But what future potential would it have? The series is ending. There really is not going to be any future story in this series for them, and they could well be very different in the next. I think it's perfectly acceptable to try and close out these little side stories of the show.

As for Daring and Caballeron being former partners, I totally forgot. That would have been useful to have brought up in this episode, and would have made his redemption a bit more believable.

TBH I like how Starlight is only really friends with Twilight but not with the rest of the Mane 6.

It's like Twi has her own friends aside from the Mane 6 and those two groups can't quite connect with each other, which is for this show oddly realistic.

Edited by Fedetropes on Sep 21st 2019 at 9:51:30 AM

Well she also has those friends in Canterlot that no one but her and Spike interact with.

Yannow, on the topic of the finale coming up, The past year and a half or so has come to feel like a time of endings for a lot of the stuff I've grown to like over the last 10 years or so.

It started with Dragonball Z Abridged, which saw Season 3 end with what seemed like one hell of a sendoff, (only for them to announce Season 4 immediately after). Then came Hellsing Ultimate Abridged in December, which ended something I'd been following since about 2011 in my first year in college. Kingdom Hearts 3 came out in January (and rather hastily wrapped everything up and started some new plot thread that's gonna take 14 years more to finish), Game of Thrones ended (badly), Avengers Endgame premiered and capped off 11 years of story, Gotham came to a close, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil and The Big Bang Theory both ended (though I didn't watch either of them), and now it's culminating with Friendship Is Magic.

Geez, all this stuff that made up a large part of my early adult life is ending. Feels like a chapter really is ending, not just a few shows.

> Well she also has those friends in Canterlot that no one but Spike interacts with.

FTFY

No, she doesn’t. Do not fall prey to Larson’s Curse of Clumsy Retcon!

I've had that happen a few times throughout my life, stuff seeming to end all at once.

I stan Twilight's Canterlot Friends. Sue me.

My lawyer-ninjas are coming for your blood!

I just started rereading Parents of Ponyville, and I find it amusing that two different people had a conference with Featherweight, and both times, Bulk Biceps was one of his parents.

I've been falling behind on MLP, and have been trying to catch up by watching one episode a day. Here's what my thoughts were after seeing each one (I'm at She Talks to Angel).

A Trivial Pursuit: So apparently the writers sat down and said, "Hey, you know how everyone loves Twilight's freakouts? Well, how about a whole episode that's nothing but Twilight freaking out? Like, we'll start her off at crazy, and just work our way down from there, putting in as many meme-able faces and memorable Tara Strong vocal performances as possible! Why, when we're done, they won't even remember 'HI, GIRRRLS!' and 'PUUUUUUUDIIING!' It'll be awesome!"

Next Day

Summer Sun Setback: Oh.

Ohhhhhhhh.

Now I see; that last episode wasn't just a concentration of Psyco!Twi, it was also a swan song. One last hurrah where they cram in as many crazy voices and faces for Twilight as possible before retiring that part of her character for good.

Makes sense, too; It would be very hard to believe that Twilight could ever be a good ruler of Equestria if she kept buckling under pressure like that — they need to show her growing out of it and becoming more mature and dependable.

Of course, it also means you're retiring something that helped make her popular, but that's the advantage of knowing you're on your last season — in a few episodes, it won't matter, so now's the time to resolve long-standing character quirks and put conflicts to rest, so your characters get a happily ever after.

...unless the execs suddenly greenlight you for another season, and now you have nowhere to go. But that's for another time.

You know, in hindsight "Trivial Pursuit" is a bit more melancholy now; I didn't know when I was laughing my butt off that I was also saying goodbye.

NEXT DAY

She Talks to Angel: You know, I wondered if we were getting this kind of episode: For whatever reason, body-swapping and shrinking episodes are really popular in kid's cartoons.

However, never did I suspect that the swapping would NOT be between the Main Six, but rather one of them and her bunny. Although I gotta say, Pony!Angel was hilarious.

...also, it is amazing to me how many people took that "I wanna marry Discord" line and immediately started crowing "MY SHIP IS NOW CANNON! I HAVE BEEN VINDICATED!" All while totally ignoring who actually said that, and why.

Okay, Caballeron is definitely behind this. "Now, I have never met Caballeron, …But He Sounds Handsome and roguishly charming..."

I really love how Fluttershy unquestioningly loves absolutely all animals, including traditionally "creepy" ones. She's defintely the kind of person who would genuinely find excessive cruelty to spiders a sticking point.

Okay. I knew ponies were stunningly gullible, but wow are these guys sheep. I mean, it's as if some random nobody came out of nowhere with a book about how Harry Potter is real and Voldemort was the real good guy and everybody immediately treated it as the actual truth.

I'm honestly surprised you managed to keep that charade going for as long as you did.

You know, the destroying-sites thing is very much a big flaw endemic to the Adventurer Archaeologist archetype. I mean, special trinkets and particularly impressive artifacts are all well and good to retrieve, but the site itself and the less-impressive artifacts that get destroyed with it are collectively a hell of a lot more valuable.

Anyway. On the one hand, I would be very interested in a situation where both Yearling and Caballeron are doctoring their accounts to make themselves look better. On the other, I fully expect Caballeron to be full of shit.

Fluttershy. Fluttershy. Fluttershy, darling. You're already an adventurer.

Honestly, I don't really feel that knocking a poisonous fruit out of the grasp of someone about to eat it requires much in the way of sympatheticization.

Oooh, Ahuizotl's kitties! Here's hoping Big A turns up as well, been a long time with no see from him.

Heh. After a berserk manticore, calming down a pack of wild panthers must be kittens' play.

Calling it now, Fluttershy will turn Caballeron and his henchmen to the side of goodness and rainbows through sheer unrelenting sweetness.

Huh. So flyders live in hives. Fun fact — there are such things as colony-building spiders; some species live in titanic webs that can be home to hundreds of spiders, and some kinds are so social that, when groups of two different species were placed in a single enclosure, they simply built a single shared web and cohabited with each other as neat as you please.

Ahuizotl! You're back! And as deliciously hammy and cheesy as always!

Caballeron! I saw you! How dare you tear that spiderweb down like that!

You, ah, you sure you're laying it on thick enough there?

I'm sure that there's no way that putting on a magical truth machine can possibly backfire.

I knew it! Nobody can resist the cute!

Hmm. With his talk of stealing and intruders, something makes me think that Ahuizotl might have... less that fiendishly evil reasons for wanting that talisman.

Oh ho, do we get to see what dirty laundry Daring's hiding now?

... eh, maybe not.

Follow you dreams, Nameless Henchman Number Three! I believe in you, whoever you are!

Starswirl would approve.

The fascinating thing about Ahuizotl's speech is that it implies that there are enough guardian creatures around (whatever they are — would the cipcatli count?) that a) there is some form of community among them, and b) there is some sort of authority among them that could theoretically fire Ahuizotl from his post, and I find both of those things fascinating.

And the moral of the story is that you helping yourself to other cultures' heritage and breaking into their sacred sites to do so is a very shady thing to do.

Heh. I liked this episode. Quite a bit, actually. Although this does raise two rather awkward questions about the events in "Daring Don't" — firstly, why Ahuizotl was trying to go through with the whole ritual to bring about everlasting daylight instead of just trying to get the rings back; secondly, if the Tenochtitilan basin is in the southern jungles and Yearling's cabin is way in northern Equestria, how on God's green Earth did they get from one to the other with a quick stroll?

Edited by Theriocephalus on Sep 22nd 2019 at 2:26:34 PM

Not cruelty to spiders. To spider webs.

Also, to be fair, a lot of those archaeological sites are destroyed by design, as part of a trap. There really is no way to really preserve a self-destructing temple other than just ignoring it, or somehow disarming it (which to my knowledge, no Adventure Archaeologist has EVER tried, by the way).

And of coruse, in real life, there is no such thing as self-destructing temples or booby trapped tombs. Ancient people used the much more Boring, but Practical method of sealing off the entrance and generally hiding it's location if that was possible. Any actual "traps" tended to be of a magical or theological nature, which of course did nothing to deter grave robbers or archaeologists, and would not be terribly convincing today (though Tintin DID make good use of the magical curse variety).

Equestria clearly works on Neverending Story rules, that the destination is always as near or as far as the plot requires. This is why Canterlot sometimes seems to be a short flight away, but other times at least a days' travel by train.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 22nd 2019 at 12:39:14 PM

Post of the Day #2646

Posted by Borne Again on Mon, 9th Dec '13 3:28:06 PM - Post #27064 in the new thread

Sounds like a discussion on Justice League: Doom.

Okay, I'm going to try and catch up to the series as much as I can in the next few weeks. I'll still be skipping more than a few episodes (mainly ones I've already seen or ones I don't like), but I'll be doing my best to catch up with everything important.

Yeah, that's fair. Keeping ancient sites intact is probably a lot trickier when they're set up to collapse at the slightest disturbance.

I agree they should've noted they used to be partners. That's a long time ago we knew of it, after all.

...I still like the Ganondorf-designed pony. <.<;

So I started rereading the Daring Do and the Journey to the Center of the Earth, and I noticed a joke I missed the first time around

Still, if one were to press her for comment they would that she could not, in fact, that they were two stories up and twenty meters back. Although she would note that they were, in fact, twenty-five feet back, but birds were good at that sort of thing so she didn’t expect Briefs to be exactly right.

One thousand miles below them (Although if The Skylark had been there she would have noted that it was in fact Nine Hundred and Eighty-Six feet), Maud and Daring Do crashed into the ocean.

Edited by storyyeller on Sep 22nd 2019 at 5:51:09 AM

So lately Lily Orchard went on some rant I won't bother you guys with, but it left me with one question: are body pillows with cartoon characters really that bad? And is it bad that they are apparently very popular at cons?

It seems like a silly thing to get worked up about to me.

Yeah, that was my first reaction, too. I think that it comes from an internet stereotype that people who like body pillows with cartoon/anime characters are creeps and perverts, and that owning one says rather unflattering things about one's sexual preferences.

Since when has the show ever cared about the comics? Especially enough to leave plot points open for them?

Edited by fredhot16 on Sep 22nd 2019 at 4:36:00 AM

I honestly find the whole body pillow thing kinda pathetic, if I'm being honest, but in and of itself I don't think that it's that much of an issue. I mean, obviously it can be and often is associated with other and more serious issues, but if owning body pillows of fictional characters is the sketchiest thing someone is doing... eh. I'll save my indignation for something that matters.