Equestria Girls 2014 Holiday Special!

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Re: Equestria Girls 2014 Holiday Special!

Postby Marimo (?) » Fri Dec 12, 2014 11:33 pm

Extended preview.

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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:14 am

Myspace is pretty outdated... *shrug*

And Rarity looks pretty weird in that shot, as usual with Fleecs art
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:20 am

Pinkie has 72,000 friends. :starity:
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:33 am

Only Pinkie Pie could have the same number of friends as a municipality.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:35 am

kefkafloyd wrote:Only Pinkie Pie could have the same number of friends as a municipality.


:ponder: going by he profile pictures, a few of them are imaginary....

Anyone know who the person on the right in the second row of the profile pictures it? Looks like a really feminine looking Big Macintosh.
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Postby Marimo (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:42 am

Sunflower Seed. Babs' sister from the 2013 Annual.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:05 pm

Sir Lintsalot returns in triumph! This will be a maybe good strange.
:milkshake: Image ImageImage Image
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Postby WandereringPony (?) » Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:45 pm

The Doctor wrote:Pinkie has 72,000 friends. :starity:


More than that, even.

I mean, this is Pinkie. She likely knows all of them...though a few miiiiiight be alt accounts she started when she didn't feel appreciated at first...
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Postby SpaceHowitzer (?) » Mon Dec 15, 2014 12:58 am

I'm just going to assume sir lints-a-lot, madame le flour and all the pinkimina depression budies are role play accounts she runs. Lots of bad puns, strange event based parties, that kind of thing.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:33 am

*sigh* Man... wow.

This is pretty bad. And I am not trying to speak out of EqG hate bias here, I tried to give this a honest chance.

-poor man's Ponyville Confidential rehash with much worse reasoning
-nonsensical metaphor between wendigos and cyber bullies to unsuccessfully tie this into a holiday special
-usual mediocre art with at least a weird face a page

The plot overall felt like it was forced into being a holiday special, and that was the biggest problem. There was a decent story to be told with Sunset wanting to establish familial relationships with the Mane 5, but somehow even with a double-issue length, it was quickly "Mane 5 hates Sunset for being Anon-a-Miss 2/3rds through", then "everyone is forgiven in just one page" at the end - just really rough pacing.

Oh well, a couple Fluts expressions were nice and her getting worked up over the video game was cute.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:26 pm

Wayoshi wrote:*sigh* Man... wow.

This is pretty bad. And I am not trying to speak out of EqG hate bias here, I tried to give this a honest chance.

-poor man's Ponyville Confidential rehash with much worse reasoning
-nonsensical metaphor between wendigos and cyber bullies to unsuccessfully tie this into a holiday special
-usual mediocre art with at least a weird face a page

The plot overall felt like it was forced into being a holiday special, and that was the biggest problem. There was a decent story to be told with Sunset wanting to establish familial relationships with the Mane 5, but somehow even with a double-issue length, it was quickly "Mane 5 hates Sunset for being Anon-a-Miss 2/3rds through", then "everyone is forgiven in just one page" at the end - just really rough pacing.

Oh well, a couple Fluts expressions were nice and her getting worked up over the video game was cute.


I liked the callbacks to Ponyville Confidential, and didn't find the reasoning any worse than in Ponyville Confidential. It's a bit of a stretch, but it worked for me. Trying to tie it into the Wendigo story also worked for me. Showing how Sunset's experiences as a pony can help her in the human world.

Was not the greatest story, but it was a sweet story. I enjoyed it.
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Postby Atticon (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 3:46 pm

Wayoshi wrote:*sigh* Man... wow.

This is pretty bad. And I am not trying to speak out of EqG hate bias here, I tried to give this a honest chance.

-poor man's Ponyville Confidential rehash with much worse reasoning
-nonsensical metaphor between wendigos and cyber bullies to unsuccessfully tie this into a holiday special
-usual mediocre art with at least a weird face a page

The plot overall felt like it was forced into being a holiday special, and that was the biggest problem. There was a decent story to be told with Sunset wanting to establish familial relationships with the Mane 5, but somehow even with a double-issue length, it was quickly "Mane 5 hates Sunset for being Anon-a-Miss 2/3rds through", then "everyone is forgiven in just one page" at the end - just really rough pacing.

Oh well, a couple Fluts expressions were nice and her getting worked up over the video game was cute.


I have very little to add to this. Aside from some funny moments this issue was mostly a boring retread of Ponyville Confidential. The "family" angle felt tacked on, and would've had mroe impact if we got more Sunset Shimmer background outside of "I wasn't close to my familiy. The end." The ending of the CMC being so quickly forgiven kind of undermines the entire previous part where the rest immediately accused Sunset and dropped her like a brick. We've already had one of those immersion-breaking conclusions from Ted in the pets issue too.

These faults, especially the recycling of ideas, do little to make the EqG content stand on its own, and only increase my wish that an 48 page holiday special wasn't wasted on that instead of a Hearth'sd Warming Eve story set in Equestria.
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Postby Conred (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 4:10 pm

To be honest there is far more things i didn't like about this issue than i did which is basically my opposite reaction to Pinkie/Twilight recent comic :fluttersmith: :fluttersmith:
So first the bad things
1. Entire plot seem to be recycled from FiM episode along with the "villains" (btw Applebloom is a worse liar and jerk than Discord and at least he didn't understood friendship).
2. Falls flat on humor, especially Pinkie compared to previous comic with pony counterpart. I guess the serious theme did not help in making those gags.
3. Art was very often clunky, faces in some panels looked like emoticons while sometimes characters like Rarity had manly faces. Not to mention enitre panels being copypasted from one to another (the one with Twilight reading was just exact same panel but zoomed out and Flash on Aj facebook page was taken straight from the movie vectors)
4. Somehow anyone in school except the fanfavourite characters like Derpy were acting like bullies. Not just Diamond Tiara or Trixie. I guess it's the same syndrome as in Putting your hoof down when entire town was bullying Fluttershy.

Good things
1. Well message about bullying was somehow delivered although i wish it was more original idea
2. Warm family reunion at the end
3. Maud Pie and Trixie
4. Sunset development with Mane5
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Postby Marimo (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 5:09 pm

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Postby The Doctor (?) » Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:41 pm

If we get another annual next year, pony or EQG, I want to see an outright Pony Christmas Carol. I doubt they'd ever do it in the show, but I think it would be pretty entertaining.
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Postby Aramek (?) » Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:45 am

I thought it was cute. The sad parts were sad. Needed way more Trixie, but, I think there needs to be a whole EQG Trixie comic/show anyway.
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Postby SpaceHowitzer (?) » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:37 am

A nominal comic, hit all the emotions it tried for with story and art was normal.

Like anything with tech references though, it'll age super fast and badly, just no good way of melding feel of social media I think, to fluid.
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Postby Max (?) » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:29 pm

I posted my point about this on their forum, I'll just post my biggest point about it here:


Finally, I'll say this: The biggest problem I have with the comic is that, for something that is supposed to be about "cyber bullying" (which I assumed Ted would know more about with the recent events).... it's way, WAY off the mark about it.
Yes, the problems are started by "the eeeevil anonymiss".... but that's just the starter. The REAL dynamite here is the jerkiness of the entire school ganging up on her, and her only friends BAILING on her, because everyone stupidly believe the girl crying on the floor is also telling off the entire school. The problem is not cyber bullying, it's REAL bullying. From everyone.

See, a more appropriate way to depict it to me would be to keep everything online and not involve the school at all. That "anonymiss"(or even multiple) would just stalk her mystable page and insult her repeatedly time after time, bemean her, call her names related to her evil past, and basically harass her every moves online, making Sunset sadder and sadder while she wonder why would someone do this to her. (it doesn't have to be the CMC too, it could easily some jealous one shots villains)
And then, instead of having her friends act like OOC d**chebags, show them all trying to help in different ways, in character too: Something like Dash and Fluttershy scouring the school to try to find the culprit, Pinkie trying to cheer Sunset up and to make her forget the insults, Rarity telling her to stop going online, while AJ saying she shouldn't let them win... and yet all of them would be powerless to help her usefully, to their own distress...

Because that's the real "evil" of cyberbullying: that it can make someone life miserable without even resorting to physical means. That it can become a sad obsession in her mind that she can't shake off, even with her friends around and an almost normal "real" life, all caused by a few people with a grudge with her hiding online... And I'm sure it's something MANY girls could relate too (way more than "somebody is going to impersonate me online and everybody will bite it).

But instead you have none of that, just that the entire school is mean, her friends are actually pretty shallow, and the CMC who normally enjoy hanging around eachother because they want to get some time off with their sisters turns to pure evil. And when you have 5 of the 6 protagonist of your comic suddenly act like jerks, that's a real problem!
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Postby Heather Breckel (?) » Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:40 pm

"(which I assumed Ted would know more about with the recent events)"

I believe this was written a while before any of that stuff happened? Obviously it doesn't mean your criticisms don't apply as they're still legit regardless. I just remember when I got the issue to color I was like well this eerie timing haha so it had to have been quite a while before all that stuff so it wouldn't have influenced Ted's writing here.
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Postby TedlyAnderson (?) » Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:02 am

Heather Breckel wrote:"(which I assumed Ted would know more about with the recent events)"

I believe this was written a while before any of that stuff happened? Obviously it doesn't mean your criticisms don't apply as they're still legit regardless. I just remember when I got the issue to color I was like well this eerie timing haha so it had to have been quite a while before all that stuff so it wouldn't have influenced Ted's writing here.


Yeah, this was written well before The Incident. I double-checked the dates, in fact: the 2014 annual came out on September 24, and I submitted my final version of the script on September 8. The pitch had been accepted by Hasbro long before that—probably a couple months before. I could even show screenshots, although with today's modern Photoshop technology those aren't exactly admissible in court.

While I can understand people not liking that the rest of the group turned on Sunset, I tried to construct a scenario in which it seemed like she was literally the only possible culprit: AJ's nickname was a closely guarded secret, the pictures were all taken with Sunset's phone. And like Max said, the real evil of cyberbullying is making someone miserable without even having a physical presence. "Anon-a-Miss" didn't just slander Sunset; "she" also broke apart the Mane Six, humiliated them and dozens of other people, all without meaning to go as far as they did. If the evidence seems to point to the person who once literally turned into a demon, that'd make me question my friendship with them, too.

As for people who've complained about me not showing Sunset's backstory or family: you do realize that I would've if I could, right? The joke of not knowing anything about Fluttershy's family is also a bit of meta-humor, since there's no way anything that important would be done in the comics. The IDW book is a side project when compared to the show; we get to come up with funny stuff on the margins, but we can't do anything truly central to the universe. I would be well and truly shocked if anything created for the comics ever shows up in the show. (Frankly, I was surprised that they let me invent a twin sister for Cheerilee!)

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Postby Max (?) » Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:56 am

Wow, I didn't expect you to answer, but since you're here...
TedlyAnderson wrote: If the evidence seems to point to the person who once literally turned into a demon, that'd make me question my friendship with them, too.

Maybe for the rest of the school, but hardly at all for the mane 6, especially after RR (a side effect of including twilight), and not with the person begging in front of you in tears.
Hell, in real life even murderers and criminals have (good natured) friends who'll still defend them after the facts, saying the attackers are wrong and don't know his real nature. While I wouldn't go that far the benefit of the doubt from them would've been welcomed.

As a result however this makes the comic seems hardly enjoyable by anyone. (except maybe Twilight fans?)
Fans of Sunset will see her being torn apart to shred and bounced around by the group and barely even excused for it, while fans of the rest will see them act like total jerks who rather than friendship act more like a closed circle.

I get that you wanted to write a specific story, but like the recent western issue, it was done seemingly hurting the character's integrity, and that's when appreciation of it plummet. Some of the most hated episodes like MMDW are because of this very reason.
Last edited by Max on Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:04 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:58 am

Worth noting that the Anthroverse girls are not the Pony girls. They are teenagers, and by that very fact, should be far less mature.
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Postby Amm (?) » Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:17 am

There were a lot of issues with this issue, but I'm willing to gloss over most of them to enjoy it. But two things stand out to me.

The retread of Ponyville Confidential. Having a callback to an episode is all well and good, but having a copy (note copy, no a continuation or a retelling) of an existing item in the universe as the base structure for your a new item comes off as lazy.
The difference of the anger between the two reveals. The false reveal of Sunset Shimmer being Anon-a-Miss that left her crying in the middle of a school hallway and the real reveal of the CMC being Anon-a-Miss that ended immediately in forgiveness. Even though the latter was arguably worse because it sent Sunset back to square one in recovering her reputation with the entire school and had her crying several times.

The difference in reactions was staggering for me. I could imagine a bunch of teenage girls getting angry about secrets being revealed from a friend. But I can't imagine being less angry at your little sister and her friends for getting you to reduce a friend to tears over false accusations. This is only further aggravated by it being post-RR where they should all be even closer than ever. If it had been pre-RR then any overreaction would have been at least a little more justified.

So yes, that difference in reactions by the Mane Five were just jarring to me. Which is disappointing because I loved Ted's Trixie arc.
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Postby Applepie (?) » Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:40 am

I hope there will be a Equestria Girls Holiday movie.
Pinkie Pie: So, you see this here? This, um, this is um, a big, round room. It's known for its roundness, and bigness, and did I mention that it's round?
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Wed Aug 05, 2015 11:46 pm

Please do not bump threads with irrelevant posts.
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Postby Atticon (?) » Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:16 pm

To make a relevant one: there's been no solicit for a Holiday Special or Annual yet this year.
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Postby Marimo (?) » Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:26 pm

Bobby already confirmed there wouldn't be an Annual this year, but something else will be coming in December.
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Postby The Illustrious Q (?) » Fri Aug 07, 2015 6:17 pm

Eyup. Just waiting to find out what that something is.

I'm placing my money on an Original Graphic Novel.
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