My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic SPOILER TALK THREAD

I actually fully agree with you on this point, but there are lots of people who have really been clamoring for more worldbuilding and history type stuff.

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Like me! I'm stoked to see Star Swirl the Bearded (of course, I'm biased by my fanfic, but still).

And I am here for Equestria. I like the characters, but, IMO, it's the setting that makes them interesting. I'd say they'd be far less interesting in a more standard setting.

Fair enough. I can definitely understand why someone might be put off by increased focus on backstory and worldbuilding at the cost of focus on the characters. Now, I personally greatly enjoy fantasy worldbuilding and I love the world of MLP as much as I love the characters, and as such I genuinely love it whenever we get new tidbits or expansions on the show's lore — it's a big part of why I'm looking forward to the movie so much — but I do agree that doing this while also keeping focus on the characters themselves is ideal.

As mentioned in the main thread, the finale leaked and well... I don't know the context but I'm happy regardless.◊

This song needs more love.

Is that...is that Adagio, Sonata, and Aria?

Are they really referencing something from Equestria Girls on the main show?

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Okay I think I got the context. It's a flashback to when Starswirl fought them.

This song needs more love.

They're really referencing something from Equestria Girls then.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Yep. *Crosses fingers for the vain hope that this means they'll come to the main universe and give Sonata a Heel-Face Turn*.

edited 7th Oct '17 2:35:03 PM by LordVatek

This song needs more love.

Why only Sonata, give all of them one. And get Sunset to show up again.

I need more Sunset.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Having actually watched the rest of the season, I think the finale's handling of the historical ponies is much closer to "A Health of Information" than to "Campfire Tales".

Given the trend of the show and the explicit lesson from the finale, I imagine all three would get a redemption.

And yes, it was a flashback to when Starswirl banished them. I feel the writers tied it all together very well, Starswirl is pretty much what you'd expect from someone who prefers banishing to communicating.

When Starswirl claimed "Once a villain, always a villain." I was just waiting for Fluttershy to introduce him to her new best friend... Sadly that didn't happen, but could you have imagined the look on Starswirl's face? Maybe we will get to see it in the next season.

If you haven't noticed, Starswirl is somewhat of a downplayed Broken Pedestal in the finale.

What bothered me too was that Pinkie did not really have a historical counterpart that she personally related to. She is connected to Somambula, apparently. Would have been nice if Pinkie had been included in that episode, then, so everyone could have an idol to look up to.

Are we allowed to put tropes on those pages for the last episodes already? Or are we supposed to pretend they haven't been aired yet?

edited 10th Oct '17 10:42:26 AM by Redmess

Optimism is a duty.

Look at the source code on the pages. People are already adding tropes. They're just marked as comments so they only show up in the source code, not in the displayed page. When the episodes officially air, someone will remove all those double percent-marks and a fully written page will suddenly appear like magic.

The episode definitely was setting up that Somnambula was Pinkie's historical predecessor, considering how Pinkie retrieved Somnambula's artifact, and it's pointed out that Hope begat Laughter. They just didn't get a distinct bonding moment (or obviously similar personalities) like the rest of the Element/Pillar pairs did.

Pinkie was included in the episode that actually introduced Somnambula, though. And she was even the one who saved the day through the power of hope.

About that, I wonder if it was a deliberate Development Gag to make Pinkie's counterpart a pegasus and Fluttershy's an earth pony, while the rest of the mane six were matched up with ponies of the same tribe.

edited 10th Oct '17 5:27:27 PM by MetaFour

Yes, I saw. I will never trust an empty page again. :p

Oops, I totally forgot that Pinkie was in that episode. I guess because Rainbow Dash and Daring Do were such a big part of that episode, Rainbow seemed to be the focus there.

Optimism is a duty.

I feel like Stygian is a much more interesting character than the Pony of Shadows. The POS strikes me as even more of a Generic Doomsday Villain than King Sombra was, and he never quite felt like a genuine threat to all of Equestria. "Oh, he's so dangerous that your only choice is to seal him in Limbo, and yourself with him? Sure, if you say so, Starswirl."

But on the other hand, I'm not sure if that's really a bad thing? Half the point of the episode is that Starswirl completely mishandled the situation the first time, and now the Mane Six have to clean up his mess. So it would make a certain sort of sense that Mr. The Bearded overestimated the threat posed by the POS and responded with unnecessary force.

In any case, if the writers had to choose between giving the POS more development, or giving the heroes more development, then I'm glad they decided on the heroes.

Watching Uncommon Bonds. Eagerly anticipating Tobias reaction.

Amending Fences

My thoughts on "Uncommon Bond":

• "Hey, Starlight. Remember how I said it felt when you got to be the main character in Celestia and Luna's first real episode? Doesn't feel so good, does it?"
• "Dear Friendship Journal: Today I learned that board games are for children, but dressing up to reenact a life-sized board game is for adults."

Yes, I think the point is that Starswirl is somewhat old fashioned in his view on and treatment of villains. I think its a nice reflection on how real society used to be a LOT harsher on crime and evil in the past, and were more willing to label criminals as unredeemable. Also, simply banishing criminals to somewhere else really was an accepted way of punishment in the middle ages.

Anyone else wonder how the Pillars of Equestria suddenly speak modern Ponish, when the episode goes out of its way to establish that they spoke Old Ponish, which was different enough to be unintelligible? Maybe they could have shown Twilight using a translation spell?

I wonder if many movie goers were confused about how magic can move the sun and moon in this world, but can't heal a broken horn, something which SHOULD be a fairly common occurence. Even to a fan, it seems somewhat arbitrary sometimes what magic can and cannot do. You get the impression that the state of medical science in Equestria really leaves something to be desired. Except of course when there suddenly IS a hospital with modern (although, modern... public operating theaters have not been a thing for a LONG time) facilities. And since we have never SEEN another pony with a broken horn before, we can only assume that it can be healed when broken.

edited 12th Oct '17 4:04:20 AM by Redmess

Optimism is a duty.

Huh. I completely missed that at the time.

Maybe it's akin to the use of Latin in the Middle Ages—or how, for a period, the nobility all spoke French regardless of what country they ruled. One the one hoof, scholars like Starswirl wrote in High Ponish because of tradition and the belief that it was the only language that could properly convey their lofty ideas. On the other hoof, the majority of day-to-day business and writing was done in Low Ponish. Ponies outside the upper classes (including at least half of the Pillars of Equestria) didn't understood High Ponish even back then.

Eventually, even the upper classes stopped using High Ponish and just called it Old Ponish instead. Low Ponish became just Ponish, or Modern Ponish.

Magic in the show definitely feels like the writers are making things up as they go. But they keep everything vague enough that it's usually possible to retrofit an explanation. Still, it's possible to transform apples, birds, and frogs into oranges ("Too Many Pinkie Pies"), or to transform ponies into breezies ("It Ain't Easy Being Breezies"), or to age or de-age a pony, though only the highest level unicorns can pull that off ("Magic Duel"). Yet transforming a mare into a stallion, or vice versa, it completely impossible ("Magic Duel"). Huh?

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I have no idea how they handle Tempest's broken horn. But there was a pony with a broken horn before—this guy who very briefly showed up in the hospital in "Where the Apple Lies". The bandage over his stump implies that it could get infected if it weren't covered, which might mean that it's still alive and could grow back?

Some more horn oddities: In "Campfire Tales" Rarity and Sweetie Belle get welts from flyder bites on their horns, implying there's a layer of skin over them. In "Applejack's Day Off", when Rarity waits too long in the sauna and winds up super pruny, the top half of her horn sags. Does that mean there's only bone or keratin in the bottom half of the horn?

Do unicorns ever file their horns? I can't remember seeing it in the show, and I can't find any pictures of it, but I might just be looking in the wrong places. EDIT: Yes, yes they do.◊

edited 12th Oct '17 1:58:07 PM by MetaFour

Nice explanation on Old Ponish! That would work well. (A nice touch was the illegibility of his handwriting, which IS a common feature of many of these documents - it would also suggest that Starswirl did not write for a court or monastery, but was something of an amateur scholar, which would not be unheard of.

I think the gist of the movie was "We can't fix your horn, but you have worth beyond your magic."

The structure of the horn is also a bit ambiguous. It seems to be a somewhat flexible organ, like cartilage covered with skin (like the nose, say), but it breaks off like it was solid bone without skin, like antlers. Bandages would not neccesarily indicate skin, I think, since bones are living structures that could be infected, and a magical horn may have other internal structures that could get infected.

Maybe the broken horn also explains Tempest's rather sudden turn to anger and resentment. The horn would presumably be connected to the brain somehow (after all, magic is a conscious phenomenon), so it would have nerves of some kind. Nerves, and the brain, work through electrical currents, and we see Tempest's horn create electrical sparks. Perhaps a surge like that did some damage to her brain.

Optimism is a duty.

Just reading the plot synopsis of Uncommon Bond is making me think of how many people are gonna bash Starlight again for it.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Implying that they wouldn't just bash Starlight for being present at all.

This song needs more love.

Eh, fair enough.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

TBF, her initial inception towards reformation was not well handled and that was a sour taste to leave in some mouths.

I never really minded her though, liked her even.

Yeah but it's been two seasons since then. That she still attracts so much anger is in itself infuriating.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

First impressions, man.

Oh, and some people just do not let things go.

Mysterious Mare Do Well