We start with the CMC seeking to get their cutie marks by trying their hoof at bowling, to predictable results: they're not much good at bowling, and they get no cutie marks to show for it, setting up our theme for the episode. After the theme song, Apple Bloom is naturally down in the dumps, and nothing her friends do seems to cheer her up. She wanders into the Everfree Forest, trips over a root and ends up chipping her tooth. Hearing the commotion, Zecora finds her and invites Apple Bloom back to her hut for help fixing/curing the tooth. The episode hadn't made much of an impression of me up till this point, where it made a negative(ish) one: my goodness I hate how Apple Bloom looks with the chipped tooth. I didn't even take a screenshot, such is my dislike: it's off-putting and nasty watching her talk with that missing bit of tooth. Luckily, Zecora fixes it quite quickly with a potion, so I'm not oppressed by the unpleasant sight for too long. Apple Bloom then looks through Zecora's potions, commenting on how many she has: amongst them, Zecora has potions for bad bones and bad back. I can't help but think that Apple Bloom ought to take those two back home for Granny Smith!

The next day, Apple Bloom suddenly has a cutie mark, but before long, she has a second cutie mark, and then a third. Applejack takes her to see Twilight, and for me, Twilight and Spike steal the show a bit, they're delightful here. I like them working together to find the right book and enjoying their own teamwork, I find the mention of the Paleopony period intriguing (paleo like paleolithic, as in prehistoric, or paleo like paleoconservative, as in old?), and I like Twilight bucking Spike off her back when he quips "try saying that ten times fast!" (in fact I actually laughed out loud at that, then quickly remembered it's 5 in the morning and hoped I hadn't woken my neighours up!), it's all very endearing and slightly makes me wish I was watching a Twilight episode instead of a CMC one. They discover that Apple Bloom has contracted Cutie Pox, a disease with no known cure. They determine that their only chance is Zecora, and so they try to take Apple Bloom to see Zecora, but Apple Bloom's condition worsens to the point that she can't make it, and the rest of the town, seeing the unnatural effects Apple Bloom is undergoing, quickly starts quarantining themselves (seeing some of them pop into hazmat suits almost made me laugh again, this may not be my favourite episode but it is pretty funny, I have to say). Zecora arrives in town, looking to stock up on ingredients that she's suddenly, suspiciously run short on: suspiciously because Zecora suspects Apple Bloom of using her last remaining stock of certain ingredients to brew up a potion of her own.

Images still not working, so, just imagine some screenshots from the episode, and maybe later if they work I can attach to a reply post!

>>12803
The episode so far has been a mixture of neutral and good. This is the point when Zecora gets out some special seeds, which when planted in the ground will then bloom into a flower that cures Cutie Pox when someone speaks the truth near them. In other words, Zecora produces the seeds of the Deus Ex Machina flower, and the only way to have their fabulous secret powers revealed to you is to speak the words of the moral of the story!! Yes, I'm really not very keen on this conclusion, although the Pinkie Pie joke (trying to tell the truth about how many corn cakes she ate when Mrs Cake wasn't looking) was fantastic. I see a pattern here with this episode, very funny but otherwise mixed. Something I'm not sure of is whether the flower doesn't bloom because Pinkie still wasn't telling the truth (meaning she ate more than six cakes...? did she eat ALL the cakes? would Mrs Cake not have noticed that? I'd make a "Lex Luthor took 40 cakes" joke if I weren't already certain it's been done to death with this scene). But yes, of course the flower of truthiness only blooms in conveniently short order after Apple Bloom tells the truth about stealing from Zecora and making a potion to fake having gotten a cutie mark.

Overall, I think the lesson here suffers overall from being beaten over the head with it a bit, usually I'd say the show's messages really resonate precisely because these things are much more complicated than mere platitudes, and the show demonstrates entire situations with more than one side to them rather than just plainly stating a moral. This unfortunately is an episode that is an exception to the rule, where the situation doesn't really align to anything other than allegory. Also, it feels strangely short. Apple Bloom showing off her talents goes on for quite a while, and not a lot really happens with it, so a lot of the episode just flies by without much notice. Having said that, there's a lot of really stand-out moments, particularly with the humour, but also with characterisation. I like the Apple family in this episode, I like the CMC, and as I mentioned I really like Twi and Spike. It's a hard rating for an episode that's so up-and-down for me, but I think I'd say it's a 6.3, between Ticket Master and Fall Weather Friends. Ticket Master I still recall as having rated perhaps a little lower than I might now, but I think it's definitely in a similar ballpark to Fall Weather Friends, where I enjoyed it, but partially.

>>12802
use the .org site? Seems to be having fewer image-troubles than .net just now.

>>12805
Let me test:

>>12807
On .net I couldn't post at all. Hmmmmmmmm. Did have to switch once before to .org recently for similar reasons. Yeah, for now .org.

>>12793
Poem grammar fix, something like:

>Been chasing folk in Dream, these years
>Learnt somewhere I hath forgot to chase mine own.

>>12794
I like that better. My grasps bastardizations of old englis maybe maybe poor, but it does feel a little clunky and wrong even if I like the meaning.

Goodnight and Goodnghtmare Night, /endpone/!

Goodnight /endpone/ x2

Goodnight /endpone/ x3

It's weird:
>try to go to sleep early
>actually get sleep
>wake up feeling often and foggy
but twice now I've had nights where I:
>didn't get to sleep at all, instead sleeping in mid morning to early afternoon on days with no obligation
Mind feels clearest in months when it has happened.

No interesting dreams to report.

Night!

Lots of dreams today, but all fragmented.

>>12785
Nightmare Night

It is seldom a delight, to get spooked in the night, and the traditions that conflate fear with cheer make feel uptight. But what of children really, who get a dosage of spooks, maybe it's it is healthier, than letting them waft aloof?

>>12793
Unironically playing this some just to see what I recognize, albeit this genre was something I wasn't strongly into.

It's more Nightmare Night fitting than trying to see how well Linux will run on a 128 GB USB drive that was on clearance from Walmart... or maybe not! It did take 5 hours to install a baseline Debian system and that is pretty horrifying!

>>12199
Not to derail, but this is such an amazing image and I really love it. I guess it could be as simple as 'combining my two favorite things', but the details are just fantastic. For instance, Celestia's cutie mark as the symbol on the sail instead of the wind crest from the game: excellent. And from the upturned prow on the left and the rocky cliff-face on the right, I can also tell that this is right outside the Forsaken Fortress - when you sail there with the King of Red Lions in the game, iirc you arrive during the night, so this has to be sailing out of the Forsaken Fortress after that (you'd have to go back and then sail out because Valoo and the Rito save you and fly you out from Ganondorf's tower (a repurposed aft-end of a ship which I always liked to think was the back half of the ship that the prow sticking up out of the water that I mentioned earlier belonged to), but it could be structured differently in this 'version' of the story, or be around the endgame when you can teleport back to the surface from within Ganon's tower down beneath the waves in Hyrule, and it takes you to the Forsaken Fortress - either way it's a comfily pivotal moment in the game that's being alluded to!) which all comes together to imbue the image with a lot of quite specific nostalgia. It almost makes me wish for a more nautically-themed G6!

Need to get back to using this thread again, perfect for comfy offtopic. In the meantime, be gone spammers!

Bridgefag here note locking down this thread for moment due to spam. In the meantime, let's talk text when I unlock this later. Have about that ram crisis, eh? The cheapest way for me to get to 64 Gb of Ram under $100 seems to be DDR2 server ram, of which I have a system now, lol.

>>12715
Howdy there stranger. What brings you to our humble bridge of a board?

> —at least try to do that for once.
Are you saying you don't want to drive anons away or that we are slow and not posting interesting topics?

This is like the 3rd random anon, or in this case, namefag, to:
>opens thread with either a topic or question,
>is greeted and questioned, usually friendly though, on how they found this place and what exactly they intend to do
>never replies
I don't understand this pattern.