Lucky day! Legend of Everfree stuff! (SPOILERSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS) · 2:56pm Sep 25th, 2016
Legend of Everfree popped up on Youtube about a week early, and now I have seen it! Mostly. One of the commentors said a scene was missing toward the end, so maybe I've missed some important context to something. Then again, that's what I thought last year, too.
Spoiler-tastic below.
...I said SPOILER-TASTIC BELOW! Avert ye eyes if-
Okay, sorry. Here we go.
"No offense!" "None taken." still happens, but it seems much less cutting by now. I should well hope so, after about a year of that, and Sunset assures Twilight that she'll get used to it. Given the tone of Sunset's first delivery of that line two movies ago, I'm not sure that's a good thing.
When discussing Twilight's magical freak-out moment, I noticed Sunset's word choice. "That wasn't your fault! Principal Cinch is the one that encouraged you to try and use all that magic..."
Encouraged. Not forced. Important detail, even if the movie doesn't bring it up again.
Have I mentioned that Sunset is adorable when she's excited? She's adorable when she's excited. And quite a few other times. Sunset is really darn cute in this movie. 
Speaking of cute, someone tells Flash he should get over Twilight. I'll say no more. 
Rainbow Dash exhibits signs of Cinch-ism with having a 'reputation to uphold.' It's in a harmless context, but I'm concerned, more-so with her saying more than once that the hero stuff is just 'what we do.' No one says a thing about it, naturally, but tell me a story in which the protagonist falling in love with their hero status ends well. I don't know if Rainbow is at that level yet, but given that it's, well, Rainbow, I wouldn't be surprised.
The Friendship Games and magical monster fatigue are brought up. Twilight is clearly bothered, but I'm guessing it's more due to her "I AM YOU, GWAHAHAHA" nightmares.
Speaking of foreshadowing, "Hey guys, magic is going nuts again, let's ignore it because camping!" Sunset reluctantly goes along with it rather than telling her friends what careless idiots they're being, in addition to letting Twilight keep hiding her increasingly obvious, increasingly severe problems. I could have sworn I heard someone say something about not pulling punches in this movie.
...So, speaking of Sunset, I've had this theory about her that I was waiting for this movie before I said anything. You know how she's supposed to be this brilliant, talented prodigy, just as smart as Twilight? I think it's a lie, or an informed ability at best, because she hasn't done anything to show it in the entire time we've seen her. I'll elaborate more when I get around to that blog post, but support for this theory? Timber is seen trailing sparkly dust like what he told the campers Gaia Everfree left behind, and despite the magic going nuts all around them and Gloriosa screaming "I AM HIDING SOMETHING AND MOST LIKELY EVIL" with her every appearance, do you know what Sunset's first thought is?
That Timber must have made the Gaia Everfree thing up and is working a Scooby Doo plot to get the camp closed down so they can move to the city.
Three magical incidents, zero awareness. For pity's sake, Sunset, I thought you learned your lesson from that tour with the sirens.
Speaking of Stupid, Pinkie risks the horrifying deaths of her friends by shrapnel explosion by chucking some nails at them. Luckily, her explody-magic (did I mention her magic is apparently making things explode?) only seems to apply to baked goods. No harm was done and no harm was meant, but fucking Hell.
It's this incident that spurs Sunset to win back a few IQ points and say they shouldn't ignore this anymore.
Have I said that the musical numbers, in the movies and the show, haven't done anything for me lately? I remember cheerfully bobbing along to Smile, Smile, Smile a few years ago, having felt something during I Have To Find A Way, but Coluratura Rara's performance and Sci-Twi's musical lament about Midnight just gave me the impression of "I am singing about feelings, you may deploy emotional response now," like they were just trying too hard. Personally, I never even liked My Past Is Not Today, and I'm glad it was cut. Cheesy lyrics, forgettable tunes, songs when there really wasn't any need, like they were going down a checklist for the opening song (which was okay), sad-ish song, uplifting song, and whatever follows. Maybe that's why it feels so forced, but that might just be me.
Good thing Sunset's magic is the Magic of Exposition, because I don't think she'd have riddled things out on her own. Gloria's magic rocks happen to be the same colors as Sunset and the rest. Three guesses for where they'll be by the end of the inevitable magical conflict.
A stupid thing happens just before Gloriosa does her thing post-She-Demon-#3-transformation. Snips and Snails. I'll keep telling myself that it's Snips and Snails, and not that CHS as a whole are so stupid that their collective density should be displacing the tides and pulling satellites out of orbit.
The villain song is a little hit and miss for me, but overall, I think I like it. I still like Unleash the Magic (give or take Twilight's part) and Under Our Spell better, but it's easily as good as Battle of the Bands (which I was never crazy about). Pity we didn't get to hear all of Welcome to the Show for comparison...
Also, remember how Sunset speculated that the magic and ponying up were triggered when they were being true to themselves? Neither does this movie, because either Sunset was wrong (again) or that 'rule' is just being handwaved away by the existence of magic rocks within convenient walking distance.
That missing scene I mentioned earlier? I think it's Sunset and Twilight escaping the cave Gloriosa traps them in, because they appear to get out with no explanation. If I had to guess, it went like this:
Sunset: "Use magic so we can get out of this and not die!"
Twilight: "Don't wanna, I'm having an existential/self-loathing crisis!"
Sunset: "GET OVER IT!"
Twilight: "No!"
S: "Heart-felt speech!"
T: "Oh, fine then!"
And then they escaped. The same thing happens (possibly for the second time) shortly after. It's a pity I decided against that story with Encore Midnight, because I think the overall message he's meant to carry would have only been strengthened by Twilight's struggle with 'Midnight.'
Do you think someone is getting paid by the magical girl transformation? Because I'm really, really sick of magical girl transformations. 
Gloriosa was a pretty neat villain, I think, in that she, like Starlight Glimmer (usually), did what she did with good intentions and just the right amount of insanity that what she was doing made sense to her. On an unrelated note, during the party at the end: GODDAMMIT, GLORIOSA.
At the very end, Sunset determines that they were always meant to have super powers (exactly the sort of thing I liked getting away from with the EQG movies...), says they should keep the gem/necklaces (which everyone is fully in favor of, despite all prior moaning about wanting to get away from magic) and thinks to ask where all the magic came from. We don't get an adequate answer, of course, but at least she thought to ask. Yay. We also see that nothing whatsoever was done to fix the statue and there may be consequences for that later.
And that's Legend of Everfree. Overall, not bad, I guess. I've already forgotten most of the songs and the plot makes about as much sense as usual, but there were plenty of moments that made me smile, not including the slightly predictable post-credits stinger that made me sincerely hope someone socked Pinkie square in the face. I spent most of season 1 wanting to wring her rubber-chicken-horse neck, but warmed up to her antics eventually, and now it's come full-circle.
I'd wanted to get the last (non-bonus) chapter of Sirens of CHS out before the movie aired, but it was only about a week away and I haven't had much time for writing lately anyway. The statue's destruction is going to be brought up, which I think will nullify what I guess is the teaser for the next movie, and considering that while I had some fun with Legend of Everfree, nothing relating to the camp, Gloriosa, or Timber (Even if he and Sci-Twi are cute together) particularly stuck out to me, so I don't have to change a thing!
Sunset's Super Empathy, though... that's interesting...
On a final note...
I can't get this thing to light up anymore. Do you think it's dead?
I just saw what was probably a different leaked copy from yours this morning, and I enjoyed it. Got plenty of ideas and theories of my own to go with the movie, but I'm holding them in reserve.
I feel bad for Flash, though. Dude's just screwed.
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I think there's hope for Flashimmer yet, she just got a little distracted at a bad time and he even said he wanted to start as friends and see where it went from there.
I got this.lol
I liked Gloriosa as a villain, her song was catchy. She seemed slightly more in control in her "nightmare" form, but that's probably because she had acclimated to it.
What I'm pissed about is Sunset getting the garbage power. Everyone else gets a cool power except Fluttershy, who I'm sure enjoys being land-Aquaman, but touch-based empathy? If they're going to be superheroes it's useless in combat, and outside of combat it's a creepy form of spying.
Overall I'm just frustrated that new Twilight has further pushed Sunset aside. New Twilight is somehow an alicorn, and is also in the band? All Sunset gets is Flash back.
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Personally, I'm a lot happier Sunset got something that could be used to tell an interesting story instead of something that would make her look 'cool,' but serve little to no purpose as far as the plot goes. Twilight presumably helped her and Sunset escape the cave and break into Gloriosa's barrier, but what did Rainbow, Pinkie, Applejack, and Rarity actually accomplish? What did they do that couldn't have been handled differently to lead to the same result even at the expense of their comic book moment? Near as I can tell, they gave us another hollow fight scene that ended with someone else making a single effective blow against the villain to end everything, so they could have sat back twiddling their thumbs for all the good those 'powers' did.
The implications of Sunset's privacy-breaking power, if she can't learn to control it in day-to-day life, could very easily lead to some weird/dramatic/hilarious/confusing territory if she sees the wrong/right snippets at the right/wrong times, in addition to helping her understand any future adversaries with a touch. If nothing else, she might have to wear gloves from now on or something, suddenly becoming very, very careful with group hugs.
Fluttershy's power could have similar effects, depending on what the animals see/hear and relay to her. Being able to gather info from a touch is one thing, but having whole hordes of critters tell you what they witnessed that day? Now that's a spying super power.
I guess there's the angle that the seven of them being super-powered freaks in general might bother someone, but as these are the protagonists in an FiM picture, I don't think it'll come up, and even if it does, the annoyed parties could have just as well been irritated by the way magical calamity just follows these girls around in general, dragging everyone else sometimes literally kicking and screaming along with them.
4227394 You're right, it's annoying that once again all that matters is a single blow from Sci Twi, the new mane character. I don't think they others really did anything, Twilight imagined them saying nice things to her in her mind that let her realize Midnight Sparkle is just unresolved anxiety, and then Twilight did the rest.
As a single power, empathy could have a lot more story uses than super strength or super speed, though from my long experience in fantasy, "empathy" powers are usually a trigger for really annoying, wangsty stories, on par with having "life-mates" in a story. I feel like a bunch of the very worst X-men stories started off like this. Aside from the fact that the rest of the Rainbooms were able to use their powers in their daily lives, (constantly building and rebuilding the dock, which Sunset could not do) the question is what type of stories will there be about the Rainbooms.
Will the Rainbooms be a super-team fighting evil, a classic trope? If so, Sunset's powers are fairly useless except when they are fighting a villain who is hiding in plain sight, but is happy to let Sunset put her hands on them. I'll admit, I assumed from their terrible new costumes this was the direction they are heading.
If Equestria Girls is not turning into a superhero series where the girls fight actual criminals, then its super-creepy and wrong for Sunset to be reading people's minds without their consent. I'm terrified they will do more of those awful Rogue-Gambit stories where Sunset wants to hug her now reunited ex-boyfriend but can't because of her powers, to many pages of angst.
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I'm thinking the magical power-hour mind-meld thing at the end would have happened anyway with the justification that they were all right next to her at the time. Who knows, maybe that was Sunset too; bringing other people along with her to send a message when it was called for.
It's true that we're not guaranteed to see solid use of Sunset's power, even as just being more than "I wish I knew what X was thinking, oh wait, I do now!", but it's still more interesting than what most of her friends got.
This idea just popped into my head.
Human!Twilight gets wings along with her magic, right? Pretty much because her Equestrian counterpart ascended into an Alicorn, she gets the benefit of a special transformation form that she did little to deserve.
What if Pony!Twilight, while examining the portal, suddenly turns into Midnight Sparkle? Literally for no reason other than because her human counterpart couldn't handle the magic she unleashed in the human world and created Midnight?
Would it be unfair? Yeah, totally. Princess Twilight suffers for Sci-Twi screwing up, just as Sci-Twi reaps the benefits of her parallel being an Alicorn princess. It would be ironic, no?
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Maybe.
I have nothing to add to the idea (sorry), but it makes about as much sense as anything else, I guess.Well, maybe this:
"BWAHAHA, I can learn about ALL THE MAGIC of this world now!!!"
Spike: "Don't you do that already?"
"...Oh... Yea..."
And either Midnight goes poof or Pri-Twi carries on normally, just looking really, really evil. Luna approves, of both the look and the new name.
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That's hilarious!
Or oh, how about this:
"Aaaaargh! The power, the anger! The greed! It's trying to corrupt me! I... need to resist!"
"Hey, Twilight. Sunset just wrote. Said she got back together with Flash after telling him he needs to get over you."
"She what?!!"
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Fun moments ahead!
...I heard that instead of another movie, we're supposed to get three specials for the EQG world next year. Maybe Pri-Twi will pop in for a visit and learn some interesting news...?
As sweet as it might be to have Sunset finally get some get-yer-thievin'-mitts-off-my-boyfriend-oh-wait-he's-not-really-mine-anymore payback, I'm sincerely interested in how she'd take it, because she has to know that a long, seldom-even-bloody-mentioned-distance relationship between dimensions wasn't going to end happily.
And thus do I spoil the outcome of every Pri-Twi FlashLight shiptease I'm ever going to write. It was just the one, and towards the end of a sequel to a story I'm nowhere near finishing, but still.