Mar
29th
2018
Catching Up: everything else · 10:39am Mar 29th, 2018
Yeah okay so those big writeups were too much work and I didn't want to fall into a trap of getting one episode done a week and thus being at a PERMANENT FIXED LENGTH behind schedule, so it became binge-watching time. Spaced out over a couple nights but still. Wow! Some unexpected stuff happened for sure.
- Daring Done? had an interesting point that could have been ruined by making it all the work of the villain, so it was good to see A.K. Yearling actually giving everypony their money, fixing the statue, etc. at the end of the episode. A more in-depth take on the subject could have examined the subject of what she's doing with those various ancient artifacts--blaming everything on saving the world from ancient magical evil is a convenient excuse that doesn't translate as well into the real world--but I suppose this was not that episode. It's good to know that it isn't just Ponyville where the population are all incredibly easy to persuade to believe anything at all. Daring Do herself is getting a bit thin for me, but there was a good amount of fun stuff in this episode, and it was definitely cool to have Pinkie Pie being the voice of reason.
- It Isn't the Mane Thing About You is a Rarity episode, so it wasn't about to be bad. I don't know if there's really a whole lot to say here besides that I had a good time watching it. This season has a huge emphasis on the past, both in terms of filling in backstory but also in featuring returning characters, and I mean, Quills and Sofas y'all. It's been an eternity! And I am no longer an expert on this but I don't remember the last time we saw the flower trio together either, so that was great. Just a fun episode on multiple fronts.
- A Health of Information was unobjectionable? Pretty much a standard adventure? I'm glad I wasn't around to participate in what I'm sure were innumerable "I'd like to be a tree" jokes? Nothing to complain about from a double dose of Zecora.
- Marks and Recreation was something else, one of those topics I never quite expected the show to tackle. And I don't just mean "wait, wasn't Apple Bloom supposed to be a potionmaster" though that line still hurt a little. :( But this episode really engaged with cutie marks on the show's own terms, not as a metaphor, and that was something to respect and was cool to see. This was really an ambitious season in a lot of ways, yeah? Not a lot of filler, at least here in this latter end of the season that I have new and firm memories of.
- Once Upon A Zeppelin, though, mostly was filler. Or it would be except for the fact we'd never, ever spent any time with Twilight's parents, had we? But so little fuss was made of this fact, they were presented in such a matter-of-fact way, that it was easy to forget that. Interesting. The opening of Twilight being super-incredibly-busy is probably best not thought about too hard, since two episodes ago Twilight spent days in a faraway forest with no warning, and the next episode she's hanging around Sugar Cube Corner, but whatever. I don't remember Iron Will being... dishonest, though? Certainly it's been a long time but that was weird. Idk. Not too much to enjoy here I guess. Meanwhile Shining Armor has been given another gimmick and it doesn't seem to make him interesting, and Flurry Heart has fallen a long way from being the New Big Thing with lots of toys and stuff promoting her.
- Secrets and Pies felt like an episode from an older season in some ways, with its emphasis on learning a lesson and its heavy focus on Pinkie's obsession with Rainbow Dash. Also the disconnect between the seriousness of its subject--two friends trying to make each other happy, and both getting kind of hurt in the process--and the over-the-top humor of some of its presentation. So I guess I'm not sure how I feel about this one? I liked a lot of the parts but trying to make it fit together as a whole is kind of awkward. Also this episode makes me really hungry.
- Uncommon Bond was a Starlight episode, which I understand makes some people upset, but whatever man. (Incidentally, a while back I commented to a friend that Starlight episodes are set in an alternate universe from the rest of the show, since she doesn't tend to show up at all when she's not the main character, but I was glad to see some of these episodes reversing that trend. But it's still interesting how she's noticeably set apart from the rest of Twilight's friends, so she gets to be a separate perspective in the big ensemble episodes when RD/AJ/PP/FS/R all act as more or less a single character spread across five bodies.) I think if there's one drum I've been beating for a while with respect to later seasons, it's that there's grown to be something shallow about the portrayal of the friendship between the main characters. Pinkie Pie in particular was hit with this hard for a while, and it's really good to see the show has recovered from that--Twilight genuinely seeming to enjoy her company at the start of last episode is a good example. So it's interesting to see Starlight's own social circle and social woes get the spotlight from time to time, and at least to my eye, it feels more genuine and also somehow more adult. Twilight's friendships are shiny and derived from world-saving magic, but Starlight's are more nuanced and take more effort to examine and maintain. In this particular case the episode's resolution felt a bit insufficient to me, but maybe that ties into what Fluttershy was saying in the diary episode... lessons have to be learned more than once. Problems aren't solved instantaneously. Starlight and Sunburst have voiced the problem, so they'll be able to talk about it in the future.
- Shadow Play... well, where do I even start? I mean wow. I did notice the number of ancient figures seeming to grow a little in past episodes, and the repeated references to "Old Ponish" were getting pretty obvious, but I wasn't expecting this at all. Remember whichever season introduced Flutterbat, where there were several episodes toward the beginning with ominous last-minute-twist endings, and we had fun speculating about whether they were building up to something but they never did? Well, this season actually pulled it off. An immense amount of buildup went into this--three different episodes about legendary ponies from this season, plus all that we've heard and learned about Star Swirl over the years, plus even the Rainbow Rocks movie! Wow. Not to mention all of Starlight's character arc, Twilight's, past two-parters, the world generally... I am just seriously impressed that the show pulled this off. And to be clear, it did pull this off. In addition to being incredibly ambitious, these were simply well-written episodes. Star Swirl's character made perfect sense from what we've heard about him before, and he's basically the one guy that could put Twilight in this position, where Starlight had to be the one to show her what she was doing wrong. We finally had the elements of harmony not blast somepony. And everyone else got their own moments to shine, too, during the artifacts gathering montage. I don't see how the show could go any farther in building off its years of world-building and world-expanding than this.
- OH WAIT, School Daze exists now! And it's a huge deal, like, this already feels like it could be a bigger shift in the status quo than giving Twilight wings. Sure, it makes no sense on some levels--don't all these ponies but Fluttershy already have full-time jobs--and making any effort to tie this into any number of current and ongoing realworld social debates would undoubtedly be an awful idea. But not only were these episodes genuinely fun to watch, with lots of pretty pictures and fun things going on, it's just an incredible transformation from where the show began. Do we even have a status quo anymore, or is it possible the show is in full-on final-season wrapping-up-the-universe storyline mode? I don't know! (But I do assume there'll be some slice-of-life stuff in here anyway.) And the fact that all these new non-pony students are related to characters we've already met, usually in multiple episodes as recurring characters--they're not just totally random "animal friends" like Kingsley the Lion--really drives home how big the world has become. Climbing up a nearby mountain was a huge deal in Dragonshy--nowadays Pinkie and Rainbow Dash can travel to Egypt without so much as blinking an eye. I only wish Little Strongheart's family could have gotten into the action somehow.
Props to you all for keeping silent when I said Starlight could fix a problem by going back in time, and then just a few episodes later that was suggested in the show. And for keeping silent about all my speculation about lore episodes when Shadow Play was about to hit me out of nowhere! Wowwww. I mean sure I'm still conflicted about were I to write something, would I really need to incorporate all this information from all later episodes?? But in the immediate reaction it was just so exciting to see the sirens again! Aaaaaah I'm still a fan aren't I? I'm a fan.
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Violet CLM · 347 views
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We need a fic about Kingsley the Lion now.
Sounds like you've been pone'd
4827907
I'm surprised there isn't one! I thought G1 was the earlier generation it was Socially Acceptable to watch, but this blog post is the only thing I can find on the site about the animal friends at all.
4828073
Oh wow, those are actually pretty cute.
We definitely need more animal friends awareness in the public consciousness.