I mean, I regularly forget names from episodes I just watched (or books that I finished recently), so I can relate somewhat to that. But yeah, when doing a review where you have every opportunity to refresh your memory, there is no excuse.

So apparently DHX Media made animated shorts of the ponies (not the Equestria Girls), one which debuted online recently where Twilight gets sick. Has there been any announcement of this!?

Edited by kyun on Feb 5th 2019 at 4:21:34 AM

It showed up on my youtube feed out of nowhere once Hasbro uploaded. Not heard anything before these showed up, but I honestly don't check EQD or other pony sites for news.

The first pony short was Twilight and Rarity at the Spa, and this one is about Twilight getting a cold that makes her alicorn magic go rogue.

Let me tell you, the effects of Twily's rogue alicorn magic hitting Rarity gave me the heebie jeebies.

Edited by MrSeyker on Feb 5th 2019 at 4:39:37 AM

Rainbow only being able to talk via sound effects was my favourite. It's also the first Pinkie gag in a while that I've laughed at.

Rainbow: (Indecipherable sound effects)

Pinkie: (said with complete nonchalantness) That's what I said.

That short reminds me a bit of Bridle Gossip.

It was funny. :)

I wonder if Rainbow talking in sound effects is a deliberate reference to "Duck Amuck". Also I think I heard that The Six Million Dollar Man slo-mo sound effect again.

Appljack's hat is apparently called Tallulah.

Edited by WillKeaton on Feb 5th 2019 at 8:31:33 AM

Totally didn't rip-off the plot of Frozen Fever. :P

Elsa's hardly the only character to have a magical cold. Ben 10 and Aladdin the series both used such plots.

Oh, lord. I haven't even thought of Ben 10 for years, much less that story.

...Now that I recollect it, I have to ask: the Omnitrix (or Omninatrix) works by configuring the user's cells to fit the sample of the creatures it has. So, how does that work when the user has a cold or an illness? How does that transfer to the creature it turns into, especially since it's turning him into a healthy creature? Shouldn't it turn him from a ill boy into a healthy creature rather then let the illness keep itself across species?

Should a human cold even affect a creature such as Fourarms?

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 5th 2019 at 8:19:23 AM

If you want to go even farther back, Animorphs book 12 had Rachel morphing uncontrollably (and later pop out an entire crocodile) due to an "allergic reaction" to its DNA. In book 35, Marco also morphs uncontrollably, but that is due to emotional problems rather than a magical illness.

P.S. I'm amazed I can remember that, ~15 years later.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 5th 2019 at 12:58:59 PM

So, here's a question that's been bugging me ever since "Equestria Games": there have been arguments that putting the focus on the games itself rather then Spike wouldn't have been fun or entertaining. I've been trawling into the early pages of the forum (early for me, anyway, as by then, I was still merely a lurker and random question spouter and I hadn't even seen Equestria Girls then) and even found an argument today by Wryte espousing the same thing.

So, let me ask:

What, exactly, was the point of the storyline?

And I'm not trying to start another argument, even in an oblique way, about whether "Equestria Games" should have focused on nothing but the Equestria Games. I would still be asking even if it did because the storyline itself seems rather superfluous.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 5th 2019 at 11:31:22 AM

I have no idea. You would really have to ask the writers themselves what was up with that plotline. I think it just ran out of steam for some reason and they just made the ending a Spike episode to be done with it.

It reminds me a bit of a Dutch cartoon (Alfred Jodocus Kwak, for those curious) where they spent 6 episodes (which was pretty much two regular story arc cycles worth of episodes) on this big quest to invent a machine to talk to whales (despite being a world of talking animals, whales were sort of the aliens of the setting, as no one could decipher their language). And then they botch the landing by spending the fifth episode getting side tracked by a guitar playing octopus (which had absolutely NOTHING to do with that story otherwise), and in the last episode of the arc, they finally talk to the whales... off screen. Because clearly they had not enough time left to show that part. It was stupid. And all the more baffling since it was otherwise a very high quality cartoon, going into very mature social and political themes. It even had cartoon Hitler. As a crow. Who is secretly half blackbird and paints his yellow beak black with shoe polish. And who was the main character's childhood frenemy.

... Also I just realized that Dolf (because of course that was his name) was a crow effectively using blackface to disguise his real ethnicity. A CROW using blackface. Cartoons, man...

But yeah, the Equestria Games plot was a similar thing, where they had one idea for a stretch of episodes, and then kind of got distracted by another idea, and then just halfassed the original plot in favor of their newest idea. That's what it looks like, anyway.

> book 35,

Jesus Christ they made that many?

If you mean the comics, yeah, they are pretty prolific.

Post of the Day #2418

Posted by Emidawg on Thu, 23rd Feb '12 1:59:10 PM - Post #104962 in the old thread

Jesus Christ they made that many?

There were 54 main series books, plus 4 chronicles books and 4 megamorphs books (which did occasionally get referenced in the main books much to my confusion as a kid). However, books 24-44 are filler of varying quality that you can safely skip if you want.

There were also two CYOA style books, but those were apparently a) terrible and b) not part of the main continuity.

It helped that books 24-52 were ghostwritten (following plot outlines by Applegate), giving her more time to work on the side stories.

Oh, i see what you mean. Yeah, some of those book series are LONG runners alright. I know several popular Dutch children's book series that run in the dozens of entries. They can be pretty good if they have a single dedicated author behind them who can churn out quality stories.

IIRC, the Junie B Jones books lasted a while until Barbara Park's passing a few years back.

A big chunk of that is also filler. Many of the ghostwritten books don't really add much to the lore or influence the conflict in any appreciable way.

There are some here and there that still advance the plot, mind you. Like that one with the four Andalite scouts who try to kill the Earth in order to deprive the Yeerks of humans as a host population. For much of the series, the A-plan has been "buy time until the Andalites come and save us all", and the Andalite genocide plan is basically the final nail in the coffin of that ever being a reasonable outcome.

But a lot of the rest are things like "A Yeerk Inspector thinks Visser Three is doing a bad job and then WHOOPS HE DIED WHO CARES" or "The Yeerks are trying to put mind control drugs in beef but WHOOPS THEY DON'T WORK WHO CARES." And sometimes they get weird as f*ck like that one where Jake wakes up in a Bad Future but it's All Just a Dream but also it's not because of magic dream aliens we'll never speak of again.

Once the ghostwriting starts, it takes until I think book 45 for the plot to really pick back up. It's the issue when Marco breaks his cover to save his dad and has to go into hiding, outing himself to the Yeerks and proving once and for all that the Animorphs are human. That's when shit starts to really hit the fan and the series begins moving towards a really great finale.

Pretty much the entire span between issues 45-54 are my favorite part of the franchise, with the David Trilogy a close runner-up.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:04:06 AM

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 6th 2019 at 10:37:34 AM

Those children's books are often more of the Slice Of Life sort with an established cast of characters, so these books tend to be more standalone.

Did Animorphs ever really have good villains?

It seems like from everything I've heard Visser 3 is an idiot, and Visser 2 is kind of a loser who gets played a lot and needs to be bailed out by luck despite supposedly being the smart one.

It's weird honestly. For a series to go that long with a threat that doesn't seem all that competent.