Friendship is Card Games: Best Gift Ever Shorts and 2017 Holiday Special · 1:25pm Dec 23rd, 2018
Bit of a schedule change-up this week. I was going to finish up the movie prequels, but it is two days before Christmas, and there are some animated shorts to cover as well. Capper and Tempest can wait for a week; time for some holiday cheer.
A bunch of Mane Six eyes in the darkness… I’m getting “Last Roundup” flashbacks.
I’d argue that Twilight could teleport out of the barn, but knowing Pinkie, she’s probably put a dimensional lock into place. Possibly through the use of taffy.
Yes, Twilight, successfully completing a single escape room definitely makes you an expert in them.
Pinkie deleted her own memories to have more fun. Seems legit.
Moonwalking does seem like the solution to many of life’s problems. Sadly, this is not one of them. After all, this isn’t merely an escape room. It’s an escape room built entirely on Pinkie logic. Solve the Soup Cans doesn’t begin to describe the issues here.
As the others’ reactions show just before time runs out, Pinkie Pie would be a truly terrifying villain. She wouldn’t need to change anything about herself to break ponies psychologically.
Actually, thinking about it, we already knew that.
I’d chastise the girls for panicking when they’ve been through so much together, but again, Pinkie Pie. I’m pretty sure this escape room has violated the Geneva Convention at this point.
Oh, Pinkie. When you’re good, you’re very good. But when you’re badly written…
One might ask how public address systems fit into the crazy quilt that is Equestrian technology, but I suspect Twilight borrowed the concept from Canterlot High and designed this one herself.
(On that note, how amazing would it be if Principal Celestia came through the portal specifically to mess with the School of Friendship? “See how you like extradimensional shenanigans in your school.”)
Huh. You wouldn’t think a yodeling club would mind a bit of snow. Maybe they’re worried about the avalanche risk.
Okay, the monster truck rally voice is genuinely fantastic.
So… do the girls all just assume that Twilight hired half a dozen different announcers for the school without informing them? This says a lot about how she’s running the school, doesn’t it?
Okay, so Fluttershy was keeping a hedgehog under her wing. I know she’s good with animals, but I didn’t think she got damage reduction against them.
I’m pretty sure the “Applejack can still do her Manehattan accent” headcanon just got confirmed and then some. And I think we can definitively say that when voicing this short, Ashleigh had a ball. 
Oh dear. It’s one of Granny Smith’s bad days. Don’t suppose one of her grandkids can spot her? (I’d suggest Grand Pear, but I doubt her pride would accept such a thing, even after their reconciliation.)
Oh dear. It’s one of Dash and Applejack’s bad days. At least it’s not putting their students’ lives in peril this time.
Applejack, you have a problem. (And while it’s the wrong holiday, I have to ask what makes this hat different from all other hats.)
I have to wonder what the other Wonderbolts think about the ongoing dare exchange. I get the feeling there’s an ongoing betting pool about which of Dash’s friends she’s dating.
And now they’ve moved on to the physically impossible. Pegasus jaws don’t have the same shock absorbing properties. Good thing Zecora has those tooth repair potions.
Hmm. I suppose it does make sense that Applejack doesn’t have the most finesse when it comes to applebucking. She’s just too good at it to yield such low returns.
And Pinkie says what we’re all thinking. I especially appreciate how she designed her dare such that she’d get her desired outcome regardless of what the others did. (Yes, she didn’t win the contest in the agreed-upon manner, but it’s Pinkie logic. Thankfully used for good this time.)
2017 Holiday Special
Hmm. Interesting to note that places in Ponyville offer hot cider in the winter. I suppose the Apples do make some batches with a longer shelf life; that or, hard as it is to believe, they don’t actually have a monopoly on apples and apple accessories.
Oh, Twilight, you sweet summer child. I wish people waited for the temperature to dip below freezing before preparing for Christmas. Mind you, in Equestria, trying to overshadow Nightmare Night with Hearth’s Warming prep probably leads to dreaming of a most irate moon princess.
Aww, it’s a snow-Ember. And Pinkie ends up wearing its head like a hat. Huh. 
Ooh, dragon scrolls. Twilight's probably making sure there aren't any other sacred covenants she might accidentally violate as she pursues diplomatic victory.
“It’s not like Hearth’s Warming is going to sneak up on us!” You’d think Twilight would know better than to tempt fate like that.
Okay, this is now the third time the Flimflam brothers ave ridden into Ponyville. Twilight, I’m pretty sure you can officially banish them from the city limits at this point.
Also, looks like the comics had the brothers commercialize Hearth’s Warming before it was cool. I suppose this is pretty low-hanging fruit.
My God. They’ve reverse-engineered party cannon technology.
At least Applejack’s trying to force some degree of pattern recognition on the gullible populace.
It wouldn’t be a Flimflam scheme without an accompanying musical number.
Okay, if no one points out the existence of weather factories in this comic, I will be exceptionally peeved. There’s starting highly marketable superstitions, and then there’s asking ponies to ignore major industries. A shame there don’t appear to be any pegasi in the crowd.
Windy’s gender changes in a matter of two panels. Granted, determining the gender of a relatively benevolent spirit of cold and hatred is going to be tricky in the best of times, but still, that’s a pretty shameful editing fail.
Oh good, at least Twilight and AJ recognize how ridiculous this is. Even if they’re looking oddly… Canadian while they do so.
(Also, don’t think I missed Fry telling the Flimflams to shut up and take his bits in that panel.)
Okay, Pinkie literally winking at the audience when the Flimflams bring out a holiday comic is pretty darn funny. And “Grinch!” makes for a magnificent unsound effect.
Ah, the must-have toy. Now in a variety of media, for the optimal “Collect them all!” effect. (And I’d hope those trading cards would come with a game of some sort, but I doubt the Flimflams could make anything enjoyably balanced.)
Given Granny Smith’s expression, I wonder just what childhood fables Mac and Jack bought into.
I have to wonder how a bookstore interacted with Ponyville’s library. And when it was opened relative to Twilight coming to town. Still, I have to appreciate Twilight having a literal happy place in town.
That salespony is going to rethink that survey once he’s been exposed to enough loops of the song. Seriously, how do retail employees handle carol saturation? I was lucky enough to be far from any speakers back when I worked in a supermarket.
I was hoping Twilight would just denounce the Flimflams in the Royal Canterlot Voice, trapping them in their own marketing is a marvelously elegant solution.
I… can’t really side with the townsfolk on this one. They were getting swindled. Just because they enjoyed getting swindled doesn’t make it okay.
Granted, this is coming from someone who doesn’t play any games with a Skinner box model… other than Magic. 
The point is that I may not be in the best position to judge. That said, Applejack’s last barb definitely goes beyond the pale.
… Yeah, still not buying this lesson. I mean, more open communication would’ve been a good idea, but it just doesn’t work when one side is objectively getting victimized and the other is trying to help them.
Shouting at the readers isn’t the best way to tell someone behind you to stop singing. Just saying.
Someone seriously needs to talk to Cheerilee if Apple Bloom legitimately doesn’t know where snow comes from. At least we get a nice group shot at the end, especially Scootaloo getting grouped in with Dash’s family. So cute. (And it’s not like we have many pictures of Scootaloo’s aunts. Indeed, we first heard about them only two months before this comic came out, and we didn’t get their semi-official color schemes until this past July.)
Bit of a mixed bag this week, but there was still some fun to be had. Let’s see what presents I can make from these, because goodness knows elves aren’t going to be any help. Note that there will be some Ravnica Allegiance mechanical spoilers in the following cards:
Snowsuit 1W
Snow Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+2 and is snow.
“It’s like an igloo you can wear!”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
Blinding Flash 2W
Instant
Tap up to X target creatures, where X is your devotion to white as you cast this spell. (Each W in the mana cost of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to white.)
Softened Quills 2W
Enchantment
Prevent all noncombat damage that would be dealt to creatures you are control that are attacking and blocking.
Kindness alone can turn aside natural defenses. Magic helps protect against the unnatural ones.
Loose Interpretation U
Instant
Target creature you control gains hexproof until end of turn.
Addendum — If you cast this spell during your main phase, that creature can’t be blocked this turn.
Technically legal is still legal.
Minimize Velocity U
Instant
Target creature gets -4/-0 and loses flying until end of turn.
Jump-start (You may cast this spell from your graveyard by discarding a card in addition to its other costs. Then exile this card.)
“Windy the Windigo” U
Enchantment — Song
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a verse counter on “Windy the Windigo”.
U, Sacrifice “Windy the Windigo”: Target player puts the top X cards of their library into their graveyard, where X is the number of verse counters on “Windy the Windigo”.
U, Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard: Return “Windy the Windigo” from your graveyard to the battlefield.
Crafting Clerk 1U
Creature — Unicorn Artificer
Metalcraft — T: Add CC. Activate this ability only if you control three or more artifacts.
On Ungula, even the most humble materials can find exotic uses.
1/1
A Thousand Voices 1U
Instant
Copy target activated or triggered ability. You may choose new targets for the copy.
Retrace (You may cast this spell from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to its other costs.)
“Is there an echo in here?”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
Windy, Winter’s Harbinger 1UU
Legendary Snow Creature — Spirit
Flying
Whenever you cast a snow, Spirit, or Arcane spell, tap target creature. It doesn’t untap during its controller’s next untap step.
Freshly created from mortal belief, she’s still refining the concept of “comforting chill.”
2/2
Cookie Addict 2U
Creature — Pony
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Cookie Addict unless you remove a counter from a permanent you control.
“You don’t have to use candy, but it’ll help.”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
3/3
Holiday Giveaway 4UU
Sorcery
Until your next turn, players may cast spells from their hands without paying their mana costs.
The perfect gift cannot be bought.
Mental Purge 2B
Enchantment
1B, Discard a card: Each other player discards a card. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
Pinkie’s ability to edit her own memory would’ve terrified most ponies. Her friends didn’t even blink.
Relentless Earworms 2B
Creature — Worm Horror
Whenever a player sacrifices a Song, return Relentless Earworms from your graveyard to your hand.
A single note can be enough to unleash a wave of repressed memories.
3/1
Flimflam Skinflints 2BB
Snow Creature — Unicorn Rogue
When Flimflam Skinflints enters the battlefield, each opponent loses X life and you gain X life, where X is the number of nonland snow permanents you control.
Stony hearts can be just as terrible as cryomantic abominations.
2/3
Unending Festivities 5B
Sorcery
Spectacle 3B (If an opponent lost life this turn, you may cast this spell for its spectacle cost.)
Return target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.
Hearth’s Warming lurched on, a corpse of merriment powered by greed.
Ominous Threat
(B) Sorcery
Suspend 3 — B (Rather than cast this card from your hand, pay B and exile it with three time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost.)
Return target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost.
Yovidaphone Recital 2R
Sorcery
Choose one or both —
• Yovidaphone Recital deals 2 damage to each creature.
• Creatures you control gain trample until end of turn.
Earplugs are provided to any faculty still on campus after the warning sirens.
Angry Traditionalist 4R
Creature — Pony Citizen
Riot (This creature enters the battlefield with your choice of a +1/+1 counter or haste.)
Menace
Some ponies complain in town meetings. Others carve a swath of destruction.
3/3
Delivery Colt 2G
Creature — Pony Citizen
Whenever an opponent casts a spell during your turn, draw a card.
“Our ponies are replaceable. Your package isn’t.”
—Pommel Express motto
3/2
Tallulah, Farmer’s Crown 3
Legendary Artifact — Equipment
Whenever you cast a spell, equipped creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn. If that spell is green, put a +1/+1 counter on equipped creature instead.
Equipped creature has “T: Add an amount of G equal to this creature’s power.”
Equip 2
Decoration Catapult 4
Artifact
2, T: Choose one —
• Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
• Decoration Catapult deals 1 damage to any target.
“Primitive, but effective.”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
You Americans have rubbed off on me way too much, I fear. Heh, rubbed off *snrk* The first short, background, 1.12 in, on the right of the screen. It's an American-style flayed/mutilated one, but still...
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/634/133/be3.gif
Next story's coming out soon-ish, btw, watch out for it sometime next week.
Equestrian technology is interwar-American most of the time. PA systems were being developed through the 1910s and 1920s, so really they fit right in.
Also, Starlight had a PA system in her propaganda hut.
4984527
Completely forgot about the Propaganda Hut. Good catch.
Would defeat the spirit of the game though.
Applejack had like 5 different voice actresses here tho
Pfft, I kinda chuckled when Pinkie deleted her own memory in that one short--she did exactly that in a certain long fic of mine when she discovered a surprise appreciation party for her before they were ready.
Yeah, the music at the thrift store I work at is terrible, save a few gems in the mix. I'm annoyed with all the garbage that's just generic pop wearing a Santa hat mixed in with annoying secular songs (I'm more into the religious carols, TBH), enough that when I leave my car after listening to actual good Christmas music on my Mp3 (got this thing where I can listen to my Mp3 on the car radio, it's saved me from so much radio crap), it's practically a tearful goodbye.
You mean like not telling them they would be hosting international, non-pony students up to and including royalty?
You fucker.
4984527
I've long maintained that they're at about a 50s level of achievement with caveats.
Electronic computing came about here because of our need to break Enigma. If you look at what would be a wartime-developed technology here you can see that those technologies are nonexistent in Equestria. And when your rail system is apparently superb with stations within an acceptable trotting distance you don't need cars. (And when the people transporting cargo can do it by personal power in a reasonable timeframe you don't need trucks.)
...Aaaaand I think this holiday special marks the first comic covered by Friendship is Card Games that I haven't read, but the shorts were a fun few minutes, at least. I wonder if they'll be doing any more of them before season nine hits?
If people who are paying understand what they're paying for and buying, accept it and are fine with it, are they getting swindled? I'd argue that a scam requires an element of deception -- either you're hiding what you're selling, or you're masking its worth and value. If the person doing the buying is fully aware of what they're paying for and considers it a fair exchange... then I may agree or disagree with the, but I can't exactly say they're being swindled. They're getting what they're paying for, they know what they're paying for and they are happy with what they're getting.
Put another way, I would argue that the "Windy the Windigo" business isn't too unlike people buying Santa Claus merch in real life. We know damn well it's all fiction -- but it's a fun fiction to participate in, and people who try to say we should stop participating in it because it's not real often do come across as pedantic joykillers.
Here's a link to Mystery Voice that isn't split.
4984547
Why let facts get in the way of a good pun?
4984553
It's funny. The first time I heard "Here Comes Santa Claus," I had the following exchange with myself:
"Wow, this song is a lot more Christian than I expected."
"
"... It's a Christmas song, FoME."
"Oh. Right.
Here's hoping they cut down on the pop carols after Christmas proper.
4984580
Yeah, right up there with not telling her personal student that interacting with her peer group was the key to averting eternal night and purifying an insane moon goddess. Can't imagine where Twilight picked up that kind of behavior.
4984722
We'll see. Part of me hopes not, if only on the basis of the things being tricky to work into my schedule. I've got this thing worked out through the beginning of June.
4985112
When you put it like that, I think Twilight, Applejack, and I all fell into the same cognitive trap: None of us considered the possibility that rational, well-informed consumers might deliberately choose to purchase something from the Flimflam brothers. To be fair, it's not exactly the most obvious conclusion, especially given how the comic frames Windymania as an orgiastic, consumerist whirlwind that sweeps up all of Ponyville, minus two.
4985288
Excellent! Thank you very much; I couldn't find the Hasbro one for love or money.
4986010
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The holiday shorts were nice, harmless fluff. "Mystery Voice" was fun just to hear Ashleigh do so many goofy voices, and "Triple Pony Dare Ya" managed to do a late season 'AJ-Dash rivalry' storyline without devolving into "Non-Compete Clause" levels of writing. "The Great Escape Room" was the only one that I felt really annoyed by, simply because it was just repeating the escape room concept from "Bottled Up" and really flanderizing Pinkie to justify its existence.
As for the 2017 Holiday Special, I liked what it was going for, showing how individuals can enjoy holidays through made-up traditions (a la Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny). The problem is, it's using characters who have been openly malevolent and habitual liars in all of their appearances to provide this message, as well as having their defeat be seen more as a sign AJ and Twi have gone too far instead of wise characters stopping immoral charlatans from swindling their friends. I'm all for having complex villain roles in stories, but Flim and Flam don't really work as they're written here.
I also hated how it tried to sell us the idea that all of the townsfolk weren't really buying into Windy, and that's supposed to implicate AJ and Twi of being sticks in the mud. Never mind the logic gaps necessary for this perspective (If they all knew it was fake, why act so invested in the product? Were they just playacting for yuks? Are they so rich that they can afford to blow their bits on worthless dreck?), just look at what the moral seems to be: "Blatant lies about the history of holidays used to sell worthless merchandise are fine as long as everybody knows they're lies". It's like the writer is attributing some weird equivalency between Windy and Santa Claus, despite the fact that Santa's 'existence' is a long-standing cultural mainstay (not Windy's obvious recent creation) and was at least partially based on an element of reality (the actual Saint Nicolas). It just rings really hollow when AJ and Twi are the ones supposed to learn a lesson, and it ruins what could've been a potentially interesting lesson/commentary on holiday culture in general.