S04E14: Filli Vanilli

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Re: S04E14: Filli Vanilli

Postby Angel Beat (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:39 am

Ohmigosh, this episode. :starity:

Knocked it out of the park and through a window once again. :-D

And Pinkie vocalising Shutterfly's fears and insecurities for everyone else was just icing on the cake. :-I
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Postby acksed (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:07 am

Loved what the episode did with Fluttershy, dismayed at Pinkie being handed the idiot ball and seemingly jettisoning any social awareness she had. Pinkie knows when ponies become upset. When the others tell her to stop, she stops and is considerate. She has never been this clueless or insensitive to FS, ever. Not in "Too Many Pinkie Pies", not in "Putting Your Hoof Down", or any of her other appearances.

Now, even 'Shy can be insensitive for the sake of a gag, like when she was trying to 'encourage' RD in "Sonic Rainboom". The first time it happened here, I thought that was it. But it happened too many times, it looked and sounded actively malicious and she was repeatedly told to stop. Wait... she was never specifically told to stop harassing FS, it was either, "Don't be ridiculous" or being physically pulled off. No, that would have been enough. It should have been enough. But no, they had to force-feed Pinkie an extra bowl of Autism for this episode so she could make FS's inside voice external. :ohrarity:

What really confuses my moral outrage is that, apart from that, it's an adorable, feel-good Fluttershy episode with a good message. My heart actually lifted at the opening song. Haven't had that little flash of joy since the Find A Pet song.

Edit: I rewatched it. PP's not trying to be malicious the first time, nor the second time when she confronts FS, and the rest make it clear when FS runs off that she was being insensitive and she didn't know. PP quickly amends "You kinda sounded like a guy" to "...a really good guy." So not double the autism, more... 30% more.
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Postby Davyinatoga (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:32 am

Scandinavian Hipster dad's design was cool if only for the reason that he's decidedly stocky. Plus, Zipperwhirl (I assume is what her names translates to in English?) is cool and the way she perches her tiny little body right up on his shoulder like it was nothing was super-duper cool. Take that, you lanky-Mr.-Cake-who-struggles-to-balance-a-large-headed-baby-on-your-back. :smug:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:44 am

It's Zippoorwhill, after this bird. The Zip- does refer to her zipping around, otherwise it's a pun of the bird.

I think that odd portmanteau led to the foreign-sounding dad.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:03 am

I just really can't get my head around how such a strange, inventive, otherworldly design for a kid as they used on Zippoorwhill got paired with that almost comically clumsy real-person-caricature dad design. It's like they came from two different shows—Zip from something way beyond even the purest and most creative corners of pre-fandom-contact S1, and Dad from the far opposite cheap mundane-world-insert end of the spectrum. Like there was a jam session between Rob Renzetti and the idiot nephew of some crusty Hasbro VP.

Don't get me wrong, I think Dad is hilarious for his own reasons—his accent just trips me out, and I love his giant ungainly wings and the very idea that that big bearded galoot is going to achieve liftoff and soar gracefully anywhere with his daughter zipping all around him. But the two of them are like a mashup of wildly disparate creative sources, like Drawn Together characters forced into a living room together, or one of those video games where Mario fights Solid Snake or whatever.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:48 am

No one's posted the deleted scene for this episode yet? Cheerilee is rethinking a lot of things... :gotcha:

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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:50 am

Wayoshi wrote:No one's posted the deleted scene for this episode yet? Cheerilee is rethinking a lot of things... :gotcha:

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I figured it would be too shippy for the forums. :smirk:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:00 am

Cheerilee / Big Mac is jokey-canon, it's fine. :pinkieshrug:

Also, ponymote deleted scenes is such a natural addition to the weekly routine. Thank you tumblr :flutterunsmith:
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:10 am

Wayoshi wrote:Cheerilee / Big Mac is jokey-canon, it's fine. :pinkieshrug:


I really hope I'm not alone in hoping they continue to establish it further in the show. I just love how naturally it's progressing :allears:
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Postby Ransom (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:49 am

Headless Horse wrote:
I really hope I'm not alone in hoping they continue to establish it further in the show. I just love how naturally it's progressing :allears:

You know, looking back, it sortof is. Of course they're in the background so much you can buy it if they suddenly popped up as an item and assume it all happened off screen :gotcha:
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:52 am

Season 5 finale will be the Cheerimac wedding/ Big Mac Princess coronation. :gotcha:
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Postby Pocket (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:49 am

Headless Horse wrote:It's like they came from two different shows—Zip from something way beyond even the purest and most creative corners of pre-fandom-contact S1, and Dad from the far opposite cheap mundane-world-insert end of the spectrum.

That's an interesting way to put it. It puts me in mind of how I frequently mistook some of the names from season one (like the Everfree Forest) as being holdovers from previous generations because of how perfectly kid-show they sounded.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:22 am

SoundMonkey44 wrote:Season 5 finale will be the Cheerimac wedding/ Big Mac Princess coronation. :gotcha:


Wouldn't he technically be a prince? :gotcha:
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Postby Venusy (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:38 am

Veradox wrote:I don't know where to begin with this episode, it succeeded in every way possible. I have social anxiety myself, so this was a very relatable episode, and by the end, I was bawling my eyes out. I can't clarify how much I absolutely loved this episode. It may take the prize as my favorite episode of the show so far. 10/10. :yay:

Yeah. I wasn't exactly bawling, but I did tear up quite a bit. :flutterunsmith:
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Postby Frosthawk (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 8:10 am

What kind of amazes me about this episode was the fact that I wasn't quite as enamored with it as a lot of other people seem to be, and this should be right up my alley. It's a Fluttershy episode, for Christ. And don't get me wrong, it's still easily a top-5-maybe-top-3-after-a-rewatch episode for me this season, and the ending was excellent.

Really, my favorite part of this episode was just how much Fluttershy was getting into the music - I feel that was a new aspect to her character that was only hinted at before, but never fully explored like it was here. That was pretty much a joy to watch.

It's just a couple of premise-related issues that kind of nagged at me around the beginning. I still feel the whole "whoa we've never heard Fluttershy sing before!" aspect is kind of dubious, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics I make myself do with it. And Pinkie's first rant at Fluttershy is something I can't get over. With the latter ones I can buy that she was legitimately trying to kind of nice, and just oblivious, but I don't know how you can do that first thing by accident. For similar reasons, Fluttershy doing the same thing in Sonic Rainboom has always bothered me (I just chose to believe that Fluttershy was intentionally trolling Dash cause that's the funniest and best option).

I really didn't think the Flutterguy callback was grating simply for the fact I don't really see it as a "callback" at all, just some more continuity. If it had just been played as a joke for the 2nd time, then yes, it's a callback. But it actually really wasn't a joke in the context of this episode, but a necessary and important part of the story. And yes, it was necessary - the story doesn't work if Fluttershy sings in her normal voice.

I also wasn't aware that hipster dad's design was any kind of problem until I read this thread.

Overall I think I need to watch this episode again.
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Postby londonarbuckle (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 8:47 am

Frosthawk wrote:
Really, my favorite part of this episode was just how much Fluttershy was getting into the music - I feel that was a new aspect to her character that was only hinted at before, but never fully explored like it was here. That was pretty much a joy to watch.



Pretty much this. So amazingly adorable and great and other happy-type feelings.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:59 am

Yes! For me the entire episode can almost be condensed down into a single moment.

That first time when Fluttershy sings backstage—she's all hesitant and uncertain as she goes into the first few bum-bum-bums. She's out of her element in this alien situation, and her eyes show it. But then slowly, gradually, the other three join in for the second line, and then when the harmony's all kicking in, and she starts to feel how she's fitting into the musical texture as she gets to the "aaa-AAHH":

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That expression—oohh, that expression. Just that one little moment of epiphany. It's like Rarity's-second-fashion-show levels of concentrated eye-streaming emotional rush.


E: These are the things that make the pony show special. It's not the plot that's new or interesting, or even the twists on the story that fit it into the horse universe in an engaging way. It's the way they take something like the way this character reacts to the situation, the way they animate her grooving to a new pleasure, the way it fills the viewer with the same joy she's feeling and just execute the living hell out of it. You can't explain it in words to someone who's never seen the show or doesn't know the characters. But if you do know them, if you do have that investment in how they're feeling... it's a sensation I just don't get from any other sustained piece of entertainment, and have only experienced once or twice in sporadic treasured bursts. And even then it's sort of an incidental bonus. This show makes it Priority #1 and just keeps delivering.
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Postby Thaddeus (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 12:19 pm

Horsie Emotions :3
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 12:45 pm

Frosthawk wrote:Really, my favorite part of this episode was just how much Fluttershy was getting into the music - I feel that was a new aspect to her character that was only hinted at before, but never fully explored like it was here. That was pretty much a joy to watch.

It's never really come up largely because Fluttershy almost never gets excited and enthusiastic about things. For example, back in the comics, her micro-series issue covered her skill at knitting and had her fear of being discovered for it as the issue's conflict. Much like that, this episode expanded on a side of her that got mentioned a long time ago (in this case, her knowledge of music, like with her bird choir) and showed that she really loved it but just didn't want to gain attention for it. :flutterunsmith:
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:04 pm

Also I feel like I want to take back every criticism I've ever had toward the show's chronically lackluster lyric-writing and poetry, just because this one song does such a great job with it. It plays with lyrical delivery like a bird in a birdbath. It's got all that crazy counterpoint and interplay between lines that we hashed to death in the aftermath of Rarity Takes Manehattan—everything I'd hope to see in a really top-drawer song. True, the content is no great shakes; "I've got the music in me" is less a meaningful statement than it is just a piece of melodious syllabic filler for the purpose of using the human voice as an instrument; but with that job to do, it does it damn well. And that's really what doo-wop is all about anyway.

I don't even have a quibble with the slightly odd stress pattern of "I've got the music IN me"—because the stresses are actually correct and meaningful as used. The alternative/more natural ways of stressing the line, "I've got the MUSIC in me" or "I've got the music in ME" are equally right in terms of language, and you literally could mean to use any of them depending on which word/concept you would want to stress in normal speech—whether you're emphasizing that what you have in you is music, or whether the music is in you instead of someone else. In this case, you're saying you've got the music in you, as opposed to getting it from some outside source—that's the whole point of the statement. And with that in mind the lyric works perfectly well.

I think my point is that Daniel Ingram is being tragically underutilized by making him only write the music to someone else's lyrics most of the time. I think he has more untapped talent in wordsmithing and genre-sensitive lyric-wrangling than the show ever gives him the opportunity to exercise. I don't know what led them to give the reins over to him this time and let him just run roughshod over whatever AKR put to paper, but holy damn the results make me want them to do it again and again.
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Postby InC (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:31 pm

Headless Horse wrote:I think my point is that Daniel Ingram is being tragically underutilized by making him only write the music to someone else's lyrics most of the time. I think he has more untapped talent in wordsmithing and genre-sensitive lyric-wrangling than the show ever gives him the opportunity to exercise. I don't know what led them to give the reins over to him this time and let him just run roughshod over whatever AKR put to paper, but holy damn the results make me want them to do it again and again.


Here we have an unusual example of an in-universe song whose content is not tied to the plot in any way, so the writers don't have any reason to contribute the lyrics themselves and Ingram can go wild. I'm usually not a fan of FiM's songs, but Got The Music was pretty good and it probably had a lot to do with the lyrics not dragging it down. I also like that they picked a comparatively obscure genre that actually fits the world so much better than what you usually expect from a 2014 kids show, like Make A Wish. Plus, I'd like to believe it increases the odds of Rarity and Sweetie Belle having something like a jazz or soul music duet. Make it happen, pony show. :vogue: :milkshake:
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:59 pm

Yeah the song is pretty great.

I clicked on a YouTube video yesterday that advertised "all the songs" of S4E14, which was basically four minutes of "bum bum bum da dum bum" over and over again. It drove home just how much they reuse the same song (and how hard it'll be for somebody like Octavia to rip the song since there's no definitive version, just a half-dozen partials and do-overs).

But damn, it's just so joyous. The song builds with each reprise, starting with a cappella and adding instrumentation and Fluttershy's increasingly giddy vocal improv, until at the end we have Fluttershy singing with her natural voice and weaving in pieces of her "Snow White" song from the cold open.

I liked this episode the first time I saw it, but after rewatching I like it even more given how well the music buoys the whole thing and makes everything feel so goddamn happy. I think this is going to stand up really well to rewatches.
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:11 pm

The episode is on iTunes but it's called FlutterFear, guess that was one of the earlier episode titles. XD
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:14 pm

God dammit Hub :lol:

Thought that's interesting, I wonder if they're actually exposing themselves to some kind of defamation lawsuit or something with that title.
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Postby Wylie (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:26 pm

Headless Horse wrote:God dammit Hub :lol:

Thought that's interesting, I wonder if they're actually exposing themselves to some kind of defamation lawsuit or something with that title.


I doubt it. Part of defamation requires that you're saying something untrue, which naming this episode after Milli Vanilli doesn't. The thing they got caught doing wasn't just lip synching, tons of acts do that live. Their problem was that they were lip synching to someone else's voice- which is exactly what Big Mac does in this episode.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:27 pm

Huh...is that band even around anymore? If so, the record company might have taken notice of them and ordered the title change. It could happen. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:49 pm

Also Fluttershy isn't my favorite pony but look at her all smiling in a sweater and bow tie:

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That's plutonium-grade cuteness right there. Even Sauron thinks that's totes adorbs.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:53 pm

PictishBeast wrote:Yeah the song is pretty great.

I clicked on a YouTube video yesterday that advertised "all the songs" of S4E14, which was basically four minutes of "bum bum bum da dum bum" over and over again. It drove home just how much they reuse the same song (and how hard it'll be for somebody like Octavia to rip the song since there's no definitive version, just a half-dozen partials and do-overs).

But damn, it's just so joyous. The song builds with each reprise, starting with a cappella and adding instrumentation and Fluttershy's increasingly giddy vocal improv, until at the end we have Fluttershy singing with her natural voice and weaving in pieces of her "Snow White" song from the cold open.


It feels fully realized. Like it gives itself all the time it needs, over the course of the whole episode, to develop all the way into what it wants to be.

That's one of the problems with a lot of pony songs: they're just too damn short. It's the fault of the medium/format. Magical Mystery Cure in particular suffered from the self-imposed requirement of fitting like five or six songs into a 22-minute episode; and in the end what should be a full-length studio recording album of fully realized songs ends up being just a series of minute-long vignettes, with maybe one verse each, two if you're lucky.

The best songs tend to be the ones where they do make the commitment of three to four minutes of screentime to a full-bore song with development, multiple stanzas, chorus repetition, bridges, key changes, and all the rest—"Smile" is a perfect example, and so is "At the Gala", and "Find a Pet", and "Stitching It Together" of course has a reprise that makes the whole thing feel satisfyingly long and fleshed-out. But "So Many Wonders" is over in less than a minute, and I feel like "Becoming Popular" is just screaming for an instrumental bridge or another verse or two. And the Show Stoppers song, even though you're not supposed to think it's any good, does at least give you the impression (going by that one crossfade) that there was more to it than we got to see in the actual performance.

This time, though, they pretty much just let one song carry itself throughout the entire 22 minutes—repeating and reinventing itself every time. It has all the time it wants to go everywhere it might possibly need. It never feels cramped or prematurely cut-off, nor does it feel repetitive or stale. With 22 minutes to express all its variations and to tell its own little story—from initial simple expression, to elaboration (with Fluttershy), to conflict and chaos (Fluttershy's ad-libbing), to redemption and recapitulation (the natural-voiced finale)—it's a damn fine piece of work all on its own.
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:56 pm

I buckin hate iTunes, it won't let me download anything. >:(. Guess I'll just have to try again later.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:02 pm

SoundMonkey44 wrote:I buckin hate iTunes, it won't let me download anything. >:(. Guess I'll just have to try again later.


This episode is the first in a new "volume" (half-season), vol. 7. If you haven't bought the season pass you'll need to.

Also just noticed the title "Three's a Crowd?" [sic] :smirk:
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Postby Venusy (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:05 pm

Headless Horse wrote:God dammit Hub :lol:

Thought that's interesting, I wonder if they're actually exposing themselves to some kind of defamation lawsuit or something with that title.

According to Amy Keating Rogers, the idea for the episode was pitched back in September 2012.[2] She also claims to pitched it as "The Return of Flutterguy", but the title was too spoilery, so it was changed to "Flutterfear", which was subsequently changed to the current title.[3]

No, it's just that no one bothered telling the person in charge of iTunes uploads that the title had changed. :v:
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Postby InC (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:05 pm

PictishBeast wrote:I liked this episode the first time I saw it, but after rewatching I like it even more given how well the music buoys the whole thing and makes everything feel so goddamn happy. I think this is going to stand up really well to rewatches.


It's not like I rewinded the song montage about three times on first viewing or anything. :liarjack:

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If you listen carefully, on every corner there's a rhythm playing :ponydrugs:


That's what makes this show good. They can have the most self-indulgent, feel-good happy tune sang by a yellow horse in a diving suit, but they somehow got us to care enough about the characters to smash through our jaded cynicism and have us feel the joy of a dumb yellow horse and be happy that she found a way to express herself and sing and :ponydrugs:

It all works become these ponies feel so human, and the storyboard and layout crew deserve a lot of credit for that. That's why FiM is the only TV-budget content that I can really appreciate for its animation. Sure, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe and Korra have better production by many standards, but while DHX couldn't make the NMM battle visually impressive they deliver on all the simples bits where shows that aren't as dirt cheap to produce have to settle with limited animation. Without even going into the animation, just look at this:

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You don't even need to know anything about this episode or the characters to get what's happening here.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:20 pm

InC wrote:If you listen carefully, on every corner there's a rhythm playing :ponydrugs:


I'm glad you got me to go look up the transcript, because:

If you listen carefully
On every corner there's a rhythm playing
Then it happens suddenly
The music takes you over and you'll

Find you've got the music

Got the music in you


Look at that transition, from stanza to chorus within the same sentence. God damn, that's the kind of cleverness that makes me fascinated by everything from Run DMC to Gilbert & Sullivan.

I really couldn't ask for much better than this. :awesomedash:
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Postby Aramek (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:26 pm

Fluttershy may be my least favourite pony, but her episodes are 100% fantastic because I always find myself cheering for her at the end.

"GO FLUTTERSHY! YOU CAN DO IT! REALIZE THE POWER WITHIN! UNLEASH THE BEAST!!! UNLEASH THE BEAST!!!" :black101:
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:32 pm

Fluttershy's conflicts and challenges are trivial to everyone except her, for whom they have enormously high stakes. It's not that she's a drama queen, she's just a very internal character and no obstacles are harder than the ones you make for yourself. That's why Fluttershy can work up the courage to say "No" to somepony and we cheer like it's fuckin' Thermopylae. :black101:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:56 pm

PictishBeast wrote:Also Fluttershy isn't my favorite pony but look at her all smiling in a sweater and bow tie:

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That's plutonium-grade cuteness right there. Even Sauron thinks that's totes adorbs.

Green isn't Rarity's color, but it definitely is Fluttershy's. (I feel sorry that such color distinction is largely lost on you. :fluttersmith:)
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:05 pm

Huh, that colour really does work well with Fluttershy. I wonder if they'll use it more often... :ponder:
:plonk: Image :)
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:39 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:Huh, that colour really does work well with Fluttershy. I wonder if they'll use it more often... :ponder:

It's actually just about the same teal as her eyes. I can't do a proper color sampling right now, but her outfit as the Saddle Rager back in Power Ponies used a similar (though slightly darker, as I remember it) green color.
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:54 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:Green isn't Rarity's color, but it definitely is Fluttershy's. (I feel sorry that such color distinction is largely lost on you. :fluttersmith:)


Does the sweater actually look bad on Rarity or was that just a pun?

(I love listening in on colortalk when it happens, I file shit away like an anthropologist. "hmm, so the sweaters were green. iiiiiinteresting." :ponder: )
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Postby Aramek (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:05 pm

Nothing looks bad on Rarity.

Even in Magic Duel when she had the ugly dress poofed onto her. Looked good.
Even in Boast Busters when she had the ugly green hair poofed onto her. Looked good.

:vogue:
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