S04E14: Filli Vanilli

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Re: S04E14: Filli Vanilli

Postby Passport Clean (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:34 am

Wayoshi wrote:If this was the case, everyone would like every show ever. You have to call BS when the moves are bad sometimes. :pinkieshrug:


True, but my personal standards for BS are... forgiving? I feel, it's just more relaxing to approach light entertainment that way. And I do believe there is such a thing as light entertainment, it's not a pejorative, and FiM falls in that category.

And sometimes you have to call BS on the calling of BS, or everything becomes an unwatchable exercise in cognitive dissonance. Example: Skyfall. This is not only the most profitable Bond film to date, it is a critical darling. And yet, when I watched it I noticed all the sizable plot holes and logic tangles I see in all Bond films, not to mention the cliches (yet another movie train-top fight! :-P ) and the way several character decisions made little sense if you poked at them. Now I could join the minority that seethes at this "lazy/incompetent writing", but fuck it, I'm willing to hand wave it all away and trust the writers because, to me, fixating on how the magician performs the trick is missing the point. Glass-half-empty thinking. There's plenty of ways to paper over the flaws if you really need to.

But again, that's all just me.
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Postby Jill (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:37 am

Opposing Farce wrote:See, I might agree with this more if I had gotten the sense that Fluttershy was grappling with an internal conflict once she started getting into the Ponytones thing. I don't really think that's what the episode is presenting, though; she's really just doing it because she enjoys it, and framing it as an act of self-sacrifice is how she avoids admitting to herself she enjoys doing it (because once she admits she wants to perform she can't be happy living in her safe little bubble anymore).
I don't get what you're trying to say here. If doing something makes you uncomfortable enough that you wouldn't do it for only yourself, how do you "frame" that as self-sacrifice? Is that not self-sacrifice?
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Postby doodlesplat (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:37 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:To their credit, it ain't the first time we've seen a less-than-talking hoofed mammal. Pigs have always been dumb and goats, in their sole past appearance, were only seen as Iron Will's assistants and never really seemed to speak.
'English', as we hear it, seems to be the lingua franca of the FiM universe. Iron Will's assistants just chose to speak among their own kind. We've also seen that Daisy Jo the cow moo'd at Applejack before correcting herself and switching into a language that ponies understood. Fluttershy can understand many forms of animal-speak and the animals she talks to can understand her. The "only hoofed-animals have culture and civilization" is probably a thing, but I think it would be a bit speciesist to judge a creature's sentience or sapience based on their ability to speak a particular language. Birds are smart enough to be directed by a conductor, beavers are smart enough to carry out covert ops, the animals in Find A Pet understand sportsmanship, etc..
:-P :-I
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:43 am

And Winona is a garden-variety off-the-shelf dog. :-I
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Postby Passport Clean (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:48 am

Cute theory from reddit about what was reeeally going on in this episode: :sbahj:

http://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/co ... i_vanilli/
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:14 am

For some reason I also just really love the idea of there being a Ponyville Pet Center that has to have fundraisers and adoption drives.

It's a fantasy world of unicorns and rainbows and they have to pass out flyers so the magical townsfolk will come see a band on stage and buy raffle tickets and shit.

:ponydrugs:
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Postby Jill (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:25 am

Passport Clean wrote:Cute theory from reddit about what was reeeally going on in this episode: :sbahj:

http://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/co ... i_vanilli/
With this theory we've gone all the way from "Pinkie is a well-meaning jerkwad" to "Pinkie is a well-meaning jerkwad" :amazing:
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Postby Weird Autumn (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:28 am

Grim wrote:I don't get what you're trying to say here. If doing something makes you uncomfortable enough that you wouldn't do it for only yourself, how do you "frame" that as self-sacrifice? Is that not self-sacrifice?

I had a bit of trouble wording this idea, but the episode makes it clear that after the pet fair Fluttershy is singing with the Ponytones because she wants to, not because she really cares about "oh we can't disappoint the mayor." My interpretation is that she clings to this fiction because otherwise she would have to admit she really does enjoy performing, and if she admitted that then all of a sudden her stage fright becomes something she needs to address and not something she can safely pass off with a "well I don't want to sing in front of people anyway."
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:43 am

Grim wrote:With this theory we've gone all the way from "Pinkie is a well-meaning jerkwad" to "Pinkie is a well-meaning jerkwad" :amazing:


Progress! :party:
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:08 am

This is the first time in a few days that i've gotten in front of my own laptop, so I've finally seen this episode.


:doomed: I can cure this pony that is hoarse, but it will take a longer course.
:starity: You can cure a pony of horse? How is that even possible?!

I swear AKR must have built the show around that pun, dumb as it is. :lol:

:eyebrow: Big Mac, you got some 'splainin' to do!

:squintyjack: Turkey call?
:eeyup: Eeyup.


There is so much to like about this show.
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doodlesplat wrote:If the poison joke effects are reliably activated and de-activated by a brew and a bath, every pony ought to want to have themselves tested to see what special secondary abilities they might get.
:v:


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Postby The Doctor (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:12 am

:ponder: Is the first time they have used the "hoarse" pun? 4 years, that took some restraint.
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Postby Kitsune (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:13 am

Don't forget how they waited until the end of Season 2 to pull a 'why the long face' joke.

I wonder if this whole series is actually just a several-year-long setup for some horse puns :-I
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Postby MLPMan (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:43 am

Passport Clean wrote:Cute theory from reddit about what was reeeally going on in this episode: :sbahj:

http://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/co ... i_vanilli/

Pretty cool theory.

I also found this one comment from that thread interesting.

My thought was that Pinkie kept mentioning people getting jealous of Fluttershy's voice when really she was talking about herself getting jealous. Pinkie has been seen singing in front of people pretty often (see the end of Pinkie Pride, You Gotta Share You Gotta Care, and almost every single season one episode) so it would make sense that she would be jealous.


I guess I could see Pinkie's insecurities, but if that's how she would handle things then you can also put me on the bandwagon of people not too thrilled with her behavior this episode. However, I would still like to view it as Pinkie just being Pinkie without a filter.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:45 am

Wow, I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. I actually did think that Pinkie was jealous of Fluttershy in the ep, hence her behavior.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:54 am

:modesty: You're not jealous of my voice are you?
:amazing: That'd be a heck of a thing, wouldn't it?
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Postby Ransom (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:58 am

Pinkie was replaced with a mirror pool clone this episode :flail:
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:03 am

Ransom wrote:Pinkie was replaced with a mirror pool clone this episode :flail:


Changelings. Every OOC moment on this show is explained with changelings. :evil:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:09 am

I'm not seeing any jealousy at all. That's not her MO :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Ransom (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:28 am

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Changelings. Every OOC moment on this show is explained with changelings. :evil:

Or maybe the Changlings are what you see as the IC moments and the OOC moments are actually the IC moments!

Am I doing this right? :v:
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Postby Davyinatoga (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:35 am

Foxfyre wrote:...But Pinkie's 'you sound like a dude' comment means I'll probably never watch/listen to this episode again :fluttersmith: A lot of Pinkie's behavior seemed kinda bad, but for me that just went too far.

I had a chuckle and thought to myself "how couldn't she, you all do" because I've been using "dude" as a gender-neutral noun for many years. It's like saying somebody doesn't sound human when they speak. :3:
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:39 am

Would it be better if

:skeptical: You sounded like a bro.


Mechanical Ape wrote:
Changelings. Every OOC moment on this show is explained with changelings. :evil:


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Even Changelings have limits.

Please, think of the Changelings.:sadrarity:
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:01 am

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Changelings. Every OOC moment on this show is explained with changelings. :evil:


You know, I'd say that doesn't make sense at first, but I literally have no way of disapproving or even challenging that statement. :starity:
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Postby Frosthawk (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:41 am

ShieldedDiamond wrote:
You know, I'd say that doesn't make sense at first, but I literally have no way of disapproving or even challenging that statement. :starity:


For the same reason, you literally have no way of knowing whether or not your place of residence is currently undergoing a chameleon infestation. :dreamworks:
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Postby Jill (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:47 am

So, this joke

instantly reminded me of Futurama. If there's any good reason for this, please point it out for me. :v:
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Postby Flutter Nutter (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:29 am

Grim wrote:So, this joke

instantly reminded me of Futurama. If there's any good reason for this, please point it out for me. :v:


It sounded like an exchange between Fry and Leela. I felt it too. :twonk:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:31 am

Huh...so I'm not the only one that thought of Futurama during that scene... Has any of the writers for Pony wrote for Futurama or Matt Groening before?
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Postby Captain Rufus (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:36 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW7n8eArJV0

Tell me this band isn't MADE for putting into Ponytones' singing footage.

If you can?

YOU ARE WRONG. :twiright:
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Postby Tears (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:48 am

Opposing Farce wrote:
Really the weirdest thing about this episode to me, even aside from the Flutterguy callback that I'm sure people have discussed to death by now, is how little conflict there actually is. This is honestly kind of a structural weakness in the narrative, I think; in the vast majority of the episode the only real obstacles the characters have to overcome are really minor things that pretty much immediately get settled. There's an initial conflict between Fluttershy and Rarity that they come to an understanding about by the end of the first scene, and then there's no real conflict until Big Mac loses his voice and Fluttershy has to face her stage fright, which also gets worked around in about two minutes. Afterwards we get a good 7-8 minutes or so, basically a third of the episode, where nobody really has any competing interests or internal dilemmas: Fluttershy wants to sing, the other Ponytones want her to sing, Big Mac eventually starts to look a little flustered but nothing really comes of it. The central conflict of the episode only appears with Fluttershy's terrifying searchlight-eye pony heads during the climax, and at that point the show's only giving itself five minutes to address it.



To be honest, you could take that whole paragraph and change the opening words to "Really the greatest thing about the episode for me..." on my part. One thing I love about it is that the conflict exists nowhere but Fluttershy's head. Everyone wants her to succeed. It's a great representation if actual irrational anxiety, in the person's head it's all worry and the gaze of a critical public like lasers, when all her friends are just like "she's really talented, I wish this was easier for her."

It reminds me of this musician I really like called Tiny Vipers, who sang eyes directed straight at the floor the whole show, like if she looked up she'd turn to stone. It was clearly excruciating for her playing in front of even 50 people, and I just felt bad for her. And I don't think anyone wants people to feel that way, for neurosis to get in the way of something they enjoy, but I think it happens a lot.

Most of the time what bothers people isn't a huge crisis, or someone being mean to them, it's dumb stuff in their heads, and I love that it was kept as gentle and chill as that. Obviously responses vary and I'm not saying you're wrong, obviously, it's just that I read your post and was like "god, that's all the best stuff though, that's why I love this episode."

To be honest, if I thought there were enough potential plot lines for stories like this, if have no problem with them just putting the elements in a box and just letting Discord or whoever deal with the fate of Equestria :allears:
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Postby londonarbuckle (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 9:04 am

Tears wrote:
To be honest, you could take that whole episode and change the opening words to "Really the greatest thing about the episode for me..." on my part. One thing I love about it is that the conflict exists nowhere but Fluttershy's head. Everyone wants her to succeed. It's a great representation if actual irrational anxiety, in the person's head it's all worry and the gaze of a critical public like lasers, when all her friends are just like "she's really talented, I wish this was easier for her."

It reminds me of this musician I really like called Tiny Vipers, who sang eyes directed straight at the floor the whole show, like if she looked up she'd turn to stone. It was clearly excruciating for her playing in front of even 50 people, and I just felt bad for her. And I don't think anyone wants people to feel that way, for neurosis to get in the way of something they enjoy, but I think it happens a lot.

Most of the time what bothers people isn't a huge crisis, or someone being mean to them, it's dumb stuff in their heads, and I love that it was kept as gentle and chill as that. Obviously responses vary and I'm not saying you're wrong, obviously, it's just that I read your post and was like "god, that's all the best stuff though, that's why I love this episode."

To be honest, if I thought there were enough potential plot lines for stories like this, if have no problem with them just putting the elements in a box and just letting Discord or whoever deal with the fate of Equestria :allears:


I was going to say something like this except it would have been three sentences long and dumb. Thank you for expressing my opinion better than I would have!
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Postby Venusy (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 9:35 am

Yeah. I've long held the opinion that - for a self-help show - Fluttershy's episodes are possibly the most important. They're the most directly applicable to people who have social anxiety - the primary conflict is always in Fluttershy's head, with the other conflicts just providing an incentive to win the internal one. What differs this time is that she's winning the internal conflict not because her friends are being threatened by a dragon, not for the CMCs facing petrification, not because they can't make the tornado without her extra bit of wingpower, but for herself. :allears: It starts as a matter of necessity, but very quickly turns to enjoyment.
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Postby Tears (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 10:54 am

londonarbuckle wrote:
I was going to say something like this except it would have been three sentences long and dumb. Thank you for expressing my opinion better than I would have!


I had a half hour train journey :ponynet:

But the interiority of the story, the genuine horror Fluttershy felt contrasted with the pure benevolence and support of everyone else (except Greek Chorus of Negative Thinking Pinkie, which I liked but am not gonna argue with people who found it a bit much). Everyone's rooting for her , but there's no sense of frustration with her, and the way it's resolved by just talking it out until she realised it wasn't as bad as she'd thought.

(On that, the idea that if you just get up there and do it, you'll be fine: I played onstage for the first time in a while recently, and beforehand I just thought " :flutterunsmith: feeling nervous beforehand is natural, don't fight it"

But then I got onstage and I was like "Wait, this is much worse, everyone's looking at me and I'm not allowed to leave. I wish I was still just feeling nervous somewhere, fuck :flipout: ")

Venusy wrote:Yeah. I've long held the opinion that - for a self-help show - Fluttershy's episodes are possibly the most important. They're the most directly applicable to people who have social anxiety - the primary conflict is always in Fluttershy's head, with the other conflicts just providing an incentive to win the internal one. What differs this time is that she's winning the internal conflict not because her friends are being threatened by a dragon, not for the CMCs facing petrification, not because they can't make the tornado without her extra bit of wingpower, but for herself. :allears: It starts as a matter of necessity, but very quickly turns to enjoyment.


All your analysis has been great Venusy, and has genuinely added to my enjoyment of the episode :allears:

I think this is my favourite Flutters examination ep, because Hurricane Fluttershy was her stepping up because she felt responsibility for her friend and her community, whereas this is something deeply meaningful to her personally, that she would genuinely love to be able to do.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 10:59 am

Tears wrote:To be honest, you could take that whole episode and change the opening words to "Really the greatest thing about the episode for me..." on my part. One thing I love about it is that the conflict exists nowhere but Fluttershy's head. Everyone wants her to succeed. It's a great representation if actual irrational anxiety, in the person's head it's all worry and the gaze of a critical public like lasers, when all her friends are just like "she's really talented, I wish this was easier for her."


And to reiterate what I'm sure I saw someone say earlier—it's really fascinating how this plays out when Fluttershy is exposed on stage. You'd expect the audience to suddenly turn on her, yelling about the band being a fraud and demanding their money back and so on. But no—they immediately start cheering for her. And that is what sets off her panic attack and hallucinations.

They're chasing her around because they want to congratulate and support her. And yet she still interprets it as a hostile assault. It's a great illustration for the audience of just how irrational and pernicious these kinds of mental issues are; you can't just explain to yourself that there's no harm meant and it'll be okay. It's something a person doesn't have that kind of control over. In many ways that's scarier than something everyone else can see too, because how do you seek safety in numbers when nobody else can even see anything wrong?
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:53 pm

Tears wrote:I think this is my favourite Flutters examination ep, because Hurricane Fluttershy was her stepping up because she felt responsibility for her friend and her community, whereas this is something deeply meaningful to her personally, that she would genuinely love to be able to do.

It's also better than Hurricane Fluttershy in the way it ended. HF ended with the crowd celebrating and cheering for Fluttershy and that was that. Meanwhile, as Headless Horse just mentioned, this episode used that sort of adoration as the reason for her to freak out, instead of the crowd bullying her as they did in HF. Fearing positive attention is far more tragic and heartbreakingly realistic for people like Fluttershy, as well as the gentler, more easygoing ending with her and her friends instead of a miraculous change of heart from everyone like what HF gave us.
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Postby Glazius (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:55 pm

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote: :modesty: You're not jealous of my voice are you?
:amazing: That'd be a heck of a thing, wouldn't it?


You know, with all the people calling Pinkie "Fluttershy's inner voice made flesh", you'd think somebody would have mentioned before now that they share a voice actress.

I wonder if that informed the reading at all. Like, it was read as Fluttershy being mean to herself in hypervox.
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Postby drunkill (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:32 pm

I'm looking for two or three people to join us in this weeks Round Table discussion for the episode.

A few people have it already so I don't want it to get too long or crowded. Anyone interested?

e: The Doctor & ShieldedDiamond take two places
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Postby Sind (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:36 pm

Throwing my opinions into the mix a bit late here:

Episode is good; It was mostly funny and cute, and they managed not to butcher the moral :yay:

However, I do have problems with several things in it, all of which ave been mentioned(mostly Pinkie Pie & the OCs) :pinkieshrug:

soooo.... all around a good episode. Nothing more, nothing less
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:17 pm

drunkill wrote:I'm looking for two or three people to join us in this weeks Round Table discussion for the episode.

A few people have it already so I don't want it to get too long or crowded. Anyone interested?


I am in if there is room.
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Postby Weird Autumn (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:52 pm

Tears wrote:But the interiority of the story, the genuine horror Fluttershy felt contrasted with the pure benevolence and support of everyone else (except Greek Chorus of Negative Thinking Pinkie, which I liked but am not gonna argue with people who found it a bit much). Everyone's rooting for her , but there's no sense of frustration with her, and the way it's resolved by just talking it out until she realised it wasn't as bad as she'd thought.

I can't help feeling like there's something I'm missing here, because for most of the episode I just don't see this interior conflict people keep bringing up. Once Fluttershy gets into the groove of things, she's not really conflicted: she's enjoying herself performing in front of a crowd without the pressure of actually being in front of the crowd. She's having her cake and eating it too, and in a hypothetical alternate universe where Fluttershy could have just continued being Big Mac's backstage backup indefinitely I don't see much evidence to suggest she ever would have become discontent with the setup. She eventually does have to face her fears, and there's some good stuff in that sequence (I really do like the terrifying pony head searchlight monsters as a metaphor for stage fright/a reintepretation of the eyes sequence in Hurricane Fluttershy), but it only comes at the very end of the episode and gets wrapped up too quickly for me to see it as a really satisfying exploration of the issue.

I'm not saying this because I think the episode needed to put Fluttershy through the wringer or anything like that; there's even something I like about getting to see a character just enjoy themselves artistically for a bit. The scenes of Fluttershy performing with the Ponytones are fun enough and the barber shop tune is catchy, the problem for me is just that I never saw any real drama in them. By the end I found myself looking at the progress bar and thinking "Okay, where's the rub? Have we really gone this long with absolutely everything going according to plan?"
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:57 pm

drunkill wrote:I'm looking for two or three people to join us in this weeks Round Table discussion for the episode.

A few people have it already so I don't want it to get too long or crowded. Anyone interested?

e: The Doctor takes one place


I'd like to join as well, if there is room. :allears:
ShieldedDiamond
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:58 pm

Opposing Farce wrote:I can't help feeling like there's something I'm missing here, because for most of the episode I just don't see this interior conflict people keep bringing up. Once Fluttershy gets into the groove of things, she's not really conflicted: she's enjoying herself performing in front of a crowd without the pressure of actually being in front of the crowd. She's having her cake and eating it too, and in a hypothetical alternate universe where Fluttershy could have just continued being Big Mac's backstage backup indefinitely I don't see much evidence to suggest she ever would have become discontent with the setup. She eventually does have to face her fears, and there's some good stuff in that sequence (I really do like the terrifying pony head searchlight monsters as a metaphor for stage fright/a reintepretation of the eyes sequence in Hurricane Fluttershy), but it only comes at the very end of the episode and gets wrapped up too quickly for me to see it as a really satisfying exploration of the issue.

I'm not saying this because I think the episode needed to put Fluttershy through the wringer or anything like that; there's even something I like about getting to see a character just enjoy themselves artistically for a bit. The scenes of Fluttershy performing with the Ponytones are fun enough and the barber shop tune is catchy, the problem for me is just that I never saw any real drama in them. By the end I found myself looking at the progress bar and thinking "Okay, where's the rub? Have we really gone this long with absolutely everything going according to plan?"


I was thinking the same thing, but knowing that she was living on borrowed time was the buried conflict that was there all along. Sure, she might have been able to keep up the charade forever. But chances are that sooner or later there would be a reckoning, and you know it's coming, you just don't know when, like a tax audit or a hundred-year-flood. That's kind of nerve-wracking in itself.
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