I’m combining two posts into one so I don’t end up excessively pinging people.
Post 1:
Because the start of Assa was delayed by a server migration on Thursday, we decided that we would watch part 2 on Sunday. Lo, today is Sunday!
Part 2 has a runtime of 71 minutes. The plot description from IMDb is “ASSA is set in Crimea during the winter in 1980. A young musician (Bananan) falls for a mobster’s (Krymov) young mistress (Alika). The parallel story line involves a 19th Century assassination plot.” and I would add that Assa has a lot of musical numbers and experimental scenes, and is often looked at as a turning point for perestroika and rock music’s position in Soviet popular culture. Content warnings for age gap romance, murder and other violence, “moderate profanity”, and “mild alcohol, drugs & smoking”.
Post 2:
Hay, everypony!
We have now made it past the first “hurdle” in our MLP watch party, “Derpygate”. But in about five weeks’ time we’ll be faced with another hurdle, which will (cutie) mark a real turning point for our watch parties: keeping our pace of six episodes a week, the June 7th watch party will only have one episode of season 3 left, and that episode also happens to be the subject of the biggest controversy the brony fandom ever knew. And so I figure it might be nice to set aside some time for that bit of fandom history after we watch that episode, like we did with “Derpygate”.
On top of this, the “Twilicorn” controversy is often understood in conjunction with another fandom controversy around the same time: the release of the spinoff movie Equestria Girls, which chronologically takes place between seasons 3 and 4. And so I also think it might be nice to watch that movie after the season 3 finale, and eventually other Equestria Girls content further down the road.
The other point of significance is just how we handle FiM’s two-parters going forward. I prefer not to watch two two-parters back to back, nor split a two-parter between two watch parties, but when FiM’s seasons are 13 or 26 episodes long and we watch six episodes each party… Then this is an inevitability without some occasional “course correction”, i.e. watching fewer than six episodes one night, and replacing the time with something else, such as, say, Equestria Girls content.
My current running plan for the June 7th watch party is then:
Listed time 10:30 PM CET / 4:30 PM EDT (i.e. starting half an hour early)
- S3E13 “Magical Mystery Cure”
- Equestria Girls (2013)
- S4E1 “Princess Twilight Sparkle part 1”
- S4E2 “Princess Twilight Sparkle part 2”
- A 24-minute YouTube video about Twilicorn
- Silver Quill’s “After The Fact” video about Equestria Girls
The two YouTube videos at the end mean there’s some risk of cutting into Stalin’s time, hence the idea of starting a little early, but hopefully it won’t cut too much into Stalin’s time. In any case, doing things this way means the next time we’ll need to “course correct” is for the season 5 finale.
But ultimately, if starting early is reprehensible to you all, or watching Equestria Girls is unenticing, or you don’t want to watch fan videos, then you can propose your own ideas. I don’t expect most ponies to have very strong feelings about this, but I might as well keep this matter open to feedback.