Not a bar, but plays one on TV

6:14 AM

I saw a reference to Chumbawamba in main chat, and thought some people might enjoy this:

ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba

> [Chumbawamba] is the rare case where a band can claim that they’ve done everything they could do as a band and be absolutely truthful about it.
https://www.stereogum.com/1086542/chumbawamba-break-up/news/

Derpy

11:10 AM

If Stack will ever support easy avatar switching based on daily mood, this should totally be @trogdor annoyed mode avatar :P

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Is this meant to be Twi?

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Moon Dancer

but yep, it totally makes sense for you to see the similarity

> Moon Dancer makes her first in-show appearance in Amending Fences. She is shown to be an asocial recluse, living alone in a dilapidated Canterlot house and focusing only on her studies. As a filly, she was friends with Twilight Sparkle. Twilight learns that after not showing up to the party Moon Dancer had thrown in the first episode, Moon Dancer became heartbroken and withdrawn, rejecting friendship altogether.

Twilight approaches Moon Dancer as a potential friend and appears to reach her at first due to the two's mutual love of learning and Twilight offering Moon Dancer the use of her…

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy I'm not sure what to make of that characterisation. Is the initial part of the description meant to be outright wrong in the entry (e.g. 'only on her studies')?

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica ? sorry? I don't get what you mean there

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy In other words: just how asocial and monofocused is she really? Is that a merely superficial impression that is meant to be gradually seen as oversimplified? Or do her interests really only amount to studies and discussions thereof with Twilight, and the 'party' was just a way to more socially-acceptably label an invitation to hanging out together and chatting more?

Derpy

11:20 AM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica nope, she became that way because of that party.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy Ah. The chronology looked a bit ambiguous from the description.

Derpy

Basically, in the past she already probably had few friends, and for some reason she took the filly Twily as a model. It is not clear WHY -Twily wasn't exactly a friendship genius back then, so either she admired her because of her ability in magic and stuff or I don't know.

Carcer

I got a bit frustrated at the way Twilight's background kept getting retconned to include more friends tbh

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy That seems like a sufficient and serious reason for admiration.

Carcer

oh poor twilight, she knew nothing about friendship, living a lonely childhood with her [checks notes] big brother best friend forever and the babysitter she completely adored

Derpy

11:25 AM

@Carcer "retconned............" To be fair, Moon Dancer is the one that was explicitly mentioned in the first episode.

the one Spike had bought a present for

Carcer

okay, that's a callback

but still

Derpy

as for the friendship... I think IMHO that on that point the show is consistent. The filly Twily WAS going on the Sunset Shimmer route, albeit for different reasons.

She WAS obsessed with study, and did indeed ignore "friends" for that

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy Now I just have this fragmented image, with Shimmer being some sort of mellowing-out hooligan but not really introverted in any way, due to only being familiar with her from the link you gave.

Derpy

@Carcer basically, the two you mentioned were indeed the two exceptions, and I would guess that she "lost" Cadence very soon (as you said -> babysitter... I doubt Cadence was a big presence in her life when she was at Celestia school) and as for Shining... yep, that was the Best Big Brother Forever Ever.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Shimmer was the previous Celestia's student.

Again, got obsessed with study, and probably had some issues with pride.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

(Or at least she was implied to be a mellowing-out hooligan by the episode I've seen. That's the thing, the impression I got from the sequel about what happened before may be wrong.)

trogdor

11:33 AM

@Derpy lol

yeah even I don't tend to change my avatar that often

well I say even I, I hadn't changed it until recently for a while

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica All went downhill after Celestia showed her the mirror, Sunset wanted to know more and become obsessed with it.

It is unclear if it was pursue of power of pursue of admiration, I would say probably the second one.

Anyway, looking at the mirror she saw an (evil looking) alicorn version of herself. She wanted to get that power and that caused her to be "banished" from the library, removed as Celestia's student and so on.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Interesting. That's different from how I understood the case from prior limited information.

Derpy

she then escaped in the mirror world. For some reason, she ended up in the EG world (plotwise, it would have made much more sense for her to end up in the Reflection world, the one with the opposite version of every pony. Especially since that would mean that the image in the mirror was her opposite, which would indeed fit the character she becomes after her "getting better" )

In the Equestria Girl world she manages to live as an human for some years (how... only she knows, that is the problem I already mentioned) and then she somehow get to know that Twily had become a princess

She steals Twily crown (again, why the crown would give her any power is never explained) and tries to use that to become a sort of "god" in the human world.

Power overtake her mind, she gets defeated, and she realized how idiot she was.

To be fair, if the spell and the elements work like they are implied to, that is probably the "reformed by defeat" moment that actually makes sense in the show (Luna's too, but that is another story)

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:50 AM

That reads like a 'describe a film, badly' take. (Badly in the sense of 'unsell' it, not in the sense of the description being incompetently written.)

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica you should know two things.

First, Sunset past is only hinted in the movie, you don't get that "played out" on screen.

The actual story is only available in an official comic titled "The Fall of Sunset Shimmer". There is also a fan made animation with the same name, but it kinda changes some points.

as for the movie, it isn't a bad movie. But some things in the EG movies are forced, extremely forced, Executive Meddling level of forced

The whole thing "Sunset steals the crown, Twily follows her to get it back and end up in human school" was probably forced on the staff because the Executives wanted a movie about "MLP in school" with "end year dance / beauty pageant context" involved

So, guess what? The crown ends up to be the price and Twily (who shouldn't even be a student in the first place) find herself in the "student of the year" context.

lucky the writers managed to find a way to make that bearable, but there is lot of forcing in there

I guess you also noticed that with the second movie....

"battle of the bands at school".... yep, where is "The Fonz"? .... oh, wait a second....

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy As far as the one I watched goes, the first half or so seemed interesting, but the resolution (not just the finale, but the half or so in which things got serious and protagonists started actually fully tackling the problem) felt . . . interest-losing. Not forced, just ran out of moments that intrigued me.

Derpy

12:05 PM

Flash Sentry IS Fonzie.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica the final battle of Rainbow Rock, it is probably a big "you told us to do this, but we will turn it into a Scott Pilgrim reference instead"

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy I had to look up what that even means. As far as he goes, 'OK, personal attractions + professional rivalry' was one of the things that I was intrigued by. It's not some sort of new idea, but it can be interesting to watch if done well (e.g. Congresswolf pulled it off well enough to be interesting). And I was hoping this would produce some interesting turns in the plot.

But it somehow got . . . absorbed . . . by the bigger plot thread and bigger threat. So by the second half, whatever reëstablishment of a relationship happened, it looked . . . whatever.

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica again, while you shouldn't expect things to become to much complicated as a general rule in MLP (with a few surprising exception the comic plots are far more elaborate than the show/movies ones) EG as I said has that problem.

Probably they were required to give make a musical (the movie has more than 15 songs) about a band battle and the ending was actually already planned to include the two bands "fighting" while playing songs.

they had to try and work with those limits.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Derpy Yeah, seems like I just had the wrong (or at least overly broad) expectations, not being as familiar with the storytelling conventions of this group of works, and as a result misread that setup as telegraphing a more complex subplot.

Derpy

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica MLP is a good show, with many heatwarming moments, but it is also full of issues on how they managed it.

trogdor

12:20 PM

yeah

that sums it up pretty well

Derpy

Some time ago I commented on the show ending, and how that was probably not at all what the original writers planned

trogdor

also to be honest I didn't like Equestria Girls in particular very much

it wasn't horrible but it wasn't up to the general quality of the show

Derpy

I mentioned Twily forcefully put into the position of being Celestia&Luna successor, taking on their duties.... and basically giving out her life in the process (yeah, riddle me... if Celesta and Luna where both already exhausted everyday when each did HALF the job Twily won.... will book horse get any time for anything but work?)....

Is that the worst part of the ending?

Nope, the worse part is that the final three enemies aren't reformed. Why is that so bad?

The first is one that had multiple opportunities to repent and didn't. He was pas the moral horizon by far.

The second one is a creature that was born to be a parasite of others and never knew another way. When she finally was shown one, she was shown it in a way that would make most normal persons crazy out.

So, she was the queen of her race and become the one that does not repent.

could be acceptable, if the series didn't include hints to a development that never was.