Make Your Mark: Winter Wishday

This week the latest 45 minute long advertisement for brushable horse toys (and horse toy accessories) was released on Netflix. Thanks to fandom, I was able to watch it too. This episode is in "chapter 3". It looks like this will turn out to be the only episode in "chapter 3".

Before today, I had gathered from the clips that I'd seen that this Winter Wishday is a holiday celebrated by all three pony tribes, on the same day but not in the same way or necessarily with the same name. I'd gleaned that the mane five all have engagements that day, except for Sunny, who has no family and so tries to rope in everypony else into some group activity in Maretime Bay. Instead, the mane five do the divorced parents thing, were they all try to go together to four different social events in three different pony settlements. Ergo, I figured that either this tale is going to be about being everywhere and yet seeing nothing, or about how the Mane Five bunch got so taken by this ethnic whirlwind tour that they all decided to study sociology when they grew up. Could be true.

FiMFiction does not seem to have "a cut" below which I can stash the review part, but since the software has probably automatically "cut" the text after my first or second paragraph anyway, you are only reading this far if you've seen the episode or don't mind spoilers. So, tally ho! Onward! Hi Ho Silver and away!

What really happened in Winter Wishday: Well, yeah, the mane five, plus the gremlin, go to four different events and do make it back to the Brighthouse to watch a fireball in the sky. There was no appearance by Queenie Meanie or her henchpony, Posey did not suffer some snow related mishap but she did show up in Zephyr Heights to watch the royal concert, and earth ponies seem to be able to grow plastic ornaments as well as they grow plants. The Spaceballs Marestream flying Winnebago last seen in ep. 36 of Tell Your Tale gets a slightly different origin story. To go everywhere and glimpse everything, the rusting, collapsing hulk of the trolley, with "wings" screwed on and never flown, is seriously presented as the means to travel quickly to everywhere and back in something like a 10 hour day. Then the lantern transforms junk-heap into spacecraft and everypony just hops aboard. Hitch hoof-taps the touch-screen interface and the thing just powers up and lifts off. Nopony panics. Just another pega-tech snowy day in Maretime Bay, where it never snows. Ever. So, after flying for all of five seconds and landing again, everypony is eager to risk certain peril in a flying toaster that nopony has ever flown. Ever. Sheriff Doofus wants to see a pilot's license and Dumpster Pony makes two on the spot out of craft paper. I guess it's not counterfeit or fraud if you make your own fish license for your pet halibut, named Erik for an occupation that did not exist the mare at the license bureau was all out. I chose him out of thousands. The others were all too flat. About that snow. Pegasus P.I. noticed it was snowing. Pegasus P.I. notices things. The snow was kind of hard to miss, but Pegasus P.I. noticed it. And then she cracked the case! Grandma Doofus, who's more of a cookie-cutter Grandma Smart Cookie, and who must live really far away, really, had a book about unicorns and a wishing tree: Fantastical Flurrytales of Wishyhoof. Pegasus P.I. was sharp! She read the book, all four pages of it! And thunk thinky thoughts. Now, why hadn't that book been burned? Was it unicorn mind control? Probably. Anyway, it kept on snowing and eventually everypony finds out that unicorns can do more than levitate stuff and make some crystals glow. They can control the weather. If I was a pegasus, I'd be pissed! Next hurricane, don't blame climate change, just whack a unicorn on the pointy bit. Problem solved!

OK, what else happened? Oh yeah, the flying toy order now! has six spots to stand in in the driver compartment. No seat belts or crash safety features anywhere. I think the sixth spot is for Misty Emohorse. That Henchpony is going to buck Queen Meanie in the south end and high-tail it to the brighthouse, just you wait. That way there will be a balance of power: two unicorns, two earth ponies and two pegasusses. Except Sheriff Doofus is going to have to do the gender switcheroo and move to the brighthouse instead of sleeping on the filing cabinets in the jailhouse. The gremlin can do the necessary surgery, snippity snip. Or the crab. So many options. Then there can be harmony. Or in this case, "unity". Sisterly unity! Not the other kind. Moving on.

So, the Wishing Tree of Bridlewood is big, grey barked and has five pointed palmately compound leaves, like on a horse chestnut or cannabis, which might explain a lot about G5 unicorns. Izzy's real home, the "Villa Izzy" in Bridlewood, is still there, all the lights are on and there's a snowpony by the front door, even though Izzy doesn't live there. So many things in Gen 5 just don't make a lick of sense.

At the Zephyr Heights concert, the princesses show that they are good at something, which is singing along with a Whoville chorus until the entire audience has fallen asleep.

Well, the rainbow magic lantern thing digs the flying Hasbro toy out of a snowdrift, they make a stop in Bridlewood to adjust the thermostat on the unicorns, and then they ascend to the highest tower in the brighthouse to stare at the countdown on The Alicorn Defender (of pony nutrition)'s hoofheld smartphone, and nearly miss the fireball slowly drifting across the sky. Then the Voice of Fire rainbow beam projects five bat signals on the sky (the cutie marks of each of the mane five). For no reason. Because it can. There was a sixth bat signal, but it was invisible 'cause Misty Emopony has no cutie mark. And anyway, she wasn't invited. So there. 8^p

Alphabittle Blossumforth still crouches like he's taking a wiz and ponies still have the congenital deformity in their hooves (frogs rotated 180 degrees), perhaps to delicately pinch and hold small objects. It's hilarious to slow down the playback speed and give everypony a deep guttural growl of a voice. Especially when they're talking too fast saying uncommon phrases, like "fantastical flurrytales of wishyhoof". Wha? Wha wazzat? What did she say again?! *rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind...*

Umph. Was it worth watching? Yeah, sure. Did it save Gen 5 from the hot mess it has made of lore and in-universe consequential actions? No. Not really.