A Canterlot Wedding: The Rant

Okay, I've bottled up my excitement over the awesome so far, but I need to let it out now.

I was at a brony meetup in Boston last night. Fulton Hall at Boston College. It was a celebration of the royal wedding, and a number of us suited up. Not only did the episode completely rock, but everything else that happened was made up of epic. I got pictures of all the awesome pony swag, all the awesome prizes from the raffle (I won a Target-exclusive Fluttershy, which I ended up giving to my friend who went with me), and all the awesome chalkboard vandalism that went down. Including traced images of Princess Cadance and Twilight Sparkle in her best-mare garb, and said friend's awesome freehand Fluttershy. Not to mention the GLORIOUS karaoke performance of the Flim Flam brothers' song (dance routine and everything). The next big one's a joint meetup with the NYC branch, and if I can get out there, I so will.

But now onto my thoughts of the episode itself, which I will segment below.

I admit, I was a bit nervous about how this would turn out considering the premise was a wedding. Granted, "The Best Night Ever" was a proper bang to finish season 1 off with, but that was happy to be a story of crashing a major social gathering, and I was a little afraid "A Canterlot Wedding" would try to do the same thing but draw it out. Oh, but what we got... I'll gush later.

It seems that when the episodes are of such scale, they always revolve around Twilight. The premieres of both seasons put her ahead of the others, and this two-parter did the same. Of course, that's not a complaint, especially considering the show's kind of painted her as the main main character all through the first season anyway. Plus, I see more of me in Twilight than I do in most of the other ponies, and while she's not my favorite, I have to respect that. The rest got respectable screentime as well; it was pretty refreshing to see Applejack do something after falling into relative disuse after "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000." Plus, I thought Fluttershy felt underused in the previous two episodes, if only by merit of reduced or completely absent dialogue; having her be useful here was... nice. Pinkie Pie was just... fucking beautiful; I love her in general, and this episode was a well-needed chance for her to go full Pinkie on us all. Rarity was fine throughout, but during their fight to reach the Elements of Harmony, I think she was a little underutilized. I have mostly the same feeling about Rainbow Dash throughout most of the episodes BUT that part, since we see less of her preparations for the wedding than we do for the other girls. The sonic rainboom made up for that, though; awesome how she can fire those off at will now. Spike

It bothered me a bit at first that there was no mention of Cadance or Shining Armor beforehand. The latter is her brother, her one true friend growing up (though I wonder if he got swapped out with Spike after she hatched him), and the captain of the Royal Freaking Guard; and Cadance is not only Twi's old foalsitter, but royalty. You'd think that such prominent ponies, both in Equestrian society and in Twilight's life, would've been shown before, regardless of whether or not Hasbro had new toys to sell. But I really did like these characters. Shining Armor was a pretty cool guy (not finishing the meme), definitely a lot more casual in speech and action than I expected somepony of his stature to be. And Cadance (the real one, anyway) was a lot of fun in her own right, so full of life and love that she's hard to hate. the thought did cross my mind, though, that her special talent was one I could've easily seen a Mary Sue in a fanfic having. The two really showed their love for each other, with Shining Armor's protectiveness of (who he thought was) his bride and Cadance's pure determination to reunite with her groom. Plus, the power of love fucking the villains' shit up was awesome, which is especially good since it would've been a tad repetitive to use the Elements of Harmony yet again.

Oh, the villains. I'm glad we even had antagonists for this; it really made sure the stakes were kept high and made everything just so fucking epic. The changelings (new page in the Equestrian species handbook) were pretty awesome. Their general design is a really nice one (I think others have summed it up better than I ever could), and I love how they put the shapeshifting to use. That scene was one of the funniest, most badass segments in the show's history.

Queen Chrysalis is a fantastic villain, probably even my favorite one now. Her design is obviously more intricate than the other changelings', and I adore basically everything about it, from the insect wings to the holes in her legs and horn to the fangs and slit pupils. She's really entertaining to watch, both while maintaining her Cadance disguise and after crashing the wedding and taking out Princess Celestia. And while the means are undoubtedly cruel, her motivations could paint her as a well-intentioned extremist. She was looking out for those who she ruled; the changelings feed on love, so she brought them somewhere loaded with it at a time when it would be in great supply. It was interesting how she's also the first two-parter villain that hadn't been dealt with on at least one occasion by getting stuck in a rock by the Elements. On top of that, I think Chrysalis's presence here had led to a standard being set for the series; the two-part stories have all used major antagonists to tie them together and raise the epicness of each individual episode - and as a result, the specials themselves - far above a standard episode. Plus, badass villain song. I'm shocked it took until now for one to even exist in the show.

Now for the specific moments that I just had a fanboy freakout over, in no particular order:
-Everything Pinkie Pie did, from sneezing confetti to using her party cannon as a weapon.
-Naturally, the sonic rainboom, as well as the implication that Rainbow has now gained relative mastery of the technique.
-The return of Twilight's parents. Not exactly a freakout, but a nice touch regardless.
-Princess Celestia getting off her ass and taking care of business herself. Even if she did get said ass handed to her.
-Lyra and Colgate getting voices and actually playing roles, however minor, in the story.
-A magic beam war. I've wanted one to happen for the longest time.
-Princess Luna coming back and setting the notion of her remaining dormant during the day and waking at night to perform her duties into series canon. Though it'd have been nice for her to attend the wedding itself...
-Vinyl Scratch. Not only her coming back to do what she does best, but also lifting her shades to show off those eyes. Those... magenta/purple eyes. There goes my red-pupil headcanon. And half the fanart.
-Fluttershy adorable-ing everywhere during the War of the Changelings.
-Rarity getting psychotic as she's catching the bouquet.
-Spike with the Shining and Cadance figures. I had Spaceballs flashbacks every time he showed up.
-Twilight got a few songs to herself. Which I really appreciate since her singing VA is stellar. The joint song performed by Cadance and Chrysalis was sweet too.
-The grinning sound I've alternately termed "Fluttersquee" and "THE NOISE" getting utilized by Pinkie. I never get tired of it.

I started making a PMV/clip show set to "Narcissistic Cannibal" by Korn, Skrillex and Kill the Noise for the entire series. There are several reasons I picked that particular song, which I'm not gonna go into here. Problem was... I started it when "Hurricane Fluttershy" was still days from airing, since I'd just gotten Adobe Premiere CS5.5 and chose to jump right on it. I wanted it to encompass all of both seasons, and I did what I could over time, adding clips from the aforementioned episode and "Ponyville Confidential" upon their releases. I realized, though, that I may want to lay off until the wedding, since I knew I'd want to use some clips from it. GOD was I right to wait. Hell, now I'm gonna want to rework some of what I've already done to incorporate the new awesome.

Well. That was long-winded. If anyone reads this, thanks for it.