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Conkersbadfurday · Aug 22, 2017

Good god was "Triple Threat" hard to get through. Almost stopped six minutes in because the "I got two dates on the same day!" trope is so fucking tired and cringy that I'm surprised shows are still trying.

What's worse though is that Twilight and Starlight didn't just step in and go "oi you fucked up. If we talk about this now we won't need to deal with twenty minutes of everyone acting like morons for the plot."

Like, both are smarter than that.

Or fuck, Glimglam could have cloned Spike. Using complex magic to solve simple problems is kind of her thing.

Instead we get boring at best, cringe at worst, and then it takes sixteen fucking minutes for something interesting to happen.

Then the friendship thing shows up and Twilight is too stupid to go, "no let's fix problems A and B before we bother with C," because that makes a load of sense. Not to mention the conclusion to all of this is painfully obvious from the getgo.

SigmasonicX · Aug 22, 2017

Whoops, forgot to update my bingo sheet. Added "Thorax focus episode" and "Diplomatic Twilight". With this, there's another bingo possibility I hadn't noticed before: Chrysalis doesn't appear outside a flashback, and Moondancer returns. Here's hoping she's in "Once Upon a Zepellin" or something.

ShinySylvee said:
I feel like I'm the only person that liked that episode. Sure the premise was stupid but I thought it was pretty funny.

The episode has a lot of great voice work for Rarity and, as I rediscovered when looking for those GIFs, a lot of fun animation, but Rarity's sudden immaturity is hard to get past. Plus, it's slow at points and the climax is weak; I remember how the preview was just that, and no one expected it to be the climax.

I've never been a fan of Thorax (I felt like he didn't have almost any personality or agency and only really existed to serve the plot rather then be his own character) but I dug him a bit in the episode. He feels like he's actually participating in the plot now and so his previously established traits of being fairly passive and non-confrontational feel like actual quirks that he has to deal with rather then an attempt to endear him to viewers as well as a method to insure that he doesn't really have an in-character reason to have any agency in the story despite being a central character in the two previous appearances.

A lot of people hated the new changeling designs but I feel like his visuals actually match his character now so in that regard I think the design works. Also surprised no one is mentioning it but holy shit Thorax is tall now. He's almost twice the size of the ponies. I'm guessing that they were trying to make him roughly the size of Chrysalis. I know he's always been this height post-transformation but this was the first time I really noticed it.

I suppose this is the first episode where Thorax's personality really played a role in the story, other than him being "nice".

Also, thanks to this and other images, I now realize that the wing set that Thorax is letting drag on the ground isn't actually coming from under his elytra, but rather is just a single wing-like tail. I feel better now. Though about Thorax's size, it does make it pretty obvious when he gets scaled down to work in a scene, like on the comfy chair (compare with Twilight). But I guess him being a changeling makes that not actually an issue.

Conkersbadfurday said:
Good god was "Triple Threat" hard to get through. Almost stopped six minutes in because the "I got two dates on the same day!" trope is so fucking tired and cringy that I'm surprised shows are still trying.

What's worse though is that Twilight and Starlight didn't just step in and go "oi you fucked up. If we talk about this now we won't need to deal with twenty minutes of everyone acting like morons for the plot."

Like, both are smarter than that.

Or fuck, Glimglam could have cloned Spike. Using complex magic to solve simple problems is kind of her thing.

Instead we get boring at best, cringe at worst, and then it takes sixteen fucking minutes for something interesting to happen.

Then the friendship thing shows up and Twilight is too stupid to go, "no let's fix problems A and B before we bother with C," because that makes a load of sense. Not to mention the conclusion to all of this is painfully obvious from the getgo.

The "two dates" aspect was indeed frustrating--I haven't seen anyone who actually liked it--but I thought there was more than enough fun stuff to make up for it. For Twilight and Starlight following along with Spike's scheme, I felt all it needed was Twilight saying that Spike knew Thorax and Ember better than either of them, and she trusted he knew best that they shouldn't meet. As for the map, as far as they knew, they were already getting the Thorax and Ember situation under control by just swapping who was with who, so it wasn't too odd that they didn't make the connection.

Speaking of fun stuff from the episode,

Fictional Reads by lumineko - Twilight, not in front of Thorax!

Completely unexpected

Triple Threat CENSORED - I thought this worked pretty well.

Conkersbadfurday · Aug 22, 2017

On a complete reverse of my previous post's hatorade, the newest MLP comic is really, really good.

http://wethenerdy.com/my-little-pony-the-movie-prequel-3-review/

I did the review thing for an actual site again, and yeah, I had a blast with it. Some excellent character work and really expressive artwork.

SigmasonicX · Aug 23, 2017

Conkersbadfurday said:
On a complete reverse of my previous post's hatorade, the newest MLP comic is really, really good.

http://wethenerdy.com/my-little-pony-the-movie-prequel-3-review/

I did the review thing for an actual site again, and yeah, I had a blast with it. Some excellent character work and really expressive artwork.

Oh, I thought you stopped linking them because you felt uncomfortable about advertising your own reviews. I never bothered to check the site >_>

Anyway, sounds good! I look forward to checking it out tomorrow.

Speaking of comics, November solicitations! By my estimate, the season finale should air November 4, assuming no episode airs on October 7, meaning they're no longer obligated to tie into particular episodes.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #60

Christina Rice (w) Agnes Garbowska (a & mc) Sara Richard (sc) Valentina Pinto (ric)
The Cutie Mark Crusaders have a new challenge when a young pony doesn't want to follow in her family's footsteps. Will she chose her family or her calling?
* A special coming-of-age issue!

My Little Pony: Legends of Magic #8

Jeremy Whitley (w) Tony Fleecs (a & mc) Heather Breckel (c) Brenda Hickey (sc) Jennifer "ChibiJenHen" Hernandez (ric)
The group of legendary ponies continues to grow as Rockhoof and Mage Meadowbrook join the group! Each faces unique challenges that will require the help of their peers before disaster strikes!
* New friends and new magic!

If the FiM issue ties into the season, then it's likely "Marks and Recreations". If so, that means the reason why the camper in the episode's synopsis doesn't want their cutie mark is because she doesn't just want to do what her family has always done.

With the LoM issue, I'm surprised that the previous issue only marked the start of the "legends" assembling. It looks like it will take a sort of Friends Forever route, pairing them off until everyone's together. ED notes that a fandom artist, ChibiJenHen, is doing the retailer incentive cover (not seen above), but I haven't heard of her. And from her Twitter, she already did covers for the Archie Sonic comics and such, so calling her a fandom artist doesn't seem right.

==

San Diego Comic Art Gallery is holding an MLP-themed lecture this Friday, August 25, connecting the IDW comic with psychology and social sciences. Speaking are comic writer Christina Rice and two professors.

And not really news, but the results of ED's poll for Starlight's best ship surprised me. Trixie won, no shock there, but Sunburst got way more love than I expected. Maud wasn't listed, but the "other" category is way below either of them, and Twilight is dead last. Personally, I'm not a fan of TwiGlim, and I'm cool with MaudGlim and SunLight (the other one), but StarXie is clearly the best.

SigmasonicX · Aug 24, 2017

The Movie Prequel #3 - Capper
This indeed was a good issue, and I enjoyed following along with Capper and Chummer's journey. Klugetown is an interesting place, though I find myself having a hard time imagining the ponies in this setting; I hope that the movie doesn't just have the girls be morally superior to everyone there, like in early Star Trek: TNG. That said, I'm not sure I like there being so many different kinds of anthro creatures in the pony world that aren't mythological, including pig-rat men. I feel like it diminishes the magic a bit. But then again, Diamond Dogs were there from season one, so we crossed that bridge a long time ago. Also, Verko is a mole; thanks Silver Quill for that and reminding me of Diamond Dogs.

I thought Chummer's betrayal was too sudden. It didn't feel like he had any reason to run away without Capper, and he didn't even say anything about wanting the gem for himself. Of course there were flags all throughout the issue, with them declaring how great friends they are and that they'll always stick together, but that's not a reason.

I'm curious how much of what's seen here will come up in the movie. I don't think we'll see Chummer in person, but Capper will maybe have a framed picture that he'll allude to when mentioning how his one friend betrayed him. And then they'll have a heartfelt reunion in a TV special that uses the movie art style.

What we see in this issue does contradict Capper's biography from the Movie site, which states he was an aristocrat left penniless by a bad deal with the Storm King, but it seems likely that this is a lie he tells the ponies. There will be a liar revealed moment that confirms he was always just a thief, but Rarity tells him that doesn't define him, or something along those lines.

Conkersbadfurday, I hadn't thought about the fact that these are unusually morally gray protagonists in a My Little Pony story. While we have, of course, seen villain protagonists in the comics, both in this miniseries and in FIENDship is Magic, Capper is presented as sympathetic from beginning to end. And yeah, I noticed that the cats addressed each other by name a lot.

Overall, this was a good issue.

Also, Thundercats villain cameos.

==

Pirate Rarity revealed on Facebook, in a video for some reason despite being a still image, so here's the image and here's the video as a GIF. I like this design a lot.

Unfortunately, from this image from the French Facebook page, it doesn't look like she'll actually wear that in the film; she has a different pirate outfit on. Well, at least there should be a fair amount of fan art.

Surprisingly, the Movie Prequel comic trade is coming out on August 29, physical only, which is one week before the final issue itself actually comes out on September 6. The digital release of the trade isn't until September 27. Weird.

ShinySylvee · Aug 24, 2017

Been busy of late. I'll get the writeup done tomorrow hopefully.

The comic was kinda weird in that it so different from what we usually see from MLP. All of the creatures in the comic were completely new and we've never really seen such a run-down and depressing place before. It was kinda surreal seeing all the anthro characters and no quadrupeds in sight. It was a unique setting which I look forward to seeing more of in the movie. (BTW the location was way more interesting here then in the book. Goes without saying since the book was bad but just thought I'd mention that)

The actual story was so expected that it was hard for me to get super invested. They laid the "we're buddies through thick and thin we'll find a way out of this together" on SUPER thick which made the ultimate backstab super obvious. The backstab itself felt super contrived too. Why does the head crime dude do nothing to punish Capper and Cummer from stealing from him? Why is he totally upfront with how valuable the magicite is if he's supposed to be the leader of the swindlers and cheats? He could have benefited with a couple lines of dialogue to characterize him a bit better so his decisions would have made more sense. Chummer's train of thought doesn't make sense either. And the sequence of putting the magicite on the windmill as part of the trade seemed stupid. What if there was someone else who could actually fetch the magicite? What if they found another way of getting it down? It's your big leverage for getting out of there why are you being so careless with it? I get that the narrative reason as to why they did it that way is so Chummer can put a fake up there without Capper knowing but the sequence seems convoluted and lazy if the end goal is to have Chummer double-cross him.

As for Capper he's interesting. Although the motives for why Cummer leaves him don't make sense I think it's a pretty effective setup for why he would be so indifferent to the ponies initially and would be willing to sell them out. I'm guessing that Rarity will be super nice to him and give him something and he'll be like "no one's ever just given me something without expecting something in return before." And Rarity will be like "Well that's what friends do for each other. Haven't you had a friend that would do that for you?" And he'll stare longingly at a picture of Chummer and go "I thought I did once.."

I feel like I've spent too much time thinking about this lol. Anyway the plight of "I just wish we had some place to settle down and not have to do shady crap" thing sets up well with Rarity. The promotional stuff says

she's going to make a lifelong friend which at this point is guaranteed to be Capper. Given that Rarity is running a fledgling boutique franchise she could definitely use more employees and she could hire Capper to either be her personal assistant if they want him in Ponyville or have him run a new boutique back in his home country if they want him to still exist but not be in such a prominent location. I'm guessing that one of those two will end up happening since it makes a lot of sense.

Also that Rarity costume is indeed extremely fabulous. I might consider it for an avatar if I wasn't so satisfied with the one I currently got.

Conkersbadfurday · Aug 24, 2017

ShinySylvee said:
The actual story was so expected that it was hard for me to get super invested. They laid the "we're buddies through thick and thin we'll find a way out of this together" on SUPER thick which made the ultimate backstab super obvious. The backstab itself felt super contrived too.

Normally I consider myself pretty genre savvy with MLP's bullshit, but I really didn't see that coming, at least not to the extent that it happened. When shit hit the fan at the end, I chalked it up to the Malachite first and not an actual betrayal.

It was going back that I realized that Capper wanted to quit the thief game openly and Chummer never commented on that. It was clearly a riff between the two that grew over the course of however long they were in the city.

The twist would have worked better had it another issue to develop, but I also quite enjoyed it regardless.

I wonder if this city will even show up in the movie though. Already the comics have spread a wide variety of places and people, and there's no way they'll all fit well into a 90 minute kid's movie without either gutting character moments or plot moments. I imagine it'll be too bloated for its own good and disorientating because of it.

ShinySylvee · Aug 25, 2017

Really not feeling like doing a massive writeup for this one now. I still think there's some good points that are worth mentioning so I'll do the bulletpoints as to what I was going to say in it.

> Josh Hamilton seems to really like crappy overdone sitcom stories. Unlike Parental Glideance I don't think the story was done well here

> If the whole episode was at the same quality as the actual story then it would be a serious competitor for one of the worst episodes of the show. (For reasons that have already been mentioned so I don't think I really need to go into why) The only decent parts were the conversation with Ember and Thorax and the end.

> The actual dialogue that isn't directly about the plot is top tier.Characterization is extremely strong as well. If the story was as strong as the dialogue and characterization it would probably be in competition for one of the best episodes.

> Starlight did a good job role filling. Twilight was entertaining as well. Ember got fleshed out effectively and was my favorite character of the episode. Thorax had previously been a big nothing for me but I liked him a lot here. It felt like his character was organic and he did more then mope around trying to make us feel sorry for him. Spike was atrocious and this was his worst appearance since Princess Spike.

> VA for Ember does casual conversations very well but it sounds a bit more awkward when doing more agitated voices. VA for Thorax isn't poorly executed I feel but I don't care that much for it.

> Thorax transforming into the bear was pretty cool. We've never seen the changelings transform into anything other then ponies before so it was interesting to see and I would like to see more of it in the future. Animation was overall adequate with nothing sticking out other then the scene of Thorax and Ember charging each other being just the same animations played over and over.

> Overall I thought it was a very fun episode once you get past the atrocious plot, although I can understand why people wouldn't be able to since it's REALLY bad.

To make up for my laziness I'll provide a complimentary picture of Twilight

source Guy's DA has a lot of fairly sexual pics like some humanized stuff with them wearing bikinis and other suggestive things although nothing explicit so be warned.

SigmasonicX · Aug 26, 2017

Conkersbadfurday said:
Normally I consider myself pretty genre savvy with MLP's bullshit, but I really didn't see that coming, at least not to the extent that it happened. When shit hit the fan at the end, I chalked it up to the Malachite first and not an actual betrayal.

As I mentioned, it's more about seeing all the betrayal flags coming from Chummer, rather than something demonstrated by the story itself. The justification is there if you go back and look, but I don't think they justified him taking action at that particular moment well enough.

[...]
I wonder if this city will even show up in the movie though. Already the comics have spread a wide variety of places and people, and there's no way they'll all fit well into a 90 minute kid's movie without either gutting character moments or plot moments. I imagine it'll be too bloated for its own good and disorientating because of it.

We see it in the trailer.

I don't know, i don't think there are that many locations. Equestria, the desert, Klugetown, the skies, Seaquestria, then back to Equestria, it looks like.

ShinySylvee said:
Really not feeling like doing a massive writeup for this one now. I still think there's some good points that are worth mentioning so I'll do the bulletpoints as to what I was going to say in it.

> Josh Hamilton seems to really like crappy overdone sitcom stories. Unlike Parental Glideance I don't think the story was done well here

Worth noting that these freelance writers don't actually choose what episodes they work on. A writer's room comes up with episode premises, then creates an outline for the story, then hands it off to a writer they feel will work well with it. So, it's more that the writer's room thought these were good episode premises and that he'd work well with them.

[...]
> Thorax transforming into the bear was pretty cool. We've never seen the changelings transform into anything other then ponies before so it was interesting to see and I would like to see more of it in the future. Animation was overall adequate with nothing sticking out other then the scene of Thorax and Ember charging each other being just the same animations played over and over.

Actually, Thorax himself turned into a rock and into Spike back in his introduction. His turning into a bear is the first indication that transformations actually affect their strength, I believe, unless it was purely for intimidation.

[...]

To make up for my laziness I'll provide a complimentary picture of Twilight
http://i.imgur.com/wp5kY1I.png[/IMG

[URL="https://pre03.deviantart.net/a52b/th/pre/i/2017/236/0/4/twilight_in_the_sky_by_danmakuman-dbl7uje.png"]source[/URL] Guy's DA has a lot of fairly sexual pics like some humanized stuff with them wearing bikinis and other suggestive things although nothing explicit so be warned.[/QUOTE]

I was about to comment about how that artist has drawn humanized/EQG art based on recent episodes, but that was actually a different artist that draws faces in a similar way to Twilight's there. [URL="https://derpibooru.org/search?q=artist%3Adanmakuman"]Danmakuman's Derpibooru page[/URL]. There's a lot of King of Fighters crossover stuff. I actually don't think I've seen this guy's work before.

Friday art dump.

[URL="https://mlp-silver-quill.deviantart.com/art/Pinkie-Pie-Says-Goodnight-Single-700915713"]Pinkie Pie Says Goodnight: Single[/URL] - Cheerilee is doing well after all.

[B]Triple Threat[/B]
[URL="https://shutterflyeqd.deviantart.com/art/The-Comfy-Chair-700147387"]The Comfy Chair by ShutterflyEQD[/URL]
[URL="https://luminaura.deviantart.com/art/S7E15-Yummy-Cupcake-700193295"]Yummy Cupcake by lumineko[/URL] - Oh hey, this pony got art.
[URL="https://dm29.deviantart.com/art/Remember-the-Fallen-Muffin-700069370"]Remember the Fallen Muffin by dm29[/URL]
[IMG]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8XzfPUuoOu0/WZtRLxmrPQI/AAAAAAACisw/nenw3Fb8hh4W4qZFhaPWKDsBS7DvOm48wCHMYCw/s274/TheComfyChairbyShutterflyEQD1503351058018.png

Thorax and Ember by jessicanyuchi
Yum by kemofoo
?.. by ramiras

Ember X Thorax by topolok - No other pony art from this artist.
Ember vs. Derpy by tsira360
Not So Unlikely Friends by inuhoshi-to-darkpen

TT Pointy Ponies - Even Spike has trouble with his vision.

Fame and Misfortune
Toola Roola by Anonsbelle
Twilight and the fillies by lion-grey
Stress Couture by noxartbox

F&M Pointy Ponies

The Perfect Pear
You're in my head like a catchy song by hikariviny

Pear Butter and Bright Mac Beanie Plushies by ButtercupBabyPPG

Equestria Girls
Huh. Thanks to Derpibooru, I've learned that through Pinkie in the short "The Art of Friendship", we have our first, as the Derpibooru tag goes, actual legit EQG panty shot. Honestly shocked they allowed that to happen. Not shocked it was Pinkie.

Pet Project Shy by RacoonKun - There's also similar art by lumineko, but it's... less appropriate.

Comics
Derpy's Revenge by el-yeguero - NSFW source blog, so linking to Derpibooru.
Chairs by lumineko

Videos
Daniel Ingram - We're Not Flawless (loophoof Remix) - Electronic type remix (I'm not great with genres) that focuses just on the chorus. Good all throughout.
Daniel Ingram - We're Not Flawless (Aurelleah Remix) [Hybrid Orchestral Electro] - Rearranges the lyrics, for some reason repeating Pinkie's part a lot. Good all throughout.
Daniel Ingram - We're Not Flawless (174UDSI Remix) - Not a fan of the pitch distortion, but it's otherwise good.

Sable Symphony - Monday Blues Rock Cover - Male singer. Who would have thought this would get two covers this week?
"Monday Blues" Cover (AshleyH) - Female cover that differentiates the voices. Twilight goes a bit too far into Pinkie territory, I feel, but it's good at the duet parts.

Don't Mess with Baby Daybreaker - Baby voices are a bit annoying, but the concept is sound.
MUST WATCH - My Little Fortress - Battle For Engineer - The man behind This Spy Aria and other Team Fortress 2 song parodies from back in the day is back! This time, it's a great edit where Big Heavy fights Feather Spy for the heart of Sugar Scout.

==

Some movie stuff.
Screenshots featuring pirate stuff. Weird, the colors on the third seem a bit washed out, but everything else looks fine. Unfortunately, it does look like the movie versions of the pirate outfits are restricted to headgear and eyepatches, so no Rarity costume or awesome Twilight coat. Still, they look quite adorable.

Neat posters, but there aren't ones for every character yet. And unfortunately, Twilight's doesn't look great.

SigmasonicX · Aug 26, 2017

As it turns out, the Netflix video that announced MLP season 7 coming in August has a correction in the description, saying it won't be until fall. That does explain things. Unfortunately, it looks like it isn't coming until after the entire season finishes.

Neural network for pony names. It probably would have worked better using only official names, not background pony names that haven't been repeated in official material. That said, looking forward to Deader Pony, Apple Apple, and Princess Sweat.

Today's episode is

16. Campfire Tales
When their sister camping trip is ruined by Fly-ders, Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash tell Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo the stories of their favorite legends; inspired by the tales, the girls make the most out of their new situation.

Given the prominence of the Legends in the comics, I wonder if there will be any hints toward a larger season storyline involving them. I'm also curious to see how all six will be brought up: will each "older sister" tell two stories, or will others come to their campsite? Will Starswirl be involved, or are there just five featured characters? Given that one comic cover, will they take this opportunity to introduce the Dazzlings to the show?

Ogodei · Aug 26, 2017

Heh, i've only followed anything about the comics from these threads, so it was a surprise to see characters like Mistmane show up.

ShinySylvee · Aug 26, 2017

Nothing super wrong with the episode but nothing that really wowed me either aside from a couple visual flourishes. (Rarity doing the ballerina Twilight shadow was neat) Stories themselves didn't have much to them and had a couple contrivances that weren't really explained at all that distracted me. (How did Rockhoof get super buff? Why is the Empress super powerful even though she didn't go to magic school?) The lore wasn't super interesting, the actual stories were too basic for my liking, and the visuals weren't amazing either. Overall an inoffensive episode but not super in love with it.

Also we didn't get to see the Sphinx pony like we did in the clips promoting the second half of the season. That means that there's going to be another episode that has it.

DrForester · Aug 26, 2017

I liked that episode. Lot of cute stuff with the girls and their sisters and the stories were fun.

draetenth · Aug 26, 2017

DrForester said:
I liked that episode. Lot of cute stuff with the girls and their sisters and the stories were fun.

Yeah, this is really all I can think of for the episode. It was cute, but it was a safe episode too. I did like the faces everyone would be making at various times.

Trigonometrize. · Aug 26, 2017

Today's was a good episode. It's weird how you can go to an episode that features Ponyville, which is pretty sterile and kinda not-so-great-looking, to this one with tons of different locations and original assets. You can tell they put a lot of work into this one.

The second story was the best for me. Asian magical fight.

Someone needed to tell Scootaloo to calm the fuck down when she was on top of Rainbow Dash's head tearing her mouth open.

ShinySylvee said:
Nothing super wrong with the episode but nothing that really wowed me either aside from a couple visual flourishes. (Rarity doing the ballerina Twilight shadow was neat) Stories themselves didn't have much to them and had a couple contrivances that weren't really explained at all that distracted me. (How did Rockhoof get super buff? Why is the Empress super powerful even though she didn't go to magic school?) The lore wasn't super interesting, the actual stories were too basic for my liking, and the visuals weren't amazing either. Overall an inoffensive episode but not super in love with it.

Also we didn't get to see the Sphinx pony like we did in the clips promoting the second half of the season. That means that there's going to be another episode that has it.

Super powerful? She got stomped by the protagonist. Plus the protagonist clearly cares for the Empress and not vice versa at that point.

I'm getting Force Awakens spoiler thread flashbacks.

SigmasonicX · Aug 26, 2017

Campfire Tales
... Wait, only three tales? What?

Now I can see Mage Meadowbrook coming up in that episode where Zecora gets sick, thanks to that episode's tie in comic involving her, but I have no clue how Somnambula is relevant to any upcoming episode.

Anyway, about what's actually there. The fly-ders were even more horrifying than I would have thought. Those webs, those bite marks, that swelling! Ponies sure are a hardy bunch to take that all in stride. It's weird how they explicitly brought up the questions of why the fly-ders were so far inland (also, East Luna Bay now show-canon and not just map-canon) and why they were coming after them, but didn't answer. Maybe setting up for the finale?

Though there wasn't too much to the stories themselves, I found them interesting for side details and what they revealed about those telling them.

Rockhoof's comic implied that he joined the Mighty Helm after going through the effort to train, so it was disappointing to see him suddenly bulk up in the legend. Looking at the comic, it doesn't actually say he was training before he joined the team, but the lesson and some incidental lines of dialogue make way less sense if he wasn't. The comic writers were allowed to read the scripts this time, so it's strange that they would miss his strength being magical. Maybe the episode originally did involve Rockhoof working out, but it was condensed for time?

Anyway, this is a legend, and those sorts of things happen. Through his determination, he was granted the strength to succeed. This can be seen to reflect on Applejack's and the rest of the Apple Family's values, that hard work and perseverance will make things work out in the end.

I thought Mistmane's story was interesting. The psuedo-Japanese setting was neat, and I thought from the comic that her curved horn was just a quirk of hers, but no, there was apparently a place in Equestria full of unicorns like that. The magic battle was neat, and it's funny how "jealous of a friend going to magic school" is apparently an archetypal conflict in Equestria. But the most interesting part was how the story reflected on Rarity. She disliked how the others thought of Mistmane as "the pony with the flower", apparently just referencing the part of her journey where she goes around spreading beauty despite being ugly. No, what was important to Rarity was that Mistmane herself was beautiful, but gave that up to improve everyone else's life. As I mentioned with her comic, this ties back into the beginning two parter, with Rarity so easily giving up her tail to help Steven Magnet. Also, yes, I will choose to read into Rarity specifically making a shadow puppet of ballerina Twilight.

With Flash Magnus's story, I was disappointed that no one brought up Flash Sentry, in the context of "that guard pony that had a crush on Twilight but she turned down". It was neat to see Dragonlord Torch (presumably before he was dragonlord) and what appears to be Ember's mother. I enjoyed the myth, and it reflects on Dash's element of loyalty. With his comic, I noted that it was odd that ponies more highly valued this story over the one where he saves griffons from a storm, but it makes sense now that we know it's about more than confronting some dragons, with him distracting them so others can be saved.

On another note, is it just me, or did Sweetie Belle sound really weird in her first few lines? Like the VA was growing out of that voice and had a hard time reaching it again.

Overall, it was an enjoyable enough episode. Not nearly as mindblowing as "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" was back in the day, and probably not as good as "Sleepless in Ponyville", which this is an effective sequel to, but still good. At least it wasn't full of weird sitting like the latter.

UberTag · Aug 26, 2017

Trigonometrize. said:
The second story was the best for me. Asian magical fight.

I think my favorite part of this episode was its musical scoring. Some of the background tracks during the Mistmane story reminded me of Kubo and the Two Strings.

Otherwise, I considered this ep to be inoffensive and disposable. You'd probably have to force me to watch it a second time.
Perhaps I'd be a bigger fan of them incorporating comic lore into the show if I read those things. But I don't so appearances of these heretofore unknown legendary characters make little to no impact for me.

Although, the plethora of bug bites did tell us that magical ponies do indeed bleed red... I'd have kind of preferred to remain in the dark about that.

SigmasonicX said:
On another note, is it just me, or did Sweetie Belle sound really weird in her first few lines? Like the VA was growing out of that voice and had a hard time reaching it again.

It's not just you. Claire has notably had the biggest challenge maintaining Sweetie Belle's vocal register as she's aged. Madeleine had no such challenge as she'd already cleared puberty by the time she was cast to voice Scootaloo and Michelle just has a ton of vocal range so she can knock out Apple Bloom without breaking a sweat.

I think she's still incomparably talented as an actress but Claire has had a tougher hurdle over the other two to get into character and if the voice direction slips - as it did this week - it's very noticeable in the finished product.

Trigonometrize. · Aug 26, 2017

UberTag said:
I think my favorite part of this episode was its musical scoring. Some of the background tracks during the Mistmane story reminded me of Kubo and the Two Strings.

Otherwise, I considered this ep to be inoffensive and disposable. You'd probably have to force me to watch it a second time.
Perhaps I'd be a bigger fan of them incorporating comic lore into the show if I read those things. But I don't so appearances of these heretofore unknown legendary characters make little to no impact for me.

Although, the plethora of bug bites did tell us that magical ponies do indeed bleed red... I'd have kind of preferred to remain in the dark about that.

The music that was playing when Rarity was introducing her story stood out to me.

Actually, never mind. Must've been thinking of another part.

SigmasonicX · Aug 26, 2017

UberTag said:
Perhaps I'd be a bigger fan of them incorporating comic lore into the show if I read those things. But I don't so appearances of these heretofore unknown legendary characters make little to no impact for me.

Other way around. The Legends of Magic comics were made to tie into this episode, based on its script, and all the issues are explicitly sequels to the legends we see here.

SigmasonicX · Aug 27, 2017

*looks around*

Alright fine, double post.

UberTag said:
It's not just you. Claire has notably had the biggest challenge maintaining Sweetie Belle's vocal register as she's aged. Madeleine had no such challenge as she'd already cleared puberty by the time she was cast to voice Scootaloo and Michelle just has a ton of vocal range so she can knock out Apple Bloom without breaking a sweat.

I think she's still incomparably talented as an actress but Claire has had a tougher hurdle over the other two to get into character and if the voice direction slips - as it did this week - it's very noticeable in the finished product.

That makes me think, a great idea for a future episode would be for Sweetie Belle's voice to fully change, and then she discovers she can't sing as well. She then has to go around relearning how to sing from other characters, like Fluttershy, Coloratura, and Cheese Sandwich.

Rarity's insane shadow puppetry, using Twilight to demonstrate how gorgeous the shadows can be.

Love the light from Rarity's horn going away underwater. Also, I guess pegasi really are less dense than other ponies.

And just imagine GAF in Ponyland.

Get the Show on the Road!
New Summertime Short. It's been a while.

This has the "EQG intro", which thus far has only appeared for DHX animated shorts. Sunset is back to wearing her "new" outfit. Weird how we can use that to quickly distinguish between two studios.

I was about to say this is the first DHX short in this set that wasn't a music video, but no, it's a music video now. Come to think of it, this is the first time we've seen Rainbow Dash rap, which is actually pretty surprising. Anyway, the song is alright, nothing special. There are some fun visuals.

It looks like this is the last short that was uploaded early in Russian.

Is anything actually going to come out of them taking their band on tour?

Leaping Off the Page
Oh, another direct to Direct TV short.

Again with the MLP theme. I'm surprised by how detailed the backgrounds and new setpieces are, given the other Boulder Media shorts. Dash has pictures in her room from their other shorts, and there's a bunch of unique stuff in the jungle. Come to think of it, is this the first time a midriff-exposing shirt has appeared in EGQ?

Rainbow's room with her bed, and her dresser and door.

Anyway, this was alright.

SigmasonicX · Aug 27, 2017

Some people are uploading images from The Art of My Little Pony: The Movie on Derpibooru, and there's some fascinating stuff. Here's the tag for it, and I'll talk about the ones that stand out to me below. It doesn't seem like there's anything too spoilery, but I'll discuss everything using spoiler tags anyway. Since links appear in spoiler tags, I'll use generic names for them.

Songbird - I guess this is before they got Sia cast.
Tempest - It looks like the explanation of Tempest's backstory will use an alternate art style.
Storm King's staff - According to the uploader, an earlier version of the story explained that Storm King stole his staff from Scorpan (Tirek's brother in G4, underling in G1)! Glad to see they remembered him.
Capper - There's a lot of Capper art, and it makes him look like a fun and interesting character.
Spike - So they did start out with a less jokey look for "seapony" Spike.
Klugetown - Holy crap, this is amazing! One of the original plans was for the town to be built inside the skeleton of a giant ancient dragon impaled on a mountain, mining its crystal heart! But they changed it because everyone agreed it was too brutal for My Little Pony, which yeah, I can see. But seriously, look at it! Also, surprised at the realistic concept art for the creatures in town.
Capper concept - Wow, they were going in some pretty crazy directions with him before. There was a pony OC fad a while ago where people kept giving them big tails with mouths, so I'm surprised they were exploring that with Capper too. Interesting that he didn't actually start out as a cat, but rather a fox, and then other creatures. Also confirms what we all suspected about his character arc, and that Rarity is heavily involved in it.
Celaeno - This is a pretty neat look for her, though it doesn't really pop as much, especially against dark skies, which seems like it would be important.
Novo - Old design for her hippogriff form. Probably changed due to being too complicated.
Capper again - The middle section reminds me a lot of The Cat Returns. These are animation references, meaning they're more likely to be in the actual movie. The first seems like it's from his song. I guess Rarity makes the middle outfit for him, especially with the note about it magically fastening. The third section is probably a bit where the ponies go to his house and ask for information as he prepares food for them. Ooh, I wonder they address the entire meat eating thing.
Capper one last time - More bits from his song, and it looks like maybe during the final battle, he uses Spike as a flamethrower. Neat! The last bit seems to be from the ending celebration, and it's quite adorable.
Sea ponies - Well, not quite sea ponies. The pool at the base of the hippogriff castle looks fantastic!

Followup coming later. I'll edit it into this one if no one else posts.

draetenth · Aug 28, 2017

I haven't really followed the movie news, but I did find those links interesting.

Conkersbadfurday · Aug 28, 2017

Campfire episode was a bit boring, but otherwise inoffensive. The three stories kind of sucked though. "Oh he deus ex machinaed and saved the city!"

"this is my favorite legend now

"

Come on.

At least the magic fight in the second one was cool. And the dragons were pretty cool too, even if I find it hard to believe that one pony would carry around his super magical shield heirloom all the time.

Flyders were great bugs to add to the Equestrian beastery. That's one thing this show does really well is animals.

SigmasonicX · Aug 28, 2017

Conkersbadfurday said:
At least the magic fight in the second one was cool. And the dragons were pretty cool too, even if I find it hard to believe that one pony would carry around his super magical shield heirloom all the time.

Flyders were great bugs to add to the Equestrian beastery. That's one thing this show does really well is animals.

The captain knew they were going to dragon lands, so him having a fireproof shield only seems reasonable.

And yeah, they're doing a great job making people realize that going through a portal to a world of adorable ponies isn't actually a good idea.

Oh, there are three more Art of MLP:the Movie images since I last checked. Definitely going to buy this after the movie comes out.

Oh, it's a character mentioned in the Sony emails - Well this is a surprise, Cosmos was actually a proto-Tempest. I had assumed King Cosmos, as the emails referred to the character, was an alicorn, but I guess he was a self-augmenting unicorn. And people thought Tempest looked like an edgy OC...
Capper - We saw Rarity's character page before, but couldn't clearly see the notes. Now we see that Capper is singing about how Rarity is a dazzling beauty; I guess we really are doing this.
Grubber - Nothing too shocking, but it does seem like he sees Rainbow perform her Sonic Rainboom.

NOTES
I forgot to mention before, but Sweetie Belle using a partial magic shield against the fly-ders was neat. I guess she must still be getting magic training from Twilight.

A shot of the dragons. I'm impressed they went through the effort to make Torch look younger. The green dragon actually does look different from the one from "Owl's Well That Ends Well", and you can see blue gem symbols like on Ember. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be her mother. Larger image for a better look. Ember, for comparison

And jumping back to Equestria Girls, it turns out we do have an official explanation for Sunset's magic changing colors!

That said, I prefer this explanation from that blogger, with it being an effect of the geode.

SCREENSHOTS
Picnic layout
GAF's ultimate nightmare
Swollen Dash
Screenshot collection - Rarity turning to see a smiling Rainbow and then smiling
Rockhoof's village
Rockhoof's village post volcano
Unicorns from Mistmane's village - You can also see Sable Spirit pre-uglification.
Mistmane's magic school
Mistmane's village before and after
The empress's throne room
Dragon shadows - I was really impressed by this shot.
Alternate ending (embedded) - And lo, the fly-ders never left and there was no way out, forcing the ponies to eat their marshmallow companions.

GIFS
Entire section for Scootalove.
Scaredy Scootaloo
Scootaloo dashing under Dash's arm
Scootahug
Scootaloo screaming while Dash makes a face
Dash pulling Scootaloo off (embedded) - It was hard to choose between this and the previous.
Dash scaring Scootaloo, making her curl up
Scootaloo trying to dig out
Scootaloo hammer (embedded)
Rainbow tossing up Scootaloo (embedded)

Rockhoof screaming
Edit, Rockhoof is evolving! (embedded)
Edit, Rockhoof and puberty

Magic dragon battle (embedded)

Torch in the shadows of the cave
Flash Magnus avoiding the dragons
Fighting in storm cloud

Edit, true ending of Rainbow being swarmed by fly-ders
Apple Bloom swatting with her tail
Dash puffing out her chest
Rarity moving her hooves for shadows - How?!
Rarity and Sweetie Belle nuzzling
Applejack training by punching rocks
Falling out of the waterfall
Return of season one wet mane Rarity - As opposed to the season two look that they've typically gone with since; I guess this is her drenched look, not the "out while it's raining" look. This isn't a bad look for her either. Plus, she's more comfortable being like this now, as compared to "Look Before You Sleep".
Apple Bloom shaking off water

FAN CONTENT
Alright, I've been holding onto this art for weeks, saving it for this, but Somnambula didn't appear here, so I'll just post it now. Some people are suggesting she could appear in "Daring Done", which does make sense, but I'm tired of seeing it in my bookmarks folder.
Egypt trouble by DiscordTheGE

Campfire Legends by mysticalpha
Rockhoof by freeedon
Pony Romans are a thing now apparently by cowsrtasty

Legends by JonFawkes
Dash and Scootaloo by RedheadFly
Mistmane by hatsinspace - Appears to be the only pony art from this artist.

Mistmane by Lunar-White-Wolf
Har har! I'm a viking! by KlaraPL
I am awesome by nekokevin

Mistmane by ElskaFox
MistMane by JessicaNyuchi
Mistmane by AssasinMonkey - Made a bit bigger so you can see the details.

Legends by Lemanda

Pointy Ponies

Equestria Girls
Animal Shelter Lover by befishproductions - I'm surprised how much art this Fluttershy outfit is getting.
Starlight Glimmer by jovalic
Glimmering Starlight by fotasy
Cool City Starlight Glimmer by animechristy

Movie
Tempest Shadow by luciferamon
Pirates! by Luximus17
Queen Novo (chibi) by BlazeMizu

Other
Fame and Misfortune - Friends by liniitadash23
Discordant Harmony - It seems a bit cruel to give life to a piñata by dstears
A Royal Problem - Daybreaker by Margony

Comics
Honest Apple - No apples for breakfast by verycomicrelief - Strawberry Sunrise's revenge.
Shadow-ty by bobthedalek

Rhomega Beta · Aug 28, 2017

Decent episode. Focusing on 3 stories in half an hour just makes them all shallow. Mistmane is probably my favorite of the 3.

Also, ponies eat hot dogs.

ShinySylvee · Aug 29, 2017

A quick summary of my full thoughts on the episode:

> The writers of the episode were Barry Safchik and Michael Platt. The duo have wrote together with each other on quite a few works previously on programs such as Weeds, Sullivan & Son, and the Youtube Red program Sing It, as well as doing various producing through the years. Mostly live action stuff so far. Honestly I feel like the concept and the visuals carried them through the episode and their individual writing was fairly weak. Aside from Rarity to an extent I feel like their writing for each character was very one-note. Rainbow talked about being awesome, Scootaloo spent pretty much the whole episode being scared, and to my knowledge both the apples didn't have much personality either. They weren't awful just kinda boring and I'm worried about how they'll do in other episodes that have less interesting concepts

> The stories themselves were bland and predictable with the exception of the second one that I liked largely for the ascetics. Never been too much of a fan of folk tales in general so that probably had something to do with it. The time devoted to each one was so short that there wasn't much opportunity to flesh out the characters the legends were focused on aside from Mistmane. Rockhoof was a guy that wanted to be strong and cool and Flash Magnus was a brave guy that didn't want to leave his friends behind. There's not much more to their characters presented here.

> Rochkoof's story in particular was just silly with him just randomly getting super strength for no explained reason. Coming from someone that was excited for these stories for the potential of them having some cool lore in them it's disappointing to see so little focus on it in the episode. Given that the lore has the potential to be super cool and interesting it feels like a massively missed opportunity.

> Nothing was done particularly poorly but aside from the visuals nothing really stuck out as being good. Overall it's an inoffensive but forgettable episode that doesn't really live up to its potential.

SigmasonicX said:
Though there wasn't too much to the stories themselves, I found them interesting for side details and what they revealed about those telling them.

That was one of the big takeaways from me as well.

draetenth said:
I haven't really followed the movie news, but I did find those links interesting.

For what it's worth pretty much all the news about the movie that we know about has been posted in this thread by Sigma or me.

Also Hascon is happening September 8-10. I'm guessing that there's going to be some movie and Season 8 info there so keep an eye out for that. I'm guessing they're probably going to be reusing a lot of the Comicon Stuff so we'll hopefully get those actually uploaded so we can see them as well as some actual season 8 stuff this time around.

SigmasonicX · Aug 29, 2017

Campfire Tales CENSORED - Not too interesting, but I did like the last two scenes, with Mistmane and then the cave.

Rhomega Beta said:
Decent episode. Focusing on 3 stories in half an hour just makes them all shallow. Mistmane is probably my favorite of the 3.

Also, ponies eat hot dogs.

Ahem.

Frankly, I have no clue how carrots can taste better in a bun and with ketchup and mustard, but obviously the ponies know their palates best.

ShinySylvee said:
A quick summary of my full thoughts on the episode:

> The writers of the episode were Barry Safchik and Michael Platt. The duo have wrote together with each other on quite a few works previously on programs such as Weeds, Sullivan & Son, and the Youtube Red program Sing It, as well as doing various producing through the years. Mostly live action stuff so far. Honestly I feel like the concept and the visuals carried them through the episode and their individual writing was fairly weak. Aside from Rarity to an extent I feel like their writing for each character was very one-note. Rainbow talked about being awesome, Scootaloo spent pretty much the whole episode being scared, and to my knowledge both the apples didn't have much personality either. They weren't awful just kinda boring and I'm worried about how they'll do in other episodes that have less interesting concepts

I wonder how they could have gotten involved in MLP, given their background. Anyway, now that you say it, this was indeed an episode carried almost entirely by visuals and other things that would have been added at the storyboarding stage, similar to my observations on "The Gift of the Maud Pie" last season, which did lead to Fox Brothers episodes being worse with less visually interesting concepts like "Applejack's 'Day' Off".

[...]
> Rochkoof's story in particular was just silly with him just randomly getting super strength for no explained reason. Coming from someone that was excited for these stories for the potential of them having some cool lore in them it's disappointing to see so little focus on it in the episode. Given that the lore has the potential to be super cool and interesting it feels like a massively missed opportunity.

I like to think that the myth normally explains that pony deities saw Rockhoof and were impressed by his deeds, granting him great strength as a reward, but baby Apple Bloom got bored by that part, so Applejack left it out ever since. Still, as is, the story reaffirms the belief that if you try your hardest to do good, things will just work out and you'll succeed. This actually does tie into how Applejack acted in "Applebuck Season", where she kept on trying to harvest apples by herself, though it was self-imposed.

[...]
Also Hascon is happening September 8-10. I'm guessing that there's going to be some movie and Season 8 info there so keep an eye out for that. I'm guessing they're probably going to be reusing a lot of the Comicon Stuff so we'll hopefully get those actually uploaded so we can see them as well as some actual season 8 stuff this time around.

Oh right, I forgot about the reveals we're getting there. We've talked about the possibility of some movie stuff carrying over into season eight, and I feel like this would be the best time to announce something like that, if they do. We should also hear some things about the upcoming Equestria Girls series.

DemWalls · Aug 29, 2017

Looking at those artbook images, I can't help but wonder what's been Steve Prescott's character art's purpose during the production of the movie.

SigmasonicX · Aug 30, 2017

DemWalls said:
Looking at those artbook images, I can't help but wonder what's been Steve Prescott's character art's purpose during the production of the movie.

Yeah, that realistic art style is weird. Perhaps they were playing around with the idea of beings outside Equestria being drawn completely differently. Or maybe he was being used for ideas for designs, with the intention being any they liked would then be translated into a more MLP style.

Tons of books came out today, including the Junior Novelization, meaning the ending's out there. Apparently the book is pretty sparse on details, though.

Here's some fantastic non-spoiler art from the art book.
Stained glass

Sorry Rarity, I think I have a new avatar for when the movie comes out

Unedited book cover - The guy on the left is one of the Storm King's old designs. I'm surprised it lasted long enough for this kind of art to be drawn for it.

Canterlot gate without ponies or fading

And more spoilery stuff.

Pirates - Wow, they were originally velociraptors! Though apparently they were originally pure villains that wouldn't have turned good, so it makes sense that they'd edge them down. Also funny with the new Magic the Gathering set featuring pirates and dinosaurs, but no dinosaur pirates.
Pirate names - It looks like all of the side pirates are references to the A-Team. Also, they all have dinosaur tails still, a remnant of their previous designs.
Seapony storyboards - Hmm, is that storyboarding process normal? The CGI ponies in the boards are pretty funny. Anyway, we now know how the ponies meet Skystar.

Actually, you know what, posting CGI ponies without context.

DrForester · Aug 30, 2017

the novels confirm what the short story book indicated would happen to the other Princesses.

Meghan doing Meghan's thing.

Why the hell is Cadance even in the movie?

ShinySylvee · Aug 30, 2017

I read through the novelization and although I feel like a lot of detail is missing (none of the songs are really called out and there's a lot of interactions with some of the new characters that feels not very fleshed out among other things) it does have a decent amount of info that we didn't already know. I'll go ahead and do a recap, but just be warned that I'm about to talk about almost every major plot development in the story so if you don't want to know virtually everything going into it don't read on.

The movie begins with Twilight making preparations for the festival, presumably introducing all the characters for the people that don't already know them. She tries to talk to the other princesses about moving the sun and moon during Songbird's performance so it looks cool but Celestia says that she's capable of doing it herself. (This plotline is never referenced again in the book) Twilight is super nervous and I'm guessing the festival song happens while she checks up on her friends.

Eventually the Storm crew show up and Tempest asks for the princesses surrender. She kicks doom orb thingies at the princesses that instantly turn them to stone. Apparently Celestia tells Luna to find the Queen of the Hippos before both end up getting stoned. Tempest throws one at Twilight but it is blocked by Derpy. (!) Twilight shoots some lazer thing that accidentally blows up the bridge they're standing on and they fall down a waterfall like you saw in the trailer. Twilight says that she's going to find the Queen of the Hippos herself but the rest of the Mane 6 obviously insist that they go along with her.

Tempest talks to the Storm King and informs them that they've captured 3 of the 4 princesses. The Storm King says that they need their magic to power his staff and that he'll give Tempest her horn back if she gets all of them since that was the deal.

They eventually get to Kludgetown (the run down town in the trailer) and they ask around for directions. All the locals start creeping on them but Capper comes in and pretends that the ponies all have "pastelis coloritis" because of the colors of the ponies coats. The locals back off and Capper insists on helping them out since the ponies don't understand Kludgetown and takes them to his house in a Windmill. They eventually realize through a book in his house that they're looking for the Queen of the Hippogriphs. Rarity fixes a button on Capper's coat and he asks what he owes her but she says that's what friends do for each other. Capper feels hella guilty for setting them up.

Tempest followed them to Kludgetown and finds out where Twilight is by roughing up the locals. They go over to the Windmill where everyone is. Some goons show up there (not related to Tempest it seems) to kidnap the ponies and almost immediately after Tempest shows up as well. The goons piss off Tempest who zaps them and the Mane 6 use the opportunity to escape out the window where the land on the blades of the windmill which causes the opening scene from the trailer. They land and head over to the docks and quickly board an airship. Tempest interrogates Capper who lies about the Ponies true destination after having a change of heart.

The ponies eventually get discovered by the crew who are all wearing Storm King uniforms. Celaeno reads the Storm King's rule book and says that the instructions are to throw them overboard. However before that happens Celaeno decides it's time for lunch so they take a break. Rainbow asks for food and Celaeno says that it's fine because the rulebook doesn't say otherwise. The food is really disgusting so none of the ponies want to eat it. The Parrots reveal they are doing deliveries for the Storm King now. Rainbow finds a black pirate flag that was covered up by a Storm King poster. Then the Time to be Awesome Again song from Comicon presumably plays, finishing with Rainbow doing a Sonic Rainboom which gives away their location to Tempest.

Tempest's ship shows up and harpoons the Pirates' ship. Tempest boards while the ponies hide underneath. Before Tempest goes down to check the ponies go through an escape hatch. While falling Twilight assembles a hot air balloon and they take it to where the Hippos are. Grubber finds a map showing where the ponies are going so Tempest follows them.

The ponies climb a bunch of stairs to get to where the land of the Hippogriphs is only to find it abandoned. They eventually hear some singing where they track it to a giant fountain they go in to investigate a shadowy figure inside before getting sucked under in a whirlpool. They're all given bubble helmets and Princess Skystar introduces herself. Twilight informs her about their situation and Skystar takes them to her mom, Queen Novo. Novo gets mad that Skystar took them to her. Skystar explains to the ponies the Seaponies history. That they used to be Hippogriphs but Shadow Tempest came along to try to steal their magic which forced them to flee into the water. Queen Novo shows them a pearl and uses it to transform them into Sea Ponies. Twilight remarks that with that pearl the ponies could transform into creatures powerful enough to defeat the Storm King. Queen Novo shoots this down since she fears that it would give him an opportunity to steal it.

Twilight still wants the pearl though so she instructs her friends to "give Princess Skystar the best time ever" and says she'll catch up with them. Twilight moves in to steal the pearl but naturally gets caught. The ponies instantly get thrown out. AJ calls Twilight out on trying to steal it and Twilight insists that it was the only way to save Equestria. Pinkie reveals that after they threw the party for Skystar Novo realized that Equestria was worth saving and was going to give them the pearl voluntarily. The ponies realize that Twilight's plan wasn't for them to convince Novo that Equestria was worth saving by throwing a party but that she intended for them to be a distraction while she stole it. Twilight tries to justify her actions by saying that they couldn't just do what they normally do and save Equestria and desperate times call for desperate measures but Pinkie counters by saying that it would have worked if Twilight hadn't screwed it up by not believing in them. Twilight says that her friends were holding her back and they split up. Almost immediately Twilight gets captured by Tempest.

Tempest gloats over Twilight and Twilight asks why she was doing it. Tempest says that she once hoped for friendship but considers it childish now since her friends abandoned her when she broke her horn. Twilight says she's sorry that her friends left her and Tempest responds by claiming that it looks like the same thing happened to Twilight. Twilight realizes that it was her fault for not working together with her friends for solving the problem. They show up to Canterlot where the Storm King is and he insults Tempest before using all of the Alicorn's magic to power his staff. Tempest asks for her horn back but he blows her off. He discovers he can move the Sun and Moon with it.

The Mane 5 regroup after finding out Twilight was captured. Capper, Celaeno, and Skystar show up as well hoping to help the ponies. They formulate a plan to rescue Twilight and save Equestria. Capper disguises himself as a baker with a giant cake and with the Mane 5 in shackles in tow. They get past the front guards and find Grubber, who tries to eat the cake only to find out the pirates are inside it. A big fight breaks out and the Mane 5 along with Capper and the Pirates successfully beat back all of the Storm King's guards. Storm King steps out with Twilight and Tempest and delivers his one line from the trailer. He uses the staff to summon a gigantic tornado that begins wrecking Canterlot.

As the Storm King revels in the storm Tempest asks for her horn back again. The Storm King rebuffs her and points out that he was just using her and that she was a fool for believing him. He shoots a bolt of lightning on her which sucks her into the storm. Twilight jumps after her and saves her. The Storm king notices them and is about to blast them but the Mane 5 fly in and knock the staff out of his hand. They grab it and are trying to hold on to the ground to avoid getting sucked in by the Tornado but the Storm King jumps on it and Twilight and Storm King fly off into the storm. The storm calms and there's some shitty death fakeout before Twilight shows up with the staff. They all hug each other and Tempest discovers the magic of friendship. The Storm King comes back with one of the doom orbs that Tempest used earlier and tries to throw it at Twilight but Tempest blocks it and they both turn to stone. The Storm King falls off a cliff and shatters. Tempest gets saved by Twilight and the Mane 6 use the staff to turn her back.

Everyone works together to fix all the damage done by the storm and the concert by Sia starts with her thanking the Mane 6 for saving the day. The party goes on with Rarity giving Capper a nice new coat, Rainbow and Celaeno exchanging stories, Spike and Grubber hanging out, Pinkie and Skystar having fun with each other, and Queen Novo showing up as well. Tempest is sulking because she doesn't have her horn still but Twilight says that it's still powerful like the pony it belongs to. She gets happy and uses it to launch some fireworks into the sky. She reveals that her name is Fizzlepop Berrytwist and Pinkie says it's the best name ever. Everyone laughs and presumably the movie cuts to the credits.

Alright. That's that. I missed a bit but that's the general gist of it. I'll post my thoughts on it later.

UberTag · Aug 30, 2017

Man, you guys are sure going out of your way to spoil yourselves on the movie before you get the chance to see it.

Sometimes it's fun to go into stuff blind.

SigmasonicX · Aug 30, 2017

Movie spoiler:

And thus Storm King joins the likes of King Sombra by being killed off for real (as far as show canon is concerned). Yeesh. As for the Twilight stuff, I just hope there are enough scenes of her being likable to make up for that, and they do enough to justify her mistrust.

UberTag said:
Man, you guys are sure going out of your way to spoil yourselves on the movie before you get the chance to see it.

Sometimes it's fun to go into stuff blind.

It's a bit of an odd case because all this is officially released material. In any case, the general story was never going to be the interesting part of the movie, but rather individual scenes and character moments, so I'm more comfortable looking at this stuff than usual. I'll bow out once we start getting detailed movie impressions.

In movie related news, Pirate Rainbow Dash design that probably won't be in the movie itself.

And glad they had their priorities straight.

DemWalls · Aug 30, 2017

SigmasonicX said:
Yeah, that realistic art style is weird. Perhaps they were playing around with the idea of beings outside Equestria being drawn completely differently. Or maybe he was being used for ideas for designs, with the intention being any they liked would then be translated into a more MLP style.

That's the most logical conclusion, but they just look so different and detailed that drawing all that just to be 'downgraded' to the usual, simple MLP style feels kinda... pointless?
At least I guess the artist had fun.

DrForester · Aug 30, 2017

Reading the synopsis, I see another McCarthy staple, and I wonder if it will be as noticeable in the movie...

The others are put on party detail while Twilight does her own thing.

Conkersbadfurday · Aug 30, 2017

Looks like Greg is finally back, now with the Nepotism Advanced Series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573zsc6ZuhQ

Not sure how to process it. In a way, it's probably just as cynical as his other series, but the character changeup is kind of depressing. I miss alcoholic Twilight. She was like, the best Twilight.

He's got an overarching story planned though, so hey, maybe it'll go somewhere fun. I do hope the MAS Rainbow Dash shows up. Pinkie too, really. Man, his cast was just the best. Like, fuck it would be so funny if Fluttershy just never made an appearance.

But yeah. Glad to have this stuff back.

draetenth · Aug 31, 2017

ShinySylvee said:
.

Yikes, I hope the actual movie is better than this because this sucks.

Plus, I really hate the whole "character uses a distraction to get something and fails which gets everyone to hate him when the distraction was actually...working and if he had done nothing, would have succeeded..." which is pretty much what the whole damn party thing is... It also doesn't really sound like something Twilight would normally do - not the first time the show takes liberties with characters in an effort to force a point or advance the plot..

ShinySylvee · Aug 31, 2017

So some initial thoughts about the plot:

>I didn't really spell it out in my recap but Storm King was really fun in the scenes that he actually was in. Unfortunately aside from the scene near the beginning and the climax he's barely in it. Shadow Tempest isn't a particularly great villain IMO as all she really does is scowl and be mean and she gets by far the most screentime of all the villains. On top of that her character is quite similar to Starlight who I feel does a similar arc better. (She at least voluntarily stepped down and submitted herself to punishment rather then being sort of forced into switching sides after her old side betrayed her and the good guys directly save her life) Overall the story has a lot of similarities with previous 2-parters/movies like Twilight learning that she might be a princess but she still needs to appreciate and work with her friends.

> I feel like the journey is going to be a lot of fun. All the different areas and creatures should be a lot of fun to look at. Aside from Tempest I feel like all the newcomers are interesting.

> The movie seems to be entirely ignoring pretty much all of the ponies' allies or really anyone that could potentially do anything to help the situation besides the Mane 6 and all the newcomers. Although I can understand why most of the secondary characters are being ignored (such as Starlight and Discord) as well as the Griffons, Changelings, Yaks, and Dragons since people not familiar with the show would be confused as to why all these people that they don't know about are showing up and saving the day, it's still kinda distracting that all these prominent characters that would be extremely useful are ignored.

> IDK some other stuff I probably forgot

One thing to keep in mind is that this is just a fairly flavorless text recap of the story. I feel like a lot of the movie's enjoyment will come from the character interactions, the visuals, and the songs, and none of that is conveyed very well in the format that I presented the plot in. Additionally a lot of stuff didn't feel like it was gone into as much detail as it likely will in the movie. Basically what I'm getting at is that this summary is not really indicative of the entire viewing quality of the movie so writing the whole thing off based off this is a bit premature since we haven't actually seen it in action and some of the plot developments might make more sense in context of the actual movie. Speaking of which...

SigmasonicX said:
As for the Twilight stuff, I just hope there are enough scenes of her being likable to make up for that, and they do enough to justify her mistrust.

I skipped over it during the recap but through almost the entire movie Twilight is super nervous about all the pressure she's under, first about planning the festival and then after Tempest starts hunting her down due to her being the final Princess left. It's brought up very frequently in the dialogue that she feels like it's up to her to solve everything. To a degree I can understand her feeling like Celestia sending Luna to the Hippogriphs to save Equestria could cause her to think that stealing the pearl to save it would be justified. Additionally since she thought it was up to her I can see why she wouldn't want to bring her friends into it, especially since the plan involves stealing. I also didn't mention it but she was crying when she was fighting with her friends so it's not like she goes full heel turn. I feel like she just makes a couple of understandable but really stupid decisions and the fact that they're stupid are pointed out in the movie so it's not like it isn't entirely unaware of what she's doing is wrong.

DrForester said:
Reading the synopsis, I see another McCarthy staple, and I wonder if it will be as noticeable in the movie...

The others are put on party detail while Twilight does her own thing.

Not really.

Aside from a couple scenes at the beginning of the movie when Twilight is preparing for the festival and near the end where she's kidnapped and is completely dependent on the Mane 5 and the newcomers to rescue her she spends almost all of her time with the Mane 6. Also aside from her creating a balloon and saving Tempest almost all of the big things are done by the rest of the cast. Rarity likely is the big reason Capper switches sides, Rainbow convinces the parrots to help them, and Pinkie and the rest of the Mane 5 befriend Skystar which causes her to tag along too. Like the big stretch of time where she's separated from the Mane 5 she has almost no agency while the rest of them are basically doing all the important stuff. It's the exact opposite.

draetenth said:
Plus, I really hate the whole "character uses a distraction to get something and fails which gets everyone to hate him when the distraction was actually...working and if he had done nothing, would have succeeded..." which is pretty much what the whole damn party thing is... It also doesn't really sound like something Twilight would normally do - not the first time the show takes liberties with characters in an effort to force a point or advance the plot..

I already talked about how it's a bit more justified then what I initially wrote it out as before but to follow up on that

trying to make Skystar happy was probably the best call anyway. She's super easy to impress and has a ton of influence over her mother. Even if Novo wouldn't give you the pearl she probably would still agree to let Skystar tag along and maybe send some guards as well. The reasoning might be a bit sketchy but I do think that her decision at least thematically helps illustrate why Twilight should have been working together with her friends rather then trying to solve the problem herself and Teamwork is one of the biggest themes of the whole show. At first I didn't like the idea either but I'm hoping that it will make more sense in context of the whole movie.

In other news, the new Xcom expansion came out and in it they added the ability to pair two of your soldiers together to give them bonuses when they work with each other. Twilight ended up with Starlight, Sunset got paired with Luna, and Rainbow's compatibility with literally all of my soldier was absolutely horrible so she's going to likely remain forever alone. I really wanted to pair Twilight with Rarity for you Sigma but I didn't start out with her.

In other other news is anyone else going to Pax Prime this weekend? I'm going myself and was curious.

SigmasonicX · Aug 31, 2017

Conkersbadfurday said:
Looks like Greg is finally back, now with the Nepotism Advanced Series.

I really enjoyed his Rainbow Dash Presents videos, but I never actually watched his Mentally Advanced videos. Honestly, knowing why he ended those videos--he feels the show isn't good anymore--makes me hesitant to check out these new ones. Now that I've found myself reading fanfics more often, I've narrowed down my preferences, and I've determined I really don't like "the show did this wrong, here's how it should have gone!" sorts of stories.

Movie stuff:

I'm sure the stuff with Twilight trying to steal the pearl can be perfectly in character for her, along with her then pushing away her friends. It isn't that far off from what we see in "A Canterlot Wedding" when she confronts Chrysalis-as-Cadance, and how she tries to do things on her own in "The Crystal Empire" and "Twilight's Kingdom"--though those two were because Celestia told her to. The idea of Twilight making a big mistake and then beating herself up over it is also something that's appeared in fan content for a very long time, so it's hardly strange territory for the character. My main worry is that she'll spend the entire movie moping, and people will come out of the movie not understanding how she's a likable character.

As for PAX Prime, I'm not a convention-goer, and besides, it's not in the area.

On another note, I was surprised to see that the picture book The Great Princess Caper is yet another adaptation of the movie, though apparently from the perspective of Grubber. The art in it is very cute, though.

Conkersbadfurday · Sep 1, 2017

SigmasonicX said:
I really enjoyed his Rainbow Dash Presents videos, but I never actually watched his Mentally Advanced videos. Honestly, knowing why he ended those videos--he feels the show isn't good anymore--makes me hesitant to check out these new ones. Now that I've found myself reading fanfics more often, I've narrowed down my preferences, and I've determined I really don't like "the show did this wrong, here's how it should have gone!" sorts of stories.

Makes sense. I'm in the other camp where I'm now displeased with the show, so satire of it or pointed criticism--or just mean spirited sometimes if it's funny--are up my ally.

The new stuff from Greg is probably just as cynical, though in a different way. He's no longer making fun of individual episode plots but doing his own thing, which is interesting since he stopped because of that reason.

ShinySylvee · Sep 1, 2017

SigmasonicX said:
I really enjoyed his Rainbow Dash Presents videos, but I never actually watched his Mentally Advanced videos. Honestly, knowing why he ended those videos--he feels the show isn't good anymore--makes me hesitant to check out these new ones. Now that I've found myself reading fanfics more often, I've narrowed down my preferences, and I've determined I really don't like "the show did this wrong, here's how it should have gone!" sorts of stories.

Movie stuff:

I'm sure the stuff with Twilight trying to steal the pearl can be perfectly in character for her, along with her then pushing away her friends. It isn't that far off from what we see in "A Canterlot Wedding" when she confronts Chrysalis-as-Cadance, and how she tries to do things on her own in "The Crystal Empire" and "Twilight's Kingdom"--though those two were because Celestia told her to. The idea of Twilight making a big mistake and then beating herself up over it is also something that's appeared in fan content for a very long time, so it's hardly strange territory for the character. My main worry is that she'll spend the entire movie moping, and people will come out of the movie not understanding how she's a likable character.

As for PAX Prime, I'm not a convention-goer, and besides, it's not in the area.

On another note, I was surprised to see that the picture book The Great Princess Caper is yet another adaptation of the movie, though apparently from the perspective of Grubber. The art in it is very cute, though.

The first episode of the series was more silly then anything. I didn't find it too mean spirited but that might change in later episodes so idk. The first episode has the same sort of humor that he's known for so I think it's worth watching.

Pretty much the entire beginning of the movie up until the adventure really begins is Twilight doing princessy stuff. I'm afraid that she'll be similar to how she was portrayed in the season 4 two-parters because I didn't really like her in those and it feels like the setup for that is kinda here. Also I'm concerned as to what AJ and Fluttershy are going to end up doing because they don't really have any major things revealed for them so far.

Also interestingly the Grubber book isn't remotely consistent with all of the other material. Grubber in the book feels super inadequate and really just wants Tempest senpai to notice him. In the prequel novel (and looking like the comic as well based off the preview for it) Tempest is super lonely and ends up being drawn to the Storm dudes largely because Grubber was really nice to her so their relationship is portrayed as an actual friendship. Grubber is also fairly competent in the other material but can't really do anything right in the picture book. It is extremely cute though and the inconsistencies don't really bother me since the Grubber book is clearly aimed at a very young audience. It's pretty good for what it is.

Conkersbadfurday said:
The new stuff from Greg is probably just as cynical, though in a different way. He's no longer making fun of individual episode plots but doing his own thing, which is interesting since he stopped because of that reason.

To my knowledge he hasn't been doing episode dubs for a while now since they kept getting taken down and he decided to animate it himself and just do his own storylines. That being said I never really watched a ton of his MAS series so I don't know when that changed.

Conkersbadfurday · Sep 1, 2017

ShinySylvee said:
To my knowledge he hasn't been doing episode dubs for a while now since they kept getting taken down and he decided to animate it himself and just do his own storylines. That being said I never really watched a ton of his MAS series so I don't know when that changed.

True, but MAS was always trying to be a parody of episodes, even when he was doing his own animations. This is his own animations and his own storyline.

SigmasonicX · Sep 2, 2017

It's weird, I feel completely fine about Friendship is Witchcraft. Thinking about it, it might be because those videos were always dumb things happening that happened to share some footage with episodes, and they never really attempted to critique them.

DrForester alert! Princess Celestia got an online short! It's similar in format to the shorts where Pinkie explains things to Flurry and where Rarity gives fashion tips, but there seems to be a lot more original footage. Albeit, new footage that gives Celestia a weird walk cycle. Also, Snips and Snails got into Magic School!

I'm surprised they're actually going through with this: beach-themed Equestria Girls Minis coming out. But the really interesting part is how the packaging appears to use costumes from the upcoming EQG series. Let's look at Fluttershy as an example.

Equestria%2BGirls%2BMini%2BBeach%2BSummer%2BFun%2BFashion%2BDoll%2BFluttershy%2B2.jpg

It's easier to see at full size in the link, but on the left side, there are what appear to be clips from the movies, but with her old outfit replaced with a new one. I definitely prefer it over her old outfit, but I still far prefer the old common fan design of a sweater/sweatshirt and jeans. The boxes also have nice new pony art, with some of them blushing for some reason.
Sunset - Spikes? Really?
Pinkie (and a bit of Rarity) - Pinkie's alright, not better or worse. Rarity seems to be better.
Applejack - Everyone's changing outfits, but Applejack is still wearing a skirt? Lame.
Trixie - Same outfit.
Twilight - ... Maybe it looks better when not hastily edited onto older shots? And I can't help but notice the last shot doesn't have the stripes.

Art dump. A bunch of "Campfire Tales" art came in, and in what shouldn't be much of a shock, most of it is of Mistmane. No Pinkie Pie Says Goodnight due to Silver Quill's break.
Hoof Full of Rocks by TalonsofIceandFire
Sthap, Scoots... by StellerWay
A Mane of Mist by TalonsofIceandFire

Nyctophobia by Sea-Maas
Battle for beauty by imalou - Definitely recommend checking the full size version.
Mistmane's return by kseniyart

Legend of Mistmane by Chirpy-chi
Camping Adventure by lumineko
ScootaDash by RaRaMila

In the heat of the morning by Katakiuchi4U
Mistmane by Joakaha
Mistmane by Monogy

Mighty Helm pony by raikoh
Mighty Helm pony by amarynceus
Brave by ServerChan
Mist Genji by amarthgul - Reference to Overwatch.

Legends by chub-wub

Mistmane by ponygoggles
Inner Beauty by kapu-official
Mistmane by BoresUser

Fame and Misfortune
Toola Roola by xbi
Flawless by liaaqila
Surprise Kiss by SpectrumNightYT

The Perfect Pear
Pear n' Apple by RubyW32
The Perfect Pear by jannel300

A Royal Problem
Little Hooves, Big Plans by midnightpremiere
Daybreaker Returns - in 3-D! by Tim-Kangaroo

LittleHoovesBigPlansbymidnightpremiere1504039528166.png

Other
Movie - Pirate Fluttershy by Tinka-Love

And not art, but reversed GIFs from "Triple Threat"!
Ember restoring balance with Derpy
Ember fixing Twilight's castle
Nope, I'm out!

==

I suppose this is better here than tomorrow morning. "To Change a Changeling" could be very interesting, but it's hard to tell what direction it will take. At first, it seemed obvious that Thorax's friend, Pharynx, must be allowed to remain the way he is, for a lesson about letting people be what they want, but "Triple Threat" made it clear that he's leading a rebellion and is actively trying to drain love from ponies. Will the episode just have him tone down his actions but allow him to remain the same in appearance? Or will he come to realize the new ways are better?

Also, wild card guess: Trixie will declare her love for Starlight, or vice versa. Like maybe Pharynx is starving and they need some source of love, and while Starlight tries to figure it out, Trixie pulls out a bouquet of flowers while blushing. They hug, flash of light, Pharynx is saved.

draetenth · Sep 2, 2017

SigmasonicX said:
I suppose this is better here than tomorrow morning. "To Change a Changeling" could be very interesting, but it's hard to tell what direction it will take. At first, it seemed obvious that Thorax's friend, Pharynx, must be allowed to remain the way he is, for a lesson about letting people be what they want, but "Triple Threat" made it clear that he's leading a rebellion and is actively trying to drain love from ponies. Will the episode just have him tone down his actions but allow him to remain the same in appearance? Or will he come to realize the new ways are better?

Also, wild card guess: Trixie will declare her love for Starlight, or vice versa. Like maybe Pharynx is starving and they need some source of love, and while Starlight tries to figure it out, Trixie pulls out a bouquet of flowers while blushing. They hug, flash of light, Pharynx is saved.

IIRC Pharynx is Thorax's brother, not friend as I believe my tv guide says - though I'm not able to confirm that right now. This would make sense if Changelings are like most insects with Chrysalis as the queen/mother of the Changelings). Spoilers I guess (it's from a preview clip):

He looks like one of those bad fandom made characters (red and black). Guess they really want to show he is "bad" or "evil"... No idea why they have to make him look different? Shouldn't he just look like any other Changelings before they got converted? Well, this is hopefully something addressed by the episode...

SigmasonicX · Sep 2, 2017

draetenth said:
IIRC Pharynx is Thorax's brother, not friend as I believe my tv guide says - though I'm not able to confirm that right now. This would make sense if Changelings are like most insects with Chrysalis as the queen/mother of the Changelings). Spoilers I guess (it's from a preview clip):

It's weird, I fully intended to write "brother", like I looked at the synopsis in the OP and everything to double check. But I guess I was thinking, "Don't write friend," and thus wrote friend.

On another note, I just realized, the EQG Summertime Shorts were only supposed to go through August, but now that the month is over, they still haven't aired all the shorts. There's at least one Pinkie song that appeared in the commercials that's absent. Weird.

Today's episode is
17. To Change a Changeling
Starlight Glimmer and Trixie try to get Thorax's brother Pharynx to accept the new way by sharing love and transforming so he doesn't undermine Thorax's leadership, and that the hive will ultimately accept him.

DrForester · Sep 2, 2017

Pharynx sounds like Strong Bad.

draetenth · Sep 2, 2017

Speaking of the episode... I really enjoyed this one. I found the interactions to be pretty amusing (Starlight + Trixie, Thorax calling out the two for their actions..., and the Changeling reactions were pretty good imo). Really, there were too many interactions to really choose one.

I liked the whole feeling forum (so what, they are hippie changelings now?). Don't know what, but the soup changeling at the forum made me chuckle).

So, it looks like Pharynx looks more like Thorax than the other Changelings now. IIRC he has two "antlers" like Thorax, but he seems to lack the center horn.

The only thing is that I don't really see the point was in having Pharynx look different than all other changelings (uh pre change that is). Even Thorax looked the same...

That and the young Changelings looked almost as bad as the baby cakes to me...

I also wonder how changing works. Young Pharynx was able to transform into a pretty large form... He is the only other changeling we've seen other than Thorax turn into an inanimate object, I wonder if that's something all Changelings can do or just those two?

ShinySylvee · Sep 2, 2017

Had to see it in bits and pieces so that definitely had an impact on my experience. It was written by Kevin Lappin who previously did Honest Apple which I don't remember very well. The interactions were definitely really strong here. As pre usual seeing Trixie and Starlight play off each other was a delight. One concern is that going forward I feel like Trixie runs the risk of becoming one-note. Her behavior in this episode works because the writing is funny but I can imagine Trixie becoming insufferable when the writing doesn't back it up. As for the actual story was a bit iffy for me for a couple reasons though. Despite having a perspective that I feel would be useful Starlight and Trixie don't feel like they contribute much to the solution. Everything works out in the end but it comes off as Starlight being lucky rather then it being because of anything she actually did. What if Pharanx stopped the monster by himself and the rest of the hive decided that he was a better leader then Thorax because he could actually protect them? There was a lot of stuff that she screwed up in the episode and I feel like it wasn't addressed very well. I'm fine with her doing stupid stuff as long as she's learning from it but I didn't feel like that was the case here.

Phalanx was pretty cool. And I liked Thorax a lot here too. Overall it was pretty fun despite a couple nitpicks I had.

SigmasonicX · Sep 2, 2017

To Change a Changeling
This episode was alright. The background changeling voices are pretty annoying, and they talked a lot, which brought down the episode a lot for me.

It was a bit disappointing that the entire renegade changeling thing was resolved off screen, besides Pharynx.

With the premise, the scenes of changelings being uncomfortable around Pharynx, and especially the feelings forum, I was worried the story would take a badly advised political direction and speak out against safe spaces or something. Thankfully, the episode didn't really do that, and instead was about both how being peaceful doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to defend yourself, and how to take into consideration people who feel left out.

Pharynx did change in the end after all, but I'm glad he remained black--using a design that they probably should have used for Thorax and the other changelings in the first place, even if I am mostly alright with their current looks. Interesting how he basically became a Luna to Thorax's Celestia. I thought it was odd before how he seemed to have much stronger transformation powers than any other normal changeling we've seen, but I wonder if that's because he was destined to be a changeling-alicorn. I wonder how that fan artist who does those changeling comics will deal with this, considering his character's constant complaining about the colors.

Starlight and Trixie were alright here. I feel they didn't really do much to stand out, and mainly just progressed the story. I did like when they first tried to bond with Pharynx and talked about their pasts. And we see that Starlight truly has integrated herself into the main cast: she's now nerfed enough to be completely ineffective against a random monster!

What was with the music during the ending credits? Why a random vocal song? If it wasn't something added by the uploader, maybe it was a song planned for this episode that they had to cut.

So, like Thorax's introduction episode, it was alright, but it could have been much better with some work, and fewer annoying voices.

Trigonometrize. · Sep 2, 2017

I didn't really care for the overall story — I thought the resolution could've been something more like they find a place for Pharynx and his destructive tendencies — but Trixie's attitude made up for it.

Starlight was way too much of a fuck up in this episode. Pharynx of all people is too far gone? Jesus Starlight, if you and Discord can be saved you should probably be more critical of your capability to turn him good than his capacity to be good.

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