Duskrunner

I wish I coulda said that too, set your mind at ease. But I can't. Pony personality quiz has me mostly in the Applejack & Rainbow Dash spectrum. One thing I can say to put you at ease is he logs into skype pretty often (we don't talk but I added him idk when or why), so wherever he is he still has internet access.

I don't know him personally, I just know it makes me depressed. It depresses me because Theory practically IS me: long term unemployed, can't find anything and is ashamed that the huge amount of help people gave him wasn't 'enough', that he's -still- in trouble. Everything I say is memory off comments he's made i videos that by now are private. Please correct me where I'm wrong and know I'm trying to relate facts, not spread malice. Funds were raised to help him leave where he was and everyone was optimistic, then he spent / lost like half of it at the first place he stayed and had to leave. At some point in time a person who took him in wanted him to go somewhere to get professional help (most likely for his depression). Idk what state or even country that was in so it may be something like non-voluntary comitted. Another place had problems where peole accused him of theft. The current place where he stays his presence has led to problems for the people keeping him, so he feels obligated to leave even though they aren't asking him to. The long and short of it is that his situation was met with heart more than head; people took him into their homes and they either couldn't deal with the person they got and his needs or they expected him to be able to get his life back on track too soon. It's been 8 months and he's been in at least 2 different homes in that time; as a guy who still hasn't found anything in 4 years I can relate. His last video goodbye and the way he took down everything on his channel worries a lot of us. He needs a room to stay and a job and he needs both for the long term and he's competing with literally thousands of people in the same boat. The whole thing just sucks. Nothing would make me happier than for someone to delete my post and / or reply to me here or in PM and say the whle thing's been resolved for the better.

Despite most of the continuity for Wonderbolt Academy being preserved I found it odd that Bulk Biceps is, technically, a completely different pony than 'Snowflake' (and did they change voice-actors too? I could swear the fandom does better imitations of his "YEAH!" than what we heard this episode -nevermind. It's the same voice but man doe sthe 'YEAH!' sound different.). It forces a choice: either the Wonderbolt Academy is for everypony who wants to go (not believable since Dash was nervous about getting in), or Snowflake was retconed from being Cloudchaser's wingpony to a bodybuilder Scootaloo

I think Flutterbat is an interesting idea. Since FiM's debut we've gradually seen the introduction of additional pony species. Gradually, it looks like we might end up adding them all to the group: Unicorn became Alicorn. Pegasus becomes Thestral (or whatever everyone agrees to call Bat-ponies). All we need now is for Pinkie Pie to become a crystal pony (she already has the postive energy / negative emotion body transformation thing going) and the Mane 6's species exemplar is in balance again.

You know what, you guys are totally right and at this point I don't know if it's debate, speculation or just plain inference. The Rings are magical and have a great power and their removal creates the typical Dark Tower within the Temple of Talicon self-destruct. What they do is hard to guess: Using common sense based on the episode comments we assume that the rings will either affect the sun directly - an Equestria-wide event; or the rings will create something like a magical barrier -presumably similar to the Radiant Shield of Razdon - that will make the sun's heat worse within the Tenochtitlan Basin. Both are plausable and the debate will probably end there until we get another author tweet (and by the way, it's awesome how many we get of those as a fandom). Personally, I was originally of a mind that the rings would affect the sun itself buuuuuut it would take a terrible amount of magic to do something that is guaranteed to last 800 years according to prophecy. And prophecy has a good record in-show so far. The rings themselves are pretty impressive: only the last and heaviest ring is seen to crumble after Dash and Do remove it, presumably because the enchantment magic was consumed during the ritual and that made both the rings and the fortress / temple crumble. 800 years is pretty similar to 1000 years, and it took the Elements of Harmony to alter (seal) an immense power (Nightmare Moon) for that long a time. Pre-Season 4 I would have doubted a bunch of rings had the power to affect something to the same degree as the Elements. Some people still will. With the revelation of the Tree of Harmony however I'm inclined to think that maybe other similar incredible sources of magic exist in-world and will be encountered. I haven't head-canoned this idea though so I'm happy to discard the assumption as the season progresses. What do you guys think?

I was surprised to see this in the real world, twice in an episode, but it's pretty cool in some ways. The guys in Equestria Divided are probably happy about this, lol. It makes a lot of the world aspect easier to delve into.

This ever happen to you? You're watching an analysis video and you comment to the creater and find out, "wow, I just wrote a counter-analysis of my own." Yup, just did that. So, rather than just leave it on Youtube where it'll suffer from 'Too long didn't read" I thought I'd post it here to suffer from "Too long didn't read" So I'm watching Tommy Oliver's newest video and I'm yelling at my screen (not really). Here's what came out.0- Tenochtitlan Basin, Amulet of Atonement, Quetzalcoatl Empress, Radiant Shield of Razdon, Rings of Scorchero. Talk about dense storytelling. Apparently ancient Mexico exists in Equestria, analogous to places like Trottingham and Saddle Arabia, and if we follow Pinkie's red stripe which started in Ponyville (little treehouse and the town hall doodles are obvious) they followed the train north, then pretty far west before crossing some mountain range and ending up in another plains / forest environment. According to this map http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/File:Map_of_Equestria_online_version_2012-08.jpg which matches the episode map perfectly, the gang went up to Canterlot, followed the trail between Cloudsdale and the Unicorn Range, and stopped after taking the fork that led to The Frozen North and the Crystal Empire where they crossed the mountains. Baring map alterations Daring's home and the Tenochtitlan Basin lie somewhere between Vanhoover and Galloping Gorge. moving on to my reactions more or less as Tommy wrote about them: 1- "Daring Do writes self-insertion fiction." If the stories are true, even with embellishment greater than Shining Armor in comic 11-12, then it's not self-insertion fiction it's an autobiography. Answering 'Why?' probably has the most obvious answer: Daring Do isn't an archaeologist as much as she is a professional heroine and she writes the books because she's gotta have a job that pays in bits too. 2- Daring gave the widdle kitty a black eye rofl. 3- Henchponies are now cannon. For money and as native cults. This will either change perception of Equestria as a whole, ponies beyond Equestria's borders (it's debatable because we have no idea how far they had to travel from Daring Do's house), or possibly just stallions in general. This is potentially a major world-building change because it speaks to the nature of ponies. in the past we could excuse the idea of a few bad ponies (Nightmare Moon, King Sombra) a few jerks (Flim & Flam, Blueblood, Trixie, Diamond Tiara and the pony who sold Trixie the Alicorn Amulet) and a few dumb ponies too (Snips and Snails) but our impression of Equestria remained intact because they were individual exceptions. I'm echoing an old idea of one of my favorite Deviant artists, Nimaru. http://nimaru.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-Be-Cruel-294574479 Normally I wouldn't make too much out of this but when the only examples of Stallions en masse were Royal Guards a change like this does push FiM closer to the real world instead of the idealized world we had. (Credit to http://mlpforums.com/user/19674-fngrpony/ His henchmen thread touched base on all of this before I did) 4- "We could have used a real character to have this lesson with Dash, like Spitfire." Spitfire wouldn't work. The Wonderbolts have already been lowered from their original pedestal in 'Wonderbolt Academy'. That's now the example of maturing past your obsession with role-models in an adult manner. "Daring Don't" is the example of having the ground taken out from under you. I can't help but feel Tommy's frutration comes from the fact that this nerfs Celestia more than it affects Dash, but that's #6. 5- The henchponies were spotted by Pinkie as they entered so who smashed the cottage? Daring's reaction to the mane6 is so mild home invasion must be pretty common for her. Because she's an author or because she's an adventurer? That answer is probably on a case by case basis. 6- The limits of Celestia's power are being expanded on. The rings of Scorchero make the sun hotter and it fits because Celestia didn't create the sun, she just moves it. Further, If all of Daring Do's book are based on real adventures it also means that Celestia doesn't or can't know about and respond to every threat to Equestria directly, not even the huge ones. Because the series has begun the trend disproving the idea that Celestia and Luna are gods this is fitting. 7- Twilight's quote after Daring Do gives chase annoyed me. "We're out of our league"?? Ahuizotl's an ordinary non-pony monster/villain with a small army of thugs and felines and a fondness for death traps and magical artifacts. Twilight's comment would feel appropriate if it were Season 1 Twilight but this is Season 4 and she's an Alicorn princess now with Nightmare Moon, Discord, changelings etc under her belt. And if that weren't enough she HAS the research on the bad guy ala Nightmare Moon (heck, even more than Nightmare Moon- 1 pony tale vs the entire Daring Do series). This should've been an ordinary adventure for them. The team was nerfed for this episode, in abilities and personality. My conclusion- I didn't hate the episode but its consequences for the world-building are larger than anything else that's come before, including Equestria Girls. Some of those decisions might put off the fandom (not too bad a thing usually) but others have the potential to contradict what's been built before. The episode is consistent with the micro-rebooting of S4 and the general shift away from absolute good/evil stories in the adventure arcs to grayer areas with shadier, baser villains. Thanks for reading everypony, super big thanks to the content-creaters who really moved me to get off my rump and write and please, if you don't already follow Tommy oliver aka Bronycurious, Nimaru and everyone else cited I hope you'll give them a chance. -Duskrunner