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Wait, seriously? All you guys are going to leave me hanging? Fine, I'll take care of myself.

(\

@Platus

This is where reading books gets you, purplesmart.

No, why would you do that Platus?! Oh god….here they come!

Are we still doing bats?
…
No?
…
I don't care.

These waifu charts get really awkward when your favorite characters are underage…

Awkward, but still adorable!

Also, just because it's the topic that spawned these cute little things, I don't like the 'Doing harmful things' meme.
In addition to the fact that they are just mindless weepy-fuel and are built around being unnecessarily hurtful toward characters for no real reason, 90% of them are just… bad.
With the exception of two that i can think of, there are just dozens and dozens that are all basically identical, just with a different character shoehorned in but with no change in personality.
Sorry, but if you smack Princess-goddamn-Luna in the face, she is not going to turn into a whimpering crybaby when you say you are breaking up with her.
Luna will simply break you.
That's why the only two that I have 'liked' (in terms of them feeling at all accurate, not in terms of enjoyment) have been toward Rarity and Dashie because the artists actually bothered to give them the reactions I would pretty much expect from those characters.

@Attracting Bronies
It's really a simple formula, people:

(\~/)

Oh hey, speaking of which now that the season is over and we've all (EXCEPT FOR YOU CRASH!) seen all the episodes of the season. I guess it must come to the obligatory…….

WORST EPISODE THREAD

I'm going to have to say Simple Ways is my least favorite episode of the season…..I mean I really hate this episode. Every time I try to go back and watch it I just get this bad feeling that basically says "Don't even try it." and I listen to that feeling. I listen to it well, it's seriously the only episode I've watched twice (barely made it through the second time.) it deals with one of my LEAST favorite tropes out there the whole 'Changing absolutely everything about you to impress the one guy that'll never show up again after this episode' trope is definitely the one that I was really hoping they'd never tackle. Probably the only episode of the series that I only look up a single clip of and never watch the entire episode (Which would definitely be the Applejewel/Rarihick showdown at the end).

The Breezies episode may get a lot of flack but I can at least stomach getting through that episode.

Just when you thought the ABOMINATION was over… here comes… PART TWO OF MY SURVEY! PLEASE DO THE FIRST ONE FIRST. IT IS ON PAGE 191 NEAR THE BOTTOM.

ANYWAYS, THIS ONE IS LONG AND NOW IT'S EVEN MORE "LE WACKY RANDOM" (AND THEREFORE MORE OBNOXIOUS) THAN THE LAST ONE. It does not live up to the hype, but there's no scales to rate things on a scale of one to ten this time, and you'll need to use your brain and your mind and your head (maybe). 3 very different things.

SO, IF YOU'VE SUBMITTED A RESPONSE TO THE LAST ONE, YOU'RE READY TO GO!

CLICK THIS SENTENCE TO GET TO THE SURVEY AND ENJOY (OR DON'T ENJOY BECAUSE I'M NOT THE BOSS OF YOU)!

(P.S.: A results video for the first survey is rendered and will be uploaded before KYM Thread Simulator v3.0 lolcaps)

Did the survey.
But:

You can give one pony multiple ages, yet you can't give multiple pones the same age. Neon, explain. Other than this small thingy, 't was fun to fill in, like the previous one.

It seems I made the grid the wrong way around! Haha

I hope this doesn't become too much of a problem when I look over the results, but if it does, I'll put this question correctly into the next part of the survey.

@Worst episode?
Power Ponies! – The plot made no sense… "enchanted comic b- what?" which I could overlook if it took advantage of the superhero genre for which I'm a big fan, however they didn't, and the comic-book style backgrounds didn't help, it just made the animation look a little off. The only good part of the episode was Spike realizing how he just gets in the way most of the time.. This episode had a lot of potential but it turned the genre of superheroes into more of a novelty rather then a platform of good story telling.There are no episodes of MLP that I hate, but there are ones that I will never re-watch. This episode is one of them..

In short: Spike episode 'shakes fist'.

I was more pissed off because that episode was so overhyped by the Network as it was one of the clips Shown in a Storyboard at Comic-Con, when they started playing the Season 4 Promos most of the clips were of Power Ponies, when it was the week of the premiere of the episode they played NOTHING but clips for this episode which they only did for episodes like Pinkie Pride and Twilight's Kingdom. Then in the end the episode just doesn't deliver at all.

My least favorite episode this season was definitely It Aint Easy Being Breezies. It was a very forgettable episode. Normally when an episode was full of plotholes/wasn't interesting I just forget it and move on with my life, but this had the unfortunate double whammy of being an episode many of us were excited for because breezies were mentioned in an earlier episode and being Fluttershy's key episode. All of the other key episodes were pretty solid and left me satisfied, but this one had so many problems which is really depressing because I was probably looking forward to Fluttershy's key episode the most.

Speaking of key episodes, how about we discuss our favorite episodes this season, shall we? Season 4 was a pretty solid season, and I hate dwelling on negative things. I think Pinkie Pride and Pinkie Apple Pie are the two big contenders for my season favorite. Hell, they just might be my favorite episodes of the entire series. Pinkie Pride was, as we all remember, the Weird Al episode. I was fairly skeptical of how this episode would play out, but Pinkie and Cheese's characters work really well off of each other (I totally ship it). The episode was a huge joy to watch and I've watched it several times already. Pinkie Apple Pie was an episode with fantastic comedy, a great story that fleshes the characters out, and one of the best songs to date. I feel like this was an episode made for me. I'm not all that enthused about AJ by herself, but the Apple family when they're together is one of my favorite parts of the show. They play off of each other so well and feel like an actual family. Add Pinkie into the mix and you've got one hell of an episode.

@Worst Episode
The Breezies. No doubt about that.

It's pretty the only episode that I have a negative opinion. It's more like a showcase of Flash skillz than actual good storytelling, and since MLP is all about friendship, the episode easily qualifies.

@Neon's Survey

Well fuck.

Something's wrong with the list: The values were inverted and thus I can't select repeated age groups (ex: RD and Twi at 20)

But to fix this (and yeah Neon, I'm talkin to you), as of 2014 (+4 years after it's debut)
Twi: 21
RD: 20
Flutters: 22
Pinkie: 21
AJ: 22
Rarity: 23

Aliens

Hey guys who wants to take too much time out of their day to order your favorite episodes from most favorite to least favorite? Because I know I didn't but I had nothing better to do with the last half hour here so here you go!

Man, Dat Bottom 10. Didn't realize I had Twilight Time so low on the list, didn't think it was that bad. I guess I just didn't think it was better than most episodes. And it looks like Simple Ways actually knocked Mysterious Mare Do Well off my least favorite episode. When it came down to it….I actually watch Mysterious Mare Do Well if it's the only episode of My Little Pony to watch that day.

@Episode Filter

@Episode Filter

Note: For some reason Canterlot wedding P2 is way down the bottom, even though Canterlot wedding P1 is much higher up. I think I dun goofed the sorting there. I liked Canterlot Wedding

Just gonna say it here (as of June 2014):

Twily: 21
Pinks: 23
Dashie: 20
Flutters: 24
Rarara: 23
Applepone: 22

@Worst Episode: Just For Sidekicks is boring, unfunny, and just plain awful. The only redeeming quality was how they made it happen alongside Equestria Games, which I found pretty neat.

@Worst episode

You know, I couldn't even tell you if I wanted. I'm sure it's somewhere in season 4, but the entire season has been such a bland and hazy miasma of unmemorable events that I find it difficult to pick a single episode that can be called worst. They all just blend together into a stew of general disappointment for me.

I got bored, so I made a thing:
Feeling Small?
Combining the largest and smallest plushies I own into one stupid comic for dorks.
Yay!

@Worst Episode
I really don't enjoy dwelling on the negative, but if I had to pick something from this season, the Equestria Games episode where they basically wasted the whole multi-season build up on a Spike episode was the only time I can recall being explicitly disappointed at the end.
But even in that case, I thought it was a decent episode, just not good enough to warrant what it preceded.

Overall, I was actually pretty happy with this season.
It may not have been as memorable as the first and second, but it was substantially better than the rushed and compressed third.

Anyway…
Forget the bad ones.
Why not just focus on the awesome ones?

@Songs
I'll also say that I'm really liking the songs from this season, even the ones that I wasn't too hot on the first time around.
Pretty much all of Pinkie Pride is really fun and Filli Vanilli's quartet song has really grown on me as well.
Add in the Crusaders' flag march and the insanely catchy Apple family song and Ingram put in some solid work last year!

Also, if anyone is interested, this is a map of the time signature for Discord's song:

I'd say that's appropriately chaotic.

@DP's Comic
No offense but…
THE HECK'S THAT? PLUSHIES FOR MICROBES??!!

@Worst episode of S4
For me, it's a tie between Power Ponies and Daring Don't. Both for essentially the same reason of it just not fitting in with the show. The superhero plot was poorly done and cliche--they had some great opportunities to parody the comic genre and instead passed them by for some pretty obvious Spike shilling. Making Daring real opened up a can of continuity worms, including why she or her publisher haven't been sued for libel yet by the real, still alive people she writes about and the fact there's apparently a rainforest located several miles outside of the frozen Crystal Empire.

It was just a really poor decision to do either plots.

@Fifths optimism
I can't believe it's happened but someone is actually more cynical than /mlp/--even they enjoyed large parts of S4. The Mayans must have failed to accommodate the leap year or something.

@Worst episode discussion

Season four wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I found that it had a lot of boring episodes. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of enjoyable episodes as well. I didn't think that the Breezies and Power Ponies were that bad honestly. Princess Twilight Sparkle parts one and two are the only two episodes this season that I watched more than once. I think I'll re-watch season four to get a better idea on what I think of it. I don't wanna think of season four as "the boring season".

Season one is probably my favorite season, even though season two has most of my favorite episodes. I used to hate season three, but as time went on I don't have that same emotion towards it. Then again, it's been a while since I re-watched seasons one two and three.

I feel like the only one that kinda like the Breezies episode.

Then again, I also wasn't fond of some episodes that other people really liked. So maybe that's just my hipster side talking

I also not-hated the Breezies episode. I mean, it wasn't the high point of the season or anything, but I also found it relatively inoffensive.

@XTR
Yeah, basically.

They're super tiny!

Hey, Egophiliac (creator of Woonastuck and Slice of Life) has started a new thing:

Mad scientist/steampunk Twilight who takes things too literally?
Yes, please!

+1 for Breezie a'ight-ness.
Any episode that includes an angry Swedish/Norwegian/Whatever-the-hell-accent-that-was guy is okay by me.

Felt like doing a cover of that lullaby from the Lovestruck Derpy tumblr.

Was originally going to add a few more bells and whistles, but then I remembered how incredibly lazy I am and decided just to do a quick and dirty live cover.

@Most Not-Loved Episode

Wasn't a big fan of Daring Don't. It was just sort of meh to me. Not bad. Just meh. I would say Twilight Time was also pretty forgettable though.

That said, this is still my overall favorite season.

@Fifths

Also, that's the first time I think I've seen what you look like IRL. Always interesting to put Internet names to faces.

@Fifths

Hey guys, I don't think anyone here lives in or around Russia, do they?
Because I need to find these:

Most of them are just crystal-y variations of normal blindbags (which are pretty unique themselves), but I have never seen those molds for the CMCs and Fluttershy before and they look really cool.
…But they are apparently only sold in Russia and I can't find more than four or five pictures even confirming their existence, much less allowing me to actually buy them.
They are crazy phantom ponies…
So has anybody seen these things before?

Episode Idea for Season 5:

@Fifths

Fancy guitarwork. Your musical versatility with various instruments never ceases to impress

You should show that to the people who made the original animation, see what they think. I bet they'll be ecstatic to their their work inspiring others.

Also, so that's what you look like.

@DP

Isn't there some Russian Bronies still around on KYM? I remember someone having that exact user name here and was literally a Russian Brony.

@unrelated

Art

Man, hiatuses (hiati?) murder the thread. I take it no one wants to jump start things by talking about fanfics? I'm always up for some juicy Fimfiction drama.

Maybe you should just chill a bit and figure out why everyone hates your argument in the guns thread.

This made my day. Thank you fifths.

Also,
DeadParrot wrote:

Episode Idea for Season 5:

Did you draw this? Because its friggin awesome.

Aw, thanks for the warm reception of my song everyone. I know I'm not that great of a singer and my phone isn't exactly the most high fidelity recording device, so thanks for no one complaining about my posting amateur footage of a yeti bellowing its mating call to the pony forum. :)

I did another quick and dirty cover for those who haven't had enough caterwauling.

Not too bad I hope. I actually only just picked up a ukulele for the first time about an hour before recording this cover. It's an amazingly easy instrument to jump onto if you know your way around the guitar.

@Fifths

You learned to do that in an hour? Jeez. I tried learning to play the ukelele once….I failed miserably. After 2 months of struggling to understand how to strum I gave up. I think I'm only good at things within the realm of computers

Anyway I worked on that sketch you wanted me to vector. Here's the current draft

I had a slight issue with the character looking like a mouse instead of a horse. I minorly adjusted the ears and snout to negate that appearance but I think I'd need to totally restructure the head to fully remove what I now cannot unsee.

To give you a tip fifths, note that in MLP, males have a longer squarer face. Stick with that archetype to help keep a pone look. You can have a look at my most recent vector to get an example of how to shape a head

@BSoD

Yeah, not everyone can be a musician. It takes a certain kind of intelligence, a certain…mm…how should one say…

finesse.

And would you mind replacing the cheaply scrawled treble clef on the hat with a more proper one?

You know I've had to draw hundreds of those twirly bastards in my life and not one of them has ever come out looking right.

Dud Y Dis Serius?

XTR09 said:

Dud Y Dis Serius?

I guess. I could link you to the /mlp/ and EQD threads if you don't believe me. I could be wrong regarding the copyright/trademark thing, though. You know how horrible IP laws are.

I could hardly believe the hiatus plural thing myself.

hello? i heard this is the place to post if i want to be a forum mod.

hello. i like the ponies.

I'm in a Skype chat with pretty much every /mlp/ tripfag and Horse-News writer, and they're basically just trying to lead a campaign to get people to stop using the DHX assets after a DHX employee (who's also in the chat and helping with Super Smash ponies, albeit not much anymore; her contract recently got rewritten as a result of the leaks and she's not allowed to be involved with fan projects) went into detail on the legal implications.

They're doing the smart thing. Basically the problem with the leaks as that DHX is now much more suspicious of fan animations. Most Flash assets have watermarks built into them like intentional "animation errors" (a guy I know has "BELONGS TO [name] DONUT STEAL" written over his builds' bodies in subtle text that only shows up if someone uses the fill tool on them), but even with this DHX will never be able to fully determine to what extent their builds are used in an animation. It's commonly believed that Jan had access to DHX assets and based his own heavily off them, and that this resulted in a cease and desist letter. So with DHX unable to verify a hundred percent whether an animator used their assets, they're going to flex their intellectual property rights and take down "show quality" animations simply out of the fear that their assets were involved. It's a rational action to take, but not very good news for the fandom.

The problem is that they'll never be able to convince everyone to abandon Hasbro's builds. Anyone who frequents /mlp/ and has even a passing interest in animation has at least looked at those assets. A lot of people have used them in animations and probably more people have heavily based their own builds off of them, or at least made some modifications in hopes of making them less recognizable. So the concern is that Hasbro is going to have a knee-jerk reaction and delete fan animations left and right. Not only that, but if an animator is using DHX's builds, they're open to a lot more legal action than cease and desist letters. It's highly unlikely a court will find using a company's Flash assets for personal (or worse, commercial) use to be fair use or parody; the fear is that a court would rule Flash assets to be something along the lines of "trade secrets," and even I'm not convinced that such a ruling would be incorrect. Hasbro will probably want to bury these builds and God knows how far they'll go to do that.

And that's worrisome. Even animators like me, who don't really aspire for show quality animation (I like to try to capture the aesthetic of the show, but I don't try to get my builds to look the same) could be at risk if Hasbro thinks we've in some way used their assets to our advantage.

Pone time. You guys don't post Daring Do often enough, or at least not on the pages I visit.

@Fifths' cupcakes
You forgot the most important ingredient!

Muffinlicious wrote:

Did you draw this?

Ha, you think I can draw!
Here's the source.

@Animation stuff
I was going to type out more, but Exudes beat me to it and said it all much better.
They are Hasbro's assets so even if they aren't explicitly covered by the terms of 'copyright' or 'trademark,' I'm sure they would have a legal justification for restricting their use.
'Trade secrets' sounds plausible as the way they built their puppets is a significant part of what allows them to do what they do.

I hadn't heard about those watermarks before, but they make perfect sense as they will likely go unnoticed by someone using them without permission, but they will be instantly identifiable by those who made them.
Other industries do stuff like this all the time to prove (or really, deter) unauthorized use of work.
I remember hearing stories that early programmers for calculators would stick in specific special equations that would intentionally return a wrong answer so that if they typed it into another device and received the same response, they could immediately tell that their code was being used.
It's a pretty clever little system.

I think that cases such as Exudes' where the builds are much more stylized should be safe as I can't see a court making a decision on something that abstracted from the original, but 'show quality' animators may see more scrutiny.
People calling it 'the end of the fandom' are obviously being hyperbolic, but it could have some ripples in the animation community for a little while.
(Honestly though, I think I enjoy the more stylized animators more. Even Jan wasn't perfectly in line with DHX's style and I always liked noticing the little bit of his own that he put in there.)

Some Andy Price, just because:

She tricked us all!

Captain Blubber said:

i like the ponies.

Then you are required to list your favorite pony before we can drain some of your blood for the cult ritual welcome you to the herd.

ExudesAffluence said:

…a DHX employee…

Is this a legit DHX employee or one of those "I work at DHX and can confirm the finale's shit" employees?

Not only that, but if an animator is using DHX’s builds, they’re open to a lot more legal action than cease and desist letters.

That's the thing I'm scratching my head over. What exactly would Hasbro sue them for? If a court rules it a "trade secret," the copyright/trademark suit goes out the window as neither can be counted as a "trade secret." It's not exactly a secret if the thing's publicly registered. It just doesn't seem to me that something used in the animation process can be counted as failing under copyright and it's absurd to think it falls under trademark.

There's a part of me that wants someone to take on Hasbro and force their hand just to see what kind of a lawsuit they'd file and how the courts would handle it, and then there's a much larger part of me that doesn't want that to happen because the US court system's shit and would most likely rule drawings in Flash that were quadrupedal fall under Hasbro's IP.

Deadparrot222 said:

People calling it ‘the end of the fandom’ are obviously being hyperbolic…

Hiatus + minor shitstorm = people freaking out. Honestly, x + y = people freaking out, in this fandom. I don't know if this is common for all the larger fandoms, but there seems to be higher panic ratio when involving ponies.

Hahaha

But seriously, why does everyone keep saying this now?

@Fifths

No problem. Anything else you want me to edit?

@xTSGx
(Long, semi-coherent, 2 am post coming up)
That's where things get a little more murky, legally speaking.
It definitely wouldn't be a trademark/copyright issue, but it isn't technically the art itself that is causing the problem.
Flash puppets are a lot more than just the individual pictures.
Exudes can certainly tell you more details, but a ton of work goes into stitching all those pieces together into a puppet that can be used by the animation team and it is essentially that production work that they are protecting.
Found a gif from when the leak first happened:

These Flash puppets contain all the assets for a pony from every angle, every standard expression, every… everything, really.
And, perhaps more importantly, it is all already prepackaged in and easy-to-use format.

I'm trying to come up with an analogy that works, but I'm actually just circling back around to the calculator thing I said earlier.
Obviously, no one can lay claim to all computer code capable of adding and subtracting numbers.
A second person could go out and create their own code completely from scratch if they wanted to and there would be no problem, but if you leave or just have a little signature nugget in your code that you are then able to find in other unrelated code, you can quite directly prove that that person stole from you.

Applied to animation puppets, plenty of people have created their own systems for animating ponies and these guys should have no problem on this front (well, besides the standard copyright/trademark stuff for the characters themselves), but, because Hasbro knows that their stuff is out there, they may want to take closer looks at fan projects.

I had never really noticed it before, but that little weirdness in the eye vector has shown up frequently in the show and is clearly an element of these puppets.
If some new animator popped on to the scene with very accurate puppets that also just so happened to have this glitch in them, it would be pretty obvious that they are using Hasbro's materials.

Wait…
I think I lost my train of thought in here…
I'll leave it because it's late and I still like what I said, even if it wasn't on the exact topic I was going for.
Okay, my real point was supposed to be about the idea of 'trade secrets' in this situation.
The Flash puppets function as a sort of production blueprint for the animators.
They are specially-made tools created specifically for DHX's employees to do their jobs, creating these pony animations.
The specific methods that they use to achieve this could be considered a 'trade secret' of sorts, in a similar way that a food company's 'secret recipe' could be.
Knowing the ingredients is fine (they write most of them on the packaging anyway), but the exact way they are mixed together is the unique element that really makes the final product what it is.

And that's part of why it is so murky.
For example, Coca-Cola's exact recipe is a very closely guarded secret, however, all of their raw ingredients are obviously available to the public.
It is plausible that someone could come along and mix all that stuff together in just the right way that they create something chemically identical to Coke.
Because they made it themselves, they could then sell their drink under some other name, but it would taste exactly like Coke.
But, if someone at Coke gets wind of this, they are going to want to know how this guy could just 'stumble upon' one of their secrets.
If they had some easy way to prove that he did not, in fact, come up with his drink on his own, but stole it from Coke somehow, there would be trouble.
Again, I'm no legal expert so I don't know exactly what statute it would fall under, but it would be pretty clearly a case of stealing.

That's the kind of argument being made with these puppets.
They are DHX's 'recipe' for making their product (episodes) and if they can show that someone is using that recipe, obtained without permission of its creators, they could likely have a case against that person.

Does that make a little more sense?
It's certainly a bit of a grey area, but there are definitely some legs for Hasbro to stand on.

Speaking of copying stuff:

Yeah, someone recreated a bunch of Fluffle Puff animations using Zelda characters.
I… don't even know…
(They do link to the original videos in the description so this is meant to be parody, not plagiarism, I believe. Just very odd…)

And ponies invade another game:

The Orbital Friendship Cannon is Online!

xTSGx said:

Is this a legit DHX employee or one of those “I work at DHX and can confirm the finale’s shit” employees?

Don't worry, she's legit. I've worked with her on Smash Ponies for a year and a half now, since well before the leaks actually happened. So trust me when I say I trust her.

That’s the thing I’m scratching my head over. What exactly would Hasbro sue them for? If a court rules it a “trade secret,” the copyright/trademark suit goes out the window as neither can be counted as a “trade secret.” It’s not exactly a secret if the thing’s publicly registered. It just doesn't seem to me that something used in the animation process can be counted as failing under copyright and it’s absurd to think it falls under trademark.

There’s a part of me that wants someone to take on Hasbro and force their hand just to see what kind of a lawsuit they’d file and how the courts would handle it, and then there’s a much larger part of me that doesn't want that to happen because the US court system’s shit and would most likely rule drawings in Flash that were quadrupedal fall under Hasbro’s IP.

I was talking about this with Fifths last night and I actually used the exact same Coke analogy as DeadParrot (but like five hours earlier, chump! I suspect my analogies may have been the target of a recent leak). The issue with the build leaks is that now everyone with even the slightest amount of animation talent can make show quality animation. It's very easy to get an idea of someone's animation techniques and processes just by looking at their builds. Looking at mine you would quickly figure out I'm lazy and unprofessional and I run Flash on a piece of shit computer. Prior to the leaks, the only people who could visually emulate the show were really good animators and they usually did so respectfully. Not the case anymore.

So Hasbro's basic motivation is to stop the spread of the builds. The only way to do that, since there's no way the entirety of the Internet can be convinced to delete them from their computers, is to punish the people who use them.

I doubt any of this actually goes to court, unless the person having their videos taken down decides to sue or something dumb. Hasbro more or less already has the right to take down any pony video they like; now they just have a reason to do it more often. As much as we like to think this is bullshit it's entirely reasonable. Hasbro needs to be able to protect both its intellectual property (the nebulous concept of "our little ponies") and the actual means by which it produces the show (the Flash builds). While we're mostly free to do as we please under fair use and such, actually using their Flash assets is an immediate red line. It's pretty cut-and-dry illegal at that point.

>Blubber
>Forum mod