happy capitalism day · 7:40pm Jul 4th, 2015

You know it's a Badgerpony blog post when his filthy anthro fetish shines through once again and poisons your eyes with perversions of nature.

I hope you all have a lovely fourth, and I hope you live in an awesome state like Montana or Indiana who lets you enjoy awesome fireworks instead of the weak shit we have here in Illinois. I wanted to have one of those big sparkler tanks this year, that shit was the bomb when I was a kid.

Anyways, along with freedumb, we got a new episode today! And it was a really strong one! So let's forget about silly ol' America and talk about that instead, because it's infinitely more interesting!

Pictured: Moondancer's factually superior manestyle from the comics

So this episode was pretty solid. It's probably one of the better slice-of-life's this season. I really love how the writers seemed to be prompted by one of Twilight's early, establishing character moments from the very first episode, because any show that does a crazy call-back like that is doing something pretty clever. It is mildly headcanon-busting that Twilight Sparkle had friends before Ponyville happened, but it's not a big deal and, to be frank, it was more that she didn't truly appreciate them or really think of them as "friends".

I've seen some criticisms of the episode, however, for blaming Twilight for abandoning her friends when bigger things than that were happening around her. I don't really think that was what happened with that situation. Twilight Sparkle's character has a well-established trait of 1. making mountains out of molehills and 2. Trying to get everything done as cleanly and completely as possible so that a maximum amount of people can be satisfied. Twilight, being the Princess of Magic and Friendship and Books, is a much different pony than she was four seasons ago. Modern Twilight would have explained the situation more thoroughly to her friends so that Moondancer would have understood that she had little choice in the matter, and maybe even ask Moondancer for her consultancy on the friendship bük, for that's what friends do. Twilight's guilt has less to do with the fact that she saved the country over retainibg her (frankly shallow and halfhearted) friendships, and more to do with the fact that she let a good friend of hers down. This is made explicit multiple times throughout the episode, and yet people are still pretty mad that Twilight seems to not understand that she had more important things to do than go to a party.

Thing is, these people don't understand how Twilight operates. Twilight hates disappointing her friends and is notorious for overcompensating for any of her self-percieved shortcomings. She would rather, at this point in her character development, not do something than do something that led to one pony getting the short end of the stick. She wants to please everyone, which is both her blessing and her curse.

And really, besides that, this episode is pretty solid. The flashback to Filly Twilight was adorable, it's great to see Spike not suck ass for an episode (and to see Twilight treating him nicely is always... Nice), the Old Friends From Canterlot all had pretty cute voices to match their pretty cute faces, and that stupid fucking Colgate nickname can finally be laid to rest. Mix in Moondancer being pretty compelling and this episode, overall, is a thumbs up from me. Kinda sad the background stuff was pretty sparing, though...