Episode Discussion » S7E14 - Fame and Misfortune · 1:32pm Aug 12th, 2017
Synopsis
Twilight Sparkle’s publishing of the friendship journal has unintended consequences when ponies start to argue over who wrote the best lessons.
Synopsis
Twilight Sparkle’s publishing of the friendship journal has unintended consequences when ponies start to argue over who wrote the best lessons.
Also, Larson's back everyone!
4631422
Excellent.
4631422
Yes! I'm so glad to hear that. I know a lot of people complain about him but I find his episodes very enjoyable.
Awesome to see the show coming back today!
Shit, the show is becoming self aware. RUN!
New episode?
Why do I know this will turn out more nostalgic than it should be?
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REALLY? My favourite writer returned? AND HE DID SOMETHING META? I don't know if you've realised it yet, but Larson is the god of writing meta. I'M HYPED.
Wait, is that episode today?
Or: "How Twilight brought the waifu war to equestria"
Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those cheesy clip shows?
Well, time to laugh at the writers laughing at us...again.
"Friendship isn't always easy, but there's no doubt it's worth fighting for!"
Callback count: 1
Whohoo, the streams are empty. This episode really is going out really quietly...
Starlight: What's that?
Twilight: It's this plot device that we used for a season. Kind of like the letters I wrote for a season, then everyone wrote for the following two seasons, and the map, which we don't really use at all anymore, and...wait...how long have you been here again?
Pinkie: *breathes*
Ponyville:
media.giphy.com/media/wWue0rCDOphOE/200.gif
"Twilight was better before she got wings!"
-- JawJoe ponified
That ep had its ups and downs.
So...nothing was solved at the end...ok then
The old Discord would be proud of Twilight for causing such disharmony.
10/10 ep, 10/10 lesson.
This episode was meta, but not in the good kind of way like "Slice of Life" or "Stranger Than Fanfiction".
This episode in a nutshell.
From: MLP
To: The Fans
"Everybody is flawed! We get it! Shut the fuck up and enjoy the show!"
Also, I imagined Canterlot's newspaper would be called the Tribune, not the Chronicle. I've had to retcon one of my stories to fit it.
Holy guacamole, maximum metahumour in this one. Even the song failed to deus ex machina the crowd into submission!
4631497 They're learning to deal with having super fans and critics, so maybe not a total loss.
Hey look. They ponified the fandom. lol
And one would think the world would have known about the Mane Six well before this episode.
Excellent episode, literally a slap to the fandom.
I just saw this episode and it just give an idea for a new villain!
Slice of Life was a love letter to the fandom.
This episode was a restraining order.
This episode was freaking hilarious! Leave it to M.A. Larson to write another episode satirising the brony fandom.
4631422 This will probably be his last episode since he said in an interview that he has no plans to return to the show due to how much it's changed.
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4631502 Why do you say that? I thought this episode was extremely funny.
10/10 Also a a greeting to BronyCon.
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Ikr! Every time one of the ponies opened their mouths I couldn't believe how much they sounded like bronies!
4631552 Which is why I found this episode so hilarious!
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But rarity was still being boycotted and ponies were still trying to join applejack's family
Are we really that bad? I mean I allways loved the show the way it was despite the flaws. in fact i love it more for its flaws, they just make it better.
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Same here! Especially the part where the ponies complained about Fluttershy learning the same lessons over and over again. Tbh Fluttershy's lessons revolve around different types/ subjects is shyness. But I may be a bit biased Fluttershy is my fav of the mane 6.
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Somehow I knew that it would end that way.
I think 4631537 summed this up in the best way possible. This was meta to the extreme, and I'm pretty sure I missed a minute or two because I found a YT version less than a half-hour after the episode aired. Guess I'll need to watch it on DM later.
Pretty sure my favorite 'complaint' was "Twilight was better before she got wings!" solely for the fact that that's the one I've heard the most.
But I'm actually very surprised that none of them mentioned Applejack's "I didn't learn anything! I was right all along!" entry. Oh well.Oh right, that was a letter. Mah bad.Still found this one massively amusing.
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as individuals?
No, we are not that terrible, as you can control your own behavior.
As a whole fandom?
We are WAY worse than what was portrayed in the episode.
Worst episode ever.
4631562
That AJ bit was a letter, not in the journal. :P
I wrote up a bit more on my blog page, but basically we had 3 threads here, 2 of them meta. The one pointed out most is the fandom (Fluttershy and I think Rarity's experiences, some of the random comments), and wrt Flutters' (which fans also apply to RD, actually), I've been saying basically their response for years... Of course, realism does not equate to drama, but in an episodic show I think it works personally.
The other two were the business model ("It wasn't meant for marketing!"... essentially Twilight's thread) and the just plain silly (RD, AJ, and Pinkie's threads). AJ being too eager to please doesn't come up all that much now I think about it, so it didn't seem like a riff here, just something silly they did where she couldn't turn down anyone. Drawing questions in that Granny Smith is the head of the family, but I digress. I like to think Granny told everyone to git once AJ was out of earshot.
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It's weird that spike didn't even exist in this ep
Okay, while I wasn't able to watch this when it aired, I was able to record it to watch it later, which I'm doing right now.
This episode is very entertaining. I'll break down each scene that really caught my attention.
1. You know ever since Twilight became a princess, she never really had that status of being a princess, to a extent, I mean when compared to Princess Celestia. I think this is the third episode that sets in the fact that she is like on a celebrity status. The other two episodes being Princess Spike and Canterlot Boutique (the princess dress), although I could be wrong, please correct me if I am.
2. It was hilarious that the ponies called Fluttershy out on learning the same thing more than once. The comedy in this comes from the fact that many fans have stated this about Fluttershy's character.
3. I'm curious to know what Starlight did to those snooty ponies in front of that restaurant that made Rarity cry.
4. WHERE IS SPIKE!?!?!?!?!? I know he's not part of the episode, but he is a main character who lives with Twilight. Not showing Spike is like having an episode with Luna in Canterlot Castle and not showing Celestia.
5. Now that I think about it, this episode was mostly poking fun at fans. Lets admit it, at least one or two of these things we have read or thought about in mlp.
6. When Starlight said that she had an idea, the first thing that came to my mind was her using time travel to go back in time and stopping Twilight from releasing copies of their journal, and so the moral of the story would be, "some things the world just isn't ready for".
7. When Rarity was in her dimly lit shop, it looked like a horror scene was about to take place and it doesn't help that when she turned around her face was contorted.
8. The Apples are the most hospitable ponies in all of Equestria, especially to strangers who wants to join the family. Also, the first thing that came to my mind when Applejack said that those other ponies wanted to join the family, I was thinking of marriage.
All in all, I enjoyed this episode.
On a side note, the mane 6 have saved the world several times, even stopping a threat as big as Discord or a more recent threat that really included all of Equestria, Tirek. All of this praise they're getting, shouldn't this have come way before this? And it seems that they are getting the type of fame that Spike gets at the Crystal Empire.
Hmm ok question... HOW does one go to LEGALLY see this outside NA? I don't mind paying a subscription or anything... Because the hunt online is getting quite annoying and definitely would prefer avoiding to have to wait for the Disc...
I almost flipped my shit when they started that song near the end. Why? Why the heck? Way to ruin a perfectly good episode with a needless song. It's like the "Times They Are a Changeling" all over again with Spike's song that cover right the f*ck out of nowhere, serves no purpose and could've been done much better if it wasn't a song.
But the rest of the episode was really good I think. So muck 4th wall breaking and self-awareness.