My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 498

Either a montage or just a scene where Fluttershy gets wronged, and it's "the last straw" and they show her snapping under the pressure. Just have some eye-twitch, slow angled zoom in and red hue on the screen, followed up by FS ripping into the wrongdoer and the rest is entirely believable and in line with what the show has done in the past.

Still, the episode had other problems, namely the pacing. Below average episode in my book.

Sure, they were. But it seems somewhat weird to me that donkeys, goats, gryphons, cows and whatnot are common in Equestria, despite the name implying that it's the land of horses (or ponies in this case), while the first time they saw a zebra, all of them freaked out.

They aren't common. We've seen three donkeys, two goats, one gryphon, one cow, and one zebra. In contrast, there have been countless ponies.

It never ceases to amaze me just how fucking good the animators are at what they do.

There are only a few things I didn't like with this episode.
First, Angel was acting out of character. In the other episodes, he is always helpful to Fluttershy and gives her a push in the right direction when she needs it. While the scenes in this episodes are kind of funny, I find it hard to believe, that he would be that much of a dick like he is in this episode. While both the slap and throwing her out of the house are funny, they imo are too much together. One of them would have been enough. The basic idea of using their relationship as introduction to Fluttershys problem was good, but the execution went way over the top. However, he is suddenly back in character at the end, when he is the only animal that sticks with her.

Second, Iron Will is hardly questioning why Fluttershy doesn't want to pay. He could at least ask her why she was not satisfied. The only thing he has at the end is a reason to question his approach and a new phrase, which would also fit into his old concept. Since he is the main representative of a wrong way of being assertive, a change in his personality would definately help getting the message across, yet there is no real change to him.

Third, Fluttershy realizes the bad aspects of her new personality way too fast. There is only one scene, where she gets to see the bad side of her new self. This needed more time to build up in a realistic way.

Actually I think some scenes were cut out because of time issues, because at one point I looked at the time and it was only about one or two minutes minutes left, with the whole confrontation between Fluttershy and Iron Will still coming, also the reunion with Pinkie and Rarity and of course the letter and the credits. That's not enough time to do all that properly if you ask me.

Still a nearly excellent episode in my book, it just needed more time to display the change from nasty Fluttershy back to nice Fluttershy

Fluttershy will still be the kind, shy and caring character we know, however, when her needs collide with those of other ponies, she won't take it anymore, if they want to exploit her behavior for their personal gain. That's what was the problem depicted at the beginning and on the market.

with this episode is the portrayal of so many characters and background ponies who have almost always been portrayed as good being completely reworked to be selfish and bad in this completely new Ponyville that appears out of nowhere. Sure we've always had our mini-villain here and there, but the general population was always portrayed as good. In this episode it portrays them as greedy, selfish, inconsiderate, etc etc... turns out Ponyville isn't such a good place after all (in this episode at least). Almost every background character is a Diamond Tiara.

Rather than a plot being adapted to fit the environment of Equestria that we've seen and loved for the past 40 or so episodes, the entire environment is abruptly changed to match the plot of this episode.

In this foreign environment, it's not exactly surprising that Fluttershy could have misconstrued the message of "stand up for yourself" as "stand up for yourself because most people in the world are going to be bad people who will try to take advantage of you". It's just a poor way to execute the message the episode was supposed to give.

The only other episode with a vaguely similar environment is 21, but really that's not portraying society as inherently egoist, it's just two "good" societies who have a disagreement.

Gryphons, Pegasi, Minotaurs and Goats(Satyrs?) are all from greek/european mythology.
Zebras are african.
Every european in the last 300 years or so would have heard at one point or another of those fictional european creatures. This isn´t necessarily true for creatures from other continents like africa(see platypus from australia, many thought it was a hoax).

I really liked Iron Will.
Very much disliked Angel being such an ass/out of character. Didn´t like the market scene either where everyone was acting like an ass and cutting in line. Especially the cherry vendor. If he really was in this for the profit, he would have tried to sell the cherry to FS instead of letting some random bypasser buy it for 2 bits. That gave me the impression that the vendor is just a jerk.
Some dialogues were cringeworthy(Rarity flattering the nerd....).
There should also have been an indication that FS did more than talk down a goat. Mr T saying "And now you will deal with someone ignoring you" or something. Any indication would have been good.
Those parts did leave a bitter taste for me. Badly connectivity between scenes are another but minor issue.

I really liked Iron Will though. It makes sense that a physically intimidating person would be actually a bit ignorant when it comes to actual assertiveness. It could only have been better if they had the actuall MR T speaking his voice(Like Q/Discord).
I actually found Pinkies characterisation in this ep way better than Rarity, which is usually way the other way around.
The scene where PP and R have tears in their eyes was pretty good and from there the resolution was fantastic. PP and R came to FSs cottage even though they were wronged, a gesture of forgiveness, really love that. Shots inside the cottage with the horns on the mirror etc. were absolutely excellent, very strong imagery.
Especiall when Iron Will violently tore down the planks in front of the door and then suddenly just knocks on the door. Shows that he is no monster, just a business man/motivation trainer.

So all in all, the first half was a letdown by pony standards if you ask me. Feel bad some people dislike flutterbitch and just wanna see FS being nice all the time. I can accept a pony with "2 faces".

This part always cracks me up!

I thought that character was awesome, it's a shame he'll probably never come back (kinda like Trixie and other one-episode ponies)