S02E23: Ponyville Confidential

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I think they also used that font in the Mare-Do-Well cover.

So is there a rule that written English can't actually be shown? The only exception I can think of is "Welcome Princess Celest" sign from Swarm of the Century.

[Aurora]

I just poured through the whole thread, and didn't see dibs on this called, so may I have an av of Chubby Pony with his fez on reading and then stopping and looking about? The cut to seeing him just made the episode for me. Also, I am very easily amused.

Fits already got that.

Av Requests

lazy - Applebloom's :/ face
W.T. Fits - Fatkid pony in a fez reading the paper
shotgunbadger - any Diamond Tiara scene
rudecyrus - Rainbow Dash hopping and raining on the CMC
OpposingFarce - Sweetie and Scootaloo in their newspaper boat (in the wide shot with Pinkie Pie when they're just chilling in it). Alternately, if that doesn't crop/loop well, Angel's ">:(" face
Herr General - the av where Dash rains on the CMC with a single buck
Frosthawk - Fluttershy going up and down behind that wall like an elevator
Super Karoru - Sweetie Belle with her coffee flask
Orange Fluffy Sheep - the I'LL DESTROY HER! face Rarity

[Jonathan AppleShing! Sparkle-sparkle.]

Really liked this episode. Favorite bits were fat kid with a fez and Big Mac and Applejack role reversals. Honestly though, I thought that the CMC were actually going to do a story about the embarrassing photos of themselves as some part of their apology or something, but I'm not complaining.

If no one has done so yet, I'm claiming this as my next AV:

[Tzar469"A thrilling time is in your immediate future."]

What were the metal bits in Twilight's tail at the spa?

[Ransom]

Fun episode, if for nothing else than the callbacks. Not much original to add, liked the letter as resolution rather than the revenge route, and yeah, it does seem like a scene with Featherweight revealing DT's extreme actions to Cheerilee was cut for time, it just goes from DT threatening blackmail to her getting ousted. You do have to wonder what Teacher was doing while the whole town going gaga over the school newspaper. Did she only think to intervene when the issue was brought to her attention?

Bah, it's one of those questions that doesn't bug me too much though. The rest of the story is tight.

[Mechanical ApeAnd I thought they smelled bad on the outside!]

It's fun to imagine that everything that happened in the episode was engineered by Featherweight to maneuver himself into the editor's chair.

Missed opportunity for Luna. I'd have her eating a half gallon of ice cream.

Lord knows they referenced damn near everyone else in the show today, but maybe it's just as well Luna was left alone. It's hard to picture her accepting libel gracefully.

"We decree that these disrespectful 'news-papers' be cancelled ... FOREVER!" [lightning bolt]

What with that Alicorn?

They get used in pony ads a lot as eyecatchers.

"EV(P)ONY ONLINE - Free FOREVER
Come play, my Stallion!"



But anyway, who do you suppose this is? Early photo of the oft-mentioned Namby Pamby?

[weedgoku]

What were the metal bits in Twilight's tail at the spa?

Twilight is just a decade or two behind the hottest fashion trends

[MochaBean]

What were the metal bits in Twilight's tail at the spa?

They're hair foils. You use them when you want to isolate some hair from the rest of the head for a treatment, usually to add streaks or highlights.

Which begs the question: Is Twilight's pink streak fake?!

*GASP!*
"Um... It's a Sparkle family tradition? Ahehehh..."

[Whitenoise PosterI am going to eat this entire oak tree because I am a powerful wizard!]

When all the ponies are crazy colors the idea of some of them using dyes to be even more colorful (or in the mayors case, less) is really funny to me.

[Pink Himalayan Saltsee this watch? i got it by Crying. my car? crying. my beautiful wife? Crying. My perfect teeth? Crying. now get the fuck out of my office]

Meanwhile, Cheerilee was zoned out the entire time until the end. Or she just sat back and watched the chaos reign.

Someone stick the sound from this into a clip of Cheerliee thanks.

Called it back on page 1 yo.

You fucking fucker.

Anyway I can't decide if for an avatar I want this

or this

with a zoom effect of closeups of each pony's face and Spike's face.

[Ramarren]

Which begs the question: Is Twilight's pink streak fake?!

Or maybe it is not just a different colour, but of hair type different enough to require different care, at least at spa treatment level.

[itinerant nomadSurprise Pedantry!]

This was a fun episode for me. There was no great crisis, but a lot of opportunities for individual characters to show some extra texture.

I laughed out loud when the picture of Big Mac and Smarty Pants was revealed. His switching places with Applerjack was a nice chance to show that his economy of speech is not due to a poverty of thoughts, but a reserve that takes serious motivation to get past.
Also, props for the extra touch on Rainbow Dash's spa experience. The way the gag with her hoof complex played out added a touch of tension and showed a bit of a vulnerability or hangup coming from an unusual direction for her.

The newspaper's print structure is kind of neat. To add variety, they flip the first letter, but this rule is negated when the second word is reversed. Also, the letter E is oddly flexible, sometimes dropping parts of itself or merging with the nearest vertical or near-vertical letter.

[*]"Twilight Sparkle: I Was a Canterlot Snob!" And here we dig back as far as Episode 1 for character-arc inspiration, not to mention some nice worldbuilding detail ("muddy roads and low-class rubes"). So much hidden character development to be dug out of this scene: Twilight now knows how far she's come and is pretty ashamed of the flaws she used to have (because let's face it, this would have been a pretty hard-hitting factual story, huh? Especially if told by Spike, her put-upon lackey back in Canterlot).

This one sounds like a fabrication after Gabby Gums had truly gone off the rails. I don't think Twilight ever had that kind of attitude, and the selection of that picture fits the general idea of a tabloid hit piece using a photo of her in the middle of a yawn or at the onset of a sneeze.

Sure make a joke that guys'll have to think about.
Oh God this is so surreal.

There's a reason why Pinkie was soaking in the tub. Per "A Friend in Deed", her hoofacures require two of those, and it creeps the other five right out.

"Celestia Just Like Us"
What does it MEEEEEEEEEAN? Does she occasionally order up two XXL sized cakes and pig out on them? Does she binge? Does she get frosting on her face?

I think it's interesting to use this gag. Celestia is the character with the greatest store of dignity in the series, so the payoff of taking her down even a fraction of a peg is low-hanging fruit. That has to be handled with care because of her role as a wise, nurturing, and a little mysterious background figure. Taking her down a full peg is in effect badmouthing every pony's mother.

A passage from Spike's diary:

Rarity, I like you like Celestia likes cake.

Going by the way the typewriters work in this series, I have the text of the final Gabby Gums article.

To the citizens of Ponyville:
010001100110111101110010 01110011011011110110110101100101 01110100011010010110110101100101 01101110011011110111011100101100 011110010110111101110101001001110111011001100101 01100010011001010110010101101110 01110010011001010110000101100100011010010110111001100111 01110100011010000110100101110011 011000110110111101101100011101010110110101101110
...

[Aurora]

Here are the av stuffs! viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1311

[Timalllalalalala]

Oh man, such a great episode. They've really been on a roll lately.

When Applejack said 'yup' and 'nope' I KNEW Big Mac was going to have something to say at last. So great.

[WildfireYa ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ya ta ta ta ta ta ta ta do doh duh va zha da ya dya da KABOOM. KABOOM.]

Didn't even realize that's who it was when I first watched it.
Ok that's it. DT is at the top of my shit list (Didn't think anyone would knock Gilda from the top spot).

[Kanthulhu~~Books!~~]

Loved this episode. Top notch quality. Season 2 is really ending on a high note regarding quality of the episodes.

[Headless Horse]

... And now I have a mental image of Celestia playing that song on Rock Band. (Both guitar and vocals, using a headset mic so that her hooves are free to play the guitar.)

Oh but surely. 'Tis Luna who is the gamer (in fanon).

The stuff they're doing with the font is pretty interesting—it's kinda playing on the fact that you can rearrange letters in a sentence and as long as the first and last letters are the same, you can usually understand what it's saying just fine.

In most cases up till now they've hand-lettered signs and headlines and posters and things (SIHOVI, Daring Do, Spike's signature), making them just close enough to English to give the right visual "ping", but not actually reading as English if you look closely. But in this episode so much of it has to do with printed text that they had to come up with a new technique, or else all that text would have gotten to be a huge pain to hand-draw. Solution: use regular fonts, just flip random letters around. The word forms stay the same, but they can't be said to be readable English anymore.

Pretty neat solution if you ask me, though it does underscore just how fast they're plowing through the work on these things.

[Treehouse CensorI can never show my face in town again!!!Well, at least I have plenty to read here...]

I liked the episode, but something about that spa scene rubs me the wrong way. To put it bluntly, I felt uncomfortable watching it. It really felt like something I shouldn't have seen.

Also, Twilight was looking pretty damn awkward in that scene too. I loved the cucumber bit though with RD.

E: I just finished a second watch in HD. I don't feel quite the same on repeat viewings, but I guess it's just kinda jarring at first you know? I still think Twilight looks awkward as hell in that scene though.

[Headless Horse]

1080p:





(First time we're seeing Celestia's tongue, isn't it? ...Talk about things we shouldn't be seeing...)

[The DoctorTurner Of All Things Timey Wimey]

1080p:

Darn foaltoshop.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

One picture I don't think I've seen yet. Is this a new background? Something about the way Canterlot looks off in the distance really speaks to me.

[Smoke420 fight He-Man every day]

Darn foaltoshop.

And here it is unfoaltoshopped:

[Crunchy]

I just noticed a thing



Scootaloo should try to get her cutiemark in balloon animaling.

[The Flour Moth]

I just noticed a thing

Scootaloo should try to get her cutiemark in balloon animaling.

I also like the poster of Nyandash on the wall.

[Jim RomanticEasily Distracted by Shiny Things]

Fits already got that.

Well poop, I must have missed that. My apologies.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I just noticed a thing

oh god i must have blocked that out of my brain

[MagoopWe love ponies~]

Does anyone know what the equation is on the chalkboard? What are they teaching their children? XD

[Headless Horse]

One picture I don't think I've seen yet. Is this a new background? Something about the way Canterlot looks off in the distance really speaks to me.

I just stuck this one over in the 1080p capture thread.

Damn I love how good they are at depicting background landscapes with muted, washed-out colors, like distance fog. It's so... un-cartoony, somehow.

[Crow.Why, of course!I'm clearly insane! .]

I loved the little scene where Spike gets his cucumber slice back from Rainbow Dash.

[Wayoshi]

Yeah I snapped that full Ponyville with Canterlot and put it in the album, but I somehow neglected to caption it here. I also noticed Canterlot seemed to be a new thing.

So... have we come to a conclusion on Fluttershy's tail extensions? It's a completely slanderous lie that deserves no further attention going forward, right?

[Headless Horse]

She's only so devastated because she can't handle being made the subject of such personal scrutiny by the public. Not because they've found out any horrible secret she's trying to keep under wraps.

Yeah, that's pretty watertight.

[Mechanical ApeAnd I thought they smelled bad on the outside!]

So... have we come to a conclusion on Fluttershy's tail extensions? It's a completely slanderous lie that deserves no further attention going forward, right?

"I don't remember getting tail extensions, but they printed it in the paper and I certainly don't want to disagree. I must have forgotten. I'm sorry."

[Pink Himalayan Saltsee this watch? i got it by Crying. my car? crying. my beautiful wife? Crying. My perfect teeth? Crying. now get the fuck out of my office]

Didn't even realize that's who it was when I first watched it.
Ok that's it. DT is at the top of my shit list (Didn't think anyone would knock Gilda from the top spot).

...Who is that pony?

I just noticed a thing



Scootaloo should try to get her cutiemark in balloon animaling.

holy moley

[Wayoshi]

This deserves to be here in addition to ponies.gif thread:

[Headless Horse]

So apparently this is a thing now:



When a young pegasus flaps her wings (which she'll do out of nervousness or excitement, like the one watching Fluttershy getting ready to take off last week), she does it in dragonfly mode.

BZZZZZZZZZ

[The DoctorTurner Of All Things Timey Wimey]

Yeah I snapped that full Ponyville with Canterlot and put it in the album, but I somehow neglected to caption it here. I also noticed Canterlot seemed to be a new thing.

So... have we come to a conclusion on Fluttershy's tail extensions? It's a completely slanderous lie that deserves no further attention going forward, right?

I think it's a lie. In GIYC, we find out that Fluttershy needs nothing to look great, she just goes to the spa to hang with Rarity.

[Crow.Why, of course!I'm clearly insane! .]

So apparently this is a thing now:



When a young pegasus flaps her wings (which she'll do out of nervousness or excitement, like the one watching Fluttershy getting ready to take off last week), she does it in dragonfly mode.

BZZZZZZZZZ

That scene was so d'awwwwwwww.

[Scuderia FerrarityThe Corndogs Of Today are the Tacos of Tomorrow]

...Who is that pony?



holy moley

Mare do well.

Also:
Rainbow with tears in her voice is an interesting bit of voice acting. RD can't stand public humiliation of her abilities. She has an ego to maintain.

[Coyote]

just saw this on a Chilean board (I emphasize that because the kid is Papelucho who is the protagonist of an old popular children's book series, I don't know how known its outside the country so I felt the necessity to tell that )

dunno if a reference but hot damn they are so similar

[kefkafloyd]

I'm seeing double!