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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season 5 |OT| 100+ episodes and better than ever!

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A new GM Berrow book has been announced, and the synopsis has huge spoilers for the season finale.

SPOILERS
My Little Pony: Untitled Starlight Glimmer
G.M. Berrow
On Sale Date: 08/02/16
A original My Little Pony chapter book featuring one of Twilight Sparkle's most notorious pupils!

So, does Starlight become her pupil by the end of the finale, or is this a time travel situation? Have there been hints of her being from the future in the premiere?

Now i'm wondering if she's actually Twilight's niece (Twilight did say see could'nt wait to meet her :p) from the future LOL.

Though i might be aiming big with the crazy here
 
Now i'm wondering if she's actually Twilight's niece (Twilight did say see could'nt wait to meet her :p) from the future LOL.

Though i might be aiming big with the crazy here

Exactly what I was thinking, actually.
Though it probably is just the case that Starlight becomes Twilight's pupil at the end. It feels kind of depressing if a future student of Twilight went back in time just to lord over some cult, doubly so if she was Cadance's daughter. I do wonder what the implications are for season 6 if Starlight is actually going to stick around as a student. Will she have to move in with Twilight?
 
Exactly what I was thinking, actually.
Though it probably is just the case that Starlight becomes Twilight's pupil at the end. It feels kind of depressing if a future student of Twilight went back in time just to lord over some cult, doubly so if she was Cadance's daughter. I do wonder what the implications are for season 6 if Starlight is actually going to stick around as a student. Will she have to move in with Twilight?

I can see why that would be seen as depressing and overall time travel shenanigans can get pretty messy but honestly that would be kinda crazy and bring up some questions.

Also it would be cool if Twilight actually gets another pupil but it would be funny if she now has 2 students who lost their way at some point in time.

We'll see though
 

brian577

Banned
I do wonder what the implications are for season 6 if Starlight is actually going to stick around as a student. Will she have to move in with Twilight?
More likely she will go off on her own to make friends, occasionally writing letters to Twilight. We'll probably get a few episodes focused on her efforts next season.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
I find this whole thing really weird. "One of Twilight Sparkle's most notorious students"? So she has more than one student? And more than one of them is notorious? That's all new.

Also, isn't Starlight at least as old as Twi is? Kind of a weird scenario.

Will be interesting to see how it all pans out come this year's finale.
 
More likely she will go off on her own to make friends, occasionally writing letters to Twilight. We'll probably get a few episodes focused on her efforts next season.

But
wacky roommate shenanigans and shipping tho

I find this whole thing really weird. "One of Twilight Sparkle's most notorious students"? So she has more than one student? And more than one of them is notorious? That's all new.

Also, isn't Starlight at least as old as Twi is? Kind of a weird scenario.

Will be interesting to see how it all pans out come this year's finale.

Sunset Shimmer could also be considered Twilight's student, and as confusing as her age situation is, she's also at least as old as Twilight.

Anyway, what I want now is for a story where Starlight, Trixie, Moondancer, Sunset, and, er, Discord all converge at Twilight's place by coincidence.

Sunset: So, Trixie, we've actually met before. Well, me and an alternate dimension version of you that's still in school. I don't know who any of you others are, though.

EDIT: For non-spoiler content, art of the background fillies dressed as Jem and Sailor Moon
gems_and_moons_by_talonsoficeandfire-d9f9std.png
 

draetenth

Member
I can't remember where I saw it, but someone pointed out that Glimmer isn't shown in the Season 5 poster. She's blotted out just like the CMC and it was speculated that just like the CMC, there has to be something important about Glimmer. Most people figure that at the least, she is turned good... So, maybe there is truth to that?
 

UberTag

Member
I can't remember where I saw it, but someone pointed out that Glimmer isn't shown in the Season 5 poster. She's blotted out just like the CMC and it was speculated that just like the CMC, there has to be something important about Glimmer. Most people figure that at the least, she is turned good... So, maybe there is truth to that?
It would be quite shocking for that not to be the case, IMO.
 
Friends Forever #22
This was an eh issue. There were cute moments, but the story was largely uninteresting, and the art got weird at times. Besides the human sitting, Celestia looked weird at times, especially when she started talking to Pinkie about putting too much pressure on her. The way she maintained her somber expression as she moved her head around Pinkie felt oddly sinister. And I didn't notice this until it was pointed out, but the cutie marks all look terrible. You can most easily see this with the jagged edges on Pinkie's, indicating that it was badly shrunk down from a larger version, and the fact that Chase's whisk cutie mark is very obviously clip art. By the way, it was odd that Pinkie and Chase were already buddy-buddy, but I suppose they must have met during Cadance's wedding. I did like Pinkie becoming concerned about meeting Celestia's expectations, a side you usually don't see from her, and Celestia realizing her mistake. I wasn't sure what was going on at the end. What about that slice of cake made Luna tear up when she didn't do so for the cake itself?

EDIT: Full "It's a Pony Kind of Christmas", I guess accidentally put up early on the Sony channel of this random German site. It's pretty good.
EDIT: Taken down.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
FF22 sounds kinda rough, might hold off for the price drop.

EDIT: Full "It's a Pony Kind of Christmas", I guess accidentally put up early on the Sony channel of this random German site. It's pretty good.

Cute, as expected. Can't help wishing they'd gone either in-universe or not though, rather than the halfway point we've gotten.

Still, it'll be a nice little curio. Link to the song that doesn't require region-lock circumvention for anyone who hasn't heard it yet.
 

BDGAME

Member
Art of Magic cover revealed, and it's great. Larger image here. Also, the Amazon preview revealed the table of contents.


Also, Happy Hearth's Warming!


Tomorrow's episode will be the episode that leaked earlier, "Scare Master". I and many others here had already watched the episode, but I suppose I'll make it the first one I rewatch (in full) this season. I already had my thoughts written out for other boards, so I'll post that tomorrow along with anything else that comes to mind from the rewatch.

Thanks to that I found the best artist of season 5 so far: http://doublewbrothers.deviantart.com/gallery/54930885/Season-5
 
The Christmas album is out!
* From the samples, the lyrics of the songs have been modified a lot, to refer to other characters and such.
* Still no clue who Pop Fly is. He sounds like a little boy character, and he actually reminds me of Button Mash's fan voice, especially with the subject of the song.
* Some songs sound better than others. The ones that stick out as great are "Auld Lang Syne" and "The Heart Carol".
 

PaulloDEC

Member
The Christmas album is out!
* From the samples, the lyrics of the songs have been modified a lot, to refer to other characters and such.
* Still no clue who Pop Fly is. He sounds like a little boy character, and he actually reminds me of Button Mash's fan voice, especially with the subject of the song.
* Some songs sound better than others. The ones that stick out as great are "Auld Lang Syne" and "The Heart Carol".

Yup, Auld Lang Syne/Days Gone By is quite lovely, and the extended Heart Carol isn't bad. I think Pony Kinda Christmas might still be my favourite though; it feels like it could've been a show song, were it not for all the Christmas references.

EDIT: I should point out that almost all of the songs are actually heavily modified, with massive sections that are totally unique to this particular album (written by Dan Ingram). Even if you're not particularly interested in the original songs, they're worth checking out here.
 

novenD

Member
Wow, that album is actually really great; What a pleasant surprise.

I've got a family member who should get a kick out of it.
 
Yup, Auld Lang Syne/Days Gone By is quite lovely, and the extended Heart Carol isn't bad. I think Pony Kinda Christmas might still be my favourite though; it feels like it could've been a show song, were it not for all the Christmas references.

The added parts of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" also particularly sound like they come from the show. When listening to it, I kept getting disappointed when it went back to the actual song. All of the songs were fun, though Shannon Chan-Kent deserves an award for "Twelve Days of Christmas" when her Pinkie singing voice must wreck her vocal cords. "Jolly Ol' St. Nick" shows that Spike really needs more songs.

Also, I note that in the YouTube comments for "Last Year I Got Coal for Christmas", a lot of people also had the idea that Pop Fly was supposed to be Button Mash. Some people are also saying he may be Fluttershy's brother, which does make sense, since Fluttershy's name is a play on "shutter fly". The singer is apparently Vincent Tong (Flash Sentry), BTW.
 

UberTag

Member
Man, Auld Lang Syne is quite the rendition.
May even crack my Top 10 fave songs from the show list and I've already got an Apple family tune in there with Apples to the Core. So that's saying something.

I think I might have been most impressed with Silent Night's remix... if only due to the fact that I've heard a zillion renditions of that song over the years and wasn't put to sleep. Fluttershy was the perfect choice for it, too. Just as inspired as having Pinkie deliver her take on Twelve Days of Christmas.

Also, having Spike scat up Jolly Ol' St. Nick cracked me up.
 
Yeah, I noticed that. Since the Twitch stream was only announced a bit before it started, there can't be a connection, though. Also, I was surprised by how good the watercolor Twilight paintings were toward the end, given how briefly they appeared.

I thought this was a pretty good episode, though parts involving the girls constantly laughing at the inside jokes went on for a bit too long and were repetitive. I also thought it didn't make much sense for Discord's reveal to be that he told everyone not to bother Twilight, since that felt like something any of them would have thought; instead, it would have been better for him to reveal that he has intentionally been bringing up the inside jokes to show Twilight what she missed out on, and her feeling bad was just an "unforeseen coincidence". I thought he got off a bit light, but then again, Twilight was acting quite mean when giving the potion to everyone, and they forgave her about as easily. This also ties into what was demonstrated in the season premiere, where a point was made about how a fight won't break up their friendship.

This episode had a premise that I've been interested in seeing: Twilight missing out on something her friends did and her desperately trying to recreate it. I also saw a bit of GAF (well, the Internet in general) in this episode with Twilight not finding the jokes funny and getting angry that her friends do, and at the end when the girls decided the jokes had run their course despite Discord's attempts. One of my favorite parts was when Twilight declared that she's an expert on what's funny, to Spike's confusion.

Twilight relaxing by organizing her books reminds me a lot of how I will spend a lot of time organizing my Magic cards.

I liked the scene with Zecora, especially with the reveal that the cauldron is just for show.

This is the most low-key and slice of life Discord episode we've had yet, and I thought he worked pretty well in it. It seems like he's trying to test how he can still be mischievous and mean while still being friendly, in this case by trying to make Twilight feel bad while just making it seem like a coincidence, and once again trying to pass it off as a lesson when he gets exposed. Incidentally, this is similar to what Discord himself had to learn in "Make New Friends But Keep Discord". I imagine that he still felt frustrated about being exposed as a something that feels jealousy, and decided to express it by showing that Twilight isn't any better.

Also, for those who had been wondering, the opening scene confirmed that Owloysius also lives in the castle.

EDIT: During the scene where time travel is discussed:
Starlight hiding in a bush with binoculars.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
I liked this episode. Lots of fun Twilight and Spike, which has always been one of my favourite dynamics in the show.

I kind of feel like Daniel Ingram is a genius and even outclasses Disney

I really can't wait to see what he comes up with for the film. I'm dying to see what he can achieve with the extra time and resources that a movie budget allows.

I thought this was a pretty good episode, though parts involving the girls constantly laughing at the inside jokes went on for a bit too long and were repetitive.

That would've been my main complaint. Not sure how I would've fixed it, but it did drag a little bit.

I like the fact they didn't go with an actual spell and it was Discord being a full on troll LOL

Yup, it's the right way to use Discord IMO. So long as he can justify his being a dick with the idea of teaching ponies lessons, we can have chaotic jerk Discord and reformed Discord at the same time.
 
Welp, not super crazy about this one. First third as repetitive and a little annoying, middle was pretty good but that ending weird and abrupt. When Discord just out-of-the-blue hugged them all after the mane 6 pulled the same hijinx was...odd. It was like they ran out of time and someone said "wrap this up. now."

Can't win them all I guess. I think it might be time to put Discord away for a while. I feel like his stories are becoming the same.
 

draetenth

Member
Terrible episode, one of the worst of the series imo. I would put it right there with Mare Do Well in terribleness.

Everything felt way too forced to me. The constant stupid laughing over some silly inside joke felt way too forced and everyone felt out of character to me. In a way, it was made even worse the way they just stopped laughing at the joke in the end because the jokes got old... then preceded to laugh at whatever stupid "jokes" Twilight was making in some odd attempt to turn things against Discord or something.

I don't care if there was three days to spend time with Discord. No way every single pony would enjoy the inside jokes that much and laugh that hard - the personalities are too different. I think it makes sense for Pinkie Pie and maybe RD (on the one hand she probably would trust Discord the least, yet on the other hand she has a strange sense of humor), but I don't see the rest doing that. We just had a Halloween episode were we just saw this where Fluttershy realized Nightmare Night wasn't for her in part because she hated how she scared her friends (even though they enjoyed it). Didn't she think it was wrong? I'm not sure about Applejack, but I really don't think Rarity would have been the type to constantly laugh at "inside jocks" like that either...

They seemed to try way too hard to force the "it's okay to be jealous even if you are the Princess of Friendship" moral. Like, Twilight was fine with it, but they kept rubbing in in her face over and over so of course she was going to get jealous and want to understand what happened. Yeah, I'm sure that was Discord being Discord, but it felt tiresome and forced.
 
Terrible episode, one of the worst of the series imo. I would put it right there with Mare Do Well in terribleness.

Everything felt way too forced to me. The constant stupid laughing over some silly inside joke felt way too forced and everyone felt out of character to me. In a way, it was made even worse the way they just stopped laughing at the joke in the end because the jokes got old... then preceded to laugh at whatever stupid "jokes" Twilight was making in some odd attempt to turn things against Discord or something.

I don't care if there was three days to spend time with Discord. No way every single pony would enjoy the inside jokes that much and laugh that hard - the personalities are too different. I think it makes sense for Pinkie Pie and maybe RD (on the one hand she probably would trust Discord the least, yet on the other hand she has a strange sense of humor), but I don't see the rest doing that. We just had a Halloween episode were we just saw this where Fluttershy realized Nightmare Night wasn't for her in part because she hated how she scared her friends (even though they enjoyed it). Didn't she think it was wrong? I'm not sure about Applejack, but I really don't think Rarity would have been the type to constantly laugh at "inside jocks" like that either...

They seemed to try way too hard to force the "it's okay to be jealous even if you are the Princess of Friendship" moral. Like, Twilight was fine with it, but they kept rubbing in in her face over and over so of course she was going to get jealous and want to understand what happened. Yeah, I'm sure that was Discord being Discord, but it felt tiresome and forced.

You summed up my feelings quite well. This is easily tied with Princess Spike as the worst episode of the season.
 

Kenai

Member
I haven't posted in a long time but I really liked this episode, even if it was flawed in a few annoying ways (laughing about the inside joke for so long was kinda boring).

Mainly because I have never seen any show before actually try to classify and document those random, hilarious wonderful moments that you really did have to be there for. This has happened a lot for me for things like WoW or FF14 over mumble or vent, which made the show's "message' extra believable for me since similar to how Discord had a special hilarious moment with everyone, I have had those with people I have barely known and never met irl in those situations Those rare moments with friends are even better and we still laugh about them 5+ years later (I have 2-3 old WoW friends i msg maybe once or twice a year and we STILL crack up over "clockwise? what's that?") when we contact each other, no matter how weird it is to everyone else that we still laugh about this or anything else we laugh about. We aren't trying to rub it in anyone's face, but when those things first happened, we really did laugh about that stuff for (weeks), so I find them laughing about it for a piddly 3 days understandable. Discord DID go out of its way to bring it up, but that was the point.

And true to form, Twilight tried to recreate the un-recreatable (is that a word?) it in true science!!! fashion. And Discord, being who he is, has once again given his "lesson" more harshly than anyone in the show likely will. He's not coddling anyone (comparatively) and he's in Coddle central. Who else would dare try to make Twilight feel uncomfortable emotions like jealously and then make her feel bad about it with a specific friendship lesson in mind while taking no small around of joy in watching the struggle (so no, Mare Do Well this ain't). On that note, he got fed his own medicine right away and after stumbling around a bit, seemed to realize this and shrug it off to good effect.

I will ding it points because the lesson took a LONG time to get to and hinged too much on the unrelated sight gags during it to keep people occupied who either didn't understand or didn't care (tho Back to the Future and Bob Ross were pretty ace). But still, quite enjoyable for me.
 
I don't care if there was three days to spend time with Discord. No way every single pony would enjoy the inside jokes that much and laugh that hard - the personalities are too different. I think it makes sense for Pinkie Pie and maybe RD (on the one hand she probably would trust Discord the least, yet on the other hand she has a strange sense of humor), but I don't see the rest doing that. We just had a Halloween episode were we just saw this where Fluttershy realized Nightmare Night wasn't for her in part because she hated how she scared her friends (even though they enjoyed it). Didn't she think it was wrong? I'm not sure about Applejack, but I really don't think Rarity would have been the type to constantly laugh at "inside jocks" like that either...
I won't argue about the quality of the episode, but I will address these points.

I didn't find it too strange that all the girls would have liked the inside jokes. First of all, even if you normally wouldn't find something funny, being around other friends who do will often make a shared experience funnier. That's often why inside jokes aren't funny to outsiders in the first place. Secondly, we didn't actually see what led to most of the jokes, so that aspect is left up to our imaginations.

As for why Fluttershy didn't find the use of inside jokes cruel, why would she? If the Warcraft movie references Leroy Jenkins, no one would think they were being mean to the audience unfamiliar with it. As far as Fluttershy was concerned, Twilight had a great time organizing books, and then showed perhaps an unusual amount of interest in the jokes they made with Discord. It didn't register to her how often Discord has been bringing up the jokes specifically in front of Twilight. There are also shades of "Lesson Zero", in that the girls once again underestimated how well Twilight adjusted to being sociable and how prideful she is.

Note that as soon as Fluttershy realized that Discord had been using the jokes to hurt Twilight, she and everyone else stopped finding them funny. Her briefly using the inside joke to get back at Discord falls in line with how she handles Discord in other episodes.

As for the potion inside joke itself, it was a case of taking what would have been a painful memory and turning it into a good one, though I definitely got the impression that they were playing it up to show Discord what he was actually doing to Twilight.

==

Also, I'll address complaints I've seen on another board, one of which was that the message of this episode says that it's bad to be an introvert. Everyone was already aware that Twilight sometimes likes to spend a lot of time by herself and didn't begrudge her for it. The fact of the matter is, though, that no matter what you do, you'll miss out on something else--the lesson of "Too Many Pinkie Pies". The episode was more about the fact that Twilight refused to admit what was really bothering her, and did so out of the belief that she couldn't possibly be jealous.

I've also seen complaints about Twilight's character regressing in this episode to a season 1 state, which I don't believe. Twilight has always been an introvert, which is to say, that she generally finds it more relaxing to be by herself than with others. Just because we hadn't seen an extreme demonstration of this in a while doesn't mean it disappeared. In contrast to Moondancer staying in the library all day in "Amending Fences", Twilight clearly told everyone that she was organizing her books and how long it would take, and everyone was accommodating of this, besides the inside joke thing.

As for her obsession with understanding the inside jokes, again, just because we haven't seen her act like that in a while doesn't mean this aspect of her disappeared, and this time, it was clearly aggravated by Discord rubbing it in. Twilight has definitely become better at managing this, but it popped up a bit even in "Party Pooped". There's even a bit of continuity with "Lesson Zero" with how the girls went along with Twilight's suggestion to recreate the events leading up to the jokes, since it was important to her.
 

s_mirage

Member
Terrible episode, one of the worst of the series imo. I would put it right there with Mare Do Well in terribleness.

Everything felt way too forced to me. The constant stupid laughing over some silly inside joke felt way too forced and everyone felt out of character to me. In a way, it was made even worse the way they just stopped laughing at the joke in the end because the jokes got old... then preceded to laugh at whatever stupid "jokes" Twilight was making in some odd attempt to turn things against Discord or something.

I don't care if there was three days to spend time with Discord. No way every single pony would enjoy the inside jokes that much and laugh that hard - the personalities are too different. I think it makes sense for Pinkie Pie and maybe RD (on the one hand she probably would trust Discord the least, yet on the other hand she has a strange sense of humor), but I don't see the rest doing that. We just had a Halloween episode were we just saw this where Fluttershy realized Nightmare Night wasn't for her in part because she hated how she scared her friends (even though they enjoyed it). Didn't she think it was wrong? I'm not sure about Applejack, but I really don't think Rarity would have been the type to constantly laugh at "inside jocks" like that either...

They seemed to try way too hard to force the "it's okay to be jealous even if you are the Princess of Friendship" moral. Like, Twilight was fine with it, but they kept rubbing in in her face over and over so of course she was going to get jealous and want to understand what happened. Yeah, I'm sure that was Discord being Discord, but it felt tiresome and forced.

I wouldn't say it was terrible, but otherwise I feel pretty much the same. If the episode had consisted of Twilight winding herself up over a passing reference about what she missed, or an just overheard conversation between the other characters, it would have worked better IMO. Discord could still have wound her up.

Not only that, but it doesn't feel natural that the others would have been so trusting of Discord, and so dismissive of Twilight's hypothesis that he'd cast a spell on them. Last time we saw Discord he was trying to break up Fluttershy's friendship with Tree Hugger, and the time before that it didn't exactly take a lot of work for Tirek to persuade him to betray the mane six. Not a brilliant track record.

EDIT: And another thing: IIRC, Discord persuaded the others not to tell Twilight about the weekend. Since when, given his history, has Discord gained so much trust from the main six that they would actually do that? By letting someone known for being disruptive and deceitful persuade them to leave out a member of the group, they come across as either hopelessly naive, having collectively poor judgement, or just being somewhat shitty friends.
 
Screencaps:
What-About-Discord-Image-4.png

Discord going at Ludicrous Speed.

What-About-Discord-Image-30.png

Nice background in this shot. Wait, was there always a river behind Twilight's castle?

What-About-Discord-Image-36.png

Cult leader Twilight

1018121.jpg

When Discord comes in the meeting room at the end in his "What About Bob?" getup, he's carrying The Smooze around his neck.

1018600.png

Comparison of the inside of Zecora's house between season 1 and 5. Notably, there's more detail in the jars, the floor is different, and I suppose she realized that having most of the light come from candles instead of the cauldron's green glow provides a more welcoming atmosphere.

Important gifs
Discord petting Twilight. Linked for size
Here's the board artist that designed the paintings, though the animators made the final versions.

For fan art, sprite version of the above, and humanized drunk Pinkie. Mainly posting the last because I'm a bit amused by Twilight smiling at this.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
Everything felt way too forced to me. The constant stupid laughing over some silly inside joke felt way too forced and everyone felt out of character to me. In a way, it was made even worse the way they just stopped laughing at the joke in the end because the jokes got old... then preceded to laugh at whatever stupid "jokes" Twilight was making in some odd attempt to turn things against Discord or something.

I don't care if there was three days to spend time with Discord. No way every single pony would enjoy the inside jokes that much and laugh that hard - the personalities are too different.

Sigma beat me to it, but the point here is that the content of the jokes doesn't matter; it doesn't even matter that several of the participants remember the circumstances as being totally different. All that matters is that the experience was shared - that's what makes those kinds of inside jokes irrationally funny and allows them to cross personality boundaries that they wouldn't usually be able to cross.

As for the ending, they didn't really stop laughing because their jokes with Discord "got old"; they stopped laughing because they'd just found out that Discord had been using them to mess with Twilight. With that knowledge, moments that used to be untarnished suddenly weren't so nice anymore.
 
Since I don't want to bother putting up all the relevant links, I'll just link to this Round Stable post. Amy Keating Rogers has decided to post a bunch of her episode notes online, from across the seasons. Notable things are:
* In "Bridle Gossip", it seemed like she took a while to settle on "Twilight Flopple".
* When writing for Zecora, she seriously tried to rhyme "laugh" and "bath". I don't remember if that actually happens in the episode.
* In "Fall Weather Friends", it looks like the marathon at the end started out with a lot more coverage of the other competitors.
* Cheese Sandwich's past originally involved him looking up to Soarin' of the Wonderbolts and wanting to fly. It appears that the present-day story was originally about him wanting to impress Rainbow instead of Pinkie.
* In "A Friend in Deed", during the scene where Pinkie talks to Twilight and Dash and decides she needs to force Cranky to accept her apology, there was originally a stallion approaching Dash with flowers, Gallop-a-Gus. Dash explains to Pinkie that she dislikes plenty of ponies and they don't care, like Gallop-a-Gus over there. This makes him sad, and Dash yells at him to go away.

EDIT: ED article with the images rehosted.
 

Kenai

Member
I wouldn't say it was terrible, but otherwise I feel pretty much the same. If the episode had consisted of Twilight winding herself up over a passing reference about what she missed, or an just overheard conversation between the other characters, it would have worked better IMO. Discord could still have wound her up.

Not only that, but it doesn't feel natural that the others would have been so trusting of Discord, and so dismissive of Twilight's hypothesis that he'd cast a spell on them. Last time we saw Discord he was trying to break up Fluttershy's friendship with Tree Hugger, and the time before that it didn't exactly take a lot of work for Tirek to persuade him to betray the mane six. Not a brilliant track record.

EDIT: And another thing: IIRC, Discord persuaded the others not to tell Twilight about the weekend. Since when, given his history, has Discord gained so much trust from the main six that they would actually do that? By letting someone known for being disruptive and deceitful persuade them to leave out a member of the group, they come across as either hopelessly naive, having collectively poor judgement, or just being somewhat shitty friends.

Trust him with what, exactly? All they did is go out to (a few?) local places while she was busy. It's probably not the first time she's been hold up with her books, probably won't be the last, and not wanting to bother her during it for something as simple as going to a few nearby locations as a group is hardly outrageous. It's really no different than the many episodes 2-4 members of the group have gone somewhere and the others didn't even get screentime for that episode, and in many of those situations they left town entirely.

And even then, while Discord was being kind of a jerk to get his lesson across, it was hardly something I'd call "evil". Especially when he shrugged it off after they immediately did the same thing to him. He seemed to seriously want to help Twilight learn in his own way (and poke fun at her while doing it, even at the expense of being kind of a jerk). And as seen in vs Tirek and at the last gala, he is very much learning too. They can warm up to him over time and visa versa even if he has those missteps along the way.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
I'm glad to hear that there's a positive response to the preview. This is the episode I was most unsure of ever since the title was revealed, since I couldn't help but be reminded of Avatar's "The Great Divide".

February solicitations:

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #39
MLP39_CVRA.jpg

Cover A
Special Cover
Christina Rice (w) • Agnes Garbowska (a & c)​ •​ Lea Hernandez​ (Valentine’s Day Card Variant​ cover)​
“Don’t You Forget About Us” part 2! The Cutie Mark Crusaders and their classmates are hopelessly lost in the woods! The only chance of salvation may lie with…Diamond Tiara?!
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
Bullet points:
* A spoof of teen comedies blended with survival drama!
* Part of IDW’s big Valentine’s Day promotion!
* Variant cover by Sara Richard! (Currently Unreleased)

My Little Pony: Friends Forever #25
MyLittlePonyFF25-CVRA_MOCKONLY.jpg

Cover A
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Barbara Kesel (w) • Brenda Hickey (a) • Tony Fleecs (c)​ ​• Brenda Hickey​ (Subscription Variant​ cover)
Rainbow Dash wakes up to discover that here wings have VANISHED! It’s up to the relatively newly-winged Twilight to help her friend find out the source of the mysterious occurrence.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99

I'm reminded of how insanely common "Rainbow breaks/loses her wings" stories were in fan fics back in the day. The Friends Forever issue looks like it could be fun, and while badly timed, the main series arc seems good too.
 
Well since we didn't have a Sync today, we might as well open discussion of The Hooffields and the McColts.

I think this is a good way to introduce kids to the classic family feud, as well as the "We're fighting and we don't really know why" kind of story, and even throws in a Trojan Horse. I figured Fluttershy would be the one that solves the problem here, though I was expecting to see her more assertive side.

Also, Twilight casts Sonorus Charm.
 
This episode was alright. I liked the parts just with Twilight and Fluttershy being adorable a lot more than the actual main story with the feuding families, though the main story was nowhere near as bad as in Avatar's "The Great Divide". For one thing, you didn't have any of the main characters favor one side over the other, and for another thing, you didn't have the main characters lie about the source of the feud. I still would have preferred if the actual source remained unknown, and the families were convinced to work together to help the animals regardless of what they had done in the past.

I liked the designs of the Hooffields, but I was a bit weirded out by how similar the McColts all looked. Exactly how long were they in that fort? Speaking of which, when that McColt was surprised that there was a fourth princess, it was a bit of a wasted opportunity that they didn't have him be confused about there being alicorns besides Celestia, to really drive home how out of the loop they are.

I've seen others point out that episodes written by writers new to this season tend to be a bit more self-referential than others (besides "Slice of Life" and such), as if to demonstrate that they are, in fact, familiar with the show. You could see that in this episode, with the princess line I mentioned above and when Twilight froze everyone fighting, she specifically explained that it's harder than when she did it in "Castle Mane-ia"--though Twilight only froze four ponies there, not six. There's also stuff like this episode containing the first obvious demonstration that Twilight has "earth pony strength" now and the return of the "It's Twilight Sparkle's balloon!" balloon. This doesn't mean anything either way for the quality, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Besides "The Great Divide", another direction I was afraid the story was going to go in would have been for Fluttershy to solve the problem on her own and for Twilight to learn a lesson in humility. While Fluttershy was the one to find the source of the feud, it really was the case that both of them were needed to solve the problem.

As the episode went on, I was getting rather annoyed by all the talking, and it felt like the sync wasn't right... then I discovered that I was watching a copy where the sync was off. I switched to a better copy before the end, but I expect that the undetected desync lowered my opinion a bit, since I enjoyed the last part of the episode more. Perhaps this is one I'll like more on a rewatch.

With the way Twilight was talking in the end, it feels like this should be the last episode before the finale, but no, there's still another one.

And in another case of "damn, fans are fast":
Though the episode was leaked around midnight, so I guess it isn't really that fast.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
I really enjoyed this one! Twilight and Fluttershy both got loads to do, and the two family heads on either side of the argument were a lot of fun (particularly Big Daddy McColt).

Pretty impressive debut for new writers too. I hope we see more from them in the future.
 
I really enjoyed this one! Twilight and Fluttershy both got loads to do, and the two family heads on either side of the argument were a lot of fun (particularly Big Daddy McColt).

Pretty impressive debut for new writers too. I hope we see more from them in the future.

They are new writers for this season, but this isn't their first episode. They did "Castle Sweet Castle".

On another note, it's a good thing Twilight cast that freeze spell when she did.
 

PaulloDEC

Member
They are new writers for this season, but this isn't their first episode. They did "Castle Sweet Castle".

Oh, right, I'd totally forgotten who wrote that one. Pity they only seem to be doing one a year, I've liked both their stories a lot.

And that screencap is hilarious. First on-screen decapitation-by-shovel narrowly avoided.
 
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