My Little Pony |OT| An adventure that never will end

[SigmasonicX]

Quoting this from the season 8 thread if you missed it.

Alright, so EtcetEra Hangouts is being removed, and instead there will be an Entertainment board, with Hangouts threads being split up between EtcetEra and Entertainment. This means that both this thread and the community thread will be on the same board, which is a bit awkward. For now, the best route is probably to continue to split discussion as is. That is to say, the community thread will include discussion of community events like streams and RPs along with fanfic discussion, and the season 8 OT will discuss the episodes, comics, and non-fanfic fan content. When season 9 comes around, we'll try a combined thread that covers all topics, assuming this board change lasts.

I'd like some feedback about that, actually. Would you guys be upset about fanfic discussion and episode discussion in the same thread? What about discussion of things we stream, which include a lot of non-Pony stuff?

Click to shrink...

While I'm here, I'll cover Friday's stream. We watched the Neil Breen movie Fateful Findings and a video from Jenny Nicholson, embedded in the below quote, where I give my thoughts on the latter.

Before I watch the new(ish) episode, I wanted to comment on this video by Jenny Nicholson that we watched on the stream last night. She's the voice of Twilight in Friendship is Witchcraft and the voice of Kimi Sparkle, who has since achieved modest success as a vlogger, for those unfamiliar.


In the video, she goes over the Star Wars: Forces of Destiny doll line and how it fails in comparison to the Monster High doll line. I always knew that Equestria Girls was meant to compete against Monster High, and I was familiar with some facts about the dolls from egophiliac's old reviews of them, but I hadn't realized just how much Equestria Girls was stealing from Monster High. Monster High has short two-minute web episodes that focus on the characters and depict them interacting with each other, with the intention of making girls go, "My favorite character is best friends with this character, so I have to get that doll too!" What especially struck me was the fact that Monster High included a bully character among its initial set, so there would be a character to create conflict in doll play. That's why Sunset Shimmer was presented as a stock bully character despite her backstory!

One other thing I noticed were that Jenny mentioned that you could tell the Monster High character archetypes from the way they dressed (in contrast from the Forces of Destiny dolls exposing how Star Wars leading ladies often look alike). From the image she put up, at least, none of us in the stream could see that. I imagine it's clearer in the concept art on boxes; the Equestria Girls dolls aren't great about showing archetypes in the dolls themselves either. Given the fact that the EQG characters do look pretty similar, a lot of their personality only comes from their expressions and posing, which is better handled by the Equestria Girls Minis toys than the main dolls.

Click to shrink...

As for Fateful Findings, I will admit it's more watchable than the other Breen movies showcased, due to the lack of repeated footage and the fact that stuff happens, even if I'm not sure how significant a lot of it is. It was pretty fantastic that even though nothing about the initial premise was implying it, Breen still has a room full of several laptops that he uses to hack into everything and expose all the secrets, which results in corrupt business owners and government officials committing suicide in different ways. There's also a lot of slamming papers, books, and laptops on desks or onto the ground. Also, Breen butt, which we didn't need to see. Still, I found myself pretty sleepy during the movie.

~~~

Well this is interesting. MrNumbers is converting The Mare Who Once Lived on the Moon into original fiction, and in the process, changed the genders of some characters. He talks about that in the link. I was unconvinced about the changes going in, but once he describes them, they do make sense. I am curious about how he'll handle the things that weren't explored much because they relied on familiarity with the show. I particularly wonder how he'll handle the Elements of Harmony in this version.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Well, that entire discussion is moot now.

About halfway through Past Sins, getting through chapter 11. Here's what we said in the chat. Note that Sylvee spoils later events if you care. This goes on for a bit, so I'll have to split it.

Spoiler: Past Sins chat

SigmasonicXToday at 8:57 AM
Alright, going to actually read Past Sins now https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jTrcxbye9NPKHn9Iqp0AVHwdb9a11WVpxuudQZKMqkk/edit?usp=sharing
Reading the season 1 version
Surprised the cover artist is still around https://www.deviantart.com/dreatos
SigmasonicXToday at 9:03 AM
Didn't expect Twilight to be captured in the prologue. Not much of a prologue, then, really.
Ogodei-KhanToday at 9:06 AM
Twilight's a Princess now. All Princesses must be captured or you don't have a story
SigmasonicXToday at 9:06 AM
Season 1, though
I find myself reading the villain's lines in Chancellor Neighsay's voice.
Celestia taking initiative? Now I know this is a season one fic!
CappyToday at 9:20 AM
v_v
SigmasonicXToday at 9:32 AM
It's interesting to see how the characters and narration feel the need to tie everything that happens back to events in the show. Rarity compares Twilight getting captured to the Diamond Dogs incident. The narration compares Twilight's locator spell to Rarity's gem finding spell.
Twilight going back into the Everfree Forest just a day after cultists captured her and took her there, and after Spike brings up the cockatrice turning her into stone in "Stare Master", just to retrieve some books, is some season 1 fandom Twilight.
Almost instantly, Twilight's mind began to jump to the worst case scenario, much like it had done when Fluttershy had taken Celestia's pet, Philomena.
Oh come on!
Philomena isn't even relevant here!
Reminded of the flavor text of this card https://img.scryfall.com/cards/large/en/isd/127.jpg?1517813031

What would have been a nice and pithy line is ruined by over explaining.
SigmasonicXToday at 10:20 AM
Alright, with Era back, taking a break from the fic... before I even finish chapter one.

[...]

SigmasonicXToday at 11:46 AM
Alright, now that that's done with, back to Past Sins.
Tried to bump the thread as early as possible to see if it could catch any post-reorg-unreorg attention
Weird, there are links to YouTube videos in this story
CappyToday at 11:52 AM
:o
family guy-esque cutaways?
SigmasonicXToday at 11:53 AM
It was to explain a reference to rubbing on the rims of wine glasses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwCR1FpbnhQ
CappyToday at 11:53 AM
:o non-pony cutaways
SigmasonicXToday at 11:53 AM
Which is... why?
It wasn't even relevant
CappyToday at 11:54 AM

SigmasonicXToday at 11:55 AM
Finished chapter 1. Twilight is acting like an idiot and not telling Celestia about Nyx, meaning there's going to be a part where this all blows up in her face.
Story isn't bad or anything so far, to be clear.
UberTagToday at 11:55 AM
Twilight acting like an idiot... are you sure one of the show writers didn't pen this?
SigmasonicXToday at 11:55 AM
Though I'm being lenient on stuff I can identify as "early fandom mistakes"
CappyToday at 11:57 AM
Ohhh slam
SigmasonicXToday at 11:57 AM
Well, going out of her way to hide that she found a possible reincarnation of Nightmare Moon because she thinks Celestia will destroy her is a bit OOC even for panicky Twilight
CappyToday at 11:57 AM
Uber with the dunkington!
SigmasonicXToday at 12:05 PM
In the story, Twilight decides to claim Nyx is her cousin, reasoning that she doesn't talk about her family so no one would know better. Funny how this turned out to be canon in the season 2 finale.
SylveeToday at 12:51 PM
All I know about that story is that Nyx is a meme on /mlp/ for shitty ocs
SigmasonicXToday at 12:52 PM
Halfway through chapter two, she's just "generic filly".
But I know more stuff happens with her

[...]

SigmasonicXToday at 12:54 PM
Rarity went from frightened of Nyx to being obsessed with her design and wanting her to go out with her Nightmare Moon eyes undisguised pretty quickly
SylveeToday at 1:01 PM
That story cover art is pretty edgy
SigmasonicXToday at 1:04 PM
It's a story for ADULTS after all
SylveeToday at 1:06 PM
I can't get over Twilight being hanged
SigmasonicXToday at 1:06 PM
One of the GAF posts discussing the story mentions the author said that's figurative and won't actually happen.
So it's a common thing people noticed back then
SylveeToday at 1:09 PM
ummmmmmmm, I don't know if I should say something. I read through the synopsis
SigmasonicXToday at 1:10 PM
I don't care about the story, so spoil away
SylveeToday at 1:10 PM
That definitely happens
All the stuff on the cover is from the book
SigmasonicXToday at 1:10 PM
So the author lied then
CappyToday at 1:12 PM
rip twilight
SylveeToday at 1:12 PM
I don't know how the book actually reads
But the plot sounds like pretty bad fanfiction
SigmasonicXToday at 1:13 PM
Just introduced the mulberry teacher in chapter 3(edited)
SylveeToday at 1:14 PM
What's funny is that the author apparently tried to rewrite some of the story in response to people complaining about Nyx being a Mary Sue
And what they did was have some of the students in the school hate her for being so amazing at stuff instead of all of them liking her
CappyToday at 1:14 PM

?
SigmasonicXToday at 1:14 PM
Yes, that's why I'm reading the older version
SylveeToday at 1:14 PM
C- you tried
SigmasonicXToday at 1:15 PM
It's

CappyToday at 1:16 PM
why does "beetle" look like a ladybug
hmm i guess they are beetles
SigmasonicXToday at 1:16 PM
Ladybugs are yeah
SylveeToday at 1:17 PM
I think the number one sign you have an overpowered villain is if the Elements of Harmony don't work on them
Because in the show the Elements/Tree are basically the strongest thing in existance
UberTagToday at 1:19 PM
(Starlight Glimmer excepted.)
SylveeToday at 1:19 PM
Starlight didn't defeat the literal elements of harmony though, she just beat the Mane 6
CappyToday at 1:19 PM
what's the tier list
SigmasonicXToday at 1:21 PM
Mole at top
SylveeToday at 1:21 PM
Something like:
Tree/Elements
Full power Tirek
Twilight with Alicorn Magic
Discord
Love
Sombrero
Chrysalis after sexing up Shining
Fuck
Forgot the mole
CappyToday at 1:21 PM
Aya?
SigmasonicXToday at 1:21 PM
He wouldn't get that reference

Giant moles are top tier, moles that are anime girls are worse than trash
UberTagToday at 1:23 PM
http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/9500000/Aya-and-Rei-super-gals-9597033-640-489.jpg

CappyToday at 1:23 PM
what about the vines
and the windigoes
i need match ups
UberTagToday at 1:24 PM
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uCJYhmVomjw/hqdefault.jpg

CappyToday at 1:24 PM
vines vs tree/elements is a clean 10 -0(edited)
SigmasonicXToday at 1:26 PM
Moles don't have big eyes
Failure even as a mole
CappyToday at 1:27 PM
v_v
too much bully of aya
she has it bad enough already
SigmasonicXToday at 1:27 PM
I think we scared away Sylvee
CappyToday at 1:28 PM
Anime vs Sylvee is also a clean 10 - 0
UberTagToday at 1:28 PM
That's an ironclad rule.

1
SylveeToday at 1:31 PM
I was reading stuff
But the anime didn't help
CappyToday at 1:32 PM
the skurinu
SigmasonicXToday at 1:32 PM
In the story, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are being bullies. Back in the days when they were the least redeemable characters.
CappyToday at 1:33 PM
now they're the least existing characters >_>
SigmasonicXToday at 1:33 PM
And now they just came over to play with Nyx, Twilight lets them go, and Nyx doesn't think to tell her they were bullies despite having no reason to hide it
UberTagToday at 1:37 PM
Starlight Glimmer not taking Diamond Tiara under her wing is a missed opportunity. Especially after they made it clear that DT has a crone for a mother.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:37 PM
Now Twilight is reminded they are bullies and remembers them making fun of Apple Bloom in "Call of the Cutie". Funny how the actual show just has Applejack be oblivious about this despite being present for that too.
In "Family Appreciation Day"
CappyToday at 1:38 PM
the show is kind of super terrible about that sort of continuity >_>
SigmasonicXToday at 1:39 PM
While reports of such things are rare, exceptionally magically inclined unicorns were said to be able to perform a rage shift where their anger feeds into their magic and causes a physical change to their bodies. Twilight had experienced one such rage shift when she was trying to understand Pinkie Pie's sixth sense, and today would be the second occurrence.

Mane and tail set ablaze by her rage-driven magic, eyes glowing red, and her coat a bright, angry white, Twilight glared down at Diamond Tiara like she was a pony of the apocalypse.
God, I forgot how so many stories tried to canonize Twilight's Rapidash form from "Feeling Pinkie Keen"
SylveeToday at 1:46 PM
The bigger problem with DT is that they reformed her purely so the CMC did something important enough to warrant them earning their cutie marks, and the writers had no plans/clue what to do with DT after that.
Most of their other reformed villains have gone better
Outside of some of the non-movie EQG villains
SigmasonicXToday at 1:49 PM
I'm sure we'll see a lot more of Vignette Valencia.
... Wait, did she even get reformed?
SylveeToday at 1:50 PM
They kept it ambiguous so little girls can play her as either a face or a heel

UberTagToday at 1:52 PM
https://derpicdn.net/img/2016/3/5/1102568/large.png

SigmasonicXToday at 1:57 PM
Still, as the filly looked up at the long-forgotten castle, something began to bubble up in her mind. Nyx tried to force whatever it was away, tried to clear her head, but the blurry images and voices persisted, playing out inside her head.

"Oh, my beloved subjects. It's been so long since I've seen your precious little sun-loving faces."

"What did you do with our Princess?"

"Whoa there, Nelly!"

"Why, am I not royal enough for you? Don't you know who I am?"

"Ooh! Ooh! More guessing games! Um... Hokey Smokes! How about Queen Meanie? No! Black Snooty, Black Snooty!"
Another pet peeve, when referring back to previous events, including the jokes

SylveeToday at 2:02 PM
The jokes are essential to the scene
ESSENTIAL
TrigonometrizeToday at 2:02 PM
QUEEN

MEANIE
SigmasonicXToday at 2:04 PM
Also annoyed that Applejack's line is there too.
SylveeToday at 2:05 PM
To be fair that whole scene has a lot of tension-breaking stuff in it
Because it was the first episode so they still had the kiddie gloves on
SigmasonicXToday at 2:05 PM
It was the author's choice to include all that, but yeah, first episodes
"And I know your mother's got to be worried too, Scootaloo," Twilight remarked.

"Oh no! My mom is going to flip!" the orange pegasus realized.

"Hey, don't worry, Kid; I've got you covered," Rainbow Dash said, giving Scootaloo a noogie. "I know your mom. How about I fly you home and explain everything?"
In the anti-Scootabuse phase, I see
This is clearly meant to push back on the orphan Scootaloo that's hated by Rainbow stuff
UberTagToday at 2:08 PM

I like this alternate universe where I have parents. Can I visit?
SigmasonicXToday at 2:11 PM
"That's her, Daddy!"

Twilight's eyes hardened as she saw Diamond Tiara standing on her doorstep, this time accompanied by an older stallion. He had a grayish-violet mane and a complementary grayed red tone coat. He was substantially sized, though not as large as Big Macintosh. He had a cutie mark of a jeweled necklace and jeweler's eyepiece. His azure eyes were turned down in a hard glare set directly upon Twilight.
Oh shit, Buff Filthy Rich

Oh shit
Below the portrait, set into the picture's polished wooden frame, was an engraved plaque.

Sir Spell Nexus
Headmaster of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns
The villain is in education too!
I was right to imagine Neighsay's voice for him.
Another link, this time to show the design of a random character http://images.wikia.com/mlp/images/e/ef/Bastion_Yorsets.png
What an interesting design!
(The image is gone)
SylveeToday at 2:38 PM
Joke's on you, that's his Cutie Mark
CappyToday at 2:52 PM
wait
a minute
SylveeToday at 2:55 PM
I'm waiting
CappyToday at 2:56 PM
oh sorry i was getting a drink
this is me being super pedantic (as usual)
buuuuuuuuuuuuuut
starlight said that trixie's better than twilight at "magic" but didn't twilight beat her using that
SylveeToday at 2:57 PM
Magic Duel was a mistake
SigmasonicXToday at 2:57 PM
Well Twilight doesn't make it her day job
CappyToday at 2:58 PM
i actually really dislike Magic Duel too >_>
i would've preferred a Moondancer-level treatment of Trixie rather than the outsized- magic-villain-obsessed-with-Twilight treatment(edited)
SylveeToday at 2:59 PM
Trixie in Magic Duel doesn't really feel like Trixie, it's generic evil villain with a hate boner for Twilight(edited)
TrigonometrizeToday at 3:02 PM
ALICORN

(plot device)

AMULET
UberTagToday at 3:03 PM
The amulet was the villain in Magic Duel.
SigmasonicXToday at 3:04 PM
Most of Past Sins chapter 6 is just the pilot recreated by fillies in a play
Pretty boring
UberTagToday at 3:04 PM
Just like the book in Inspiration Manifestation is the villain and not Rarity.
And how like none of the Equestria Girls villains are actually villains because they're merely possessed by similarly evil artifacts.
SigmasonicXToday at 3:05 PM
Except the Dazzlings
UberTagToday at 3:05 PM
Yeah, they're the exception.
SigmasonicXToday at 3:05 PM
Unless their gems turn out to be evil
UberTagToday at 3:05 PM
Starlight Glimmer was a legitimate villain, though. No evil artifact horseshit there.

I'm just that special.
CappyToday at 3:07 PM
Sunset was evil on her own too
UberTagToday at 3:07 PM
This is true.
Or at least the original Sunset was before they retconned her into this other character who feels completely separate and distinct from her.

Evil pony Sunset actually still exists. She swapped out with Dougworld Sunset when nobody was looking and infused her with alternate memories.
SigmasonicXToday at 3:26 PM
Diamond Tiara's father is part of the evil cult
Taking up the orange juice glass, Nexus titled the glass up to his mouth. With a few swift gulps he emptied the glass, shaking his head after he had finished. The perfectly chilled juice was delicious, but when drunk quickly it gave the unicorn a brain freeze.

The momentary discomfort, however, helped focus Nexus's mind. There was now a need for both subtlety and haste to ascertain who the filly truly was before Celestia could act in a way to make such an investigation impossible.
Can have blood rituals, but NO ALCOHOL
So much of this story is so... menial.
SylveeToday at 3:36 PM
Isn't it supposed to be slice of life combined with epic stuff?
SigmasonicXToday at 3:36 PM
Yeah, but it's like setting up a fair and nothing interesting happening.
"Yeah! Turn Fluttershy into a tree."

"W-why would you want me to be a tree?" asked Fluttershy, looking incredulously at Pinkie Pie for her incredible suggestion.

"Because, this one time, on a train, I got talking with Rainbow Dash and Twilight, and, for some strange reason, Rainbow thought you were a tree, even though you obviously aren't. But then you said you'd like to be a tree," Pinkie Pie answered Fluttershy before turning her excited blue eyes back to Nyx. "So can you turn her into a tree? "
MEMES
UberTagToday at 3:37 PM
This is just horrid writing.
Why are you subjecting yourself to this, Sigma?
SigmasonicXToday at 3:38 PM
It's one of the most important brony documents and it's still very popular, tho
UberTagToday at 3:39 PM
So is Fifty Shades of Grey.
My point stands.
SylveeToday at 3:40 PM
I mean Suicide Squad is basically required media
SigmasonicXToday at 3:48 PM
"Twilight, you okay? Yer lookin' mighty pale," said a deep voice on Twilight's right.

The unicorn was snapped out of her spiraling thoughts as she looked up at Big Macintosh, who had a moment free from customers to check on the pair.

"Oh... yes, sorry... I'm fine. Just... just a little light-headed."

"You want another apple?" he offered kindly.

"No, no thank you, Big Macintosh," the unicorn replied. "Uh, have they started the afternoon activities?"

"Don't think so, but I reckon it's going to start right soon," Big Macintosh answered, the straw in his mouth twitching as he spoke. "Saw Applejack and Apple Bloom headin' in that direction."
Talking Big Mac
Hmm, pretty sure he was already established as not talkative in season 1.
He only ever talked much in "Applebuck Season"
Maybe like with Scootaloo, this is intentionally pushing back against a common fan assumption
Pinkie Pie's frown quickly turned back to a sinister smile, her turning her head in another direction. "Don't worry about it, Dashie; now the spy is trying to run away from me again, and nopony can run away from Pinkamena Diane Pie."
MEMES
SylveeToday at 3:57 PM
Pinkamena wasn't a psycho killer, daily reminder
SigmasonicXToday at 4:02 PM
Alright, first OP Nyx moment. She's playing tug of war with the CMC against four older colts. They pull in the CMC, but then Nyx uses magic to cast multiple spells quickly in a row and defeat them.
SylveeToday at 4:03 PM
That one specifically was apparently edited later to make some people frustrated at her
Although I feel like the better solution would be to remove it altogether
SigmasonicXToday at 4:04 PM
We already saw in "Fall Weather Friends" that ANYTHING GOES in pony tug of war.
Only Applejack was upset about Rainbow flying
Oh shit, the villain knows The Stare.
And it's definitely The Stare, because Fluttershy made sure to give a detailed explanation to all readers that haven't bothered to watch "Stare Master" I guess
CappyToday at 4:08 PM
this author doesn't really know their audience, i guess >_>
SylveeToday at 4:08 PM
I think they just REALLY wanted to make sure everyone got the reference
CappyToday at 4:09 PM
it's not fun if you explain it
SylveeToday at 4:09 PM
ur not fun

CappyToday at 4:09 PM
nyxnyxnyx
SylveeToday at 4:12 PM
Oh, Sigma. Is the main character actually a bug thingy that can turn invisible?
CappyToday at 4:12 PM
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ;-;
i guess technically they would have a bug thingy
as a devotee
SigmasonicXToday at 4:16 PM
"Learning from experience," Rarity offered softly, staring into her own cup of tea. "Taking care of Sweetie Bell the past several years and running my boutique without any help, it's forced me to learn many things the hard way... at least since mother and father..." Rarity trailed off, the end of the sentence dying in her throat.
RIP Raridad and Rarimom
UberTagToday at 4:17 PM
Sweetie Belle has no parents. Scootaloo has parents. What a weird alternate universe this is.
SigmasonicXToday at 4:17 PM
So to recap, yeah that
UberTagToday at 4:17 PM

I have an 'E' at the end of my name. This is clearly an imposter.(edited)
SigmasonicXToday at 4:18 PM
TBF, it did take a while for people to get consistent about that, I remember
It's spelled with an E later in the chapter
I wouldn't be too hard on the typos, since those presumably did get fixed in the 2012 revision
Apple Bloom leaned in, lowering her voice. "Tell us something you've never told any other pony."

Nyx blinked in confusion and titled her head to one side. "Like what?"

Apple Bloom shrugged. "Anything."

"Yeah, just make it something cool," Scootaloo added.

"Well, I can't really think of anything to tell you, but..." Nyx fell silent and glanced back at her vest. "There... is something I can show you."
Jesus Nyx that's really all it takes?
(She's been hiding her alicorn wings)
SylveeToday at 4:27 PM
She showed Twilight
Fricken cheater
SigmasonicXToday at 4:42 PM
Great idea Celestia, follow this guy's advice to bring Nyx to him to cast a spell to supposedly look into her mind without telling Twilight what you're doing.
SylveeToday at 4:43 PM
Typical Student Teacher relationship
SigmasonicXToday at 4:45 PM
Alright, chapter 10, this is supposed to be when shit gets real™
Celestia actually does tell Twilight what she's doing TBF
Though she still thinks it's a good idea to leave Nyx alone with Evil Pony.
SigmasonicXToday at 5:02 PM
And she handles taking Nyx away from Twilight in the worst possible way
With Nyx bawling and crying for mommy (Twilight). You'd think not upsetting the potential force of evil would be a priority.
Nexus offered no words in reply as they moved across the hall. In the center of the grand space the ritual had been constructed. Four stone columns stood in a perfect square around a central point, torches burning at their tops. Unicorns that Nexus had brought in to aid with the spell, secret members of the Children of Nightmare, fed their magic into the columns, causing them to glow with ancient runes.

"How does this spell work, Nexus?" Princess Celestia asked quietly as she watched her guards place Nyx in the center of the elaborate ritual, placing her gingerly on a single, soft pillow.

"You need not concern yourself with the mechanics," Nexus assured the princess. "The spell will handle all the work. All you need to do is stand in the center and feed your magic into the columns. When the spell has enough built up energy, it will activate."

Princess Celestia nodded, striding into the center of the ritual while all the unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies that were working moved to the sides of the room. Nexus was the only one that stayed close, standing just on the edge of the spell circle as he watched her with slate gray eyes.
So Nexus's justification to Celestia was that this was a zebra spell.
And Celestia doesn't find any of the actual spell's set up odd.
SylveeToday at 5:05 PM
"How does this spell work?"
"You don't need to know"
I trust the guy don't you?
SigmasonicXToday at 5:06 PM

Among those who had been waiting in Ponyville were Night Wind, Gray Gale, and Stonewall, Nexus's lieutenants. Joined by them was another in armor, a thin earth pony with a regal blue mane and a gently turned mustache. To the locals, he was known as Horte Cuisine, a waiter at a local restaurant. However, to the Children of Nightmare and Pinkie Pie, he had been a spy at Nyx's school.
Now the author went too far! He made the random waiter evil!
From "The Ticket Master"
Wait, Nexus went out of his way to get Nyx away from Twilight, but he ends up teleporting back to Ponyville anyway?
Nightmare Moon is revived through Nyx and her very first act is to get revenge against Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon
I suppose I'll stop after chapter 11.
Princess Celestia thought back, and began to scrutinize every recent memory she had of Spell Nexus. Surely there had to have been a clue. Surely there had to been a sign of his treachery, yet she could not remember a single instance of doubt. Spell Nexus betraying her would be like Twilight Sparkle betraying her; it just didn't seem possible.
AS TRUSTWORTHY AS TWILIGHT
SylveeToday at 5:21 PM
Ok, who's more trustworthy
Twilight or Applejack?

Leaving on that cliffhanger question.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Spoiler: Past Sins chat continued

SigmasonicXToday at 5:22 PM
I suppose I'd trust Applejack to tell me that something happened, but not to actually get something done.
SylveeToday at 5:22 PM
Bro what if you had low water pressure?
SigmasonicXToday at 5:23 PM
Twilight would have just magicked the water into submission
SylveeToday at 5:23 PM
Twilight would have had to read books to figure out what to do, AJ already knows
SigmasonicXToday at 5:25 PM
Plus as we can see, Twilight would kidnap my child and use them to revive an ancient villain, so AJ probably wins in the end.
SylveeToday at 5:26 PM
(Pretend AJ winking at the end of Grannies Gone Wild is here)
AJ always wins
You're reading the original version right? So Celestia was trying to kill Nyx or whatever?
SigmasonicXToday at 5:31 PM
She said that if she was still Nightmare Moon, she strongly implied she'd kill her, yes.
SylveeToday at 5:32 PM
Hope she packed some Sentry Wards, heyo. Up top Cappy(edited)
SigmasonicXToday at 5:32 PM
What was changed about that in the revision?
SylveeToday at 5:32 PM
She says that it's alright if she is but wants to test it anyway
So basically there's no real point in testing it in the revised version
But it still happens because otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to leave her with Nexus
SigmasonicXToday at 5:35 PM
Ah right, I did hear there was a clumsy attempt to address criticisms like that.
SylveeToday at 5:36 PM
The two big ones that are listed are that and some of the students not liking her at school
SigmasonicXToday at 5:36 PM
You know, Luna here doesn't actually read that different from how she's portrayed in later seasons. If anything, I suppose the season 2 revision to make her sound more like she does in "Luna Eclipsed" would have overcompensated.
SylveeToday at 5:37 PM
Luna Eclipsed is really weird going back to it because she never acts like that anymore
SigmasonicXToday at 5:38 PM
There is the perfectly valid explanation that she got used to modern times, at least.
SylveeToday at 5:39 PM
And all of it took place after Luna Eclipsed but before Canterlot Wedding, and she had made no progress before that episode?
SigmasonicXToday at 5:40 PM
She sounded pretty "Luna Eclipsed"y when she yelled at Twilight to stay inside.
SylveeToday at 5:41 PM
And when she asked if she missed anything
SigmasonicXToday at 5:42 PM
Nightmare Moon Nyx is all like, "Yeah, but do we have to be so mean about conquering the world?"
Which raises the question of why she wants to conquer the world at all if she's like this.
SylveeToday at 5:43 PM
Character motivations are for dummies
She still has to be adorable when she's taking over the world
SigmasonicXToday at 5:45 PM
Nightmare Moon turned her back on the training dummies, and began to walk towards teh door. "Good, and I want one of the training dummies that looks like Twilight Sparkle brought to my bed chamber as well, and it is to be intact."

Oh wow
I'm just sitting here laughing
SylveeToday at 5:46 PM
What I don't get reading on is that at one point the Everfree Forest tries to invade Equestria because Celestia isn't in control anymore. At that point Nyx has given up on the whole night thing and is trying to do the right thing, but refuses to let the Sisters free out of fear of consequences. I would think that the whole invasion would be a scenario to force her to let the princesses out to save Equestria, but she's so awesome that she repels the attack by herself. So much for that
SigmasonicXToday at 5:46 PM
Did the author really not see what that looked like?
SylveeToday at 5:46 PM
Also that's pretty spicy
We're not BIOLOGICALLY related
Since we're not related it'll be ok
SigmasonicXToday at 5:48 PM
Nyx's cupcakes were frosted with a simple vanilla frosting, but Scootaloo tried to frost hers so each one would have a rainbow on it. The result of her endeavors, however, was all the frosting colors got mixed together to make a dark, purple frosting. Scootaloo was disappointed, but in the end the cupcakes still tasted good, and that was what mattered.
Frosting doesn't work like that
SylveeToday at 5:50 PM
Don't let logic get in the way of symbolism
SigmasonicXToday at 5:50 PM
"Here we are testing our latest batch of plants that can grow under eternal moonlight. We initially focused this research on agricultural plants such as grains, fruits, and vegetables. Those plants were finished some time ago, and we're ready to begin replanting Equestria's fields, gardens, and orchards with the new plant breeds."
This was before Lauren Faust said that plants would have grown fine during the eternal night, I suppose.
Also how are there so many scientists and researchers in this cult?
Like what do they expect to actually be better under Nightmare Moon?
SylveeToday at 5:51 PM
I do think it's explained at some point
So there's that
SigmasonicXToday at 5:52 PM
It was like a piece of her memories was missing: the memories surrounding her motivations. She knew she had those motivations, she knew what they were. Yet, when she tried to remember those motivations directly, what they felt like and why they had driven her, it was like she was grasping at nothing.
Motivations partially addressed, I guess
SylveeToday at 5:53 PM
It's a stupid explanation that introduces stuff just to make the plot actually function at a basic level, but it is explaned. Being not evil or being evil?(edited)
Also so much for stopping for the day

SigmasonicXToday at 5:56 PM
No, I just finished chapter 11, where I said I'd stop.
And I'll just go ahead and copypaste this chat in the Hangouts thread.
SylveeToday at 5:57 PM
Hooray my lame Dota 2 joke can be immortalized for the world to see

Anyway, Sunday stream followup. We watched the following.
1. No Second Prances
2. All Bottled Up
3. On the Road to Friendship
4. The Simpsons season 28 episode 6 - There Will Be Buds
5. Super Gals episode 24
6. Revolutionary Girl Utena episode 3-4

We were joined by ahoyhoy , who hadn't seen the later seasons of the show, so the MLP episodes were all new for him. It was nice watching them with someone like that. I actually had loading problems for the first two episodes, but everyone else enjoyed them, and the bits I saw were good.

UberTag was really excited to show the Simpsons episode to ahoyhoy, since it's a later season Simpsons that he considers good. I never followed along with Simpsons enough to keep track of the characters, so it was interesting seeing people say, "Oh, I didn't realize these two characters got back together," and such. It was pretty odd seeing Homer be so responsible, with him being unwilling to go to a strip club, but he had some pretty funny moments, like when he's chatting with Marge on a smartphone then yells for her to hide and tosses the phone into a drawer. It was a pretty enjoyable episode overall.

The Super Gals episode featured the classic "believing fortune telling too much" story with Ran going to great efforts to avoid her boyfriend due to bad luck. While amusing, it was also pretty frustrating; at least Ran only accidentally forgot to tell him about the fortune and didn't do it deliberately.

With Utena, we watched two episodes. I was told by Uber that episode 4 had a big cliffhanger and thus we should wait to watch 4 and 5 together, but he was fine with it in the end. The cliffhanger turned out to be misremembered, and it wasn't that impressive. Anyway, the episodes themselves were fine, focusing more on comedy. And slapping. Lots and lots of slapping. I hear it only gets worse in that regard as the series goes on.

We watched the following YouTube videos.
1.Double Trouble (PMV) - YouTube
2.Monody - Trixie x Twilight x Starlight PMV - YouTube
3.[MLP Comic Dub] Why Starlight Wasn't in the MLP Movie (comedy) - YouTube
4.[French] MLP:FIM - We're Friendship Bound (Trxie and Starlight Song) - YouTube
5.[PMV] Beautiful Life - YouTube
6.[PMV] A Story Told (The Count of Monte Cristo) - YouTube
7.[PMV] Descendants 2 - Ways to Be Wicked (Discord, Starlight, Tirek, Trixie) - YouTube
8.Magic Lessons [Animation] - YouTube

 

[SigmasonicX]

New Crimson Lips chapter, and here's what I wrote as a review.

Spoiler: The Fairy in the Garden

Very interesting. Rarity Princess Beautiful in the garden was adorable, especially that bit where she felt the trees should have been honored by her presence anyway. I love the idea that Rarity tried to model herself after Celestia. And nice touch with Rarity only acknowledging the girl was her after she was changed by Celestia's magic. I'm very curious about what could have led to the current situation.

And yes, feel free to go down this rabbit hole [of examining Celestia as a mother figure to Rarity].

Stream followup.

On Friday, we just watched the normal anime episodes, finishing off the dub of Super Gals with episodes 25 and 26. The former gave a glimpse of Miyu's pretty terrible mom, and to my shock, actually advanced her and Yamato's relationship. The latter episode was another personality swap episode with Ran, intentionally repeating a lot of the same gags, but unlike before, this seemed like a completely valid path for her character to take, becoming a no-nonsense detective solving the oddly large number of crimes that just happened to start then. Some were pretty disappointed when this came to an end.

We ended up watching three Utena episodes: 5, 6, and 7. We had a good laugh making fun of Miki trying to come up with noble reasons for wanting to duel Utena for Anthy when he really just wants to smash. Also, uh, red hair guy macking on his sister completely out of nowhere. Not quite sure this is the order these episodes happened in, but next was, uh, that one girl fighting Utena to prove miracles don't exist after slapping Anthy for no particular reason. I was surprised to see Miki just casually hanging out with Utena. Green haired kendo guy tried to get in on the casual hanging out action, but he was rightfully ignored; no Anthy slappers allowed. Though I expect Miki and probably even Utena will get around to that at some point. Anyway, it was interesting to see Utena basically lose the fight except for some really good luck. I wonder if there's some magic or something behind that. Last was a comedy story involving... Nanami I think her name was. I know I'll be spoiled if I look up character names. Anyway, it was pretty good and had a boxing match with a kangaroo. Overall, Utena is definitely more comedic than I expected so far.

On Sunday, we watched the following.

1. Sleepless in Ponyville
2. Flight to the Finish
3. Parental Glideance
4. The Washouts
5. Fate/Zero episode 1-2

All the MLP episodes were good. I had forgotten a lot about the first two, including the entire fact that Luna was involved in the former somehow, and Ms. Harshwhinny and Dash being professional in the latter.

Fate/Zero was pretty hard to follow for much of the first (hour long) episode, especially with all that talking. I've never watched or read or played Fate/Stay Night, but I was familiar enough with Rin and Sakura from when art of them and others was all over the place in the aughts, so it was nice seeing them pop up. There were some interesting moments, like when Kirei and Kiritsugu were both talking about each other to I assume set up their rivalry. The second episode (half hour) was much easier to follow and featured nice moments like Alexander the Great the Rider learning about the modern world and the Assassin getting owned by the Archer. Oh, and the opening is quite good.

We watched the following YouTube videos.
1.G3 Intro - YouTube
2.Scootaloos Party - YouTube
3.MLP: Meet the Scout (Scootaloo) - YouTube
4.MLP Animatic "I'll Keep Trying" (Scootaloo Sings) - YouTube
5.MLP Baby Comic Dub - Feeding Scootaloo (Comedy) - YouTube
6.My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - The Washouts - If MLP was Johnny Test - YouTube
7.PMV - Scootaloo Underground - YouTube

The latter caused a lot of confusion for one person who wasn't aware of Sonic Underground.

 

[SigmasonicX]

So after I announced the Friday schedule, I got feedback that we definitely needed to watch Utena episode 11. And then if we're watching that episode, we might as well watch episode 12. In the end, it was all Utena, no Super Gals. To sum up, we watched Utena episodes 8-12, finishing the first story arc (or so I'm told).

First was a comedy episode where Utena and Anthy switch bodies. It had the strange issue of both being too out there and not being out there enough. The situation was absurd, but no one really cared that much. It didn't help that the animation didn't seem to be able to keep up with the wacky moments. Funny moments included Miki continuing to be thirsty, green guy getting dunked on, and Nanami being attacked by elephants, though the latter went too far when they appeared on surfboards. The other viewers, who had watched the show before, commented they completely forgot this episode existed.

Next green guy continued to be trash, but we got an unexpected flashback with Utena meeting him and Touga when she was younger and her parents died, and apparently we got a bunch of foreshadowing when he tried to bring Anthy to the dueling area and then the castle did some things. After that, green guy was kicked out of school, leading to a hilarious moment where Touga promises to take care of his journal and proceeds to toss it into an incinerator. Nanami becomes a duelist, turns out to be a kitten murderer, and then loses her duel pretty easily despite being in the opening, though she does catch Utena off guard by attacking even after losing.

Last was the part the others were excited about. Utena fights Touga, loses, and then is shocked when Anthy completely changes her interests to match Touga's and appears to no longer care about her, as is the nature of the rose bride. Anthy's absence breaks Utena enough that she starts wearing a normal uniform! In the end, she gets her groove and Anthy back. This was definitely the most interesting set of episodes so far. I was going to say it's odd that Utena rescued Anthy without coming to understand what Anthy actually wants, meaning it was purely selfish, but I suppose she needed to learn to be selfish when it comes to Anthy first. Anthy disabling the power boost spell on the sword while Touga was using it shows who she favored, but I don't think Utena made the connection.

I was asked my thoughts about the first arc, and it's hard to say really. If I didn't know it's supposed to be a great series, I probably wouldn't have found this first arc that interesting, TBH. But with that, I'm able to focus more on the enjoyable bits. Part of it is really how it's inconsistent what the characters care enough to question and what they just ignore. Like Utena doesn't like the rose bride thing, but doesn't question pulling the sword out of Anthy, and doesn't seem to view everyone slapping her as a big deal. I'm hung up on the slapping bit because I feel like if Utena cared about Anthy at all, like the first thing she'd do is deal with the slapping. At least pull an Applejack and make her wear a helmet.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Thought I remembered seeing this come up a while back.

Got around to reading it tonight, and that's actually not the hook. It's pretty light on external conflict overall—which is good, because Novel Idea isn't very good at it anyway—and a lot more concerned with being adorable and fluffy. Not one of my new favorites, but it was a breezy, pleasant read.

Click to shrink...

Oh, that's a surprise. I thought for sure that's what the story was going for from the first chapter. Still, it's practically Pinkie X an OC, which I'm not interested in.

Late followup to Sunday's stream, we watched the following. With no changes, for once.
1. MLP - Shadow Play parts 1-2
2. MLP - A Rockhoof and a Hard Place
3. Big Hero 6 episode 3 - Big Roommates
4. Fate/Zero episodes 3-4

The viewers were a bit strange, with two regulars absent and more irregulars than usual.

I mentioned "Shadow Play" was a season finale, so ahoyhoy , who hasn't been keeping up with the show, got confused about how this worked with "Friendship University" until I clarified it was the previous season's finale. He also didn't know Sunburst and asked if he was a harem lead; I said to watch the episode before this. He seemed to follow the episode well enough despite not having seen the episodes leading into it, but maybe he can confirm. I still think this is a pretty good story, Twilight somehow not realizing the Pony of Shadows would be released aside.

I mentioned the stream reaction to "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place" in the season 8 thread.

Yeah, after rewatching the episode, I enjoyed it a lot more. In fact, it got a universally positive response in the stream; the only other person in the entire chat who actually watched this episode before it was UberTag and he wasn't in this stream (EDIT: oh, and Ogodei). My issues weren't as big, particularly the Pillars not doing as much as I would have liked, and I felt for Rockhoof more.

Click to shrink...

A lot of people in the stream weren't there for when I aired episode 2 of Big Hero 6 before, and a surprising number of people continue to have never seen the movie. Still, the show is easy enough to follow. The animation in this episode was pretty rough, which didn't give a great impression, but people seemed to have liked it well enough.

Fate/Zero covered the first proper fight, between Saber and Lancer, and it was good. We got more explanations of how things work with the Servants, and it was generally much easier to follow.

We watched the following videos.
1.Legends of the Pony Temple (MLP + LOTHT Temple Run) - YouTube
2.Equestria Girls Dino Rangers (EG PMV) [Legend of Everfree Spoilers!] - YouTube
3.[MLP Comic Dub] The View (saucy comedy) - YouTube
4.MLP:FIM [FULL PMV] Equestria's Story - Legends Never Die - YouTube
5.[PMV] Legend You Are Meant To Be - YouTube
6.Legend of everfree : Miraculous Ladybug (PMV) - YouTube
7.MLP | Smiley Face | Urban Legend - YouTube

With the exception of the comic (which has Rockhoof), I just searched for videos with "legend".

Trigonometrize was here for early in the stream, but missed the last YouTube video. You should definitely check it out; it's very spooky.

~~~

Stream announcements.

Friday will be... more Utena. Probably five episodes. And I got the verdict, episode 13 shouldn't be skipped despite being a recap. EDIT: And verdict changed, I watched it on my own and we're skipping it.
1. Utena episodes 14-18

And Sunday will be Princess Real Estate Day.

1. Castle Mane-ia
2. Castle Sweet Castle
3. What Lies Beneath
4. Big Hero 6 episode 5 - Food Fight - Aunt Cass gets caught up in underground cooking competitions; meanwhile, an evil sushi chef attacks
5-6. Fate/Zero episodes 5-6

Skipping a Big Hero 6 episode.

~~~

Read some fanfics.

Extra Sprinkles by Minds Eye is a short story about Donut Joe's first day running the donut shop, where a young Twilight and Spike run in, also explaining why Spike called him Pony Joe in "The Best Night Ever". It's alright, and it's interesting to see a story about this character, but there isn't much to it. I also thought Joe's reaction to Spike was too over the top.

I also read The Sun Sets Over the Apple Orchard by Oroboro, recommended as an example of how Sunset X Applejack can work. Sunset comes over to the farm to help out with the harvest, they bond, and then sex happens. The bonding worked pretty well, and the story was overall nice.

~~~

And some chat stories.

This first one follows up both "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place" and the fanfic Past Sins.

Spoiler: Chat - Market Crash

CappyLast Monday at 2:36 PM
http://www.halcyonmaps.com/infographics/#/constellations-throughout-the-ages/
Halcyon Maps
Infographics
hey its that hoyLast Monday at 3:18 PM
So that means space exists in their world?
So another point for post apocalyptic theory?
CappyLast Monday at 3:19 PM
I think they're stars in a huge pony's galaxy-sized cosmic mane
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:22 PM
Luna changed the constellations specifically to mess with Rockhoof
CappyLast Monday at 3:23 PM

I changed the stars as a joke!(edited)
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:32 PM

Your joke led to the destruction of a hippogriff navy ship! This is an international incident!

lol
CappyLast Monday at 3:36 PM

Ω I have crashed--making me the victor!
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:38 PM

(pumps money into stocks to recover from crash)

(there is massive inflation as a result)
CappyLast Monday at 3:39 PM

Sister, you've ruined the economy for the last time.

*pushes Luna onto a Moon Pie*
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:42 PM

Now that's what I call just desserts!

Technically, it's deserts with one 's'.

Jesus, Twilight.

Hello, I am Moon Pie now apparently.

(drains Luna's power to turn her back into a filly)

Twilight is your mother now. And you are also her butler.
CappyLast Monday at 3:44 PM
oh no, it's N E X U S
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:44 PM

Yes, give me that tea.
CappyLast Monday at 3:49 PM

My punishment was more dire than I was expecting.
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:49 PM

You shall have company

(now wearing a maid outfit)

...

Yeah, sure

Now that Luna's a filly, time to ship her and Gallus!

That's weird.
CappyLast Monday at 3:52 PM

Yes.
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:53 PM

(turns Cadance into a filly)

Oh wow, now I can teach Cadance the sunshine dance she taught me!

There, now it's normal.
CappyLast Monday at 3:54 PM

I think you need to turn Gallus into a filly.
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 3:54 PM

What? No. Why would you even think of that?

Turning a blue character into a filly, who would do that?

Safe!
[The End]
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 4:00 PM

Technically, Maud draining Luna's magic is a reference to Luna draining Nyx's magic, well after Spell Nexus was out of the story. Just wanted to point that out.
CappyLast Monday at 4:01 PM
So you're saying that happened after Spell was cast out of the cast. >_>
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 4:06 PM

And one based on some comic art, and recent Era threads about gentrification.

Spoiler: Chat - Pony Gentrification

SylveeLast Monday at 6:45 PM

OrcastarLast Monday at 8:49 PM
If Cadance is the mother, are Luna and Celestia the maiden and the crone respectively?
SigmasonicXLast Monday at 9:34 PM

Dibs

Di--

[...]

September 18, 2018
XzeonLast Tuesday at 8:45 AM
Spooky princess
VillageLast Tuesday at 10:31 AM
too spooky
too spoopy infact
I am calling the police
hey its that hoyLast Tuesday at 11:17 AM

Yall call the spoop popo?
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 11:22 AM

I was feeling threatened by these ponies cooking. It's lowering the property values.

How could I be lowering property values? I am this country's ruler.

Cooking, though.

That's because I was casting a spell to lower property values and make ponies with white actors uncomfortable, sister.

As part of this neighborhood's HOA, I am not amused.

places entire HOA in dungeon
And there was much rejoicing.
hey its that hoyLast Tuesday at 11:32 AM
HOA = Horse Owners Association

I am the HOA of Ponyville
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 11:38 AM

places in dungeon

hey its that hoyLast Tuesday at 11:57 AM

Ponyville is a town within the greater realm of Equestria, of which I am the sovereign, making it a monarchy: ruled by one

an HOA is an organization which attempts to exercise unwanted control over local issues which bear little importance, making it a curiosarcy: rule by the nosy(edited)
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 12:20 PM

starts moving in

...
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:26 PM

It's Ponyville, not Griffonditch, daaaaaaaaaaarling.

Miss Rarity, that's horrible!

Quiet, you pest!

I think Rarity is having one of her moments again

Don't get me started on you, you country bumpkin!
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:28 PM

Now that they aren't in my backyard in particular, I think speciesism is bad.
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:28 PM

Rarity, for the last time, we're from the exact same town!
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:30 PM

Sorry, just feeling some economic anxiety.

opens hipster rock store that draws in more ponies, forcing rent prices too high for non-ponies

All better~

But whatever happened to the culture of this place?
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:32 PM

It hasn't been the same since that nice library exploded.
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:33 PM

eats griffon scone prepared by yaks living 30 miles out from Ponyville

Ooh, that looks nice.
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:34 PM

50 bits.
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:34 PM

rent prices become too high for an owner of three successful clothing stores

becomes forced to commute to her own Ponyville store, which is now owned by

In time, Rarity, Twilight, and all the ponies of Ponyville have to commute from Yakyakistan
Which no longer has any yaks living there.
Soon, every creature left Equestria altogether. Commuting from Dougworld turned out to be much more convenient.

Not in my backyard!
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:40 PM

Scone?
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:40 PM

nom
[You're gonna carry that weight]

Thus ends the tale of what could happen if we aren't careful.

Get out of my face, scaley.
[The End]

This was then followed up by a discussion about race in MLP, which I made a big post about in the season 8 thread.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Late stream followup.

Last Friday was Utena episodes 14-18, covering the first half of the Black Rose Arc. Despite the increase in, I suppose, subversive stuff, this arc also feels much more in line with the typical magical girl formula. Random person gets upset, villain uses these negative emotions to turn them into opponents for the hero, they fight, the hero wins. But mixed in there is a lot more incest; though this is still the time in anime when incest is presented as bad and creepy. The visuals are interesting, and it's nice to see the characters get more development, but in a way, the story feels like it isn't going forward. It feels like this arc will be Utena fighting a bunch of scrubs, and then the plot will progress. Mixed in there is a comedy story where Nanami turns into a cow, which was pretty good.

A recurring event in these episodes is people pulling swords out of previous duelists, like how a sword is pulled out of Anthy. Or so I'm told, because I've never noticed a sword coming out of Anthy. It makes me wonder if this inspired the guitars in FLCL, especially with the characters blushing when talking about it afterward.

During the stream, Chained pointed out the sword coming out of Miki (who was first) was like Anthy's, and I feigned ignorance. He didn't realize I was joking. It's kind of hard to miss.

Also, randomly, whenever I think back on the music that plays during the student council meetings, this is what comes to mind.


On Sunday, we watched the following.

1. Castle Mane-ia
2. Castle Sweet Castle
3. What Lies Beneath
4. Star Wars: Clone Wars season 5 episode 6 - The Gathering
5. Big Hero 6 episode 5 - Food Fight
6. Fate/Zero episodes 5

All the MLP episodes were fun to watch again, and I've forgotten a lot of the particulars of both of the old ones.

Since I mentioned in the MLP season 8 thread that "What Lies Beneath" was inspired by a Star Wars: Clone Wars episode, I decided to show it. Here's what I said in that thread.

During the Sunday stream, we also watched the Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode I mentioned in my previous post, "The Gathering", which inspired this episode. From that episode, the wookie character and Byph the slug-headed alien both felt similar to Yona. The human character Petro even sounded like Sandbar, though I confirmed he has a different voice actor. For the record, it seems like the stream viewers thought the episode was alright, but the MLP episode was better.

Click to shrink...

The Big Hero 6 episode seemed to be better received than the last one, and the animation was less obviously stilted. It featured Aunt Cass becoming the Knife Demon Lord of San Fransokyo and being a better hero than the heroes, but alas, there are only so many food themed villains.

There were some stream issues, so we only got through one Fate/Zero episode, this one ending the first big encounter. The fighting was pretty good. I was surprised no on ended up dying,

We watched the following YouTube videos, with "tree" as the theme.
1.(Fixed) Fluttershy's Lament all-kinds-in-one-edition
2. Made by me - My Little Pony x Rush Hour - Carter destroys the Library
3.Twilight tree
4.MLP Season 8 In a Nutshell: Ep. 13 "The Mean 6"
5.MLP:FIM [Animation] "Wrong Apple Tree"
6.Derpy Visits a Christmas Tree Farm (PIRL)
7.Tree Hugger's Psychedelic Adventure [Animation]
8.The "Apple" Tree [Animation]

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followups.

On Friday, we watched the Jenny Nicholson video Trapped In A Island With Josh Hutcherson, a fanfic that goes places. It has quite a twist. After that, we watched the first part of Phelous's review of Goodtimes's Beauty and the Beast. I like his stuff, but it didn't seem to get an enthusiastic response.

Lastly, we watched two episodes of Dan Vs.: "Dan vs. the Mall Santa" and "Dan vs. Canada". The first episode felt like it was padded out from a quarter hour to a half hour, but it was alright. The second was good, and according to UberTag, an accurate depiction of Canada. I watched the first two episodes of this show years ago, but never got around to the rest. It really does feel like an Adult Swim show that ended up in a kids time slot somehow, though there was a bit of unexpected mild swearing.

Sunday was Cultural Imperialism Day.
1. Over a Barrel
2. The Fault in Our Cutie Marks
3. Sounds of Silence
4. Big Hero 6 episode 7 - Failure Mode
5. Fate/Zero episode 6-7

Super Gals ended up having issues, and we may not be able to continue it in the stream at all. In that case, we'd just watch it on Crunchyroll individually.

Again, haven't seen the first two MLP episodes in a long time. "Over a Barrel" still has great comedy moments, but the main story is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. You know, in retrospect, it seems like all the really troublesome season 1 episodes are also among the funniest. "Bridle Gossip", "Feeling Pinkie Keen", and this. And the funny parts are completely separate from the offensive bits. Also, I keep forgetting about all the weird sound effects during the big fight at the end. One new thing is that Pinkie's "You Gotta Share" song is actually kind of offensive in light of recent seasons: she says they have to get along because ponies and buffalo both have hooves and are vegetarians.

In "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks", I somehow forgot about how Gabby was over the top good at everything. About the song, the beginning is weak, but I like it once it picks up. Episode is good.

People seemed to like the Big Hero 6 episode, aside from how unfair the class assignment was. Everyone was surprised they never ended up capturing Globby and retrieving the stolen painting.

The Fate/Zero episodes were interesting, especially bypassing a complex magic security system by just blowing up the entire building, and some neat blob magic. A bit too much child murder for my taste, though.

YouTube videos followed the theme "empire" and "emperor". And also an official Monster Hunter web video with a pony style kirin (not like in "Sounds of Silence", though).

Videos to be edited in later.

EDIT:
1.MLP- Glory to the Solar Empire! - YouTube
2.Age of Empires - My Little Classics, Gaming is Magic - YouTube
3.Emperor's New Clothes (Panic! At The Disco) [MLP PMV] - YouTube
4.MHWorld Shots: HR49 in a nutshell... - YouTube
5.Twily's New School (Ponyfied Emperor's New School intro) - YouTube
6.My Little Pony - Kuzco Dance - YouTube
7.[Collab] Empire [PMV] - YouTube
8.Age of Empires II - My Little Classics, Gaming is Magic - YouTube

And no new Crimson Lips chapter yet, but instead have this fantastic bonus story where they fight ninjas.

 

[SigmasonicX]

EDIT: Actual names put in.

Alright, so last night, we watched episodes 19-23 of Utena, thus reaching the first point where I was so confused that I needed everything spelled out for me. But I'll get to that later.

The first two episodes showcased Utena's friend, Wakaba, first introducing her old friend that turned out to not actually be relevant, Tatsuya. It was kind of weird that he was rejected for the Black Rose stuff because he was a good person, when his issue didn't seem that different from the others, but I assume it's largely because he didn't have a connection to a duelist, and maybe there's a connection to the past of the pink haired guy, Mikage, I'm missing. It was revealed Wakaba is letting green haired guy, Saionji, stay in her room. I had forgotten the thing in the first episode with her writing a love letter to him and it getting mocked. Due to technical difficulties, we switched to the English dub for episode 20 on. I remembered Wakaba having a really bad dub voice before, so I was shocked to see her acting was much better here. Uber explained that they changed dub directors after episode 13. That moment where Wakaba and Saionji seem like they'll be romantically involved, and then Saionji asks about Anthy and there's a long pause was hilarious. It was pretty interesting to have Utena win her duel against Wakaba without using the Sword of Dios. Unlike the other Black Rose duelists, she seemed to still have negative emotions bottled up after all that; I wonder if that's connected to not using the Sword of Dios. Saionji looked so happy returning to school; I wonder if he'll ever learn the fate of his exchange diary.

The third episode unexpectedly focused on a background member of Nanami's entourage, featuring some hilarious and stone cold pettiness. It's kind of weird how Touga isn't really saying or doing anything anymore, even in the episode where someone takes his sword.

And the last two episodes featured Mikage's backstory and a fight with him. I noticed that the scene with framed pictures of the Black Rose duelists included shots of the production crew, which was cute. I liked that Utena just punched him when he was trying to justify himself. I suppose I'll start using spoiler tags now.

Spoiler

So what actually happened, I think, is that in the distant past, Mikage burned down a dorm with 100 duelists, including his friend, Mamiya, after getting a ring from Anthy's brother, Akio (who looked the same back then). Then at some point, Akio had Anthy use magic to disguise herself as Mikage's dead friend and encourage him to do the Black Rose stuff. Also Mikage was dead the entire time, I guess.

Now when I watched the last two episodes, I was really confused for the following reasons:
* I had forgotten about that person that was with Mikage during the scenes where they were cultivating the black roses. Thus, I didn't connect that person to the flashbacks. Even when people were explaining these episodes to me, I wasn't remembering this until well after the stream ended, but TBF, everyone was saying "the scenes where Mikage was alone" and didn't mention anything about the black rose cultivating. Plus, thanks to watching the sub for the first Black Rose Arc episode, I assumed that person in the cultivation scenes was a woman and not a man. Well, it did turn out to be a woman, but you know what I mean.
* I assumed Mamiya in the flashback was the man in the castle, because why would so much focus be placed on a character we hadn't seen before? So when characters were talking about his grave, I assumed that was referring to the castle. It didn't help that there was a framed picture of Mamiya in a duelist uniform, which made me think of the man in the castle. I did think it was strange that the man in the castle would be a normal person, and that his sister had lighter skin than him, but I assumed it was an anime style "darker skin = more power" thing, which I was annoyed by.
* I had forgotten that Akio appeared in the flashback.

In the course of having things explained to me, I was told that Akio is End of the World. Not sure if I wasn't supposed to know that yet.

The episodes in this set were good, but it kind of feels like the Black Rose Arc was more to introduce Anthy's brother and what he can do, and that all the actual Black Rose stuff is unimportant to the rest of the series. But I guess we'll see.

Oh, and I read a fan fic, City in a Bottle by Cynewulf. The premise is that Twilight disappeared into a strange space out of time, and Rarity follows after her. However, it isn't an adventure story, but rather one that follows the thoughts of both ponies as they stay in a tower and walk toward the tower respectively, as they consider their romantic relationship and how they view each other. I thought the format was pretty interesting. Here's the review I posted.

Spoiler: City in a Bottle

I enjoyed this story a lot. It's a nice quiet story examining Twilight and Rarity, and both narrators were written well. The atmosphere was great, with the I suppose you could say uneventfulness only adding to it.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup, we watched the following episodes.

1. Secret of My Excess
2. Triple Threat
3. Father Knows Beast
4. Big Hero 6 episode 9 - The Impatient Patient
5. Fate/Zero episodes 8-9

It turns out dragons are pretty racist, even more than ponies are to them. As usual, I had forgotten a lot of the first episode. Not as much with the second episode, though I somehow forgot about Starlight's involvement and the chair scenes. All three episodes seemed to be well received.

The Big Hero 6 episode seemed to be well. received too, although the main villain's plan relied a lot on luck and thus didn't really earn the Xanatos style reveal. His name isn't revealed in the show proper for a couple more episodes, but it's Obake (o-bak-e).

I ended up watching Fate/Zero with just one other person. The episodes were good, but it was getting kind of frustrating that no one is dying after being put in mortal danger. Besides the little kids, I mean. It also feels like a lot of these rules like each servant having only one noble phantasm are established just so characters can subvert them for reveals, like it turning out Saber's scabbard can heal.

We watched the following Spike themed YouTube videos. The Rarity ones are Spike's dreams.
1.my little pony Wysteria & Spike - Eitt Lag Enn (PMV) - YouTube - This is the second most viewed Spike PMV
2.Rarity's Daughter [MLP Next Gen Comic Dub] - YouTube
3.I Like You So Much (MLP ANIMATIC) - YouTube
4.[MLP Comic Dub] The True Lifesaver (uplifting) - YouTube
5.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'The Other Side' ft. Rarity Official Music Video - YouTube
6.Kenshiro vs. Rarity [Fist of the North Star x My Little Pony: Equestria Girls] - YouTube
7.Twilight's Backside (MLP ANIMATIC) - YouTube
8.Your Fault (MLP ANIMATIC) - YouTube
9.MLP:FIM Spike X Applejack - (MINI) Tribute - You Belong With Me - YouTube
10.MLP Spike Dragon PMV - Let it Go - YouTube

~~

To fit in a bunch of Halloween stuff, I have to plan out the upcoming streams further ahead than usual, so I'm posting this a bit earlier in case someone has feedback for this week.

Friday, October 12
1. ParaNorman (movie)
2. Utena episode 24

With Utena, we'll have 15 episodes left after this, so in November, we'll be able to finish it by watching five episodes per week for three weeks. Not sure if we'll watch the movie the week after or wait a bit.

Sunday, October 14
1. MLP - School Raze parts 1-2
2. Gravity Falls - Summerween
3. Bob's Burgers - Full Bar
4. Bob's Burgers - The Hauntening
5. Fate/Zero episode 10

Instead of any additional MLP episodes or Big Hero 6, we'll be watching some Halloween episodes. Fate/Zero is included so we can start from an odd numbered episode again next time, but we won't be watching it for the rest of the month.

Friday, October 19
1. X-Files - Post-Modern Prometheus
2. Ghost Stories episode 1
3. Ghost Stories episode 9 (the rabbit one)
4. Ghost Stories episode 12 (the nurse one)

I was interested in showing an X-Files episode. There surprisingly isn't a Halloween episode (or at least one that people include on episodes that are good for Halloween lists), but this one is appropriately Halloweeny and one of the best episodes of the show. Hoping to show some Darin Morgan episodes on some other day. After that, we're watching some episodes of Ghost Stories, an anime that has a parody dub, and we've chosen some of the best episodes. And the first one; I don't remember if that's particularly funny compared to the others.
EDIT: Swapping out episode 1 for episode 13.

Sunday, October 21
The Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror marathon

Uber will be in charge of that.

After that, things aren't as planned out, but it will presumably be more Halloween specials. "Best Gift Ever" will be airing on October 27, but we decided to wait to stream that in December where it would be more appropriate.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Late stream followup.

On Friday, we watched the following.
1. ParaNorman (movie)
2. Utena episode 24

ParaNorman has a great look, once it gets to the horror parts and the ugly human designs start feeling more appropriate, and the climax is fantastic. Unfortunately, I didn't like most of the comedy when I first watched this in theaters and I still don't.

Utena episode 24 was a recap episode. Sort of. It's more like a Nanami episode that cheaped out by using a lot of flashbacks. This was the first dub episode we watched with Tatsuya, and wow, his English voice is way deeper than I would have expected. He was talking about his secret, and I expected his secret to be he was 30. It was a pretty fun episode, going through the effort to add him to the flashbacks so it wasn't a plain clip show.

On Saturday, we watched the following.
1. MLP - School Raze parts 1-2
2. Gravity Falls - Summerween
3. Bob's Burgers - Full Bar
4. Bob's Burgers - The Hauntening
5. Fate/Zero episode 10

We had probably our biggest audience yet, I believe getting up to 10 people.

"School Raze" seems to have been enjoyed well enough.

Most people seem to have seen Gravity Falls in its entirety, but we did have one person who only saw the first two episodes. This is a standalone episode that doesn't tie into the plot, thankfully. I had forgotten a lot about this series already, particularly Mabel's friends and somehow Dipper's Wendy obsession. It was good.

I hadn't seen Bob's Burgers before, and the same applied to one other person. Both episodes were pretty good, with the second being funnier. Compared to other animated sitcoms, it struck me how well the family got along.

Last was a single Fate/Zero episode that was more or less standalone and even fit the Halloween mood, with young Rin going against the serial killer. I had some computer trouble, so I had to watch it on my own later. Rin was pretty cool here.

Videos we watched generally followed a MLP:FiM 8th Anniversary theme.
1.PMV | 1985 - YouTube
2.MLP Season 8 In a Nutshell: Ep. 22 "What Lies Beneath" - YouTube
3.Cozy Glow wakes up feeling so... [My Little Pony x Jojo's Bizarre Adventure] - YouTube
4.1 second of every MLP:FIM episode - YouTube
5.PMV | Black & White (A PMV Collaboration) | Commemorating 8 Years of Pony - YouTube
6.[MLP Comic Dub] Rescue UR Horse (comedy/romance - Rarity/Twilight) - YouTube
7.Alright || MLP 8th Anniversary Tribute by MathematicPony - YouTube

~~~

Upcoming streams.

On Friday, we're watching the following.
1. X-Files - Post-Modern Prometheus
2. Ghost Stories episode 9 (the rabbit one)
3. Ghost Stories episode 12 (the nurse one)
4. Ghost Stories episode 13 (the DaVinci one)

Note that for those who haven't watched one of Sylvee's streams before (ex: The Iron Giant ), I'll be using a similar process as him to show that first episode. I'll be looping another thing using the same method in the stream, so if that doesn't work for you, either follow the steps I PM'd to you or PM me.

We changed up what Ghost Stories episodes will be shown from my previous post.

I don't think we'll get to it, but if there's still interest by the end, I might show episode 2 of Zombieland Saga, a currently airing show. I'm not sure the series will be good overall, since episode 3 was pretty weak, but episode 2 has some great moments and it recaps the first episode well enough.

Then Sunday will be a full blown Simpsons Treehouse of Horror stream, which will be handled by UberTag.

~~~

In fanfic news, The Enchanted Library Sidestories got an update, "Empty Parks". Mono has mentioned in her blog posts that she has to hold herself back from just telling everyone about later events in the story, and it seems she's releasing some of that pressure here. It feels a lot more like a later chapter of The Enchanted Kingdom than a side story. Still, it's intriguing; and just like Mono to put Rarity and Twilight in that situation. In a good way.

One chapter of Crimson Lips came out too. My review:

Spoiler: Crimson Lips - The Third Big Question

I'm glad to see more of Twilight and Rarity's early interactions, before the events of the previous chapter. I adore this portrayal of Rarity where she acts cool and mysterious just to hide how incredibly nervous she is around Twilight.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Whoops, forgot to post a chat story.

Spoiler: Chat - Silverstream Saga

SylveeLast Tuesday at 2:08 PM
Take 2

SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 2:14 PM
That looks better, I guess it was mainly the left side that was bothering me.
CappyLast Tuesday at 2:19 PM
should i add it now
something will have to be removed
UberTagLast Tuesday at 2:20 PM

It clearly still needs a ton of work. Go back to the drawing board.

You're just saying that because you don't want to get whisked away into limbo.

As if you would like it. Besides which... you can't have Discord without Discord. That would be like having a party without Pinkie Pie. It just doesn't fly.(edited)

Well, something has to go.

You're going to keep a generic changeling over me? Really now? Those things don't even exist any more.

<hiss>

Go hiss yourself.

Besides, I have an extremely full docket of activities today. Why, I'm having tea with Fluttershy later tonight!
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 2:28 PM

has seen little use, really
And I think I'll wait before removing

since I don't think now's the time
Oh wait, we did get the go ahead from AM to remove some other emotes
I propose

UberTagLast Tuesday at 2:32 PM

How I tire of emote culture... <sigh>

eats

CappyLast Tuesday at 2:36 PM

Wow, I love this posta!
UberTagLast Tuesday at 2:39 PM

I have succesfully cheated death once more.

Yay!

and

share

It's Silverstream!(edited)

Oh no!

pounces on

(edited)

I love you guys even more than pasta!

Apparently, we're supposed to go on a class field trip today out to sea. We need to hop on this boat named the S.S. Sylvee.(edited)

I can't imagine why.

OMG!

Oh wait... apparently I've been assigned something else. I won't be able to join you guys.

All according to plan.
CappyLast Tuesday at 2:57 PM
Sylvee was a boat the whole time :o
SylveeLast Tuesday at 2:57 PM
I'm a what now?
UberTagLast Tuesday at 2:58 PM
Sylvee's not a boat... but he does

and

.
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:17 PM

I see how it is. Training my own replacement.
UberTagLast Tuesday at 3:20 PM

I thought I was going to be your replacement.
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:21 PM

Technically she's your replacement.

I'm going to eat this boat.

UberTagLast Tuesday at 3:22 PM

shares stories with

about the alternative universe where she becomes the Princess of Chaos

Sounds like fun!
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:24 PM

I forgot to mention that if I get wet, I turn into a human.

Problem is, I can't swim or fly now.

(entranced by water for some reason)

(scary drowning music plays)

pets Pinkie

rescues Gallus

Thank you, friend whale.

I am no whale.

By coming into contact with a griffon turned into a man, I have become a woman. Who can swim and carry you.

Wow.

continues petting

Now can you get that high quality of story without me?

Wow, look at that thing go! I never realized feathers could be used like that!

You should have been paying attention to my dictation, not the writing!

Though I suppose this means I had your character down pat.

I was listening! In fact... Professor Pie!

pets

This is... awakening something in me.

builds nest in

's hair

Hmm, somehow didn't see that coming.

urk

Seriously, another one?!

Clearly we need some egg education here.

Some egg ucation?(edited)

Not the time, Pinkie! And don't move around! You'll drop the egg!

Now Silverstream, Ocellus here has some experience laying an egg in the school. Usually what happens is you'll hatch a time traveling owl.

Maybe I'm not actually needed around here.

Silverstream, have you read any good books lately?

I did read a great book on indoor plumbing earlier.

Ooh, wow. That'll do it.

cracks

Ah, here it comes!

Wow, that's my baby?
CappyLast Tuesday at 3:51 PM

How many owls does that make?
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 3:51 PM

We've got a regular aviary!

Come, my child. We have much to teach you of the world's true order.

Who

We. Me and the other time owl.

Who

I told you, me and him!

Who

Don't you start too

retcons away all the owl stuff

That was weird. But fun!

Oh, so that's why Owlowiscious hasn't shown up since season 5.
[The End]
CappyLast Tuesday at 4:07 PM
now we need yona
actually we've needed yona all our lives
CappyLast Tuesday at 4:15 PM
oh and smolder she's alright too
SigmasonicXLast Tuesday at 4:16 PM

Please no more egg laying students.
CappyLast Tuesday at 4:16 PM
well she's a baby so it'll be fine probably

[...]

TrigonometrizeLast Tuesday at 5:29 PM
Rarity, that's classist. And not like screw poor people. You're a mammal supremacist
CappyLast Tuesday at 5:38 PM
Egg ternalist

And just read another fandom classic, Hard Reset by Eakin. Twilight traps herself in a time loop while changelings invade, and she has to find a way to save everyone. I'll just post the chat discussion.

Spoiler: Hard Reset

SigmasonicXToday at 5:16 PM
Just finished reading https://www.fimfiction.net/story/67362/hard-reset
Fimfiction
Eakin
Hard Reset
Twilight gives her life to stop a changeling invasion. Repeatedly.

It's pretty good! Definitely much better than the last fandom classic I read.
Wasn't keen on that alternate ending, but it is alternate.
If I remember correctly, you said the sequel isn't worth checking out, right Sciz ?
ScizToday at 5:18 PM
not as I recall them, no
they're increasingly unfocused and lack the tight writing and black comedy of the original
the Matrix trilogy is probably a good analogy
SigmasonicXToday at 5:21 PM
Oh, thought there was just one sequel, but I see there are a bunch of them.
ScizToday at 5:21 PM
two direct sequels and a followup to the AU ending
SigmasonicXToday at 5:22 PM
Yeah, none of those seem appealing.
And they're all close to twice as long
ScizToday at 5:24 PM
wordcount bloat tends to be a good sign of an iffy followup
SigmasonicXToday at 5:27 PM
Yeah, what got me to even consider actually reading it when you recommended it was that it was far shorter than I thought it would be.
I had read the TV Tropes page for it years ago, and assumed it was a Fallout Equestria style behemoth.
It spent just the right amount of time on each loop variant and didn't overstay its welcome.
ScizToday at 5:29 PM
mhmm
SigmasonicXToday at 5:29 PM
I did feel like the final loop needed more going for it--compare to Edge of Tomorrow making the final loop wildly different from the others and removing Tom Cruise's ability to go back (until he did, I mean)--but the epilogue made up for that.
SigmasonicXToday at 5:46 PM
Since I might as well just copy this chat instead of rewriting everything for my writeup post, I'll go over one thing I don't like about the alternate ending and it appears the sequels: the idea that that the Elements of Harmony would kill Twilight when she tries to use them (the correct way, with her friends) and they aren't actually forces for good. Even just looking at the first episodes would show that can't be the case, and it just feels needlessly edgy. Plus, in the normal ending, it looked like the invasion was being handled well enough and using the elements was just to prevent too much loss of life, so Twilight could have just left the situation like that and then after things calm down, find a new bearer of the Element of Magic or figured out a way to cancel the spell. The fact that Celestia could detect it showed that was a possibility. Twilight turning evil, especially to the level she does, just doesn't feel like a possibility in this case, and was just there to appeal to Ask Pinkamena fans.
Come to think of it, is Hard Reset the last really famous MLP fanfic, chronologically?
To not end on a sour note, I will say I liked the epilogue a lot. It felt appropriate that Twilight would act the way she did, having trouble dealing with a life that isn't predictable.
Oh right, I guess my question is right there in the middle now

Forcing a timestamp
Well never mind
Come to think of it, is Hard Reset the last really famous MLP fanfic, chronologically?
ScizToday at 5:50 PM
I like the epilogue, but I'm also not at all sure the story needs it
I'd have to check dates as far as fame goes
SigmasonicXToday at 5:52 PM
In the last loop, things went exactly as Twilight predicted, making it not as exciting for the audience. If it was more like the last Edge of Tomorrow loop, I would have been good without an epilogue, but as it is, I did feel the epilogue was needed for a satisfying ending.
It probably didn't need to be as long as it was, though.
About my question, Hard Reset was published after season 3 premiered, and I can't think of anything that got much attention after that, and certainly not after Princess Twilight.
ScizToday at 6:00 PM
I'm inclined to say that TEL is probably the last meaningfully famous story published
lacking the view counts of earlier hits mostly due to lacking as many years of inertia
SigmasonicXToday at 6:01 PM
Eh, while TEL does get a decent amount of fan tributes, I don't feel like it's anywhere near the level of the older fics in popularity.
ScizToday at 6:02 PM
it's three years late to the party, ultimately
SigmasonicXToday at 6:02 PM
Hard Reset arguably got a reference in the show itself, for one thing
Spike saying, "Well that didn't work," in The Cutie Re-Mark when they enter the Chrysalis timeline.
ScizToday at 6:03 PM
there's stuff with higher raw view counts in the interim between them, but nothing that jumps out at me as having endured over time and drawn the attention of the writing crowd at large
I'm willing to chalk that up as coincidence
SigmasonicXToday at 6:04 PM
I could have sworn there was something that made it more likely it was an intentional reference, like from a Twitter post or a convention, but I don't remember what.
ScizToday at 6:05 PM
hm
SigmasonicXToday at 6:10 PM
Well, on a quick look, I don't see anything about it

Also checked to see if this fic was ever mentioned in the GAF threads, and I don't think it was.
But I had completely forgotten about how people wanted Equestria Girls to be out of continuity and hit the reset button at the end.
Full disclosure, I wanted EQG to be non-canon for purely Brad related reasons.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followups.

The X-Files episode "Post-Modern Prometheus" was nice, though the bits I remembered enjoying were mainly toward the end. It seemed like some people didn't get what parts were normal X-Files and what parts were references; in retrospect, I probably should have played a more normal episode sometime before this one. Still, it seems like the response was positive enough. Bigger issue is that some people had trouble playing it, but hopefully we can figure that out. While I'd prefer to just show the more fun episodes in the stream, "E.B.E." might be a good normal episode to show. Even introduces The Lone Gunmen, AKA best supporting cast members, who are in surprisingly few "must see" episodes that aren't two parters.

After that, we watched three episodes of Ghost Stories, with one person who was unfamiliar. The show's dub is hilarious, though heavy on some early 00-isms. Rabbit episode is the best of the lot, but the other two were good too. I had forgotten a lot about this series.

We had time to watch episode 2 of Zombieland Saga after all, with one person who hadn't seen it. He said it was interesting, but he'd have to see more before wanting to watch it on his own, and fair enough. Like I said, I wasn't a big fan of episode 3, and I'm completely prepared for this show to fall flat on its face. Still, episodes 1 and 2 at least are a lot of fun.

Today was UberTag 's Treehouse of Horror stream, and it was nice, despite some stream issues. We didn't watch the episodes in order, so I can't reproduce the list off hand. The only THOH I remember watching before is V, and I got confused because I remembered the inside out gas appearing at the end of the time travel short and not the teachers eating students short. That inside out song freaked me out when I was a kid. In addition to the THOH episodes, we also watched an actual "canon" Simpsons Halloween special and an episode with Kang and Kodos making one of their few "canon" appearances, both from newer seasons. The former oddly felt more like a Fluttershy episode than a typical Lisa episode, but it was still nice. The latter had good bits, but I don't think it worked overall.

There were no YouTube videos, except for one hyping up THOH and a better quality version of the inside out song than what was in the version of THOH V we watched.

About the streams coming up, we'll continue watching Halloween stuff. As I mentioned in earlier posts, we'll hold off on watching "The Best Gift Ever" until December. I'll be taking suggestions for what Halloween/spooky stuff to show, but what I have so far is:

Friday:
Garfield Halloween special
Something Scooby Doo (leaning toward Zombie Island, but I'll take alternatives)

Sunday:
MLP - Luna Eclipsed and/or Bats! (also and/or Scare Master, but that was streamed before)
Tangled - that haunted bar episode and/or the creepy tree painting episode
Reboot - Evil Dead episode
Hilda (new series) - nightmare spirit episode and/or tide pool mice episode and/or poltergeist episode
Unikitty (new series) - spooky board game episode and/or the second Halloween special (I haven't seen the second one)
Teen Titans (new series, but referring to the old one) - that episode where Raven becomes scared and her fears attack everyone

That's what I got as possibilities so far. Feel free to suggest more.

~~~

On Saturday, I ran an RP: 301 - Nightmare Cake. On Nightmare Night, Smolder meets up with SciTwi, who turns out to actually be a nightmare cake made by Pinkie Pie, who proceeds to attack. Or rather, this is all a take told by Pinkie. No RP next week, but we'll get back to longer ones the week after, hopefully.

~~~

In fic news, I read a story called Rarity Takes Slightly Too Much Klonopin to Stave Off Her Dread Regarding the Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe by Cynewulf. If you can't guess, it's on the wacky side, though there is some seriousness to it. It's actually a continuation of a previous gag story, but I read a bit of that and just didn't enjoy it. Twilight is asked to talk to Rarity after she does what the title says, and Twilight tries to understand why she did it as Rarity talks about random things and acts oddly affectionate. Yes, it's a RariTwi story... or technically RariTwiShy, which does get extra credit from me. If you're wondering, the author takes klonopin, so she's making fun of herself with this story. Note that this became a huge deal in the comment section as someone responded to an innocent question about this with unwarranted insults, resulting in a big fight. Anyway, the story is a fun read. It does end with Twilight and Rarity smooching while Rarity is apparently still under the drug's influence, which didn't sit well with me, though, despite Rarity insisting she's in her right mind.

There was also a new Crimson Lips chapter. Here's the review I posted.

Spoiler: Crimson Lips - Leap of Faith

God, this chapter was insanely adorable. I loved the way you described moments like Twilight successfully walking on water and turning to face Rarity. I should have figured this was inspired by "I See the Light".

 

[SigmasonicX]

We ended up playing three games of Dominion, with three people. There wasn't much to do when it wasn't your turn, and Sylvee steamrolled us anyway, so it doesn't look like we'll continue playing this. I'll look into something more collaborative next time.

Ah right, should follow up on yesterday's stream and post what tomorrow's lineup will actually be. We watched the following.
1.Backstreet Boys - Everybody (Backstreet's Back) (Official Video)
2.Betty Boop Snow White 1933 1080p recently restored pre-code.
3.Garfield Halloween
4. Scooby Doo on Zombie Island
5.The Worst Ghost Hunting Show of All Time

Was going to play "Thriller", but I realized that music video is actually pretty long.

You wouldn't think a Betty Boop cartoon about Snow White would be spooky, but it goes places. Pre-Code cartoons were crazy. I knew old cartoons were heavy on every little thing randomly gaining a face and turning out to be alive, but wow, that happened a lot here. This is my first time watching Betty Boop of any kind, and I enjoyed it, particularly that random jazz number that I assume used an actual performance as reference.

After that was the Garfield Halloween special, which was nice. Sylvee hadn't seen any of the old Garfield cartoons, to our surprise, so he hadn't heard Lorenzo Music as Garfield. It was a nice special.

Scooby Doo on Zombie Island was interesting to watch after so long. A bit more boring than I remembered, but still, it had some fun songs and actual corpses and implied death. Velma made a :3 face a lot. Tara Strong voiced one character. Daphne and Fred were pretty annoying here; they are definitely the characters that creators have the most trouble finding a use for, hence Mystery Incorporated giving Fred at least some wacky characteristics. I still need to watch that.

Last was a Jenny Nicholson video describing a pretty odd ghost hunting show where they first get a normal home inspector to look at the haunted houses, and he always finds perfectly normal explanations for the spooky incidents, particularly improperly placed doors and wiring problems. Then they also bring in a psychic and go "both sides mirite", and they never say if the home owners fix the actual door and wiring problems.

As for Sunday, here's the final schedule.
1. MLP - Luna Eclipsed
2. Reboot season 3 episode 1 - To Mend and Defend - The Evil Dead episode
3. Unikitty - Spoooooky Game (15 minutes)
4. Hilda - The Nightmare Spirit
5. Tiny Toon Adventures - Night Ghoulery (hour long)

There will be several TBD shorts (Mickey Mouse, Looney Tunes, etc.) in between everything.

 

[SigmasonicX]

It was sort of surreal watching an old cartoon from that era. It's one of the most commonly parodied and referenced eras of animation, but I've never really watched much from back then. It was really weird because I've seen a ton of stuff that looks like that sort of thing before but is obviously trying to pretend to be from there, but this was actually from that era.

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Yeah, it really struck me how much Cuphead got right with the random transformations and such.

I liked the slower pace at the beginning of the movie. It made it feel like an actual movie rather then just a normal episode stretched out to 70+ minutes. I really liked the setting too.

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Yeah, I liked the beginning and setting, but it got dragged out once they reached the island and we kept cutting to Scooby and Shaggy eating peppers. I'm fine with this having real monsters, since that's better for a movie level event.

What I think is a little less forgiving is that the gang seem to have little agency in the story and them solving mysteries has almost no bearing on how they actually end up succeeding.

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This is a big part of why I didn't like the pacing later--much of what the characters did wasn't relevant. One thing I liked about A Pup Named Scooby Doo back in the day was that there were actual clues that led to the heroes solving the mystery, though it's entirely possible that if I watch again it'll be "PPOV" bunyip style whale logic.

The St. James Infirmary musical number was a rotoscoped performance of Cab Calloway who ended up doing a few songs for Fleischer cartoons, maybe we can watch them some other time.

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Yeah, that'd be neat.

Sunday stream followup, with the other videos included.

*. Bustin - YouTube
*.The Mad Doctor - Mickey Mouse (1933) - YouTube
1. MLP - Luna Eclipsed
*.Popeye the Sailor - Shiver Me Timbers - YouTube
2. Reboot season 3 episode 1 - To Mend and Defend - The Evil Dead episode
*. Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny) - Water, Water Every Hare - Second Gossamer (red monster) short
3. Unikitty - Spoooooky Game (15 minutes)
*. Looney Tunes (Sylvester & Tweety) - Hyde and Go Tweet
4. Hilda - The Nightmare Spirit
*.Alma short film - YouTube
5. Tiny Toon Adventures - Night Ghoulery (hour long)
*.Ghoul Friend | A Mickey Mouse Cartoon | Disney Shows - YouTube

"Luna Eclipsed" was nice to watch again, Pinkie messing everything up and everyone forgetting Luna's good aside. Luna's normal (non-shouting) voice was pretty different from what we hear later, which goes more for a non-shouted version of her shouting voice. I forgot about all the fun costumes.

Of the shorts we watched, the Popeye one was the best. My favorite bit was when Popeye came onto the deck and there were a bunch of skeletons and he seemed more annoyed than anything; I loved him mumble-shouting to one of them, "Hey, what's your name?" as he runs to beat him up. Also Popeye killed the ocean.

The Looney Tunes shorts were good. In retrospect, both shorts were from the same era, so perhaps I should have used the first Gossamer short instead of the second.

Alma is a pretty creepy short film, so I went with that last Mickey Mouse short for a happy ending. Goofy is helpful even as a zombie.

The Reboot episode was right from the start of the more edgy era of the show. Bob is lost in the web, Dot is mourning missing him, the viruses have control of Mainframe (for now) and Enzo has to step up as a young guardian with a broken Glitch. I actually really liked these ones where they're still in Mainframe because it still had a lot of the cast around. This episode was fun to return to there's some comedy, the show is looking a bit nicer with improved lighting and shadows.

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I agree that the season 3 episodes that are still in Mainframe are pretty good. It's a lot more serious than before, but there's still a lot of good comedy and you still have Dot, Mouse, Phong, Megabyte, and Hexadecimal (for a bit) around. I also thought Enzo rising up to the challenge was interesting--less so when he became Matrix. About the lighting, the season 2 episode we watched in the stream didn't show as much as an improvement as I remembered, but you could definitely see it here. I can say with certainty that the show looks better in season 3 than Guardian Code does in its CG segments. This also marks the point where you can notice the female character models in particular getting more *ahem* detailed.

You brought this up in the stream chat, and yeah, this is one of those episodes where you can tell being the user must be frustrating as hell when playing a game.

It was my first time watching a Unikitty episode, and it was pretty good. Ditto for Hilda. The animation in the latter was really impressive and the tone in general was really nice.

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Glad you liked them! I admittedly haven't been keeping up with Unikitty, but I found it appealing because it's Teen Titans Go style humor without the rampant cynicism. And I still get a kick out of Tara Strong straight up using her Twilight voice for Unikitty.

Hilda is a really solid show and I recommend checking out the entire thing. The two episodes after the ones we watched could have also fit into the Halloween stream.

Tiny Toon Adventures is weird for me in that I remember watching it a lot as a kid, and being fine with it, but whenever I go back I don't get a ton out of it. This special wasn't much different. I mostly noticed now how amazing the animations looked. I had a few laughs, but I think in general the characters aren't really that great.

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Yeah, compared to Animaniacs and such, Tiny Toons is much harder to go back to, though this special was fun overall and I'd definitely be up for watching the Summer Vacation special. I agree the animation was fantastic here. It was pretty annoying that with so many segments, more than half of them involved Plucky in a lead role, and most of those also involved Hamton. That said, Plucky is funny and Hamton was a good foil to him. It was surprising that Buster only appeared in one of the segments. I really don't have patience for Babs' celebrity imitation gags, especially when I have no clue who she's imitating. I had forgotten a lot of the characters who appeared here, including Li'l Sneezer and that droopy dog. Many characters just didn't work well for gags, particularly the blue cat whose name I'm blanking on (EDIT: Furball) being too innocent looking to work for slapstick. Meanwhile, Fifi and Shirley got nothing, even though Shirley being psychic would have worked well for a horror short.

Overall, I thought the stream went pretty well. Next time, we're back to normal. Next couple weeks will be finishing up Utena on Friday, and on Sunday we're back to watching Big Hero 6 and Fate/Zero. Also maybe back to Super Gals.

 

[SigmasonicX]

While moving the Delta Rune installer to my games folder, I took a look at when my save data for Super Lesbian Horse RPG was made and holy shit that was back in January 2014? In just two months it'll be five years since I finished it! This shocked me because I made a post on GAF reviewing it, and I didn't think it was that long since I joined these threads.


It's a pretty good fan game, BTW. Very silly, but it's very cute (and runs better than what's shown in the trailer, from what I remember) with a surprisingly good lesson about being respectful in relationships. The original upload was deleted, but you can find a reupload here.

1.Art by purmu
2.Art by crispokefan
3.Art by alexanderkrizak

I was surprised to see that the creator is converting this to an original IP.


It looks pretty good! It seems to have the same rough story, at least with not!Twilight building a huge dungeon in not!Rainbow's basement for no particular reason. Demo here, which I haven't played; I generally prefer to stick to final games.

Her Patreon (which I'm now supporting) had a post about the game in late September this year, and her Tumblr is very active (including with frequent pony image reblogs, so no fandom abandonment here), so this is definitely still being worked on.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Yesterday we watched five episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena, episodes 25-29. I suppose I should start putting everything in spoiler tags at this point.

Spoiler: Utena

This set of episodes starts the, uh, Car Arc I guess. I had of course seen that GIF of Akio sprawled out on the hood of his car while it's driving toward the screen, but I never imagined cars would be emphasized this much, or that the GIF was stock footage used when Akio uses a sex metaphor to power up duelists.

Speaking of stock footage, it was interesting that they swapped out all the old ones with new ones. Utena uses an elevator to get to the duelist arena now, while Anthy turns into a tree. Utena can't use the Sword of Dios anymore for some reason (probably Akio), so now Anthy pulls a sword out of her. That guy in the castle dives into Utena in a different way (no justification given for this). And there's new stock footage of them going to bed.

I was surprised they dropped the abandoned dorm setting, since it seemed like there was going to be something important about that place, but I guess not.

Duels have switched to having the opponents have their own Anthy stand-in to pull a sword out, who then hilariously drive around the dueling arena in a car and crash / run over their duelist when the duelist is defeated. Except for Saionji, who didn't have a sword pulled out and had an empty car driving around. The Anthy stand-in driving around is a fun visual, but I think having a bunch of cars embedded into the ground is a bit much, haha. I am impressed that they managed to give each of the Anthy stand-ins pretty nice dresses and hair styles.

As for individual episodes, not much else to say about the Saionji and Miki duel episodes, really. Well, I was pretty shocked to see Touga mention in the former that he's too young to drive, meaning he's only 15. Anime ages, man.

In the middle was a pretty fantastic Nanami episode where she thinks she laid an egg. She struggles with the idea that people will think she's strange for laying an egg, but then concludes all girls lay eggs, but then worries that people will think she's strange for only laying an egg now and she's late, especially when Juri describes her bowling ball and Nanami thinks that's her egg. I assume that's because "ball" and "egg" can both be "tama" in Japanese. Nanami asks Touga if he'd prefer a boy or a girl, and she says she'd prefer a girl, leading to Touga lecturing her about how lesbianism is unnatural. I was pretty surprised Touga would say that, especially given what he's doing(???) with Akio, but I wouldn't place hypocrisy beyond him. He also talked about how he doesn't want someone who lays eggs in his family. I'm not sure if there's a Japanese pun that's not coming through or he literally believed Nanami laid an egg and wants no part of it. Anyway, the egg hatches into Chu-Chu I guess. This is probably my favorite wacky Nanami episode.

We ended with a two parter about Juri and her former fencing captain, Yuka(?). It was all about Juri's complicated relationship with her old friend whatshername (huh, surprised spell check allowed that), with Yuka being a dick to both of them. Then he dies off screen of an illness. RIP, I guess. Interestingly, Utena's duel with Juri ended not when she cut her rose, but rather her necklace with a picture of whatshername. I will say, I am annoyed that duels showed Utena clearly struggling against Yuka and Juri, but then the guy in the castle comes down and she instantly wins. I have to assume at some point he chooses not to come down to help and a big deal will be made out of that.

In Pony news, bottled water event in Thailand has pony statues and billboards.

That's some water.

And it's time to work on the episode guide again! I'd like people to look over what's currently there, especially since I've made several changes since we voted on season 7 episodes. For instance, there's a lot more Equestria Girls coverage, with the movies being upgraded to Important (with the caveat that this is only relative to Equestria Girls), and season 6's "Gauntlet of Fire" has been upgraded to Important, with Ember having appeared in a two parter and that episode having already been Recommended.

I recall people were asking for a do-over with season 5 in particular, so here's what he have right now.

Important:
1-2. The Cutie Map
19. Crusaders of the Lost Mark
25-6. The Cutie Re-Mark

Recommended:
4. Bloom & Gloom
7. Make New Friends But Keep Discord
8. The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone
9. Slice of Life
12. Amending Fences
13. Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?
14. Canterlot Boutique
16. Rarity Investigates!
21. Hearthbreakers

Notable episodes that weren't listed as Recommended:
5. Tanks for the Memories
11. Party Pooped
15. Scare Master
20. The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows
24. The Mane Attraction

And after that, be sure to post what you'd like to see for the season 8 recommended episode list! Here's my list, with the descriptions. Bold and underlined means Important, just bold means Recommended.

801-2. School Daze [SONG]
Following the events of the Movie, Twilight establishes a School of Friendship to bring together ponies, griffons, changelings, yaks, dragons, and hippogriffs. However, Education Chancellor Neighsay believes bringing in other species will only harm ponykind and is looking for just the excuse to shut the school down.

803. The Maud Couple (Pinkie Pie, Maud Pie)
Maud has a new boyfriend, Mudbriar. Despite being very similar to Maud, Pinkie Pie despises him.

804. Fake It 'Til You Make It (Fluttershy, Rarity)
Rarity asks Fluttershy to work at her Manehattan store while she's out, and to handle the intimidating customers, she adopts alternate personalities.

805. Grannies Gone Wild (Rainbow Dash, Granny Smith, Applejack)
Rainbow wants to ride a famous rollercoaster at Las Pegasus, but Applejack forces her to take Granny Smith and her old friends with her and follow a long list of rules.

806. Surf and/or Turf [SONG] (Cutie Mark Crusaders, Twilight Sparkle)
The Cutie Map sends the CMC to the land of the hippogriffs, where they find that Silverstream's brother is unsure if he wants to live on land or in the sea as a seapony, and Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo get into a fight over which is better.

807. Horse Play (Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Mane Six, Starlight Glimmer, Spike)
Twilight holds a school play about Celestia and casts her in the lead role. When Celestia turns out to be a terrible actor, Twilight is afraid to tell her.

808. The Parent Map (Starlight Glimmer, Sunburst)
The Map sends Starlight and Sunburst to their home town, where they have to convince their overbearing parents to get along.

809. Non-Compete Clause (Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Student Six)
Applejack and Rainbow Dash take the students on field trip, but their rivalry threatens to turn it into a disaster.

810. The Break Up Break Down (Big Mac, Spike, Discord, Cutie Mark Crusaders)
On Hearts and Hooves Day, Big Mac overhears Sugar Belle planning to break up with him. He gets advice on what to do from his Ogres & Oubliettes group.

811. Molt Down (Spike, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Zecora, Smolder)
Spike undergoes the "molt" all dragons experience before they're forced to go out on their own, and he worries he won't be able to stay with Twilight anymore.

812. Marks for Effort (Cutie Mark Crusaders, Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer)
The CMC try to join the School of Friendship, even though they've already mastered the curriculum . Meanwhile, they help a filly attending the school named Cozy Glow.

813. The Mean 6 (Chrysalis, Mane Six, Starlight Glimmer)
Queen Chrysalis creates evil clones of the Mane Six to exact her revenge, but the clones prove to be harder to manage than she expected.

814. A Matter of Principals (Starlight Glimmer, Discord, Student Six)
Twilight leaves Starlight in charge of the School of Friendship while she and the others are on a Map mission, and Discord takes this opportunity to mess with her.

815. The Hearth's Warming Club (Student Six, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash)
Before everyone leaves for the holidays, a prank ruins the school's Hearth's Warming decorations. While Twilight tries to figure out who was behind it, the Student Six tell each other how their cultures celebrate the holidays

816. Friendship University [SONG] (Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Flim & Flam)
Twilight and Rarity learn of a Friendship University run by the Flim Flam Brothers. While looking for the scam, they learn that they roped in Starswirl the Bearded as a student. After eight seasons, this is the first Rarity / Twilight team up episode.

817. The End in Friend (Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle)
Twilight has her students examine Rainbow and Rarity's day out together to see how such different ponies can be such good friends, only for them to get into a fight and decide they shouldn't be friends after all.

818. Yakity-Sax (Pinkie Pie, Mane Six)
Pinkie becomes obsessed with playing an annoying yak instrument, but when her friends tell her to stop, she falls into despair.

819. On the Road to Friendship [SONG] (Starlight Glimmer, Trixie)
Trixie is invited to perform her magic show in Saddle Arabia and goes on a road trip with Starlight, but their friendship may not last the journey.

820. The Washouts (Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo, Twilight Sparkle)
When Scootaloo becomes obsessed with a stuntpony group called the Washouts, Rainbow fears she'll lose her number one fan. Follows up on season 3's "Wonderbolts Academy".

821. A Rockhoof and a Hard Place (Rockhoof, Twilight Sparkle, Yona, Mane Six, Spike)
One of the Pillars of Equestria, Rockhoof, has trouble finding a place in modern times.

822. What Lies Beneath (Student Six, Twilight Sparkle)
During a study session, the non-pony students come to believe friendship isn't in their nature. When they discover a secret chamber under the school, a mysterious being forces them to undergo trials.

823. Sounds of Silence [SONG] (Applejack, Fluttershy)
The Map sends Applejack and Fluttershy to the land of the kirins, where they discover all but one has chosen to never speak, out of fear that hurt feelings could unleash their destructive sides.

824. Father Knows Beast [SONG] (Spike, Twilight Sparkle, Smolder, Mane Six)
A strange dragon crash lands in Ponyville, and after recovering, he claims to be Spike's father. Spike tries to learn how to be a "real" dragon from him.

825-6. School Raze
When magic starts disappearing from the world, the Main Six journey to Tartarus to check if Tirek is behind this, but when the true threat turns out to be closer to home, the Student Six have to step up.

Special - Best Gift Ever (Mane Six, Discord, Cadance, Flim & Flam)
In the first FiM TV special, everyone is worried about getting ready for Hearth's Warming. Applejack suggests a Hearth's Warming Helper where each of them secretly gets a present for just one of them to reduce the load. This has unforeseen consequences.

Depending on how things play out, "What Lies Beneath" could easily get upgraded to Important. Cozy Glow is demonstrated well enough there, so if that's included, we don't have to worry about her introduction.

Plain list for copying and pasting.

801-2. School Daze
803. The Maud Couple
804. Fake It 'Til You Make It
805. Grannies Gone Wild
806. Surf and/or Turf
807. Horse Play
808. The Parent Map
809. Non-Compete Clause
810. The Break Up Break Down
811. Molt Down
812. Marks for Effort
813. The Mean 6
814. A Matter of Principals
815. The Hearth's Warming Club
816. Friendship University
817. The End in Friend
818. Yakity-Sax
819. On the Road to Friendship
820. The Washouts
821. A Rockhoof and a Hard Place
822. What Lies Beneath
823. Sounds of Silence
824. Father Knows Beast
825-6. School Raze

Special - Best Gift Ever

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup. We watched the following.

*.Interrobang Pie - Final Day Area - YouTube
*.Super Ponybeat - This Day Aria (Changeling Mix ft. Odyssey) by Eurobeat Brony - YouTube
1. MLP - A Canterlot Wedding parts 1-2
*.Friendship is Witchcraft- It'll be Ok - YouTube (after part 1)
*.My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Love is in Bloom - YouTube (after part 2)
*.This Spy Aria - YouTube
2. Big Hero 6 episode 11 - Killer App
*.Queen CHRYSALIS is in Control - PMV HD - MLP FiM - YouTube
3. Reboot season 2 episode 5 - Painted Windows
*.This Day Aria: Literal Video Version - YouTube
4. Fate/Zero 11
*.[MLP Comic Dub] Reforming Chrysalis (comedy - Fluttershy/Chrysalis) - YouTube
5. Super Gals 27

Videos we didn't end up watching:
*.[PMV] Starset - Monster (Queen Chrysalis) My Little Pony - YouTube
*.[MLP Comic Dub] Learning Lessons (comedy) - YouTube

We were short on viewers at the start, but more people joined as it went on.

It was nice watching "A Canterlot Wedding" again. Though there are a lot of weird things with the story in retrospect, it's among the best two parters for its focus on Twilight's emotions, the dramatic turns, that first half cliffhanger, great setpieces, one of the most memorable pieces of BGM in this series (and the only one I know of to get a fan remix), and those songs. At three songs and two reprises, I believe this is still the most song-heavy two-parter, with "The Crystal Empire" having two songs and one reprise, and all of them are great. Well, the first "BBBFF" maybe not, but the sad reprise is fantastic. While Chrysalis's defeat is pretty unsatisfying when you describe it, the music, sounds, and animation just make it amazing. As Sylvee pointed out during the stream, there's a big chunk of the episode left after she's defeated, and the time spent on the resolution makes it feel like more of a movie than most other two parters. Things like the lesson we're supposed to learn from this episode don't really work, and this started the trend of Celestia getting her ass kicked to show how strong the villain is, but you just don't care when "Love is in Bloom" starts playing.

Unlike most other two parters, this is about what should be a single relatively mundane event, a wedding, and how the characters react to it, with that particular event ballooning into something bigger, but it ultimately going back to the core of the event. Other two parters, including those by Meghan McCarthy, tend to be more about some big unusual event happening from the start and the ponies just being along for the ride, but it seems like this sort of story is just better suited for the setting and characters. But then again, "The Crystalling" is pretty similar to the description I just gave, and people largely aren't enthused about that. However, that didn't have any songs, and the character emotional focus was on the Sunburst side plot and not Flurry Heart or the storm, I suppose.

We learned that UberTag hadn't seen any Friendship is Witchcraft, so I suppose we should resolve that at some point.

After that, we watched a Big Hero 6 episode that introduces a pretty fun recurring villain, Noodle Burger Boy, and the episode seemed to be well received.

I showed this Reboot episode in order to showcase Hexadecimal, before we watch the The Guardian Code season one finale that's supposed to include her. It involves her gaining control of the Paint program and using it to mess around with everyone. I remembered this episode being good, and indeed it was. It was also way creepier than I remembered; Hex is a seriously great villain. There were a lot of good gags too, particularly with the visuals. Going back to a season 2 episode after watching a season 3 one last Friday really showed how drastic the jump in visual quality was; I was surprised.

We got back to Fate/Zero with an episode where some of the servants just get together and talk, and it was interesting seeing their different views. And then Rider proceeded to summon an entire desert and army, which was neat.

We also got back to watching Super Gals, which is sub only from this point on. Ran's English voice felt pretty close to the original, in attitude at least, but everyone else felt pretty different. Anyway, this episode involved Tatsukichi's younger brother appearing and trying to get a date with Ran, which he gets when he offers to pay for everything. Shenanigans ensue. It's a pretty typical episode, but fun.

I ended the stream there because it was getting late, and I had a pet to feed that didn't care about the time change.

~~~

Monochromatic released two new stories!

A Thousand Words of Noise, which released later but I chose to read first, is a short look at Twilight undergoing a depressive episode and her friends helping her work through it, based on Mono's own episodes.

Twilight didn't know what to say. How easy it sounded, to just not think about things that hurt, but thoughts were all she had.

Thoughts were the only thing that were hers, for better or worse.

Click to shrink...

It does a great job getting you inside Twilight's head, and it feels perfectly in character that she'd feel this way at times. It's also interesting seeing how the other characters work through bad thoughts. Twilight having major depression is a huge part of The Enchanted Kingdom, if you weren't aware, but this offers a more concise and focused look at that subject.

Flying on Cloud Nine is a Rarity X Celestia story, based in the same universe as the still just starting Tailor of the Crown, but taking place after the chapters that are out. It's a short tale of them at a gala, Rarity wanting to avoid talking to some people, and Celestia letting her ride on her back as she flies from the balcony. It's pretty cute, even if I can't say I'm a big fan of this ship.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Honestly I don't feel like the Yaks are something that really have to be established much, they're pretty simplistic and people can figure them out pretty quickly.

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Yeah, fair enough, especially with Thorax.

Personally I'd remove Bloom and Gloom and add Mane Attraction and call it a day but that's just me.

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I can't remember a thing about Bloom and Gloom, which seems like cause enough to downgrade it.

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Yeah sure, leaving "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" then, and just swapping "Bloom & Gloom" for "The Mane Attraction".

About "Twilight Time", the thought was to recommend an episode where Twilight being a princess actually mattered. Plus it has burger time. It definitely is one of the weaker recommendations, though. And if we remove "Bloom & Gloom", we also remove one of the few callbacks to it.

SLH RPG

I didn't remember it had a lesson. I remember it was pretty good overall but the middle part was a bit slow, didn't quite keep up the pace of the demo

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During the end segment, Fluttershy becomes angry at Rainbow for saying she (Fluttershy) can't do anything on her own and always needs her help. The characters get split up and then Fluttershy saves Rainbow, whereupon they make up and Rainbow learns to respect her more. This is also reflected by the villains, who are in a bad relationship where the final boss doesn't show respect toward the sub villain despite his devotion, which gets pointed out by the heroes. I might be a bit off with this, but that's the gist.

I don't know what criteria to use to pick recommendations. Here's stuff I like the most from the season.

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That's fine. What I do is count up votes to see what people find important, and then use that to determine what will be in the guide.

~~~

Since the developer of Friendship is Epic disappeared last year, others working on it are going ahead and making the 2017 build publicly available.

"you can fall under it and not come back on it if you play Applejack."

Trailer from 2016


I hadn't even noticed, but yeah, last update about this was back in early 2017.

And with NaPoWriMo starting, ED has started their author interviews again, this time with Pen Stroke, creator of Past Sins. While I didn't like that story in the end, I did find his point about outlines interesting.

PEN STROKE: In a way, I'd say it's something like being along for the ride along with my characters. It's part of the reason why methods that rely on heavier outlining don't tend to work for me. I've found that once I've laid out clearly what happens in a story, once I know the story myself and all its nuances, I lose some of my motivation to write the story. That's part of the joy I get from writing Fanfiction, or even creative writing in general. I get to tell the story to myself, in some capacity.

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Back when I wrote fanfics, I definitely felt like that at times. Heck, that's definitely true with our current RPs in the chat. Tons of things happen just based on what makes sense with what the players are doing, and I often don't have resolutions planned ahead of time, largely because I just don't feel the motivation to plan things out. If I know what's going to happen before I write, then I feel less interest in actually writing. However, as the interview itself notes, you still need some outline to keep on track.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Starlight confirmed still evil. I guess old habits die hard:

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Offered pizza at the end

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This one is cute.

Friday stream followup. We watched Utena episodes 30-34.

Spoiler: Utena episodes 30-34

First, here's a chat discussion:

SigmasonicXYesterday at 11:32 PM
Repeating what I said in the stream, that was an interesting set of episodes, though I was unsure how it was all going to come together until that last one (episode 34).
Anthy is the Prince's brother, yet the Prince who talked to Utena is a separate character from Akio / End of the World, since the Prince claimed Akio was the Prince grown up. Guessing the Prince is like Akio's good side split off.(edited)
I'm reminded of Princess Tutu a lot with that last episode.
And like Tutu, I really get the sense that a lot of this later stuff wasn't intended from the beginning

November 10, 2018
Chained PrometheusToday at 6:44 AM
SigmasonicX I'm not so sure.
There's definitely a bit of a tonal shift, but it's very clear that Ikuhara definitely had this all planned by the time he finished Arc 1 as shown by that first recap episode where Akio talks with the Prince.
And there's certain details present in the first arc that indicate that a lot of this endgame stuff was likely present to begin with
SigmasonicXToday at 8:53 AM
I suppose my issue is that a lot of the stuff from before this arc doesn't feel that relevant now. Especially things like brother-sister relationships being so important that they're a key part of the backstory, and how the Black Rose arc doesn't seem to tie into anything. And even in this arc, the duelists got in the car and dueled Utena, but then they appear to be exactly the same after, so what did that even do?

And now going more into my thoughts:

This show is doing a pretty good job at having shocking moments, like Nanami's groupie getting with Touga (especially unexpected because it seemed like she "fell in line" after her episode), Nanami walking in on Akio having sex with Anthy, and Utena having sex with Akio, which give you a visceral "Oh shit" reaction. However, there is some frustration on the Akio front with how no one appears to be interested in doing anything. I imagine it's building up to something in the last episodes, but still, that's a lot of episodes of build up with no one except maybe Nanami even realizing there's a problem.

In light of current events, I do see some similarities between Nanami's choice not to actually tell anyone about Akio and Anthy with how women are encouraged not to report sexual assault because the system is against them. After all, who could she tell that wouldn't immediately decide she was lying, or knows about it and doesn't care?

Going back to Utena having sex with Akio, that was effective because you see all these episodes of Akio being sleazy, and since Utena is the pure and innocent hero, you expect her to see through him before things get too far with him. But nope, he successfully seduces her. I didn't find Utena's English VA too notable before this point, but I thought her parts in episode 33 were really well done, showing how her mind was elsewhere while having sex with Akio and she was worried and even regretful about what they were doing.

Episode 34 contained backstory, both via a shadow play and a flashback from Utena. That scene of young Utena seeing Anthy stabbed with swords was very effective and creepy, but I'm not really feeling the backstory with Dios. Like I said in the chat, it's weird that brother-sister relationships are so important now, and the backstory is that Dios was tired rescuing all these princesses, so Anthy told these fathers he needed to rest and they stabbed her? My first impulse was to think "rescuing princesses" meant sex, but then the fathers wanted him to rescue their princesses? Literally, the story is strange, and I can't figure it out figuratively.

Still, good set of episodes.

Forgot to post these, videos that Uber added to the Utena stream last week.
Utena - Akio Ohtori riding on car hood - Live Action
Shoujo Kakumei Utena opening live-action parody
NANAMI'S EGG

Next in the Cutie Mark Crew series is out

2 Twilight, 2 Rarity, 3 Pinkie, 2 Applejack, 3 Fluttershy, 3 Rainbow. Weird that it's uneven.

Some art.
1.Rainbow bothering Applejack like a dog by dcon
2.Blazing Autumn by CoconutHound on DeviantArt
3.Sad FlutterCord by sadistjolt
4.Flutterboo by heir-of-rick
5.Applejack 11 9 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Smolder's Secret by Marenlicious on DeviantArt
2.Blushing AppleDash by zuki
3.EQG Pinkie winking at her painting by zuki
4.Godlike Rarity by 1AN1 on DeviantArt
5. Not suggestive - flutterbutt by Riressa on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 2

1.[fan art ] Fluttershy by kriss-studios on DeviantArt
2.Twilight telling Luna to socialize by darkest-lunar-flower
3.Winter Luna by Koveliana on DeviantArt
4. Discord, Fluttershy, Rainbow, Pinkie, Scootaloo - Wonka by YewDee on DeviantArt
5.Ralsei from Deltarune Ponified by Sethisto on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 3

1.EQG-Anthro Rainbow and Twilight measuring Sunset's muscles on the beach by ambris - Note this is Princess Twilight, not SciTwi
2.The Evolution of Twilight Sparkle by uunicornicc on DeviantArt
3.Apauljack and the Big Blue Dash by Tsitra360 on DeviantArt
4.EQG Starlight in Rarity's The Other Side outfit by (artist needed)
5.Human Rarity by Gyuumu on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 4

Deltarune SPOILER art
CHAOS, CHAOS!!! by Zetamad on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Deltarune SPOILER art

Cute Twilight and grandfather clock animation by eagle1division
Looks like not even ResetEra 2.0 will support WebM, unfortunately.

Comic
Sweetie Belle's new spell by input-command

Spoiler: Comic

Neat ponification of a Phantom of the Opera song.


Halloween song I missed earlier


Rarity-inspired song
UndreamedPanic & PegasYs - The One You Should Know [Synthwave] - YouTube

Decent remix
Daniel Ingram - We're not Flawless (Paloris Remix) - YouTube

Another one of those brony documentaries, just 9 minutes long.
Voices in The Cider: A Look Inside a My Little Pony Convention - YouTube

Pretty straightforward, talking to fan content creators, but because it doesn't try to get weird about the fandom, that basically leaves, "We like MLP because the show is good."

And lastly, about the episode guide, I went ahead and swapped "Bloom & Gloom" with "The Mane Attraction" with this image.

Votes for season 8:
801-2. School Daze - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
803. The Maud Couple - UberTag, fony
804. Fake It 'Til You Make It - SigmasonicX, fony
805. Grannies Gone Wild
806. Surf and/or Turf
807. Horse Play - Sylvee, UberTag
808. The Parent Map - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
809. Non-Compete Clause
810. The Break Up Break Down - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
811. Molt Down - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
812. Marks for Effort - UberTag, fony
813. The Mean 6 - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
814. A Matter of Principals
815. The Hearth's Warming Club - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
816. Friendship University
817. The End in Friend
818. Yakity-Sax
819. On the Road to Friendship - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
820. The Washouts - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
821. A Rockhoof and a Hard Place
822. What Lies Beneath - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
823. Sounds of Silence - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
824. Father Knows Beast
825-6. School Raze - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
Special - The Best Gift Ever - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony

4 votes
801-2. School Daze - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
815. The Hearth's Warming Club - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
819. On the Road to Friendship - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
820. The Washouts - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
822. What Lies Beneath - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
823. Sounds of Silence - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony
= 7

Special - The Best Gift Ever - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag, fony

3 votes
808. The Parent Map - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
810. The Break Up Break Down - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
811. Molt Down - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
813. The Mean 6 - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
825-6. School Raze - SigmasonicX, Sylvee, UberTag
= 6

2 votes
803. The Maud Couple - UberTag, fony
804. Fake It 'Til You Make It - SigmasonicX, fony
807. Horse Play - Sylvee, UberTag
812. Marks for Effort - UberTag, fony

I'm willing to drop "Fake It 'Til You Make It", but I'll need more input about what episode to choose out of the remaining. Note that I'm not convinced "Marks for Effort" is needed to introduce Cozy Glow.

 

[SigmasonicX]

About the episode guide, looking at my original posts, I liked "Fake It 'Til You Make It" less than I remembered. I liked "The Maud Couple" and "Horse Play", while I thought "Fake It 'Til You Make It" and "Marks for Effort" were just alright. Unfortunately, both "The Maud Couple" and "Horse Play" were pretty divisive.

Looking at the other shoo-ins for the season 8 guide, there aren't any Pinkie episodes, and Mud Briar has shown up in the background pretty often, so that's a reason to go with "The Maud Couple". On the other hand, there are so few Celestia episodes, but also, we already include two of them in season 7. So I'm leaning toward "The Maud Couple".

In the news, season 8 is now on Netflix!

That image

NaPoWriMo Interview - Bookish Delight on Character Chemistry and Interaction
Decent overview of how to decide characters to focus on in stories and write good chemistry. There's also an entire segment about Juniper Montage, Trigonometrize .
I haven't read any of her stuff, but she's an early fandom author that's still pumping out a ton of fics, which is neat. Her stories look pretty fun, but nothing I'm driven to check out.

Also, I forgot how cute this scene was.

Art dump
1.Young Human Twilight and Spike by garam
2.Pinkie and Crying Twilight by luciferamon
3.EQG Applejack and pie (based on comic #72) by dcon
4.Dash wants Applejack's pie by dcon
5.Starlight and Starlight by sayu

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Yona by celebi-yoshi
2. Far Future Twilight redesign - Big Book Horse by Dark-Walkerr on DeviantArt
3. Luna X Pharynx - Sunset of love by Marbola on DeviantArt
4. Trixie - running through the stars by belka-sempai on DeviantArt
5.Fluttershy with pumpkins by yanamosuda

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Derpy by renderpoint
2.Applejack by ponimu
3.Starlight and Trixie by ponimu
4.Starlight by ponimu
5.Fluttershy with socks by kittyrosie

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Cadance and Flurry looking at ice cream by kittyrosie
2.Fluttershy 11 11 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
3.Pinkie Pie 11 13 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
4.Somnambula - My Little Pony by YugoVostok on DeviantArt
5.Marble crying about Big Mac and Sugar Belle by liu ting

Spoiler: Art 4

1. Marble - I thought you love me by RedRose26 on DeviantArt
2.Trixie and Starlight kissing with pocky by raikoh
3.Fluttershy in winter clothes by shadowreindeer
4. Rainbow Power Twilight - a queen by WanderingPegasus on DeviantArt
5.Fluttershy by MellonCollie-chan on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 5

Fighting game themed art by Danmakuman (one of my favorite active MLP fan artists, BTW) for the listed artist RJ-Streak. He's been making these for a while.
1.Equestria Heroes Xtra - Juniper Montage by RJ-Streak on DeviantArt
2.Equestria Heroes Xtra - Wallflower Blush by RJ-Streak on DeviantArt
3.Equestria Heroes Xtra- Vignette Valencia by RJ-Streak on DeviantArt
4.Equestria Heroes Xtra/Boss - Midnight Sparkle by RJ-Streak on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 6

Remixes/covers
Daniel Ingram - The True Gift of Gifting (Nicolas Dominique Remix) - YouTube
A Kirin Tale | MLP Piano Cover [Sheet music & MIDI] - YouTube
So Much More to Me | MLP Piano Cover [Sheet music & MIDI] - YouTube

~~~

Sunday stream followup.

*.Fall of the Crystal Empire - MLP Fan Animation - YouTube
1. MLP - The Crystal Empire parts 1-2
*.Lost MLP Literal Videos - Ballad of the Crystal Empire - YouTube (after part 1)
*.My Little Pony: Overture to Season 6 - YouTube
2. Big Hero 6 episode 12 - Small Hiro One
*.MLP:FiM x Utena - Zettai Pony Mokushiroku (Absolute Pony Apocalypse) - YouTube
3. Reboot: The Guardian Code episode 10 - Mainframe Mayhem
*.Panic! At The Disco-The Ballad Of Luna Lisa (Mona Lisa)[MLP PMV] - YouTube
4. Fate/Zero episode 12-13
*.[PMV] MLP:FiM - King Sombra / Mastodon - Crystal Skull - YouTube (after episode 12)
*."Think Of Me" MLP Animatic [Phantom of the Opera] Fluttershy Cover - YouTube

YouTube videos based on "crystal", which netted fewer results than you'd think, once you exclude the videos made by users with that in their name.

The viewers were pretty unusual this time. At the start, it was just me and ahoy, and then Sunny joined, then Cappy, then Village. I don't believe Sunny and Village were ever in the stream before. Since neither Uber nor Chained were there, I opted out of showing Super Gals.

"The Crystal Empire" has a lot of neat parts, but Celestia's plan and Twilight treating it as a test is still so strange, and it's so weird that they haven't actually explored the crystal ponies much more. I love the presentation of Sombra's traps, and he was pretty neat when he attacked at the end. It's a shame they haven't done more like that. The songs are pretty good, even if they didn't strike a cord like the "A Canterlot Wedding" ones. This story also features some of the few RariTwi moments of the show at the end.

The Big Hero 6 episode was pretty well received. It also included a tsundere briefly acting deredere.

The Reboot: The Guardian Code episode was so weird. Here's the chat we had about it.

Spoiler: Reboot: TGC chat

SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:19 PM
For those who weren't in the stream, we watched a second Fate/Zero episode instead of Super Gals
So 1. MLP - The Crystal Empire parts 1-2 2. Big Hero 6 episode 12 - Small Hiro One 3. Reboot: The Guardian Code episode 10 - Mainframe Mayhem 4. Fate/Zero episode 12-3
Reboot:TGC episode really did feel super weird
CappyYesterday at 6:22 PM
i would've watched the whole thing if the first episode was like that
just from curiosity
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:22 PM
From Wikipedia summaries, that's the only time Bob and co. show up
CappyYesterday at 6:23 PM
it was clearly super awkward but also kind of cool to see the old setting again and the characters
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:23 PM
[CENSORED]
Yeah, it was interesting seeing everyone again, but they didn't do them right
CappyYesterday at 6:24 PM
enzo didn't try to enter the game
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:24 PM
And seriously, why does the User have a Bob poster
CappyYesterday at 6:24 PM
dot was just standing around
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:24 PM
None of the season 2+ stuff was there
CappyYesterday at 6:24 PM
yeah that user bit was weird too
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:25 PM
I loved a description of that episode I read a while ago. We finally see the User, and he's some fat guy living with his parents that jizzes his pants when Mainframe goes back up.
CappyYesterday at 6:25 PM
lol
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:26 PM
And the thing is, someone who was just watching TGC and not the original Reboot would get nothing from all that. It's solely for the established fandom, and there's no way they would have liked that.
CappyYesterday at 6:29 PM
also there's the bit where they use a cheat code despite not being the players of the game >_>
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:30 PM
And it results in the player losing
Bob saying the opening narration was really awkward, holy crap
CappyYesterday at 6:33 PM
oh totally
SigmasonicXYesterday at 6:36 PM

I am Twilight Sparkle. I used to wonder what friendship could be, until you all shared its magic with me.
CappyYesterday at 6:37 PM


[...]

SigmasonicXToday at 8:48 AM
Another thing about that Reboot:TGC episode. Mainframe was completely empty. Where are the numbers and binomes? It's pretty silly that a 90's show was better at crowds than a brand new one.
SigmasonicXToday at 3:32 PM

Hexadecimal was so scary, you guys.
This is after Hex just looked at her and punched her off their web ornithopter or whatever.
Watch "Painted Windows" and get back to me.
CappyToday at 3:36 PM
yeah the finale of that was genuinely super creepy
i had forgotten how effective it was
also hex in that series has more creepy abilities than some generic energy punch blast thing
SigmasonicXToday at 3:38 PM
TGC even showed her expression changing on screen without her hands going in front of her face.
CappyToday at 3:38 PM
yeah that was a blunder
SigmasonicXToday at 3:41 PM
I just checked and Hexadecimal is defeated and sent to the "Virusylum" in the very next episode.
CappyToday at 3:41 PM
also the faces are supposed to be extreme like the drama masks but she kept dreamsworks smirking >_>
._.
it would just be quarantine
they really don't get the basic premise of the show, which is computer analogs
SigmasonicXToday at 3:45 PM
Just slap a science term and a real world thing together and you're good to go
When Tamra accidentally uploads a video recording of Vera rapping about herself and the Guardians, her classmate Shari downloads and shares it without their knowledge, causing her to learn about some sensitive information; the Guardians manage to intercept the video before anyone else sees it. Parker learns that Vera's "dates" with Trey really were to help him study. At the DIS headquarters, Agent Nance recognizes the Guardian Code as Adam's work and she becomes intent on finding the Guardians and taking their tech by force.

Vera's rap in this episode was featured in a promotional music video released on May 25th, a month before the show's premiere in Canada, on YTV's website and official YouTube channel.[6]

Sounds like a great episode

CappyToday at 3:47 PM
i kinda want to see Vera rap
also i want to remember what her acting reminds me of...
i don't think it's Data(edited)
SigmasonicXToday at 3:48 PM
Well I'm not watching it, but here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_9DQqM_U64
YouTube
YTV
Vera Raps | REBOOT: THE GUARDIAN CODE

CappyToday at 3:48 PM
but a similar emotionless role done not super well
SigmasonicXToday at 3:48 PM
Oh god that

in the title
CappyToday at 3:49 PM
the beat boxing is louder than her
this is really tough to watch lol
SigmasonicXToday at 3:50 PM
This was released before the series came out. To promote it.
CappyToday at 3:50 PM
oh she's laying down some vocals for the hook
in Don't Starve there's an endothermic fire you can put down that sucks in heat
that's the kind of fire that was
SigmasonicXToday at 3:52 PM
To prove his worth to the Sourcerer amid constant threats of deletion, Megabyte infects a line of bee toys in order to scare children around the world. After the Guardians stop him, the Sourcerer finally learns their identities and instructs Megabyte to capture them and get access to their technology.

Now free of the Sourcerer's delete code, Megabyte attempts to hijack all the world's social media, frightening the users when he starts talking to them. Before the Guardians can enact a plan, Agent Nance sics the DIS drones on them and captures Megabyte. However, while in Virusylum, Hexadecimal offers him a chance of revenge based on knowledge she's obtained since episode 11; he reluctantly accepts. Meanwhile, the Sourcerer begins a physical journey to Alan Turing High School.

Scare? Is this the Monsters Inc. universe? Also, looks like Hex does show up again.

The Sourcerer discovers the Guardians' secret base and Austin recognizes him as Adam, his father, who was thought to have died in a fire. Nance has the DIS bring in Austin after school, but Rowan secretly frees him, just in time to join the other Guardians in fighting identity-theft pirates. They find a memory sphere revealing that Adam had faked his death to protect his family from Agent Nance, then entered cyberspace to study dark code for a year. Ultimately, they learn that dark code attacked and infected him, giving him an alternate personality as the Sourcerer.

Kingdom Hearts logic, so yeah, I guess this could be the Monsters Inc. world.
CappyToday at 3:54 PM
him as Adam, his father, who was thought to have died in a fire

(edited)
dark code
i guess that comes from the dark web
SigmasonicXToday at 3:55 PM
Final episode
The Sourcerer uses Austin's feelings toward his father to lead him into their secret base, from where he enters cyberspace and attempts to destroy the Internet with a cyber black hole. Adam fights for control as the Sourcerer fights the Guardians, and eventually Adam sacrifices his life to save them and the Internet. Austin thinks there's a chance he survived. Megabyte and Hexadecimal return to Megabyte's fortress with a larger army than ever. The DIS discovers that the Nova X3J computer, which the Sourcerer had stolen in episode four, has gone missing.

CYBER BLACK HOLE
Kind of want to watch some of these, but they aren't online.
I mean I could watch them on Netflix but I don't want that in my history
CappyToday at 3:56 PM
yeah that would really mess up your recommends
i feel like that vera role isn't a dream job, hope the actress gets more work >_>
SigmasonicXToday at 3:58 PM
Got summaries from Wikipedia, BTW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReBoot:_The_Guardian_Code
ReBoot: The Guardian Code
ReBoot: The Guardian Code is a Canadian live-action/CGI-animated television series, produced by Mainframe Studios. It is a reimagining of the fully computer-animated series ReBoot. Originally announced in 2013, the first ten episodes debuted on Netflix worldwide (excluding Ca...

Even the reception section of the Wiki page mentions people liking Vera, but I didn't see anything noteworthy about her performance. I suppose it comes down to a Data-like character innately being better than whatever the other characters are.
https://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/reboot/272319/reboot-the-guardian-codes-tribute-episode-is-a-failure
Den of Geek
Reboot: The Guardian Code's Tribute Episode is a Failure

CappyToday at 4:06 PM
horrifying
SigmasonicXToday at 4:06 PM
I didn't put that much thought into the User, but yeah, that can't be anything but an insult toward fans.
CappyToday at 4:07 PM
well actually it's not all the way to horrifying it's in the middle which is way less entertaining >_>
yeah the User thing seemed like a bit of a slam

We aren't going to watch any of The Guardian Code after this. The Mainframe animation somehow looked worse than the original show circa season 3 (and had less charm than any season), and everything was just, in a word, awkward. A notable bit not mentioned above was the new heroes being unable to reboot in the game, meaning they can't even do the series's namesake.

After that, we watched two Fate/Zero episodes, finishing out the first half of the season (or first season, depending on how you look at it) with Caster summoning a big monster as a cliffhanger ending. The episodes were interesting enough, though not particularly action heavy.

 

[Sylvee]

Click to shrink...

Doesn't have wings 2/10



Pass Thru was an experience, just like all the other Breen movies. The movie starts out extremely incoherent with some of the truly worst editing I've ever seen, but gets more coherent but arguably less entertaining as it goes on. It doesn't lose as much gas as I Am Here.....Now but it turns into a lot of preaching about how we need to stop all the bad corrupt people in the world and be leaders, not followers. All of his points are so simplistic, un-executable, and lacking in any subtlety that it's impossible to take any of it seriously. And unfortunately there's never as big a payoff as there was in Fateful Findings where all of the corrupt people took turns committing suicide. It's definitely better then I Am Here........Now and worse then Fateful Findings, but I'm still hung up on whether or not it's better then Double Down.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Made my first ever PMV, based on a scene from the latest Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part V episode!


Today's stream had a lot of no-shows, and by the time the anime started, there was no one else around, so I went ahead and ended it early.
*.MLP Equestria Girls-Extended Hub Promo Edition - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'Friendship is Magic' Live Action Music Video - YouTube
*.EQUESTRIA GIRLS - YouTube
1. Equestria Girls
*.[PMV] Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind Dance - YouTube
*.Twilight Sparkle's Song - I Can't Wait - Friendship Is Witchcraft: Horse Women - YouTube
2. Big Hero 6 episode 13 - Kentucky Kaiju
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'Make Up Shake Up' Canterlot Short - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'A Photo Booth Story' Canterlot Short - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'Raise This Roof' Canterlot Short Ep. 3 - YouTube

About that first YouTube video, it's still crazy that they not only made that "Equestria Girls" song and music video, but proceeded to use that as the namesake of a largely unrelated spinoff. You know, I'd like more official song parodies by the MLP singers.

I'm glad they stopped making these live action promos for Equestria Girls. Besides them being super cheesy, I really don't like how all the girls are white or white-passing. The girl playing Sunset trying to look mean is hilarious in this video. Actually, going to go ahead and embed it, because it needs to be seen.


The third video is actually the origin of the "Brad" nickname for Flash Sentry. And there's way way way more to this parody series than I first imagined, as I realized a bit over a year ago I think, back on GAF.

Now as for Equestria Girls the movie, it's dumb fun, particularly with Twilight trying to be human, but there's a lot of nonsense that becomes even more apparent with the later movies taking things a bit more seriously. I don't think I have to list out the ways Sunset doesn't make sense. It would have been fine if she was a one-off, I guess, but she's a major recurring character, and this movie just doesn't jive with what we see of her later. The movie also sets up things with Twilight that oddly get shoved aside with the season 4 premiere, despite having the same writer. Twilight is mostly fine with having wings (the princess bit not so much) and the Elements of Harmony are shoved into the Tree of Harmony until the end of season 7. Brad is as bad a love interest as ever, but it's good knowing it doesn't go anywhere. And I've always said the Brad moments in Rainbow Rocks are even worse. I forgot a lot of the movie, particularly Snips and Snails' involvement, the way certain plot developments go, and several songs.

"I Can't Wait" is a song that completely replaced "Strange New World" in my mind, and it's a great parody song. It's a shame they never completed Horse Women.

The Big Hero 6 episode was fun, though it seems like people are getting tired of Obake. Indeed, he does turn out to be a pretty weak villain in the end.

The last three videos are Summertime Shorts that oddly take place during the first movie. I'm not sure why. Still, they're decent fun. They were clearly trying something with having Boulder Media make EQG shorts, but we haven't seen any of their involvement in MLP since. Is it all secret work on G5?

 

[SigmasonicX]

Haven't had one of these in a while. Some thoughts I had about Equestria Girls's animation and dancing led to a dumb chat story. Split into two spoiler blocks.

Spoiler: Chat - Equestria Girls animation and dancing

SigmasonicXToday at 1:14 PM
You know, it's weird that Equestria Girls has never had a sequence with as much squash and stretch as "Helping Twilight Win the Crown" again. The only things even close are those Boulder Media shorts.
In fact, the only other dance sequence I can think of is Dance Magic, where everyone moves with way less energy.
Yeah, wait, it's really weird that EQG has so little dancing when that's the big advantage it has over FiM
Though now I remember Coinky-Dink World has dancing.(edited)
CappyToday at 1:21 PM
they can only dance like half as much as a pony though
SigmasonicXToday at 1:23 PM
No fingers though

CappyToday at 1:23 PM
hmm that's true
so more steps but 0 jazz hands

SigmasonicXToday at 1:25 PM
To explain more, human dancing has movements in the hands, hips, knees, elbows, and general posture that can't be done with ponies without basically writing a new visual language.
So EQG should logically take advantage of the ability to have real dancing more than it is.
CappyToday at 1:26 PM
yeah i was only foolin'
although don't forget dressage

SigmasonicXToday at 1:27 PM

I can't dressage...

I can't either.

Spoiler: Chat - Free the Fluttershys

UberTagToday at 1:27 PM
https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/...ing_female_make+a+wish_mare_microphone_po.gif

CappyToday at 1:27 PM
a special where the girls go ride horses and perform dressage
my eyes
and then sunset sets them all free

Be free from the yoke of tyranny, my fellow horses!

SigmasonicXToday at 1:30 PM

I can't believe someone was breeding Fluttershys.
CappyToday at 1:31 PM

I can.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:32 PM

CappyToday at 1:33 PM

What, I have to account for all sorts of hypotheses!
SigmasonicXToday at 1:36 PM

Oh no, watch out!

One Fluttershy fell behind!
CappyToday at 1:37 PM

With a Flutter lagging behind, the predator prepares to snag its prey.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:38 PM

CappyToday at 1:38 PM

But what's this!? The Flutter is prepared and turns to face the would-be hunter.(edited)
SigmasonicXToday at 1:38 PM

CappyToday at 1:39 PM

Unnerved by her steely glare, the dragon falters in its swoop enough for Flutter to avoid its talons. Now she has the upper hand.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:40 PM

jiiiiiiiiii

CappyToday at 1:41 PM

And thus the dangerous predator is turned into a flightless friend. The circle of life continues as normal in this city.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:43 PM

The wild is quite a strange place.
CappyToday at 1:43 PM

It is, Rarity, but it follows its own rules to some extent.

stares

SigmasonicXToday at 1:45 PM

Well, this is quite an experience.
CappyToday at 1:46 PM

So that's why you can't set horses free in the other dimension, Sunset.

Even if they are Fluttershys for some strange reason.

stares

Ow.

Stop that.
SigmasonicXToday at 1:48 PM

Nice.
[The End]

Neat figure-construction video. Sometimes it's hard to tell it's 3D, in a good way.


NaPoWriMo Interview: Georg on Motivation
He goes about things in a pretty unusual way, figuring out the story beats and then deciding what characters to use after. I haven't read any of his stuff.

Art dump
1. Rarity - the other side by RacoonKun on DeviantArt
2. Luna - Untitled by Colorfulcolor233 on DeviantArt
3.Wheat Grass (comic) by celebi-yoshi
4.Fluttershy and Pinkie with Bramble (Duck Tales) by strebiskunk
5.startrix by 1racat on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Fluttershy by kalthedestroyer
2.glimmer by twilite-sparkleplz on DeviantArt
3.[+VIDEO] Cute Fluttershy by MellonCollie-chan on DeviantArt
4. Rarity - Rariry by MellonCollie-chan on DeviantArt
5.Rarity by Monogy on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 2

1. Cozy Glow - Cozy place by Rutkotka on DeviantArt
2.Twilight Sparkle - LOOKING GOOD! by FlairNightz on DeviantArt
3.Fluttershy by ponimu
4.maud pie 11 18 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
5. EQG Rainbow and Rarity - ''I would never bet again'' by Khaon on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 3

1. Trixie and Starlight - Trixie's hat by Marbola on DeviantArt
2. Twilight - Thanks... by YinglongFujun on DeviantArt - This link gives Twilight the silver trophy, but I chose to embed the alternate from the artist where she gets gold instead.
3. Fluttershy and Discord - Lil 'cord in the Mane by YinglongFujun on DeviantArt
4.Human Twilight by irracat
5.Pinkie s shopping online by AlexBlueBird on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 4

1. Sunset and SciTwi - Cover for Happy Girls doujin by k-nattoh
2. Human Trixie, Sunset, and Starlight fighting over Human Spike - [Commission] He's Mine! by iojknmiojknm on DeviantArt
3. EQG Applejack and Rarity - Roleplay by LooknamTCN on DeviantArt
4. Anthro Rarity - [Commission YCH] Girly gift by IrinaR85 on DeviantArt
5. Anthro - Octavia Melody by MellonCollie-chan on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 5

1.RariPie 1 by fromamida on DeviantArt
2.RariPie 2 by fromamida on DeviantArt
3. Humane Five - I released an album. by Yanamosuda on DeviantArt
4. Kirby eating Sunset - Ultimate Power - GIF by Katakiuchi4U on DeviantArt
5. Sunset in swimsuit - [Commission] - Swimmy by Katakiuchi4U on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 6

1. EQG - Cozy glow by brother-lionheart on DeviantArt
2. Cadance, Shining, Flurry, Twilight, Pinkie, Tempest - Random Pony Drawings by saturdaymorningproj on DeviantArt
3.Tempest blep by feve
4.Pony Fluttershy in bunny girl outfit by kabosu
5.Rainbow in leather jacket in fashion show by kabosu

Spoiler: Art 7

1.Twilight giggles by Taurson on DeviantArt
2. Twilight - Book! by Kaliner123 on DeviantArt
3.Rarity eats ice cream by geraritydevillefort on DeviantArt
4.Rarity (EqG) by geraritydevillefort on DeviantArt
5. Non-specific siren - Siren by Plainoasis on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 8

1.Flutters in a box by Miokomata on DeviantArt
2. Pinkie X Saffron Masala - Pinkiesala - sweet and spicy! by IncendiaryBoobs on DeviantArt
3.RariJack pirates by p3e3c
4. RariTwi, in the Count of Monte Dashie universe - TCOFMD: Hey there~ by skuuma2511 on DeviantArt
5.rarilight by echobone on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 9

1.pinkiedash sketch thing yguh by echobone on DeviantArt - The description mentions the artist shipped this since she was a little kid, which made me feel

2.ApplePie by kkmrarar
3.Starlight and Trixie Halloween by eric.t.alex
4.Twilight by eric.t.alex
5. Twilight - Fluffy Bookhorse by LunarFroxy on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 10

1.RariJack by ponimu
2.AppleDash in bed (not lewd) by dcon
3.DiscoShy by dcon
4.Sparity Best Gift Ever by pia-sama
5.Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie by Foxcarp on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 11

1.Rainbow Dash 11 15 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
2.Pinkamena diane pie 11 16 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
3. Pinkie and Rainbow - my gorls by WanderingPegasus on DeviantArt
4.Coco Pommel by taytinabelle
5.Capper and Rarity's daughter, Clarity Darlingpaws by sapphirescarletta123 - "Darlingpaws" got me
6.Random Clarity Darlingpaws drawings by sapphirescarletta123

Spoiler: Art 12

 

[SigmasonicX]

Since people couldn't make it to today's stream, Utena has once again been delayed. Instead, we watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Werewolf, one of my favorites.

Amazon listing for the MLP manga confirms that it's an Original English Language manga, so not Japanese.

My Little Pony: The Manga - A Day in the Life of Equestria Volume 1
David Lumsdon (w) • Shiei (a)

The land of Equestria comes alive in this distinctive My Little Pony manga series that spotlights each of the Mane 6 and a host of other characters from the exciting world around them! When Pinkie Pie lends a hoof to help Twilight Sparkle and Spike clean up the Golden Oak Library, she discovers a mysterious mirror with the power to gaze into alternate realities. Upon entering the mirror and traveling to alternate realities, Pinkie Pie sets off a chain of events that will bring doom to Equestria! Follow this adventure--and many more--in this hilarious new My Little Pony manga series.

TPB • FC • $10.99 • 5" x 7.1" • 120 pages • ISBN: 978-1-64275-051-5

Bullet Point:

• The land of Equestria comes alive in this one-of-a-kind My Little Pony manga spotlighting each of the Mane 6 and planet of their friends!

Tentative Release Date: June 18th, 2019 (Pre Order Here!)

Here's the artist's DeviantArt page. She has some pieces of MLP fan art.

Interview with Imalou, and it's pretty interesting. She goes into a lot of detail. I hadn't realized she was drawing back during season 1. It's great to hear she managed to convert this to a professional career.

Morning Frost by Imalou on DeviantArt

1.Annoyed Twilight sketch by tre
2.Smug Fluttershy sketch by tre
3. EQG Sunset X SciTwi - Untitled by Electric-Shine on DeviantArt
4.Sonata Dusk by EnvyGirl95 on DeviantArt
5.Scootaturkey and Sweetie Pilgrim by kdbrony

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Cadance and Shining Armor cuddling by kevinsano
2. Fluttershy in Chopper's hat from One Piece (post timeskip) - Request by 1racat on DeviantArt
3.Sunset X Sonata Dusk by badumsquish - Using the scales seen in "Shadow Play".
4.Brown Kirin tilting head GIF by dorokuma_angie
5.Rarijack Loy krathong by LooknamTCN on DeviantArt - Loy Krathong being a Taiwanese holiday

Spoiler: Art 2

1. RariJack - A Time For Thanks by LennonBlack on DeviantArt
2.Spitfire by HigglyTownHero on DeviantArt
3.Rain Shine kirin by MinamiKoboyasy on DeviantArt
4. Celestia and Raven (her assistant) - Rest After a Hard Day of Work by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt
5.MLP:YL - Princess Flurry Heart by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Mercy (Overwatch) Fluttershy by holivi
2. Ember - Day of Embers by AssasinMonkey on DeviantArt
3.ScootaBelle by tylerdashart
4.StarTrix sketch by tylerdashart
5.Rainbow carrying sleepy Twilight sketch by tylerdashart

Spoiler: Art 4

1. Sunset - Shimmering Sun by Darksly-z on DeviantArt
2. Luna - Daily Doodle 924 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt
3. Celestia and Luna - MLPFiM: Total Eclipse [Comic] by dsp2003 on DeviantArt
4. Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie - AU - Shadowbolts by NellaDang on DeviantArt
5.Sunset Starlight Tempest Sonata adventure by Light by Light262 on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 5

1.Nightmare Moon by freeedon
2. Tempest - Captain Fizzle Pop by JayCDandelion on DeviantArt
3. Coloratura - Live To Perform by VanillaGhosties on DeviantArt
4. Human, somewhat revealing outfit - Older Sunset Shimmer by Axsens on DeviantArt
5. Changeling characters, including Ocellus - Changelings set by Marbola on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 6

 

[SigmasonicX]

B-Master Productions‏ @Beastlyboy2013 Nov 16
@ishiH3Art hey does Rollarcoaster of Friendship takes place before or after the My Little Pony movie?

Ishi Rudell‏ @ishiH3Art Replying to @Beastlyboy2013
Based on our EQG timeline it would after... when movie magic was written, the idea was to remove Starlight Glimmer from the MLP universe to explain why she wasn't around during the time of the Pony Movie. And Rollercoaster of friendship happened after that. Therefore...

2:20 PM - 17 Nov 2018

Click to shrink...

The intention was that "Mirror Magic" would explain Starlight's absence from The Movie. Pretty interesting.

It doesn't work because Starlight appears in the Movie, and in "Mirror Magic", Starlight says that Twilight and the others are on a friendship quest. That doesn't make sense to describe the Festival of Friendship, and it would be an odd way to describe their quest to find the hippogriffs. Plus, if this really is supposed to be during the actual invasion, are we really supposed to assume Starlight knew about it but decided to have fun with Sunset instead?

Anyway, it's clear that the ponies and girls were meant to simultaneously face their greatest foes yet: Tempest and The Storm King, and Juniper Montage.

YTPMV of the Deltarune secret boss theme, with Starlight and Trixie.


And Japanese Movie trailer! Featuring Japanese Tempest and others.


~~~

We started our RPs again, using my own approximation of the Fate RP system (hoping to get closer to the real thing as we go on).
RP 302 - The Shattered Realm 1 - Otter You Waiting For

Spoiler: RP summary

Cappy - Applejack

Applejack is helping out Fluttershy at her cottage when she goes into the broom closet and falls into another world (like Deltarune), of floating rocks above an endless void. There, she finds Maud and then fights a rock monster.

Maud shows Applejack a platform with sparkling portals to other times and spaces (like Chrono Trigger). There is a portal inside a bucket, but Maud warns against using it. It leads to a bathroom with a clogged up toilet. Applejack offers to fix it, but she needs tools, so Maud points her to a gate that leads to a market on another world, of otters.

Applejack stops a broom thief (brooms are in demand for nests) and is rewarded with tools. Maud explains the hub they came from is the Shattered Realm, created from the remnants of time and space falling apart, and if they don't do something, it will overtake their home too. She's oddly unconcerned about this. Time moves differently in the Shattered Realm; she's been stuck there for three years.

Applejack evokes the feeling of family to fix the toilet, which actually repairs the time rupture at that location, sending them back to the hub and removing the portal to the bathroom.

A mysterious figure appears and summons a glass spider creature to attack them before disappearing. Applejack gets the creature to fall into the void.

Fluttershy appears, having come to check on Applejack. She freaks out when she realizes they're stuck there, and Maud tells a joke.

Here's the sheet I made for Applejack.

Apple Bucking and Lasso turned out to be pretty broken; I need to change some skills around, particularly to increase Rapport; and I need to get a handle on how to handle examining things, in terms of things I felt didn't work in this session. I definitely need to get a better handle on the system in general, but I don't think that aspect negatively affected this session much.

 

[Sylvee]

Said it before, but Princess Twilight really doesn't hold up well these days. A huge chunk of the episode is dedicated to flashbacks that have little purpose in the context of the story. It's nice to see Luna transforming into Nightmare Moon, especially since it's very well-animated and has a ton of budget put into it. But as a whole the thing is just a self-contained story that has nothing to do with everything else and just exists as fan pandering. The big emotional hook of the Mane 6 being forced to give up the elements, which are a symbol of their friendship, doesn't have much emotional weight to it. It especially gets bad because it ignores the obvious solution of only borrowing the elements for short periods of time and then returning them, which is something that they end up doing in later episodes anyway. The intrigue of "what's going on with the vines" isn't interesting at all. And a ton of the stuff that they were trying to set up with this 2-parter (and season 4 in general) doesn't really have much payoff and is generally just abandoned.

The one really good thing I will say is that Discord is arguably at his best her as a "good guy." More then the other episodes I think this one showcases that he's actually on the ponies' side but is still a dick about how he actually helps them. Him causing Twilight to go back to her friends is ultimately a good thing, but rather then doing it in more of a supportive way he guilt trips her by going after her insecurities.


Big Hero 6 was fun. It's nice seeing an episode not focused on Hiro for once, although it could have been better. Once again the biggest problem with the show I feel is the villain, which is especially problematic because he's one of those Big Bad villains that ends up being behind literally every bad thing that ever happens. The show spends so much effort showing off how much of a 5D Chessmaster he is that's so far above everything and is always in control. Which already I generally don't like those kinds of villains (I think the show would work a lot better if a lot of the fun weekly villains they have could actually stand on their own rather then always being contracted out by him) but on top of that he's just not interesting.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Alright, we finally got around to finishing Revolutionary Girl Utena in the stream, with the last five episodes (subbed this time). Hmm, where to start?

Spoiler: Utena ending spoilers

I suppose I should start with what I made of Akio, his plans, and the ending.
* The power of Dios is sealed at the duelist tower / Akio's house. To break the seal and gain power to change the world, Akio has spent decades cultivating princes to steal blades from. With each failure, he changes his methods for cultivating princes, but regardless, he takes advantage of Anthy's devotion to him.
* Dios the ideal prince doesn't exist. Utena was basing her ideal off of a brief meeting with Akio long ago. There was some period of time where Akio was a good person, which Anthy is hanging onto, but that's long past. The power of Dios too may just be an ideal Akio is hanging onto that doesn't exist.
* Akio has manipulated everyone into redirecting all hatred that should rightly be directed to him toward Anthy instead. Anthy started this herself, but Akio got her to continue to willingly do this through abuse and manipulation. This redirection happens even to Utena when she catches Anthy naked with Akio, which is what drives Anthy to her attempted suicide.
* The reason people hate the prince given in the play is still ??? to me, so I'll assume that was obfuscation and people hate Akio because he's Akio.
* Akio is a loser that's been relying on Anthy and his illusion machine to mess with people for his own amusement, outside of the seal breaking plan.
* I had assumed there would be a point where Akio would withdraw the power of Dios from Utena, forcing her to fight on her own for the first time, but Akio himself ended up being a scrub and that never came up, so I guess Dios falling into Utena really was just a visual for Utena tapping into some inner strength.
* Utena thought Anthy needed a prince to rescue her, but she doesn't need another prince who will trap her in a "happily ever after" scenario; she needs a friend. As a friend, Utena is able to break through Akio's mental hold on her enough for her to leave Akio on her own accord, leaving him SOL.
* As far as Utena is concerned, she's still straight by the end of the show, and she and Anthy aren't in a relationship. If it wasn't for things I've heard about the movie and how the franchise is viewed, I wouldn't think they were actually romantically interested in each other. But with that, I'll assume the embers are there, and they may or may not get together in the future.

I should jump back to the part where I largely dismissed the backstory given in the play. I know the show doesn't want you to take things literally, but that play was presented with some significance and I can't make heads or tails of a major part of it literally or figuratively, so I decided not to think about it and just dismiss it for the meaning I thought was more interesting. There were many other parts where I wasn't sure if I should just take it as a wacky visual or something deeper. And the significance of this was that I wasn't particularly interested in looking deeper into it. And there are things in the bullet points above that weren't necessarily depicted in the show or were given much less explicit focus than I would have liked.

A big focus of these last episodes was Utena and Anthy, but they haven't actually gotten any development as friends for I feel like the last 20 episodes. Utena and Anthy being catty to each other (the poison talk) and then Anthy attempting suicide felt a bit unearned because of that. The student council spent much of the series sitting around talking about End of the World, which ended up all being time filler really, and they didn't do much these last episodes (aside from a duel and pep talk I mean). One disappointment was that there was that last recap special where Utena and Akio had sex, but in these last episodes, it didn't feel like that actually happened. Even when Akio showed tapes to shame Utena, he only showed a part from an earlier episode where Utena hurt her foot.

What I'm getting at is that the show focuses enough on its characters that it frustrates that it doesn't focus on them more.

I enjoyed the series, and thought the visuals and music were striking and wonderful when they needed to be. From these last episodes, all the swords attacking Anthy was an especially well done scene. And the Nanami comedy episodes were great, of course. However, I don't think the story, metaphors, and characters all quite came together well in the end. I'll definitely look back on the show and think, "Oh, that part was neat," more than I'll remember the parts I was less interested by, though.

I was also asked to read this fanfic that takes place in college, shipping Utena and Anthy. I wasn't so sure about the beginning, and most of the cameos really, but there were some good gags and the story of Utena slowly remembering was handled well. It was nice.

 

[Sylvee]

Rewatching Rainbow Rocks, the soundtrack I think is easily the strongest of any of the EQG movies. (Which is saying a lot because I think that the soundtracks are easily some of the best parts of each of the movies) In particular I really like Welcome To The Show, it's kind of disappointing that none of the other epic stories have had a song for the climax. However one of the biggest problems with the movie is just that the Mane 6 all act like jerks and do nothing but cause problems in order for Sunset to come in and save the day, and once you start looking for that it becomes really apparent. To that end it makes me feel like the movie would have been better if Twilight wasn't even in the movie at all as she does almost nothing of consequence the whole movie. There's still some cool parts, and the Dazzlings are still one of the better villains of the show, but it's got issues too.



For Big Hero 6 the episode Fan Friction really makes me wish that the rest of the show was at its quality. It's fantastic. Fun premise, good character development, fantastic action, and it even does a great job at making the whole team feel useful despite it being primarily a Hiro episode. Aside from the weak main villain I think my biggest issue with the show so far is just that the rest of the characters besides Hiro rarely do anything of consequence in the episodes. Too often the episode is framed as Hiro learning something important so he can defeat the bad guy at hand and grow as a person, which ends up with lots of fight scenes where the rest of the gang show up and get instantly defeated while doing nothing useful because they're not allowed to actually solve the problem. This episode still has Hiro learning a lesson, but at the same time the rest of the cast plays a much more active role in the plot and each has their own moments to shine in the action scenes. And a large part of why the action scenes in this episode are so good is because they actually take advantage of all of the characters' unique skills rather then have them try to do something useful and fail so Hiro can come in and save the day. It's such a massive step up in quality from the rest of the show that it makes me wish that it was always like this. Not so say that Big Hero 6 is bad, but I feel like it could be a lot better and the two major problems I have with it (The main villain and the massive focus on Hiro) can easily be fixed with the show refocusing itself in Season 2.


EDIT: One other thing I really wish they'd do more is have them learn/develop new powers. The group is actually pretty pedestrian when you compare them to a lot of other super teams, and I feel like it would be cool if they grew more into fully-fledged superheros. Legit one of the heroes can cut through things, and another one's super power is that he has a non-violent robot fly him around. They're super geniuses it would be cool to see them develop their technologies further and come up with new stuff to help them out. They did it a bit in Fan Friction, I just wish they'd do more.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Here's Saturday's RP.
RP 303 - The Shattered Realm 2 - Applestonia

Spoiler: RP summary

Applejack - Cappy

X O X
X X

Fluttershy has arrived in the Shattered Realm, panicked, and then recovered. She, Applejack, and Maud go into one of the portals to find a way home. Thanks to Maud's dirt investigation, they know they're in the correct dimension, but in the year 3121. The present day is 2018.

Maud is snatched up by the duo of the Headless Horse and the Diamond Dogless Head (the disembodied head of a Diamond Dog), and despite Applejack and Fluttershy's efforts, she is taken into a tunnel where they can't follow.

The remaining two ponies go into the nearby town of Applestonia, founded by the Apple Family to farm apple stones. Applejack argues with a future relative and then they go into a bar. There, Applejack is challenged by a yak named Lyzolda to a game of Pin the Tail on Celestia. Applejack wins and thus the yak reveals the following.

Strange creatures have been popping up, and they appear to be coming from rifts in time and space. Fixing them will make them disappear. Canterlot has sent someone to help with this. Lyzolda is willing to help with Maud by providing a map of the tunnels and by smashing.

Some BarBEARians appear in the bar, and a cloaked figure that was in the bar fends them off with a flurry of sword swipes in the air. She reveals herself to be Princess Flurry Heart, now an adult.

And here is Applejack's new sheet.

Late stream followup, we watched the following.
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks - 'Magic of Friendship' Music Video - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks EXCLUSIVE Short - 'Music to My Ears' - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks 'Shake your Tail!' EXCLUSIVE Short - YouTube
1. Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks
*.Tricks Up My Sleeve [PMV] - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks - "Friendship Through the Ages" Music Video - YouTube
2. Big Hero 6 - Fan Friction
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks - 'Life is a Runway' Official Music Video - YouTube
3-4. Kaleido Star 3-4
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks - 'My Past is Not Today' Official Music Video - YouTube (after first)
*.MLP ANIMATION The Sirens' Call (Equestria Girls Dazzlings Song) - YouTube

The first YouTube video is another one of those live action videos. At least there are some non-white people mixed into the Mane Six actors this time.

Rainbow Rocks has a great soundtrack, particularly with the final battle and the credits song. I wasn't too attached to Trixie's song before, but it's growing on me now. Like Sylvee said, it's frankly remarkable that they haven't done a song final battle again. Really, they haven't used much of anything from this movie in later stories.

The Dazzlings are entertaining baddies, but in the lead up to this stream, I was thinking and realized they almost never actually interact with the heroes. They talk to Sunset once at the beginning, Sunset tries to threaten them later, and then they never interact with anyone else until the final battle.

Aside from the sleepover sequence and the midnight snack sequence, all of the non-Sunset heroes are honestly unlikable in this movie. They treat Sunset pretty badly (and since Sunset carries over none of her negative qualities from the first movie, this is presented as completely unjustified) and they're all useless. Twilight especially, who misses all the hints that they just need to enjoy playing music to bring the magic and instead focuses on making a specific counterspell for no reason, even though she has never heard the Dazzlings sing and doesn't know how to make a counterspell in the first place. If the movie is going to insist on including Pony Twi, then at least have her know how to make counterspells, but they just aren't working because Dougworld magic is weird. Sunset getting a prominent role was from a late revision to the script, so I have to imagine the version before was mostly what we have now, but Sunset doesn't do anything important and Twilight is the one who gives the speech when they're trapped under the stage. The hook is Sunset being reformed, so even if I'm not a fan of Twilight not noticing that everyone was arguing, the story without the Sunset hook would have been much worse.

As I've mentioned before, I dislike the Brad scenes here even more than the ones in the first movie, because Twilight shows way too much interest in him. Thank god they stop trying to force a romance between them after this point.

It's still hilarious that once Twilight establishes a stable portal between Equestria and Dougworld, she proceeds to never go through it again, except once for a cameo at the end of Friendship Games. And she never talks to anyone except Sunset again.

I feel like they make sure to redeem every Equestria Girls villain because they chose not to redeem the Dazzlings, which bit them in the ass when they turned out to be really popular and then there was no elegant way to bring them back.

But I think there might be a way to do that, not in Equestria Girls, but the pony show. The Legends of Magic comics established that Stygian wasn't in favor of the way they defeated the Dazzlings, by casting them into another dimension instead of talking to them. You could have an episode of the show where they somehow come back to Equestria (maybe set up by the upcoming cruise special) and then have it focus on Starswirl and Stygian. You could contrive things so Twilight and Spike never appear, thus you would have no reason to bring up Rainbow Rocks. The Dazzlings are friendshipped, Starswirl learns a lesson, and then the Dazzlings willingly go back to the other dimension.

Anyway, in the stream, we also had someone who hadn't seen any of the Equestria Girls movies, so that was fun. He said it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, but the story and setting felt unnecessary. And "Tricks Up My Sleeve" got stuck in his head.

With Big Hero 6, "Fan Friction" is one of my favorite episodes, primarily for the fan fiction parts, but I had forgotten it has some great action sequences too. Like Sylvee mentioned, this is largely due to the team actually working as a team, as opposed to losing until Hiro saves the day. More specifically, there was a lot of Honey Lemon and Gogo, who really are the most dynamic fighters. There were also several moments where the heroes only lived because they were facing a sword user in a kids show. As for the story, I was really surprised to see it take a very positive view of fan fiction, with it making Karmi more popular and actually helping the heroes come up with ideas. I have to imagine the show crew can't legally look at any fan fiction for ideas, though. Something Sylvee said that I hadn't thought about is that this is one of the few episodes where it really feels like the heroes are upping their game by developing new techniques. I know for sure that Overdrive Mode appears in future episodes, but I can't remember if anything else we saw did.

The Kaleido Star episodes were good. When Sora was given a low-ranking role handing out toys to the audience and realized this was a chance for her to perform too, I was surprised to see this resulted in delays to the rest of the show and children getting lost (and probably dying) because she didn't think about how her actions fit in with the other performers. The second episode gave a prominent role to a background worker who had a background character design and a background character voice.

On another note, I was talking in the chat about how odd the chemistry club member list is here, but then I noticed something about the picture.

Sunset's head is way bigger than Twilight's, and her neck looks weird too.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Something like this would've been lovely. Does it ever even draw a parallel between how the sirens and Sunset both set out to create divisions among people?

Click to shrink...

I don't remember anything that's spelled out. The part where Sunset confronts them in a dark hallway is clearly supposed to evoke the similarities, but no one really says anything about it.

Regarding Rainbow Rocks, Sunset Shimmer may have been a late addition to the script, but she absolutely steals the show, while Human-form Ponyworld Twilight drags the story down, and they had to break the rules of the universe just to get Twi over there so she could drag the story down (the portal was supposed to be closed). There should've been one more rewrite to remove Twilight from the story. She could still make a guest appearance in the movie via spellbook-telephone, but that's it. And a lack of Human Twi in the movie would've made the Human Twi reveal at the end all that much better.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, in retrospect, it really should have left out PonyTwi and focused on Sunset. I can understand that wasn't the starting point of development.

Likely the story of the movie was originally Sirens appear, Sunset provides the contrivance to bring Twilight back and then peaces out of the movie, Twilight tries to come up with a counter-song and fails so they delay during the Battle of the Bands, they get trapped under the stage, Twilight gets them to stop fighting, and then they win. Not very interesting. Clearly Meghan McCarthy was trying to find some way to shore up the story, and she mentions the breakthrough came when she wrote the midnight snack scene.

However, from all the supplemental videos released before the movie completely excluding Sunset, it was too late to change course from a marketing perspective, especially to exclude Human PonyTwi.

Regarding the Mane Five being jerks, I feel that the mechanism of the Dazzling's magic is that their song is an ear worm (the lyrics don't matter, the song itself is magic), and it gets in your head and finds negativity. It can't create what isn't there, it finds the flaws that exist in everyone and gives them a little nudge.

Click to shrink...

I think the story works fine with the band falling apart from normal non-magic manipulation. It shows how dangerous the Dazzlings can be even if their magic can't affect you. The issue is more that the Humane Five don't get a good showing and Twilight especially comes off badly for not noticing the conflicts. Excluding Twilight from the movie would have helped a lot, including providing more time for Sunset and the Humane Five.

~~~

I suppose I should mention what's going on with Tumblr, if only for people coming back to this thread later.

So Tumblr is removing all NSFW content, using terrible bots that hit SFW stuff too, and people are leaving in droves. I'm subscribed to some pony artists and they're all listing alternative sites, mainly Twitter. Compared to other fandoms, though, I'm seeing them mention that their stuff is all on Derpibooru anyway, so it will be easy to keep track of where they'll go. It's nice that the pony fandom at least should come out of this without losing track of anyone.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followup. On Friday, we watched the following Halloween things.
1. The Small One (Disney special by Don Bluth about an old donkey)
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas

I decided it was important we started out with a normal, straightforward, and Jesusy special, because basically everything else we're watching is subversive or comedic. The Small One was just that, with a lot of cute donkey moments, perilous moments, and the donkey of course being sent off with Joseph to carry a pregnant Mary. This was Don Bluth's last work at Disney before he went off on his own, and of course, there's a part where a group of characters makes a big show and then proceeds to disappear. People enjoyed it for the donkey.

I thought I had seen The Nightmare Before Christmas recently, but then I realized this was in college about eight years ago. Jack randomly having to fight Oogie at the end and him getting with Sally don't get nearly enough set up, but otherwise, this is an interesting if straightforward story with fantastic visuals.

We didn't have an RP today.

Big art dump.
1.Twilight, Rariy, Rainbow, and Pinkie dressed as girl band K/DA by bartolomeus_
2.EQG Pirate Applejack and Rarity by haibaratomoe
3.Ocellus in a changeling outfit by flutterthrash
4.Nightmare Moon and Night Maid Rarity by kkmrarar
5.Party of One Rainbow pushing Pinkie by kkmrarar

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Sonata and Aria with tiny Adaggio pony by kkmrarar
2.Adaggio with dog Sonata and Aria by kkmrarar
3.EQG Rarity with Pony Rarity by kkmrarar
4.Gallus and Silverstream making faces by luciferamon
5.Rarity - My Little Pony by unousaya on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Tea-lestia by Donnie-Moon on DeviantArt
2.Twilight Sparkle Anthro by Rariedash on DeviantArt
3.Fluttershy by tohupo
4.Sombra, Nightmare Moon, and Chrysalis by kawaiipony2
5.Twilight and Celestia romantically booping by magnaluna

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Trixie by yuyutsuka_0130
2.Fluttershy by yuyutsuka_0130
3.Marble and Pinkie by yuyutsuka_0130
4.Discord and Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls) by yuyutsuka_0130
5.Autumn Blaze by zakro

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Discord by zakro
2.Mane Six by lispp
3.Sunset with Sunset Sarsaparilla by mylittlekkotnim
4. Fluttershy - Color Sketch by Yakovlev-vad on DeviantArt
5.Pinkie by tohupo

Spoiler: Art 5

1. Starlight / Snowfall Frost - MLP - Say Goodbye to the Holidays by Fire-Star-Animations on DeviantArt
2. EQG Fluttershy - Request 2 by ASteveNamedWolf on DeviantArt
3. EQG Fluttershy dressed as Hinata (Naruto) - Untitled 3 by ASteveNamedWolf on DeviantArt
4. Twilight and Sakura (Cardcaptor Sakura) - Double Maigc by Jeremywithlove on DeviantArt
5. Twilight - Twitwitwitwi by Jeremywithlove on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 6

1.AppleJack by tyuubatu on DeviantArt
2.Sleeping Spike and Smolder by cutepencilcase
3.The Legend of Captain Celaeno by ZidaneMina on DeviantArt
4.K/DA Rainbow Dash / Akali [MLP x LoL] by Shad0w-Galaxy on DeviantArt
5.fluttershy 2018 by spacekitsch on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 7

1.Twilight Sparkle 2018 by spacekitsch on DeviantArt
2.Luna Claus by NCMares on DeviantArt
3.SunsetShimmer Chibi - Dec 4th by TokoKami on DeviantArt
4. Applejack - MLP FIM - Spirit Of Hearth's Warming Past by Joakaha on DeviantArt
5.Mistmane by Marbola on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 8

1. Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight, and an OC - Commission: Special by SilFoe on DeviantArt
2. Starlight X Trixie - magical snuggles by WanderingPegasus on DeviantArt
3.Pinkie's Present by Darksly-z on DeviantArt
4.Applejack's Gift by Darksly-z on DeviantArt
5.Ocellus Portrait by Tsitra360 on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 9

1. Trixie - Daily Doodle 960 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt
2. Starlight X Trixie - Daily Doodle 959 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt
3. Twilight - Daily Doodle 956 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt
4.Mane Six and Sunset sleepover by typhwosion
5. Filly Twilight and Spike - Books! Books! Books! by Chapaevv on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 10

1.Big Mac X Cheerilee by hoverrover - So this ship still exists
2. Flurry Heart - MLP:YL - Not Fitting Quite Yet by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt
3.SciTwi and Demon Sunset by thecaptainacobskicorncob
4. Sunset - A present for you by Xan-gelX on DeviantArt
5. Luna - Follow me on Twitter :D by MagnaLuna on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 11

1.Maid Twilight by larrykitty
2.Multiple Fluttershys by heir-of-rick
3. Sunset in Daydream Shimmer form channeling He Man - daydreamertest by twilite-sparkleplz on DeviantArt
4.Rarity X Trixie by urbanqhoul
5.Sandbar by Tsitra360 on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 12

1.Fluttershy eating a pretzel by heir-of-rick
2. Rainbow - Looks Like Rain... by EmbersLament on DeviantArt
3.Somnambula by Marbola on DeviantArt
4.Cheerilee annoyed as CMC rush out of class by vaetan
5.Luna by Fluttersheeeee on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 13

And comics
The Cakes - My Little Pony: Not Gonna Leave by zouyugi on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Comic 1

Sunburst, Flurry Heart, and Starlight - Telling Traits by bobthedalek on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Comic 2

 

[Sylvee]

Thoughts on the stream:

I've never really watched any of the shows that were on display so all of them were not only episodes I haven't seen, but shows I haven't seen either. Starting off was the Animaniacs, which had an abridged retelling of A Christmas Carol. It was kind of weird overall, and the 11 minute run time really didn't help things either. As an actual story it was pretty weak, the arc of the main character (don't remember his name sorry) is extremely compressed and basically goes from "bah humbug" to being over-enthusiastically into Christmas over the span of one short and not that emotional scene. It sort of just goes along with the general story beats of A Christmas Carol and uses the framework to tell a silly story. And stuff like all of the showgirls in the Christmas Yet To Come just felt like them flaunting that they could get them through the censors rather then something that added to the story in any way. There's some fun silly bits but the story feels like it takes a backseat to them and it wasn't fantastic.

The 2nd part of the episode though was something that felt very dated as it was basically just a bunch of animations of various heavily religious Christmas songs, with a ton of biblical animation to go along with them. These days people make Christmas specials sure, but usually they play up the Santa and season of giving aspects of it and ignore the religious part of it entirely. So it was very unusual seeing a network TV cartoon talking about Jesus Christ and the pilgrimage of the 3 kings. There isn't much else to say as the whole thing is literally just a bunch of Carols sung and acted out by the cast of the show.

Next up was The Loud House, which was alright but nothing particularly exciting. Despite being a fairly important episode for the show (Holiday episodes of a show are often when cartoons go all-out with their budget) the animation felt very pedestrian. The most striking example was when all of the family was singing a Christmas song to cheer up their grump neighbor which was easily the climax of the episode, and most of it was just the whole group standing still while moving their head back and forth. I'd only seen a bit of the show before then and it struck me as being not the worst thing ever but not particularly great, and that didn't really change after seeing this.

Then there was the Hey Arnold episode, which from what I heard is one of the most famous holiday cartoon episodes, and I can see why. I've never seen the show before, so it was surprising that the show itself talked about a real world conflict like Vietnam. It was a very mature episode overall all things considered, which is why it was kind of jarring how unsubtle everything about Helga was. I knew already about how she pretended to hate Arnold but secretly was madly in love, but it felt a bit much here. It was kind of silly how much she gushed about how he was amazing and deserved the perfect gift out in public given that she's trying to keep it a secret. It's also kinda weird that Mr Hyunh devoted his life to finding his daughter in the city he lived, but seemingly never looked at the government records given that Helga and the guy at the archives located her in one evening. There's actually a lot of stuff that sort of conveniently worked out so the story could go the way it did. But I feel like that's overshadowed by the stuff that does work. Most of the interactions that don't involve Helga are very well-written, and the big emotional payoff for the episode is extremely emotional and well done. It does have me interested in checking out the rest of the show, although I probably don't have the time for that.

After that there was the Futurama episode which was not that impressive considering how much I've heard people talk up Futurama as an amazing show. The first 5 or so minutes are a bunch of largely irrelevant skits of them going to a skiing slope. After that there is some potential set up as Fry has to deal with the fact that the holiday has massively changed and is different from what he remembers, but this is abandoned pretty quickly. Then it sets up that Leela has it even worse then Fry and that he was selfish for being sad about his predicament and ignoring hers, but this is eventually abandoned as well. There's no real emotional payoff for any of the stuff set up and instead it ends with CGI evil Santa trying to kill them but getting defeated. Also there's a very unfunny subplot about Bender pretending to be a homeless robot so he can steal booze that doesn't really have much connection to the rest of the story. There were a handful of decent jokes but most missed for me.

Finally we watched a Justice League special which was serviceable but nothing particularly special. Probably my favorite parts were Clark and his adopted parents just hanging out and enjoying Christmas together, it was pretty well-done. Green Lantern and Hawkgirl have a storyline where they have a snowball fight and then go to some space bar to have a real fight. The Snowball fight was kind of fun but the bar fight felt like a waste of time. And Flash had to find some sold out toy all the kids want (I just noticed just how frequently this plot device is used, it was in the Hey Arnold episode too) but it breaks due to some fight he had with a villain, but then the Villain realizes that the Flash was doing a thing he approved of and has a truce with The Flash to repair the toy so the kids can be happy. That last storyline probably could have worked out better then it did, it felt weird just seeing the two just casually talking to each other when like 10 seconds before they were trying to kill each other and the only thing changing is the toy getting destroyed. Not the worst special by any means though.


There was also another special I was interested in showing off but I (and seemingly everyone else) didn't have the time to actually watch it, and that's the Mickey Mouse retelling of A Christmas Carol. Surprisingly it's the most faithful retelling of the original story that I've ever watched. And contrary to what you might imagine with characters like Mickey Mouse and Goofy in it the special doesn't pull any punches either. It's a very strait-faced retelling of the story that features every major story element from the original book. It's actually surprising how dark it gets during the future segment. In a way it's nice seeing a kid-focused retelling of the story that doesn't try to dress it up or diminish its message by cutting out the darker parts of the story.

 

[SigmasonicX]

On Friday, we watched the following.

1. A Pinky and the Brain Christmas
2. Penn Zero Part Time Hero - North Pole Down
3. The Real Ghostbusters - X-Mas Marks the Spot
4. DuckTales - Last Christmas!

As a focused half-hour special, the Pinky and the Brain episode was better received than the Animaniacs episode. It was a fun episode, and had a unique ending where Brain comes close to taking over the world but chooses not to.

This was the first time any of us have seen Penn Zero, but it's the first episode, so I thought it was fine. Still, the episode throws a lot at you. I wonder if, like Teen Titans, there's a proper origin episode later. People thought the episode was fun, but no one was particularly interested in watching more. It's kind of weird that the part time heroes work right next to the part time villains. I get it's like those Wolf and Sheepdog Looney Tunes shorts, but the stakes are higher here.

The Real Ghostbusters is still good. More people had seen it than I expected. This was a pretty well animated episode.

The DuckTales episode was good too. I think only one person hadn't seen it before.

~~~

We had an RP this Saturday, probably the last of the year.
RP 304 - The Shattered Realm 4 - Glam Battle

Spoiler: RP summary

Cappy - Trixie

Trixie finds herself in the same time period as Applejack, Fluttershy, and Maud. Applestonia in the year 3121. The story starts a bit before the others get to town.

Trixie on a whim has a magician's duel with a teen stallion who gives a Tartarus themed performance, named Angel, after the horrific bunny of old. Trixie wins the duel, but Angel earns her respect. He reveals his real name is Lulu Glimglam, both parts based on old family names.

After that, Trixie is approached by Flurry Heart, who finds her familiar. They go to the salt bar, where they catch up to where the previous part ended. Bears enter the bar and Trixie fights one. She talks with Applejack and Fluttershy, who catch her up on the time displacement and on Maud being kidnapped. Realizing these are past versions of her aunties, Flurry makes a discreet escape to not screw up the spacetime continuum.

The three mares prepare to rescue Maud.

New ForgaLorga cat video.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup.
1. Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire (1989)
2. 'Tis the Fifteenth Season (2003)
3. Miracle on Evergreen Terrace (1997)
4. Skinner's Sense of Snow (2000)
5. Marge Be Not Proud (1995)
6. Holidays of Future Passed (2011)

Plus bits of various other episodes in between.

These episodes were all pretty fun.

... Yeah.

Random Pony Merch
Cute crochet ponies. I find it funny how much smaller the "everything you need to make" font is.

Sad knockoff Glimglam

Rarity, Pinkie, and Owlowiscious at the top. It's a shame you can only get a horse OR accessory.

Art dump. Leaving these two out of spoilers.
Fantasy by mirroredsea on DeviantArt

Christmas Rarity and Pinkie by dstears - Notable in that dstears usually sticks to purple monochrome art.

1.Limestone Pie by tractareSolidum on DeviantArt
2.Celestia dancing by smartcoockie
3.Fluttershy by zakro
4.Rainbow by zakro
5.Sunset x Shimmer (standard) (Ver.1/4) by Slackerburst on DeviantArt - Two Sunsets

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Crown of Denial by Taiga-Blackfield on DeviantArt - Luna
2.SR: Not a Kirin the World by EmbersLament on DeviantArt - Autumn Blaze
3.A whale by gor1ck on DeviantArt - Seapony Rainbow and Fluttershy
4.Krampus by LadyChimaeraD on DeviantArt - Discord
5.Spike exchange by Darksly-z on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Learning to Levitate by LifesHarbinger on DeviantArt - Alicorn Apple Bloom
2.Chrysalis Gamer by Viejillox64Art on DeviantArt
3.Snowball game by ierf on DeviantArt - Rainbow
4.Ruins by iLickSunshine on DeviantArt - Twilight
5.Apple Bloom by 91o42

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Velvet X Oleander (Them's Fightin' Herds) by ogaraorcynder
2.Fluttershy with cat by talimingi
3.Anthro Fluttershy by coffee-on-campus
4.Human Twilight by coffee-on-campus
5.Mane Six by lavender_1227

Spoiler: Art 4

https://derpicdn.net/img/2018/12/16/1909682/medium.jpeg[/IMG
[IMG]https://derpicdn.net/img/2018/12/16/1909672/medium.jpeg

I haven't had a chance to go through this yet, but here's a new expansive fan-made CYOA, similar to the Rainbow Dash one that came out early this year.


A look at the non-English versions of season 7 songs. The description that the beginning says to look at just says this isn't a ranked list or a competition. This was a pretty good format for this; I should check out their previous videos like this later.


Animation of a Deltarune battle with Derpy.


Spoiler song from Wreck-It Ralph 2. This works really well.

 

[SigmasonicX]

On Friday, we watched, in this order.
1. The Christmas Tree
2. Olive, the Other Reindeer
3. Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation

The order got changed due to a stream issue.

The Christmas Tree is an infamous bad special, and we had fun riffing and reacting to it.

Olive, the Other Reindeer was a fun straightforward Christmas special. Some of the designs were pretty weird, but Olive the dog and Martini the penguin were good lead characters.

After that, it appears everyone else left, but people were still listed as online in the stream, so I let it keep going. People have mentioned before letting the stream play in the background while doing other things. Anyway, the Phineas and Ferb was good. I had forgotten that there were multiple Christmas specials, so I was surprised that Isabella's rendition of "Let It Snow" never showed up. It's pretty adorable.

1.PinkieDash with reindeer antlers by pinkablue
2.PinkieDash kissing by pinkablue
3.Rainbow Dash as a dragon by celebi-yoshi and graphene
4.Anthro Twilight by latecustomer
5.Human Sunset in scarf by hobilo

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Twilight in scarf by bigshot232
2.[マイリトルポニー] "家族" Illustration/ドロクマ [pixiv] - Applejack, Pinkie, Apple Bloom
3.Fluttershy X Pinkie by 770nanao15
4.Sky by Miokomata on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
5.fs by DreamSugar on DeviantArt - Fluttershy

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Luna's Night by WolfieDrawie on DeviantArt
2.NY gift by Xjenn9 on DeviantArt - Fluttershy, Twilight, Sunset
3.Futuristic Tempest Shadow by hardbrony on DeviantArt
4.Capper 12 17 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
5.Pinkie Good Morning by tohupo

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Fluttershy 12 20 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
2.Comm: Choose Your Ship! by LiaAqila on DeviantArt - EQG Autumn Blaze, Rarity, Coloratura, and Strawberry Sunrise surrounding Applejack
3.Anthro Twilight by holivi
4.Anthro Rarity by holivi
5.Anthro Rarity with ponytail by holivi

Spoiler: Art 4

1.V and O by Holivi on DeviantArt - Anthro Vinyl and Octavia
2.The Great and Powerful by Holivi on DeviantArt - Anthro Trixie
3.Trixie in beanie and hoodie by higgly-chan
4.Trixie by morose-muffin
5.Discord and Fluttershy by sansdy

Spoiler: Art 5

1.Discord wanting Fluttershy-senpai to notice him by sansdy
2.Fluttershy noticing Discord by sansdy
3.Winter Solstice by LennonBlack on DeviantArt - Luna
4.RuBronyCon'18 by Ramiras on DeviantArt - Tempest and Chrysalis
5.Derpy Hooves by Ramiras on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 6

1.Cadance by lavender_1227
2.Rainbow bakes a pie for Pinkie by tastyrainbow
3.「不思議の国のフラタ！」/「かぼす」のイラスト [pixiv] - Mane Six Alice in Wonderland
4.Dashing of the Bells by TheDoctorDisco on DeviantArt - Fluttershy and Rainbow (wings accidentally missing)
5.Anthro Ballerina Twiligth by luciferamon

Spoiler: Art 7

1.PinkieDash socks by pinkablue
2.Sunset postcard by Xjenn9 on DeviantArt
3.Daily Doodle 996 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt - Twilight
4.Starlight by SkyeyPony on DeviantArt
5.Conflicted Feelings by HazuraSinner on DeviantArt - Trixie, Starlight, and their child
6.Commission 22 : Luna's Christmas style by Marenlicious on DeviantArt
7.Let The Sunshine In by Ramiras on DeviantArt - Rainbow, Twilight, and Daring Do

Spoiler: Art 8

Fun PMV


And a recap of 2018 (and 2017 after the Bronies 2017 video was made) in the pony fandom, including the G5 leaks.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followup. We watched all of the MLP Hearth's Warming episodes.
*.My Little Pony G3 - That's What I Love about Christmas - Sing Along - YouTube
*.[SFM Ponies] Deck the halls (60fps) - YouTube
1. Hearth's Warming Eve
*.MLP: A Very Minty Christmas - Nothing Says Christmas Like a Pair of Socks - YouTube
*.MLP: PMV - Days Gone By Animatic w/ Animation - YouTube
2. Hearthbreakers
*.[SFM Ponies] Jolly ol' St. Nick - Spike (FIXED) - YouTube
3. A Hearth's Warming Tail
*.It's a Pony Kind of Christmas: Jingle Bells - YouTube
4. The Hearth's Warming Club
*.[MLP Comic Dub] The Get Out Claus (comedy) SCRIBBLER'S CHRISTMAS CRACKERS #5 - YouTube
*.All I Want For Christmas MLP MEP - YouTube
5. Best Gift Ever
*.[MLP Comic Dub] Sparkles! The Wonder Horse! Holiday Special! (comedy) CHRISTMAS CRACKERS #4 - YouTube
*.[Animation] Merry Christmas 2016 - YouTube

It was nice to watch all these episodes again. There were details in the first episode particularly that I hadn't noticed before, like the fire in the play during Spike's opening narration being moved by sticks. I don't have much more to say, really.

~~~

Thailand is running a Christmas pony event, and it's... interesting.

~~~

Well, I've done it. I've made an art commission for my ship, Rarity X Twilight, thus losing the moral high ground here. It ended up being a bit more suggestive than I initially wanted it (and this is toned down from an earlier sketch), so putting it behind spoiler tags.
[Commission] Pop Quiz by iojknmiojknm on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Uncensored

And here's a censored version to address the lewdest part.

Spoiler: Censored

(You only need to censor the tip)

 

[Sylvee]

So I was in charge of the stream, and to start things off I played stream-regular YouTuber Jenny Nicholson's video on Justice League. It was mostly just filler but she mentioned that MLP did a better Justice League then Justice League, and although I don't really know which episode she's referring to (I'm guessing it's To Where and Back Again) I'm sure she's right.

Next up was a video by Star_, who I had previously shown his Basically: Sweet Genius video. It's about a plotline in the CW show The 100, which is sort of geared to be Game of Thrones but for Teenagers. I've watched the show through it's most recent season, and although there's a lot I could point out as problems with the show (And honestly the storyline shown in the video is just one of many that don't make sense if you really think about them) I will say that the show is always engaging and interesting. It's not the best show ever but it always does a good job at making you feel like things are on the brink and that everything is life or death. The video covers a storyline where the main lead's boyfriend decides to murder over half a village of people for no reason and is instantly forgiven for it, but has to die anyway because the village belonged to a much bigger faction that's extremely pissed that he just killed over half a village for no reason. It's about as stupid as you might think it is and Star does a good job at riffing on it.


Wreck It Ralph I had never seen before, and it was alright. Summarizing my thoughts on it, I thought the movie started out pretty slow. It takes it a very long time to really establish Ralph's unhappiness with his situation, how the arcade world setting works, Ralph getting his coin and then losing it, introducing the 2nd main character Venellope, and explaining both why she wants to win the big race as well as why people don't want her to. The scene where the other racers bully Venellope and Ralph comes to her defense happens over 40 minutes into the movie, and given that the movie is only 100 minutes long that's a massive chunk of the movie. I feel like once they're finally on the same side and working together the movie gets a lot better, and the scenes with the two working together are easily the best in the film. It's pretty great from then on up until I feel the climax of the movie where things unfortunately kind of go south again. I mentioned it in the Discord, but conceptually I really liked Turbo. I think that the concept of a character that's used to being the top dog and getting extremely jealous when he loses relevance is fitting. Him destroying 2 games and then hacking another one so he becomes the central character, that's fine too. But his demeanor when it's revealed that he's the bad guy is a bit much, and it gets even worse when they decide that he needs to become an evil bug monster to fight Ralph at the end. His presence really detracts from the climax of the movie. Overall there were some really good spots but I'm not really in a hurry to watch it again, I feel like it just starts out far too slow and the extremely weak villain ruins the climax for me.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followups.

On Friday, it was interesting to watch Wreck-It Ralph again and seeing how the second movie repeats some plot points. I agree that the beginning is a bit slow and the scale of the climax feels unnecessary, and that the story improves once Ralph and Vannelope work together. I had forgotten how much Vannelope's glitches were presented as a mental condition, with her even referring to it as "glitchlexia". It's a decent enough movie, but not among the top of the "New Disney Renaissance" in my opinion.

On Sunday, we watched the following.
*. PMV Starlight Glimmer- It's My Life - YouTube
1. Winter's Tale
*.PMV: The Logical Song - YouTube (video now deleted)
2. The Cutie Map parts 1-2
*.PMV- (Starlight Glimmer) Daniel Ingram - In Our Town (Sim Gr☆tina Remix) - YouTube (after first part)
*.Every utterance of "Starlight" in My Little Pony version 2 - YouTube

We moved Winter's Tale first because Sylvee was going to leave early. I have to say, we got way more people in this stream than I would have thought, and thus many people experienced the wonder and miracle of Winter's Tale. Everyone was pretty flummoxed by it, with the high budget and major stars only adding to the confusion. This is actually the second time I watched it this week, since Cappy wanted to see it on Friday due to being busy at other times, and it was still a fun group watch the second time.

Anyway, with MLP, "The Cutie Map" is still good. I had forgotten more about it than I expected, particularly with the "Unequal Four" saving the day. We had ahoy, who hadn't seen this story before, and he was surprised by how many of our stream emotes came from this.

~~~

Following up on my earlier mention, the Belle Eve commission by pastel-pony-pictures is complete! (Derpibooru)

Based on my real life.

New Equestria Girls Mini toys

Also

Art dump.
1.Pinkie sketches by colorfulcolor233
2.Oleander by linaprime
3.Comm: Sorry Scoots by LiaAqila on DeviantArt - Apple Bloom and Chicken Scootaloo
4.Comm: Cutie Hug by LiaAqila on DeviantArt - CMC
5.Gabby with present by esmeia

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Lyra by Atlas-66 on DeviantArt
2.Reassurance by WanderingPegasus on DeviantArt - Twilight and Starlight
3.Winter Fun by Fensu-San on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
4.Zecora Hierophant tarot card by sourcherry - This artist has tarot cards for a ton of other characters.
5.Thorax Judgement tarot card by sourcherry

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Rainbow imitating Gilda by tsitra360
2.Chrysalis by phoenixrk49
3.Cozy Glow by riukime on DeviantArt
4.Another Lil' Marble Pie by Fakskis on DeviantArt
5.Twideer by PucksterV on DeviantArt - Twilight

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Sparkler by PucksterV on DeviantArt - Twilight
2.Prance by OrchidPony on DeviantArt - Pinkie
3.Queen Rain Shine by Marbola on DeviantArt
4.Totally Not Evil by its-gloomy on DeviantArt - Nightmare Moon
5.Lyra Heartstrings by MellonCollie-chan on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Silverdab by Paw-of-Darkness on DeviantArt - Silverstream
2.Fluffy Fluttershy by kebchach
3.Rainbow dash 12 28 2018 by tohupo on DeviantArt
4.Celestia by tohupo
5.Background Pony Volume 2 by Ramiras on DeviantArt - Lyra, cover for published version of fanfic Background Pony.

Spoiler: Art 5

1.Lyra Heartstrings by Ramiras on DeviantArt
2.shimmy blue and gold edition by fannytastical on DeviantArt - Sunset in sweater
3.HMPH!... by MagnaLuna on DeviantArt - Tempest
4.Pinkie launching her head by dsiak
5.Twilight with bird by tohupo

Spoiler: Art 6

1.EQG Rainbow and Scootaloo by ryuu
2.The Power Ponies - Radiance by AmarthGul on DeviantArt - Human Rarity
3.The Power Ponies - Zapp by AmarthGul on DeviantArt - Human Rainbow
4.My Little Twilight by Jeremywithlove on DeviantArt - Anthro
5.Human Fluttershy by tohupo

Spoiler: Art 7

1.Celestia by mirroredsea
2.G5 Fluttershy by whalepornoz
3.Pinkie X Rainbow with long hair by pinkablue
4.Flutter by Imaplatypus on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
5.Windy Whistles by Brok-Enwings on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 8

1.AppleDash by LiaAqila on DeviantArt
2.Rarity and Twilight snuggling with a scarf by casara
3..:CYBERNETIC EMOTIONS:. (Commission) by The-Butcher-X on DeviantArt - Humanoid Sweetie Bot (Sweetie Belle robot)
4.Sunset asking SciTwi if she would ever kiss a horse by tjpones
5.TheCaptain by dustyMunji on DeviantArt - EQG Rainbow

Spoiler: Art 9

1.EQG Rarity X Rainbow by kkmrarar
2.HNY by Holivi on DeviantArt - Sunset Happy New Year
3.Commission by Holivi on DeviantArt - Anthro Apple Bloom, Applejack, and Rarity

Spoiler: Art 10

Videos

Good cover
Open Up Your Eyes (2018 Redux) - Rockin'Brony - YouTube

Third Phantom of the Opera animation


Alright if one-sided fight animation. The closed eyes are weird.


So many Starlights. I did think this video overused the use of full scenes besides the "Starlight"s.
Every utterance of "Starlight" in My Little Pony version 2 - YouTube

Silver Quill looks back on Friendship Games, making some interesting points. He comes out sounding positive, despite pointing out the problems.
After the Fact: Friendship Games - YouTube

Applejack uses her ability to look at two different realities and choose one to fight Flim and Flam.


New Pony Sims video


And thanks to Pinkablue's image (set 8), I learned about this account with Chinese MLP animations. NOTE: On this Chinese site, you can disable the comments over the video by toggling the blue switch below the player.

I especially recommend watching this Pinkie X Rainbow video.
【小马手书/像素风】恶作剧组的A Thousand Miles_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

It looks like this site allows you to collect videos into a playlist and list that as a single video. This starts with a ponified version of the beginning of the One Punch Man opening, and if you let that finish, you get an incomplete ponified (well, human ponified) version of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's second opening (for Part 2).
【弃坑手书大合集】那些做了一半就不做的小马同人（2018.12.16更新P3）_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

Bizarrely, a Chinese ponified version of that MALK comedy sketch.
【MLP/手书】给我一杯MALK_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

And I'm not quite sure what's going on with this video. I suspect it's just an art collection. However, I haven't seen any of this art before, so it's still worth looking at for that.
【MLP】恶作剧组的达拉崩吧_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

 

[SigmasonicX]

Friday stream followup.
1. Street Fighter (US) - 9 - The Medium is the Message
2. Street Fighter (US) - 25 - Final Fight (crossover with Final Fight)
3. Haruhi - The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00
4. Haruhi - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya I
5. Haruhi - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya II

Street Fighter was... weird. I mean, I already expected it to be silly, but it was a weird mix of game accuracy and things from the movie and its own oddities like Ken having Rattrap's voice and Blanka's terrible terrible voice. There were bits where the art looked decent and surprisingly accurate to the game designs, but then there were bits where it looked horrible. Bison was the highlight, with his hammy acting.

The first episode was the one with the "Yes! Yes!" scene. If you somehow don't know about it:



I had always assumed that music was Bison's victory theme or something, but no, it plays at random points all throughout both episodes.

The second episode had no Bison, but I found it more entertaining. Despite initially looking nice enough, the animation and art became terrible. It was a crossover with Final Fight, and the characters from there were all pretty weird, particularly with that one guy sticking wires in his mouth to take out the power and a guy in a wheelchair spinning around and firing lasers.

As for Haruhi, reactions seemed alright enough, given these are the early episodes. However, with the reactions to "Melancholy II", I think it's safe to say I'll be skipping the "Sigh" arc in the stream after all. People really didn't like Haruhi harassing the Computer Research Club and Mikuru, and she does stuff that's arguably even worse in that arc. Kyon does call her out about it in that arc, at least, but still.

Of course, without that arc, there's less to see in "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00". The arc is all about the filming of the short film in that episode, and there are a ton of moments when I rewatched that episode in the stream where I thought, "Oh, so that's what was going on there!" Reaction to this episode was that it would have been funnier if they didn't stretch the joke out for the full episode, which is pretty much how everyone reacts the first time. It's only really good in retrospect.

With that episode, we can already see KyoAni's trolling with this series. They put an immense amount of effort into making this episode look like a bad student film. Bad lighting is only apparent if they go all out to establish the lighting. Everyone's little fidgets and eye movements wouldn't have been there in the first place if they were animated normally. And there's all the camera problems, before that became the style for AAA games, which they had to draw.

The first two "Melancholy" episodes were all character introductions, and were much slower about revealing the actual story than you'd think. Reactions weren't too enthusiastic, but nothing of note has really happened yet. The big Haruhi Harassment moments of "Melancholy II" left a bad taste for the end of the stream, though. Thankfully, it does seem like people are fine with continuing.

However, the discussion did remind me of something: I had completely forgotten about showing the Utena movie. But Chained is a must for when we show that, and he still doesn't have his Internet situation figured out, so we're going to have to wait regardless.

~~~

After a long break, we got back to the RP.
RP 305 - The Shattered Realm 4 - The Headless Curse

Spoiler: RP summary

Trixie - Cappy

The party is Trixie, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Lyzolda the yak.

Lyzolda leads the party to an entrance to the tunnels, which leads them to a mine cart railway. They encounter a pony and a human there, knocking them out of the carts. They talk to the human for a bit, but Trixie yelling when the pony tries to sneak away results in Lyzolda charging into them and knocking them far up the tunnel.

The ponies take the carts down, leaving Lyzolda to run behind them since she's too big for them. The third of the three carts is filled with rocks, and Trixie enchants them to glow, so they can be left behind for Lyzolda to follow. Carts being ridden by the Headless Horse and the Diamond Dogless Head come alongside them, but Trixie manages to trick them into thinking nothing's wrong. However, the carts reach the end of the tracks and stop next to each other, whereupon the enemies realize what's going on and attack.

The Head uses a magic artifact on Applejack to copy the Headless Horse's curse to her, making her head fall off. It's fine, the head can still talk and everything, and she can remotely control the body. Applejack gains enough control to knock the enemies far away with her body.

Continuing on, they find a large chamber with a crystal structure the size of Canterlot Castle, with rocks being sent to it and imprisoned ponies and diamond dogs working at the bottom.

They find Maud, who it turns out had been willingly working on the rock-based weapon of mass destruction due to that overriding her survival instinct. Lyzolda arrives and crashes into the party (minus Maud), sending them down to the bottom of the chamber.

The session ends with them falling.

~~~

There was a Jeopardy question about the MLP Movie.

Art dump.
1.Commission: New Years Kiss by SilFoe on DeviantArt - Rarity X Celestia
2.Happy New Years 2019 by SilFoe on DeviantArt - Cast of Royal Sketchbook fan comic: the princesses, Starlight, Tempest, Rarity, Sweetie Belle, Shining Armor, Twilight Parents, and Spike, plus OC babies
3.MLP:YL - Older Ocellus by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt
4.Rarity kissing Pinkie by anonhatter
5.PIERCE THE HEAVENS WITH YOUR HORN!! by AleximusPrime on DeviantArt - Gurren Lagann cosplay with Shining Armor (RIP), Twilight, and Cadance

Spoiler: Art 1

1.BEST DEMON BOOP by OgaraOrCynder on DeviantArt - Oleander and Fred
2.Applejack Painting Paint by AssasinMonkey on DeviantArt
3.Pony Twi and SciTwi by ciciya
4.Sunset in winter clothes by asimos
5.Fluttershy and other animals in glasses by tohupo

Spoiler: Art 2

1.EQG Rarity by qaq
2.EQG Rainbow by qaq
3.EQG Applejack by qaq
4.EQG (Pony) Twilight by qaq
5.M6 by mirroredsea on DeviantArt - Mane Six

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Spoik by thegreatrouge on DeviantArt - Spike
2.「トワイライト」/「スピカ」のイラスト [pixiv] - Pony Twilight and Human Pony Twi
3.Human Fluttershy by odiiette - Reminds me of Utena
4.Snowed On by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt - Trixie and Starlight
5..:NEW YEAR! 2019:. (MLP:FiM) by The-Butcher-X on DeviantArt - Mane Six

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Pinkie X Rainbow by pinkablue
2.Swap: :Cadence and Chrysalis: by SoundwavePie on DeviantArt - Species swap
3.Scribbly Flutters by Fawnshy on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
4.Fluttershy laying down by artnya - Artist forgot wings
5.Celestia and Twilight in second Gala dresses by noupu

Spoiler: Art 5

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup. We watched the following.
*.▷Compilation | MLP: Equestria Girls | Friendship Games (All shorts!) [HD] || ☆El Brony Mendivil☆ - YouTube
1. Equestria Girls: Friendship Games
*.What More Is Out There - Duet (Song) - MLP: Equestria Girls [Friendship Games] - YouTube
2. Big Hero 6 - 18 - Big Problem
*.Equestria Girls Friendship Games Deleted Scenes - YouTube
3. Kaleido Star - 5
*.Mlp Equestria girls, bloopers - YouTube
4. Super Gals - 29
*.MLP: Equestria Girls - 'Unleash the Magic' Friendship Games Stomp - YouTube

So I was wrong. There was, in fact, a live action music video for Friendship Games. And all the girls are back to being white.


Anyway, we had a pretty packed house for Friendship Games. My opinion of the movie remains the same: the bits with SciTwi making friends with the girls were good. Midnight Sparkle is a fantastic design and concept, if unearned here. Many of the Shadowbolts are pretty fun with good designs, and should appear more. However, the story is hot trash. SciTwi's stupidity could have been largely fixed if the magic detector wasn't created by her, but rather was an Equestrian artifact she found like with later EQG villains, so then her not knowing how her own device worked would have made sense. One person watching with us actually did assume that was what was going on, until informed otherwise. Of course, there's still a lot more to fix after that.

The deleted version of "What More is Out There" is still probably one of my top Pony songs. It's a shame they couldn't find a way to justify using it, with Sunset's subplot being really under-cooked from the deleted scenes.

We got back to Big Hero 6 after a big absence. The most impressive part of the episode isn't the main plot itself, but rather that part of the story involved Karmi impressing a scientist that Hiro couldn't and Hiro getting upset about that, and it didn't have Hiro get his comeuppance. Instead, it's Karmi who saves the day. Also, the most confusing part is the villain making random Shakespeare references (The Tempest) and this episode not being written by Greg Weisman. I thought he had a monopoly on that.

Also back after a long break was Kaleido Star, where everything went wrong with Sora and people were having heart attacks left and right (well, only one person, and not the guy with the known heart problem). It was a good dramatic episode.

And back after an even longerest break is Super Gals! This episode featured Mami and Second Place hooking up, as strongly hinted at by a certain poster for a while. Mami came around to the idea much more easily than I would have thought. This was a fun episode with an extended contest between Ran and Mami. There was some weirdness with the tan girls deciding not to tan themselves anymore, which was awkward even with the knowledge they weren't naturally tan.

On another note,
Deltapony (MLP x Deltarune) by TyScope on DeviantArt

2018 PMV montage


If this style and premise seems familiar, it's from the same guy that did that Shelter PMV, which was... shit, about a year and a half ago.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Friday stream followup, none of the anime viewers showed up, including the person who wanted to show that Trackdown episode, so we just watched the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life". Sylvee seemed to be way more into the episode than I would have thought; this was his first Twilight Zone episode. People make jokes about it, but the Twilight Zone could be legit creepy when it wanted.

And then Cappy was too busy for today's RP, and I couldn't work out another time today. We'll try it out on Thursday, since I'll be busy with Magic next Saturday.

Hopefully tomorrow's stream goes better.

On another note, it looks like Sunset's hairstyle has changed for the spring special. Old, new.

This is easiest to see with how on the left of the image, Sunset's hair doesn't have that sharp corner, and where her hair parts isn't as "hilly". Also, that's a cute dress.

Art dump
1.Applejack by tohupo
2.Almost Christmas Reindeer by XeniusFms on DeviantArt - Twilight, Tempest, and Lyra
3.Snowplant by Tsitra360 on DeviantArt - Scootaloo and CMC
4.Autumn Blaze by ponimu
5.A frisbee game by chedx on DeviantArt - Gabby, Sunset, and Skystar

Spoiler: Art 1

1.School Daze Review by TheSoleil on DeviantArt - Student Six
2.Twilight redesign by Marbola on DeviantArt
3.Long Neck Pass by Taurson on DeviantArt - Fluttershy with long neck
4.Hello - Diwata Aino (Crystal Prep background human) by the-butch-x
5.Hello - Sophisticata (EQG1 background human) by the-butch-x

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Twilight Sparkle by OhieKhe on DeviantArt - Human SciTwi
2.Fluttershy isn't decent by tjpones
3.The Wielders of the Keyblade by CCKittyCreative on DeviantArt - Mane Six Kingdom Hearts crossover
4.[Comm]cAll's fair in Love and Friendship Game by iojknmiojknm on DeviantArt - Human Lyra and Bon Bon
5.Luna by magnaluna

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Fluttershy X Rainbow New Year by horatio_kun
2.Gabby by ponimu
3.Sonata Dusk by aetherionart
4.Memories We Share by mirroredsea on DeviantArt - Pinkie and Sunset
5.Twilight sparkle 1 10 2019 by tohupo on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Dragon Lord Ember by RaikohIllust on DeviantArt
2.Sunset Shimmer by reijisakamoto on DeviantArt
3.Fullmetal Horse by midnightpremiere on DeviantArt - Sunburst and Starlight in Fullmetal Alchemist crossover
4.Demon Shimmer by iojknmiojknm on DeviantArt - Sunset
5.Gilda portrait by el-yeguero on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 5

1.Commission 23 : A little cozy by Marenlicious on DeviantArt - Sunset pony
2.Let me help you by LooknamTCN on DeviantArt - EQG Rarity and Applejack, in spring break outfits from trailer. A bit suggestive.
3.Commission: Samurai Tempest by SilFoe on DeviantArt
4.Gala Drago Dash by GrapheneDraws on DeviantArt - Rainbow as dragon
5.Yawning Twilight by luciferamon

Spoiler: Art 6

1.Collabuary: Sweet Comfort by EmbersLament on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
2.Celestia faceplanting while Luna and Twilight watch by greyscaleart
3.Shattered Wishes by DebbyGattaTheBeast on DeviantArt - Tempest
4.Tempest Shadow and her Edgy Look by DebbyGattaTheBeast on DeviantArt
5.Letting That Mane Down by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt - Cadance

Spoiler: Art 7

1.Roseluck with cat bells by quetex
2.Jolly Ol Saint Nicholas by JustSomePainter11 on DeviantArt - Spike
3.Sneaky Peek by bobthedalek on DeviantArt - Sunburst, Starlight, and Twilight

Spoiler: Art 8

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followup, we watched
*.MLP:FIM [Animation]: The Cutie Re-Mark Prequel - YouTube
*.[PMV] Be Prepared - YouTube
1-2. MLP - The Cutie Re-Mark 1 & 2
*.You must remember [Animation] - YouTube
3. Big Hero 6 - Steamer's Revenge
*.[MLP Comic Dub] Starlight's Birthday (comedy) - YouTube
4-5. Kaleido Star - 6 & 7
*.MLP:FIM - My Past Is Not Today - Starlight Glimmer - PMV (200S Special) - YouTube (after first)
*.[MLP Comic Dub] Starlight Learns to Be A Good Friend (comedy) - YouTube
6. The Promised Neverland - 1
*.Starlight vs Mane 6 - YouTube

This was ahoy's first time watching "The Cutie Re-Mark", with no knowledge of what happens other than Starlight being redeemed. Like many reacted when it aired, he went through the episode wondering how Starlight could possibly be redeemed for her actions, and wasn't satisfied in that regard. In any case, it seemed like he had fun watching the episode, and I still think it's one of the stronger two-parters.

The Big Hero 6 episode was alright. There are two more normal episodes of this season left, and then a three-part finale. While the normal episodes are good, I honestly wasn't a fan of the finale. I'm considering not showing it in the stream, since it would take up over an hour.

After that, we watched two Kaleido Star episodes. The first introducing a friendly seal, and the second introducing a girl skilled at using the diabolo who is THE MOST BORING PERSON EVER. I love how savage the theater continues to be. Anyway, these were both fun episodes.

Lastly, we started The Promised Neverland, which is less happy. Reactions were positive, so we'll continue watching it in the stream. I read the manga, so I'll try not to spoil anything.

~~~

So the Twilight variant cover of FIENDship is Magic is way rarer than I thought. By the calculation in the article, there are fewer than 300 out in the wild. Sara Richard, the artist, put up one of these issues for auction and it's at over $300 as of this post. There are two days left in the auction, if you want it.

Ponified versions of these poses.

SciTwi, Fluttershy by jhayarr23

And more art.
1.[MLP]twilight velvet by Choyamy on DeviantArt
2.Fluttershy redesign by Marbola on DeviantArt
3.Sunshine Cruise by uotapo on DeviantArt - Sunset in cruise outfit
4.Twilight is watching you by Kaliner123 on DeviantArt
5..:Dark Web Mystery Box:. (EqG Shorts) by The-Butcher-X on DeviantArt - Spike the dog, based on the "Reboxing w/ Spike" short

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Fluttershy fairy (collaboration) by Zefir-ka on DeviantArt
2.Rarity 1 14 2019 by tohupo on DeviantArt
3.Twilight and SciTwi taking a bath together in a not awkward way by tjpones
4.AGDQ2019 Killed the Animals by luminaura on DeviantArt - Young Fluttershy reacting to Games Done Quick 2019.
5.Bridle Gossip Fanart by pyroprye on DeviantArt - Mane Six with poison joke afflictions.

Spoiler: Art 2

1.mi amor by WanderingPegasus on DeviantArt - Cadance
2.Rarity dressing up Tempest by dstears
3.Silverstream by (artist needed)
4.Curled Up by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt - Fluttershy X Discord
5.EQG Sunset and Pony SciTwi by yakieringi014

Spoiler: Art 3

EDIT: Whoops, forgot the main reason I made this post. WatchMojo made a list of 10 Dark Facts About My Little Pony That Will Ruin Your Childhood. As you'd expect, the list is pretty silly.


This is a list that includes Tyrant Celestia. At least they have Cozy Glow being sent to Tartarus at #1, as it should be.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Friday stream followup, we watched the following.
1-2. Miraculous episodes 25-26
3. Haruhi - The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya
4. Haruhi - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya III

Miraculous was cheese beyond cheese, but I thought it was fun enough, and I can see the appeal. From the fan art I've seen, most fans seem to like the Ladybug and Cat Noire relationship. The flirting as heroes but blushing and awkward around each other in their secret identities situation would drive people crazy (in a good way). Plus Marinette's blushing game is on point. I was worried that this being the season one finale would mean that this origin story wouldn't actually work as starting episodes, but it seemed just like a pilot. The only real hint that it wasn't was Cat Noire turning to the screen and saying, "I guess this is how it'll always go," in response to Ladybug having to save the day after he screws up.

I heard about it before, but it's funny how the villain, Hawk Moth, has the absurdly broken power of being able to turn anyone anywhere who is upset into his slave and give them superpowers, and if they're left alone long enough they can turn other people into slaves with the same powers, but he's stymied by the fact that at most one person in all of Paris is upset at any given time. Also, he's pretty obviously Adrien's father. FAKE EDIT: He is.

As for the Haruhi episodes, they went over better than the first set we watched, but there wasn't much excitement about it either. We start getting more into the story here, and I don't know, I still find the expo-dumping of this show oddly enthralling. The Mikuru abuse was more omnipresent than I remembered, and part of why it's frustrating is that she's pretty interesting as a character when she's allowed to be. There was some confusion about the episodes being out of order. I think there will be fewer issues with that in the future, though.

To make for a better two-episode-a-week experience, I'm going to schedule episodes in these pairs:

February 1

• Remote Island Syndrome I
• Remote Island Syndrome II

February 8

• Mysterique Sign
• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya IV

February 15

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya V
• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya VI

March 1

• Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody
• Endless Eight I

March 8

• Endless Eight V
• Endless Eight VIII

March 15

• Live Alive
• Someday in the Rain

Not fully happy with splitting "Endless Eight", but I also don't think it would be right to show three episodes in one stream. I was planning on showing Disappearance on a Sunday stream, since it's three hours long, but with both Tangled and The Promised Neverland episodes we have to watch each Sunday, maybe I will just play it on a Friday and see if that works out.

~~~

The first few seconds of this animation reel has unused footage from the Movie, apparently from when the pirates were outright villains. Though you can embed Vimeo videos now, the privacy settings for the video that don't allow it.

Fun song from Round Trip.



This is a fun video. And it has fantastic theories like that just like how humans lose their teeth to grow their adult teeth, ponies lose their eyes to grow adult ones.



Nice remix

 

[Sylvee]

I mentioned it before but I feel like I'm the only person that REALLY likes Legend of Everfree. By that I mean that most people are either indifferent towards it or think it's alright, I think it's one of the better "epic stories" (Meaning 2-parter or longer) they've told. First off, the soundtrack is fantastic, easily the 2nd best EQG soundtrack behind Rainbow Rocks. Only real dud in my opinion is "Embrace the Magic" Opener is more simplistic then the other ones but I think it's great, Midnight in Me I just wish was longer, I'm always a sucker for Ingram's pop stuff so I liked Legend You Were Meant To Be, and the rest are fun too. The main plot isn't super fantastic but I think it does a decent enough job at moving the story along and isn't distractingly bad like Friendship Games. But what I think makes the movie great is the interactions between all the characters. It's easily the most slice-of-lifey of the EQG movies IMO. There's a lot more scenes in this movie compared to the other ones where the characters are just hanging out doing camp stuff, and Lewis and Songco's writing always makes it fun to watch.

And perhaps most controversally I really liked Timber Spruce in the movie and felt like he was one of the best parts of it. I know that he's not particularly popular but honestly I feel like a lot of people strait up got him wrong and think he's fantastic and can only assume that his negative reception is due to him being yet another love interest for Twilight. As a love interest it's really night and day comparing him to Flash. Him and Twilight actually have a dynamic with each other and play off each-other well, the first scene with them in particular I think showcasing why they actually have something in common besides "they're attracted to each other because of reasons" like with Flash. And what I think makes him leagues better then Flash is that he's a character that could easily exist even as regular character and not just as a love interest for Twilight. He has a duality with his sister and works well with her, he has his own agency in the movie and from what we can see does a good enough job at helping run the camp with his sister. And shorts like Turf War I think showcase that he can play off other characters too if they actually gave him a chance to. Probably the biggest thing is that I'm a pretty big sucker for self-depreciating and sort of ironic humor and he does this very well IMO. Him calling himself the Picaso of noodles is just a great line to me.



Glad Rainbow finally got that copyrighted:

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup, we watched the following.
*.Alternate Realities (song) - Ashley H, TPressleyJ, & Friends - YouTube
*.MLP: equestria Girls Latino América - 'Legend of Everfree' Commercial de TV Muñecas - YouTube
1. EQG - Legend of Everfree
*.My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Legend of Everfree : Bloopers - YouTube
2. The Promised Neverland episode 2
*.Equestria Girls Dino Rangers (EG PMV) [Legend of Everfree Spoilers!] - YouTube
3. Kaleido Star episode 8
*.[PMV] Legend You Are Meant To Be - YouTube
4. Super Gals episode 30
*.Legend of everfree : Miraculous Ladybug (PMV) - YouTube

There are several good moments in Legend of Everfree, particularly in the character interactions. Sylvee is right in that this is the closest it's come to a slice of life movie, up until "Rollercoaster of Friendship" if you count that as a movie. However, the movie just doesn't come together well in the end and it feels forgettable.

Timber Spruce and Twilight had cuter interactions than I remembered, but I still have zero interest in ever seeing him again. The real issue with this movie is the time spent on the new powers, which years later, have proven to be completely unnecessary from a story perspective. When you introduce a new power system like this, you'd hope they open up new story avenues, but from a story perspective, the only real effect it has is that Sunset goes up to the villain and gets an expo-dump flashback, which is frankly a terrible story device, and Rarity was able to block Vignette's camera. At most, the other powers have just been used for gags in shorts. Heck, with Fluttershy, no one would have bat an eye if she just talked to animals like her pony counterpart. When they confront a villain, they rainbow blast them anyway, so the powers have no significance.

Anyway, the songs are good, but I feel like they don't tie into the story in a meaningful way, making them less memorable.

Anyway, anime. Moving The Promised Neverland to earlier seems to have worked out, and people are really into it.

The Kaleido Star episode featured more bad parents, and Super Gals was a parade of absurdity with Mami. Both were great.

~~~

Today, we finally got around to the next RP part.
RP 306 - The Shattered Realm 5 - The Rescue Reaches a Head

Spoiler: RP 306 - The Shattered Realm 5 - The Rescue Reaches a Head

Trixie - Cappy

While falling, Trixie uses a rope trick to save everyone. Inside the crystal superweapon, they see a leaky pipe, which Maud explains is a time leak and the source of the weapon's power. Lyzolda the yak hits the crystal repeatedly to reach the pipe, but this draws the attention of the warden of the prisoners working on the weapon.

They hide, and after a tense argument, Trixie gets Fluttershy to check what the warden is. It's a headless hydra. Maud explains that the hydra is actually the one creating the weapon. It will knock everyone's heads off, so it can walk around wherever and take a head from the ground to talk through.

They have Lyzolda distract the hydra, running into a tunnel and having it chase after her. Trixie frees the prisoners and the prisoners escape. Maud breaks the crystal to reach the pipe, and Applejack gets to work on it. Unfortunately, the tunnels lead back to them, and the hydra attacks. Trixie fends it off for a bit, but then the ceiling opens up with a sword slice from Flurry Heart. However, she used up too much magic on that flashy entrance. Trixie ties up the hydra and Flurry finishes it off with sword strikes (using the blunt side).

Flurry explains that their multiverse is coming to an end, but that's what's supposed to happen. From their perspective inside, that actually doesn't mean anything. It's only significant to outside observers. In any case, this is causing time leaks, and someone's taking advantage of that.

With the exits blocked and her too low on magic to fly with it, Flurry is forced to reveal her hidden shame: her gigantic wings, proportionally the same size as when she was a baby. She uses a running start to take flight and carries Lyzolda out of the cave. Then Applejack fixes the pipe and they're back in the Shattered Realm, with her neck fixed.

Four portals remain.

~~~

Interview with the new IDW assistant editor, Meghan Brown. Nothing too interesting here.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Friday stream followup, we watched the following.
1.Well, I guess SOMEBODY had to read "Trigger Warning"
2.One Small Step

The former is Jenny Nicholson reading and commenting on a conservative wet dream of a published novel where a 24 year old man that acts like an old geezer (because he has an old soul) who is also BIG protects a college campus from Antifa ninjas in a Die Hard ripoff, but what's more interesting is the backstory of the book she reveals after.

The latter is the start of a series of us watching Oscar nominated animated shorts. This looks great, and is good at triggering emotions with zero dialogue. The route the story takes it quite cliche for this type of short, though. Also, the main character is named Luna.

~~~

RP 307 - The Shattered Realm 6 - Old Prench Couture
We leave Applestonia behind to visit new pastures.

Spoiler: RP 307 - The Shattered Realm 6 - Old Prench Couture

Trixie - Cappy

After some sleep, Maud accidentally throws Trixie into a portal. Only two other ponies can travel through portals, like in Chrono Trigger, so Fluttershy and Applejack follow after, with Maud staying behind.

They end up in Old Prance, in the home of Lord D'Cheval. He is using a time leak in the form of a leaky drinking fountain to power a time machine that can send you back one day. There's a party going on downstairs, and he actually did go back and tell himself to enjoy himself there. He has a barrier around the time leak that will only respond to his magic. He's willing to bring it down if the heroes can convince his other self to dance with Lady Crinière.

They go to the party where they find her buried in a book. She's literally a Twilight recolor. Eventually, they are able to convince her that her dance with him would be completely platonic and she and Lord D'Cheval approach.

But then! The other Lord D'Cheval that was upstairs decides he wants to dance with Lady Crinière instead. The two Lord D'Chevals argue, and then! A giant roc that looks like Gallus crashes through the window and snatches up Lady Crinière! The two lords chase after it.

~~~

More keyboard ponies, this time with brony songs.


Art dump. Leaving this one out.
by animesoul - Artist tag also includes close ups

1.Sunset teaching SciTwi to swear by sunsetslight
2.Moonlight Raven by iojknmiojknm on DeviantArt - Human
3.Humane Seven by jirousan
4.Rainbow talking about Twilight in her sleep anthro by tylerdashart
5.Happy Pinkie by ponimu

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Fluttershy by erkythehero23 on DeviantArt
2.Spike by TheBowtieOne on DeviantArt
3.Pinkie by PlnetFawn on DeviantArt
4.Fluttercord Week - Day Six : Favorite moment by Kyumiku on DeviantArt - Fluttershy and Discord
5.YOU from the past by LooknamTCN on DeviantArt - EQG Applejack and Rarity

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Photocard 01 by dustyMunji on DeviantArt - EQG Applejack and Rainbow
2.Fluttershy by MoonDreamer16 on DeviantArt
3.Fluttercord Week - Day Seven : Mistletoe by Kyumiku on DeviantArt - Fluttershy X Discord
4.Poplar fluff by mirroredsea on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
5.Water stroll by Marbola on DeviantArt - Rarity

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Book princess redesign by EpochAii on DeviantArt - Twilight
2.A Little Helper by ChaosAngelDesu on DeviantArt - Rainbow
3.How To Train Your Draconequus by Vantiss on DeviantArt - Fluttershy and Discord in cosplay
4.Fluttershy X Discord by sadistjolt
5.SciTwi alternate outfit by bordogushter

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Phoenix by its-gloomy on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
2..:The Craft of...Cookies?:. (EqG Shorts) by The-Butcher-X on DeviantArt - Two images, Pinkie and Tank
3.The Goddess Lyra ~ by SarAlieng on DeviantArt
4.F-sh by Xjenn9 on DeviantArt - Fluttershy

Spoiler: Art 5

1.Rarity redesign by Marbola on DeviantArt
2.Fluttercord week 2019 Day seven by Waackery on DeviantArt - Fluttershy X Discord
3.Reversalis by VanillaGhosties on DeviantArt - Reflections Universe Chrysalis
4.Starburst -Eearly Days- by uotapo on DeviantArt - Starlight and Sunburst
5.EQG Pinkie about to prank Rainbow by erufi

Spoiler: Art 6

1.EQG background human Mystery Mint by nekojackun
2.TwiSet by Jowybean on DeviantArt - EQG Twilight and Sunset
3.EQG Twilight and Sunset singing by jowybean
4.EQG Twilight and Sunset rocking out with Pinkie by jowybean
5.EQG Twilight by kkmrarar

Spoiler: Art 7

1.EQG young Rainbow protecting young Fluttershy by dcon
2.Too shy to play doom on public by 0ndshok on DeviantArt - EQG Fluttershy
3.It s morning already? by Xan-gelX on DeviantArt - Sunset
4.Twilight with Books by NinjaHam on DeviantArt - Humanized
5.Crying then happy Twilight GIF by colorfulcolor233
6.Cozy Glow by erufi - She is saying "Help me safe me! I am all alone" and then "Take my hoof. I have friends who gonna love you."

Spoiler: Art 8

This is a cute video, aside from one point where I was worried it was going in a fetish direction. Note you need to enable captions to get the subtitles.


And hey, we finally got another memoir video. Still a season behind, though.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Stream followup. We watched the following.

*.'The Art of Cookies' Original Short 🍪 MLP: Equestria Girls Season 2 - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls Minis - 'The Show Must Go On Pt.1' Digital Short - YouTube
*.MLP: Equestria Girls Minis - 'The Show Must Go On Pt.2' Digital Short - YouTube
1. EQG - Dance Magic
2. EQG - Movie Magic
3. EQG - Mirror Magic
*.Dance Magic [PMV] - YouTube
4. Yuru Yuri - 1
*.[Japanese] Sunset Shimmer meets Starlight Glimmer | MLP Equestria Girls Specials - Mirror Magic - YouTube
5. Yuru Yuri - 2
*.Beyblade Moses

Way more people showed up to see Juniper Montage in action than I expected. Because of that, I didn't think it was right to watch The Promised Neverland episode 3 with people who hadn't watched the previous two episodes, so I'm holding that off until next week, where we'll watch it with episode 4. Assuming episode 4 doesn't disappoint me as an adaptation more than episode 3.

Anyway, "Dance Magic" was fun but I still find the way Rarity resolves things with the Shadowbolts to be pretty contrived. "Movie Magic" was dumb, but more fun than I remembered. And then with "Mirror Magic", the Sunset and Starlight parts were good, but the Juniper parts were HOT GARBAGE, worse than I remembered. It's quite impressive.

Since Juniper is Trig's thing, I decided it was time to honor his request to show Yuru Yuri. It was really anime. There were some alright jokes, but it really isn't my sort of series.

There really aren't many Juniper related YouTube videos, so I had to stretch in that regard. About the Japanese video, while they stopped dubbing FiM with season 2, they continued dubbing Equestria Girls, resulting in the odd situation where "Mirror Magic" is Starlight's first appearance in Japan.

On the subject of "Mirror Magic", comic by keeerooooo1 based on the part where Sunset's upset that PonyTwi hasn't written back. The Chinese text is just the dialogue from that scene.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Friday stream followup. We watched the following.
1. Kaguya-sama: Love is War - 1
2. Kaguya-sama: Love is War - 3
3. Haruhi - Remote Island Syndrome parts 1-2

Kaguya-sama was pretty well received, but I got the impression people were already finding it repetitive. I think I will show some episodes later, but it's episodic, so it will be fine to show select episodes.

The Haruhi story was good, and seemed to be the best received episode set so far. I had forgotten a lot of the particulars. I had heard about how the explanation scene used poses from Ace Attorney, but I had watched this show before playing those games, so I didn't pay much heed. Watching it now, yeah, it's an exact match.

But the bigger news is that Chained finally figured out his Internet problems, or rather got a workaround working, so he was able to join in.

We had no RP today, and not next week either.

Spoiler: RP totally canon segment

~~~

About that EQG Trixie short, here's the chat we had.

Spoiler: EQG Trixie chat

SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:16 PM

Were the previous ones shorter than two minutes? That doesn't sound right.


ScizYesterday at 1:21 PM


this is the only one I can think of to be cut down so much



I think I can see why, too, watching the animatic. Forgotten Friendship did enough to develop EG Trixie that portraying her as completely hopeless at this point feels like a step back.


SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:27 PM


It does come at the expense of removing any semblance of humor from the short, though.(edited)


SylveeYesterday at 1:28 PM


Also the old short explains why SciTwi would be willing to intervene and save her act, rather then it just sort of coming out of left field and isn't really explained


ScizYesterday at 1:30 PM


oh, what's left of it definitely feels off, but it's at least not completely incoherent, which is good enough for what they're doing



"Trixie is actually bad at magic" is a well they've already tapped pretty dry, and it really should've had a different direction from the beginning


SylveeYesterday at 1:31 PM


IDK, the original was more coherent but I don't think either version would have been particularly great. The original also dragged on for a bit too long as well


SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:33 PM


It was just a quirk of the animatic, I suppose, but when it showed Pinkie with the cupcake and the cupcake kept changing, I thought they were having Pinkie do tricks while Trixie wasn't looking, which would have been a cute gag.


ScizYesterday at 1:33 PM


it's short and not funny instead of long and not funny, but at least like this it comes off as a little character moment where Twilight intervenes where she doesn't need to just to add a little razzle dazzle to a show that Trixie already had a handle on, instead of her stepping in to save Spike's neck from a desperate bid at saving face(edited)


SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:34 PM


And yeah, like I said in the thread, the Trixie short should have been like that classic David Blaine parody video where he's using demon magic on two unlucky guys.


ScizYesterday at 1:34 PM


gaslighting Snips and Snails would've been easy



should've done that, sure


SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:34 PM


Like Trixie's tricks work, but she's a nuisance that maybe makes people question reality.



Yeah, Snips and Snails going, "Oh, I'm freaking out, man!" to simple tricks would have been good too.



Like the main appeal of street magic videos in the first place is the audience reactions.



Have Trixie go

into the camera every once in a while, and you're gold



https://mobile.twitter.com/isitlunchyet_t/status/1091439240724893696



I guess mobile links aren't embedded



https://twitter.com/isitlunchyet_t/status/1091439240724893696(edited)

K.Hadley (@isitlunchyet_t)
@SeanRuleZ7 @kuco288 No. We only animated what you see on YouTube. The extra content was cut at animatic.
Twitter


Some people were guessing the full version would appear later, but nope.


CappyYesterday at 1:43 PM


someone will do it



that is to say, animate the rest >_>


SigmasonicXYesterday at 1:44 PM


Hmm, probably. Someone did animate the full "More That's Out There", but then again, I don't think the other Friendship Games deleted scenes were.

K.Hadley (@isitlunchyet_t)
@SeanRuleZ7 @kuco288 No. We only animated what you see on YouTube. The extra content was cut at animatic.

Bit of news that was in that chat.

Looking on Derpibooru, I was surprised to see that there were more images of this one-minute long Trixie short than the Rarity short from earlier this week. Part of this is because people had been drawing fan art since over a year ago, based on the leak. I'm sure I posted some of these before, not realizing the context. Heck, I didn't even realize any shorts leaked besides the Sunset gamer short.

1.Trixie by khuzang
2.Trixie by rockset
3.Magic Trixie! (Street Magic with Trixie) by charlieXe on DeviantArt
4.The Great and Powerful by Holivi on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Old Trixie short art

Even disregarding that, there's more post-official-release art than for the Rarity short.
1.Not art, but here's a screenshot of a new background human
2.We Could Be Related by twilite-sparkleplz on DeviantArt - OC greeting that background human since they resemble each other
3.Trixie by keeerooooo1
4.Sunset and SciTwi by keeerooooo1

Spoiler: New Trixie short art

~~~

Based on a running idea from the chat that I started, I commissioned this art, and it's great.
Tokusatsu Sunny Flare

I knew those arm thingies did something!

~~~

Art dump.
1.Alicorn Sunset and Twilight by dragbax
2.awwwwwwwwww by Yanamosuda on DeviantArt - Fluttershy
3.Pear Butter by bushbuck93 on DeviantArt
4.BFF (Windy Whistles and Mrs. Shy). by Heera29 on DeviantArt
5.Rarity with Fluttershy dressed as a reindeer, with Lyra and Bon Bon by an unknown artist (the listed artist is a re-uploader)

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Anthro Fluttershy by hiccupsdoesart
2.Human Applejack X Rainbow wedding by signiroha
3.Half Kingdom by GjschoolArt on DeviantArt - Centaur Celestia and Twilight (in the crowd). This is interesting because the artist doesn't usually do MLP stuff, and this isn't labeled as such, but that's clearly Celestia and Twilight.
4.Tuna Doodle 30.01.2019 by Amarynceus on DeviantArt - Twilight X Luna
5.Twilight Bad by ShadowReindeer on DeviantArt - Anthro

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Rainbow Birthaversary (Pinkie Pride) by sugar morning
2.Twilight Pikachu by muchu
3.Fluttershy Pikachu by muchu
4.Rarity Pikachu by muchu
5.GIF of Sunburst with bunny ears and Starlight with alicorn wings by agrol

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Derpy Vector 01 - You Got Mail! by CyanLightning on DeviantArt
2.Gabby by tyuubatu on DeviantArt
3.AppleJack Cordie costume - Cliffside by PyroPk on DeviantArt
4.Pigtail Twilight by colorfulcolor233
5.Pigtail Rainbow by colorfulcolor233
6.Pigtail Pinkie by colorfulcolor233

Spoiler: Art 4

I usually don't post these Top N videos, but this is for all of 2018, so might as well.


I also usually don't post these Everything Wrong With videos, but there's something really weird that got pointed out. At 4 minutes 22 seconds.


As part of the crowd, Apple Bloom shouts, "That's my sister!" and Sweetie Belle responds, "No, mine!" At first I thought this was reused dialogue from "Sisterhooves Social", but no, it isn't from there! Maybe it's unused dialogue from there? It's weird.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Sunday stream followup, we watched the following.

*. Dragon Ball OPs
*.My Little Hikawa - Genkai Toppa × Flawless {DB-Super X MLP Mashup} - YouTube
*.Goku vs Twilight Trailer - YouTube
1. Dragon Ball: Battle of the Gods
*.Twilight vs Sombra Teaser - YouTube
*.The Promised Neverland - One Minute Neverland #1 - YouTube
*.One Minute Neverland #2 | The Promised Neverland - YouTube
2. The Promised Neverland - 3-4
*.[PMV] Dragon Ball Z Opening - YouTube
*.Pony Ball KAI | Opening - YouTube
*.Dragon Ball Z Re-enacted by Ponies - YouTube

We had someone who hadn't seen any Dragon Ball, and he was able to follow the movie well enough. It was enjoyable.

For The Promised Neverland, we had someone who hadn't seen the first two episodes but still chose to stick around. I included some fun official recap videos that make the series seem lighthearted, and after the exchange of "All you need to know is they eat babies" "Who's they?" "THEY", they were all caught up to speed. Here's the post I made in the anime thread for The Promised Neverland.

Just watched episodes 3 and 4 with a group (having been unable to watch episode 3 with them last week), and they seemed to really enjoy it. Ray being the traitor especially got a big, "Oh shit!" reaction; they were assuming both Don and Gilda were traitors. Granted, I did mention the issues with episode 3 the previous week, so that could have affected what they found acceptable.

Watching episode 4 again, I thought they did a pretty great job with Norman clearly suspecting Ray, but being unsure what to do about it until he talked to Emma.

EDIT: Also, I checked manga chapters 10-12, which this episode adapted (the first part of chapter 10 being the ending of episode 3), and it's a pretty close adaptation, even including some adaptation choices I liked, such as condensing the scene of talking to Don and Gilda with Norman telling Ray about the ropes.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, one person in the group watch hadn't actually watched episodes 1-2, and they still dug episodes 3-4.

Click to shrink...

After that, I unfortunately wasn't able to get Super Gals episode 31 working.

Due to me attending a wedding (not mine), I won't be able to run either of the next two streams. Hopefully I'll be able to catch bits of whatever gets run.

Art dump.
1.DATE by LooknamTCN on DeviantArt - Sunset X SciTwi
2.Octavia by Holivi on DeviantArt - Anthro
3.Sailing Through the Snow by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt - Fluttershy X Discord
4.Human Twilight and Starlight by twilightglimmer
5.Human Trixie and Starlight by twilightglimmer

Spoiler: Art 1

1.Human PonyTwi having a hard time writing by tastyrainbow
2.YONA NO by kam
3.Fluttershy Vector 27 - Relaxing by CyanLightning on DeviantArt
4.Twilight with a flower in her hair by tingsan
5.Starlight Glimmer x Mercy by Avonir on DeviantArt - Cosplay, not shipping

Spoiler: Art 2

1.Sunset carrying Sunset by katakiuchi4u
2.Mc by DreamSugar on DeviantArt - "Don't Mine at Night" art with Sweetie Belle and Button Mash
3.Rarity by tyuubatu on DeviantArt
4.Tempest tired by ShadowReindeer on DeviantArt
5.S Glimmer by tiffanymarsou on DeviantArt - Starlight

Spoiler: Art 3

1.Random Question by LiaAqila on DeviantArt - Rainbow
2.You say you gonna teach me... by LiaAqila on DeviantArt - Rainbow and Scootaloo
3.Pear Butter and Bright Mac by INowISeeI on DeviantArt
4.Another Hayburger by mirroredsea on DeviantArt - Pinkie
5.Stars by mirroredsea on DeviantArt - Luna

Spoiler: Art 4

1.Dashie x Twi - Collab [Comm Reward] by Darksly-z on DeviantArt
2.Sweetie Plushie by thediscorded on DeviantArt - Apple Bloom
3.Rarara ra by PosionJoke on DeviantArt - Rarity
4.Beauty and Ferocity by Allionii-Azy on DeviantArt - Mistmane
5.My Rarity Redesign by 12irinchan on DeviantArt

Spoiler: Art 5

1.EQG Trixie and Starlight on a broom by keeerooooo1
2.Sunburst again by TehShockwave on DeviantArt
3.Ocellus by puppies4lana
4.MLP - Loving StarTrix by Rosey-Raven on DeviantArt - Starlight X Trixie
5.MLP:YL - Flurry Onward by InuHoshi-to-DarkPen on DeviantArt - Also Sunburst

Spoiler: Art 6

Neat "Bad Apple" based animation and song


Original StarTrix song


Music box version of "I'll Fly"