My Little Repeats 73: "Rarity Takes Manehattan"

Phones are canon. I prefer to imagine this with the H absent

S4E08: "Rarity Takes Manehattan"
Written by Dave Polsky
4 Jan 2014

My original rating: 8.5/10 (=★★★★)
IMDb score: 8.3

The one with Hinny of the Hills

Thoughts: We move into 2014 with what is arguably Dave Polsky's best episode. I remain equivocal about the increasing prominence of "modern" Manehattan in FiM from this point on, but it works pretty well here. It's a good-looking episode, too. This is a good Rarity ep that gives her plenty of moments to shine but doesn't shy away from the slightly less attractive facets of her character, as seen most obviously in the "sweatshop" scene and her later rain-soaked remorse. The song is a very solid one, which I'd place just one notch below outright classic status. (Fun fact: the stallion with the orange scarf is voiced by Daniel Ingram.) Downsides? There's the odd bit of irritatingly dated "hey, funny meme", eg the Grumpy Cat cutie mark, but only the odd bit. Perhaps not the subtlest moral in the world. Prim Hemline also has the world's weirdest accent, albeit less annoying than Suri's, but I suppose as "mid-Atlantic-ish fashion designer" it's defensible. But there's a really big plus that outweighs all of that: we get Coco Pommel's debut. (Coco will never, ever be simply "Miss Pommel" to me!) This was the first "key" episode; Meghan McCarthy hinted at the time that the rainbow flash was important, but back then we didn't know why. Overall? This is actually better than I remember. I was expecting to bump it down to three stars – but no. It's keeping the four. Congratu-pony-lations, fillies.

Choice quote: Rarity: "Isn't friendship magic?"

New rating: ★★★★

Next up is "Pinkie Apple Pie". I remember having a bundle of fun with that one first time out. I hope I do again!

Ponyfic Roundup 337

Read it Later story count: 146 (+1) 

Here we are on Good Friday, which presumably ponies don't mark in any way. It would be rather strange if they did, at least outside the realms of some of the more unusual crossover fics that no doubt lurk out there in Fimficland. Three stories as per usual this time around, and here's the list:

Shell Game by BlazzingInferno
The Great and Deathless Trixie by Blarghalt
The Battle of Carousel Boutique by Greymane Shadow

★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Rescheduling PR again, but don't worry

Nothing is wrong this time, I'm just snowed under with other stuff. I'd rather take a day or two longer to write it than rush it out and make even more mistakes than usual. So, as is usually my way when this happens, Ponyfic Roundup will appear on Friday this week. Don't worry, I've been reading! :)

My Little Repeats 72: "Bats!"

"Why Rarity, you're gonna save us a fortune on buckets!"

S4E07: "Bats!"
Written by Merriwether Williams
28 Dec 2013

My original rating: 8/10 (=★★★★)
IMDb score: 8.2

The one with Rarity's hazmat suit

Thoughts: Merriwether Williams' final episode is arguably her most enjoyable, fighting it out with "Wonderbolts Academy" for that honour. It certainly boasts a good song, an excellent duet between Applejack and Fluttershy that – at least at the time – was unlike anything we'd heard before on FiM. Vaguely Tim Burton-y and with fine visuals to complement the music. The actual story is quite fun, too, though it sticks in my craw slightly to have to admit that AJ generally has the right in the argument over Flutters. Doesn't help either that all of a sudden 'Shy is, well, a Stare master. Plus the "mystery" over who's swooping in to eat the apples really isn't much of a mystery at all. Flutterbat became famous of course, but even so. As I said in my 2013 review, I do (mostly) appreciate how Pinkie is written here; S4 is uneven on this score, but "Bats!" generally gets her right. The moral about sometimes having to tell your closest friends no is a great lesson, but it's not really one from the episode we've seen. Oh, and Fluttershy's fang at the end was rather intriguing at the time; now we know it meant absolutely nothing it's mildly irritating. All this means that I'm going to nudge this down slightly, from a bottom-end four to a top-end three. I still like it, but song aside I don't really think it's a classic.

Choice quote: Rainbow Dash: "Won't somepony please think of the cider?"

New rating: ★★★

Next up is "Rarity Takes Manehattan". I remember this as being one of my favourite Dave Polsky episodes, but not as being exceptionally good.

Ponyfic Roundup 336

Read it Later story count: 145 (-3) 

It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights. Neither of which are much use on a text blog, so instead let me move on to the actual meat of the matter. I haven't had a lot of spare time recently, but I have at least got some ponyfic read. (And even a little written, believe it or not.) There are, as usual, three stories under the wobbly microscope today, and they are:

Motherly by Trick Question
As the smoke fades by RarityEQM
Linked by Wheels by JourneyCatMLP

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

GalaCon postponed to 2022

GalaCon 2021 will not happen. The plan is to hold the event in June 2022 instead. As is common, people are being given the option to hold on to their tickets or to get a refund. I can't say this is likely to be a surprise to anyone. While things are not as bad now as they were last year, the threshold needed to be confident of hosting a large, organised convention is pretty high. I would dearly like to be proved wrong on this, but I'm personally not convinced there will be any full-scale cons in Europe this year.

My Little Repeats 71: "Power Ponies"

Green Lan—er, Rarity's little moments in this are always worth watching

S4E06: "Power Ponies"
Written by Meghan McCarthy, Charlotte Fullerton and Betsy McGowen
21 Dec 2013

My original rating: 6.5/10 (=★★★)
IMDb score: 7.5

The one with the Hairspray Ray of Doom

Thoughts: The only ep with Betsy McGowen as a writer, albeit sharing the spotlight with two regulars. I wasn't a huge fan of this first time around, and I still fret that it's not especially Pony. At this point, before "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Maretropolis was the first really modern city setting we'd ever seen the ponies in, and it felt odd. After all, Equestria didn't have cities like that (or so we thought) so a comic with them in was more science fiction than superhero fantasy. Still, I quite enjoy the characters and their superpowers. Everyone talks about Flutterhulk Saddle Rager, but I actually find her "You hurt a firefly, therefore I will destroy you" bit rather irritating, given she didn't get angry when her close friends were being threatened with death ("You shall live just long enough..."). On which note, I do have a soft spot for the amusingly over-the-top Mane-iac, actually. I don't much care for the more recent dark'n'brooding superheroes (or indeed supervillains) and this 1960s-style stuff is much more to my personal taste. Poor Spike/Humdrum, though: he just can't catch a break in this show sometimes – until, of course, he's inspired by Twilight pointing out how much the Mane Six trust him to come through and he ends up saving the day. So, quite an entertaining episode, yes – but it doesn't always feel much like a My Little Pony episode. And that, in the end, means it can't do better than the moderate three-star rating I gave it the first time around.

Choice quote: Rarity: "We're breaking for tea and biscuits!" Oh, excellent. Custard creams, I hope!

New rating: ★★★

Next up is "Bats!" Apparently this is not an episode that the whole fandom regards terribly fondly, but I have a soft spot for it. At least, I had. Whether I still do, we shall find out.