>>10401
> they also did this while providing a character who is an example of a braggart and show off in a negative sense (beyond the point of being a mere charming sometimes flaw like with Rainbow Dash) I think is very clever and gives a balance that maybe is lacking in our current era of online hype culture.
having that juxtaposition to hammer home the lesson is a very neatly efficient use of the episode's runtime and characters, and I appreciate that from a writing point of view and that this was almost certainly the entire intention with creating Trixie, but I can't help but also think that Trixie is the sort of person Twilight could have ended up as if she let beating Nightmare Moon get to her head. Part of why knowing just how much she relied on her friends to win back in the first two episodes is so important, I suppose.
> I disagree with the issues some had with Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity challenging Trixie. Trixie directly invited them to it and acted pretty antagonistic.
It seems like Trixie's standard act is to provoke audience naysayers and critics into challenging her directly to immediately defuse heckling and play up her power and prestige. It may possibly make more sense logically speaking for some more suited pony characters for that role to challenge Trixie, but since the whole conflict is centered around how Twilight's friend's feelings towards Trixie makes Twilight afraid of being seen like Trixie, it doesn't really make sense to skip out on our main characters interacting with Trixie, and this specific interaction serves to establish Trixie's quirks and personality too. It's again that sort of efficient, shortest-path method of achieving what the episode wants to get across that I think is on full display here and I find very admirable. We talked about how episode 5 kinda dilly-dallied a bit before introducing Gilda and it felt like the episode could have been a better-oiled machine, well this episode is run like a tight ship in comparison I'd say. Virtually no wasted space.
>Twilight Sparkle quietly pleaded this after she removed the Ursa Minor from the town. Rationally, as a adult, this monster was threatening the town and actual lives, at least to some extent. Of course her friends wouldn’t hate her for this and it is almost absurd for her to think otherwise.
It's possible Twilight had taken Trixie's initial claim of vanquishing an Ursa Major more seriously than the others and misinterpreted their skeptical reactions as ingratitude, or maybe she thought the townspeople wouldn't understand the threat an Ursa Minor presented... It is still a weird line though.
>Still, I like to think of this from an in-universe perspective as well.
Ponies clearly strongly value maintaining a very innocent, peaceful and sheltered society, which I think is an explanation I prefer to the specific mental maturity of the specific characters idea. Plus ponies are particularly conflict-averse as a species, something which can make them seem childish to a warrior species like ourselves where even simple debates are seen as a kind of contest of wills - like, a pony's reaction to adversity is never going to be that they've gotta toughen up or tough it out as is the adult norm among humans, with few exceptions ponies just seek safety the way human children do. That's part of why they're good for imparting lessons to children, because they grow emotional intelligence and maturity in their childlike adulthood rather than emotional callouses and numbness like human adults do.