Markeia named her pony Trixie (Gadgets) without knowing that's already a character, SMH.
Anyway, they get really into character, so it's pretty fun. However, the fact that there are almost no acknowledgments of show events or characters, or the sort of tone the show goes for, does bring it down in my opinion. Also I think I just don't find OC-only stories set in the MLP universe that interesting.
Oh right, stream followup. We watched
1) My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic S6E23 - Where the Apple Lies
2) Equestria Girls Short - Five to Nine
3) My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic S9E10 - Going to Seed
4) DuckTales S2E12 - Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!
5) The Simpsons S27E9 - Barthood
6) The Simpsons S29E8 - Mr. Lisa's Opus
7) Fruits Basket 2019 S1E9
Fan sequel to Turnabout Storm.
Well, I knew it was in development, but progress was so slow I assumed it would never happen. But in the video's description, the creator mentions that he gave himself an ultimatum and that lit a fire within him.
Stream announcement. On Thursday, we're watching the following.
1. X-Files - 202 - The Host
2. Infinite Ryvius - 15
3. Infinite Ryvius - 16
This will be the first really gross episode of X-Files we watch, thanks to a fluke man.
NOTE that we'll be starting the stream TWO HOURS EARLIER to accommodate those who would want to watch the Stanley Cup Finals at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT.
That is to say, the stream will be at 3 PM PT.
However, since the stream is less than two hours, that means I'll be able to rerun the stream at the normal time if people don't show up for the first run.
Fan sequel to Turnabout Storm.
Well, I knew it was in development, but progress was so slow I assumed it would never happen. But in the video's description, the creator mentions that he gave himself an ultimatum and that lit a fire within him.
It's pretty alright. It definitely has a lighter tone than Turnabout Storm, particularly since no one's dunking on Phoenix anymore, and I feel like everyone's speaking much more quickly with fewer pauses between dialogue. Plus it's nice having more of the Ace Attorney cast involved. Trucy especially is a lot of fun having around ponyland. Some screenshots.
I ran the stream early, and then reran it at the normal time, though the second run only got through the X-Files episode. It went pretty well. Some people confused this episode in their memories with a later one involving a sub, but I do intend to show that episode too later.
Ryvius featured a REVOLUTION, but things probably won't go well for this new government. Also apparently there was a murder off screen? I feel like this show makes things more confusing than they need to be.
~~~
Stream announcement, Sunday will be a Starlight Day!
1. MLP - 621 - Every Little Thing She Does
2. MLP - 717 - To Change a Changeling
3. MLP - 911 - Student Counsel
4. Fruits Basket - 10
5. Kaleido Star - 21
6. Kaleido Star - 22
The stream went pretty well. There was some concern about overlap with the Microsoft E3 conference, but we just waited five minutes for it to end and we were good to go. It was a surprise to everyone that we hadn't streamed either of the old Starlight episodes until now. Both were still good, the former more so. It's a shame we haven't seen much with Pharynx since, or that a bunch of stuff happened off screen between "Triple Threat" and "To Change a Changeling".
Fruits Basket implied a lot of things but didn't explain it, to some frustration.
Kaleido Star shocked by revealing the masked figure is exactly who everyone expected. I was thrown off because the characters in-universe guessed it right away, but they still held off on the reveal for a bit.
~~~
The Thursday stream will be:
1. A Goofy Movie
2. Disney's House of Mouse - 208 - Max's Embarrassing Date
With Father's Day coming up, and people otherwise wanting to see it, A Goofy Movie only seemed appropriate. The second listing is something few people are aware of: a follow up of A Goofy Movie showing Max and Roxanne's first date! Though being House of Mouse, it's not that great; still, it's quite interesting that this even exists.
Fan sequel to Turnabout Storm.
Well, I knew it was in development, but progress was so slow I assumed it would never happen. But in the video's description, the creator mentions that he gave himself an ultimatum and that lit a fire within him.
The animation is pretty smooth and looks nice. But on the hand, the writing could have used some work. I remember the original Turnabout Storm being much more engaging. Though I don't remember if that's starting with the first video or later. Gotta go rewatch that at some point. This one's not super bad either but feels more checklist driven than story driven.
Those Daniel Ingram songs from the other thread were pretty cool too.
The animation is pretty smooth and looks nice. But on the hand, the writing could have used some work. I remember the original Turnabout Storm being much more engaging. Though I don't remember if that's starting with the first video or later. Gotta go rewatch that at some point. This one's not super bad either but feels more checklist driven than story driven.
Yeah, Turnabout Storm definitely felt more intense, while this feels pretty relaxed.
Stream followup. We watched the following.
1. A Goofy Movie
2. Disney's House of Mouse - 208 - Max's Embarrassing Date
I hadn't seen A Goofy Movie in years and years, so it was nice to see again. You really do emphasize more with Goofy when watching it at this age. When I was young, I always skipped the dream sequence at the beginning because of how scary it was. There's a lot I forgot about this, including the sequence on the river (including it having a song), and even the reason why Goofy felt the need to drag Max onto the vacation. Watching it after this long, the 90's really stand out in this, from the music to the outfits (also way more revealing outfits than I remembered). Anyway, it's good.
House of Mouse is a show about Mickey running a high end restaurant that all the other Disney characters eat at, making for tons and tons of cameos. This episode even had The Horned King in the background! However, the majority of the episode is made up of repackaged shorts from Mickey Mouseworks, an attempt at making new shorts for the classic Disney characters in the early 00s that didn't work that well. This means the promise of this restaurant set up just isn't explored well. Anyway, this episode involves Max going on a date with Roxanne at Mickey's restaurant. There isn't much to the date itself: just Mickey and others getting overexcited and trying to make the date perfect for them, instead constantly interrupting them, but it's just interesting to see someone at Disney actually remembered her, especially given Roxanne disappears for the actual sequel to A Goofy Movie. The shorts weren't great, but were still decently interesting to watch and comment on. First was Pluto getting wooed by a female dog, but then she turns out to be super horny and won't let him leave her house. Second was a Goofy instructional short about biking, which had some nice gags.
To accommodate Father's Day plans, we're going to have a separate Kaleido Star stream to finish the first season. That leaves more room for MLP episodes in the main stream.
Kaleido Star stream at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET
1. Kaleido Star - 23-26
And main stream at 2:30 PM PT / 5:30 PM ET, focusing on the Cutie Mark Crusaders before their (maybe) last focus episode
1. MLP - 223 - Ponyville Confidential
2. MLP - 506 - Appleoosa's Most Wanted
3. MLP - 604 - On Your Marks
4. MLP - 721 - Marks and Recreation
5. MLP - 912 - The Last Crusade
6. Fruits Basket - 11
I'll probably move "The Last Crusade" earlier if people have to leave before it would normally air.
Kaleido Star featured intense training in the Grand Canyon leading to a miraculous definitely not gay acrobatic maneuver that leaves everyone in awe. It's a surprise that the divine move (or whatever it was called) appears and is successfully pulled off only halfway through the series, but Layla is left supposedly permanently injured as a result, leaving Sora on her own. These episodes were alright. A lot of the appeal of the show is everyone getting together to work through their shows, but these episodes were focused solely on Sora and Layla, and on them struggling, which is less fun. Still, I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the show.
It was interesting watching all of these CMC episodes, since they ended up all coming together for "The Last Crusade". These episodes were all generally better than I remembered, but two streams in a row tired me out, haha. Fruits Basket was alright.
This will be the start of our first two-parter in X-Files, and which I expect to be our last lore story (outside of "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", if you count that). Unless I feel like showing that one with the train.
I keep forgetting to post about these. I read the following fanfics last week.
I liked this story, and it's definitely something I could see happen with Flurry Heart. Discord being a good mentor in his own way is always nice too. It reminds me of later Gargoyles, with Puck and Alexander.
This was an interesting story, and effectively written. However, even before reading your comment confirming it as such, the description of Meghan staying in the pony world as opposed to going home between episodes as depicted in the show felt like it was written out of ignorance rather than a deliberate deviation.
This was good! I admit the Chrysalis reveal in this last chapter was losing me, but then I saw where you were going with it. Overall, I really liked how you portrayed the characters, especially Diamond Tiara and Autumn Blaze.
Stream followup, we watched the following
1. X-Files - 216 - Colony
2. Infinite Ryvius - 17
3. Infinite Ryvius - 18
This X-Files episode went differently than I remembered. I thought for sure this introduced the alien oil. Is that the next episode? Anyway, this does introduce the Alien Bounty Hunter, who is capable of shapeshifting. Oddly, despite encountering shapeshifters of the same type pretty often, Mulder and Scully never develop any real countermeasures. They basically forget about the shapeshifters in time for every lore episode involving them. It's because of stuff like that that I intend not to stream many, if any, lore episodes after we watch the second part of this one later. Still, in the early days, this all felt very intriguing.
Ryvius featured the ship's societal structure continuing to fall apart because no one knows what they're doing and there's a chef coup, and then a pack of grannies appear to assault them with another gravity weapon. It continues to disappoint me that none of these other weapons are mechs. They're defeated and victorious music plays, but then we're back to society falling apart. Good set of episodes.
As an ancient alicorn trapped inside a library, Princess Twilight spent many a century dreaming of being rescued from her prison. Now, finding herself in an entirely new Equestria, she realizes she'd never planned for somepony to actually succeed...
www.fimfiction.net
Here's my review
This was a great chapter, skillfully switching from the sheer dread of going back to the library and encountering what appeared to be new drawings from Discord, to the purest of RariTwi fluff once they actually get inside. I can see why you struggled with this one. Everything comes together so well here that it's hard to call out anything in particular. Well, I suppose there is the fact that when Twilight first tried to go in, I was mentally telling her to go in with Rarity at the same time, and then later they did! Though in a sillier (and better) way than I imagined. Ponies riding ponies is truly the best reason a fic should use ponies instead of humans. It's a huge relief to see Rarity and Twilight work past at least this aspect of their trauma, and a blast from the past to see them have fun in the library again. You could even say it's... enchanted ethereal.
Stream announcement. On Sunday, we're watching the following for Princesses Day.
1. MLP:FiM - 504 - Bloom & Gloom
2. MLP:FiM - 701 - Celestial Advice
3. MLP:FiM - 913 - Between Dark and Dawn
4. Fruits Basket - 12
5. Kaleido Star - 29
6. Kaleido Star - 30
We haven't watched "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" yet, but I figured we're more likely to get a Rarity and Sweetie episode in season 9's second half than another Apple Family episode, hence putting the Apple Family Luna episode here.
Kaleido Star 27-28 are recap, so we're skipping them.
New Eurobeat Brony song, the second he's done recently. I like this one.
Pretty fun animation, with Applejack destroying Ponyville.
6-23-19 Between Dark and Dawn stream; Chat - Down Under
That second YouTube video contains the DEEP backstory of Celestia and Luna.
All the MLP episodes were good, though I was a bit distracted doing something else at the same time. People pointed out that the focus on Starlight's future in "Celestial Advice" is strange in retrospect, given she's just settled into a role given to her rather than seeking anything out.
Fruits Basket had Tohru meet Akito, resulting in real shit and also explaining to people Akito's gender and how the 00's dub handled Akito.
Kaleido Star was the start of a new season (skipping two recap episodes), where after completing the divine move (I keep forgetting the actual name), Sora has gained zero fame and instead everyone's upset that Layla was put down. A new barking rival has appeared who's pretty entertaining, I think. There's also a dumb French superstar.
~~~
Read a one-off RariTwi fic, What is a Youth by Undome Tinwe.
That was really cute! And nice to see Twilight being the seductive one this time.
~~~
And a chat story! Haven't posted one of these in a while. As an explanation, we have a Discord chat category called Temp Archive where channels that will temporarily go unused go. Right now the RP channel is there.
This was really cute! And yeah, that twist got me, lol
The Time of Their Lives by Cold in Gardez is a random comedy about the dead rising and just acting normal, leading to Twilight's arrest and other things.
Finally got around to reading this, and I enjoyed it. It was actually nice reading about the implications this had on Ponyville life, and I particularly enjoyed Rarity's subplot for that reason. I admit I felt bad for Twilight, even if she had the least secure jail cell ever and was lightly punished; she still felt bad about it. I thought the ending was sudden. Otherwise, I thought this was good.
Stream followup, we watched the following.
1. Infinite Ryvius - 19
2. Infinite Ryvius - 20
3. X-Files - 217 - End Game
Ryvius had all the interpersonal drama start boiling over, and then Kyoji decides he's had enough and uses the Vital Guarder to threaten to kill everyone if anyone breaks the rules. It was nice to finally see people confront each other, as opposed to tons of things building up to the point where you can't keep track. We also streamed some comedy shorts tied to Ryvius that were alright.
The X-Files episode makes it clear that the lore episodes are just less interesting than a good one-off episode. Since this episode didn't end up including the Black Oil (that's actually a season 3 episode, "Piper Maru"), I'll show that one and then we'll be done with lore episodes. Next will be a comedic episode, though.
Not sure if there will be stream on July 4, or if it will be at another time. Many of the stream viewers aren't American, so who knows how much it will matter.
Stream announcement, we're watching the following on Sunday
1. MLP - Rainbow Roadtrip
2. Fruits Basket - 13
3. Kaleido Star - 31
4. Kaleido Star - 32
Rainbow Roadtrip is about an hour long, as opposed to being 42-45 minutes, which severely restricts what else can be streamed. I wanted to stream the G3 special Twinkle Wish Adventure, but it just wouldn't work out timing wise.
I tried watching some of Infinite Ryvius last week. There's a lot of cool concepts like slow space battles, the weird sea and space combination, the gravity weapon (though it still focused on crushing things with it instead of messing with trajectories which I would have thought more important for slow battles), something about navigational solids I haven't figured out (or if there's anything behind that).
But the whole thing is just too slowly paced. And I didn't care as much about the ship's internal politics (though having most of the crew not work together except in pockets is kind of interesting). I guess the people are a bit generic and its more like "let's watch want happens when these archtypes are stuck together" than proper character development. Or maybe I haven't got far enough.
Probably won't be able to make it to today's stream unfortunately (if there is one).
I tried watching some of Infinite Ryvius last week. There's a lot of cool concepts like slow space battles, the weird sea and space combination, the gravity weapon (though it still focused on crushing things with it instead of messing with trajectories which I would have thought more important for slow battles), something about navigational solids I haven't figured out (or if there's anything behind that).
But the whole thing is just too slowly paced. And I didn't care as much about the ship's internal politics (though having most of the crew not work together except in pockets is kind of interesting). I guess the people are a bit generic and its more like "let's watch want happens when these archtypes are stuck together" than proper character development. Or maybe I haven't got far enough.
Probably won't be able to make it to today's stream unfortunately (if there is one).
Solids are basically just computer programs; ex, given the current conditions, a navigation solid to move forward.
I largely agree, to be honest. It's slowly paced and I don't care too much about the characters. And it only recently felt like it was really going anywhere with the characters, in the last eight episodes. I mainly just enjoyed the concepts you mentioned.
Stream followups. Nothing much to say about the one on Thursday. Clue didn't work out, so we watched a single YouTube episode instead.
Showed "Colors of the Rainbow" twice to accommodate people who came in after the first showing, and this must be seen by everyone.
I posted my updated Rainbow Roadtrip thoughts in the season 9 thread, but in short... same as before. One person in the stream who hadn't seen it before said they liked it.
Rainbow Dash's Special Day is a G3 special that recaps Rainbow's appearances in previous G3 specials. Yes, G3 had recap specials. This one is interesting because Rainbow had two VAs during G3. The framing story used Rainbow's second VA, so they actually had her go back and redub all of Rainbow's lines in the flashbacks. This created especially odd moments where Rainbow's new VA had to say Rainbow's old catch phrases. New Rainbow said everything was "dashing", while Old Rainbow said "darling" a lot.
Fruits Basket 13 had Yuki's brother, Aya, who is quite a character. I think he went over well.
Kaleido Star honestly started to lose me with these episodes. Leon, the new acrobatics superstar character to replace Layla, is a complete drag and I hate how he more or less brings about power creep. Layla was good at acrobatics but clearly needed to practice all her shows. Leon meanwhile does everything perfectly first go, including things with tools he's never used before, and looks down on Sora for not doing the same.
Interesting animation, though I don't like this as much as the previous "A Different View of" videos. This is about Discord altering reality so Applejack's parents meet, thus bringing about her birth.
And here's a recording of a song planned for the never-to-be fan movie Journey of the Spark. I've always been fascinated by this fan project, which was announced between season 2 and 3, with the selling point of Discord and Chrysalis teaming up. It was clearly never going to happen, but the creator did release a fully voiced animatic trailer, and even a song for it (no animation). The premise of the movie was that Twilight is left in charge of Canterlot for a bit, but screws up so much that a dragon destroys the castle and she runs away to the ends of Equestria, which I suppose is what's depicted in this song. The start of the song is rough as hell, but it gets better past that part.
Stream announcement. Normally this would by on July 4, but I'll ask here too if that's an issue for anyone. I'm perfectly fine moving it to July 5.
1. Legends of Tomorrow - 401
2. Infinite Ryvius - 21
3. Infinite Ryvius - 22
I only started watching Legends of Tomorrow season 4 recently and I knew I had to stream the first episode of that. To give an idea of the sort of craziness this show gets up to, here's a clip from season 3.
Stream followup, we watched the following
1. Legends of Tomorrow - 401
2. Infinite Ryvius - 21
3. Infinite Ryvius - 22
So, here's the reason why I streamed this Legends of Tomorrow episode.
The response to the episode at the start didn't seem that great, but it picked up once the above happened. This was compared to Supernatural, back when it was about goofy supernatural threats instead of just angels all the time, and yeah, this season is clearly positioning itself to fill the gap from Supernatural ending. Probably won't show any more episodes of this.
Infinite Ryvius featured maybe probably sex and live under a guy who threatens to kill everyone if anyone commits crime. It turns out this leads to people committing crime anyway, but no one reports it. Part of episode 22 was recap, which was a bit weird. But maybe probably maybe not an enemy Vital Guarder that's actually a mech incoming.
I'm taking this break as an opportunity to show the Equestria Girls specials we haven't streamed. It's so weird how "Pet Project" introduced a pet lizard for Sunset and made a big deal out of him, but then he never appears again. And he won't appear again, because this short was animated by Boulder Media and DHX never got the assets for Ray.
Twinkle Wish Adventure is interesting for a couple reasons. People tend to view the transition from G3 to G4 as being a huge difference, but this last G3 special actually includes some things that people associate with early season 1 of FiM. In particular, there's a fair amount of sarcasm, and reacting to statements with an understated and unimpressed, "OK." The story in broad strokes also resembles that of "Dragonshy" (which is why I showed it), with the ponies going up a mountain to confront a dragon. The dragon in question, Whimsy Weatherbee is more friendly than that dragon, but that also means she wouldn't be out of place in FiM as a Gabby like character. The special also has a mayor character who is similar in design to Mayor Mare, including with pink hair like Mayor Mare has naturally. Though this mayor rides around on an electric scooter.
Other details are that Scootaloo is Cheerilee's younger sister, Pinkie Pie has the ability to talk to animals (bugs) that are pink, and Twinkle Wish is the most horrifying thing.
Anyway, despite all that, it isn't a good special. Songs were alright, though.
Watching an EQG short with Fluttershy in it before "Dragonshy" made me notice for the first time that she actually did sound pretty different back in early season one. Season 1 Fluttershy's voice was much scratchier, making it sound like she was speaking lower than her natural volume. By the present, Fluttershy sounds naturally sweet and gentle. Anyway, the episode itself is... alright. There are some really nice moments, but honestly, I was never super impressed by the episode as a whole even when I was first watching the show.
"Overpowered" is still weird for how it seems like it should be important, but it just never comes up again. They have a graph and everything about how their powers work! But nope, Rainbow Dash is still using her super speed everywhere with no apparent side effects.
Fruits Basket 14 was good, featuring a graveyard scene and a scene with max despair, and they aren't the same scene.
Watching "Star Crossed" knowing that yes, the show crew did actually ship SciTwi and Timber, just goes to show how hard they were trying to get the viewers to accept that ship.
Kaleido Star didn't have Leon, but the episodes were still just alright and not as fun as part 1 was. A big part of it is how Sora is so down on herself and not her old cheerful self. Rosetta was weird here because she seemed to become even younger and less mature; I assume Leon was draining her skill and thus her age. Layla returned, but it felt like her episode was being hijacked by May making noise. I liked her well enough before, but it did feel like she was just getting in the way by this point.
Next Sunday stream will be of the 2017 MLP Movie.
~~~
I suppose it makes sense to just post "official fan art" here as opposed to the season 9 thread, when it's stuff made after they stopped working on the show.
So after seeing Bevin Brand draw commissioned fan art for fan original characters, I brought up on Monochromatic's Discord that it would make sense to get her to draw a scene from one of Mono's fics. Since she's been drawing humans only, I decided the best one would be Crimson Lips, and the best scene from that would be Twilight pointing out the stars to Rarity during their park date. I commissioned this from Bevin and she read the relevant chapter (on her own volition). She liked it enough to say she'd read the entire story later, and when I told Mono this, she freaked out.
a pal commissioned an EGQ storyboard artist to draw a SFW scene from Crimson Lips (which is itself a mature human raritwi fic VERY LOOSELY based off the aesthetic of Moulin Rouge) and so
a storyboard artist of EQG has not only read an entire chapter of my mature fanfic
but apparently they liked it so much they're going to read the entire fic now and i don't know how to properly compute this except for ????????????? incredible??????
#along with #WOULD IT BE APPROPRIATE TO MESSAGE THEM AND ASK WHAT WAS THEIR FAVORITE PART??? #monorambles #i mean tbh im stoked bc crimson is so fucking good #crimson lips is the only important thing ive ever written #okay not really but almost
I went ahead and asked Bevin about her favorite part, and she gave a pretty detailed and very positive review that made Mono explode. Since that was a PM, I won't post the exact text.
[INTERNAL SCREECHING]
#IT LOOKS SO GOOD #I LOVE RARITYS HAIR ALSO #ALSO IT LOOKS SO GOOD #I LOVE THEM??? #AMAZING #A++++ #rarilight #otp: purple girlfriends #DANG THO
I have to say, I had a distant hope that this woman who worked on actual pony stuff would be so impressed by the bit she read for the commission that she'd read the entire story, but I didn't think it would actually happen.
Stream announcement. On Thursday, we'll finish Infinite Ryvius with the last four episodes.
1. Infinite Ryvius - 23-26
Wasn't so infinite after all.
It's time for my seemingly quarterly catch up on Vannamelon's videos. I don't generally watch her Let's Play videos (especially since it's random junk games now), but her other stuff is entertaining.
I have to say, I had a distant hope that this woman who worked on actual pony stuff would be so impressed by the bit she read for the commission that she'd read the entire story, but I didn't think it would actually happen.
Stream followup! We finished off Infinite Ryvius with its last four episodes. It featured some neat twists, like the religious girl being cray-cray and being behind the murder that Uber mentioned a while ago. It was nice having more stuff happen these episodes, but it also didn't focus on a lot of the stuff I wanted it to. Over 26 episodes, the show kept showing us a set of characters for a few minutes, then cut away to another, then cut away to another, with so little happening each time we saw them. Maybe it would have worked better if we got episodes focused specifically on certain groups of characters, because on a per episode rate, it felt like very little was happening. We didn't get much explanation of the sci-fi stuff either. And even the interesting slow speed battles were dropped, with the last battle instead being a pretty standard mech battle (though against squids). In the end, things are resolved like Lord of the Flies with them being rescued right before everyone starts shooting each other. Though I admit I missed how they defeated the enemy Vital Guarder. The epilogue episode was nice, and I liked seeing everyone reunite.
Next up on the anime schedule will be Madoka Magica, but next Thursday will likely not get right into it.
This was a good chapter, filled with... well, what's the opposite of "heartwarming moments"? Heart chilling moments that still feel good. I really like the direction you're taking Twilight and Rarity's conflict this story. Bodyguard AU Rarity always felt less mature than your other Raritys, to a sometimes frustrating level (in a clearly deliberate way), and it will be interesting to see if she develops past that here.
Nice music with a neat simple animation
And since I'm posting official fan art drawn after they stopped working on the show here, here's Katrina Hadley's new art.
For tomorrow's stream, I was asked to delay the Movie showing until next week, so instead I'm going to take MLP episode suggestions from you guys, especially those who haven't been on the stream much or at all. I'll extend and rearrange the stream as needed.
1. FiM - 719 - It Isn't the Mane Thing About You
2. FiM - 122 - A Bird in the Hoof
3. FiM - 713 - The Perfect Pear
4. FiM - 407 - Bats!
5. FiM - 710 - A Royal Problem
6. Fruits Basket - 15
7. Kaleido Star - 35
8. Kaleido Star - 36
The anime part may or may not be streamed, and I can also stream more FiM episodes if people want it by that point in the stream.
We got some people that don't usually come to the stream... and no one else. All the regulars were gone for reasons, which meant no anime.
The episodes were good. Not too much else to say. "A Bird in the Hoof" reminded me that Philomena hasn't shown up at all since that episode, or even been referenced. Despite the jokes about Pee-Wee, he's shown up more than she has. Also, is Twilight the only character in the show to be intimidated by the royal guards.
s
Watched the first minute and a half and it's... something
For one thing the heroes are actually called Darlings
Oh damn actually kind of creepy about two minutes in
Evil villain still keeps calling them Darlings
Villain: "See Star Darlings? All those wish missions you went on were for nothing! Your positive energy never had the power to defeat me!"
Then the heroes realize oh wait they got power ups from those wish missions I guess, and go Elements of Harmony on the villain
Oh wow, it really is presented the same way as the Elements of Harmony
Oh, the villain's name is Rancora
There's a Pinkie, complete with curly pink hair
Oh my fucking god, the not!Pinkie even says, "You know what this calls for? A party!"
The not!Pinkie
From the "You know what this calls for?" part. She's moving too much when she says, "A party!"
There was also a Celestia that I guess the villain defeated the previous part, who gets up and congratulates the Darlings
Well that explains a lot
I do like the not!Twilight design, at least
Anyway, this one part out of context on its own is pretty wild. I might just stream it tomorrow (still just this part, not the others)
Not!Twilight with not!Celestia
I see no one cares about darlings
I did eventually get a response.
EDIT: Watched more of the series, and the video above is the best it gets, TBH.
We actually got a ton of people this time. Like a ton a ton! Pretty sharp contrast to our last attempt to watch Clue. This includes two people who hadn't seen Clue before. It was pretty nice to watch it this way. People commented on how young actors like Christopher Lloyd and Tim Curry looked and the use of awkward situations for humor. The only bit that didn't age well is the gay jokes with Mr. Green, particularly the heroic reveal that he isn't actually gay. Besides that, it's a lot of fun.
Star Darlings didn't get as big a response as I wanted.
For a while, we kept our streaming site public, but this time we got an viewer who made some somewhat rude comments and then later realized we were an MLP themed stream and made a few anti-brony comments. As a result, I made the stream private at last.
Full announcement tomorrow, but we're going to watch the MLP Movie for the Sunday stream.
Conan had a brony themed skit. There were some surprising deep cuts, like a Cozy Glow reference, but also odd mistakes like saying Cozy Glow betrayed the Cutie Crew. Some suspect it's that thing where you intentionally make mistakes about nerdy things so people don't think you're a nerd. The Bernie Sanders impression also isn't that good.
~~~
Art dump. I need to post these more. Also just going to mix in art done by former crew members.
Huge crossover event, with the following:
- Scootertrix the Abridged
- Camaraderie is Supernatural
- Friendship is Witchcraft
- The Mentally Advanced Series
- Ultra Fast Pony
- Friendship is for Adults
- My Little Pony: The Abridged Series
- Pony Horror Abridged
- MLP:FIM Abridged (CRP)
- Friendship Goes Hard
- Friendship is Pandering
- Bean Quest
Yup, Friendship is Witchcraft rose from the grave for this. No Jenny Nicholson, though.
I still have to watch this, but it's too big not to post.
EDIT: Here's the Friendship is Witchcraft bit
Only Celestia talks. It's pretty disappointing, really.
EDIT: Got to the ending in one shot, and apparently using one of the shorter paths. As someone who has never watched Scootertrix Abridged before, while I can appreciate the effort, this didn't do much for me and I was just confused about all these characters.
I was a bit surprised to see it was more than a year since we last streamed the MLP Movie, and the last time I watched it was soon after that. The Movie is still enjoyable, and in fact I think this is the viewing where I enjoyed it the most, but it's hard not to notice the weird pacing issues and points where things could have been improved. We had someone who hadn't seen the movie before, and he seemed to enjoy it. It's pretty clear the beginning is the weakest part, with the really forced jokes ("watcha talkin' 'bout") and the sudden shift from fun song to airship attack. I pointed out the places where the art book reveals there was supposed to be more. For example, after escaping Celaeno's ship, the ponies were supposed to drop down into the forest and encounter mud monsters. When Queen Novo caught Twilight stealing the pearl, the ponies were supposed to be put in seapony jail. There, as I recall, Fluttershy would have befriended the other prisoners and organized a jailbreak, and Applejack would use HONESTY to convince the seaponies to help them. One odd thing about the Movie is that a lot happens, but you're also left wishing a lot more happened still.
We're one week behind on Fruits Basket, but I elected to only show one episode today and two next time. This episode was interesting mainly for the time spent on just the adults talking. Well, if you can really call any of them but Hattori an adult.
The first Kaleido Star episode, about Marion, was nice, and featured Leon getting super angry that they dare perform a show for children. Second episode revealed that Leon severely injures all his partners, making me wonder how the hell anyone still hires him. He does this to May, and then Sora trains for a TOURNAMENT ARC. It was a shame to go back to the Leon stuff, but now that he has actual flaws beyond being a jerk and May has been cowed (yes, I get to use that word that way!), maybe both characters will be better.
The EQG shorts were well received, aside from jokes about how no one cares about filters anymore.
Also, decided to stop showing YouTube videos after the last show.
Years ago, ahoy suggested streaming The Breadwinner, but we just sort of forgot until now, so we plan on streaming that on Thursday. It'll probably be the most depressing movie we'll stream.
I'm sure everypony has had that nightmare where you have to give a speech in front of a huge crowd, then you look down and find that you are FULLY CLOTHED.
I thought it was alright; as such, I chose not a post a review.
I enjoyed the mythical qualities of the beginning segments, but it was losing me once pony society was formed and it went into detail about original characters I just didn't care much about. The two students ended up just being damsels anyway. Plus the dream sequences just kept on being vague and didn't explain anything for so long. Finally, I've mentioned this before, but I just don't like Discord in antagonistic roles in fan content. When he's a serious threat, he isn't interesting, because you have the binary state of him completely overpowering the protagonist or being defeated, and there's little way to have a real back and forth. Plus the story felt obligated to hook up to the events of the show, leading to things like Celestia creating the Elements of Harmony from her inner self when she doesn't seem to have a particular affinity for the qualities the Elements represent.
Still, it remained interesting enough throughout.
Also, I got an ad in a place that amused me.
(Because you could interpret the ad as an image of what Discord was doing, with him being played by an old woman in the live action adaptation for some reason)
Meant to get back to it once things settled down, forgot about it, saw this, read your reaction, couldn't really think of anything to say at the time, meant to come back to it again when I had, and... still don't really have anything to say besides "yeah, that's fair."
Thanks for tackling a three hundred thousand word novel on nothing more than a recommendation, at least, and I hope it was worth it.
It's been long enough since I've read this one that I don't remember the back half well, which is probably telling enough as is. The shift in focus is definitely meant to mirror the change in Celestia's priorities as time wears on, it's just a shame that the story itself doesn't completely stick the landing once it moves on from the creation myth. Still one of the most interesting depictions of the sisters as proper goddesses around, though, and you don't really see stuff like this anymore since the show came up with Hearth's Warming.
Stream followup, we watched the following.
1. DC Super Hero Girls episode 5 - #AdventuresInBunnysitting
*. DC Super Hero Girls shorts - #LetThemEatPie
*. DC Super Hero Girls shorts - #RemoteUncontrolled
2. The Breadwinner
The DC Super Hero Girls episode and shorts were well received, though I'm not sure there's that much else I consider worth showcasing. Mainly because not much has released still. BTW, in that first episode, Supergirl says, "Time to take out the adorable trash." This is indeed an MLP reference; MA Larson wrote that SHG episode. Rainbow said this in "Swarm of the Century", referring to the parasprites.
As for the movie, it was quite good, though heavy enough that there wasn't much chatting. That said, there were lighthearted moments where we felt free to talk spread throughout. I definitely recommend checking it out. If you really need to know, the ending is happy... more or less. Still has America Fuck Yeah coming in to bomb everyone and later presumably be shocked when society in Afghanistan is falling apart and figure it must be innate in the people, but the protagonists escape that. It was interesting to see so many aspects of Indian culture depicted in the Afghanistan setting; the country is right next to that region, but I never thought about it.
I realized that I should probably stream something to commemorate Kyoto Animation, after the arson, so I plan to stream Liz and the Blue Bird next Thursday. The movie is in the setting of Sound! Euphonium, but it can be watched standalone.
~~~
Good cover, and the added lines work well
Good PMV. I've posted a couple of their PMVs before, though only one comes out a year or so. Still, it's kind of sad seeing it's their final collaboration.
The Equestria Girls special was still fun to watch, and the shorts were pretty well received too.
We watched a Simpsons episode and that Mickey Mouse short in light of Russi Taylor's passing. The Simpsons episode was pretty good, and the short was well received too.
The two Fruits Baskets episodes covered material not adapted in the first anime with Uotani's backstory, due to it being after the point where that anime ended (and where this first season will probably end). It was good.
Kaleido Star unfortunately tried to push the idea that no, Leon isn't the jerk for pulling his hands away before catching his partner, his partner is the jerk for thinking he's the one with the problem and not herself. It's pretty dumb. It did give us this GIF though.
I'm sure a story of Twilight turning into a naga will appeal to some people >_>. But it isn't a lewd story, for the record. Here's a sample.
The Princess of Night stepped around her shoddy attempt at coiling herself and looped a hoof around Twilight's ankle. "Let's try getting you off this floor, then. Somewhere carpeted, I think, will help."
"Okay." Twilight swallowed. "How?"
"What?"
"Moving. How?"
"Er… slithering, I should think."
She didn't get it.
Twilight fixed her with a meaningful look. "Luna, how do I slither?"
The mares stared at one another for a moment. Luna let her gaze flick between Twilight, her coils, and the floor.
"I… is it not simply a sort of…" Luna bit her lip and wiggled her hips. "Sort of thing?"
Her ears flattening against her mane, Twilight glanced over her shoulder toward the length of her tail and gave it a try.
My review; it isn't a twist based story, so I'll just post it straight up.
I loved Twilight figuring out her new naga body. The descriptions were great and conveyed the character personalities really well. Even though I'm not a huge fan of TwiLuna, I liked them here.
She was a storyboard editor and not a writer, to be clear.
Spacing aside (probably Tumblr's fault), it's well written for the short and simple story it is. It involves Sunset being discouraged when she loses to SciTwi in a competition she worked hard on and Flash getting her to cheer up. Just friendship, no shipping.
Stream announcement, we're watching one of Kyoto Animation's movies in tribute to them, after the arson.
1. Liz and the Blue Bird (English dub)
I've actually been interested in streaming this for a while. KyoAni was pretty good about getting women involved in their projects, with the writer and director for this both being women. To confirm, both of them are alive. This movie is based on Sound! Euphonium, but you don't need to have watched that show for this, from what I hear. This is about what were background characters on that show, and the main characters of the show are background characters here.
Stream followup, we watched
1. Liz and the Blue Bird
The stream was looking dire for a while, but 20 minutes in, people did start showing up, so I went ahead with the movie.
I had seen a lot of anime-tubers hyping the hell out of this movie. While it's certainly a pretty film, with incredibly detailed animation, and it isn't bad or anything, there just isn't much to it, so I found it underwhelming. No one else who watched it was all that impressed either. It was nice to see a movie with a female director and writer and a ton of female staff, though.
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