/pony/ - Show Discussion

Sticky.

Wow, who's this tall white pony with the fancy mane?

Also, Christ is Fluttershy the worst doctor ever or what? This thing comes in looking half dead and she doesn't even bother to figure out what it is? Just starts feeding it soup and random drugs?

I mean, that's the whole joke, sure, and it's a really funny joke, but damn.

>>36780329
ALRIGHT, FINALLY, I GET TO TALK ABOUT CELESTIA.

This right here is the episode that made me a Celestia fan.

Though the episode itself is rather meh, it did do a good job of solidifying Celestia as my favorite character. Before this episode, we had only seen a little bit of Celestia before this episode, and while they did a good job in setting up Celestia's wisdom, they were fairly vague in regards to her personality.

This episode showed that personality. Here we see what she's like: She's in a small town which is basically in the middle of nowhere, not for a decree, not for a royal opening, just there to chat and spend some time with her subjects. She's almost unaware of her status, finding the reverence that ponies treat her as, well, silly. Deep down she feels no different than the Cakes, Pinkie Pie, or anypony else, really. She also shows a good sense of humor, coupled with intelligence and wit, as she notices the pattern of the Cakes instantly refilling her cup due to how stressed they are at keeping her comfortable, and tricks them into flooding the cup, following it with a playful "Gotcha!". As if to say "Calm down, I'm not going to bite you, this is a party, after all".

And she's not really just lolligagging and forsaking her duties either. When Mayor Mare summons her to discuss in private, she doesn't complain or delay the request. She immediately gets up and goes to solve the issue, showing that yes, she is a very responsible ruler, and she does take the lesser leaders seriously.

And that is the Celestia that I saw: A devoted, humble ruler with a good sense of humor, and incredibly smart and wise. That made Celestia my favorite character.

My like for her would grow further with future episodes, but that's neither here or there for now.

>>36780334
She went to the same school as Dr. Mario, shove pills down the throat until all the bad things are gone.

>>36780336
>She's in a small town which is basically in the middle of nowhere
Um, she can see Ponyville from her house.

>>36780361
Doesn't detract from my point.

I just needed to gush about Celestia, ok? I haven't been able to do that for over a year now.

An episode that I never really thought about too much until I watched the MAS version. Which brings up an interesting point about how Fluttershy takes care of animals. I mean beyond the usual just seeing her give them food and such. We get to see in depth the process Fluttershy goes about taking care of animals, which is interesting as it actually looks like Fluttershy doesn't know what she is doing. Rather it just seems that the case is normally the Before this episode the relationship between Fluttershy and her animals has always been kind of vague. She's always taken odd jobs before this point (bird choirs, winter wrap up crew, helping feed local wildlife) and this is the first time we really get to see her talent in effect, but the interesting thing about this approach is that Fluttershy doesn't actually seem to know what she is doing. It seems as though her life takes on to more mechanical tasks when it comes to taking care of animals, she has a schedule and goes about things in a certain manner when it comes to taking care of animals. Even when thrown off the norm she is shown to take a methodical approach to the situation. Its really different as its a nice change from the usual empathizing with animals (the Manticore, the Dragon, etc.) and shows that Fluttershy's abilities to take care of animals extend beyond just being nice to them. Though in the case of this specific episode its shown that once Fluttershy has exhausted her usual methods, she has difficulties adapting. Overall I very much like at the more in-depth look at Fluttershy's life and I wish we had more episodes like this for her instead of her usual, don't be shy/scared/a pushover.

Great episode. I hope for more phoenixes in S5.

Good episode. Amusing to watch Fluttershy and Twilight desperately try to care for Philomena.

>>36780391
>We get to see in depth the process Fluttershy goes about taking care of animals, which is interesting as it actually looks like Fluttershy doesn't know what she is doing.

Fluttershy's talent is only ever stated to be a very generic "good with animals" type of thing. What it's really looking like is that she's got a strong animal empathy, she's good speaking to animals, she's good at watching over healthy animals, but she is unquestionably not a veterinarian. She has solutions for illness, but they all fall squarely in alternative medicine, and possibly even esoteric medicine. She knows first aid and how to bandage things, but for all we know that's just because Rainbow Dash hurt herself a lot as a child. She can supposedly subdue and train an orthros, but if it gets anything more than a cold, she's just plain out of luck.

Question of the day: Why is it that the phoenix appears to be the one mythical creature that she hasn't been able to recognize and recite facts about? She knows all about all these other things, but this bird shows up and she's just completely lost.

>>36780675
I assume it's because Phoenixes are exceedingly rare. Celestia owns one of the few in existence.

>>36780675
>Fluttershy's talent is only ever stated to be a very generic "good with animals" type of thing.
Which is my point exactly, the episode actually looks at the talent and how she applies it rather than it just being there. We get to see the extent of her empathy and the character's limits.

>Why is it that the phoenix appears to be the one mythical creature that she hasn't been able to recognize and recite facts about?
Would you assume the ugly looking bird coughing up its own feathers would be a rare mystical creature?

>>36780694

I would I knew anything in world about phoenixes. And if I was really that interested in animals, I would probably want to know what this bird I've never seen is. Perhaps I'm assuming too much, though, and a lack of feathers just completely scrambled her ability to decipher what it was.

>>36780681

I'm not so sure about that one. I mean, we've seen a whole family of phoenixes that are presumably unrelated to Philomena out in the wild, and the dragons seemed to make a sport out of smashing their eggs, which implies that they're plentiful enough to hunt that way. It was a pretty sizable family, too, four children, I think? And Spike even took one home with him for a while. And then we also have to assume that Fluttershy has never seen one in a book or something, either, which seems unlikely.

>>36780695

Its possible they're only plentiful in the area the dragons were at though; the dragon migration seemed to be occuring at a location far away from where ponies normally lived, so its possible they're very scarce in Pony lands.

>>36780695

We've seen more dragons than phoenixes, and ponies know next to nothing about dragons. Keep in mind that Twilight Sparkle, the only pony in Ponyville who could identify a zebra, didn't know what Philomena was either.