Pharynx reminds me of my own brother… And from the beginning of the episode I had the feeling he was going to "have a good point, but is terrible at making it".
Putting aside that point to ponder how Starlight could have made her point better, she could have pointed out that continuing to treat a peaceful nation as an enemy is NOT a good way to keep the hive safe.
… She could have gone with a SAO abridged line as well, one by Asuna: "At least I pretend to be nice to people!"
Yeah… Doesn't make much sense for the species who feeds on love to be dicks now does it? Given they could probably get better mileage pretending to be nice to ponies than being dicks.
Its weird when both sides of a conflict are being idiots… The reformed changelings being fanatical pacifists was dumb. Weirdly the show made that point (weakly) so that I don't have to.
Honestly… Probably the one weird part of the episode was that Starlight/Trixie didn't get annoyed by the feeling's forum, or their lack of ability to assess threats or priorities. The flow there really could have benefited from a voice of reason between two extremes; and it would have felt like a more natural sequence of events.
Part of me wonders if the fact the feelings forum was included was essentially an attempt to say something about the "recent" state of things, only to be aborted because it might rub people the wrong way.
Overall the episode was quite good. Its a lot better than that episode where Spike tries to keep his friends from meeting; mainly since everypony involved didn't hog the crazy stick the whole time, they learned from the small mistakes they made quickly, and didn't drag out a feat of insanity for a whole episode.
Yeah, a lot of the episodes I consider "cringy" that make me take a while to watch are ones where they do something dumb and then double down on it.
Meanwhile, Trixie and Starlight make practically the best comedy duo of the show. Not in an absolutely hilarious way, but its just amusing to me every time I watch them for how they play off each other. Normally Starlight makes the perfect straight mare to Trixie's excitable ego, and when the common sense switch is flipped out of Starlight's position, Trixie's snarky nature makes her a great straight mare to Starlight's neuroticism that she inherited from Twilight.
So yeah, good episode, would watch again.
If I've not mentioned the campfire tails episode, then its probably because I don't really have much to say on the matter… Other than "Yay, now we know what Eastern Ponies look like!"
… Except they don't have the horns one might have expected. Which is fine I guess; though it does still leave the question of what kind of pony has the alternative configurations, such as having a pair of horns on the back of the head.
On the other hand… I'm not sure the show would actually do that, probably because that wouldn't exactly be a "Unicorn" so much as a "Bicorn"… And I'm pretty sure they don't want to muddy the waters of classification by doing that, or maybe just because they'd rather not use the word Bicorn, since it might sound silly.