I am looking at this thumbnail, and I can perfectly tell why I dislike the modern Tamers MLP stuff. All these new OCs, their bloated backstories, the soap-opera interpersonal drama - it's numbing. It reads like a by-the-numbers fanfic; it started as a gross-out parody but caught the AIDS.
Good parody relies on subverting baseline expectations. For example, Twilight (in the actual show, all 9 seasons) is a nerdy, teacher's pet, OCD sperg. The joke lands when you subvert that by making her spit slurs worse than a sailor. That's parody 101. It's why Sonic Underground worked. Even the most normal of normalfags know Sonic isn't a suburban sitcom, the characters aren't racist, lewd, incestuous degenerates, and they fight bad guys instead of acting like them. You take the innocent world of Sonic and mix it with cringe TTS, vile-n-crass humor, and the most eye-boggling animations possible to make a great parody that reads as a stand-alone universe while respecting the core canon rules. Seeing cute hedgehogs ruin family dinners with farts is alien and dark humor, but the contrast between the source material we know and the new vision just works.
MLP started the same way. Technicolor horses stepping in shit that spirals out of control, like Rainbow Dash (under pressure) farting so hard that she nukes a city. It's funny because you know how Dash behaves in the show. And if you don't, then you don't need to watch 10 episodes of lore to understand the joke that nuke-farting is funny. But then, Tamers tried to weave an interconnected narrative. I'll admit, the Flawless arc worked. We got 5+ episodes of frustrated pent-up sexual tension to build upon. When Flawless was formed and killed, it felt earned. If you're a ponyfag, you get bonus points for knowing that Twilight x Trixie is the fandom's first OTP. Since her premiere in the 6th episode of the 1st season, Trixie was immediately paired with Twilight because they just work together. It happened 15 years ago; it is expected they will fuck each other in any given pony medium. And then, you also know that there is a lot of bitterness between Luna and Celestia in the show, let alone in fanon. Tamers took existing lore and remade it into a proper storyline with great build-up and a nice payoff. Shit, The Death of Twilight Sparkle was named the best fan animation of 2024, and /mlp/ board almost had a civil war over letting Flawless into the Miss /mlp/ contest (spoiler, she was added but eliminated early because of reasons).
Now? It's a clusterfuck of worthless OCs shoved down our throats. We've got Flawless's "evil" side (who is just retarded, not evil), two pedo lesbians, unlikable faggot twink in a clown hat, Trixie's sister (is she a feminazi? abuse victim? author self-insert? ludonarrative fourth-wall breaker? who gives a fuck), Apple-bitch, and Postal-schizo (toxic fujo bait), future Soarin and cat janitor (pointless fillers for three-way drama), Friendship and his clown-slut (visual AIDS), and whoever else. None of these shits were in the show. It is not a parody anymore; it has stopped being about the actual characters and mutated into a glorified OC circlejerk, where Tamers (one, or both, or five ov them) just play with shitty dolls. The story only exists to justify the author's OC schizophrenia. Characterization is dead. One episode, somepony is a god of destruction, next they are a tsundere bitch, then a vampire, then a prince, a heel-turn, a face-turn - it's whiplash. Flawless started as a socially inept, cunning, brooding mage. Alright, it might work: show her acting as a sarcastic bitch who is clearly two steps smarter than other ponies, but her ego fails her. But no, 20 episodes deep, she's a spineless, flanderized, slutty butt-monkey with the brain of a hill valley highschool girl. She got the Brian Griffin treatment: started as the sarcastic voice of reason and devolved into a stuck-up jerk.
How can we maintain any baseline expectations when the characters change behavior randomly and any growth is nullified the next episode? Tamers tries to tell an overarching story, so we expect the progression to stay - yet the plot throws random bullcrap at us. What's the point, then? Sonic Underground worked because it didn't pretend to be a huge epic; it was a slice-of-life comedy you could drop in and out of. Even overarching arcs like Battle With The Boys were not taxing. By the time Dumbledore enters the fight, you already don't care about coherence and watch Bartleby fuck Sonic for 40 minutes straight. But here? A random plot device appears out of nowhere, it leads to tension between characters, they have a 10 minute dialogue about feelings, the random bullcrap is resolved, and they reset to the status quo only to get interrupted by a new random thing in the next episode. And then the same characters will be having the same tensions, and we are expected to be surprised by it AGAIN. It's disheartening to witness the rot happen in real time but here it is.
