The support means the world to me, and thanks to your kind contributions I was able to go and visit my boy in Britain. I'll try and mock up a proper recap blog—though I am notoriously terrible at doing those, I don't think I've ever managed a proper recap blog for any of the various conventions I've gone to over the years. I guess there wasThe Great Divide [SPOILERS] · 12:36am Nov 15th, 2015
Ma Hooffield: Truce?
Big Daddy McColt: Truce.
[the two ponies spit on their hooves and slam them together]
Fluttershy: Hurray! Finally, some progress! This is so great, Twilight!
[Twilight stares at the two hooves dripping spittle, her eye twitching]
Fluttershy: ...Twilight?
Twilight: [under her breath] There's no such thing as too much Purell...
Sorry that I haven't been on top of reviews for the past two weeks. A lot of real life shit's been slamming me and I haven't had a crazy amount of time for fanfiction or fimfiction related things.
Moving along, this episode brings us something we don't have a ton of—Fluttershy and Twilight interactions. There are certain pairings in the show that just don't seem to happen very often, most likely just by happenstance, and this is one of them. As someone who really enjoys Twilight (I came to the realization a little while ago that I've written the majority of my stories either about Twilight or containing her in some way, and after some deep thinking I came to the conclusion that I'm drawn to her subconsciously. She was one of my favorites for a while in the beginning (pretty much through 2012), and her episodes make me smile pretty consistently.
But I digress; in this episode, Twilight finally managed to get her butt to glow! We all know this is something she's been lusting after a while, and her butt-glowing buddy is Fluffernutter, so the two get to spend some quality time together. This episode was packed with a lot of rich visuals, some pretty well-aimed jokes, and a solid plot backed by a solid moral.
The Hooffields and McColts are obviously a reference to the Hatfields and McCoys, two families from mid 1800 who lived in the southern US and hated the fuck out of each other to the point of legend. These two fighting families here in the show were obviously a bit more family friendly than the Hatfields and McCoys, and they actually reminded me of two other famous fictional feuds—the feud between Jatizso and Neitiznot in Runescape and between the Gan Jin and the Zhang in Avatar: The Last Airbender. The absurdity of what they did to each other without being overtly cruel, the muddled histories, and the hilarious stubbornness tie into those two feuders (and seem to be common tropes of family friendly feuds).
Fluttershy saved the day, but... not really? She allowed the history to be discovered, but she herself didn't do too much directly. But that was alright for this episode–this was an episode based on understanding and the elimination of ignorance and conservative ideals as opposed to something like The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone where Dash and Pinkie had to directly affect Gilda with their actions to get something to change, or in Made In Manehattan where direct work was taken in order to get things to change.
I feel sort of bad for Twiggles, because she was waiting so long to do something as The Princess of Friendship and the day ended up getting saved by a squirrel. But them's the brakes, Twalot.
The new body types of ponies were really interesting. The mare with the stallion muzzle was a really neat choice, and it works really well for the stockier earth pony build. I want to see that form used more often, she's a qt.
The actual moral of the episode was one that's important not only for children, but for adults to remember, and when MLP pulls out one of these, I love it. If you're trying to achieve the same thing, you shouldn't be fighting others who are working towards that goal. I feel like that's massively applicable to the real world right now in so many ways, and the writers inserted it in a solid and intelligent way while still keeping things whimsical and light.
This was a really good episode that kept me interested the whole way through. Give it a watch.
The Cutie Map pts 1 and 2
Slice of Life
The One where Pinkie Knows
Raiders Of The Lost Mark
Brotherhooves Social
The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone
Make New Friends But Keep Discord
The Hooffields and McCoys
Castle Sweet Castle
Rarity Investigates
Made In Manehattan
Canterlot Boutique
Hearthbreakers
Amending Fences
Appaloosa's Most Wanted
Tanks For The Memories
Party Pooped
Bloom and Gloom
Princess Spike
3545502 well, it was clearly a historically reference to the Hatfields and the McCoys, so I mean