A thread to discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the tie-in media.
All of the usual forum rules
apply. In addition, please remember that the thread is discussing a kids' show, and it's primarily focused on the work itself, not the fanfic — in particular, we don't want to see lewdness creeping in.
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM
What also comes to mind is that bit in Art of the Dress where Flutters tells Rarity EXACTLY how her dress could be better. And not just general things, no, very specific criticisms aimed directly at not just Rarity's fashion sense, but her ability as a dress maker (note how she mainly points out technical mistakes, rather than looks).
I mean, the others were a bit unfair too, but Fluttershy? Dagger right to the heart.
It isn't that she's that older than me. It's that we share birthdays and she's only that much older.
The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.Here's an Out of Context screenshot JT and Tobias might approve of.https://derpibooru.org/545846
Flirting, clearly.
The best part is that it doesn't lead into anything. It's not a misunderstanding. She's not trying to impart some lesson. She's just being unnecessarily hostile to somepony she's already forgiven.
At the Doylist level, it's clearly meant to set up suspense as to whether or not Sunset's appeal will be received. But there is no equivalent Watsonian reason for Celestia to act that way. Sunset's pouring her heart out, and Celestia's trolling her for the sake of trolling. Because that's how Celestia rolls.
edited 9th Apr '18 11:37:34 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The funniest thing about Flutter Jerk is that it is canonnically not quite out of the question, as I've already pointed out before. I suspect the writers have been making jokes of that nature behind the scenes regularly.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
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It was more merciless than her usual trolling, but the Fan Nickname Trollestia didn't come out of nowhere.
edited 9th Apr '18 12:33:05 PM by AkoSiKuya23
Yeah, honestly, I was a bit surprised, not just by Celestia's cold behaviour, but by the implication that this is the FIRST time since she abandoned her as a student that they talked. Surely Celestia knew about Sunset's reformation? Surely she reached out to her afterwards, or had Twilight do so on her behalf? Anything but just... pretending she didn't exist anymore?
The longer I think about it, the less this seems like the Celestia we know. This is some serious OOC moment.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesIt's a very, very common theme in fiction for kind and soft-spoken characters to have a deeply repressed dark side. In many cases, the meekness of this character archetype is implied to be a manifestation of self-loathing, as though they're too afraid of their own impulses to stand up for themselves.
We've seen some of this with Fluttershy when Discord tried to bring out her darker tendencies with nothing but smooth-talking: Fluttershy's immediate response to being put down was to agree with the put-downs, in a way that preserved her docile, submissive attitude. And it worked. She was able to preserve her personality solely by bashing herself, and it took a brute-force brainwashing to finally turn her.
edited 9th Apr '18 4:24:24 PM by Zennistrad
The longer I think about it, the less this seems like the Celestia we know. This is some serious OOC moment.
It does add some unwanted credibility to a remark I've made in the past about her "Rainbow Rocks". Unwanted in the same sense as when the Friendcrips shaking down the Flimflam Brothers and threatening them with physical violence made my jokes about them being a gang become suddenly very uncomfortable.
I say these things because they're ridiculous. Quit supporting them in canon.
In this case, the ridiculous notion I postulated was a bit of Alternate Character Interpretation. I pointed out that Twilight didn't even know what the communication journal does; it was apparently just shoved in some corner of the library and then shipped off to Twilight's Castle with the a bunch of other books, without ever so much as explaining it Twilight.
The idea was that after the events of EQG, Celestia was just like, "Meh. Sunset's your problem now! Here, take this dumb mirror and book so they can stop cluttering up my valuable castle space," and then washed her hooves of ever having anything to do with her again.
There was a lot of pushback against that because it was a really negative view of Celestia. And rightly so, because it was meant from the beginning to be a ludicrous interpretation of the events in question, extrapolated solely from the fact that Twilight was never actually told about what the Journal does when it was entrusted to her.
Then Forgotten Friendship comes along and...yeah, I guess that really is what she did.
edited 9th Apr '18 4:53:59 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Across time and space, no less! The Flimflam thing happened in the Rainbow Rocks shorts, which I only watched well after the Friendcrips joke had already become a thing, but that came out well before I ever started watching the show.
EDIT: Also, if Twilight ever resolves a conflict by breaking out the F*cker Explodes spell, I may owe the fandom an apology.
edited 9th Apr '18 4:57:29 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.So the show is lately developing a tendency to confirm our worst fears and jokes about characters. Should we be afraid of the coming seasons? Is the Great Deconstruction upon us?
Tune in next week, when Granny Smith is revealed to be a gambling addict, taking her group of equally addicted granny friends to Las Pegasus to live it up large. And it will have a title that will make it sound like a cheap porno.
edited 10th Apr '18 2:42:11 AM by Redmess
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesPost of the Day #2117
but come on: tell me the image of somepony pimpslapping away that rainbow wouldn't be the coolest thing ever
This review points out a few things that we've already partially discussed: the idea of a Friendship School is inherently flawed because friendship can't be taught, and Twilight undercuts the message of adhering too closely to a overly strict rulebook... by writing an even bigger one. Also, no one is exempt from the rules, not even Princesses... until Twilight just makes a new set of rules just for herself.
Where did this whole bureaucracy come from anyway?
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
The Immortal Game had a great NoSelling of the Elements.
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Friendship can't be taught, but various methods and lessons pertaining to friendship and starting, building, and maintaining relationships can. After all, the first season or two had Twilight sending reports about what she learned about friendship.
Also, I'd say that the problem with the rules is that you can't force a bunch of disparate topics that are distantly related to each other under the same umbrella of super-strict and exacting rules. It's like trying to have the same exact standards and protocols apply to both a furniture-maker and a glass-works. Sure, they both make household goods and decor, but they have different work environments and conditions. Having multiple differing institutions operating under one set of rules only works if the rules are general or universal enough to conform to various different circumstances. Twilight basically saved the EEA the trouble of having to write up an entire new charter for how friendship schools should be operated, as opposed to vocational or academic schools. And of course she made a bigger rulebook, because it's a rulebook tailored to her school, with rules that are actually relevant to her teaching environment, and there's probably a lot more in there about how to deal with all the particular circumstances one may encounter when teaching the magic of friendship.
I think what this last episode confirmed for us is that Fluttershy has a bit of an obsessive personality. Not OCD, but you know those people where when they get into something new, they really get into it? Devote all their time and energy to it to the detriment of other things? I think Fluttershy is a bit like that. At the Grand Galloping Gala she got it into her head to spend time with the royal menagerie, and she wasn't going to let something as insignificant as "the animals don't want to" get in the way of that. In "Filly Vanilli" she got really into the whole backstage singing thing, coming up with excuses to keep doing it even after Big Mac's voice recovered, starting to improv the lyrics, and even adding a little dance number at the end. In "Scare Master" Fluttershy decided that she wanted to be scary, and she went way over the top to do so. In this episode, she got way too into the roles she was playing, to the point where she was miserably failing her original goal of selling clothes.
And Rarity, while a good businesspony and solo entrepreneur, previously never had to deal with subordinates in her charge, so obviously she's new to the personnel management side of things, and is learning as she goes. That doesn't mean she isn't good at business, just that she's a bit lacking in experience in a particular area.
And yes, my hobby is to try to make a long series written by a team of writers who may or may not collaborate to make sure everything meshes perfectly and work under time constraints and executive oversight actually flow into some sort of cohesive narrative sense.
edited 10th Apr '18 10:28:19 AM by danime91
Not what happened. I don't get where selling clothes even comes into this? The lesson learned here was that she should be able to enjoy halloween her own way, and that's OK. No obsessiveness is ever involved beyond her being worried that she scared her friends too much.
We actually have several episodes about Rarity dealing with her subordinates at this point.
edited 10th Apr '18 11:16:10 AM by EpicBleye
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae![]()
The lesson learned was that she should be able to enjoy Halloween in her own way, but she does end up devoting a lot of time and effort into making a scary attraction to attempt to scare her friends, which works a bit too well.
And what do you mean you don't know where selling clothes comes into it? Rarity brought Fluttershy over specifically to run the shop while she's gone and sell clothes.
The comment about Rarity's business acumen and dealing with subordinates was directed to that one post where they thought Rarity's rep as a business pony was a case of Informed Attribute. And besides, she has had several episodes dealing with the roles and responsibilities of being a manager, but she could still be getting used to it, and Fluttershy is one of her best friends, which always complicates a working relationship, and she was also stressed and in a hurry due to the fashion show.

Speaking of the movie, I thought of a good joke for it recently. I thought of the characters saying something like this in the part when they were painfully wandering through the desert.
Rest of the Mane Six: Water... water...
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!Spike: Gemstones... gemstones...
Rarity: Room service... room service...