Tem's Well of Stuff

My Little Pony: Make Your Mark is a Bad Show which Sucks

Forgive me for this. I wrote this up for one person in DMs but it's too much to contain it there. So instead of posting about math, I'm posting about My Little Pony: Make Your Mark, which is so bad and inept that it is hard to describe. But I'm going to try anyway.


A poster announcing the premiere of My Little Pony gen 5.
I'm not the biggest fan.

In a break from MLP tradition, g5 is not a totally fresh start, but rather follows directly from the events of g4, except that it doesn't. It "follows the events" insofar as Twilight Sparkle is dead. Canonically deceased. An ex-pony. Departed, as alicorns eventually must. Other than that, g5 doesn't really use anything else that g4 established.

At the start of MLP g5, the three races of Pony have become totally racially segregated, with the earth ponies living in Maretime Bay, the pegasus ponies living in Zephyr Heights and the unicorns living in Bridlewood Forest. There's exactly one city for each race, despite there being a massive world of ponies in g4. Equestria was able to support multiple major urban centers, a centralized labor effort to manually manipulate the seasons and a transcontinental railroad. And now each race fits comfortable within one small city apiece?

And what about all the other non-pony races? What happened to them? If the ponies are too racist to live with variants of their own kind, what did they do to the non-ponies? Maybe it's best not to think about it.

Also, all magic is gone.

One pony named Sunny believes the magic disappeared because there's no Unity in the world. Unity is this generation's replacement for Friendship. It means getting along whether you want to or not. It's like Friendship, but fascist.

The movie which kicks off the series involves her going on a big adventure to the three racial cities and re-uniting three Unity Crystals held by the three races. She manages to combine them in her house, which is a lighthouse called the Brighthouse. The Brighthouse (her lighthouse) makes a huge beam of rainbow into the sky, which they call the Prisbeam. This returns flight to the pegasus, magic to the unicorns and also gives agricultural magic to the Earth ponies. Earth ponies have never had magic power before, so this is a huge deal!

The show handles this amazing new development by having the characters argue over whether it's better to let everyone use magic willy-nilly even if they're causing propety damage and endangering lives, or whether it's better to ban all magic forever. It's annoying and boring.

Also during the movie, one pony named Sprout goes full Nazi, complete with unambiguous Nazi imagery and an emphasis on racial purity. It's not well-handled. It's not great.

A close-up of Sprout's fascist outfit from the movie.
These horses are always one bad day away from doing a genocide.

There's a pretty fun song to go with it, at least.

So after the movie, the Pony races begin re-integrating, with some hiccups along the way: there are still racist Ponies, and the Earth Ponies don't know how to control their magic since they've never had any before.

Also there's an Evil Pony named Opaline who wants all the magic for herself. Her plans are so lackluster that two seasons of trying to fuck with, corrupt or outright kill the main cast, they still aren't aware of her existence.

Two seasons! Opaline literally kidnaps a baby for an entire episode, and the cast doesn't realize anything is amiss afterwards. When she manages to kidnap the same baby a second time, they initially assume he's just "playing hide and seek." How the fuck do you lose a baby so often that his disappearance becomes routine??

As another example of how oblivious these dumb horses are, there's an episode where Opaline uses mysterious text messages to lure two of the main characters into a seaside cave and trap them inside, expecting that they'll drown or starve or whatever. When the ponies are eventually freed, they never stop to wonder who sent the messages or if their entrapment was anything more than a random accident. They were in the cave, now they're not. It's not merely a lack of pattern recognition, it's an inability to remember what happened five seconds ago.

Pipp preens from social media while Zipp rolls her eyes.
Horses who are too stupid to live, being menaced by a villain too stupid to kill them.

The show only works at all because every character is so stupid and bad at what they do that it somehow compensates for how oblivious and incompetent every other character is as well. The entire cast shares a single cell brain cell, but that brain cell still doesn't see a lot of use.

And also the main cast compulsively lies to each other for no reason.

One of them finds a magic egg and decides to raise it in secret for literally no reason. He lies to all his friends when they ask him why he's acting so shifty and secretive. There is zero reason for him to not just say he found a egg. Fuck this show.

Okay so main (I'm not going to say "mane") cast, here we go:

SUNNY STARSCOUT


Sunny's entire personality is that she loves Unity and hates Conflict. She loves to shut down conflicting feelings immediately. A lack of Unity harms magic, which means no one can ever disagree or have negative feelings about each other for even a second. She acts like any conflict between ponies will immediately Kill Magic Dead Forever.

They should have called this show My Little Pony: Friendship is Mandatory.

She is, in my friend's words, tenderqueer-pilled and validcore. Sunny is the worst. There are more annoying characters, but Sunny is the secret villain of the show.

She is the bad, flanderized version of Twilight Sparkle, but only because she loves magic. Whereas Twilight is a real bookworm, I'm not sure you could convince me that Sunny is literate.

She is orange.

HITCH TRAILBLAZER


Hitch is a fucking cop. He's the sheriff of Maretime Bay. He is less shitty than the Nazi Cop from the movie but he's still a fucking Cop. When Earth ponies initially have trouble controlling their magic, his reaction is to ban magic forever. (This is somehow less bad than Sunny's plan, which is to let everyone continue to cause wanton property damage and imperil innocent lives without restriction. Sunny is the worst.)

The thing that makes him not as bad as most Cops is that he forgets to do his job and also he is bad at it. That said, he's still a Paw Patrol reject. I do not like him, but he manages to be less insufferable than some of these other assholes.

He is the bad, flanderized version of Applejack and Fluttershy, since he's salt-of-the-earth but also can talk to animals.

He is also orange. But more yellow than Sunny.

PIPP PETALS


Pipp is an Influencer and yet somehow not the worst of these shitheads. She livestreams her every waking moment and has no personality. Her wings look like they're made from diaper material. She is the princess of Zephyr Heights and exists solely so the writers can make references to "Clip Trot" and "Ponygram" and "Dewdropping." You will not be surprised to learn I do not like her.

She is the bad, flanderized version of Rarity.

She is pink.

ZIPP STORM


Zipp Storm is the most likeable of the main cast, somehow. She is a detective, which means she likes noticing things, something every other pony assiduously avoids at all costs. If the ponies all share one brain cell, it is Zipp's turn to hold onto it 80% of the time. She is Pipp's sister and the other princess of Zephyr Heights, but has no actual interest in ruling or luxury.

Zipp actually seems to care about the setting and events of the show, which is good, because it's extremely clear that the writers do not.

She is an alright take on Rainbow Dash.

She is white and her wings don't look like diapers.

IZZY MOONBOW


UGH

UGH!!

Izzy Moonbow is the Zany One, which means her role in every scene is to talk incessantly while contributing absolutely fucking nothing. She's what happens when the voice actor sits down to record her lines, but the only thing the scripts say for her is "omg, soooooo random XD". She'll spend what feels like 20 minutes talking about literally nothing because all of her bullshit is a Unicorn Tradition or whatever. You could improve the pacing of every episode by simply jumpcutting forward whenever Izzy's mouth is open.

And then Sunny will tell her how fun it is to listen to her prattle on about nothing. Sunny is the worst.

Her thing is that she likes to upcycle -- sorry, unicycle -- old stuff to make it new again. For example, Sunny had a lantern that was made for her by her father, as a precious gift, before he passed away. The lantern had been damaged, so Izzy took it to unicycle it. Without her permission.

And the lantern she gave back had been completely redone. It looks nothing like it used to.

The Prisbeam Lantern, before and after Misty redid it.
Who want a precious memento from their father as he designed it when it could be utterly mutated without your consent instead?

Sunny didn't seem to notice. The characters in this show don't like noticing things.

Oh, right, this lantern ended up containing a portion of the Prisbeam Power from the Unity Crystals. That's an important plot point to the show. This makes the lantern incredibly valuable and important, but it's never explained why, exactly. The lantern is the focus of several episodes, and yet the show never devotes two minutes to giving you a reason to care.

Seriously I looked at the wiki, and the explanation there (paraphrased) was: shrug. They should have just called it The Lantern of MacGuffin, because it's not like they tried to hide that fact otherwise.

She is the godawful flanderized version of Pinkie Pie in the later seasons, who was already a flanderized version of herself.

She is purple but I keep mistaking her for Pipp anyway.

SPARKY SPARKERONI


UGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

His name is Sparky Sparkeroni and he's The Baby. He makes nonsense noises in place of having a personality. Sunny is the worst because she's the villain of the show, but Sparky almost manages to eclipse her through sheer annoyingness. He's exactly what you imagine when you think of a hack writer trying to write a ""cute"" baby character, but also you're suffering from the worst migraine of your life as you try to imagine it.

There's an episode where the lesson is that it's important to avoid providing babies with any kind of structure in their lives, and that it's fine if you abandon them to their own devices. No really! Hitch is chided for foolishly believing babies benefit from schedules, clear rules and not being left alone to take care of themselves! Thankfully, Izzy is there to teach Hitch about what babies truly need: Neglect.

Izzy is the other secret villain. It's not a good show!!

Sparky's got magical dragonfire that can do whatever Crazy Wacky Zany Silly-Billy-Willy Magic the writers need to try to make this episode interesting, which would be super convenient for them in any of them knew what "interesting" is. He's bonded to Hitch because Hitch hatched him from an egg, after lying to his friends about finding the egg for No Fucking Reason. There is nothing redeemable about his inclusion in the show. He's just Macguffin #2, but optimized for Marketability.

He is the replacement for Spike. Spike deserved so much better. He is a bad take on a terrible trope.

His name is Sparky Sparkeroni.

OPALINE ARCANA


She's evil and she wants all the magic for herself. She's Bad Mommy.

Her plans all suck to the point that the main cast doesn't realize she exists for two entire seasons of the show. It's not that they don't know her identity, it's that they aren't aware she even exists, despite Twilight (from beyond the grave) telling them she exists. Like all the worst cartoon villains, she tends to give up on her plans at the first hiccup, such as abandoning her one-episode-long plan to turn Sunny into her new apprentice. She explains how Sunny's alicorn magic will make her an invincible god-ruler, wins Sunny's trust immediately, but then gives up on the plan because Sunny goes against her advice one time.

She is a boring, uninteresting villain. She lacks the entertaining, weird aspects of g1 villains and the competent, threatening aspects of g4 villains.

Oh yeah, she's an alicorn, which is a big deal, apparently? Sunny sometimes manifests ethereal alicorn features which makes everyone totally crazy and devoted to her, which is kind of weird when 45 minutes ago everyone lived in total paranoid pony racial isolationism. But I guess people recognize Racial Superiority when they see it. Ha ha! This show is fascist.

She is purple, but frankly her weirdly white nose always makes me think she's just done a line of cocaine.

MISTY


Misty was "rescued" (actually kidnapped) by Opaline as a baby and raised in her castle, away from other unicorns. She is Opaline's agent in the world. She doesn't have a Cutie Mark, and honestly, that might be the one good thing I can say about the show's writing. Her inability to manifest her cutie mark while living in Opaline's rule is a prettty poignant metaphor for not being able to find out who you are while you're living in an abusive household. Credit where credit is due.

Her role is to infiltrate Maretime Bay to achieve Opaline's ambitions. Unfortunately, she is intensely anxious and an absolutely terrible liar, which is frustrating because it slows down every episode she's in. Misty will stammer her way through a completely unnecessary lie, everyone will raise an eyebrow, and then Sunny will get mad at anyone who seems suspicious. (A gentle reminder: Sunny is the worst.) At least Misty's anxiety makes sense, given she's spent her entire life living with an abusive stepmom. It feels like some thought was put into her character. Not a lot of thought. Maybe just one thought. A puddle of personality is still an ocean compared to every other character in this fucking show, though.

She's no Fluttershy, but she's kinda alright.

She is blue. Her cornrows can look really good when she's standing still, but also tend to create wild animation errors when they need to settle down after movement.


Okay, that's it. Thanks for reading the entire thing! And also, my sincerest apologies.