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> The new round of characters here I don't love as top tier but do want to see again and I am drawn to that dynamic.
I liked the Appleloosans and Buffalo as characters, the Buffalo chieftain was a particular highlight I'd say.
> As for the culture issue itself, let's just say while I can understand someone finding this offensive there was a certain honor and reverence that has died as we have paved over everything with pearl clutching and then being purposefully offensive as a response, I would take that world over the current one.
To me I'd say the issue is less so offensiveness, and moreso that there's a very direct comparison being made - that is, ponies to white Americans. I like white Americans, and ponies are clearly in many other ways a sort of mirror to the United States (not least of which being that literal mirrors from Equestria lead to the EQG USA), BUT in most of those cases it's clear that these are just similarities. I want ponies to be ponies, not any particular human group, and I want pony flaws to be pony flaws. When it comes to ponies settling on tribal lands, I'd very much like to think of that within in-universe terms, and I just find that very difficult to do when it's quite so direct an analogy. It's particularly frustrating to me in a way because I don't even find what the US did to the native Americans especially bad or horrifying in the grand scheme of things, not great but every European country has easily done worse. I like Appleloosans as old west types, I like the native American buffalo, but having the two groups fight over who gets the rights to ancestral tribal lands is just too close to irl, particularly when it's trying to both be a real war and a pie fight at the same time. We'll have to wait till the changelings to get MLP showing how war can be done right, even in a kid's show.
> Honestly, I am thinking of revamping my review style to be more like 5050s (on a good day) and more brief and quick (on a bad day)
The lengths and detail of the reviews varying is a good thing, in my mind. In the sense that reviews are a bit of a shared diary, the review we write being more/less detailed reflects the state of mind we were in when we wrote it. And as actual reviews, the level of detail could also reflect a reaction to the episode itself - a good episode with a short review, for instance, says something about an episode in and of itself. Plus I think it highlights when an episode is really special to us, like when I did a 4-part megareview for Winter Wrap-Up.
> Oh, and for my rating, 7.3/10. This was a pretty good episode!
Probably our most disparate ratings difference so far. I think I'd certainly say that prior to the Appleloosans and Buffalo presenting their sides of the argument, the episode is probably around that sort of rating for me too - I just can't get past the way both analogy and conflict are handled in the episode, to me the tone and subject matter are all extremely incongruous. I will say however that I think these are moreso things that bother me and make the episode 'bad' or overall unenjoyable for me to watch, my rating is not intended to be objective. As for whether it's objectively a bad episode or not, I really don't know - it's sort of half-and-half in a way because there's some great stuff in there. Maybe objectively speaking it would be closer to a mid episode? But even that is my subjective opinion of what it's objective quality would be. I don't know, it's complicated. I wouldn't want to go so far as to say I actively disagree with anybody who likes the episode, I think I'd just want to leave it at, I didn't like it, personally.