weesh

Fun to hear that you figured it out by measuring the ponies rather than just drawing.

interesting style. keep up the good work.

18 entries in 17 days? Well done guys!

Why do people STILL pronounce the 'R's in "Jar Jar" when none of the characters on screen do so?

Since I was the last in line, I asked Angie to draw the final picture and sent both to ping. Can't wait to see the final product. ^^

In other words...

We are done!?

YAY!

If I wanted to get the hub, I would have to get basic cable. Then I would have to add the "prefered" package. Then I would have to add the "variety" package, which has the Hub and is only available if you have the preferred package. It gets expensive pretty quickly while iTunes was a one time fee to have them forever.

interesting.

I wonder how it shakes out if you remove MLP from the equation, and what the numbers looked like prior to season 1.

3) Which character best exemplifies good traits for a man?

Mr. Cake. He is a hard working man, a supportive husband, and a loving father. Best of all, he works as a team with his wife, and they communicate brilliantly. Their relationship is not perfect, or even glamours, but they are willing to work on it together.

Communication is the key to a strong marriage, and I would love to see more of they're relationship in episodes as a way to teach this to children. I think it would be great to show this to kids not only for what lies ahead of their relationships, but to help them understand what their parents relationship is.

To many people learn to fall in love with the idea of love, and they expect to have the love story they watched, read, and had pumped into their minds since childhood happen to them. A good example is Rarity and Blue Blood, and how her ideas about love had to be measured up against reality. This is why I like Best Night Ever so much, because her prefabricated expectations go wrong for all the right reasons.

Very true, I love the team aspect of their relationship.

On a side note: WHY U NO PUT ROID RAGE PONEH? He's a personal favorite. When I first saw him I about wet myself laughing.

I've been calling him "Flex", is their an "official" name for him yet? He was excluded for the same reason Time Turner was: there is no in show development of his personality.

On the show it is both. That is official enough for me.

Thank you everyone that has taken the time to put thought into responses.

1. It is important only in the sense that males should not be stereotyped or typed cast when shown or have dialog. We all know the show is aimed at a female audience and seeks to show that audience positive female role models, so that should be paramount. There is no need for male-female parity, because there are so many male dominated shows for kids out there already.

That makes a lot of sense. Well said.

Is it time to push the artists up a notch?

The cutie mark change fundamentally changed each character mentally. But it is not clear that it railroaded them down a specific path, as much as it pushed them towards the character whose mark they had. Perhaps Rarity sees Dash's cutie mark as all things Dash, and started emulating her perception of Dash. In this case, she probably things of Dash as a skilled flyer and the local weather guy, but being unable to fly, defaulted to weather. All subconscious of course.

A similar case can be made for Applejack, who isn't often around on Rarity's gem missions, and couldn't do it anyways.

Snips and Snails aren't really trouble makers, they are just dumb.

Which was the problem. It would be better for the characters if they were intelligent and silly, or intelligent and troublemakers.

1) Regarding the portrayal of men, there are several levels that the show could strive towards. Firstly, they intentionally avoided romantic love and focused on friendships, which is one of the best decisions made in the show. They could go a step further and have more males that are friends, because modeling such things wouldn't be a bad idea in a society where it can be hard to be "just" friends with others of the opposite sex. I'd say "important" but they aren't failing this one.

2) I made this topic because it was hard to think of good male characters. Sure there are Shining Armor and Fancy Pants, but the rest are unsatisfying. Many have little depth, little screen time, are cliches, etc. While it isn't a deal-breaker for this part of the series to be weak, it is disappointing.

3) Fancy Pants, for the short period that we got to know him, showed open mindedness and love to all those around him, from the first moment to the last. He edges out Shining armor.

4) While it is hard to say that any of the characters hurt the show, there are some missed opportunities. Snips and Snails could have been portrayed with more respect, but still been troublemakers and thick skinned enough to not let teasing get to them. Sorin could have been the one male jock that was deeper than loving pie.

Update?

It seems like you are asking if you should act different than your normal self for some reason.

If being yourself works for small groups, and for a big convention, why wouldn't it work for a small convention? What am I missing?

Pretty sure Little Strongheart is supposed to be female actually.

Oops! you seem to be right, I have removed her from the list.

3) Which character best exemplifies good traits for a man?

Not exactly sure about the question since I don't know exactly what "good traits for a man" entails. It's kind of an awkward question. I'm not sure I believe good traits for a man and for a woman are all so different. If instead the question was which male character exemplifies the most good traits, I'd go with Shining Armor; he's compassionate, strong and a leader. Spike is a great character too though.

While similar, they are not exactly the same. Women and men are physiologically, emotionally and mentally different. I need to think about what specifically the differences are, but they should exist. I'll get back to this later.

[colour=#282828]Hey, what are you doing calling Thunderlane a slacker? Is it because of that [/colour]one time[colour=#282828] Rainbow Dash called him lazy? He was ill! You think that talent happens overnight? You don't know what he goes though, man! Get off his back![/colour]

Then write us a better one, or should I just remove him from the list? We don't really know that much about him. It had seemed that he was a slacker before he got sick though. Unless the symptoms take a long time to develop, which is inconsistent with the story. But, maybe he had a low grade fever, and his immune system was already weak before he started hanging out with other sick ponies.

As his roleplayer, I'd say that the most important thing about Filthy is that even though he's probably the richest pony in town, he's still down to earth compared to his Canterlot brethren. In fact, it's a bit odd that his daughter turned out to be a brat.

If you rewrite his summary, I'll use yours.

Anyway, I'll probably post in-length later, because I'm lazy.......

The reason my thoughts aren't typed yet is because they are not easy questions to answer.

This was almost a "where are the good men?" but it disintegrated when the information was pulled together. A little more time is needed for contemplation.

A couple of thoughts on the royal dresses...

Option A

It should be covered in stars because I am Princess of the night and put some clouds on it, mystical clouds! Mystical clouds for dreams! It should look regal though, so make it purple but not that 'Royal purple' that everypony uses.... trim it with gold as well, I don't see why Celestia should be the only princess who... Ooh a crown, a gold crown, with my cutie mark on it.

Don't you already...?

WHO'S DRESS IS THIS?

Option B

In a small house in Fillydelphia, a young mare is crying on her friends shoulder.

'Everypony hates them!'

'Oh, that's not true. They were a really pretty design and the Princesses loved them.'

'You're just saying thaaaaaat'

I don't understand your post, unless you are lamenting the ugly dresses.

They are so bad, that they took me out of the moment. There was a brief window when I hoped that they had intentionally dressed down to make twilight's gown all the more spectacular, but hers was sub-standard as well.

Here is a survey of the non-antagonist male characters (that have talked and gotten significant screen time) with a brief description of each:

Spike: Often a voice of reason, compassionate, has trouble focusing, dependable, loyal

Big Mac: shy, hard worker

Snips/Snails: nerdy fanboys, dumb

Fancy Pants: navigates high society with ease, but open minded, courteous, respectful and kind.

Mr. Cake: adept parent and baker

Hoity Toity: fashionista

Sorin: pie loving jock

Shining Armor: Powerful magic user, leader, great brother

Filthy Rich: good father, boring, money obsessed

Pony Joe: down to earth pastry chef

Thunderlane: talented slacker

Flex: excitable, loud, jock

Braeburn: pioneer, family oriented

Sherrif Silverstar: steriotypical western sherrif

Chief Thunderhooves: Action oriented, reasonable, boring

Cranky Doodle: spent life searching for love, depressed

Gustave: stereotypical french chef

Firstly, feel free to write better summaries, or to add characters, and this post shall be edited.

Secondly, some questions:

1) Is the portrayal of men in the series important? Why or why not?

2) What is your overall impression of how men are portrayed?

3) Which character best exemplifies good traits for a man?

4) Do the portrays of any of these men hurt the series? Who and why?

I don't think the spell made Twilight a princess. It appears creating a new magic did. Starswirl might have been unable to finish the spell because he didn't have the knowledge of friendship to create the new magic

That is the problem with WMG; we may never know. I like your theory as well, since it is more grounded in fact than mine.

I will have to watch it when I have time. From the sounds of it this is what a brony documentary should be, something about why the fans exist, not random footage of cons and people talking about why they are awesome

The best part is the quote about Rarity being a good role model, not because she loves fashion, but because she turned her passion into a career.

This is everything a documentary about bronies should be.

To the point, open minded, plenty of clips, and intelligent conversation.

So here are the two spells:

From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled.

From all of us together, together we are friends, with the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without end.

It makes me smile to think that Starswirl the Bearded (character) might not have been as clueless as Celestia seems to suggest. Perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing.

"Secret unfinished masterpiece" is high praise for a harmful spell unless the intent and planning behind it is part of the charm.

Perhaps "he did not understand friendship like you do" was referring to the fact that Starswirl knew he would not be able to successfully cast his greatest spell given his life of solitude (WMG!), so he intentionally sabotaged it as a clue for someone else to find. Or maybe it means Starswirl was unwilling to write it correctly because he did not want to ascend, and thus couldn't write it, for fear of...

Aside - interesting magic lore:

The spell did nothing when Twilight said it out loud, but transcribing the sentence and especially the period invoked it without her repeating it. This may be the way all new magic works the first time, or just the way certain special spells work for the first time.

...invoking it and becoming a prince when he had reasons not to do so.

Another possibility is that they used those words because this episode was written before they signed for a 4th season. So they could have been making it into a reference to the greatest farewell speech in modern history to end the series with.

That crossed my mind, but didn't it turn out that seasons 3 and 4 commissioned together? Perhaps my understanding is faulty.

...but once again Trollestia is kind of like "nope, deal with it princess" in a nutshell...

That was not my impression.

The predictable panic in Twilight was caused by two things: fear of losing her friends, and fear of inadequacy.

Celestia address both of these. She assures her that there will be time to learn about her duties, and she assures her that her relationships will not only remain intact, but will grow, even as they change.

Spending more time on it than that would have been overkill.