My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Live Reactions & Discussion)

Yeah, not my favorite TLR either.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Also, he missed two other episodes and didn't finish Rainbow Rocks.

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

I'm pretty sure DWK did the first half of season 5 out of order, too. Like, "No Second Prances" was the first TLR he ever did, then he went back and did the prior episodes after.

I didn't write any of that.

Sunset was basically exactly the same person when she was drunk on magic.

Uh, horsefeathers. She falls into the same "unfettered" category as Twilight. Observe how prior to her transformation she dognaps Spike only for it to turn out to be a total bluff as she had no intention of hurting him, only to then start hurling fireballs at people once she transforms. Or how she swings from resigned to defeat after Twilight calls her bluff on destroying the portal to cackling maniacal laughter after her transformation. Heck, she's visibly crying during her transformation sequence. This is absolutely not the exact same person.

What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.

Fair enough. Both Sunset and Twilight had their fetters stripped out.

I didn't get that feeling from Glory. I felt like she should have been more aggressive in Filthy Rich's direction, but that would have meant leaving the camp. I can sort of see what they were trying for, but imprisoning everyone while utterly destroying the camp herself just felt like being generically evil.

I'm not sure the writers really knew how to reconcile "wants to protect what matters to her" with "is the bad guy", so she just wrecked things and attacked people for no reason while weirdly ranting about how she's nature incarnate like that matters.

Again, if she was actually meant to be Gaea Everfree unleashed, this would make sense. For the Glory we spend the movie getting to know, though, turning her fury on the camp itself and threatening her own campers just feels completely out-of-character. Like she's drunk on evil, now it's time to do bad guy stuff.

And then she never gets talked down. Sunset is blasted with rainbow beams and then Twilight explains to her how the Power of Friendship is awesome. Twilight loses her nerve when Spike turns on her and then Sunset reaches out to her to help her find a better path.

Glory wakes up with no memory of the events, like she was possessed by evil the whole time and that's the only thing that went wrong. They punch her out with violence and then she's cool 'cause it wasn't her fault anyway?

edited 28th Apr '17 11:16:27 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I would have to watch it again, but the implication I remember was that there was some kind of sentience behind the force that corrupted her, unlike that behind Sunset and Twilight's transformations, making it some kind of hybridization of corruption and possession, as opposed to the simple corruption that happened to Sunset and Twilight.

But it's been a long time since I watched it, and I may just be filling in headcanon.

What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.

Is there a similar threat like her in Equesteria? Just HOW different and how similar are the two universes? Hell, according to that movie, there seems to be not only unique threats in the EG Universe (Gaea Everfree) but also magic of it's own, if I'm right. So, Equestrian Magic doesn't work there but it has it's own unique form of magic that Equestrians wouldn't be able to tap into to. Also, why is there a Tree of Bullshit look-a-like in the EG Universe? Are there Elements of Harmony in the EG Universe? What purpose do they serve? What's the Seventh Element?

Erm, sorry. Just questions off the top of my head.

Also, are there love potions in Equesteria? Just curious.

edited 28th Apr '17 11:27:32 AM by fredhot16

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

There are bits throughout the third act that imply she's been possessed rather than simply being drunk on power - most notably Sunset outright telling Timber that his sister is gone - but I didn't catch anything that implied that this was meant to be necessarily different from what happened to Sunset and Twilight.

Gaea Everfree is revealed to be a made-up story with no bearing on anything that's happening. In my opinion the biggest mistake of the film, but there it is. Everything that happens is the product of Equestrian magic once again bleeding into the human world.

Equestria is basically the worst thing that ever happened to these kids. It constantly f*cks their lives up.

edited 28th Apr '17 11:29:05 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

IIRC, up until that point, Glory actually hadn't been doing anything to save the camp, she had become resigned to its fate and determined to make this last year the best year ever.

Compare that to the other two, who "wanted power" and "wanted to learn about magic". You could say their fetters were stripped but also that they became dangerously mono-focused on the goal they had beforehand.

Glory turned into that crazy person that hog ties you and bring you to their tea party, insisting "we're gonna have a great time!"

Glory's focus was never on saving the camp, it was about making this last year last in some way. Now she was going to make it last forever.

Mmm. That does actually make more sense of her actions.

It still feels like, between Glory being "possessed" by the magic and all the Midnight Sparkle stuff, the movie was trying to retroactively absolve Twilight of responsibility for Friendship Games. There's this underlying narrative current of, "Look, Twilight's brooding and angsty over the events of the last movie even though she never did anything wrong and was a sweet and innocent snowflake forced into a bad situation by evil forces that took over her and made her do bad things!"

There's an element of Fix Fic in how the magic is portrayed in this movie that I take issue with.

edited 28th Apr '17 11:37:06 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

There's a love poison, which the CMC made in an ill-advised attempt to pair up Cheerilee and Big Macintosh. If left untreated, the poison will cause the lovers to focus on each other to the extent that they'll neglect literally everything else in their life. Allegedly, it brought an entire kingdom to ruin, sometime in the past.

And Princess Cadance has some kind of powers over love, but canon is deliberately vague about the specifics. You could say that she reminds ponies of why they love each other in the first place, to give them incentive to put dumb arguments aside. Or if you want to go dark, you can say that Cadance just brainwashes ponies into loving each other.

I didn't write any of that.

...

The human counterpart girls establishing their personalities more. Flashlight finally being taken behind the barn and shot. The girls gaining consistent, controllable superpowers instead of their wild, unpredictable pony forms. Introduction of a central narrative thread in much the same awful way that the show got one.

There's a lot of Fix Fic elements to this movie, now that I think about it. Did EQG change creative teams?

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

@Tobias: Well, it was always pretty clear that Sunset Satan and Midnight Sparkle were not proper representations of their host personality.

In addition to these, Twilight also knows a spell that makes anypony who lays eyes on a thing become desperate to have it for him or herself. It's not quite the same, but similar to a love potion in the sense of making the target brain-meltingly desirable.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

^^ I wouldn't go that far. They are firmly rooted in their original personalities, just with the brakes taken off and their obsessions turned up to 11.

I've compared it before to being drunk on power, where the drink in question is tequila spiked with the Red Skull's imperfect super soldier serum. It strips away inhibitions and filters, while intensifying whatever harmful emotions brought it about.

This is why forceful reversions to their original selves tend to come with total 180s on their outlooks. It's not the Elements or whatever compelling them to be good (if they had that power, Discord would never have been a problem), it's hangover regrets amplified by 1000. They've now experienced a taste of the logical extreme of the path they've started down, and now see that they need to radically change direction if they don't want to end up like that again.

edited 28th Apr '17 11:56:19 AM by Wryte

What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.

Yeergh, I'm reminded of a fic I read a while ago where Dinky Hooves unwittingly cast a Want-It Need-It spell on herself... it got pretty dark (though not as dark as it could have).

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

-just with the brakes taken off and their obsessions turned up to 11.'

I wouldn't call that a proper representation of the host personality.

What happened?

edited 28th Apr '17 1:30:26 PM by fredhot16

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

It was like watching piranhas feeding.

Elaborate.

edited 28th Apr '17 2:15:04 PM by fredhot16

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

Yeah. Contrary to what some folks would have you believe, your inhibitions are just as much a part of your "true self" as your desires.

edited 28th Apr '17 2:06:47 PM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.

I seriously want some of these damn equines to start dueling each other in children card games.

edited 28th Apr '17 4:59:30 PM by fredhot16

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

Sorry, didn't mean to leave anyone hanging that much. This was early in The Chase- a.k.a. the longest story on Fimfic- and I wanted to check on some of the context but I felt iffy doing it at work.

So the protag is dating Derpy and teaching Dinky magic, and Dinky takes an opportunity to check the back of his spell book to practice more advanced spells (but actually it's in alphabetical order, so it's the Ws).

So Bucky (to use the protag's name) comes back and is hit with maddening arousal for his ward, but thankfully he recognizes the magical compulsion and is particularly good at repressing himself. He tries taking her over to Twilight to get this sorted out, but taking her outside obviously doesn't help. Discord actually ends up cancelling the spell after Buck has half crippled himself magically fending off the crowds (and literally beating his head against the wall), and Dinky stays, ah, untouched.

The kicker is, Celestia later has Luna modify everypony's memories in case the experience stuck with anypony and gave them ideas. Made it so they thought everypony was just hit with super Cuteness Proximity and were in danger of trampling Dinky. Which... you'd think it could have just been written that way in the first place?

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

Ah.

So...let me get this straight: this was the story about how one filly narrowly avoided molestation because of some accidental magic? Oh, dear lord...

edited 29th Apr '17 3:14:07 PM by fredhot16

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

I can sort of see what they were trying for, but imprisoning everyone while utterly destroying the camp herself just felt like being generically evil. I'm not sure the writers really knew how to reconcile "wants to protect what matters to her" with "is the bad guy", so she just wrecked things and attacked people for no reason while weirdly ranting about how she's nature incarnate like that matters.

I just rewatched the ending of Lo E to be sure, and you're definitely misinterpreting things. Gloriosa never "attacks people for no reason". She doesn't attack people at all until they start trying to destroy the wall, and even then it seems like a desperation move to stop everybody from messing up her plan. Likewise, while she does wreck part of the camp, it is almost certainly accidental.

You could describe Flurry Heart the same way and be nearly as accurate to canon. I mean, come on.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play