Winter and Fall · 3:36pm May 21st, 2013
One advantage about being home is that I can actually watch episodes of FIM on TV (instead of on my computer) and as luck would have it, I got to watch some from season 1 including Winter Wrap Up, one of my favorite episodes. The strengths of Winter Wrap Up are pretty easy to explain; it’s got probably the best song of the show (not an aspect of the show I’d normally praise), some of the better comedy bits (Twilight making a nest, some of Spike’s dialogue (“that nest needs to be condemned”)), and a the story being about something I think everyone can relate to: trying to fit in and finding your place and something your good at (Twilight getting teary-eyed is one the few times in the show it gets me on a more emotional level; there’s always times in your life where you feel well, useless). For me, it’s probably my favorite Twilight episode, showing her as incompetent but not stupid or irrational (I’m looking at you Lesson Zero).
My problems with Winter Wrap-Up are due to structure and plot. On the character side of things, it’s about Twilight trying to help in whatever way she can (which is good), and then it’s also about the fact the town is bad about being organized (a bit of a stretch but not an unreasonable one considering that it makes sense that the ponies would be looking only at the task their assigned to and not the overall picture) and that keeps them behind schedule. The second one doesn’t really get introduced until after the second commercial break (this is also causes a different experience than the computer when you aren’t doing livestream, those commercials are really annoying, but you can all attempt to go over what just happened between breaks) except perhaps when the mayor says they need do things better than last year and Fluttershy says there are so many animals she needs to wake up. It would have been better if it were brought up earlier.
My other problem isn’t so much that part of the plot has a low-stakes hurdle (well, okay the possibility of failing at cleaning up winter is high-stakes, but the problem of the week here is the fact they’re always late, which is low-stakes compared to say the previous episode (Swarm of the Century) with the parasprites), but that it is one caused probably as much as sticking to the customary earth pony way of cleaning up winter as it is being unorganized (I am not a very traditional person, so you can take what I say as just my own bias getting the better of me). There’s not a hint on how exactly magic is used to change the seasons in Canterlot, but in any case, if getting done on time was a big concern, I think they should be open to different ways of cleaning up winter that might go against convention. It’s hard for me to get too invested in a story when the conflict seems to have a simple solution (“work smarter, not harder”) that isn’t considered because of inflexibility such as Applejack’s (those are fine character traits to have in a fictional character, but let’s face it, being unwilling to adapt is one of the most tiresome of traits. Perhaps it’s because we’re all really stubborn ourselves that we feel contempt for people who are more or equally so; we don’t like our egos challenged). To put it this way, if Twilight’s magic actually did help clean up winter faster, and not screw things up, Applejack would look like an ass if she started to chastise Twilight (I know we shouldn't play "what if this happened" when it comes to critiquing .
One thing I noticed about many of the early season 1 episodes is how loose they are, being made more of set pieces than actual progressing parts. Pretty much everything between the song and Twilight going to help Applejack could be rearranged without changing anything (a fact enhanced by the clear imitation of Bambi (a film made of set pieces, but adds many things such as the aging of the characters that it doesn’t become a problem) when Twilight struggles to skate on ice). Winter Wrap-Up in many ways was the last one that followed such a format, where a character would meet with all (or most) the other characters of the show, try to solve the problem of the week, and fail. Off the top of my head, only Cutie Mark Chronicles and Luna Eclipsed would follow a similar format after this episode (someone will probably correct me on this). Not a bad thing that moved away from this, I think it allowed them to move towards episode that had better plots and were less repetitive.
And I would say that Winter Wrap Up was the best episode I’ve seen since returning home, if it wasn’t for catching Fall Weather Friends yesterday. That episode is probably my favorite season 1 episode and it contains a lot of pony goodness: a healthy dose of slapstick (eat hay bale Rainbow), one of the more solid storylines, and of course, a lot of really great character moments, both in individual ones and relationship ones. The only problems I have with FWF are minor compared to the most other episodes even Winter Wrap-up. Okay, the first one isn’t really minor: I find Pinkie to be annoying as an announcer. There’s nothing funny she said during the whole running of the leaves and instead I wished Andrea Libman’s mouth was shut during the duration of the episode. Oh, and Dash's cheating at the end of the tug of war was so blatantly obvious, I'm surprised more didn't call her out on it(minor but mood breaking). The other issue I have that's minor but still important; it deals with the spatial aspect of the race. Anyone who has seen a chase sequence before (and if you’ve seen as many cartoons as I have, well you’ve seen the majority of them; about sixty percent of all golden age cartoons are chases) knows that there is always one character ahead of the other and the distance between the two is often determined by the time it takes for the second character to pass a landmark (for example, a tree or a rock) that the first character already did. The Running of the Leaves suffers because that aspect always seems to be in flux. Twilight isn’t moving at anything more than a trot (the second slowest term to describe a horse’s speed) while everyone else is galloping (the fastest term) and yet the distance between the two is so close, it never adds up. Hence, why I get bother by the idea of Twilight getting what place she got (I remember being shocked when I first watched the episode that Twilight snagged fifth place; I already figured out Applejack and Rainbow would get last (they had to other the message the episode was trying to make wouldn’t have any force to it), but I really expected Twilight to get first just to surprise the kids, I was left in a five minute comatose state when the actual results came in). The same problems occurs with the distance between AJ/RD and the other runners; there’s no sense where everyone is in relationship to each other except that one is ahead of the other.
By comparison, as Mark Mayerson points out, the chase sequence with Monstro the whale in Pinocchio doesn’t have this problem despite the lack of true landmarks and faster action. I never end up confused about where the characters are in relationship to each other, all of which makes the whole sequence that more terrifying. It’s stuff like this that make the early Disney movies such treats to watch. It’s also these spatial aspect that make films were worth watching. You can say a lot about a character by the distance between him/her/it and another character or the distribution of their stuff around their home. I don’t think chase sequences work as well in literature (I’m currently working my way through the book with one of the most famous of all chases pieces and curious to see how it’s handled) or the distance between two characters when they talk, they never can really capture that ability to describe space (visual yes, but rarely if ever spatial). I’ll admit that I do still consider Moonspire Run (a race story) to be one of my favorite pony fanficts, that was less about the distance between Dash and Spitfire than how Dash was going to figure her way through the obstacles.
I’ll write a little more episodes that catch my eyes by this weekend. I’m particularly curious to how I’ll react to both Suited for Success and Sonic Rainboom, this time. They've never been ones I've felt much enthusiasm for, but that's why I want to see them again.
Edited By by Bandbrony
To get a feel for Edited By, let me re-post part from it:
“As if it wasn't enough that Twilight couldn't write a single sentence of prose to save her life, the Archives had requested an entire documentation on the subject, written to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible without turning into an adjectively sloppy mess of modern literature that they had taken to looking down upon with such fervent disdain. Her faith in herself had dipped to an all time low with each passing moment. Her parchment remained blank even as her undying appreciation for novelists and writers soared, and the poor, innocent desk suffered the tortuous consequences of her supposed inadequacy to a steady, but for the most part, upbeat tempo.”
That pretty much describes the prose and the conflict in one simple paragraph. Bandbrony opted for a more advanced style of writing (not really elaborate or complex, but certainly one that couldn’t be described as plain or simple) through his choice of words. At the same time, not only is it possible to figure out words that we don’t know (there was a paragraph were the word ‘mewl’ showed up and my first instinct was to read on and skip the dictionary, because it was presented in a way for me to figure it out its meaning), but also matches the premise of Twilight trying to figure out how to write an essay. I'm not a much of a grammarian In addition, the word choice is equally evocative and leads to some very amusing moments (I giggled when the narration described Twilight beating her head against the desk as a “fanatic percussion solo”). It’s rare to come across a fanfict with where the actual writing is half the fun (or at least a quarter of it), but that’s certainly true here.
Besides the prose, other parts of the piece shine brightly. Twilight’s struggle to figure out how to make her writing “aesthetically pleasing” is something that any writer can relate to (well any one who cares about how their telling their story). I do some writing in my spare time, and I’ve always find my prose to be inadequate and ask myself “how the heck do others do it”. It’s just Spike and Twilight here, and both of them are well-characterized, capturing both their personalities (although maybe given them too advanced a vocabulary, more so for Spike, I can’t really imagine him using anything that counts as a two-dollar word), and, just as importantly, their relationship with each other. This is very a much the brother-sister relationship
The biggest problem that I had is that once you get past the all that, you realize that there isn’t a lot to this piece. Bandbrony wraps up his story quickly, and not necessarily in the most satisfying way (I don’t think anything is lost when I say that all it takes is a talk and a read over (we wisely don’t hear him read aloud) from Spike to calm Twilight down and to get to her regain her confidence and get back to the task at hand). I have little reason to doubt this is because it would difficult to stretch this the prose style out for too long (I actually felt it was petering out towards the end, and more basic words were being used), besides the lack things that could be done without stretching things out. But it doesn’t change the fact that the ending, just happens, giving it a rather anticlimactic feel. And while the piece is amusing and engaging for the most part, I’m not sure I think it’s exciting. At best, the stakes are remarkably low (as is typical of Twilight, she’s basically making a mountain out of a molehill) and I never found myself worrying what would happen if Spike couldn’t help Twilight (a problem for a work fiction).
If you can’t get see yourself enjoying either the prose, reading a character remind you how difficult writing is, or some nice character bits, then this might not be for you. But even then, I would still suggest trying to read this. It’s not very long, and much of what was done well is praiseworthy. Kudos to Bandbrony for writing something this good.
Oddly enough, Winter Wrap-Up and Fall Weather Friends are my third- and second-favorite episodes. Given how frequently we seem to disagree about fanfiction, I wouldn't have expected us to be on the same page there.
...Of course, my favorite episode is still May the Best Pet Win, and I seem to recall you being less than enamored with that one. And so the status quo reasserts itself, I suppose.
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If by "less than enamored" you mean not a favorite, than you are correct. If you mean it as in "not liking it," than you are not. I do like "May the Best Pet Win," although I'm not big on the song (there we disagree), and quite frankly, I find the ending to be annoyingly predictable (the problem isn't so much that you know how it's going to end, so much it is that you know how it's going to end based on knowing what the moral of the week is by the time you see Tank).
But it does make me laugh (actually I think the one of the more amusing parts is that someone like Dash would actually consider having a butterfly as a pet), and contain quite a few great Dash moments.
Although, it does have some errors that bother me.
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I don't know, with a few exceptions, we tend to agree on episodes quite a bit. Which I guess, does make the fact that
you end being so wrongwe disagree so often on fanfiction that much more peculiar.