MLP Marathon Bonanza S7 E1-3 · 6:36pm Dec 2nd, 2017
All right, it’s the last season until I get to The Movie. I’ve been hearing good things about this season, so I’m quite excited. In fact, I’m even more excited because I’ve just seen Trixie in the Netflix screenshot for the first two episodes. This season is starting off good.
Celestial Advice
This was an all around really strong episode. I quite like that Discord, while not being a villain anymore, is still Discord and he kinda likes messing with others. It’s really believable to me that he’d fuck with Twilight just for laughs, but this episode really shines when Twilight goes to Celestia for help. Discord sets up the shot, but Celestia knocks it home. Before I get into the meat of the episode, I just want to mention briefly that I really liked Discord in this episode. He’s funny, kinda hammy, and not overly mean. He manipulates Twilight into freaking out about what to do with Starlight, but it’s not unreasonable and it’s something that would have come up eventually anyway, so it just makes for a good episode that it happens right after Starlight and friends rescued the others from the changeling hive.
There was one beautiful moment where I thought we were going to get Starlight, Discord, Trixie, and Thorax as a regular thing
I can sort of imagine some people not liking the way Celestia acts at first in this episode, by not really helping Twilight any when she starts to really go crazy worrying about Starlight, but I think it’s not only in her character to do that, but necessary to the story. Celestia, as she says in the episode, knows what Twilight is going through, and she knows that it’s not going to help her or solve her problem if she just tells Twilight what to do. Twilight has to work through all her anxiety and fears, not necessarily on her own, but she needs to find her own solution. She eventually comes to the conclusion that she has nothing left to teach Starlight and so she’ll have to send her away so she can continue to grow, just as she did when Celestia sent her to Ponyville. I think this is actually a really nice and interesting way to sort of bookend Starlight’s character. Of course, they flip that around and Starlight says she’s not ready to leave yet, and that’s fine as far as I’m concerned.
When Starlight says, “Yo, Ember!” in that deep voice, I thought to myself, “It’s gonna be so amazing if they just, like, fucking chest bump like bros.” AND THEN IT HAPPENED.
All in all, I think this is a fairly strong episode to start the season off on. We have classic Twilight anxiety about planning, and we get to see Starlight’s character a bit more and see that she’s not ready to leave her friends yet. We get some cool fantasy spell that Twilight casts, which is both cool from an ideas perspective and from the perspective of how it’s used in the episode. I think Twilight’s fears about Starlight growing too powerful, or being endangered is reasonable, and furthermore I think it’s important that she faces those fears and realizes she needs to let Starlight make her own choices. So yeah, good episode, good moral, and some good jokes as well.
All Bottled Up
It’s great to see an episode mainly focused on Starlight and Trixie’s friendship and dealing with their issues. The episode itself isn’t amazing, it’s pretty good though, but it’s the characters that make it rise above a fairly simple story. So, the basic premise is that Starlight hides her anger so she doesn’t lose Trixie as a friend. It’s a really basic story, but when you add into it Starlight’s history of manipulating emotions with magic, it takes on a little bit more meaning. Also, I think the moral of this episode is one that Starlight, and Trixie, would’ve needed to learn at some point anyway, because this isn’t the first time it’s been shown that Trixie kinda gets on Starlight’s nerves. In fact, Trixie has a lot of similar character traits to some of Twilight’s friends, and Twilight had to deal with them all individually, while Starlight gets a big sack of Trixie dumped on her all at once.
Trixe does have great hair. I mean, she’s not wrong about that.
One of the things I really liked about this episode was the contrast between Twilight and her friends, and Starlight and Trixie. While Twilight and co. are solving all these puzzles and working together as a team, Starlight and Trixie are just falling to pieces. I think my favorite side of Trixie is the side where she’s an adorable idiot. She’s ambitious, passionate, and driven, but not very talented, so she works as a great foil for Starlight who is talented and can teach her. The more I see of these two, the more I’m sold on their friendship. Of course I was always going to be into it, because it features Trixie, but it feels a like a genuine and believable friendship that I am looking forward to seeing grow. Also, I hope there’s more interaction between these two and Discord. That would be amusing.
I like that this song is both a good song, and kind of a parody of MLP songs. When Starlight jokes that they’ll sing a song, and then they do, it’s kinda great.
A Flurry of Emotions
I’m not too excited about this episode. Baby Cakes is one of my least favorite episodes because it features two aggravating babies, so I’m not looking forward to an episode about one even more aggravating super-powerful baby.
Y’know, in retrospect, I might not dislike the Baby Cakes episode that much. I should go back and watch it again and see if I dislike it as much as this episode. Okay, I should clarify. I don’t hate this episode necessarily, but I’m really not a fan. Flurry Heart is cute… I guess? I don’t know. I find her absolutely unbearable, but maybe I just don’t like babies in general. At least with the Cake twins they’re just regular ass babies and they do magic and fly and shit, but at a very limited level. Flurry Heart seems to have limitless power and can teleport, which we just established in the previous episode is a very advanced spell. I don’t know, man. Just… just fuck all this shit.
Is it just me, or are her wings massive proportionally speaking?
Like I said before, I don’t really hate this episode, but I don’t like it either. Twilight at least feels believably rushed and uncoordinated. I can believe that she’d try her hardest to be the best aunt ever, and that it would cause problems, but Flurry Heart just gets on my nerves. At least Spike is pretty great in this episode. It’s actually a stand out episode for him in general. He’s the mature one keeping track of everything, and I like that he reads the dragon story to the ponies in the hospital at the end. That’s really cute and fun. I’d love to see an episode about Spike acting as an older brother for some kids since he’s presumably not much older than any of them. That would be a kinda fun topic, I think. In any case, I suppose the moral of this episode is fuck babies. They’re just a big mess.
Yeah, A Flurry of Emotions isn't a great episode, but I wouldn't call it bad either. It does have some charming moments sprinkled throughout, and Spike's character provided a great contrast to Twilight's in the scenario, but it's definitely one of the weaker episodes of Season 7.
However, I will say that I loved Celestial Advice and All Bottled Up. While neither of them are perfect, they're both highly entertaining thanks to the different character interactions, specifically the aforementioned Twilight, Discord, and Celestia in Celestial Advice and the chemistry between Starlight and Trixie in All Bottled Up.
–alexmagent, 2017
Yeah, Flurry's kind of infamous for her disproportionate anatomical accessories. (Her horn's about as big as Twilight's!)
Again, Trixie and Starlight are my favorite parts of the show nowadays and I love how their personalities work with and against each other. Unlike the rest of the cast, who were all good ponies to begin with and generally likable and friendly from the start, these two have a lot of rough edges to work against. They may be learning the same lessons as the rest of the cast went through already, but their attitudes make it fresh and fun to watch. They do learn, but from a different angle, which speaks well of the writers that they can still make things interesting even after so many seasons.
Not sure if it's good or bad that Celestial Advice had more characterization for Celestia than the last six seasons!
4740324
Yeah, like you say, I think that even though Trixie and Starlight are learning the same or similar lessons as Twilight and her friends did, they're learning them in a different way. It keeps the show interesting and fun.
4740326
I don't know if it's necessarily good or bad. Celestia's character was never really the point of the story. I think keeping her relatively mysterious makes her more interesting.
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Twilight's imagined version of Starlight is so mean.
Is All Bottled Up the episode with Trixie and the teacups? I seem to remember that comes up again later in the season with her.
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Doin' the spellllll~
Top tier horse
4740396
Yes, it's that episode. I hope it come up again. That'll be a nice call back joke, like in the episode after Trixie turns everything into teacups, there's a shot of Spike washing a pile of teacup. That's classic set up and payoff.
4740403
Trixie has always been top tier horse. Actually, she's in a tier of her own. She's Trixie-tier.
I knew as soon as I read Twilight describing herself as "B.A.E." that the fandom was going to pick up on it. In fact, I think I'm a little surprised that there are only 29 images on Derpibooru tagged "twilight is bae".
4740480
Not like that, but yes the teacups get a callback later in the season.