My Little Repeats 28: "The Return of Harmony, part 2"

Caption*

S2E02: "The Return of Harmony, part 2"
Written by M. A. Larson
24 Sep 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 9.1

The one with Screwball.

Thoughts: Back in 2011, fans had to wait a week between the halves of this premiere – and it's taken me even longer! What can you say about this episode? It's widely considered (including by its writer) a triumph and is often cited as being one of the finest episodes of the series' entire run. Is it that good? Well... yes. After the "Previously on My Little Pony" and the opening theme, the action never lets up. The stakes get increasingly high as the five corrupted mares get even greyer and, eventually, even Twilight gives up. There's still comedy, though, not least in Spike's "New Rainbow Dash" sequence – as well, of course, as "Your Face!" from Fluttershy and various of Discord's chaotic creations. Indeed, the dialogue is generally excellent. 'Shy also plays a pivotal role late on, being spurred into Dash-catching speed when reminded of Discord's meanness. The ponies still have strongly horsey attributes, as seen when Twilight carries Tom on her back. Still, what I really like about this ep is the way it's resolved, using all those letters Twi sent to Celestia as a very effective and very Equestrian way to turn the tide. We get a full-on Elements/Rainbow of Light sequence to restone Discord, and then the icing on the cake is the brilliant Star Wars homage in the final scene (with, I think, the show's first changed end credits music). Part 1 scraped a five-star rating. Part 2 clears the bar with effortless ease.

Choice quote: Twilight: "This is my book and I'm gonna read it!"

New rating: ★★★★★

Next up is "Lesson Zero", an extremely popular episode with most of the fandom and one I've always loved. Will I still? Wait and see!

* I meant to do that... Liarjack face.

Sorry, no Ponyfic Roundup this week

Applejack Pie by Tsitra360
( CC by-nc-nd 3.0 )

More flooding in my area being the reason, and the river level is higher than it has been for almost 20 years. I don't live in a directly affected part of town, but it's causing considerable concern and various problems with transport etc even so. I expect to bring back PR next week, but it's not happening today, I'm afraid. Instead, you get a picture of Applejack.

Okay, so Applejack thoughts in brief...

I'm now worrying mostly about flooding again (it's higher than last week) but I thought I'd get this out of the way. Last week, someone posted a fanart picture of Applejack as an American slave owner, relaxing on an apple plantation porch, with all the slaves working in the background portrayed as zebras. (The picture was apparently closely based on a scene in Django Unchained, but I haven't seen that film and so I can't comment on that.) And naturally the resulting drama quickly spread to Twitter.

I did not like the picture at all, and I liked it even less once I read some of the comments defending it – which could be boiled down to "It's dark humour and if you don't get that then you're a woke SJW cuck pussy!" (Which is generally code for "I want total free speech but I don't want to face any consequences for what I say.") While I'm not myself especially sensitive, it seemed pretty clear that this pic was going to stir up trouble. I don't know the artist, so I can't say whether they realised this. But I'm damn sure that some of the commenters liked it because it upset people.

Even so, if that picture had been all it was, I would have grimaced a bit and moved on. I'm decidedly not a fan of the 4channy parts of the MLP fandom, and the fact that it largely began there does not mean we all have to venerate the place as some kind of eternal god. I don't and won't. As has been noted, 4chan itself is not the same place it was a decade ago, having noticeably shifted from old-fashioned shitposting to hard-right politics even on boards that used not to have much. But if it had just been that one picture, I'd have ignored it.

The thing is, that picture wasn't all it was. Over the next few days, we saw several examples (with screenshots and so on as evidence) of people in this fandom who were not simply guilty of giggling at a rather racist picture – but were guilty of being racists, plain and simple. One, for example, had been shown to use the n-word several hundred times in their Discord (I think) chats. There were others for whom the admittedly overused "Nazi" designation wasn't far off the mark.

Twitter being what it is, this quickly span out of control in various ways. We had people suggesting that the fandom was poisoned beyond repair and should be put out of its misery, and we also had people suggesting that this was just a case of a couple of bad apples and we were all great really. Anyone who felt like putting a more nuanced case, that there was a significant problem with tolerating racism but that it didn't mean the fandom was rotten to the core, didn't get much of a hearing.

And that's about where I stand. When people are saying, as one fairly prominent professional artist did, that they were planning on stepping back from fandom involvement; when people are feeling that out-and-out racism is being tolerated; and when show staffers are feeling personally insulted by what they've seen, then we have a problem. I do not think the fandom is lost, not by any means. I do not feel we might as well leave it to the jackals and have done with it. I'm damned if I'm going to do that. I've seen this fandom do extraordinary good and change lives – including mine.

But if wanting racism out of my fandom, and feeling that there is a line beyond which free speech is no longer a virtue, makes me a "woke SJW cuck pussy" then I shall wear that badge with pride.

EqD poll results for "How old are you?"

Equestria Daily likes its polls, and there's usually one running. The one that's just recently closed was simply asking how old visitors to the site were. Of course a poll like this isn't remotely scientific, so the results should be treated with caution. It's also worth noting that EqD is not necessarily representative of the bulk of the fandom in 2020 – it's probably declined in relative importance in the last half-decade.

All that said, the results are still interesting. Very nearly a quarter of respondents said they were over 30, and just over half were 25 or above. The days when the average brony (at least on EqD) was a teenager or young student are well and truly behind us. This doesn't surprise me, even allowing for the fact that those who do their fandoming wholly or mostly on social media probably skew a bit younger.

Doubtless any outside media profiles of our fandom will continue to be written as though we're all still 18. (Some of us were never 18 during the FiM era, of course...) But though that may never have been quite accurate, it's now entirely inaccurate. We're an older fandom than we used to be. I'd love to add "and a wiser one", but I'm not sure we can really say that. Ah well.

UK PonyCon 2020: dates and venue announced!

UK PonyCon 2020

NTU City Campus, Nottingham

Sat 10th and Sun 11th October

Let's talk about the choice of dates first. The convention has been in October for as long as I've been going to it (first attended 2014) and it seems to work out pretty nicely. It doesn't clash with the other British cons (Griffish Isles and BronyScot), nor with school holidays or exam season. The 10th will also be precisely one decade since Friendship is Magic premiered. I thoroughly support this choice of dates and – if the weather behaves for once! – I think they'll work very well indeed.

Now for the bit I do have slightly mixed feelings about: UKPC will be back at the same venue for the third year running, the first time it's ever done this. Read the committee's article and you'll see their reasons. Attendee feedback mentioned a desire for good transport links, local accommodation options, plenty of side rooms for panels etc and on-site refreshments. The article says the committee "found it difficult to find another venue that ticks these boxes as well as Nottingham while keeping ticket prices affordable."

It's extremely hard to argue with any of those points. There's more I could say regarding my feelings about this, and I may do so at a future date. But I don't want to do that kind of thing in today's post. Today, I simply want to say that if I can I expect to be going to UK PonyCon once again – which would mean my attending for the seventh straight year. I won't be staying in the same hotel, though, so that will be a change of scene, at least. It may still be seven and a half months away, but UKPC 2020 suddenly feels closer!

Ponyfic Roundup 284

Due to being distracted by real-world events, I haven't really been keeping up with fandom events recently. I'd gathered that a certain picture was making the rounds, but I hadn't realised until now that there was considerably more going on. I'll be writing about that here in due course. Don't expect me to be all sweetness and light. For now, though...

Read it Later story count: 222 (-4)

Slightly against my expectations, I've managed to get through three stories, which is just about enough for an edition of Ponyfic Roundup! I don't have a great deal to say about them beyond what I'll put in their reviews, so let's do a quick run-down of what's on the dissection table today:

Byte sized by Sir Hat
Ticklesprites by Holocron
Untwisting the Knot by Flashgen

★: 2 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Unavoidable (but I hope short) delay

There's always something, isn't there? In this case, it's these floods. While I don't live by the river myself, I do live in an affected town (it's the worst flooding here for almost 20 years) and do know people who are at risk of being flooded. As such, I really haven't had the time to spend on Pony that I normally would. I hope I can get Ponyfic Roundup posted tomorrow or Friday, but things are moving fast around here and so I may have to scratch this edition entirely and wait until next week. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Since I'm restarting things...

...I think it's about time I prepared to get going on "Sounds of 2013" – so all being well, I'll start that up in the next week or so. For those who need an introduction or a refresher, this series will consist of me going through Everfree Radio's fan-voted Top 100 brony tracks from back in 2013, adding links and commentary where I can. I shall be using the same inclusion criteria as last time:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the artist
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion

Naturally, I'm not going to spoil you by giving away the rankings in advance. That wouldn't be much fun. But what I will say is that, looking through the 100 tracks, there is a lot of great music in there – and that the really good stuff starts well down the list. In fact, my first post in "Sounds of 2013" is likely to contain one of my favourite pieces of all time. Raring to go with this? I am! :)

My Little Repeats 27: "The Return of Harmony, part 1"

I wonder whether the similarity to 1920s cartoon character faces was intentional?

S2E01: "The Return of Harmony, part 1"
Written by M. A. Larson
17 Sep 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 9.0

The one with horn-opened locks. Well, one of them, anyway.

Thoughts: And we're back! What a start to Season 2, too. We get the debut of Discord, with this two-part premiere his only outing as a true villain. He's charismatic, unpredictable, dangerous... all the things a great movie villain needs. I wasn't familiar with Star Trek's Q when I first saw this (really! Not everyone watches it!) but John de Lancie was still easily the most compelling character in the episode. Discord also has the necessary crucial weakness, but the only hint this time that he's not quite as all-powerful as he believes himself to be is his inability to corrupt Fluttershy without changing tack. This is of course the very first time we see 'Shy having a special hold on Discord, something that will develop far more in future seasons. The other Mane Sixers get corrupted variously interestingly: Pinkie's genuinely creepy balloon garden is my pick, whereas Rarity's and Rainbow's corruptions are less cleverly done. Twilight alone remains normal... for now. The only thing I slightly dislike about this ep is its beginning: the CMC's field trip is a bit of a contrivance; and the stuff with chocolate rain etc, though amusing, drags very slightly. Once we're in Canterlot, though, with Celestia giving us the intriguing – and frightening – information that Discord once ruled Equestria, it's hard to look away for a moment. Oh, and I also love the little instrumental theme that plays whenever things look up for the ponies. A very good start to S2 indeed. Superb, even.

Choice quote: Discord: "What fun is there in making sense?"

New rating: ★★★★★

Next up is, of course, part 2! I don't imagine for a moment that it's going to score badly. But let's see how it goes.

2021 MLP movie release dates (provisional)

Pointless amusement of the day: reading (mostly) Americans being mildly horrified to discover that the Oxford comma is not only unused but flat-out incorrect in German. German! A language which scatters commas everywhere else like confetti.

Via Equestria Daily, we have some dates for the release of the G5 movie next year! The countries that have been mentioned so far are the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Turkey. A slightly motley crew for this first batch, but never mind. At least we now know the film is intended for big-screen duties in this country, though I'd have been pretty amazed if it hadn't been! The dates listed are these:

US: 24th September 2021
Netherlands: 13th October 2021
UK: 15th October 2021
Turkey: 22nd October 2021

As more than one person has quite reasonably mentioned to me today, these dates are not necessarily set in stone. We are, after all, over a year and a half away still. I think the powers that be will probably want to try to keep the UK release somewhere around the autumn half-term holiday, but all sorts of things could happen.

We also still know effectively nothing about the film itself, beyond the fact that it will be CGI. It does seem almost certain that it will serve as a prequel/introduction to the (Toon Boom) series that follows, but right now we haven't seen anything visual at all. I wonder whether we might get a still or a promo pic out of this month's New York Toy Fair? Maybe it's still too early.

Still, this is just that little bit more activity on the G5 front. Of course we've known G5 was definitely on its way for a while – but it does feel as though the wheels of public information are just beginning to turn now. I am looking forward to finding out more!

Ponyfic Roundup 283

Read it Later story count: 226 (nc)

The weather outside is frightful, but ponyfic can be delightful, so let's go! No change in my RiL list count for a change, since I've read three stories this week and added the same number to the pile. (As I've said before, the numbers don't always match as not everything on the list makes it to review time.) Here's the treble for today:

The Last Ride by Muramasa
How Not to Woo a Fluttershy by dragonjek
The Starving Heart by Vasar Huineo

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

"Lavender Alicorn Blues" – the instrumental!

( Text link )

Last month, I posted this piece I composed, with me singing. There were two problems with that: one, I am not the world's greatest singer. Two, my mic is embarrassingly awful in quality. I said at the time that I might upload an instrumental version to get around that... and here it is! I've made only one or two tiny edits to the tune itself since the first version, but I hope any of you that liked the music itself but were put off by the quality (in either sense!) of my singing will enjoy this new, voice-free version.

The lyrics you'll now have to sing yourself! They're unchanged, but I'll repeat them past the page break for convenience.

Meetery

Nothing pressing to write about today, so I'll simply mention that the Worcester ponymeet folks met up yesterday. We were about ten in number overall, and though I don't have precise records I suspect that's actually higher than the average from when the fandom was larger. The group's been meeting since May 2013, and I was a founder member, so I think I can make a reasonable judgement on that.

We don't even do anything particularly special. There are only perhaps one or two times each year when we depart from our simple regime of sitting around a café table and enjoying chat, food, silliness and ponies. I wonder sometimes whether that might actually be the secret behind our still holding up well in 2020. Admittedly the fact that we consider ten a largish attendance probably helps too, in that we all know each other quite well by now.

Though of course we're very happy to welcome newcomers! We have had a couple of new semi-regulars in the last year or two, which has been very pleasing. I don't know how long these meets will continue, but I really hope they go on for some considerable time to come. We're not scared of G5!

Ponyfic Roundup 282

Read it Later story count: 226 (-6)

Off we go at last! I'm gradually getting back into the swing of things now, and for once I have a fic under review that isn't a one-shot. It'd be nice if I could manage that more than about once a century, wouldn't it? Ha ha ha. Anyway, here's today's tasty (I hope) trio:

The Sparkle Census by Skyward Shoe
Alpha Predator by Jest
The Carmine Line by Zontan

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0

Technical Derpiculties

I'm afraid that, thanks to a power cut, Ponyfic Roundup will be a day or two late this week. I might get it up tomorrow, but it should definitely be here by Friday at the latest. Apologies! In the meantime, I will say that I have indeed read The Sparkle Census, the fic whose review I trailed at the end of the last PR. Also that no, that will not be the only story I post about!

My Little Repeats: Looking forward to Season 2

The other day, I posted some reflections on how my rewatch of Season 1 of Friendship is Magic had gone. Here, I'm going to talk a little about how I expect to find Season 2. This will be quite a short post, as I don't have a huge amount to say. I know, you're heartbroken, aren't you? But for better or worse, here are a few of my brief thoughts as to what S2 may bring.

S2 is, of course, the second and last season in which Lauren Faust was involved, albeit only on some episodes. Its finale is also the point at which a decisive break was made with Faust's plans. But from my personal point of view, the more significant thing is that the S2 finale is also the first episode I watched as it originally aired. So, although only marginally, this will be the first season for which I was a member of the fandom!

I remember S2 as being pretty decent overall, but also somewhat more uneven than tends to be remembered today. I certainly remember Rainbow Dash annoying the hay out of me for large swathes of the first half of the season. On the other hoof, S2 also contains my favourite episode of all time – or at least, what has been my favourite: "Hurricane Fluttershy". I wonder whether it will still wear that crown when all is said and done with this rewatch?

Derpygate is coming halfway through S2, but unlike the controversial episodes in S1, that one seems almost forgotten ancient history now. I suppose the knowledge we have now that Derpy would return eventually after her near-absence from the season after this one has a lot to do with that. I'll actually be pleased when I get to "The Last Roundup", because the preceding episode ("Baby Cakes") is one I have found a bit of a trial to watch for many years now.

I'm expecting to enjoy S2 overall, but I wonder whether it will quite be able to match S1, which was better than I remembered. I've never placed S2 right at the top of my season rankings, but it's always been there or thereabouts. I have a fair idea of what the highlights are likely to be, but if I can have a few nice surprises along the way then that will be perfect. I'll be getting going with rewatching S2 sometime next week, I think. No promises, but I'll try!

My Little Repeats: Reflections on Season 1

Things have been happening in the UK, as you may have noticed. I'm not especially keen to drag politics into this blog, but those who've paid attention over the years will have a good idea how I feel right now. You can always read and comment on my Dreamwidth blog if you're interested in my thoughts on that and other political matters. But here, I intend to keep things Pony for the most part. So off we go to the magical world of Equestria!

Rewatching Season 1 was generally a very enjoyable experience. I must say, it was probably a bit more so than I'd expected: several episodes surprised me on the upside, and really only one ("A Dog and Pony Show") on the downside. I'll give a summary of each episode's star rating beyond the cut – but my mean star rating across the 26 eps was 3.38. That seems like a pretty solid average, and I wonder how many (if any) of the later seasons will be able to match it.

More waffling past the cut!