Equestria Girls Special: "Spring Breakdown" Broken Down · 2:23am Jun 5th, 2021
Blog Number 144: Spring Goes Sproing Edition
Well, I’ve recently rewatched the Equestria Girls special, “Spring Breakdown”, which last time generated no further complaints than Rainbow Dash and Ragamuffin. Now that I’ve rewatched it, I’ve gained a better sense of perspective and can summarize my reaction more fairly:
What the hell did I just watch?
Me when the credits rolled.
Let’s step back a bit.
The truth is that the Equestria Girls alternate universe has been plagued by a lot of unanswered questions from inception onwards, such as:
- Where’s the other Sunset Shimmer?
- What are the rules for having human-pony counterparts, since some don’t cross over exactly or at all?
- Why does no one make a bigger deal of the fact that magic now exists in their world – this is the sort of thing that shatters history, after all, so what gives?
- Whence cometh the geode things from Camp Everfree?
- Why does Equestrian magic so often corrupt human users, despite the rest of the world feeling very similar in tone and content to ponyworld (largely utopian, same basic character types, sapient animals*, etc.)?
* Let’s get a pet peeve of mine out of the way: sapient=having humanlike intelligence; sentient=being capable of sensing or feeling anything. To put this into perspective: it’s a philosophical possibility that even insects are sentient, for the simple reason they can sense and react to things around them, but it’s nigh-impossible they’re going to be sapient. Now watch the cartoony animals make humanlike expressions and gestures in Equestria and in the Equestria Girls universe. See? Sapient.
For the most part, you can gloss over this, and not just because everyone and their dog has concocted fan theories to do the writers’ jobs for them.
Worldbuilding and universe rules are all well and good, but at its best the Equestria Girls franchise lets it all take a backseat to character awesomeness (Sunset, the Dazzlings, Sci-Twi, Wallflower), cool standalone concepts (the Shadowbolts**, the Memory Stone’s amnesia horror, Groundhog Day), TV-budget spectacle (pretty much any time the girls “LIGHT ’EM UP!”), and funanigans (fun shenanigans, usually supplied by whatever weirdness the Main Six and especially Pinkie are doing e.g. in “Movie Magic” or “Rollercoaster of Friendship”).
** A.k.a. the Shadow Five, and yes, I pinched that from FanOfMostEverything. The world would be a much better place if we pinched more stuff from FanOfMostEverything.
But then you get something like “Spring Breakdown”, where all of those elements are – not to put too fine a point on it – weird. And then that rickety worldbuilding gets a little bit harder to ignore.
Let’s begin with the beginning…
The fact that the girls and Twilight in particular can afford a Lux Deluxe cruise just like that… Well, goodness knows she probably makes treasure troves assembling and selling gadgets, or schooling university scientists because she’s a prodigy and so on, but we’re already on shaky economic ground from the premise up (seriously, how much money must that cost? And for all six of them?). Between the clear economic prosperity of the city they live in and the modern tech plus movie connections plus general glamorous lifestyle, the girls largely seem pretty well-off already. A luxury cruise is kinda pushing it.
Two phrases I never thought I'd hear in the franchise: "international waters" and "tax-free shopping". Way to draw attention to stuff I wasn't thinking about while watching a show about magical redemption girls...
Small potatoes compared to what’s coming next, though.
Usually, this is the setup for some Main Six funanigans, which does indeed happen here, but they vary between the straightforward (Fluttershy at a petting zoo on a luxury cruise feels like someone didn’t stretch themselves very much, so had the plot do it for them) and the perplexing. Applejack spends the entire cruise seasick, and… I’m not sure what the joke is, other than implied gross-out humour in the one scene with Dash. When Shining turned out to be airsick in “Once Upon a Zeppelin”, at least the point of the joke was that he was the tough-as-nails military boy in complete denial about it.
Pinkie goes chasing after a particular cake, which is kind of a lame duck of a “subplot” in itself – you’re telling me the girl who baked the Mona Lisa into a cake couldn’t add extra chocolate to a pre-existing recipe? – but gets banned from the buffet table because of something Dash did. I haven’t even gotten to the point that she saves a baker’s life by eating said cake in the climax, a contrivance so inexplicable it almost rises above the fact that we’re watching Pinkie chase a cake all episode long.
To be fair...
...this shot...
...was pretty funny.
I could spend a whole paragraph on Rarity’s go-nowhere “romance” with Mr We Now Owe Dick Van Dyke An Apology. So nuts to it: let’s spend several, because it really is such a baffling “joke”.
You wanna marry her, Ragamuffin, then you better get used to this.
I guess the joke – made nonverbally clear in one scene – is that he looks eerily like Applejack, and after “Rollercoaster of Friendship”, the RariJack is basically one "they-hold-hands-and-then-they-kiss" scene from becoming undeniable canon. Which isn't going to happen, because this isn't that kind of show. But which I’m also not adverse to, because – platonic or romantic – RariJack is a polished apple of a concept. At least, it is on my desk.
No caption required.
It also means the Ragamuffin = Applejack joke didn’t land for me, because Ragamuffin =/= Applejack unless your brains have been enfeebled to the point that freckles, skin tone, and hair colour is your idea of character. True, it definitely doesn’t help that AJ has an association with an AU version of herself that does a lot of character legwork on her behalf, but I think even confining ourselves to this universe, AJ has a lot more going on for her than rugged good looks. It honestly comes across more as Rarity being shallowly infatuated with surfaces, something she in any universe should be several leagues above (yeah, remember when the broader series made a point of not having Rarity be the shallow girly type…?).
So devoid of any real character, devoid of any chemistry that doesn’t make Rarity look either massively out-of-character or shallower than the skin of an apple, the result is that Ragamuffin is almost totally defined by an accent so outrageously faked and unnatural that it almost perfectly disguises the fact that he has no actual personality. Coal-miner’s son? Wanting to dance for a living? Tries and fails to portray himself as a cheeky chirpy Cockney chappie? Who cares? He could be any generic sailor hunk for all they do with him. He’s so disposable I think I’d forget he was in the special if it wasn’t for that bloody accent.
For Pete's sake, I'm British, and I don't have this much trouble saying "Rarity".
By the way, re: the physical resemblance thing: I know the show did something similar in “The Cutie Pox” with Apple Bloom’s loop-de-hoop trick causing Twilight to briefly look like Rarity and causing Spike to suddenly fail to spot the difference, but that’s not really how romantic attachments work.***
*** Fun fact: people who fall in love with someone who has an identical twin sibling don’t fall in love with the sibling. Merely being physically interchangeable isn’t how the attachment process works, because it identifies and attaches to the specific person, not the type. It’s the same logic that says we don’t – when a crime is committed – find someone who merely looks like a plausible crook and chuck them in prison, because nominally the punishment is supposed to apply specifically to the perpetrator. It’s a moot point, anyway, since Ragamuffin is so unlike Applejack beyond a meagre physical resemblance that this makes about as much sense as Spike randomly feeling an irresistible urge to be Moondancer’s Number One Assistant… because Moondancer slightly resembles Twilight with her hair down.
And then we get Rainbow Dash. How do I put this…?
"This is all your fault! All my dumb accusations would stick if you were Angel Bunny!"
The thing is that her righteous bloodlust sounds plausible in theory. She likes “awesome”****, blasting bad guys is awesome, therefore Rainbow likes blasting bad guys and can’t wait to do it again. But then Applejack is very protective of her little sister, and “Somepony to Watch Over Me” is still ridiculous the way it exaggerated and parodied that trait beyond recognition.
**** You think that’s bad, count how often Rarity uses the word “divine”.
Basically, Rainbow’s behaviour has no real precedent. Yeah, hitherto she’s bragged otherwise and gotten excited in the moment – she even had to learn as far back as Rainbow Rocks that it’s not all about her and her awesomeness – but she hasn’t been consistently portrayed as a crusading blood knight.
To be fair, The Great and Powerful Trixie could make for a pretty fun boss fight. Maybe a puzzle boss, except then Rainbow would have difficulty winning.
The closest example I can think of is Dash rushing off to chase the mysterious thief in “Movie Magic”, and that was clearly a spur of the moment thing motivated by her already-psyched commitment to the Daring Do movie. She didn’t spend the first half of the special hoping a thief would come along to give her superspeed something to do.
Furthermore, Rainbow has regressed to a five-year-old mentality. She rushes around making wild accusations about evil bunnies and voice-stealing creatures, disturbing Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, somehow forgetting Applejack has seasickness to make a misunderstanding joke work, and generally acting like a kid who’s been told Santa Claus is hiding incognito and she’ll get her present if she finds him and pulls his beard off.
They're making a reference to another Dash here. The incredible part is that both Dashes are peas in a pod, right down to both being proven right about superheroing... while also being obnoxious about it.
Oh, and the other Dash is, like, ten years old. He has an excuse.
I’m not going to pretend Rainbow’s the most mature of the Main Six, but this sudden infantilization of her to the point of forgetting what consideration for others is… is total overkill.
I mean, there's a significant difference between "not the brightest bulb" and "delusional to the point of paranoid psychosis".
What’s really weird about the Rainbow plot is not her exaggerated behaviour, but the moral. It's basically a complete pretzel.
"Someone say pretzel!?"
You see, it’s shown that genre convention is ultimately on Dash's side here, and she gets her wish at the end of the special… and it still doesn’t excuse her behaviour.
The special acts like Rainbow’s magic paranoia was a good thing because – on the basis of a brief vision in the sea – she rushed off into a storm and uncovered the secret. Trouble is, it’s not really a vindication. Firstly, she wasted goodwill early by really acting like an obnoxious doofus apropos of no evidence whatsoever, and then wastes it again by reacting to her first bit of evidence with even more obnoxious doofery, then by committing crazier antics (setting off in the middle of a storm, wandering into quicksand) that, apart from a stroke of luck, nearly get her lost or even killed. Any credit Rainbow gets for spotting the problem is undermined by both her faulty problem-detector and her faulty way of handling it.
Only Rainbow Dash: even when she's right, she's wrong.
So the moral is one about crying wolf? Don’t do the stuff Rainbow does, else you’ll have a harder time convincing others of the real thing?
But then there’s the recurring thing about how she tries to claim they’re superheroes, and is ultimately proven right. Same with the fact that Equestrian magic really is responsible for this current disaster. Rainbow never really gets punished for her mistakes, because a combination of blind luck and meta-level genre inevitability (we’re watching an Equestria Girls special, of course Equestrian magic is going to pop up sooner or later) ensures her idiocy doesn’t cost her anything.
This is best exemplified by the one scene where, in the middle of apologizing for ruining Twilight’s day with her own wild goose chase after Equestrian magic… Equestrian magic either tries to eat her or turns out to be literally right under her nose.
I'm not usually one for vindictive cruelty, but I'm not gonna lie...
...this was cathartic.
Maybe this was an attempt to make a complex moral rather than a straightforward one, but I think in that case there’d be a more even-handed approach to it, which there really isn’t. Instead of both sides getting their dues (one nice thing about this is how sensitive Sunset is to Twilight’s unhappy feelings on the matter), it looks more like Rainbow gets rewarded for her maniacal persistence, which is untenable when she’s this openly bad about handling it.
Also, what’s the point of Twilight coming to accept that they’re superheroes? It’s not like she was in some comic-book ten-minute retirement, or anything. Trouble starts, she dives in with everyone else. Who cares whether they call it superheroing or not?
"Heheheh... I nearly died and got you all killed by a monster plant to prove this point, Twilight. So I hope your lesson sticks!"
So character-wise, either we get nothing really new or particularly juicy, or we get oddities that feel more OOC than anything.
There are other strange elements in the plot too, like how the threat this time necessitates a completely new portal, the existence of which is neither explained nor relevant again outside of plot convenience. I’m not going to pretend the first portal outside Canterlot High was explained adroitly, but so far it’s settled to the point of becoming fossilized premise. This digs it up and holds it up to the light again, confirming Equestria Girls’ weakness for unexplained lore as the plot demands.
Crucial Question Number One: what's the parrot's backstory?
Normally, you could wave this aside as just another Memory Stone/Sirens thing – who cares about the logistics if it means something cool will happen, right? Certainly, the storm provides a legitimate threat, and while I’m not qualified to talk about the storm’s canonical origin*****, it’s enough to pin down that “a bad guy did it, and these are the side effects”.
***** Because I haven’t watched the movie. It never really grabbed me.
That’s no worse than the Sirens’ banishment backstory or how Clover’s prize ended up in the hands of an outcast, though I think it would have been nice to attach the storm to a front-and-centre character here, rather than leave us with an antagonistic force basically on par with the weather from “The Crystalling” in terms of memorable impact.
Where it goes wrong is in the… bizarrely self-deflating presentation.
"Didn't we leave our friends stranded on a broken boat in the middle of a storm or something?"
KABOOM!
🎵doot doot doot doot-doot, DOOT doot-doot, doot doot-doot...🎵
The most obvious is that – despite Rainbow’s quest being all about proving the storm is freaky Equestrian magic – the moment she, Twilight, and Sunset end up in ponyworld, the urgency and menace both take a backseat to silly timewasters.
Them creeping through Ponyville to pony-Twilight’s castle is just about forgivable, largely for the basic plot logistics of getting from A to B. It’s when they suddenly treat the pony-Twilight visit as some kind of gossip session that you get the impression either the script wasn’t paying attention to itself or the script thought it was being daringly witty.
The disaster scenes on the Lux Deluxe cruise are interspliced with the laid-back scenes of the four ponies and Spike yacking away around a table, making unintentionally ironic statements. The problem is that this both sucks the tension out of the threat and makes Rainbow et al either look like idiots or look unbelievably callous.
Well, more idiotic and callous than usual.
See, though Rainbow Rocks and “Forgotten Friendship” have jokes in them fair and square, when it came time for the threat to make itself known, there was no messing around. The result? The Sirens hold claim to arguably the most badass Equestria Girls final battle, while Wallflower’s psychological problems are treated with utmost seriousness where it counts.
Here? Between the storm’s threat constantly getting undercut and the quick resolution, combined with the fact that it lacks a face to focus on and treat as a full character, it all means the whole special starts looking less like another epic showdown and more like a lark with feints at being epic.
Oh, it has a face! Two lightning bolt shapes in a storm, yes, but... just let the magic of pareidolia be your guide!
It's kind of a weird thing for Equestria Girls in general (but especially after the first three or four movies) that it starts to trend towards the trivial. Threats go from meaningful rivals (Sunset, the Dazzlings, Midnight Sparkle, possibly Gaea Everfree) to largely pathetic or random obstacles of the week (possibly Gaea Everfree, Juniper Montage, Vignette Valencia, even PostCrush from “Sunset’s Backstage Pass” as they have no real chemistry or connection to the heroic cast). It’s no secret the last special, “Holidays Unwrapped”, ended up the wrong culmination of the entire series.
The same problem weakens “Spring Breakdown”: Rainbow’s ultimate threat is basically a throwaway side effect of something more epic that happened elsewhere, robbed of what little threat it has by the casual, trivializing way it’s treated by the editing and by the plot.
I mean, sure, the Dazzlings and the Rainbooms had holographic projections, shock waves, and kickass music, but what they really needed was interior decorating. And Salvador Dali.
Thus, "Spring Breakdown" ends up weakened by the worldbuilding weirdnesses, which – deprived of much distraction or compensation – really stand out. A portal that’s a quicksand pit? How come the sand doesn’t go through? Why is it here in the first place? And why is the plant monster randomly the same one from Friendship Games?
Things that could otherwise be brushed aside by (say) cool spectacular villains or a more overt commitment to silliness (what makes “Movie Magic” work, for instance, such as its blatantly daft excuse to have the cast run around in Power Pony costumes) end up with little defence when everything else is choppy too.
It really is like every single major stretch of this special sooner or later has something that makes me go WTF******? Even the big dramatic rescue scene at the end has that one bit of Pinkie saving a chef’s life because the chef had somehow trapped herself with a cake.
****** “What’s that for?”
Still… I wouldn’t say it’s a dead loss.
Some of the concepts do have a gleam here and there (the concept of other portals is obvious fanfic fuel), some of the humour does get a giggle out of me, and there are some nice touches too.
I'm no shipper, I'm just sayin': these two have more romantic chemistry than Ragamuffin and RariJack combined.
For instance, Rainbow and Sunset arguing over magic terminology (“rainbow lasers” vs “pony up”), later giving Pinkie another chance to shout over them (“LIGHT ’EM UP!”). There’s the little sweet bit about Sunset picking up on Twilight’s desperate attempts to make sure everyone’s enjoying themselves (including a smile-tugging scene of Sunset taking “I can take it” Rainbow aside and accidentally “punching her in the feelings”). And Trixie, as ever, remains amusing (“I’M TOO POWERFUL!”).
"Ha! Foolish writers! If anything, Trixie is not too powerful enough!"
Given it does have its moments (the final rescue is a decent enough action bit, with the lovely little moment of Sunset reuniting a lost kid with her mother), cameos (Pinkie doing a Titanic pose with Bulk Biceps is somehow one of the most inevitable and one of the oddest shout-outs), and little details too (there’s a background character whose haircut makes him look like Sokka!), it’s not bad, per se. It’s still watchable Equestria Girls fluff, and at least its logical madness and moments (ha, cue the macaw!) have more going for them than the inane non-events that characterize most of “Holidays Unwrapped”.
Like this little girl. She's only onscreen for a few seconds, but she's the most adorable and relatable thing in the entire special. 
Still, the messy emptiness hollowing out even its solid stuff can’t help but fail to hit my memory hard enough to leave an impact, not like the best of Equestria Girls. It's just too weird and too prone to undermining itself to really land.
Ultimately, we’re nowhere near Rainbow Rocks or “Forgotten Friendship”…
…or “Sunset’s Backstage Pass”. 
That’s right! Next time, I take another look at the best candidate for series finale, in which the Dazzlings come back, the basic plot points of “Forgotten Friendship” come back, the Sunset Pie comes back – oh wait, that’s new. 
🎵Then I saw this shot... Now I'm a believer...🎵
Till next time! Impossible Numbers, out.
Oh we totally do that, all the time. Even if we're not supposed to.
5530036
I could watch this part over and over again
The Equestria Girls writers actually wanted to answer that one. But Hasbro said no.
Technically? Broader series Rarity is nothing but infatuated with surfaces, when it comes to romance. All her crushes had only a few basic things in common; being male unicorns who are influential, and famous. That's it basically it.
Blueblood and Trender Hoof have little else in common, and it's not like she knew either one of them well enough to form any kind of opinion based on their personality.
Not a fan of the pointless romance either, but it is something lifted from the show, if nothing else. Kind of like Dash's behavior; although I too prefer the relative maturity of her EQG counterpart.
Yeah, this I did not need. Luckily they dropped it in the last few instalments of this series, unlike in the main show, where they never seemed to really figure out that it wasn't a thing that people wanted.
Those episodes were sweet and funny, and more importantly, didn't make me hate the series characters. Nothing like this episode, or a entire catalogues worth of terrible decisions in the main show, that left the some total of the main series more or less unwatchable.
Seriously though, as disjointed as it is, I would gladly take the open ending we got with EQG, over reams of "edgy" writing that would've left me hating the show's main cast, and wanting to forget everything about it in perpetuity. (Basically most of Season 8's writing, and most everything to do with the Grogar Arc.)
Could they've done a worthwhile end to the series? Certainly they could've. But the fact that we got what we did is still pretty impressive, given how bad Hasbro's story department was by the end of Friendship is Magic.
5530043
Shame. That looks like it might've been a interesting final, if they could've done it justice.
5530040
Thing is, normally I'm fine with EqG Rainbow Dash, so anywhere else, this'd be a bit cruel. In this special, it's just a moment of pure schadenfreude.
5530043
I know. I've mixed feelings about it, because on the one hand it's a cool "come full circle" concept; they can address one of the bigger mysteries as a potentially epic finishing special. On the other hand, I gotta admit to my fanfic biases and say I like the question remaining open.
5530050
True re: Rarity's canon infatuations, but I think even there the stallions tied in better with her broader obsessions. Prince Blueblood represented all the allure and attractions of high Canterlot society, something bound to tickle her social ambitions until she spent any time in his company and found herself angered by his self-important prissiness. Blueblood ended up being a subversion of the shallow crush concept.
While Trenderhoof... admittedly comes across more as a random one-off, but there's more of an implied lifelong attraction prior and at least he tied in to her fashion obsessions and constant hunt for novelty. Plus, I get the sense she got the measure of him fine enough, as he's presented more as a gentlecolt: it was just bad luck he turned out to have a thing for farmers.
There was at least a semblance of a deeper reason for her attraction to either stallion that took into account her broader, more dominant fixations. Ragamuffin's just some random sailor dude.
Also, it really is hard to overstate how much of a liability Ragamuffin's accent is...
To put my cards on the table, I'd take "Spring Breakdown" over the majority of Seasons Eight and Nine. I'm not a late-pony-seasons fan, either.
See, as out-of-nowhere as Rainbow's behaviour is in this particular special, there are moments of vulnerability too (I'm thinking both the scene where Sunset confronts her and the scene where Rainbow - trapped in quicksand - has to eat humble pie). Plus there's the fact that, getting past the weird threat trivialization, when push comes to shove they do the whole superhero thing well enough.
I think there was some acknowledgement towards fleshing her out a bit. Personally, I'd have preferred it if that aspect had been more prominent, but these are the cards we're dealt.
But yeah, Rainbow's behaviour is an obvious problem here.
I see your point. For all my grumbles about it, "Holidays Unwrapped" I remember being harmless enough, and if it came across as a bit flat for me, I could at least see the appeal of a casual hang-out style of ending over something OTT epic. It's just in my case, the theoretical "fun times" were a tad thin on the ground, so it came off more like a load of meh than like one last chance to enjoy spending time with the cast.
And to its credit, Equestria Girls in general is usually at least a pretty fun experience, where hanging out with the cast is a major part of the appeal. I'd still take "Sunset's Backstage Pass" as a better potential finale, because it managed to be that and had a far more interesting story.
That said, one thing I did like about "Holidays Unwrapped" was the one where Rainbow struggles to get Fluttershy a present. She comes off a lot better there than in, say, "Best Gift Ever": I mean, she put in some damn effort here on her own initiative.
As long as you only pinch the conceptual stuff that I still have post-pinching. Touch my cards and we have a problem.
🔪
(Though, in fairness, I pinched "Shadow Five" from the Derpibooru tags.)
For one, even pony Rarity has a bad history of superficial relationships. (Blueblood, Trenderhoof, even gladly debasing herself she platonically respects from Hoity Toity to Celestia herself.) For another, I actually have considered the question of Ragamuffin before. Here's the crux of my reasoning there:
Almost definitely Equestrian. The question is what it becomes on the other side of the portal.
I am, and it makes no sense. There was never any indication that the Storm King had magic of his own, much less that he was a Skizzik trapped in a yeti-satyr-thing's body. The Staff of Sacanas is equally unexplained, both in its "insert four alicorns to play" and its "insert here to restore Canterlot from backup" functionalities.
On the one hand, the characters in Equestria didn't know that the storm was even there, much less working on its aim. On the other, we do, and thus everything you said definitely applies.
Same species? The portal at the relay seemed to open to the Everfree as well.
But yeah, this indisputably has issues. There are definitely fun moments and interesting components to pull from it, but Dash's obnoxiousness sets a poor tone for the whole thing. I maintain that a spring break spent in Equestria from the beginning would've worked a lot better on all levels, sidestepping questions about the girls' ability to even afford the cruise, the logic behind the Storm King's remnants, the porousness of the fabric of reality, everything Ragamuffin-related...
I wanted canon world-hopping, but not like this.
5530120
My reaction is this:
Good analysis. This was a special of a few really fun moments and an uncomfortable number of cringe ones; it was ultimately much less than the sum of its parts.
5530120
Now I'm imagining this eldritch birdlike Everfree horror that torments stray visitors by repeating their words back at them, over and over and over...
It wasn't busting out the magical stuff yet, that's true, but if I recall right, it was still portrayed as a conventional storm prior to Sunset and Twilight leaving, so they at least have in memory the fact that a broken-down cruise ship is stranded in the middle of dodgy weather. I get the impression the main reason Rainbow's runaway stunt bothered them was because of how crazy it was to take off in the middle of a storm. I think that's sufficient to raise an eyebrow at their casual tea party with a princess.
In ignorance, I'll have to accept your mini-analysis of that canon aspect, but for turns of phrase like this, it was totally worth it.
Oh gosh yeah, I haven't even drawn up a comprehensive list of all the little details I enjoyed. One of the sweeter bits was Pinkie sitting outside the buffet lounge she's been banned from, whereupon Fluttershy comes out to give her some food. On the comedic side of things, I like the running gag of the parrot mimicking Rainbow, who apparently felt an urge to repeatedly identify herself (facepalming, she groans: "I gotta stop saying my name out loud..."). And of course they stick in a good ol' pop EqG song in the middle, for the heck of it. The Rainbooms concept has grown on me a little over the years.
Oh gosh yeah, that's what I mean. There are glimmerings of potential and some good bits, but it's so weird the way it executes those things. It's like they hit upon the interesting idea of Rainbow being psyched for the next big EqG action setpiece, but instead of finding a reasonable way to work that into the story, randomly decided to throw it in any old how. And thus we end up with this crazy conspiracy-theory loon running around upsetting people.
There's that admittedly pretty mind-blowing-in-a-funny-way final scene of Sunset dragging everyone back home via another dimension. I would've liked more of that, definitely. So much fun you could have with that idea.
5530126
Well, you've just rendered my entire analysis superfluous.
Dunno why I didn't just say that from the beginning. 
I come down more on the side of it being "tolerable enough to re-watch if you can put up with certain oddities" than "less than the sum of its parts" - it's still hangout EqG, after all, with the little perks that come with it - but ultimately I echo your sentiment.
Implying she ever surpassed it.
A lot of times, I'll remember a bad episode as good because it had one good part that I really liked, and I forget the rest.
In this case, I think back on it, remember, "They was all ponies hurr hurr" and then very specifically recall that that was literally the only redeeming quality of the short. :B
5530107
True but that doesn't change the fact that Rarity did in fact crush on him, so she definitely has a type regardless.
Well actually, there is something Ragamuffin is pretty good at, and that's doting on and flattering her. Rarity loves attention, and Ragamuffin very much appeals to that side of her.
Sure that alone wouldn't make for a romantic connection, but it is something she enjoys. So when it comes from a good looking guy, I'm not surprised that she shows interest.
I mean with Rainbow Dash, it's admittedly a pretty low bar for me by this point. This manages to be moderately better than some Rainbow episodes, but that has more to do with some very small details than anything.
1. There's the fact that that no one predicated that ponying up would have negative consequences. 2. Rainbow Dash goes it alone to solve the magic problem, rather than put anyone else in danger (which is what her counterpart would usually do).
Plus there's what we know of the character herself; Rainbow Dash is a adrenalin junkie, and there aren't a lot of opportunities to get the blood pumping on board this ship. So she's proberbly the one person not having fun in this episode.
Add what you mentioned about her being vulnerable, and she's at least more tolerable then what her character could've been (or usually is for that matter).
That's probably the best part of EQG's action sequences; the girls feel like they are still kids, who's world has been turned upside down, and have to deal with it. It reminds me of the very early episodes of MLP:FIM back when it was starting out.
I guess I can see that; there are shorts that I've forgotten, and others that simply weren't memorable. That said, I do think they tend to be of a superior quality then most people give them credit for (especially in terms of character and world building).
Yeah that episode is pretty great, and I love the interactions between her Zephyr.
EQG just does Rainbow Dash better in general. A big part of what helped me to get over Spring Breakdown, is how well she's portrayed in other EQG shorts.
She actually looks for ways to be helpful, and even has a moment where she is willing to do reading stuff with Twilight simply because it's something Twilight wants to do.
It's the kind of characterization I wish we had gotten more out of her with the main show.
In fairness to Rainbow Dash, she grumbles a bit in that episode, but it really does feel like she wants to find a good gift for Fluttershy; which is likely the reason Rainbow listens to Discord; because she knows that he has spent more time with Flutterhsy, and thus would know her a bit better then Rainbow does.
It just so happens that Discord winds up derailing her search by shooting down all of her ideas, rather than offering any of his own (at least until he mentions the Winter Chili).
Or, in other words, the only reason why EQG has any appeal to anyone is because the characters doing crazy or badass things is used to disguise nonexistent worldbuilding and horrible writing. Which could even be a result of it that even the writers of EQG don't care about it and rather do short-lived jokes and character moments than actual writing, considering what EQG is at its core.
Maybe, one day, the fandom will wake up and finally see what EQG in its entirety really is: A soulless cash grab that replaces ponies with humans in an irritating, franchise-defying way that exists for no other purpose than Hasbro having tried to get a piece of the doll market cake and to break into a sector of marketable toys where it just doesn't belong in with the My Little Pony franchise.
And, yes, I still exist. I have just been incredibly busy the last couple months and then needed a break for a few weeks. It was about time that I finally comment under a blog entry of yours again. Also:
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"Groundhog Day" in EQG, you say? I counter this with a superior My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic version:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/435618/critter-snow-day
5530128
Not quite the same thing, but I've imagined the "Despairow" as an Everfree bird species with a depressive/obsessive bent before.
The meta moral was good actually. It was similar to a lot of early Kim Possible episodes, where they meet some weird guy called Monty Fiske or Gil and Ron immediately concludes that they must be an evil mutant, because that's just how it goes when you're in an action cartoon, and his insane judgement is eventually proven correct. The moral is that you can't live your life according to the morals derived from an action cartoon because the morals you would derive from such a show are completely insane. What's the moral of the story? Cheer camp sucks. Yeah, that works.
Also, Ragamuffin was obviously just lying the entire time as a goof, and that's great.
5530128
Now I'm just imaging Discord's baby cousin "Mimic" who exists solely to copy things over and over again, in the most annoying fashion possible. Then again I suppose that could fit Discord's character as well. We do know he's taken other forms to troll people before... Hmm.
5530890
Those fiends! They stole the "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" Writing Formula!
Say it with me girls!
5531400
You must be kidding with that claim. While the first three seasons focused almost exclusively on Ponyville, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has started with very extensive worldbuilding in Season 4 (definitely not coincidentally either, Hasbro first wanted to end it after Season 3 and therefore likely didn't allow anything of the world beyond Ponyville and vicinity, Canterlot, Appleloosa and vicinity and the Crystal Empire being shown, because it didn't have many plans with the show at that point, but then gave the green light for a broader exploration of Equestria and the lands beyond in the show when it renewed for six more seasons) and continued that throughout the show until it ended.
Season 4 alone went out of Ponyville and Canterlot eleven times, to ten different and unique locations (some named in the episode, some not), nine of which we have never seen before, with only two locations that we have at least heard by name before Season 4 showed them being explored, the other seven completely unheard of during the first three seasons.
Then Season 5 showed us places outside of Equestria for the first time, with Griffonstone and Yakyakistan.
Worldbuilding also doesn't mean just new locations. It is a collective term for the inclusion of both places and lore of a world. The Elements of Harmony, the Tree of Harmony, the Shadow, the Pillars of Equestria, the artifacts Cozy Glow used to try sending Equestria's magic into another realm, just to give a few examples, all of that is also worldbuilding. The first worldbuilding in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has happened in the very first episode even, with the legend of Nightmare Moon, barely a minute into the show.
EQG doesn't have any of this. It has a few magical artifacts, whose origins never get really explained, they just sort of appear and are then gone again, a town, another town only being talked about, a summer camp somewhere in a forest near the town and a tiny island somewhere. That's it. EQG's toybox world can't compete with the vast high-fantasy realm and far reaches of Equus.^^
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Yeah except for the fact that scope does not equal coherent world building.
Because besides the elements of Harmony you can name a single artifact or location that gets it's origins explained in MLP outside of the comics? The Mirror Pool? The Alicorn Amulet? The Everfree Forest? Anything?
Even the Elements origins raise questions. If the elements started as artifacts plucked from a tree created by six talented individual using their own personal magical macguffins after who knows how long, how was Twilight able to produce them just by calling out virtues and waving her horn everywhere?
Why does it take so many seasons to find out about the Yacks if they are all such war mongers? If the Dragons are raised communally, and aren't to type to abandon unborn babies willy-nilly, what happened to Spike's parents?
Why are there books on a thousand year old Nightmare Moon/Luna and the Wendigo's (which are older than any other villain we've seen) but not Discord or Tirek, despite the both of them posing very real, very physical threats?
I could go on, but the reality is that while MLP is certainly more expansive, it doesn't do much better a job then explaining it's mechanics then EQG does. It just throws a bunch of semi-coherent scenarios at fans, and desperately hopes they'll either buy into, or make their own excuses for what is going on in any given story.
It gives you more to look at, but it doesn't really explain much of any of it beyond some basic history, and even that has a tendency to be more than a little nonsensical at times. It isn't coherent world-building, just very flashy.