PL1E7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

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Fizzbuzz
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PL1E7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Jul 12, 2020 7:15 am

The Trail Less Trotten
As Fluttershy joins a Trail Trotters troop, her friends try to protect her from a big disappointment.

Death of a Sales-Pony
The Mane 6 enter a cookie selling contest in the hopes of winning a celebrity meet-n-greet, but the high-pressure world of cookie sales has a way of changing ponies.

Bighoof Walking
The ponies set out to earn their Trail Trotters Rare Animal Sighting Badge by searching for a terrifying creature known as Bighoof.

The Fluttershy Effect
Rainbow Dash runs out of time. Literally.
Today's episodes, airing at 11 AM EDT, are a complete mystery aside from the titles. They never showed up on Zap2it since they're past the first set of episodes that got listed before being pulled from American distribution, and while TV Passport has listings for Treehouse, the synopses for today's episodes are copied from Cute-pocalypse Meow. Well, we'll just have to find out what they are when we watch them live! :party:
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Re: PONY LIFE 7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Jul 12, 2020 11:35 am

I've said before that Tabitha St. Germain gained a lot by how much hammier she could get with her performance as Rarity in Pony Life, but in terms of the characters themselves, I feel like Fluttershy has gotten the freshest take out of the Mane Six. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash are about the same as ever, Twilight Sparkle is a bit edgier and Applejack is a bit drier in wit, and Rarity mostly changed thanks to her performance as described earlier.

Fluttershy, though, feels like a near-complete inversion of who she was in FiM. This incarnation of her seems to have none of the social anxiety and brought her love of animals well out to the forefront. She feels barely one step away from the Ultimare Universe take on her (a mildly popular AU from five years ago, where she had Pinkie Pie's exuberance), though considering the body pillow she was toting around in The Trail Less Trotten, "one step away" might be too much separation. It works surprisingly well here, I think.
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Re: PONY LIFE 7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:43 pm

Remember how FiM avoided saying the words "death" and "die" to an almost laughably extreme?

Now we have an episode of a spinoff where the word "Death" is in the title :-I

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Re: PONY LIFE 7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:21 pm

So according to Pinkie, she had a brother.

"Had" in past tense :-I

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Re: PONY LIFE 7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by SigmasonicX (?) » Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:25 am

This is the first set of episodes where every five-minute chunk was its own story, yet they also all tied together with the story of the fake troupe, which still hasn't been resolved. I think this storyline is pretty fun; something just tickles me about the fact that the inciting incident is them being rejected for being too old to start a troupe. Applejack being the one to suggest lying and Rainbow being against it is weird, but that just brings back the old "they have the wrong Elements" jokes.

The first story shows us Fluttershy's house, and it's an interesting redesign.
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It also showed us Twilight's house, though I didn't realize that until the last story.
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Sheesh, Twilight is just living in ruins that don't even have a ceiling. She's got it rough.

The second story was a rough one, I thought. We've seen the girls get so caught up in something that they treat their friends badly before, notably in "Rarity Takes Manehattan", but the tone of this series made it seem more like Fluttershy was a different character altogether. I mean, I thought it made sense given her obsession with Finn-tastic, but others had a hard time connecting her actions to Fluttershy's personality.

Also, uh


Baba Yaga house! And RIP the fifth Pie sibling, I guess.

The cloud gag in the third story got me. In the PonyERA stream, someone brought up FiM teaching a lesson about not believing superstitions, but then Twilight looked up Bighoof and confirmed he is in fact real. I have to say, I wasn't quite sure if Fluttershy changing size was something she was really doing, but no, Fluttershy having to get big to rescue Pinkie shows it's an actual thing.

The fourth story had fun gags, though I feel they didn't explore Dash jumping to the future nearly as much as they could have.

I'd like to highlight the writer of episode 8, Taneka Stotts. I believe she's the first Black writer for MLP G4, and the first Black woman writer at that. She's an Eisner Award-winning comic writer, and has written for Craig of the Creek and Steven Universe. Also, four weeks in, every writer has been a woman. I also tweeted about this.

Got a response to a question


Confirmed that Pony Life has a writer's room, which is what Lauren Faust wanted for FiM.

Here are the title cards


Also, a Simpsons edit

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Re: PONY LIFE 7-8: The Trail Less Trotten/Death of a Sales-Pony/Bighoof Walking/The Fluttershy Effect

Post by Adiwan (?) » Tue Jul 14, 2020 6:05 am

Must. Lower. My. Expectations.
All of the stories felt very rough and went too far for my taste.
"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams

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