Yeah, I don't have high hopes that we'll see Lightning Dust again.

It just strikes me as odd to see so many accusations that the show is rehashing prior episodes, then turn around and see someone cite the show's unwillingness to rehash as a reason to criticize this episode.

If I had to guess on possible Season 9 episodes:

• An episode where the Mane 6 and/or Starlight swap pony races (...er, pony type. Like pegasi, earth ponies, unicorns... you know what I mean)
• We finally learn about the Royal Sisters' past, before they became princesses
• That "Fluttershy becomes a dragon" episode there were rumors of in Season 3
• Pinkie Pie having to learn that sometimes a pony might not want to be her friend, and that this is perfectly okay
• A long shot, but something confirming in unambiguous words that Scootaloo will never be able to fly, maybe not strictly saying "disability" but very clearly referencing the concept
• A reaaaaaaaally long shot, but an actual, on-screen LGBT relationship. (Lyra/Bon-Bon's really close but it's never been put into words so it doesn't quite count.)
• A time-skip in the finale showing Twilight Sparkle becoming the new Princess of Equestria

Edited by Zennistrad on Sep 10th 2018 at 7:18:19 AM

It's not that this show specifically being unwilling to rehash that's in some way a problem. It's that short of rebooting, you can't get a do-over on specific plot points. You can revisit themes, you can rip off the basic structure of the episode, but you can't just do the episode again, but right.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a rehash of A New Hope. But it's not A New Hope, but right. You can't just make a new Star Wars movie, slot it into the same timeline, and have it be about Luke meeting Obi-Wan and blowing up the Death Star but told differently. You have to commit to a reboot first. Once the story's told, it can never be told again without resetting your continuity and starting over.

That's not a flaw of the show. That's just the nature of continuity structure. You can't unwrite an episode and do the events over again. So when I see an episode that touches on really important material but does so inadequately, completely ruining that material in the process, it bothers me. Much more than episodes that never had a lot of potential in the first place.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 10th 2018 at 5:55:35 AM

My predictions for season 9:

• Rarity and Rainbow Dash somehow get hoofcuffed together in the Everfree Forest castle, and have to work together in order to escape.
• Cheese Sandwich returns for another Pinkie episode. But every time he tries to sing, something cuts him off—all to disguise the fact that DHX couldn't get Weird Al to reprise the role, and they had to hire a soundalike VA.
• The mane six stage an intervention to tell Applejack that her eagerness to shove food into other ponies' mouths is getting really creepy.
• Angel Bunny does something especially nice for Fluttershy, which breaks the curse that has trapped him in the body of a rabbit for all these years, and transforms him back into a stallion. At the end of the episode, he and Fluttershy get married.
• Starswirl the Bearded learns about Starlight Glimmer's modifications to his time travel spell, and realizes the side effects of her spell are now causing time itself to slowly unravel. Twilight teams up with Starswirl to fix time, and they set off on a whirlwind trip. The entire episode is clearly an attempt to explain the contradictions between "It's About Time" and "The Cutie Re-Mark" (and to patch up dozens of other continuity errors from prior seasons), but it winds up creating even more plot holes in every episode it retcons.
• Pinkie Pie breaks into the real world, and doesn't return to Equestria until she's thrown a party for all the DHX staff. It's a Roger Rabbit-style mix of animation and live action, and the real DHX staff all play exaggerated versions of themselves.
• Princess Celestia announces she's stepping down from the throne, and she names Twilight as her successor. Twilight freaks out about the responsibility. She talks it over with Celestia, and Celly comes clean about why she's abdicating: she isn't a pony. She's a pony-shaped mecha operated by five squirrels. Twilight reassures the squirrels that she still loves and admires them, and that convinces the squirrels not to step down after all.
• We'll finally find out who shot Filthy Rich.

Edited by MetaFour on Sep 10th 2018 at 7:15:53 AM

"That 'Fluttershy becomes a dragon' episode there were rumors of in Season 3".

Those season 9 speculations remind me a bit about the silly "season 8 spoilers" people made up as a joke back when there were only three seasons.

Didn't some of those come true?

It was a long time ago but I remember rumors circulating about it being a planned episode from Season 3 that Fluttershy would get transformed into a dragon. (This was back when "being afraid of big dragons" was more of a thing with her.)

It never came to pass, and it's unclear whether it was actually planned at all, but that was a minor thing that came and went, IIRC.

Didn't some of those come true?

I don't remember, but I'd be surprised, given that they were deliberately outlandish.

Particularly @Tobias

A hypothetical episode I could see:

• Scootaloo meets up with LD again, like, somewhere. Las Vegas sounds good, it's a giant Chuck E. Cheese after all
• And Scootaloo does her Neo-Crusader thing and helps LD get a better grip on her purpose. Perhaps touching upon LD's abysmal risk management.
  • LD's good points are brought up, how she's accepts responsibility for the harm she causes but only when she actually manages to cause harm, never before. Say, when a team mate is actually injured, she'll take care of them but before that she'll be unwilling to accept they can actually be injured. Again.
• Perhaps there is interference from RD as she struggles with the lesson she learnt, being that that episode is directly referenced, and her maternal concern for Scootaloo. So perhaps Dash is the antagonist here, I dunno.
• A new and improved Washout with better risk management becomes a possibility in Scootaloo's future. The episode ends with implying but not confirming such a thing. RD has to come to terms with that.

I have no idea. I was just making up stuff I thought would be funny.

Post of the Day #2271

Sounds like someone's playing Monopony.

do not pass go dont collect 200 whatever they use as currency and go straight to the moon

Bits, IIRC. And as a programmer, I'm a yuge fan of it. But out of curiosity, when there's 8 of them is it a byte? When there's 1024, does it become a kilobit? We need some powers-of-2 consistency.

Nah, eight bits adds up to one Spanish dollar.

Nopony knows why they're called "Spanish dollars".

still think horse shoes as currency is funnier

Ten bits makes a bridle. Ten bridles make a blinder.

...what kind of "bits" are we talking about, exactly?

The golden coins ponies pay each other with. They're called bits.

that's the joke.jpg

Oh myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

@Zennistrad

No joke, I'd love an episode where Starlight becomes a dragon or something. I bet she'd be really cute.