Progress on my next MLP post (To Where and Back Again)

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Yesterday, I finished reviewing To Where and Back Again, Part 1, and now I’m about to start part 2. Once that’s done, I’ll write my recap of the season of course. I plan to release the post on May 26, keeping my pattern of releasing MLP posts on Fridays. You may ask: why has this taken so long? That’s a fair question, and the honest answer is I’m getting burnt out.

Now, don’t get me wrong. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a wonderful show that means the world to me. But like any ambitious project I do, there’s ebb and flow to my motivation. I’ve learned from experience that when I think I need a break from a project, I should do it before I strain myself too hard, to prevent what happened with my Homestuck posts in late 2016 to early 2017. If you don’t know, during that period of my Homestuck posts, my motivation was crumbling but I tried desperately to keep writing them, and I succumbed to burnout so extreme that I paused the post series for almost two years. I don’t want something like that to happen again.

I’m already pushing myself a little to reach the end of season 6, because it’s so much more satisfying to reach an elegant stopping point than an awkward one. The best way for me to conquer burnout on a project is to start or resume a different project—in this case, my Eurovision blog post series. And like all my ambitious projects, the starting phase has me overwhelmingly excited to dive right in, but I always need to plan it out first. In retrospect, my Homestuck blog post series was a major learning experience for what I should and shouldn’t do with projects, especially how to deal with burnout.

I’ll see you soon! It’s possible my first few Eurovision posts will come out before my review of To Where and Back Again, but I won’t start writing them until I finish that review. That’s what I promised myself.

My quick thoughts on Eurovision 2023

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I just got done watching my first Eurovision Song Contest live! The finals just happened, and Sweden won as I expected but didn’t hope. My favorite this year was Finland. As promised, I will now discuss what it was like watching it.

It was super fun!!! As cheesy as a lot of the show was, it was also oddly charming and served as a great way to root for countries and banter about music. I watched the contest through the Swedish broadcast, which is one of the few that makes the stream publicly viewable worldwide. I will definitely continue watching it in the future; maybe next time, I’ll try using a VPN to catch the German or French broadcast, which would be a cool opportunity to sharpen my skills in their languages. I discussed the contest live on a Discord server focused on… sigh… Homestuck. Yes, everything in my life comes back to Homestuck, whether I like it or not, but that’s beside the point.

I won’t review every song in this post; that’ll be after I have reviewed every contest from 1956 to 2022, probably at least a year from now. I suspect that by then, I’ll write sprawling, overly detailed paragraphs about every song. For now, enjoy some quick and loose thoughts about the highlights!

Semifinal 1 (non-qualifiers)

  • Latvia deserved better and should have qualified. However, I mentally prepared myself for the likelihood that their gorgeous indie rock song in unusual time signatures wouldn’t, because it’s pretty niche. Why do they have so much bad luck lately? They haven’t qualified once since 2016.
  • Otherwise, all the songs from semifinal 1 that didn’t qualify are ones that I expected not to qualify, though I did enjoy Malta’s a lot. The qualification I least expected was Switzerland, who had a tacky ballad about war that felt rather impersonal.

Semifinal 2 (non-qualifiers)

  • Greece’s performance was unintentionally funny. It was a 16-year-old boy singing melodramatic English lyrics about how depressing his life supposedly is, but contradictory to the text, he danced like a goofy teenager at a party. It was pretty adorable.
  • I knew from the start San Marino wouldn’t qualify because their lyrics are bizarre animal metaphors for sex. Shame, because I genuinely like their rock song.
  • For this semifinal, I had predicted which songs wouldn’t qualify. I got five out of six right; I predicted Cyprus wouldn’t qualify, but they qualified and Iceland didn’t. Not bad, I’d say!

Finalists

  • Austria was a big fan favorite, singing about the unrecognition and low payment that songwriters face with exactly the right balance between comedy and bitterness. And yet, they scored around the middle in finals.
  • Portugal’s song was a lot of fun! It feels so extremely Portuguese to the core, with a characteristic Hispanic sound plus lyrics clearly in a Portuguese cadence. Mimicat is a great performer who never broke character once in the song—impressive because once she thanked the audience, she was audibly overflowing with nervousness. How did she keep her composure through the performance?
  • In contrast, Poland’s song is obnoxious generic radio pop music with a grating voice, my least favorite of the contest. I don’t know how the fuck it made it into the contest, but I had prepared myself for its qualification. Shows the value of pessimism!
  • I had prepared myself for Sweden being the winner, again so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed if it happened, which it did. That’s why I’m not that pissed off about it like so many fans are. “Tattoo” is an alright, marketable EDM song, and Loreen will go down in history as the first woman to win the contest twice…
  • … but I think Finland, the runner-up, will go down in history even more. They sent a masterful rap song reminiscent of Gangnam Style, and it was entirely in Finnish!!! Keep in mind that the winner of a Eurovision contest won’t always become its most iconic song. Think of the gorgeous classic “Eres tú” from 1973, the legendary “Dancing Lasha Tumbai” from 2007, “Run Away” from 2010 which became an Internet meme, and “Snap” from 2022, a super-popular radio song. I think Käärijä’s “Cha Cha Cha” will remain a beloved Eurovision classic for years if not decades to come. I hope this makes people who wanted Finland to win feel better—I wanted them to win too.
  • Czechia’s song was awesome too! I love how multilingual it is, and the chorus in Ukrainian is my favorite part.
  • When Belgium qualified to the finals, I screamed “YES!” louder than I have in years. Their song is so catchy, uplifting, and fun to sing along to with a great 90’s vibe, and I was worried it wouldn’t perform well since I saw people call it “dated”. It was a pleasant surprise to see it reach the top half in finals!
  • Norway’s representative, Alessandra, was really funny and cute. She made some goofy gestures pointing at herself in the interludes between songs, as if to say “vote for me! I know I’m your favorite anyway.” Her song was cool too.
  • OK, now here’s what I am pissed off about. HOW DID GERMANY GET LAST PLACE AGAIN WHEN THEY ACTUALLY SENT A GOOD SONG THIS TIME????? They deserved so much better! I know Germany has had a rough track record for the past decade or so, but this year they sent a total hard rock banger! And it got last place in the finals anyway for some stupid reason! Regardless of the bad results, this song makes me proud to be (half) German. Lord of the Lost, ihr wart wunderbar.
  • Israel’s song would have been my favorite when I was a teenager. I find it extremely cheesy, but undeniably fun, and that dance break made my jaw drop both times.
  • In Eurovision, Slovenia seems like the kind of country that doesn’t care about winning, but does care about having fun and showcasing their culture. This year, they sent a charismatic rock band of five guys in their 20s who like to party. Among the boys, they win the cuteness prize. Their song was entirely in Slovenian, intending to adapt it into a language of entertainment that everyone can understand, and it worked so perfectly! It’s a blast to listen to and always puts a smile on my face. I wish Germany in Eurovision was more like Slovenia.
  • Holy mother fuck, Croatia’s song was unhinged in the most wonderful way. Their song is shameless political satire in their own language, by a bunch of middle-aged guys who take pride in the outlandish and controversial. Also, the 3D animated ŠČ! on the backing screen absolutely KILLS me.

Who I voted for, if you’re curious

This was the first time people outside of participating countries got to vote, and as an American, I seized the opportunity. Each person got a maximum of 20 votes to spread across contestants, costing a euro per vote. I only used all 20 votes in the finals.

  • Semifinal 1: Latvia 2 votes, Portugal 1 vote, Czechia 1 vote, Finland 1 vote (I felt Latvia needed a little boost.)
  • Semifinal 2: Belgium 3 votes, Slovenia 3 votes, Australia 1 vote (Oh yeah, Australia sent a surprising banger too. I think they’ll stay in Eurovision for the foreseeable future.)
  • Finals: Germany 5 votes, Slovenia 5 votes, Finland 5 votes, Belgium 5 votes (You can sense my increasing investment in this contest from the increasing number of votes I sent each time.)

Concluding thoughts

Well, not so much concluding thoughts as introductory thoughts, since this is the beginning of my journey through Eurovision history.

Every year of Eurovision, there is something, or rather many different things, that fans are going to get salty about, and I’m not immune to that. While I had prepared myself for Sweden winning, an outcome I didn’t want, I did NOT prepare myself for Germany getting last in the finals. Still, I’m going to handle this salt like a mature adult would. *ahem*

I got so mad, was gonna cuss the jury out outside my house for everyone to see.

Wanted to trash their cars, tell the Eurovision fans how cruel they were to Germany…

Instead, I wrote a blog.

OK, in all seriousness, it was tons of fun to follow Eurovision for the first time, and I think I’ll have to accept it as my latest obsession. After all, I have over 60 blog posts about the contest to write! Surely this can’t be bad… right? …

*gulp*

We’ll see, OK? We’ll see.

A year later, I went to Malmö for Eurovision 2024. I wrote a blog post about the trip too!

Quick little announcement about my Eurovision blog post series

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For starters: I AM SO HAPPY THAT BELGIUM QUALIFIED FOR THE FINALS!!! I was worried that my boy Gustaph wouldn’t make it, but when he did… that was the loudest “YES” I had screamed in years.

Anyway, once Eurovision this year ends, I will make a quick little blog post describing what it was like watching my very first Eurovision Song Contest. This is so that I don’t have to wait a year or more before I write a blog post about Eurovision 2023. I will write a full review of the contest, song by song, once I’ve written posts about Eurovision 1956 to 2022. By then, my thoughts are sure to be a little different from today.

(Oh god. I’m really turning into a Eurovision nerd. What the fuck is wrong with me.)

(Uh… I promise I’ll make time to write my review of the MLP season 6 finale before I get too absorbed in the Eurovision posts.)

I had my first ever dream about Eurovision last night

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All I remember in the dream was that I was in a train and learned Slovenia’s song “Carpe Diem” didn’t qualify for the finals. This is a scary realization: I am now enough of a Eurovision fan that I have dreams about it. They’ll probably be more common once I start my Eurovision blog post series, after the finals.

(By the way, Slovenia will obviously make it to the finals, and we’ll find that out in about three hours. They’re one of the most well-liked songs this year.)

Introducing my Eurovision blog post series!

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After having finished a huge blog post series analyzing Homestuck, and soon to finish season 6 in a blog post series reviewing My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, I’m going to start my third large-scale blog post series: reviews of every song in the Eurovision Song Contest, year by year. Basically, it’s an annual contest where a variety of mostly European countries each send a song to perform live, hosted in whichever country won last year—2023 is an exception due to the war in Ukraine. The contest is filled with controversy and drama, but it has an enthusiastic fandom that embraces all the absurdity.

But why would I, an American who barely even heard of Eurovision until last year, do such a thing?

Because I think it’ll be fun. Every Eurovision fan outside of Europe, kind-of-maybe-European countries, Israel, and Australia has a different story for how they got into it, and I got interested through music mashups. After a certain YouTube channel released a lot of mashups on the day of Eurovision finals last year, I went on tons of Wikipedia and later YouTube spirals about the contest because I have heard so many crazy things about it. It turns out this song contest, dating back to 1956, is an absolute rabbit hole! It has everything from spectacularly creative bangers to the dullest pop music of the time period. Everything from serious, heartfelt ballads to indescribably goofy dance songs that you’ll only hear in Eurovision. I also find it super interesting how the languages used have evolved over time and per country, so the contest perks up my inner language nerd.

In addition, despite living in the United States all my life, the contest has a mainstay country that I can call mine: Germany. It’s where my mother was born and raised, I can speak their language well, and I even own a German passport. In the contest, Germany has had an extremely mixed track record and only two victories, but they’ve loyally participated since the beginning. (Also, why haven’t they sung in German since 2007?! It’s the most spoken native language in Europe behind Russian, for crying out loud.)

After we find out the winner of the 2023 contest next week—my top picks are Finland, Slovenia, and Germany, but my honest prediction is Sweden—I’ll get right to it and review each song in the 1956 contest! I won’t have a consistent schedule, but the posts should come quickly at first. Knowing how my prior post series have gone, it’s safe to say my Eurovision posts will start off short and simple but gradually get overwhelmingly detailed, and I’ll eventually wish my early posts were more thorough and resist the urge to remake them. I also predict that my Eurovision post series will go through lots of pauses and take a year at least. Once I’m caught up with the present, I’m not sure if I want to review every contest annually from here on out. We’ll see what happens!

Here are two other Eurovision blog post series worth checking out: one by Erica Dakin, which is focused on the songs like mine, and one sadly deleted called Eurovision Scoreboards, which is focused more on the contests’ presentation and history.

And here are some archives of Eurovision contests commentated: a series of Google Slides by Ivan Alexander for 2000 onwards, and a spreadsheet by me with all German-language commentary I could find.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 74: Top Bolt

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 >

Season 6, Episode 24

I feel bad that I’ve missed so many weeks when going through season 6! Though my love of this show is as strong as ever, my motivation for writing these posts has decreased over the past few months. That’s how it always is with my ambitious projects: motivation comes and goes in waves, leading to months at a time of hiatus. Once I am done with season 6, I’ll take a break during which I’ll scratch an itch to start a brand new blog post series—I’ll announce what it is later today. (It wouldn’t be quite as long as my Homestuck or MLP post series, but longer than my Regular Show post series.)

Season 6 Episode 24: Top Bolt

In five words: Bookworms discover well-intentioned lies.

Premise: The Cutie Map sends Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash—the Mane 6’s bookworms—to the Wonderbolts’ flight camp, where they encounter two childhood friends in training who have unknowingly been holding each other’s flight skills back by secretly giving boosts.

Detailed run-through:

Going by the position of Rainbow Dash’s shadow, it looks like her locker is fifth from the right, on the bottom row.
This will be important later.

The start of this episode is a clever bait-and-switch. As she prepares to go back home, Rainbow Dash banters with her fellow Wonderbolts. Spitfire grumbles that she has to run trials week, then admits she loves putting on her aggressive act. This seems like it’ll just be a quick reminder that Rainbow Dash has fully established herself as a member of the group, making viewers think the rest of the episode will take place somewhere unrelated.

Indeed, when her cutie mark starts glowing, she flies right to Twilight’s castle and excitedly asks where the map will take her. It turns out she needs to go back to Cloudsdale, much to her annoyance. Twilight Sparkle could have easily gone there earlier to find Rainbow Dash, but instead she waited for her friend to show up and waste time flying. Maybe this was a deliberate prank on Twilight’s part? Maybe she has a skeevy, trickstery side that she normally hides? Or maybe Twilight was a bad friend and forgot where Rainbow Dash was over the past few days.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 73: P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View) + Where the Apple Lies

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Introduction

< Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 >

Season 6, Episodes 22-23

Season 6 Episode 22: P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View)

In five words: Mystery solved through conflicting tales.

Premise: Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie have come back from a boating trip with their friendship in shambles, and Twilight Sparkle tries to piece together their contradicting stories.

Detailed run-through:

To start the episode, Twilight Sparkle is excited to hear how three of her friends’ boating trip went. We get an excuse for why Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy didn’t go on the trip: they were at a Cloudsdale flight school reunion. This leads me to wonder, why did the show choose Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack, out of all character combinations, to go on the trip? I’ll discuss this peculiarity in the overall thoughts, so that I don’t get ahead of myself.

I refuse to believe Rarity didn’t bring at least ten spare outfits to wear in case her current one got dirty.

The three ponies depart the train in separate directions, refusing to talk to each other. If they’re so mad at each other, why did they go home in the same car of the train? My best guess is that the rest of the train was full of excited ponies who had a delightful trip.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 72: Viva Las Pegasus + Every Little Thing She Does

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 >

Season 6, Episodes 20-21

We’re almost done with season 6! My plan is to split the last five episodes into three posts: episodes 22-23, 24, and 25-26 (the finale). If I release the next three posts every week, I’ll be finished with season 6 on May 5.

Season 6 Episode 20: Viva Las Pegasus

In five words: Selfish hotel owner gets overthrown.

Premise: The Cutie Map sends another odd pair (Applejack and Fluttershy) to another odd place (Las Pegasus) to deal with another pesky two-faced celebrity (Gladmane).

Detailed run-through:

Before I begin, I’d like to say that this episode has me at an awkward position. I’m so close to an episode that I am extremely excited to analyze, in no small part because it’s a Starlight Glimmer episode, but I first have to pick apart an episode that I feel neutral about analyzing. That’s why I procrastinated on starting this post for about a week.

If the Cutie Map sent her to Appleoosa, I could already hear Applejack’s delighted “hoo-wee!”

The cold opening of this episode is short and effective, only 48 seconds long, since we know the map episode formula. Applejack and Fluttershy both aren’t very thrilled to enter the noisy party town of Las Pegasus. I find it amusing that Applejack has the worst luck when it comes to cutie map missions: seasons 5 and 6 both sent her to a big city that she’d rather not be in. It’s the exact opposite of Rarity’s level of luck—she got sent to both the cities she adores the most.

The efficient storytelling is continued through what TV Tropes calls a Gilligan cut. Applejack says that Las Pegasus probably isn’t as bad as they think; take a wild guess what happens next.

You guessed it! It’s even worse!

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 71: Buckball Season + The Fault in Our Cutie Marks

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 >

Season 6, Episodes 18-19

It’s a little annoying that I’ve generally had more to say about odd-numbered episodes of season 6 than even-numbered episodes, because it makes it hard to decide which episodes to give their own posts and which to pair up. We’ve been on a streak of relatively short reviews since The Cart Before the Ponies, and I think I’ll give Top Bolt (S6E24) a post of its own and pair up the rest.

Season 6 Episode 18: Buckball Season

In five words: Pinkie and Fluttershy play sports.

Premise: Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are interested in playing a sport called buckball against Appleoosa, but when Applejack and Rainbow Dash try to coach them, they become pushy and ruin the fun.

Detailed run-through:

Every time Rainbow Dash says “buck”, I have to remind myself that she’s not swearing.

This episode starts with a throwback in tone to the cartoony slice of life scenes that are everywhere in season 1. We get a dramatized portrayal of Applejack about to buck an apple onto a target, but then Rainbow Dash interrupts her and they have a comically serious discussion about the upcoming buckball match against Appleoosa. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are the most well-established pairing of Mane 6 members, and this episode will explore their dynamic with new characters in the mix. Rainbow Dash acts as her classic doofy self when she sternly agrees that Appleoosa could never beat Ponyville at buckball, then asks what buckball is.

Fluttershy, on the other hand, is deliberately emphasizing the B in “buckball”.
She doesn’t want to repeat the incident where she cussed about her brother in front of a foal.

Fluttershy: Wow, Rainbow Dash. You sure seem to know a lot about this game. I’ve never even heard of… buckball.
Rainbow Dash: Yeah, I’m kind of an expert.
Applejack: An expert who hadn’t heard of the game either until I told you.
Rainbow Dash: Well, it’s a new game. I probably know more than most ponies, so that makes me an expert.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s banter is hilarious and endearing, and it truly brings me back to season 1. It’s not exactly outright shippy… but the fact that I had to say it’s not exactly outright shippy shows that it can totally be interpreted as shippy. I also love how serious Applejack gets that Braeburn challenges her to a match. This is Applejack at her finest: getting stone cold serious about silly family traditions that don’t mean much.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 70: The Times They Are a Changeling + Dungeons & Discords

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 >

Season 6, Episodes 16-17

This post took a little longer than the last few because spent a few days (March 15-18) on a trip to New York City where I met several Internet friends and a friend from school. During that trip, when waiting for things to happen in my hotel room, I wrote the first half of my review of Dungeons & Discords.

Season 6 Episode 16: The Times They Are a Changeling

In five words: First step resolving changeling discrimination.

Premise: The Crystal Empire is under threat by a changeling spy, and when searching for the culprit, Spike discovers a sensitive changeling named Thorax who merely wants to be his friend.

Detailed run-through:

For some reason, pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire starts with a train ride there.

To start this episode, Twilight Sparkle demonstrates a severe lack of fourth-wall awareness when she says Flurry Heart has grown a lot and she probably won’t even recognize the baby. If she was aware of the fourth wall, she would know that babies in a cartoon NEVER age until the time skip finale. Starlight and Twilight have a friendly discussion that shows good progression in friendship lessons, which makes it surprising that in the next episode focusing on Starlight, she royally screws things up.

Spike keeping a plush of his pony waifu wherever he goes was clearly inspired by bronies doing the same.

Pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire also has a reminder that the crystal ponies obsessively worship Spike. Spike has a variety of goofy disguises prepared, and I wonder… could this be a hint that he’s soon to befriend a member of the race whose specialty is impersonation?

One difference from pretty much every episode taking place in the Crystal Empire is that this time, it doesn’t feature all of the Mane 6—instead, it’s only Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, and Spike who visit. The minimization of the cast helps give supporting characters some spotlight time that would have otherwise been taken by Pinkie Pie gags.

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