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[ShinySylvee]

"Bridle Gossip" really is carried by the poison joke gags, so yeah, if you don't like that, then the entire thing falls apart. I personally found them quite amusing, and thought the humor justified Rainbow continuing to fly even when she had no control. Everyone's fear of Zecora was definitely out of place even then, so I felt that was the weakest part of the episode.

I hadn't thought about it, but the lack of background music when they're talking about Zecora always did strike me as odd. I can't say I've noticed Twilight's voice sounding all that different. Offhand, the only season 1 episode she sounded odd in to my knowledge is "Winter Wrap Up", where she was way more perky and excitable than usual.

As for Zecora compared to Trixie and Luna, part of the issue is that Zecora does appear pretty often, but they never actually do anything character-wise with her. Meanwhile, Trixie and Luna get episodes actually about them.

The rest of the scene wasn't that bad but this line in particular felt really off. Normally she speaks more confidently and has more inflexions in her voice. It's sort of a different emotion but you compare that scene with how she sounds in this clip you can see what I mean. Overall she sounds a lot less enthused then she normally sounds.

I was largely just pointing out that it took other characters a long time before they got fleshed out as well. That being said it wasn't the best comparison to make since that was largely due to them not making many appearances rather then not getting any development despite appearing numerous times. I feel like Cadence and Shining Armor are a bit more accurate comparisons given that they don't really experience all that much development either despite I believe having more appearances then Zecora has even had. At this point the "mentor" role she was initially supposed to fill is no longer necessary given that they've already gone on a bunch of adventures and have matured quite a bit since the beginning of the show. At this point I'm not sure what they can really do with her as her initial purpose feels unneeded now.

 

[Slamtastic]

Blast from the past, just got reminded of these great 3D models

Honestly I think a 3D movie could be really good looking, going by what one guy has managed to do style/animation wise. Has the actual movie been confirmed to look like the show?

 

[SigmasonicX]

The rest of the scene wasn't that bad but this line in particular felt really off. Normally she speaks more confidently and has more inflexions in her voice. It's sort of a different emotion but you compare that scene with how she sounds in this clip you can see what I mean. Overall she sounds a lot less enthused then she normally sounds.

Yeah, I can definitely tell the difference with those clips.

Blast from the past, just got reminded of these great 3D models

(snip)

Honestly I think a 3D movie could be really good looking, going by what one guy has managed to do style/animation wise. Has the actual movie been confirmed to look like the show?

I assume this was prompted by 2snacks' new video. The video explains that he made the 3D models for his next Two Best Sisters Play, but he couldn't deal with all the Maya bugs and gave up for a while. TBSP's next episode is still going to be 2D, and the animation looks great from the short clip in the video. Anyway, the Fluttershy Maya models have been made public now.

As for the movie, we know the models are slightly different but it will still mostly resemble the show. Here's what we have so far, with the only official publicity being the last, Songbird Serenade.

 

[ShinySylvee]

Honestly I think a 3D movie could be really good looking, going by what one guy has managed to do style/animation wise. Has the actual movie been confirmed to look like the show?

It's confirmed at this point that the movie will be animated in Toon Boom Harmony. I made a post on reddit a while back when the news was revealed which sort of explains my opinion on the matter. Since I think it loosely applies here, I'll just paste my thoughts on it:

We haven't really seen that much of the art so far so I wouldn't be too quick to judge how the new artstyle will end up looking. I can only imagine it will look fairly similar to the old one. It seems stupid to me for them to alter the look too drastically given that they have a really rock solid foundation as far as art direction goes.

On one hand what DHX has done with Flash animation is nothing short of remarkable. I'm not a flash aficionado but at this point MLP is one of the if not THE leader in the field. Although the animation of the earlier seasons were not weak by any means, the later seasons of MLP have transcended "wow that looks good for a flash cartoon" and have gone on to be "wow that looks good." It's one of the best looking animated shows in the western hemisphere right now, flash or otherwise. A lot of that is thanks to their incredible art direction but their animation has been with them every step of the way.

That being said they may be feeling like they're reaching a plateau in terms of quality. Flash has its strengths that serves it well as a weekly 22 minute TV show. It allows them to create their models and animate in a short amount of time compared to other methods, and they use the time they save to decorate the background and add in other touch ups to make the scene look that much nicer. Seriously just go watch the background of any season 5-6 episode and just see how much is there. But when making a movie you don't have to make those tradeoffs. It's around 90 minutes long and you have potentially years and a much larger budget to work on it. If they used a more traditional animation tool for the show (Like ToonBoom) then they would have to likely spend more time on creating the scenes and less time touching them up. But with a feature film level budget they don't have to make those tradeoffs of lower quality animation but higher quality backgrounds.

Enter Toonboom, the new tool of choice for the movie. Generally speaking most people that have used both would say that it is a more powerful tool then flash but one that takes more time to use. Toonboom is at this point THE go to program for anyone trying to make seriously high quality 2D animation, and a lot of TV shows use it as well. A lot of Disney's recent 2D animation like The Princess and the Frog use it. The short before Frozen "Get a Horse" uses it too, as well as pretty much all of their direct to dvd sequels. For TV shows everything from SpongeBob to Bob's Burgers uses it.

Making a TV show into a feature length movie usually demands an increase in animation quality. And generally speaking I feel like ToonBoom is a natural step. The program isn't completely alien to anyone that uses flash so it's not too hard to go from one to the other. And it generally is more powerful of a tool then flash. MLP doesn't look bad by any means but I wouldn't exactly say that it's movie level. ToonBoom should help them reach that level.

NOTE: I am not an animator. If I have said anything wrong please point it out and I will edit my post accordingly.

Adding on to that I'm actually looking forward to the fact that it's 2D. Almost every western animated film is 3D CGI these days so seeing a 2D one with those levels of budget is going to be really cool. Those 2snacks models might look high quality but given that the show is done in 2D changing that would probably require them to redo most of their art design. Why try to go 3D when all the animators and artists are used to doing everything in 2D? Besides those models might look good by themselves but they might not look as good in an actual scene.

At any rate I hope we'll see a trailer at some point before the new year. I was thinking they might show it off as a preview for Disney's movie Moana but given that it releases tomorrow I feel like we would have seen something about it by now if that were the case.

 

[PaulloDEC]

The rest of the scene wasn't that bad but this line in particular felt really off. Normally she speaks more confidently and has more inflexions in her voice. It's sort of a different emotion but you compare that scene with how she sounds in this clip you can see what I mean. Overall she sounds a lot less enthused then she normally sounds.

Yeah, I can definitely tell the difference with those clips.

That's weird, I'd never noticed Tara voicing Twilight like that before. It seems a lot deeper and smoother than Twi usually is; kinda Mum-sy. She's a lot perkier and more variable nowadays I think.

Adding on to that I'm actually looking forward to the fact that it's 2D. Almost every western animated film is 3D CGI these days so seeing a 2D one with those levels of budget is going to be really cool. Those 2snacks models might look high quality but given that the show is done in 2D changing that would probably require them to redo most of their art design. Why try to go 3D when all the animators and artists are used to doing everything in 2D? Besides those models might look good by themselves but they might not look as good in an actual scene.

At any rate I hope we'll see a trailer at some point before the new year. I was thinking they might show it off as a preview for Disney's movie Moana but given that it releases tomorrow I feel like we would have seen something about it by now if that were the case.

I'm with you on the 2D. I absolutely love 2snacks' models of Luna and Celestia, but FiM ponies are for me a lot like the Simpsons or Futurama characters; they just work better in 2D. I'm still very excited to see how ponies look on Hollywood dollars. Some of my favourite scenes from FiM animation-wise have been ones that make use of dramatic light and shadow, and I'm certain we're going to be seeing a lot more of that in the movie.

As for a trailer, I don't expect we'll see anything until maybe Feb or Mar next year. Some quick googling shows that films like Cars 3 or the new Smurfs film released their first trailers roughly 7 months before release.

 

[DemWalls]

First things first, it's really hard watching this without noticing just how outdated some of the effects and voices feel. There's barely any BGM in the scene where they're talking about how evil Zecora is and it feels weird. There's quite a few other scenes like this as well. Also Twilight sounds like she's 10 years older. Tara Strong was definitely still trying to figure out her voice for Twilight at this point. Rarity as well to a lesser extent.

As superficial as it is, I find it a little hard to rewatch episodes from earlier seasons also because of how little variety there is in background ponies. After episodes like Viva Las Pegasus (an incredible amount of different, unique designs, with many fantastic ones - I particularly like this unicorn), looking around and seeing three Lyras, two Bon Bons and endless recolourings of Berry Punch is almost painful, really.

 

[SigmasonicX]

As superficial as it is, I find it a little hard to rewatch episodes from earlier seasons also because of how little variety there is in background ponies. After episodes like Viva Las Pegasus (an incredible amount of different, unique designs, with many fantastic ones - I particularly like this unicorn), looking around and seeing three Lyras, two Bon Bons and endless recolourings of Berry Punch is almost painful, really.

Not just the background ponies, but the backgrounds have greatly improved. It's a shame that fans not to do too much with new background ponies, but in a way, the fact that there are so many now is probably a big reason. (Come to think of it, what's with all the tents in that screenshot?)

In other news, these piggy banks have a couple of things to talk about.

First of all, it always amuses me when places like Wal-Mart unknowingly use cut outs of fan characters like Little Pip (from Fallout: Equestria). Second,

I know that's where the hole to remove money typically goes in these piggy banks, but I'm still getting flashbacks of that one Lyra plushie.

 

[DemWalls]

Yeah, everything massively improved. But that point really sticks out to me.

Anyway, I just rewatched Where the Apple Lies since I was a little bit distracted as I watched it when it first aired, and boy, does it turn dark at the hospital part :lol:
Made me realize that, despite the hate his episodes receive, I really appreciated Dave Rapp's output this season. I like the more "adult" (for lack of a better term) touch his work has.

 

[judhudson]

Not just the background ponies, but the backgrounds have greatly improved. It's a shame that fans not to do too much with new background ponies, but in a way, the fact that there are so many now is probably a big reason. (Come to think of it, what's with all the tents in that screenshot?)

In other news, these piggy banks have a couple of things to talk about.

First of all, it always amuses me when places like Wal-Mart unknowingly use cut outs of fan characters like Little Pip (from Fallout: Equestria). Second,

I know that's where the hole to remove money typically goes in these piggy banks, but I'm still getting flashbacks of that one Lyra plushie.

Heh, about those banks, yes - they are found at Walmart, but the picture was taken at my friend's work. He's a huge fan so his workspace is covered with them - He makes those cutouts as he works at a graphics / sign place.

 

[ShinySylvee]

That's weird, I'd never noticed Tara voicing Twilight like that before. It seems a lot deeper and smoother than Twi usually is; kinda Mum-sy. She's a lot perkier and more variable nowadays I think.


As for a trailer, I don't expect we'll see anything until maybe Feb or Mar next year. Some quick googling shows that films like Cars 3 or the new Smurfs film released their first trailers roughly 7 months before release.

Like I said before it's mainly just season one stuff. In earlier episodes almost everyone sounds a bit off. Tara and Tabitha seemed to take a bit longer to find their stride though. It doesn't matter that much but it's weird going back and watching the earlier episodes as sometimes they sound off.

I don't know how early they usually try to show off their movies. I figured since Moana has a similar target audience for what MLP: The Movie will likely end up going for they would try to show it off in previews there but it sounds like it's still too far out.

Not just the background ponies, but the backgrounds have greatly improved. It's a shame that fans not to do too much with new background ponies, but in a way, the fact that there are so many now is probably a big reason. (Come to think of it, what's with all the tents in that


I know that's where the hole to remove money typically goes in these piggy banks, but I'm still getting flashbacks of that one Lyra plushie.

I feel like it's a combination of two major factors as to why there isn't a bunch of fandom theories about the new background characters. First, their repeated use in the show was a large part of why they became important in the first place. These days they have a large enough budget and so many designs already made they don't have to reuse them with anywhere near the amount of frequency they had before. Whereas the fact that they showed up so much caused people to be interested in them. The second big thing, and what might be the larger problem, is that I feel like background ponies were part of the show's meme culture. I've already gone into this before so I'll keep things short but overall the meme culture surrounding the show has really died off as I feel like most of that crowd of people moved on to FNAF or Undertale or Zootopia or whatever else. All the background pony stuff always felt hella forced to me anyway so I can't exactly say that I miss it. (Although I do like Derpy but she actually does important things in the show outside of Slice of Life)

Also I feel slightly better that I'm not the only one that immediately thought of the Lyra plushy when I saw those piggy banks.

This image got me thinking a bit. The obvious question is who would win and I feel like most people would instantly say Starlight but thinking about it I'm not so sure. They haven't really shown on the show what unicorn Sunset was really capable of. All we really know for certain is that she used to be Celestia's pupil but left her to try to become more powerful. The comics expand a bit more on this by saying she had an Anakin Skywalker thing going on where she felt that Celestia was intentionally holding her back and preventing her from reaching her full potential which was largely why she left. That being said comics are kinda awkward as far as canon is concerned although given that I doubt EQG will elaborate on it further to the point of contradicting the comics I feel it's reasonable to assume that's roughly what happened.

All that being said it doesn't tell us exactly how powerful she actually is. Although she was able to Teleport in the first EQG which is generally something only really powerful magic users can do. I think it's fair to assume if Sunset just went right through the portal and started duking it out she would lose since she's massively out of practice. But would she be able to win if she was back before she left Equestria? How strong would she have been if she stayed with Celestia? It brings up some interesting questions that will likely never be answered but are still fun to think about. Before going through the portal she could have potentially been more powerful then Twilight is now. She certainly seemed more knowledgeable then her in the first movie.

 

[Cheerilee]

This image got me thinking a bit. The obvious question is who would win and I feel like most people would instantly say Starlight but thinking about it I'm not so sure. They haven't really shown on the show what unicorn Sunset was really capable of. All we really know for certain is that she used to be Celestia's pupil but left her to try to become more powerful. The comics expand a bit more on this by saying she had an Anakin Skywalker thing going on where she felt that Celestia was intentionally holding her back and preventing her from reaching her full potential which was largely why she left. That being said comics are kinda awkward as far as canon is concerned although given that I doubt EQG will elaborate on it further to the point of contradicting the comics I feel it's reasonable to assume that's roughly what happened.

All that being said it doesn't tell us exactly how powerful she actually is. Although she was able to Teleport in the first EQG which is generally something only really powerful magic users can do. I think it's fair to assume if Sunset just went right through the portal and started duking it out she would lose since she's massively out of practice. But would she be able to win if she was back before she left Equestria? How strong would she have been if she stayed with Celestia? It brings up some interesting questions that will likely never be answered but are still fun to think about. Before going through the portal she could have potentially been more powerful then Twilight is now. She certainly seemed more knowledgeable then her in the first movie.

My take on Sunset Shimmer's power level is that her cutie mark is almost a duplicate of Princess Celestia's cutie mark, but it contains a light/dark ying/yang symbol.

Celestia saw this (ignoring the ying/yang) as a sign that Sunset was "the next Celestia", offering a tired Celestia the opportunity to step down and retire (perhaps turn all of her energies towards solving the Luna/Nightmare Moon problem), so Celestia began Sunset's magical education, but Sunset took to magic too well and Celestia sensed a growing demon in her.

That's because Sunset is both Angel and Demon (the Demon seen in EQG1 and the Angel seen in EQG3). When she's both of them in perfect balance, neither good nor evil, she should be more than the sum of her parts and should be Celestia-tier.

De-powered, Sunset should be similar to any Celestia-educated unicorn. Her Angel and Demon forms should rank somewhere between a unicorn and a god.

The EQG world is a non-magical world that's mostly containing Sunset's emerging godlike powers as she struggles to come to terms with them. Sunset's leaking powers revived the Sirens and empowered the Mane 5 in EQG2, and the DBZ fight in EQG3 was basically a power-fearing Sunset using her first taste of Angel power to battle EQG Twilight playing the role of Sunset's Demon (using power tapped from Sunset). And Demon Twilight was able to open portals to Equestria at will, to try and chase after more magic, but Angel Sunset closed those portals with similar ease, to try and keep the both of them insulated away from any more magic (and casualties).

IMO, Sunset Shimmer in Equestria is bad news for anyone who tries to mess with her (and maybe bad news for Equestria, as she might Demon-out and try to destroy the world, requiring intervention from a god-level Equestrian). She's already exceeded Equestrian normal.

 

[SigmasonicX]

I'm of the opinion that magical feats in Dougworld have no bearing on Equestria, so given that all we've seen from Sunset is teleporting and basic telekinesis, she'd be much weaker than Twilight and Starlight. Besides, every magic thing she has done besides that has been helped by the Element of Magic, Rainbow Power, SciTwi's inexplicable magic absorber, or maybe-Dougworld-Elements-of-Harmony. However, if Sunset actually does return to Equestria in canon at some point and does magic, I expect that she'll inexplicably be shown to be at the same level as them.

The implication of the Equestria Girls movies has been that it was the Element of Magic being brought to Dougworld that triggered all the magical stuff, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's Sunset's latent power, Cheerilee. As for Midnight Sparkle, the fact that she came about due to SciTwi creating a magic radar that somehow absorbs magic without her even realizing ruins any serious attempt to analyze her powers for me.

EDIT:

Heh, about those banks, yes - they are found at Walmart, but the picture was taken at my friend's work. He's a huge fan so his workspace is covered with them - He makes those cutouts as he works at a graphics / sign place.

Ah, didn't realize that. Neat.

 

[Cheerilee]

I'm of the opinion that magical feats in Dougworld have no bearing on Equestria, so given that all we've seen from Sunset is teleporting and basic telekinesis, she'd be much weaker than Twilight and Starlight. However, if Sunset actually does return to Equestria in canon at some point and does magic, I expect that she'll inexplicably be shown to be at the same level as them.

The implication of the Equestria Girls movies has been that it was the Element of Magic being brought to Dougworld that triggered all the magical stuff, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's Sunset's latent power, Cheerilee. As for Midnight Sparkle, the fact that she came about due to SciTwi creating a magic radar that somehow absorbs magic without her even realizing ruins any serious attempt to analyze her powers for me.

When Sunset moved to Dougworld, she gradually turned evil as her inner Demon fed on popularity contests, but yeah, she had no access to magic. She returned to Ponyworld when the portal opened again and stole Twilight's crown as a large source of magic. But then Twilight reclaimed her magic and used the rainbow space cannon to (temporarily) suppress Sunset's evil (the evil can't truly be purged, not as long as Sunset lives, because it's a fundamental part of her).

After EG1 though, the Mane 5 started to Ponify without Twilight's crown, and EG2 made a thing about asking how that was possible. And then, when Twilight and the Mane 5 couldn't beat the Sirens, one high-five between Twilight and the no-longer-hiding Sunset was enough to break the Sirens. Then Sunset powered-up and (without actually doing anything, just by virtue of Sunset powering up) Twilight and the Mane 5 powered up again and a massive rainbow space cannon curbstomped the already-defeated Sirens.

The crown was a catalyst. Sunset is generating her own power now. She's actively trying not to power-up (because she's afraid of her Demon side), but she's unconsciously powering the Mane 5 and able to have DBZ-style fights with herself. The crown being the only source of magic in Dougworld with "residue" powering the Mane 5 was just a theory, and a flimsy one at best, until a better explanation became clear when an unpowered Sunset joining Twilight provided an exponential power boost.

I would suggest that a Unicorn can use magic. A god (varying degrees of Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Twilight and Sunset) can make it.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Alright, time to catch up on stuff I've left alone for too long.

WOONATALE - Undertale combined with the old egophiliac comic Moonstuck, about a chibi Luna named Woona. I haven't actually gotten around to playing this yet.

It's short and easy, it's just a fight against Nightmare Woona where you dodge Main Six-based attacks and do friendship things to her until she remembers who she is. It's pretty good for what it is.

Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has finally been released!
Trailer

This game has been in production since 2012. While the graphics are pretty simple, there is apparently a huge amount of content, with 70+ levels and 50+ characters. In any case, I recommend downloading it before something happens.

Finally got around to playing this, after more than a year. There is indeed a lot of content, but the big problem is that the base gameplay just isn't that good. It's pretty much your standard novice platformer, complete with the weird jumping and occasional glitch, except there's a lot of it. Exploring is decently fun, but I quickly lost interest. There can be a ton of different sprites on screen at once, and the game doesn't do a good job handling it. My computer isn't exactly built for gaming, but it shouldn't have such a low framerate for a sprite game like this. It's also really annoying when you open a treasure chest, since a ton of stuff can come out, and it takes a long time. The same thing happens when you beat a boss and it spews out items. Plus, the UI and level map are cumbersome, I feel.

I've unlocked four characters so far: Twilight (starting), Applejack (beat boss), Daring Do (random unlock), and Lily (of the Flower Trio) (random unlock). Twilight's charge shot is really satisfying when you take out a ton of enemies, but it takes forever to charge, and the flowing particles to represent her charge are annoying. Daring Do's whip is decent. There's a trick to it, where you can start the whip in one direction, then turn around and move in the other, and the whip animation will continue behind you, which allows you to attack and run away at the same time. I didn't use Applejack and Lily much, but they have projectile attacks, with Applejack's going straight ahead and Lily's arcing. You have the option to play with two characters (one acting as a Tails-like partner), but I didn't play that much.

I got past the boss you beat to unlock Applejack and played a bit of the next level to test her and Lily out. I have no intention of continuing the game. Overall, it's ambitious, but it was built on a shaky foundation.

In my original post, I suggested the game could be taken down, but it hasn't yet, and in fact, there was an updated release earlier this year.

EDIT: Don't normally post these, but I'm happy Everything Wrong With Legend of Everfree in 11 Minutes or Less acknowledged how similar Twilight's song is to "Luna's Future".

 

[ShinySylvee]

Played like 10 minutes of the Clockwork Stallions game and going from my DKC2 playthrough to that is pretty rough. It's pretty obviously made in Gamemaker, and it being that obvious to spot is never a good thing. I didn't mess with any of the characters besides Twilight since I stopped playing after the first boss, but there being so many of them despite the core gameplay being so mediocre is not a good thing. It just seems like the guy doesn't have his priorities strait as you can change the curser in the game (Which outside of navigating some menus is never actually used) but can't rebind keys or change the volume. Z being the firing key makes it almost impossible to use ASD to move around and why is up jump? Like they figured this out in the 8bit era up should never be jump. Speaking of jumping why can you even jump on the enemies' heads? It doesn't deal damage from what I can tell and makes no sense flavor-wise since you aren't wearing anything on your feet and the gameplay isn't set up to take advantage of this at all. And the double jump just looks weird since there's no animation for when you jump the second time. The game is thematically all over the place I have no clue what the author is even going for. The background looks like it's going for more of a grimdark vibe but the first level has upbeat music.

I feel that I should give him a gold star for trying as this is still 10x better then anything I could ask myself to make but I feel like the guy decided to metaphorically start sprinting before he could even crawl. It's bizarre he spent all that effort making so many characters and levels when the core gameplay is this unfinished.

For what it's worth performance-wise I had no problems. That being said my computer can run Witcher 3 at max settings at around 50 FPS so if I was getting any framerate drops there would be a pretty massive problem.

It does make me wish we could get an actual MLP game at some point. Like one targeted at core audiences rather then just mobile game clones. They already have action figures, comics, and a card game. I guess a half-decent video game would cost a lot more then that and given the subject material only fans would buy it even if it was actually really good. It just feels like a waste that such a terrific setting is never really going to get shown off in a game since I think there's so many possibilities with it. The show is so flexible you could do anything from high fantasy to modern stuff and nothing would feel out-of-place. And as long as you aren't tackling "mature" stuff like gore or sex I don't think anything else would feel tonally inappropriate as the show has tackled deep themes in the past as well. Oh well maybe if the movie does extremely well we might get something but until then all I can do is dream.

 

[PaulloDEC]

It does make me wish we could get an actual MLP game at some point. Like one targeted at core audiences rather then just mobile game clones. They already have action figures, comics, and a card game. I guess a half-decent video game would cost a lot more then that and given the subject material only fans would buy it even if it was actually really good. It just feels like a waste that such a terrific setting is never really going to get shown off in a game since I think there's so many possibilities with it. The show is so flexible you could do anything from high fantasy to modern stuff and nothing would feel out-of-place. And as long as you aren't tackling "mature" stuff like gore or sex I don't think anything else would feel tonally inappropriate as the show has tackled deep themes in the past as well. Oh well maybe if the movie does extremely well we might get something but until then all I can do is dream.

Here's my pitch: we're talking a single-player RPG in the vein of the Pokemon games (popular with both kids and adults alike, after all) wherein the player as pony of their own design goes forth into the world, making allies (to add to their party), exploring exciting locations and defeating enemies. The story would be framed as Twilight reading a book to her friends, so there's no established lore or required characters to worry about.

Give the player lots of latitude in how they want to solve problems (are you more rough 'n' tumble, or will you use charismatic words and diplomacy?) and let the player's conscience be their guide.

I bet there's plenty of devs who could whip up a game like that without breaking the bank.

 

[DemWalls]

As always, I would trust Obsidian with any kind of RPG. Especially after The Stick of Truth, since we're talking about a licensed product. Would be awesome to see a game basically indistinguishable from an episode of the show.

 

[ShinySylvee]

Just thought I'd mention that for the first time ever a pony video has broken 100 million views on YouTube. Congratulations to the video "Welcome to The Show" for being the first one to reach that milestone. The accomplishment is made all the more impressive given that there's easily another 80 million views of the scene/song if you add up the other videos on YouTube. Again congrats on hitting 100 million and I fully expect to make another post about how the version with almost 75 million views hitting 100 million sometime in the near future.

EDIT: Ok so I was WAY off on the second most viewed video. Apparently it's "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me" with almost 97 million views. I would like to point out just how hard it is to actually find the most viewed videos without just doing a search sorting by viewership since all the videos are scattered among a ton of different videos and even doing a YouTube search for a specific song might not actually display the most viewed version.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Just thought I'd mention that for the first time ever a pony video has broken 100 million views on YouTube. Congratulations to the video "Welcome to The Show" for being the first one to reach that milestone. The accomplishment is made all the more impressive given that there's easily another 80 million views of the scene/song if you add up the other videos on YouTube. Again congrats on hitting 100 million and I fully expect to make another post about how the version with almost 75 million views hitting 100 million sometime in the near future.

EDIT: Ok so I was WAY off on the second most viewed video. Apparently it's "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me" with almost 97 million views. I would like to point out just how hard it is to actually find the most viewed videos without just doing a search sorting by viewership since all the videos are scattered among a ton of different videos and even doing a YouTube search for a specific song might not actually display the most viewed version.

I mentioned before that I knew Equestria Girls stuff was more popular on YouTube than normal pony stuff, but I hadn't realized that a "Magical Mystery Cure" song was that close. Odd that it would be that song, especially since it felt like "I Have to Find a Way" was the song that got the most remixes, and "Celestia's Ballad" is tied into Twilight becoming a princess.

 

[ShinySylvee]

I mentioned before that I knew Equestria Girls stuff was more popular on YouTube than normal pony stuff, but I hadn't realized that a "Magical Mystery Cure" song was that close. Odd that it would be that song, especially since it felt like "I Have to Find a Way" was the song that got the most remixes, and "Celestia's Ballad" is tied into Twilight becoming a princess.

I don't really know, I found most the songs in MMC were some of Dan's weaker work in general although if I had to pick one to be the standout of the bunch it would be "True True Friend." That one is probably sitting around 60 million combined views off the videos I found, whereas if you combine all the different versions What my cutie mark has it probably goes well over 140 million views. None of the other MMC songs come even close to reaching True True Friend let alone WMCMITM. (That name is way too hard to type out) That being said all the other songs in the episode are either extremely forgettable (Morning in Ponyville and Twilight's coronation song) or have names that would make searching for them difficult. (It's acutally "I've got to find a way" and the other song didn't have its name anywhere in the song) Spending a couple seconds on the internet wayback machine it appears that most its views came well over a year after it came out, so my theory that most the views were from back when it was from the only musical number the show had is wrong.

At any rate, there's only a handful of songs from the mainline show past season 3 that have decent views. (Basically just You'll Play Your Part and Hearts as Strong as Horses) I think a lot of people that listen to MLP music these days don't follow the show anymore which would explain why even excellent songs from Season 5 and 6 have less then 10 million views. Equestria Girls seems to be the exception to this rule although that being said even Legend of Everfree is getting pretty meagre views.

 

[PaulloDEC]

I've always found those crazy high views to be a weird phenomenon, and I wonder whether it ties back to something I learned from my boss, who has two young children. Apparently it's a thing now to do a fairly generic search on Youtube (i.e. "kids cartoons") and plonk your kid down in front of it, letting Youtube's related content algorithm continue to queue up new videos.

What you ultimately see is a crazy mishmash of real TV show clips, home-made videos, foreign language animation, etc playing in a seemingly random jumble. The craziest part though is that they often have insane views, many in the hundreds of millions. And then of course the more views certain things get, the more likely they are to be dredged up by the algorithm in the future, creating this weird popularity cycle.

Semi-related funny story: A month or two back the boss had his baby daughter in the office and he wanted to put some My Little Pony on for her. The video he actually found on Youtube was the Canterlot Wedding episode of Friendship is Witchcraft. I had to sit there working while this played out, eventually trying to drop some subtle hints that maybe this wasn't the actual show.

Awkward.

 

[SigmasonicX]

At any rate, there's only a handful of songs from the mainline show past season 3 that have decent views. (Basically just You'll Play Your Part and Hearts as Strong as Horses) I think a lot of people that listen to MLP music these days don't follow the show anymore which would explain why even excellent songs from Season 5 and 6 have less then 10 million views. Equestria Girls seems to be the exception to this rule although that being said even Legend of Everfree is getting pretty meagre views.

A lot of people were joking about it at the time, but I guess a lot of people really did leave the fandom after season 3. But looking back, I can't blame them. Season 3 wasn't just short, but was generally considered weak, and it rushed through major events like Discord turning good and Twilight becoming a princess. Combine that with a large gap between season 2 and 3, another large gap between season 3 and 4, and most of all, Equestria Girls, and no wonder people thought the show was no longer for them.

That said, there's a ton of official content coming out, so this hardly led to the downfall of the show like many feared.

As for Legend of Everfree songs getting relatively few views, I do get the impression that interest in Equestria Girls is dying down. A Hasbro earnings report from before LoE came out stated that EQG toy sales were down, and I feel like each movie is inspiring fewer fan works. There's a fair amount of Gaia Everfree art, and some camping art, but not at the level of the Shadowbolts and SciTwi / Midnight Sparkle from Friendship Games, and that movie definitely inspired fewer fan works than Rainbow Rocks.

I've always found those crazy high views to be a weird phenomenon, and I wonder whether it ties back to something I learned from my boss, who has two young children. Apparently it's a thing now to do a fairly generic search on Youtube (i.e. "kids cartoons") and plonk your kid down in front of it, letting Youtube's related content algorithm continue to queue up new videos.

What you ultimately see is a crazy mishmash of real TV show clips, home-made videos, foreign language animation, etc playing in a seemingly random jumble. The craziest part though is that they often have insane views, many in the hundreds of millions. And then of course the more views certain things get, the more likely they are to be dredged up by the algorithm in the future, creating this weird popularity cycle.

Semi-related funny story: A month or two back the boss had his baby daughter in the office and he wanted to put some My Little Pony on for her. The video he actually found on Youtube was the Canterlot Wedding episode of Friendship is Witchcraft. I had to sit there working while this played out, eventually trying to drop some subtle hints that maybe this wasn't the actual show.

Awkward.

I hadn't realized that was a thing, but it makes a lot of sense. I recall that some MLP videos would recommend a playlist that had that and other seemingly unrelated videos. So your boss didn't notice that anything was up with the dialogue?

 

[ShinySylvee]

A lot of people were joking about it at the time, but I guess a lot of people really did leave the fandom after season 3. But looking back, I can't blame them. Season 3 wasn't just short, but was generally considered weak, and it rushed through major events like Discord turning good and Twilight becoming a princess. Combine that with a large gap between season 2 and 3, another large gap between season 3 and 4, and most of all, Equestria Girls, and no wonder people thought the show was no longer for them.

That said, there's a ton of official content coming out, so this hardly led to the downfall of the show like many feared.

As for Legend of Everfree songs getting relatively few views, I do get the impression that interest in Equestria Girls is dying down. A Hasbro earnings report from before LoE came out stated that EQG toy sales were down, and I feel like each movie is inspiring fewer fan works. There's a fair amount of Gaia Everfree art, and some camping art, but not at the level of the Shadowbolts and SciTwi / Midnight Sparkle from Friendship Games, and that movie definitely inspired fewer fan works than Rainbow Rocks.

If the live numbers of people watching the episodes are any sort of reflection on the show's popularity it was actually the Hiatus before Season 5 and Season 5 itself that caused its ratings to drop. Which I would chalk up more to people slowly losing interest in the show as opposed to people giving up on it considering that Season 5 is widely considered to be the best or second-best season ever. I don't speak for everyone obviously but I stopped watching the show regularly because I just got burnt out on it because I paid so much attention to it for so long. I think there's a large group of people that still really like the show but can't muster up the energy to keep up to date with it. And let's face it 6 seasons is a LOT to sit through and watch so I imagine there's a lot of people that started watching through the show and just haven't gotten to the later seasons. It would be interesting to take a poll on a fairly casual brony site that doesn't discuss new episodes and see what percentage has actually seen season 6. That number is probably a lot lower then you think it would be.

Like it's easy to assume that the show's popularity among older audiences dwindling is a reaction to a culmination of problems that the show had, and there definitely were a lot in the season 3 era. Season 3 is widely considered to be the worst of the show, Twilicorn was probably the biggest outrage the fandom has ever had, and Equestria Girls was almost hated as much. But the numbers would indicate that people stopped watching before and during season 5, and although everyone has their own opinions I don't think there's a whole lot of people that feel that Season 5 was a massive step down in quality from 4. The trends would indicate to me that the show has dropped in popularity because people just lost interest and not due to anything the show itself actually did, because even after those things the show actually increased in viewership. That being said another thing you have to consider about live viewers is that over the past couple years online streaming services have drastically increased in usage. I think there's a large group of people that wait for the show to come out on Netflix before watching it rather then catching it live.


As for EQG I think that Legend was probably the least game-changing movie so far. The first one established the world, Rainbow Rocks established Sunset as the main good guy, and Friendship Games gave Sunset her first "solo" outing and introduced SciTwi. Gaia and Timber are probably not going to be important going forward and although the powers are neat they're not a whole lot to make fan art of. Also I think some people might have been soured by the drop in quality from Rainbow Rocks to Friendship games and haven't gotten around to watching Legend of Everfree yet because of it. It also has the problem of being at the end of a growing list of movies that you have to watch beforehand in order to fully appreciate. Similarly to the seasons, I think there's a good chunk of people that just haven't gotten through all of them yet.

 

[SigmasonicX]

If there was a drop in TV ratings between seasons 4 and 5, wouldn't a big part of that be due to The Hub dying and Discovery Family taking its place? Also, looking at the season start and end times, I forgot that the gap between season 4 and 5 was almost a year long.

In any case, I was specifically referring to interest by adult fans. We discussed earlier how the younger fanbase isn't necessarily connected to that, and there must still be a lot of interest by them for the show to keep going like this with spinoffs. Besides, the adult fans are the only ones we can gather much information about without hacking into Hasbro's market research.

As for Equestria Girls, yeah, I think the fact that the first three movies felt important while the fourth didn't really was a negative in two aspects. First, in that fans feel they can't treat the movies like you would Scooby-Doo direct-to-videos and watch them as stand-alones, and second, in that Legend of Everfree could be a letdown because it didn't feel like it really changed much. I expect the TV specials should be more popular, especially if they actually do a slice of life story instead of making it another save the school/world plot.

 

[ShinySylvee]

If there was a drop in TV ratings between seasons 4 and 5, wouldn't a big part of that be due to The Hub dying and Discovery Family taking its place? Also, looking at the season start and end times, I forgot that the gap between season 4 and 5 was almost a year long.

In any case, I was specifically referring to interest by adult fans. We discussed earlier how the younger fanbase isn't necessarily connected to that, and there must still be a lot of interest by them for the show to keep going like this with spinoffs. Besides, the adult fans are the only ones we can gather much information about without hacking into Hasbro's market research.

As for Equestria Girls, yeah, I think the fact that the first three movies felt important while the fourth didn't really was a negative in two aspects. First, in that fans feel they can't treat the movies like you would Scooby-Doo direct-to-videos and watch them as stand-alones, and second, in that Legend of Everfree could be a letdown because it didn't feel like it really changed much. I expect the TV specials should be more popular, especially if they actually do a slice of life story instead of making it another save the school/world plot.

The numbers from Season 4's Finale to Season 5's opener went from .79 million to .51 million. The popularity dropped further as the season went on and it ended up at .33 million. As I said before there's a lot of factors that go into what probably affected the show's ratings because I think as a whole a LOT of the people that watch the show don't catch it live anymore and choose to stream it through Netflix/some less legitimate means and part of the ratings drop is because of that. But yeah I think the nearly year long break of no episodes caused a lot of the older fandom to lose interest and stop following the show, and there was another group that got burnt out mid-season. I know around 25 or so people from my time on Pony Fortress 2 who used to watch the show, and all but one of them fall into two camps: they either stopped watching midseason 2 because it was "so much worse now" (This group is admittedly pretty small) or the slowly lost interest and eventually quit following the show altogether before or during season 5. There's one that still follows the series although he still hasn't finished season 6 yet. And pretty much all of them in the second camp don't really hate the show, (and if they do it's more of a shame kind of thing rather then actually thinking the show is bad now) they just haven't really gotten around to actually watching it. And again I think that the movie next year might be a catalyst that gets a lot of these people back into the series again provided it ends up doing very well.

For what it's worth the show's popularity seems to have mostly stabilized. Season 6's premier was at .38 million and the finale did drop to .24 million but again a lot of that is probably because people are shifting over to different ways of watching the show. At the very least it wasn't as significant as the drop from Season 4 to Season 5's finale which lost almost 60% of its live viewers. Also just remembered but I think the large reason why the gap between Seasons 4 and 5 was so large was because they wanted to postpone launching the show until spring because they were rebranding as Discovery Family in October. So in that indirect way I think the rebranding hurt in addition to there being some people that didn't get the memo.

It's probably a combo of Legend being solid but unremarkable and it being now the 4th movie in a series that you have to watch all the previous ones to fully enjoy. And yeah the fact that it's by no means a standalone film really hurts it as a direct-to-dvd movie aimed at kids as you can't just pick it up for them without watching the previous movies first.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Episode Rewatch: Swarm of the Century

Besides Pinkie's bizarre insistence on not explaining herself, which undermines the moral about listening to your friends, this episode was a lot of fun. The escalation of the parasprite threat was great, and the way characters reacted to them led to many memorable moments. The scene where Rarity is screaming in her shop, then Pinkie comes in to to save her, only to leave after getting a kazoo, leading to Rarity screaming again has perfect comedic timing; and Twilight snapping is still a favorite character moment of mine. Plus, there were smaller moments like Celestia's reaction to the parasprites following Pinkie, and Twilight trying to hit them with her tail. Given that, I was surprised how much I had forgotten about it until I looked through the article. I should definitely rewatch it soon.

This was MA Larson's first episode. Can you believe he actually didn't watch Star Trek before he was given this episode?

It's kind of interesting how, as Calpain points out, the "Welcome Princess Celest" scene has almost every season 1 background character that became big with the fandom all together.

I hadn't thought about it, but you really can draw a straight line from this episode to Weird Al eventually appearing on the show, can't you? Without Pinkie's instruments, you don't have "Pony Polka", and without that, you don't get Weird Al's attention.

Ah yes, the age old question of whether Celestia knew about parasprites or not. I say she did, due to the way she said she had to deal with a problem in Fillydelphia, though I don't recall her exact words. Come to think of it, we still haven't seen Fillydelphia in the show, have we?

On one hand, I'm surprised Calpain didn't bring up the "don't feed the parasprites" meme.

But on the other, it was pretty embarrassing. For a while, people tried to push "parasprite" as a substitute for "troll", and it got big enough to be included in non-brony articles and videos about the show and fandom, but in practice, very few people actually used it. It was just completely unnecessary, IMO.

==

Next in DRWolf's therapy series, a character that probably could have really used therapy: Starlight Glimmer's Therapy Visit. It only covers up through "No Second Prances", which goes to show her issues.

EDIT: Ended up rewatching "Swarm of the Century" today. It's been a while since I watched a season 1 episode, and I couldn't help but notice how static the character movements were and how relatively weak the backgrounds were. It also seemed like they used every opportunity they could to use generic walk / run cycles for purely horizontal movement. I remember that for a season 6 episode, people were noting that it was kind of nostalgic to have a scene where Twilight uses her old walk cycle with Spike on her back, but that goes to show how far character movements have evolved. As for the episode itself, the moment where Applejack rolls the parasprites away, only for it to turn out Fluttershy kept some, and then Rainbow Dash does her own thing to get rid of them, was a pretty odd bit of repetition and was overly plot convenient. Plus, I forgot that Pinkie was the one to mess things up and send the parasprites to town. But besides that, my previous praise of the episode still applies. I feel like Rarity is the unsung hero of this episode, with her great scenes. EDIT: As for Celestia, she was clearly trying to help Twilight out with her talk of the parasprites being part of a parade and such. She definitely knew what was going on.

I also rewatched "Boast Busters" (Trixie's introduction), and outside of the ursa minor part, it honestly isn't that good.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Re: the shrinking fandom, I've always figured it was just a natural decline. The initial fandom seemed like it was running at least partly on the novelty of the whole thing, so once that faded away we lost a big chunk.

It's also worth remembering that a lot of the early fans were young; as of the 2013 "State of the Herd" report, 95% of fans were aged between 10 and 30, with 80% being between 15 and 25. People change a lot during that period of their lives, so finding other interests that diminish or eliminate their pony time isn't too surprising.

Re: Swarm of the Century, I just now rewatched, and I'm realising that I don't even know how to comment on Season 1 anymore. It's like I've seen a finished drawing and now I'm trying to evaluate the initial sketch. Everything is so much simpler.

 

[DemWalls]

Re: the shrinking fandom, I've always figured it was just a natural decline. The initial fandom seemed like it was running at least partly on the novelty of the whole thing, so once that faded away we lost a big chunk.

I honestly think it boils down to this, in large part.
After all, just look at what was written in the OP of previous community threads:

Reasons pointed out by the members of PonyGAF for liking MLP:FiM are:

[...]

And above all...

The sheer rush from the absurdity and cognitive dissonance resulting from the realization that you're a full-grown adult person who is loving a show about magical ponies, geared primarily at young girls, and coming from a franchise with a 25-year history of lowest-common-denominator toy-store-shelf-filling plastic vapidness, and knowing that you are not alone in doing so.

This almost gives me the impression that many people weren't really into the show, the kind of interest that would've kept em hooked for more than a few months. As you said, it was just the novelty of seeing a show aimed at children that wasn't, for once, absolute crap.

 

[PaulloDEC]

This almost gives me the impression that many people weren't really into the show, the kind of interest that would've kept em hooked for more than a few months. As you said, it was just the novelty of seeing a show aimed at children that wasn't, for once, absolute crap.

Yup. I got the sense back in the early days that the fandom as we knew it was actually more like two fandoms; there were the people who were fans of the show, and there were the people who were fans of the fandom. The community seems like it was an exciting jam back in the beginning, with overwhelming amounts of fan-content, memes and general enthusiasm.

It's kinda like this massive My Little Pony-themed party just appeared out of nowhere, and some people joined because they like MLP, while others just joined because it was a big party and it seemed like fun. A lot of the former stuck around, but many of the latter moved on to enjoy other parties.

 

[SigmasonicX]

This recent Lazy Town topic shows what MLP could have been like if the vast majority of the fandom was just "there for the party". I didn't even realize Lazy Town lasted into 2014! Also note how the song in the OP appears to have come from a 2014 episode, but it didn't start getting remixes until 2015, when it was put on YouTube, and it's only that song that's getting a lot of attention out of the newer songs.

 

[DemWalls]

Incidentally, I learned about that song just recently. It seems it's been garnering a lot of attention lately because the actor who plays Robbie Rotten has cancer, and needs some help. A good cause.

 

[ShinySylvee]

I think there was a combination of a lot of things that have caused people to move away over time. As Paullo said a lot of the people in the fandom were in unstable parts of their life and something might have changed dramatically (Going to/leaving college, getting a job, finding a new circle of friends) that might have caused them to lose interest or drop the show. One thing that also has to be remembered is that at the time it was released there was pretty much no good family cartoons on western TV. There was Adventure Time and MLP and that was pretty much it. These days you have a plethora of options and so I think a lot of people have moved on to other cartoons for one reason or another as well.

Also is that really the reason why "We're Number One" is getting popular? I was fairly sure it was because Silvagunner started using it in his meme videos. (Same general reason why the Nutshack became a meme)

 

[SigmasonicX]

I don't believe "We Are Number One" became a meme because of Robbie Rotten's actor getting cancer, but it helped bring attention to him.

Review of the live MLP musical based on Rainbow Rocks that's touring in Singapore, from a local fan that loved Rainbow Rocks, and he's very positive about it. It's interesting to hear about the changes made, such as making it so that Sunset is the main character, making everyone more antagonistic toward her, and making it so that the Sirens are drawn to Canterlot High due to her negative energy and specifically want her to join them. The musical also integrates songs from the shorts (including "My Past is Not Today") and even one from Friendship Games. Plus, Celestia and Luna get to sing.

APPLES - A Frozen Musical Parody - I find the covers of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" and "For the First Time in Forever" fun enough, but it skips "Fixer Upper" (no problem there) and "Love is an Open Door", the cover of "Let it Go" isn't good, and, as a weakness of the movie itself, there isn't a good closing number.
A Shy Heart - A pretty decent original song about Big Mac Fluttershy.
Catch a Falling Star Animation - Cute animation with filly Luna and Celestia. Note that it's on DeviantArt, will automatically play, can't be controlled, and will loop.

Variant cover for main comic #52 shown already, and I like it a lot, especially due to alternate hair styles.

You might have noticed a change in the "Friendship is Magic" part of the logo. By chance, I came across the reason on the show's Wikipedia: Font Brothers sued Hasbro about their use of their font. I'm not sure how this lawsuit went, but whether it was a loss or a settlement, they aren't using that font anymore.

And speaking of stuff I came across by chance, Equestria Daily removed images from their article about movie information taken from a Russian convention, but this article on another site still has them (also from Wikipedia). It also has a bit of information I wasn't aware of, like confirmation that there will be eight songs.

Amazon is listing the new brushable designs now. I like the more expressive poses and faces, and the wearable accessories, especially since they actually relate to the characters. Though I suppose Pinkie is a bit creepy.

A faster way to travel
Happy BirdDay - Pokemon crossover
Luna

Lyrabon
Things You Wouldn't Think You'd Miss
Winter Timbers
C-Celestia?

 

[ShinySylvee]

If the font change is due to a lawsuit sucks for them but I hope that is what they'll end up going with. I always found the original logo to be extremely girly which to a degree makes sense given the subject material but even if you ignore the "brony" fandom the show has a lot of young boys watching the show too and that title might give people the wrong idea for what to expect. The new one looks a lot better, way more colors then just shades of pink and I like that they went for a sleeker font choice. The "Friendship is Magic" part reminds me of the logo for Rainbow Rocks which I thought looked awesome. More importantly, it allows them to continue the tradition of changing the opening credits every season outside of season 3. (As we all know, that is the real reason why season 3 was not very good) Overall I like that they're shifting the logo to be more gender neutral and look like it wasn't made exclusively for 7 year old girls. Which brings me to...

I really hope "Friendship Adventures" isn't the title for the movie. As a continuation for what I just said, the show actually appeals to a very large demographic of people, and I feel that their promotional stuff for the movie should reflect that. I can imagine that "Friendship Adventures" would no doubt be an accurate subtitle for the movie, but I feel like that might give people the idea that the movie will be for little kids rather then be something that the whole family can enjoy. If they can release a movie on the level of Rainbow Rocks but can keep it accessible enough for non-fans to get into it then I think they have a chance to have a pretty successful hit on their hands, but I think that most adults would balk at a movie called "My Little Pony: Friendship Adventures" even if it did end up getting good reviews. I'm just really hoping the movie ends up being really good and doing well. It being well received by watchers would probably drum up interest in the show which means more pony and that's never a bad thing.

This was one of the slides from the Moscow convention that Sigma linked. It's obviously not confirmed but this looks close enough to the show that it might just be what kind of art style they're looking to use for the movie. Overall it looks really good to me. It's basically the old designs but with a bit more detail which is all it really needed to be. I didn't think it was possible for me to be more hyped for the movie but here I am. I really want to see a trailer for it.

Lastly I'll leave you guys with some nightmare fuel.

 

[DemWalls]

Also is that really the reason why "We're Number One" is getting popular? I was fairly sure it was because Silvagunner started using it in his meme videos. (Same general reason why the Nutshack became a meme)

Not exactly, but I think it has at least contributed to its (relative) popularity. If it's to help someone in need, I guess more people will spread the word, instead of just going "Oh cool, a new meme". Or maybe I have too much faith in humanity?

 

[SigmasonicX]

I really hope "Friendship Adventures" isn't the title for the movie.

The official logo doesn't have a subtitle, so I don't think they're using "Friendship Adventure". It's possible it's the official title of the movie to distinguish it from the 80's movie for retailers, like how the new Ghostbusters is officially called "Ghostbusters: Answer the Call" but was never referred to that in theaters.

This was one of the slides from the Moscow convention that Sigma linked. It's obviously not confirmed but this looks close enough to the show that it might just be what kind of art style they're looking to use for the movie. Overall it looks really good to me. It's basically the old designs but with a bit more detail which is all it really needed to be. I didn't think it was possible for me to be more hyped for the movie but here I am. I really want to see a trailer for it.

Indeed, that looks like a good movie art style. The movie art I posted earlier looks similar, but not quite like it, but perhaps it will look closer in an actual scene with lighting and posing.

Lastly I'll leave you guys with some nightmare fuel.

An oldy but a goody.

 

[ShinySylvee]

I've decided to try rewatching the episodes in a random order and giving my thought on them to hopefully start some discussion. The ones from EQD are cool but they aren't all that common and they usually focus exclusively on early episodes in the series which is fine but I like talking about the later seasons of the show that aren't the one that just aired as well which likely won't happen as much. Using a trusty random number generator I ended up with episode number 73 which is the Season 4 episode Rarity Takes Manehattan.

To start things off this episode was written by Dave Polsky, one of the most frequent writers on the show. He's written an episode for every season except season 2. (Which is odd given that he wrote for season one and every season after that) That being said he's generally considered to be one of the weakest writers for the show. Reddit's survey averaged his episodes at a meagre 32.6% approval rating, putting him as the 20th rated writer out of 26. That being said, most of his episodes generally strike me as being mediocre and forgettable rather then just being outright awful. How does he do in this outing? Well let's find out.

Right off the bat we have the old tried-and-true "Rarity packs way too much things and forces other people to carry them for her" joke. At this point this might be the most overused gag in the entire show. And unfortunately I feel like it's been done better. As per the tradition for every season besides season 6 Spike is being used as slapstick as we are encouraged to laugh at his misfortune as he's forced to carry an overwhelming amount of bags for Rarity. I could do a whole post on how mistreated the guy has been but that's hardly the focus of the episode so let's move on.

I feel compelled to mention Manehattan here as this is the first episode where we get to see it. I thought it was pretty neat although I still like Canterlot more. Most of the design is aping Manhattan so half the work is already done for them but it's a faithful enough adaptation.

Polsky I think does Rarity really well, at least when she's the star of the episode. His other episode he did with her as a prominent character was "For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils" and he did an amazing job with her in that episode as well. More so then perhaps any other writer I think Polsky shows why Rarity is the element of Generosity. In FWTSBT she works hard to make sure that Sweetie Belle's dresses for her play are great even though she also had an important order she had to fill for Sapphire Shores and tried to salvage her 5th birthday party when Sweetie didn't show up for it. He portrays her as a hard worker that will do anything for her friends and tries to do the right thing, even if it's not easy.

I liked the intro gag for the song but the actual song itself feels unnecessary and is one of Ingram's weaker efforts. I do like that she did reward various people for helping her out, even Spike although again they sort of ruin it because of a gag where we're supposed to laugh at how unfortunate he is. I know this is nitpicking but I don't like how the bird taking the carrot dog (?) away kinda undermines Rarity's goodwill gesture towards him.

I would say that the humor in this episode is hit or miss but that would imply that there were a decent amount of hits. Rarity's freakout for not having the dresses is so short lived and expected at this point it's hard to really get into it. Most of his jokes are so paint-by-numbers and overly played out that it's hard to find them all that funny.

I do like how her previous good deeds end up panning out for her as she's able to make it to the meeting on time, although there's really no narrative reason for it to even play out. It just seems odd that she would let something like that sneak up on her. (Or the rest of her friends for that matter you would think she would tell them about the meeting earlier) The meeting is ultimately pointless anyway from the showcase standpoint as they basically exchange like 3 lines of dialog that could have easily been told to them earlier.

Moving on Suri just isn't very interesting. She's just a generic awful person and I feel like she could have been done a lot better. I think it would have been more interesting if they made her someone that was desperate to live the dream of being a top fashion designer which causes her to steal Rarity's designs. Instead she just treats everyone including her assistant like garbage for no real reason.

Ok I spoke too soon as I feel like the second freakout is a bit better then the first as it feels fleshed out and not just some obligation for a joke. I admire that when she gets knocked down she gets up and tries again but the scene where she's overseeing the dresses being made could have been done so much better. Rarity feels uncharacteristically cruel in this scene. Forcing her friends to skip out on their fun evening they had planned including tickets to the play that she gave them is expected but refusing to feed them and then guilt tripping them into helping her just seems over the top. They could have shown that she treated her friends poorly without going as far as they did I feel. I really liked the "Isn't Friendship Magic?" line though. There's a couple really good lines in there even if I think the tone is a bit muddled.

The payoff for her acting horrible in the previous scene is that it feels more genuine when she realizes how awfully she treated her friends. She owns up to her mistakes and tries her hardest to make amends for how what she did. It's handled extremely well and what really makes the episode work. And the scene with Coco giving Rarity the trophy was well done as well and feels like a great payoff for all of Rarity's hard work and generosity.

Overall I'm biased as Rarity is my favorite member of the Mane 6 but I loved this episode a lot. This is easily one of my favorite portrayals of her in an episode and does an amazing job at showing just why I love her so much and why she succeeds whereas most similar characters in other shows fail to interest me. She's hard working and dedicated. She's thoughtful and generous. And she tries to do the right thing even if it isn't easy. She's a brilliant role model that everyone can aspire to be. Polsky certainly has his issues but writing for Rarity isn't one of them. I think it's a wonderful episode and one of the better ones from season 4, even if the humor isn't always there.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Didn't expect that last paragraph from the rest of the post, haha.

"Rarity Takes Manehattan" is odd in that it isn't all that funny, the song is weak, and the story has weird aspects (including having the most famous season 4 instance of being a princess being worthless), but it's worth watching due to how it portrays Rarity in an interesting way.

 

[ShinySylvee]

Didn't expect that last paragraph from the rest of the post, haha.

"Rarity Takes Manehattan" is odd in that it isn't all that funny, the song is weak, and the story has weird aspects (including having the most famous season 4 instance of being a princess being worthless), but it's worth watching due to how it portrays Rarity in an interesting way.

I'm a very critical person and am not afraid to call out problems that I see in something, even if it's something I really like. That being said I'm also willing to overlook issues if I think the rest of it is worth it. I do enjoy a good laugh but I would like there to be a bit more substance to an episode as well. For instance I enjoy Testing Testing 1,2,3 and Every Little Thing She Does more then Saddle Row Review even though I do like the latter a lot as well. The episode could have been better which is what I always try to highlight even in stuff I like but what we got was still really strong in my book. I've always liked the episodes that have a larger focus on the characters and show them developing in interesting ways while overcoming their own personal flaws, which is probably why I'm such a fan of Rarity. Sweet and Elite is one of my favorite episodes from season 2 as it shows Rarity's struggle of whether she should strive to achieve her goal of high society or stay faithful to her friends who are a large part of where she was in society at the time. The episode has its issues such as the overall weak humor and the song, but I thought that Rarity was fantastic in it and the moral was handled extremely well.

For what it's worth, I would much rather that Twilight's princess-ness was completely ignored then having her just flash her status everywhere to instantly get what she wants. Three seasons later and I still don't think there's been sufficient enough payoff to justify her ascension although there have been glimpses of writers using it decently well enough. It was an extremely unpopular episode for some reason but I really liked how they treated Twilight in "The Hooffields and McColts." The end solution to the problem was bullshit and was handled in just about the worst possible way but at the very least I feel like they did a good job at portraying Twilight as a princess in a way that felt natural to the character. Back on track I'd much rather that they ignored it assuming the alternative is that they feel the need to bring it up every 5 seconds and narratively have to explain why Twilight can't just go "hey I'm a princess you should do what I say" to solve all their problems.

 

[SigmasonicX]

It's true that the story shouldn't warp around Twilight being a princess, but the fact that she wasn't able to get a cab and a random Manehattanite was rude to her really didn't help make Princess Twilight feel significant. That's an issue with season 4 as a whole, though, with how it took the second half of the season for it to really come up again.

Anyway, rewatched "Dragonshy" tonight. Last time I rewatched it, I recall I wasn't too keen on it, but I liked it more this time. The show needs more scenes of characters pushing each other with their heads. I noticed that both this and "Boast Busters" had extended sequences where each of the Main Six other than the focus character did something one after another: this had them confronting the dragon (besides Applejack), and the latter had each confront Trixie (besides Fluttershy). I suppose these "let's see how each character individually approaches this situation" scenes were important early on, but I'm glad they stopped doing them as much, as they get repetitive.

 

[ShinySylvee]

It's true that the story shouldn't warp around Twilight being a princess, but the fact that she wasn't able to get a cab and a random Manehattanite was rude to her really didn't help make Princess Twilight feel significant. That's an issue with season 4 as a whole, though, with how it took the second half of the season for it to really come up again.

Anyway, rewatched "Dragonshy" tonight. Last time I rewatched it, I recall I wasn't too keen on it, but I liked it more this time. The show needs more scenes of characters pushing each other with their heads. I noticed that both this and "Boast Busters" had extended sequences where each of the Main Six other than the focus character did something one after another: this had them confronting the dragon (besides Applejack), and the latter had each confront Trixie. I suppose these "let's see how each character individually approaches this situation" scenes were important early on, but I'm glad they stopped doing them as much, as they get repetitive.

To be fair I think there's quite a few people that wouldn't give up their cab for Joe Biden's friend if he asked them to. (Or whoever is an important political figure in insert country you live in here) Idk I feel like it would be a better justification for them want to give the cab up given that Rarity had helped save the world at that point at least 5 times at that point. If any character gets any preferential treatment I would rather it be because of something that they've done and not because they have a title. I understand as a presumed Twilight fan you want her princesshood to mean something but I'd rather that it didn't manifest by everyone groveling at her feet and giving her preferential treatment purely because she's a princess now.

My biggest issue with Twilight's princesshood was that it felt like it puts her on a pedestal over her friends. I understand that Twilight has done a bit more then they have in protecting the world but it was fairly well established even in season one that a lot of her strength comes from the support of her friends. Pretty much every major triumph in her life is at least partially because of someone else (usually other members of the mane 6 or Spike) helping her out so it doesn't sit right with me that she got an important title worthy of respect while everyone else didn't get any recognition and just went on and lived their lives.

And to be fair most of my issues with this have largely been fixed from season 5 onward. I really like the map room in the castle as I feel like it does a great symbolic job of showing how important all of her friends are to her job with all of them having their own seat and them being featured just as prominently as Twilight's. The Cutie Map does a great job at giving Twilight a purpose as caretaker of the castle and the map so she can do something that is very important while not really changing the dynamic of the show all that much. If anything I feel like the map is underutilized as they've only had 6 episodes so far with it. And although I feel like it has been mishandled so far I do think that Starlight's introduction can be a great way of allowing her to fill more of a mentorship role befitting that of a princess. (That being said as much as I love Starlight I feel like she hasn't exactly helped Twilight much in that regard. Hopefully Twilight can grow in season 7 and be a better teacher then she's been so far)

Honestly I feel like if this episode aired today no one would bat an eye at that scene. Season 4 I think people had a totally different mindset going into episodes as they do now as back then people were expecting major changes to the status quo now that Twilight was a princess and moreover this was the first episode after Twilight became a princess outside of the two parter that she actually interacted with anyone besides the Mane 6. People were expecting a payoff for Twilight's ascension and I think there was a disproportionately negative reaction to that scene because it was the first time that we saw that Twilight being a princess wasn't going to change that much. To a degree I do feel like there wasn't much of an impact with Twilight being a princess outside of a handful of episodes in season 4 but I don't think that one dude being rude to her and not giving up his cab for her is that big a deal.

The whole "Everyone gets a turn" thing is partially why I didn't like Friendship games that much. Having to sit through 5 scenes of SciTwi stealing someone's magic while being totally oblivious to what's going on or why she shouldn't be just running around with something that she didn't understand and kept doing weird shit drove me crazy. But that's a rant for another time. The storytelling has gotten a lot more advanced since season one that's for sure. I haven't watched it in ages but Dragonshy was one of my favorite episodes in season one. I loved the humor as well as the adventure. Also given that the first season was a lot more girly then the later seasons the fact that it was based around confronting a dragon was really cool to me at the time.

 

[SigmasonicX]

As odd as it may sound, I feel like we've been talking about the show too much recently in this topic. As a change of pace, let's try something related to fanart.

I'm going to post a picture of a single character, and the next person should post a picture of that character and one other character (in the same image). Then the next person will post a picture of that second character and a different character, and so on. For example, I'm going to start with Twilight, and the next person could post Twilight and Celestia, and the third person will then have to post Celestia and someone else (such as Luna). If there are more than two characters, you can choose who "counts" as the second character, so don't worry if Twilight/Fluttershy art also includes Angel, or Applejack is way in the background, or something. Humans are fine, along with other animals. To make things more interesting, try not to repeat any character. Let's see how far we get.

I'll start with my avatar:

To get smaller versions of the images, you can either go to Equestria Daily and modify their embedded image URLs, like I did; or you can go to Derpibooru, go to the share tab below the image, and get the "medium" BBcode image URL.

 

[ShinySylvee]

Thought I'd go with something a little unexpected. (Followup character will be SciTwi)

In other news the Guardians of Harmony comic is dropping tonight right? I'm probably going to be picking it up tomorrow so that should be fun.

 

[SigmasonicX]

I forgot that between Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, SciTwi was often depicted in a villainous way.

I guess I'll go the easy route then.

Next is Sunset Shimmer (both human and pony work). But the fact that you need art of her with someone that isn't either Twilight will make it more difficult.

In other news the Guardians of Harmony comic is dropping tonight right? I'm probably going to be picking it up tomorrow so that should be fun.

That's correct. Since it's an official comic, it's probably best to post your response in the season 6 OT.

In other news, from the Death Battle: Zoro vs. Erza thread, it looks like the next Death Battle will be Deadpool vs. Pinkie Pie. I don't think this will work as nearly well as Rainbow Dash vs. Starscream; in that, both characters had feats that could be used in combat, while in this case, Deadpool does get into more-or-less serious fights and Pinkie doesn't. 90% chance it's just going to be them joking around for a bit until Deadpool shoots Pinkie.

And in weird news, Funko Power Ponies toys include Mane-iac's head. Just her head. And it's not a mistake or anything.

 

[PaulloDEC]

I forgot that between Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, SciTwi was often depicted in a villainous way.

I guess I'll go the easy route then.

Next is Sunset Shimmer (both human and pony work). But the fact that you need art of her with someone that isn't either Twilight will make it more difficult.

This was a tricky one to find!

Looking forward to checking out the GoH comic too.

 

[ShinySylvee]

This was a tricky one to find!

Looking forward to checking out the GoH comic too.

Man I was going to post a Sunset + Flash Sentry pic, although I think I might have been saved there because almost all the pics were either vectors from the show or basic hand-drawn stuff. Sunset is actually pretty easy to find pics for since she's extremely popular. My other choice I would have gone for would be Sunset+Starlight although I wanted the train to stay in EQG since it would be hard to go back there with Sunset and Twilight already done. At any rate, here's my picture: Celestia + Chrysalis

source

Also since the comic is digital-only for a super long time I was going to pick it up that way. Unfortunately that seems to be a challenge as I can't easily find a good way to get it online. All the comics I've picked up so far have been physical ones so I'm just wondering the best way to get the new one.

Lastly, I've only really been browsing the threads the past month or so but I'm wondering why keep two threads up during the hiatus. When the show is going on it sort of makes sense to keep all the fandom stuff and the official stuff separate since they're fairly different but at this point there's very little activity in either thread as I feel like most people are just waiting out the hiatus or are lurking and don't feel compelled to reply. If both threads were healthy it wouldn't be a problem but at this point there's like 5 people that regularly post in either thread and another group of like 10 or so that check in on the threads and occasionally post. A lot of the stuff I've been posting in this thread should be posted in the other one but at this point I think it would be a bit simpler if everything was combined into one thread at least until the rumor mill for season 7 and the movie kick into full swing. If not that's fine and I'll do a better job at following the guidelines for the threads going forward but I feel like the current setup was designed for back when the PonyGaf community was a lot bigger and doesn't work as well now. I just felt like someone needed to ask the question.

Edit: Now for some less serious stuff. DWK does humorous loose episode recaps and just released part two of the finale. His humor style is unique to say the least and his content is VERY vulgar but he's the most consistently funny person on youtube I've found so I would highly recommend checking him out if you haven't already. Here's a link to his latest video, although almost all of his work is worth checking out.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Bending the rules

Next is Princess Cadance, without Twilight, Sunset, or Chrysalis.

Lastly, I've only really been browsing the threads the past month or so but I'm wondering why keep two threads up during the hiatus. When the show is going on it sort of makes sense to keep all the fandom stuff and the official stuff separate since they're fairly different but at this point there's very little activity in either thread as I feel like most people are just waiting out the hiatus or are lurking and don't feel compelled to reply. If both threads were healthy it wouldn't be a problem but at this point there's like 5 people that regularly post in either thread and another group of like 10 or so that check in on the threads and occasionally post. A lot of the stuff I've been posting in this thread should be posted in the other one but at this point I think it would be a bit simpler if everything was combined into one thread at least until the rumor mill for season 7 and the movie kick into full swing. If not that's fine and I'll do a better job at following the guidelines for the threads going forward but I feel like the current setup was designed for back when the PonyGaf community was a lot bigger and doesn't work as well now. I just felt like someone needed to ask the question.

In short, it's an attempt to match what other OTs do without rocking the boat too much, since there's a bit of history.

Threads like the Steven Universe one in OT often post fanart and talk about fanworks, and are active between seasons and during breaks. The MLP OT threads used to be like this too years ago, back before there was a Community section. It was partially the fact that GAFers got tired of seeing the MLP thread on the front page so much that led to the creation of the Community section in the first place. After that, mods cracked down on OT threads being active outside of when the show or whatever was actually airing, and for anything other than official discussion. Things have since greatly loosened up for other threads, but MLP threads have always been held to a harsher standard. People in OT recently seem to react less negatively to MLP, but I don't want to push things too much by posting about fanworks. That's the reason why we still have a Community thread.

As for why have a thread in OT while continuing to post here, more people look at OT threads. Even though a lot of the same people post during the off-season in both threads, several posters only post during the season, and I imagine there are plenty of lurkers who just look at the OT thread.

In the past, there have been posters that were turned off by the discussion of fanworks, and preferred that it be kept separate from official discussion. There are also posters that prefer the Community thread to be kept as a "spoiler free" zone that doesn't discuss the latest news. Even if those posters haven't spoken up in a while, I imagine this reflects the view of some lurkers too. Thus, I think it's better to include official news and reactions to recent official material only in the OT thread.

Besides, it no longer makes as much sense to restrict the OT thread to just when the season is airing. In the past, when we were unlikely to get official material between seasons, it made a lot of sense to pack things up and completely move to Community. Equestria Girls added a lot of ambiguity to this, since it can appear both during and between seasons. Once the general feeling became that EQG was "official" enough to be discussed in OT, that also opened things up for the comics and any other bit of official material.

Discussions of older episodes is an ambiguous area. I think they'd be fine in either thread.

Edit: Now for some less serious stuff. DWK does humorous loose episode recaps and just released part two of the finale. His humor style is unique to say the least and his content is VERY vulgar but he's the most consistently funny person on youtube I've found so I would highly recommend checking him out if you haven't already. Here's a link to his latest video, although almost all of his work is worth checking out.

Watched a bit, and it wasn't quite to my taste, but there were some funny moments.

 

[ShinySylvee]

Next is Princess Cadance, without Twilight, Sunset, or Chrysalis.



In short, it's an attempt to match what other OTs do without rocking the boat too much, since there's a bit of history.

Threads like the Steven Universe one in OT often post fanart and talk about fanworks, and are active between seasons and during breaks. The MLP OT threads used to be like this too years ago, back before there was a Community section. It was partially the fact that GAFers got tired of seeing the MLP thread on the front page so much that led to the creation of the Community section in the first place. After that, mods cracked down on OT threads being active outside of when the show or whatever was actually airing, and for anything other than official discussion. Things have since greatly loosened up for other threads, but MLP threads have always been held to a harsher standard. People in OT recently seem to react less negatively to MLP, but I don't want to push things too much by posting about fanworks. That's the reason why we still have a Community thread.

As for why have a thread in OT while continuing to post here, more people look at OT threads. Even though a lot of the same people post during the off-season in both threads, several posters only post during the season, and I imagine there are plenty of lurkers who just look at the OT thread.

In the past, there have been posters that were turned off by the discussion of fanworks, and preferred that it be kept separate from official discussion. There are also posters that prefer the Community thread to be kept as a "spoiler free" zone that doesn't discuss the latest news. Even if those posters haven't spoken up in a while, I imagine this reflects the view of some lurkers too. Thus, I think it's better to include official news and reactions to recent official material only in the OT thread.

Besides, it no longer makes as much sense to restrict the OT thread to just when the season is airing. In the past, when we were unlikely to get official material between seasons, it made a lot of sense to pack things up and completely move to Community. Equestria Girls added a lot of ambiguity to this, since it can appear both during and between seasons. Once the general feeling became that EQG was "official" enough to be discussed in OT, that also opened things up for the comics and any other bit of official material.

Discussions of older episodes is an ambiguous area. I think they'd be fine in either thread.

New picture without Chrysalis, Celestia, or Twilight?

source

Also I'm a little confused about the Guardians of Harmony comic. It was supposed to launch today but there's literally no articles about it anywhere outside of it being announced a couple months back. Moreover it looks like it still hasn't become available anywhere yet from what I've found. So either it's being released SUPER late in the day and they don't have any fanfare for it despite having an entire toy line based off it or they pushed it back and didn't say anything. Either way it just seems odd.

That clip I linked earlier reminded me of Kyro. Apparently all of his social stuff went quiet after season 2 and no one has heard from him since. Looking at the discussion on his channel there was some other guy that stepped in called Deme F.Q doing 5 second reaction clips. But he disappeared after season 4. It's odd that now there's probably like 10 or so people that routinely upload whole scenes from the show but I haven't really found anyone that still does the reaction clips. I don't care that much I just find it weird that the two major people that did it both left and no one major has tried to take their place.

I was going to mention it earlier but I forgot. I usually don't watch Deathbattle but if it's remotely serious it should just be Deadpool eviscerating Pinkie. As far as wackiness goes Pinkie is actually a lot more subdued then Deadpool is and as far as actual combat goes he's unkillable and Pinkie has shown very little in terms of offensive potential in the show. Best case scenario for her they decide not to fight eachother if any of them dies it's going to be her. If it were one of the more powerful characters from the show such as Twilight or any other of the powerful magic users or pretty much any of the big bad villains then it would be a different story. That being said I feel it's only fair since they basically picked from what I've heard is the biggest jobber in the entire Transformers series for the Rainbow Dash battle so she could win so it's reasonable enough that they set Pinkie up to fail.

I figured there would be good reasons but it just seems inefficient to basically have 90% of the discussion here and then use the other thread every couple weeks whenever a new comic came out when we could reasonably talk about it here as well.

 

[SigmasonicX]

No one else going to bite? Alright then.

Next is Sunburst.

Bad Fanfiction Theatre features another MLP story... sort of. It's actually Bad Fanfiction Theatre fanfiction about the Sonic X Rainbow Dash story previously covered on the show. The story focuses more on the Sonic aspect, though. There's one line from the fic that I love.

"Bats" cover by Elias Frost, notable for how he uses a different language for each character's parts.

Friendship is Musical season 4 part 2, which I feel is pretty weak compared to the other videos.

Silver Quill writes about MLP's nature as a toy ad, in response to Guardians of Harmony's upcoming digital release (which has been moved to December 8, FYI). He makes comparisons to Transformers and He-Man, and I found it pretty interesting.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Source. Starlight is up next.

Interesting article about MLP as a toy commercial. I wasn't aware of much of the Transformers/He-Man stuff.