and episodes.

Though usually those seasons also carried a couple of issues as well. Love and immunity to criticism are not the same thing, love can get unhealthy without criticism in fact.

@Twi Clown
Season 7 and 9 wernt bad at all. The series finalie was incredible and the epilogue was perfect
6 had the most misses for sure

@Twi Clown
Even during The Transformers inception did they already make logical blunders as tfwiki.net does in fact list them all.

@Badumsquish
Just because its not “new” doesn’t really make it ok for them to do this to Spike like that.

@Badumsquish
FiM was a lightning in a bottle similar to Transformers G1: No one expected to be that succesful which made it prone to commit high blunders overtime (S6-9 FiM, S3-4 Transformers).

It’s obvious Hasbro wanted to sell as many toys as possible without paying much attention to the weird stuff they tried to pull.

@TheQuietMan
Yeah. It’s strange how they kind of half-assed the continuity. You’d think they’d either go all the way, or not at all. Maybe this is the original timeline, before things were changed in The Cutie Remark or something. Twilight never had to mentor anyone, so she focused on her job of being the Element of Magic, so the school was never opened, so Cozy never became a villain, so she never attacked Equestria, so there was never the big “she’s ready to be leader now” moment, so Princess Celestia and Princess Luna didn’t plan to put her in charge, so Discord never created the Legion of Doom, so the Legion of Doom never attacked Equestria, so Twilight never became 2.0. Meanwhile, Spike stepped up into the role of Twilight’s second-in-command and his leadership abilities developed far more, so he eventually became the Dragon Lord. Meanwhile they never met Sunburst, so Luster Dawn was never born, so Twilight took on a different apprentice named Opaline who turned evil. Meanwhile the school never instilled the “friendship is like a religion” mentality so when stuff got rough the various species drifted apart rather than coming together to fight it. I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out, but that more or less makes it work :P

@nightshroud96
That’s nothing new though. Hell, how many times was there a threat in G4 that would have been over in about 10 seconds if Princess Celestia actually had the power, competency, wisdom, and experience she is alleged to have? :P

@WanderingHolyKnight
Wished Spike had a actual hand(claw?) in it properly instead of just getting worf-effected.

I mean, he would naturally have personal beef with her since she essentially ruined everything he and his friends worked hard for. And basically ruined his life too since he and his own kind wouldn’t been able to live their lives due to being stuck asleep forever if it wasn’t for Sunny accidently breaking the spell. Like Twilight went MIA and Opaline was still on the loose, if it wasn’t for that happy accident then the dragons would have been trapped asleep forever and no one would have realized it, Twilight screwed up hard and Opaline’s bs caused that.

@TheQuietMan
At the very least, Opaline got her comeuppance in being sealed in her own tree forever and her castle destroyed. A fate worse than death is what she deserved.

@nightshroud96
I knew what was gonna happen if I did. But at the very least, you gave your unsurprising thoughts.

@TheQuietMan
Sadly it ended up being nothing with how he ends up falling to Opaline easily to prop up the heroes.
He’s basically suffering the Royal Sisters effect.
And against whats possibly the worst villain to do so since he would naturally have personal beef with Opaline since she basically ruined everything he and his friends worked hard for(and ruined his life since Twilight had the dumb idea of putting him and his whole kind to sleep, which is so very flawed). And yet he ends up worf-effect bait.

Whats worse is this is probably his only appearance in Gen 5. Just to fail to prop up the heroes, and just exposition.@Badumsquish

I loved that he’s dragon lord, but they messed up by having him easily fall to Opaline.
And messed up HARD.

Really, the writers should have let Spike be part of the girls’ bond more.
Instead of essentially being blocked from it.