Derpy speaks.

Hell. Yeah.

Spike: "this won't end well"

Me: "read my fucking mind"

Ah, yeah.

And on a more meta level, it would kinda be a bit of Space Whale Aesop for Twilight to get dragged out of town over that. It is an issue from a plot perspective, but since it wasn't the main point of the episode it gets glossed over.

Why would the episode need to gloss that over? What point was so important that they needed to leave that out?

Derpy is hiarliously incompetent that it's awesome.

I just thought Twilight still whining about her tardy case was more to explain her actions than her talking about her key priority, sort of like "I only did those things because of ya di ya". As said they probably should have shown more of her talk with Celestia from the start.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:28:50 PM by Psi001

@Mio: What I mean is that the moral of the episode was a combo of "take your friends worries seriously/don't get yourself worked up over things that don't matter" and that the writers chose to use the time at the end to emphasize those points rather than address the brainwashing thing because "brainwashing the town into fighting is bad" isn't nearly as applicable, and as a result a bit of the story's internal logic gets sacrificed. I'm not saying that it was a good choice (I agree that they should have at least put Twilight on probation or something), but I think it's understandable why they'd rather use that time on a moral that's actually relevant. It comes down to "we can have Celestia talk about Twilight's priorities" which is a moral the audience can apply, or "we can have Celestia talk about how brainwashing is bad", which is true, but irrelevant to most of the audience.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:30:35 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Did fluttershy just fucking judo flip a bear?

Now, Twilight, it's very important that you don't cause mass riots by casting love spells on your dolls.*

Besides, that's totally Cadance's job.

Yes.
Yes she did. sort of. *

Okay, not really.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:31:40 PM by Swasfews

That's probably her deepest*

As in, not the one that appears most often, but the most potentially damaging when it does come into the limelight.

character flaw— how she handles stress. It had come up before, but only in "Lesson Zero" did we see how far she could go— very prone to overreaction, more than a bit paranoid, and overall just out of it. Not going into detail about the S2 finale, but let's just say that particular trait resurfaces and bites her in the ass hard.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:36:12 PM by Blueeyedrat

Crap, I kinda need to go bed, and the chat got awesome.

Nighty night.

Lesson Zero clearly shows Twi still has PTSD from Discord's rampage.

@van - Fluttershy knows Sambo. That pony just went Russian crack commando on that bear!

And that mailpony shall be my ensemble darkpony. Even though he got a cake, I feel really sorry for that guy.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:37:39 PM by dRoy

Forever Alone Mailpony, huh.

Ju-jitsu is serious business.

Ep over: Twi. You need tharapy.

I reckon Celestia also keeps an eye on Twi because of Incidents like these. It's not beyond the stretch of imagination to suggest that Luna had a breakdown something like that when she became Nightmare Moon.

@J Teeth: While that message is good, I think that it was misplaced in the context of what happened in this episode. While the rest of the mane six were a bit insensitive to Twilight, ultimately her problems were her own doing. It made the ending where she was "rescued" by her friends, was less an affirmation of their friendship, and more an absolution (something Celestia was kind of already working towards) of any responsibility for her actions. It unintentionally tells her that it was ok for her to act the way that she did, when quite clearly it wasn't, and her failure to recognize it makes it all the worse.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:42:15 PM by Mio

Applejack not coming back...

Maybe she had some lotus.

Big Macintosh crying...you know, Applejack better be in some really dire situation to top that, the mailpony, and Derpy.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:43:48 PM by dRoy

@Mio: What it did mean was that no matter what happens, they'll try to help/save her.

...It also makes the Wedding sequence more painful because they didn't realize what was going on, mind.

This is a setting where the perpetrator of an attempted royal coup and attempted sabotage of the solar cycle (which, if successful, would have killed thousands of ponies) was immediately forgiven and restored to her prior position of authority because she apologized.

Which makes "It's About Time" more important, because Twilight learned the lesson there that she failed to learn in "Lesson Zero".

edited 10th Aug '12 9:45:31 PM by MetaFour

Oh, so is Applejack forced to be a gladiator?

@Roy: Not... exactly...

Ah, so she's made a slave.

Eh, a gladiator, a slave, same thing.