• Community Soapbox - Applejack Shipping, Lack of Hitch Merchnadise, Villains in G5, and More!

    The soapboxes continue! As always, these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.

    Have some headlines

    • Applejack Ships and who will help Her
    • A Troubling trend with g5
    • When Does a Fandom In-Joke Overstay Its Welcome?
    • Who's going to be G5's First Villain?
    And go read them below!


    Applejack Ships and who will help Her
    By Double C


    In the final episode, it left use guessing if Applejack and Rainbow Dash are in a relationship like a married couple. Personally I think they are still just friends and believed like others that Rainbow and Soarin got married and she ask Applejack to be her kid’s godmother. But for all I can guess is that she might be the last of the Mane 6 that would find someone special since she has shown to have no interest in romance. In my opinion, her friends and family might help out in finding her a special someone by meeting them. Though it may seem that she and Spike did not get together but Applespike is still my favorite and that will never change.

    Trouble Shoes is still holding strong with many fans for liking the cowboy theme between them. I think Applebloom might help bring them together after she tries playing love match again. I did like how she and her friends tried to find Cheerilee a special someone and learned not to do it again. But I can’t help to think that she just wants to help her older sister find someone since she doesn’t want her to be single forever. You all can see her do this for Applejack I mean that’s what siblings do.

    Blueblood is literally the last guy for any mare including the Mane 6 to be shipped with because he is both snobby and rude. I got interested after seeing many fan arts on deviantart and derpibooru and is actually my 2nd favorite Applejack ships. I like the idea of him being sent to Sweet Apple Acers by Twilight and asked Applejack to show him hard work, discipline, and common scene. This would be among the possibilities of how Blueblood can be reformed and give him more character. What I like about this pair is because they are total opposites and they both aren't the best at showing affection.

    When it comes to Thunderlane ships, both Rarilane and Flutterlane are my favorites but this one is also ok. You can agree or not but many fans and me can see Thunderlane as the male equivalent to Rainbow Dash because he is competitive and lay back while sometimes being excitable and occasionally sensitive. So Applejack and Thunderlane can compete with each other all the time when Rainbow is too busy. The other is that they care deeply for their younger siblings even though they can be a bit over the top.

    Now these are just what fans have thought of and may not happen but I just like how Trouble, Blueblood, and Thunderlane have many qualities that Applejack would fall for. If you guys have your own please let me know who he is and what makes him perfect for Applejack. Once again if you have nothing nice to say then no mean comments because people are allowed to ship whatever they want and show their opinions of why they like them.

     


    A Troubling trend with g5


    As the toys continue to be released for g5, allowing us a glimpse of what is very soon to come, I really can’t help but notice a very troubling and very suspicious trend.

    There seems to be a frequently occurring omitting of a certain main pony- that apparently being the very first male main pony that has ever been done- Hitch Trailblazer. We can very clearly see that we have already a steadily increasing number of Sunny, Izzy, Pipp, and Zipp toys….but only one Hitch toy. This legitimately concerns me.

    I fear that he is already receiving the role of a certain fan-dubbed “background pony” that was commonly played for laughs…although, Applejack had plenty of her own toys in the toyline to contradict that statement. Hitch, however….I mean, at this point, while it is still very early, and it is possible that he will indeed receive more toys in the future…I gotta look at things for how they are at the moment and say…Hitch is just seeming to be the “Applejack’s hat” of the toyline, for this generation. Already, quite a few others, I’ve noticed, have also begun to question Hitch’s whereabouts in the toyline, as more and more of the female leads continue to receive their toys ahead of him.

    And while I desire for the pony fandom of g4/5 to pull together as they do and get a massive call for change heard, enough to influence Hasbro to notice and take action (because let’s be honest, Bronies gained attention and influenced things directly for g4, many times over), I just can’t see that big of a passionate fan base for poor Hitch, to be able to warrant such a significant change-  at least at this point in time. I hope the fandom proves me wrong. 



    When Does a Fandom In-Joke Overstay Its Welcome?
    By IronYoshi


    Now before we get started, this entry is not meant to be an anti-fun one, nor am I here to promote "censorship" or something ridiculously stupid like that. I just wanted to get this off my chest and felt it was worth talking about. So with that said, let's get properly started.

    So fandom jokes. They're a common staple of every fandom. Some have even become legendary, such as Han shooting first or Captain Kirk screaming "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!" And the brony fandom is no stranger to this concept. Hundreds of in-jokes have been made that have transcended and became a staple in the fandom. Stuff like Background Pony Applejack,  Chicken Scootaloo, Berry Punch being a drunkard, literally every single depiction of Celestia in the early days (which I talked about before) as well as her cake obsession, Izzy's tennisball (a recent one), the list can go on and on.

    Some of these jokes are born out of a brief scene in an episode, as is with Cakelestia or Chicken Scootaloo, others are just to fill in gaps for characters that didn't get much screentime. In fact, I believe a couple of these managed to get into the show as small nods to the fandom, so even the showrunners were aware of them to some degree.

    But one has to wonder if a couple of these jokes have overstayed their welcome and become less funny as time goes on. Many of them have literally been beaten to the ground that you just roll your eyes at the people whom keep making them. Like, I personally don't think Cakelestia is very funny anymore because it's been, as mentioned, beaten to the ground. Sure, it may have been funny the first few times, but it got pretty annoying pretty quick. You literally couldn't go on anything relating to Celestia without someone bringing up cake. All over a scene that was on screen for like a few seconds.

    Now it is true that comedy is subjective, and what one person finds funny another doesn't, nor are you a bad person for liking any of these fandom jokes. I think the real problem lies in exploiting these jokes so quickly to the point that they end up not being funny. Its similar to how some memes end up becoming popular but over time people start to hate them. They start as a small in-joke and start to get popular the more people see it, but sometimes it gets overexposed and spammed everywhere that it ends up no longer being funny. That's how I feel about most of these fandom jokes.

    Again, I'm not saying that these jokes are bad and you should feel bad for using them. A lot of them are remembered fondly (for better or worse) and have become legendary in their own right. But honesty, beating it to the ground will only make its impact less significant. When G5 rolls around, let's try and make those jokes worthwhile.

     


    Who's going to be G5's First Villain?
    By Alexrioponylover95


    Hello everycreature!

    So I recently been thinking about who’s going to be the first villain for G5 and maybe the first villain is the reason why Equestria is the way it is now.

    We all know that in the world of G5, the three kinds of ponies, Earth, Unicorn, and Pegasus have split apart, taking care of their own kind, with their own leaders. Harmony and magic are apparently gone with paranoia and mistrust taking its place, however how is still very much unclear… Whether or not it’s just a natural progression or an outside force is still unknown.

    And well… What if it’s an outside force that has caused this separation? What if a villain played the slow game, using the ponies’ separation as a means to weaken the ponies. And when the ponies are at their weakest, take over the three different kinds of ponies one by one very easily. Except of course Sunny and her new friends, who band together to defeat this villain, maybe having their own version of the elements of harmony.

    Another idea I have is what if the ponies themselves are the villain and their mistrust of each other will eventually bring their downfall? In fact I imagine a similar situation from the movie Raya and the Last Dragon, in which there the different lands in that movie drew their borders and don’t work with each other. Their hatred of each other creates the Druun, evil spirits that turn people into stone and it was only a select group of people from all the different lands who manage to save that world in the end.

    The same could be true for MLP G5, in which the ponies, again, have separated from each other and well their hatred of each other will create their own version of the Druun. And just like Raya and her new friends, Sunny, with her new friends, must find a way to once again unite the ponies and prevent Equestria’s end.

    Now speaking of villains… Will it be an entirely new character or someone we know from the previous generations? To be honest, I think it would be better if the G5 villains were entirely new, with maybe only references to previous villains, maybe G5’s villains are the descendents from the villains of G4 or are at least inspired by them.

    However, MLP has done recurring villains before from different generations, like Tirek and Grogar, (Okay, I guess you could say that G4’s Grogar is not him at all, you know since it was Discord the entire time…) and I guess I would be fine with it in G5, if it does make sense of course. Maybe such villains like Cozy, Chrysalis, and Tirek could return, having been freed from their stone prison. Maybe we’ll even get the real Grogar in G5 this time!

    Either way, whatever happens in G5 and who’s going to be the first villain, I am very interested in finding out and seeing how Sunny and her new friends will defeat their first villain!