S04E23: Inspiration Manifestation

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Re: S04E23: Inspiration Manifestation

Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:26 am



Thank you. :vogue:
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Postby Applepie (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:09 am

And this is why I hope for an episode featuring Rarity and Pinkie Pie in S5.


That would be funny with a Rarity and PP episode.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:25 am

I would definitely love a Rarity and Pinkie episode. It's actually at the top of my wishlist for Season 5.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:36 am

Headless Horse wrote:A couple of people have noted that this ep had a very "first-season" kind of feel to it, almost as though they're consciously trying to hark back to the early texture as much as possible. Well, here's something I noticed:

Image

Oh hi face I haven't seen since S1. :-I

Now that you mention it, I can't help but wonder what things would've been like had this episode been in S1. Back then, would it have been too much for Rarity to lose her mind due to the misuse of dark magic? I think it would've worked, though it definitely would have made the early fandom go wild. Spike finding that old spellbook would've been fine as it was, too. Even though the old castle was much more mysterious and dangerous back then, Spike was also madly in love with Rarity, so there's an easy explanation for him braving the dangers of the Everfree Forest.
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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:39 am

One thing I can't help but notice, one episode away from the finale and the castle is still in the same shape it was at the beggining of the season. What was the whole point of them fixing it up in Power Ponies? It's not even any cleaner.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:42 am

The episodes may not take place in a linear timeline.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:45 am

Or they just didn't fix it up very much. In Castle Mane-ia they spent most of that time being scared by each other and Pinkie Pie, and in Power Ponies they spent most of that time trapped inside a magical comic book. They haven't been back since, so I guess the show is actually sticking to its continuity!
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:04 pm

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote:Image
Image :"Where is Princess Celestia?"
:speakest: Yes, let's just flip the open sign to closed on the entire Princessdom and turn the hands on the "Be back soon" clock because Twilight's Dragon blundered into a forbidden wing of the ancient library.


:pcstare: Now I want every bit of evil placed in here.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:31 pm

Also

Niels Olof wrote:
Huh, that show never made it to my part of the world, but this must be the referenced scene:



Seems a good deal funnier when Spike does it.



I'd never seen Saved by the Bell (gasp, I know), but seeing this clip makes me absolutely crazy at how great a reference this is. :ponydrugsliterally:

It's been said that this ep has the same moral as Leap of Faith; but it's importantly different. LoF's was something like "A painful truth is always better than a pleasant lie, even if it doesn't look like it in the short term". But this one is far more explicitly "Don't enable your friend's drug habit."

And yet they did it in such a way that you only realize it's a Very Special Episode if you're a grown-up who can recognize one coming a mile off. To a kid there's no frame of reference. There's no obvious clue what real-world phenomenon it's being didactic about. But it's something they can internalize anyway, and apply later in life as an instinctual, organic "right thing to do" if and when the situation comes up.

The confirmation from Jayson is lovely to see. It's a reminder of how careful they're all being with their subject matter and yet at the same time how much fun they're having under the surface. Making an oblique reference to a notorious but aging cultural touchstone that will be recognizable only to thirty-somethings, as a way of telegraphing the confirmation that yes, Mom, that is exactly what we're doing in this episode, wink wink, now sit back and let the kid watch, we got this* is chapter-and-verse Pony to me, and the mark of writers who really have their shit together.

It reminds me of that bit in Drawn Together where Wooldoor, who has been caught shoplifting at the mall, is unceremoniously released. Uncharacteristically for the show, he launches into a pastiche of the released-back-into-society scene from The Shawshank Redemption. It's funny, but it feels out of line with the show's normal humor. And the first time I saw it I thought to myself, "You know what this feels like? A Family Guy scene." I continued to watch with furrowed brow, wondering just what was going on, whether maybe they'd secretly hired Seth McFarlane to guest-write halfway through an episode. Wooldoor went through scene after scene of painfully re-integrating back into the world-got-itself-in-a-big-damn-hurry 60s, in period clothes and Morgan Freeman dialect, just the way I might have expected a Family Guy episode to do one of its tiresome out-of-role pop-culture-referencey bits, and finally he slumped down on the sidewalk in dejection.



And I stood up in front of my TV and went :golfclop:



* Or alternatively, "Yes, you're very smart. Shut up. :-I "
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:34 pm

kefkafloyd wrote:The episodes may not take place in a linear timeline.

That's a cheap excuse. :pinkieshrug:

S4's arc is what it is at this point.

EDIT: Secretly a Very Special Episode? What?? Reference to drugs for a laugh yes, not much else. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby die Fledermaus (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:12 pm

It's not so much secretly a drugs episode as it is a moral that can be applied to a wide variety of things, including something like that, and it actually is pretty good that they did it like that instead of a hamfisted 'special episode' like most kids shows.
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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:15 pm

Character gets hopped up on magical power is an old trope, a few of us that watched it together made referances to The Ring from LOTR.

Heck, I'm pretty sure that's where they got it from in the first place.

It's not a very special episode on drugs.
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Postby die Fledermaus (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:18 pm

Rarity's arc was that yea but I was more talking about Spike's big 'aw geeze I gotta keep supporting her because she's my friend and I promised I'd help her but I should probably tell someone she's gone literally nuts and is bending reality to her whims to make things pretty' thing.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:39 pm

The enabling behaviors of people who interact with those with destructive behaviors can be applied in many kinds of addictions, one of which is drugs.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:59 pm

shotgunbadger wrote:It's not so much secretly a drugs episode as it is a moral that can be applied to a wide variety of things, including something like that, and it actually is pretty good that they did it like that instead of a hamfisted 'special episode' like most kids shows.

True enough. I just didn't see it primarily as a Very Special moral or anything. Maybe that was the whole point and I am just reading these comments wrong. :pinkieshrug:

That said, the thought of Rarity being on crack the whole episode is amusing. :smirk:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:59 pm

Huh, I never really thought of it as Spike being an enabler. I saw his behavior as that of someone who didn't have a good idea of what makes a friend be a friend and just didn't want to lose what he did have.
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Postby doodlesplat (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:43 pm

The unusual interlocking of 'truth is necessary to dispel' and 'only Spike, Owlowiscious, Rarity, and the book knows (and only Spike out of all of them can/will tell the truth' means that Spike kinda got shoehorned into the role of enabler. :-I
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 5:20 pm

Headless Horse wrote:
:pcstare: Now I want every bit of evil placed in here.


Took me a sec.

"That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs!"

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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 5:35 pm

/\ I should just sit myself down and watch a Terry Gilliam marathon.

doodlesplat wrote:The unusual interlocking of 'truth is necessary to dispel' and 'only Spike, Owlowiscious, Rarity, and the book knows (and only Spike out of all of them can/will tell the truth' means that Spike kinda got shoehorned into the role of enabler. :-I


Chances are, Rarity is probably used to disappointment, she deals with it in her own way ...

Image

... and then dusts herself off, cleans the mascara out of the lounge, pulls out the mop and wash bucket, and in a few hours she's working on her next project like the professional she is. :vogue:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:11 pm

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote:... and then dusts herself off, cleans the mascara out of the lounge, pulls out the mop and wash bucket, and in a few hours she's working on her next project like the professional she is. :vogue:

You think she does the cleaning? In cases like that, I'm sure that she always has Spike and/or Sweetie Belle on hand to clean up after her.
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Postby die Fledermaus (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:31 pm

^^^I like the idea of Rarity sitting in this pile of ice cream buckets (she was totally going to have more until Spike came in) just yelling "SWEETIE IT HAPPENED AGAIN" :gonkity:

Wayoshi wrote:True enough. I just didn't see it primarily as a Very Special moral or anything. Maybe that was the whole point and I am just reading these comments wrong. :pinkieshrug:

That said, the thought of Rarity being on crack the whole episode is amusing. :smirk:


Oh yea to be clear I'm not saying it was PRIMARILY that I was (rather clumsily) trying to say I think this is AS CLOSE to one of those as we're going to get, and good on them for doing it in a very broad, entertaining, way rather than a hamfisted 'we're going to have a very serious episode' thing that many kids shows go down.

But yea the moral of the episode is 'don't be an enabler when you see your friend going down a bad road' and that can mean anything from 'get your friend off the crack pipe' to 'hey buddy maybe take a deep breath and calm down a little?'
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Postby citric (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:39 pm

None of the side effects were removed when the spell ended. Rarity was rewarded for her rampage by coming home to ten billion dresses and a brand new couch :wat:
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Postby Kitsune (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:43 pm

citric wrote:None of the side effects were removed when the spell ended. Rarity was rewarded for her rampage by coming home to ten billion dresses and a brand new couch :wat:


If her artistic talent is anything like mine, after a few days she'd decide that everything she has is tacky and end up redoing all fifteen seasons' clothing lineups from scratch.

...I'm very critical about my own art :v:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:25 pm

Foxfyre wrote:
If her artistic talent is anything like mine, after a few days she'd decide that everything she has is tacky and end up redoing all fifteen seasons' clothing lineups from scratch.

...I'm very critical about my own art :v:

And furthermore, I'm almost certain she conjures those fainting couches directly via magic, so having new ones in the boutique is nothing new. She likely sells them for a bit of extra cash on the side.
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:32 pm

Rarity can break the law of conservation of mass, but only as it applies to fainting couches.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:34 pm

They're teleported from somewhere. She has a stockroom filled with chaise longues. Like the bows and hats closet. :v:
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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:35 pm

kefkafloyd wrote:They're teleported from somewhere. She has a stockroom filled with chaise longues. Like the bows and hats closet. :v:


The basement under the Boutique is full of them. :v:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:39 pm

kefkafloyd wrote:They're teleported from somewhere. She has a stockroom filled with chaise longues. Like the bows and hats closet. :v:

She pulls them out of the stock of that one store in Ponyville. That's why Davenport had to start selling quills as well.
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Postby Doctor Wheeze (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:13 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:She pulls them out of the stock of that one store in Ponyville. That's why Davenport had to start selling quills as well.

She's just got a subscription with him. She gets one a month.
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Postby Chaos Sonic (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:55 pm

Tears wrote:If it's a Very Special Episode, it's about cocaine: everything is possible, and everything is a great idea.

So you're saying.. it's about... the white pony? :gotcha:
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Postby die Fledermaus (?) » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:07 pm

Chaos Sonic wrote:So you're saying.. it's about... the white pony? :gotcha:


"YEA I SMACKED SPIKE!....Fabulosity is a hell of a drug..."
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 12:11 am

kefkafloyd wrote:They're teleported from somewhere. She has a stockroom filled with chaise longues. Like the bows and hats closet. :v:


I believe that Rarity has her own sub-dimension full of these couches, and has them breach across realities when she summons them. That way, no one else could use these couches. :vogue:
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Postby MochaBean (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 4:45 am

shotgunbadger wrote:
"YEA I SMACKED SPIKE!....Fabulosity is a hell of a drug..."


:ohrarity: Come on, what am I gonna do? Just all of a sudden jump up and grind my hooves on somebody's couch like it's something to do? Come on. I got a little more sense than that.

Image ...Yeah, I remember grinding my hooves on Twilight's couch.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 6:12 am

ShieldedDiamond wrote:
I believe that Rarity has her own sub-dimension full of these couches, and has them breach across realities when she summons them. That way, no one else could use these couches. :vogue:


I believe that Pinkie has fainting couches stored all over Ponyville in case of fainting couch emergencies.
:plonk: Image :)
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:58 pm

ShieldedDiamond wrote:
I believe that Rarity has her own sub-dimension full of these couches, and has them breach across realities when she summons them. That way, no one else could use these couches. :vogue:


Maybe it's one of these mail order subscription services that's a pain in the ass to cancel.
It all started with:
:starity: :"What's this?! I can have my pick of any seven couches from this catalog and for only three bits?"
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:59 pm

Rarity would never sign up for a subscription service without reading the fine print. :v:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 5:25 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:Rarity would never sign up for a subscription service without reading the fine print. :v:

Nah, Twilight Sparkle is the one who reads the fine print. Rarity seems like the type to generally avoid such mass-distributed things (too un-original) unless it's about something she absolutely loves (fashion, gossip, blinging the fuck out of everything, etc.). In that case she signs up right away.
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 5:30 pm

:flimflam: Yes, Miss Rarity, you can try out the Fashion Madness Club for 30 days, and if you don't like it, just call and cancel. Otherwise, we'll bill you $59.95 for the full year.

:starity: But why do I have to call if I don't want it? Why can't I call if I do want to keep it?

:-/ Remind me to discuss the negative option sales tactic with you, Rarity.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 5:44 pm

I'd like to see what's in the Fashion Madness Club.
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Tue Apr 29, 2014 5:51 pm

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Join now!
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