My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 416

Derpy was great! Proves how much the community actually matters.

I might be retarded but I honestly did not see the ending coming. I had assumed that AJ had actually won the tourney and had the prize money sent and that the other 5 were just trying to get AJ back and that the money wasn't a problem.

Still a really great episode, maybe one of my favorites now.

Derpy's ascension is complete. I think I can't say anything more beyond this.

Applejack can't into lying, just as you would expect from the Element of Honesty. She'd rather run away and hide than try to tell any kind of actual lie or try to deceive anyone.

And, as I kept saying in IRC later on... I think we have been reminded today of a very crucial fact about Pinkie Pie:

Don't mess with Pinkie Pie. EVER.

No, that's an Anonymous mask, like the one from V for Vendetta.

Every time I think about this episode I have a fangasm. I'm gonna need at least a few more days before I can sort out my thoughts.
But in summary, AMAZING.
I think it did a lot of things well that I'll try an explain without foaming at the mouth.

The first thing I want to adress is the AJ character development. This episode wasn't about giving her face time, but it developed not her character greatly. I never really got an explicit sense of pride from her. She's been down to earth and family-oriented, but the personal pride and honor that she shows really intrigued me. It wasn't to the point of a character flaw in itself, but when bolstered by her surrounding in Ponyville and the expectations, they were really able to make a good episode out of it. It is an interesting type of egoism though, because its more about what she thinks about how others' think about her, instead of her just thinking about herself. Rainbowdash is more commonly seen as the figure who is prideful by virtue of her own ability, but applejack is focusing on her ability for the sake of others' belief in her ability. This is absolutely fascinating.

As a side-note, I don't actually think they wrote it explicitly to show this, but its something that happens with good writing. In a well written plot that has character development and is educated about the human condition, you start with a base idea and the character literally comes a live. Once this episode was fully completed AJ was truly created, the planning and method was intricate enough to allow for the viewer to make intuitive constructs out of the character. Being social animals (usually) allows us all to pick up on the same subtleties and simply exist in the story and probably weren’t even intentionally made, but this type of happy accident requires absolute mastery and understanding of character writing.

The second thing is the group dynamic (I am stating these in order of importance for me). I like the AJ development the best because it was a much needed episode to flesh out her individuality, so this feature takes a close second. Every pony was fairly portrayed in this episode with respect to their character. As a pinkie pie fan (PPBP!) I was absolutely flustered/amazed/Idon'thavethewordforit by the amount of amazing she was given and I could honestly write pages about how much her role in this episode and the last one means to me, so FUCK YEA! Fluttershy had a few key parts that were amazing, and I especially liked the interaction WITHIN the group. Most of the time when they have a group episode it is the mane 6 taking on a problem or a pony within the mane 6 addresses the group. This episode had a very key difference. I think this is where the lack of AJ time in an AJ episode was brilliantly done. Each of the mane 6 was targeted for very specific actions, it fels like this entire episode was done as if it was a bunch of friends sitting around a table and talking. It had the same feel as a social devlopment between friends. The setting and context was extremely interesting, which helped, but the most important thing for me was that everypony talked to everypony else.

I'm probably going to write something about my vview on Pinkie Pie within the next few weeks, but it will be less analytic and more personal ala my Christmas post.

Third is Derpy. Everyone knows why. It isn't about a good character creation or good dialogue, frankly if she just ran into a wall for 3 seconds we would have all freaked out just as much. The point is that the writers have now established a communicative line with the brony fandom. Isn't that just fucking awesome? Yay~~~~~~

Well that's all I can come up with at the moment. When I have time to think about it more I'll be a bit more in depth, but yes. THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD AND I JUST CAN'T HANDLE IT ER34IKGJNHOAWER8INGIOUW4TGOIWN4OIHYO4IJYHO4IJY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess the only thing I didn't like was how they went back to the western theme. Having a new theme would've been cooler. So its less of a con and mroe of a neutral in that respect.