The Round Stable

(?) · by **Headless Horse** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:47 am

Stuff wrote:Can you believe it's been a week already?

I'm confident that this thread will last all summer. :allears:

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:53 am

Headless Horse wrote:
I'm confident that this thread will last all summer.

I do love the fan made conversations people do with smilies. :allears:

It's like tiny small hits of Pony to keep the shakes away.

(?) · by **FightingDreamer** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:56 am

The one touch I think they should have had was Celestia straight up apologizing to Twilight: "I should never have doubted you, my dear Twilight." Or something like that. Eh, there probably wasn't enough time.

(?) · by **Pocket** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:09 am

A couple observations from over on Ponychan:

Firstly, Meghan McCarthy recently made this her Twitter profile image:

Note the spelling. (Although, given how old this is, it's also probably from before Hasbro tried and failed to get "Princess Cadence" trademarked.)

Secondly, someone noticed that real-Cadence has a different wedding dress than her doppelganger did. At first I was confused as to why that would be... but then I remembered that the first outfit vanished when Chrysalis revealed herself in her true form! Attention to detail, you guys. These froods have it.

(?) · by **Mechanical Ape** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:18 am

But then where did the first outfit go? Shapeshifter hyperspace? Mass-to-energy conversion to power the change? Is the Chrysalis we perceive some sort of Brundlefly changeling/dress DNA splice?

Answers, we need them :gonkity:

(?) · by **Wayoshi** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:20 am

Regardless, real Cadance was fine with Rarity's work as shown in the mini-montage.

I love seeing Courier New font scripts like that as well. :allears:

E: Interesting how they went with the rotating gems reflecting her abstractly, THEN she sees her reflection during the cake line.

(?) · by **Ransom** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:33 am

Jupiter wrote:I'm so sure the series finale is going to be all
"I was not just teaching a student and friend, Twilight Sparkle; I was training my replacement."

You know...I could see them MAYBE doing that. Though I'm actually hopeful for a "Celestia and Luna take a vacation" episode where Twilight gets to run Equestria for a day.

I just read some of McCarthy's twitter, lol, she's experiencing the bombardment! But she seems to be handling it well.

I'm a (NFL Team) Colts fan, so I laughed at "Rainbow Dash goes to the WonderColts" followed by "That wasn't a spoiler for season 3."

BTW, is there an official season 3 speculations thread?

(?) · by **Wayoshi** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:18 am

GUYS.

Fluttershy 70s dance move. YES. :allears:

(?) · by **Grue** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:17 am

Hmm, Meghan's Twitter is pretty interesting

"QUEEN CHRYSALIS, a GANGLY BLACK PEGACORN with a gnarled black horn."

How long before people start going "pegacorn is canon"? :iamapony:

(?) · by **synthorange** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:45 am

Pegacorn on the cob. :v:

(?) · by **Herr General** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:45 pm

Ransom wrote:You know...I could see them MAYBE doing that. Though I'm actually hopeful for a "Celestia and Luna take a vacation" episode where Twilight gets to run Equestria for a day.

I realize how cliched it is, but I'm a sucker for "royalty/really famous people spending time incognito in normal society". So Celestia and Luna replace Twilight and...uhh, AJ or something, but the rest of the mane six don't know. The real Twi and AJ get to run Equestria. Cue massive chaos and hilarity.

(?) · by **Mad Surge** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:52 pm

Stuff wrote:Can you believe it's been a week already?

I'm still gushing at how good that ending was. I think my pony-less summer won't be as bad as I thought. :awesomedash:

(?) · by **Headless Horse** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:11 pm

What I can't get over is how "blah" the title of the finale is. I mean, could they possibly have come up with a less evocative thing to call it?

It's like the bigger the scale of the episode, the blander they make the title. Considering how much fun they have with titles at all other times, it's got to be some kind of really subtle prank.

(?) · by **Wonkadoo** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:07 pm

Headless Horse wrote:It's like the bigger the scale of the episode, the blander they make the title. Considering how much fun they have with titles at all other times, it's got to be some kind of really subtle prank.

"There are eight million stories in the pony city. This one is about a wedding." :cool:

(?) · by **Discord** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:30 pm

Headless Horse wrote:What I can't get over is how "blah" the title of the finale is. I mean, could they possibly have come up with a less evocative thing to call it?

It's like the bigger the scale of the episode, the blander they make the title. Considering how much fun they have with titles at all other times, it's got to be some kind of really subtle prank.

I've seen worse for a season finale ("Endings" :-/

)

(?) · by **Kronos** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:37 pm

Still more original than "endgame"

(?) · by **Ransom** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:25 pm

Herr General wrote:
I realize how cliched it is, but I'm a sucker for "royalty/really famous people spending time incognito in normal society". So Celestia and Luna replace Twilight and...uhh, AJ or something, but the rest of the mane six don't know. The real Twi and AJ get to run Equestria. Cue massive chaos and hilarity.

That'd be cool, though I actually imagined the sisters taking off the crown and various jewelry and spending the day in an open field, doing horsey things like rolling around in the grass and such :allears:

Though your idea would give us more character interaction.

I'm imagining this scene though:

Shining Armor: Twilight! The Smooze is attacking! It normally only pops up ever other Tuesday!
*Twilight Freaks out*

(Scene Cut)

Celestia: Luna! Jump on my back and lets play polo!

...I really need to stop, it's been one week and I've already got like three episode ideas in my head that I've thought so much about they almost seem cannon to me :gonkity:

(?) · by **Scuderia Ferrarity** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:36 pm

Celestia and Luna are at the beach. Celestia is dog paddling in the ocean while Luna is reading a book under two sun umbrellas, a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses.

Do you think Twilight Sparkle will be alright while we're away?
:gotcha:

I have the utmost confidence in Twilight. She has proven herself time and again to be a most capable leader.

Screen wipe to Twilight wearing Celestia's crown and giant collar thingy that are too large for her. She is in full lesson zero mode - eyes wide, teeth grinding, mane on end. She running around Canterlot shouting at the top of her lungs.

: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO DO YOUR JOBS FOR A SINGLE DAY?!!"

: "..... why did that Pegasus fly straight into that building? Is that building on fire? Why is that building on fire? When does the Princess get back?"
:rainbert:

: "It's only 10:30 in the morning..."

:ohrarity:

I'm a professional.
\/

(?) · by **kefkafloyd** (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:39 pm

Let's cool it with amateur fanfic hour, guys...

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:21 am

That you are, Scuderia, that you are. :allears:

(?) · by **Headless Horse** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:53 am

I just want to note that I've had "Love's In Bloom" and "BBBFF" stuck in my head all day, and it's freaking me out. Both songs are almost obscenely cheesy and vapid lyrically and they don't do that much that's interesting musically either; but something about their contextual meaning just makes them into things of transcendent beauty.

Part of what has me all tied up in knots is how the whole focus of ACW is "love"—a theme that's new to Pony but by no means any kind of new ground for animated properties in general. Disney movie after Disney movie revolved around love stories between the hero and heroine, to the point where an idealized golden-age "Disney" is basically the recognized archetype for that kind of story nowadays. Pony has studiously avoided romance for two whole years, and now in the S2 finale they finally bust out a "love" story whose central pair of characters is as straightforwardly, uncomplicatedly "in love" as any pair of predestined lovers from any piece of pre-modern-irony-age entertainment. It's classic prince-and-princess fairy-tale stuff, eschewing all the wisecracking, sarcastic, Shrek-era shenanigans we've come to expect these days, and because of that it has the feel of a throwback to a much simpler time.

The lyrics underscore just how little subversion they've indulged in: "A beautiful bride, a handsome groom; a bond that can never be undone". Geez, how insightful, right? It reads like a jingle from a doll ad. (I am aware of the irony of this statement.) How long has it been since a big showpiece like this touted the pair's beauty/handsomeness as their defining characteristics? How shallow have we trained ourselves to believe such statements to be?

Yet somehow that works for this show. We've often talked about "neo-sincerity" being at the heart of the show, but it's been hard to pinpoint a firm example to stick in front of people; here at last we have a really clear one. It may not be subverting anything or making an overt statement rejecting gender politics of the past century or anything, and for some reason we're just lapping it up.

I guess it's just because this show makes it work so well. It knows how deeply it has to mine the details of the universe before we'll buy such broad, innocent-eyed statements about it. Just think about what it would have been like if they'd shown ACW early in Season 1. It wouldn't have made any sense. Not only would we be having to wrestle with a story about "love" between two characters we've never seen before (as we are now), we'd have to be weighing their unexpected appearance against the portrayals of these six other main characters who we don't know very well either. It seems to me that that's the mistake a lot of shows (like previous-gen Pony as one example, or a lot of one-shot movies) have tended to make: they'll present a "love" story that centers on characters we simply don't care about. We don't buy that they "love" each other, no matter how many times the dialogue or the song lyrics assert it. It just turns into a stream of platitudes. It just makes us roll our eyes.

But in the case of FiM, we've had two years' worth of steadily deepening character portraits leading up to this "love" story, with the result that even though the romance doesn't even involve any of the Mane 6, we're happy to buy into it because we know the universe so well by now that we can appreciate what "love" in this context actually entails. It's not just something a couple of characters recite to each other and expect us to follow along by singing the song on the soundtrack. It's something that's so pure and uncomplicated that it deliberately contrasts with the complexities of the friendships the Mane 6 have spent the past two years illustrating for us. By now we know their friendships to be so multifaceted it's almost eerie. They're uneven. They're unpredictable. They're even not always all that healthy (see Rainbow Dash and Rarity, both of whom run roughshod over Fluttershy; or Pinkie, whom the others can hardly bring themselves to take seriously for more than half an episode at a time). But that's what makes them real. We intuitively understand how natural and organic their relationships are and how much they embody exactly the opposite of a hollow platitude-fest about "two peas in a pod, we did everything together".

Which in a weird way is what makes Shining Armor and Cadance work. We would never have taken them seriously if they didn't appear against a backdrop that proved the writers know how to create believable characters and relationships. This way we know the purity of their love (and of Twilight's and SA's harmonious childhood) is something we can take at face value and really be impressed at how powerful such feelings can be in this universe—because the writers really mean it. They've demonstrated their chops, and now when they say a couple of characters share a love strong enough that it can physically blow an army of changelings out to beyond EMP range, we sit up and notice in a way we never would have if this had been some show that just sauntered in and said "Yo, kay, so here's this princess and the captain of the royal guard, and they're getting married, and they love each other so much it magically saves the kingdom from invasion." By the same token, we're a lot more likely to accept a lovenuke resolution from two characters who are obviously very much in love when it comes in the same dang episode as that argument Twilight sees through the door crack between SA and FakeCadance. The argument paints the backdrop of complex interactions and emotions that make heartfelt purity into something we can really get behind and cherish and respect. As we said a few months ago in that thread where we engaged with that guy writing a blog response to the WSJ article, it isn't that the characters are flawed that makes us love them; it's that they have the capacity to be flawed. This show has taken the time to establish the stakes that make romantic love into a significant thing, and therefore it takes on a lot more stature than we otherwise would have afforded it. Twilight singing about how handsome and beautiful her brother and her new sister-in-law are, coming after forty minutes of her hating everything about the Cadance she thinks she knows and being resentful of her brother's newly redirected affections, is so warm and open-hearted it makes my eyes water.

I guess what I'm saying is that the sentiments at the heart of ACW (and especially in its songs) are so cheesy we could easily choose not to take them seriously; we might well dismiss them as pap. But because the writers have put in the insane amount of effort prior to now to flesh out the depth of the interpersonal relationships among the cast and show that they do understand the implications of the grandiose and primary-colored statements they're making, they've earned the right to make them and present them without any irony at all.

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:58 am

There needs to be a read this post later option on this forum.

Because it is late and I wanna read HH posts but I have to study.

(?) · by **Wayoshi** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:15 am

Still, if pony were to become like ACW from now on (not necessary on the same scale, but with the same cheese), I'd think the fanbase would slowly get :-/

. In a way, all their hard work let the fanbase at large give them a pass this time, but still expecting more normal pony in S3. :allears:

(?) · by **Chaos Sonic** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:42 am

Artificer wrote:There needs to be a read this post later option on this forum.

Because it is late and I wanna read HH posts but I have to study.

If you right-click on the little

underneath the post title, you can choose to bookmark that post, then read it later when you've got time. :spike101:

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:18 am

I don't see it, I'm afraid.

(?) · by **Ragnar** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:33 am

I don't either, and I think it's because I'm using Chrome, but I'm too lazy to load up another browser to test it.

(?) · by **Chaos Sonic** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:46 am

Should be right here:

If you've read the post, it will be white instead of orange.

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:59 pm

Read it. It was beautiful. :allears:

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Tue May 01, 2012 7:03 pm

Just read HH-post. I think, beyond what Headless has stated, that the key behind the success of the finale is that, in less than two episodes, it made us know the new characters well enough that it works. Making Twilight, after the whole of season 2 still somewhat of a protagonist, closely familiar with and emotionally invested with both characters from the start also provided an emotional hook to lift us off the ground and get there. The sheer storytelling efficiency of this season's finale (both parts, even despite the fact that episode 25 used to be about something else) is simply impressive, as are many other aspects of it.

(?) · by **Ransom** (?) » Wed May 02, 2012 6:06 am

You know...I thought about this aspect of Cadance when the episode first aired, but didn't mention it. Remember this?

Click here to view video.

Maybe I'm reading too much into the fact that when asked to put a new character into the series and give her a special connection with Twilight, Lauren (I'm assuming this is an aspect of the episode she had influence over) chose to make Cadance a foal/babysitter, it seems like a charming touch.

(?) · by **Gravenstein** (?) » Wed May 02, 2012 6:28 am

I was thinking the same thing. I'm surprised I haven't seen art of Cadence secretly being Faust's OC Alicorn in disguise yet.

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Wed May 02, 2012 5:44 pm

There's already a Fausticorn, isn't there?

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Wed May 02, 2012 7:47 pm

http://bronibooru.mlponies.com/post?tag ... mit=Search

Specifically:

It was made by her for an interview.

(?) · by **Pocket** (?) » Sun May 06, 2012 1:07 am

Something occurred to me today: Why exactly did Chrysalis ask Twilight's friends to be her new bridesmaids? At the time it had obvious overtones of suspicious goings-on behind the scenes, but we never got to see what her plans supposedly were for them since she was unmasked in the middle of the ceremony. Or was it maybe just a more general "keep your friends close and your (potential) enemies closer" thing?

(?) · by **Crow** (?) » Sun May 06, 2012 1:33 am

I'm pretty sure it was Celestia that invited them, specifically to help plan/prepare the whole thing. And Celestia invted them specifically because it's A) Twilight's brother and B) they have experience doing all the same things, as shown in the pilot (except the Dress Designing/Sonic Rainbow, which you all know where that is from).

(?) · by **kefkafloyd** (?) » Sun May 06, 2012 1:45 am

Well, Celestia invited them to the ceremonies, but they weren't bridesmaids until Chrysalis asked them to later in the episode.

I think Celestia got all of the mane six there because she knew something was up and wanted to have the Elements of Harmony nearby just in case. :gotcha:

(?) · by **Pocket** (?) » Mon May 07, 2012 4:02 am

I just realized that this is now the second time they've been brought together to vanquish a villain, under the guise of planning the festivities for a big event. I almost hope it happens a third time, with one of them finally realizing what Celestia is really up to.

(?) · by **itinerant nomad** (?) » Mon May 07, 2012 5:34 am

I think the safer bet, unfortunately, is that Celestia was not aware and invited the main characters to take part because of Twilight's connection to the betrothed couple.
It's not the Celestia show, so there's no record of the likely many other times Celestia has invited various ponies to special events, some unknown fraction of which inevitably explode into threats to national security.
The main six were invited in this episode because this is their show, and the story of how Jeff the recalcitrant unicorn saved Equestria is being saved for a spinoff.

The idea she's playing some subtle long game is undermined by her getting her ass kicked by deciding to wait until Chrysalis and her plan are well entrenched and nearing victory.

(?) · by **SlateSlabrock** (?) » Mon May 07, 2012 7:15 am

Pocket wrote:Something occurred to me today: Why exactly did Chrysalis ask Twilight's friends to be her new bridesmaids? At the time it had obvious overtones of suspicious goings-on behind the scenes, but we never got to see what her plans supposedly were for them since she was unmasked in the middle of the ceremony. Or was it maybe just a more general "keep your friends close and your (potential) enemies closer" thing?

It freed up Team Evil Lyra for guard duty during the wedding, but sending Twilight to hell came after that. Maybe Chrysalis had Twilight pegged as the biggest troublemaker from the start? Or maybe she just wanted to be extra-certain that Cadænce couldn't escape.

itinerant nomad wrote:The idea she's playing some subtle long game is undermined by her getting her ass kicked by deciding to wait until Chrysalis and her plan are well entrenched and nearing victory.

Yeah, as much as I want to believe Celestia is the all-poweful, all-knowing pony-goddess, if she had any inkling of what was going on, she wouldn't have let Shining Armor get mind-zapped over weeks/months and undermined Twilight with that "You have a lot to think about" punch to the gut.

(?) · by **Pinkemon** (?) » Mon May 07, 2012 2:00 pm

WELL, they HAD gotten a message about there being a threat to canterlot before the big day, hadn't they? Which was why the barrier was there in the first place?

That could've been another reason for Celestia to invite the elements of haromony, even if she didn't know how exactly the threat was going to be carried out.

The Round Stable

S02E25 & 26: A Canterlot Wedding [SEASON FINALE]

Re: S02E25 & 26: A Canterlot Wedding [SEASON FINALE]

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