Not nice situation, but cool stuff (especially about previous gens) · 3:46am Sep 21st, 2015
Okey-dokey. Well, the last week or so has been a mixed bag, especially where health is concerned. I don't like coming on here and listing off the unpleasant things about my life, so I'm not going to. Besides, if I did, it would be all Pollyanna'd, like "I went to the ER and I wasn't having a heart attack after all! YAYZ!" or "My cat isn't showing signs of her kidney disease yet, whoopie!" or "The water company finally admitted that they had been overcharging me and sent me a check for 2,000!" Yeah, that last one really happened. Would you believe that they tried to put it as a credit on my account? At my current water usage, that would have been "free water" for over four years. I said I would take a check, thx, and so I am finally upgrading to a new IPhone.
I promise there is some cool stuff about ponies under the cut!
But the one that is really getting me down is starting the school year again, and it's almost entirely to do with the bureaucratic clusterwhen-someponies-love-each-other-very-much that was the committee I chaired. We're going through a major shift right now, and I'm dreading it, and what's worse, my body dreads it, too. So if I even think about driving back on campus after a while, my body reacts like it was going back to a bomb site, and suddenly I'm getting all kinds of symptoms that are very real. My mom suggested that there might be some kind of biofeedback thing I can do so I don't stress out just at the thought of work. My mom's a genius.
So instead of that, I wanted to talk about something cool! One really nice thing about EQLA was all of the connections with previous generations of Pony. I know some people like to look down on everything that isn't G4. I'm not one of those people. That's not because I think earlier generations are the greatest thing since sliced bread, or because I have some kind of nostalgia for them. I'm actually older than Lauren Faust, so I didn't play with ponies when I was growing up, and I'm not going to pretend that "Sweetie Belle's Gum House Surprise" should have won an Emmy, even if it wasn't straight to DVD.
But I really like knowing where things started, especially if where they start is a little girl's imagination, and most especially if those little girls are a Bonnie Zacherle, who dreamed of having her very own pony, or a Lauren Faust, who dreamed of playing with Bonnie's ponies and making them have cool adventures. And if I'd been the right age and I'd been allowed to watch a pony show and play with pastel ponies, I would have been all over that.
I love seeing what the show staff does with previous generation material! Here's just one example: G3's Princess Promenade.
Every Pony Is a Princess
I'm gonna admit right out that that causes me actual physical pain. I cannot stand lyrics with dumb rhymes. They drive me nuts. So if you don't want to sit through that, I don't blame you. But cutting to the chase, there's a whole lot of stuff in which Wisteria has to be a princess, and Spike instructs her in it, but she hates it because princesses aren't allowed to do anything and her friends don't treat her normally anymore. So she quits, and then she decides that everyone gets to be a princess.
I was never uncool with Twilight being a princess. It was all about the kind of princess she was going to be. And I think it's pretty darned cool that she explicitly wants NOT to be the kind of princess Wisteria was forced to be. Princesses just smile and wave? That's awful!
But what's even better is what they did with "Princess Spike." In "Princess Promenade," when Wisteria quits being a princess, Spike is horrified. "Everyone wants to be a princess! Even me!" The Mysterious Mr. Enter has a good long laugh about that (and I really do recommend that review.) What's so cool about "Princess Spike" is that of COURSE Spike wants to be a princess. In his world, princesses are the most important people ponies around. They're powerful and badass. I think it was an especially nice touch to have Cadence, the sparkly pink power of love pony, be the active princess in that episode.
You don't kick over the previous generations and un-girlify them and pretend they never happened. You repurpose them and show some respect for the material, and what comes out is pretty darned neat.
I also got interested in Kimono's Townhouse, which is a web comic shot with G3 ponies.
The Syreth Clan drew my attention to it, and I'm sorry she's no longer active on the site, but she's got some pretty interesting links on her blog. And Kimono's Townhouse is pretty awesome. If you don't fall in love with Minty somewhere along the line, there is probably something wrong with you.
And THEN someone on the CheesePie board pointed this out. What if, she posited, Pinkie and Cheese actually already have a daughter? A pony, say, who shared their funloving attitude? Maybe who combined their coat and mane colors? Possibly shared their interest in pyrotechnics?
OMG GENIUS
They have a daughter through time travel.
Now I have to have dinner and be good and get my syllabi done. But I'm in a much better mood!
"Let's do the Time Warp again!"
How's it go?
"It's just a jump to the left..."
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Well it is the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane...
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I knew there was something I liked about you.
Well, with the water, I'd see it more as a good thing that you have the money now, rather then dwelling on being overcharged for a long time. A new phone's never a bad thing.
I try not to fall into the trap of hating all older generations, personally. "Sweetie Belle's Gumball House Surprise" wasn't great. The dialogue was all horribly dumbed down, with them puzzling over hints a five year old could get. My mind came up with all sorts of inappropriate rhymes to "You're almost through with this hunt; You'll find Sweetie Belle..."...
But then, there's Tabitha St.Germain's performance as Scootaloo. Her delivery of some of the lines was great. I can totally understand them pulling her and Andrea Libman from that short later and bringing them into G4.
I'm sure Elric could tell you that I unironically enjoyed considerable parts of the original mlp G1 movie, too. I feel sorry for Spike, having to put up with Lickety Split for the whole movie. He's all heart, though.
[youtube=RUKJh77bCrI]
What I really had trouble with was Megan, and how she took center role for sections of the movie while all the ponies IQ's dropped. I've I had to bring two humans from that movie to G4, it'd be Reeka and Draggle, who were always terribly entertaining to watch.
[youtube=B2XG7Zcrupg]
They were, in fact, responsible for the Smooze in that movie, and while I was happy to see it adapted for G4, I actually liked its previous incarnation here better.
I actually do want to see a fair amount more of Spike and Cadance together, actually. While there were things I didn't like about that episode, I enjoyed Cadance being sort of a mentor for Spike...
--arcum42
Man, I remember arguing with my sisters about watching 'some dumb pony thing' when I was a little kid... there were two of them and only one of me, so naturally I had to suck it up and miss out on G.I. Joe for the evening.
Fast-forward a couple decades, and on the advice of another FiM fan's recommendation I went and looked up Rescue at Midnight Castle, only to realize 'holy shit; I saw this on TV when it aired in 1984,'
If only I'd known then what I know now,
I admit, I was never fond of G3. It was just so cutesy, corny, and bland that it repulsed me and I was off doing better things. The designs were nice, I admit, and I have played with some of the toys with my little sister (imagination helps a lot in that regard)--but I didn't want anything to do with it.
Believe me, if I had told my past self that I'd draw myself as a unicorn, create a bunch of pony OC's, and write MLP fan fiction, past me would have looked at present me like I was crazy. And probably being freaked out.
But, you know, Friendship is Magic.
Anyway, I actually want to see revamped versions of the G3 ponies. I kind of want to see Toola Roola and Starsong in G4, just to see what their incarnations there would be like. Because, you know, the other ones transferred from G3 turned out pretty good.
(Not withstanding that Rainbow and Pinkie got their personalities from G1 ponies...)And regarding Sparkleworks... dang part of me wants to add her to my CheesePie family, but I already gave them five kiddos--and one's already going to be an expert in pyrotechnics...
G4 is actually a prequel to G3.
Discuss.
Or merely cringe. Your choice.
I like to look back on G3 with fondness and while I understand why people don't particularly like it, I don't appreciate people just straight up bashing it. Uh, we got this show from G3? So why are we hating it so much for being one of the reasons this show exists?? I could never figure that out...
Well, I kinda did. People like to believe that the earlier gens never happened and that this current gen is the holy grail. Most of our beloved characters CAME from previous gens, gens I happen to hold dear to me.
Well, given that I've posited that Pinkie fell through a time rift and was actually there to see Equestria get made, this is an easy leap of logic to accept. Heck, there may very well be CheesePie offspring sprinkled throughout the pony spacetime continuum! G1 Surprise, the original Pinkie Pie...
Not sure about any others. But just imagine the conversation with the OB/GYN.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you appear to have what I can only describe as a 'time vortex.'"
3408862 Or 3.5? We never SAW Sweetie Belle being born. What if she did fall from a cloud while Rainbow Dash was being fabulous in diapers? What if Scootaloo aged up and Cheerilee never did?
If Moondancer can get an appearance, I hope Minty can.
3408892 I've got plenty of shows I liked as a kid that I don't want to hear people bash. Kids' TV was pretty awful back then, and pretty scarce, too. I actually watched the Jim and Tammy Show (as in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, of the 700 Club) for months before my parents found out, because puppets. I can't sit through Josie and the Pussycats or Penelope Pitstop now, but I'd just as soon not hear a lot of snark about 'em.
I agree, we wouldn't have Pony without those earlier incarnations. And it's neat to look at some of the intros back to back. The rainbow's always been there, and so has the hot air balloon!
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WHY IS THERE NO MINTY IN G4? (Other than the blindbag, which I of course sought out and specifically purchased by maneuvering little plastic butts into the conveniently transparent portion of the packaging.) I mean, she likes socks. Canonically!
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That balloon is what drove me to checking the show out, actually! I recognized the toy from when I played at my cousin's house (she had all the toys, omg), and I was like, "ooo, this looks neat."
3412220 I love it that you get defensive. Otherwise, I wouldn't know anything about G3 from the pov of someone who loves it. And I'm inclined to want to find something to like about it (and also not to forget that currently what I am watching is a little girl's cartoon.) You'll notice that up there ^^ are a bunch of people who like previous gens, too, and among them are some pretty good critics and writers. Discovery Family still runs them, so I recorded them when they were on and still have them. This detail:
--is pretty cool.
In "real life" I've been known to read stuff for my job that's generally pre-dismissed: Walter Montague's The Shepherd's Paradise, for instance. I suspected it was partly pre-dismissed because it was written for and acted by Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies. And ok, it's pretty long and it's not all riveting, but I learned a lot from reading it instead of deciding that it wasn't worth my time.
I get the impression that the canon personalities are sometimes tweaked instead of blanket altered, like Minty's being brilliant but fun loving and easily distracted. Taping the silly calls in to Tech Support, however, I suspected right away wasn't canonical.
Anyway, thank you for weighing in! (At some point, you'll have to let me know what you thought about the documentary, maybe in a PM, but I went out and got a copy of My Little Obsession and inflict it on friends. I wish it was easier to get hold of.
3408994 I know, right? I went out and got a Minty, but I looked for the little codes in the bottom. They're still there, if a bit hard to see.
3410053 Continuity, which a lot of people like, at least theoretically. Stuff that's kept fascinates me.
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The things the show pulls in from earlier generations is always a nice wink to the older audience. I remember feeling particularly excited about the Smooze and Tirek. I wonder if Grogar will ever show up.