Pealing Process

[Kappa]

I think it's pretty likely that enjoyment of the Equestria 'verse would be increased by watching MLPFIM beforehand. But not so drastically that it's required viewing.

[Tamien]

One nice thing about MLP is that while there is an overarching plot to each season, the individual episodes mostly stand on their own. If you want to watch just one representative episode to get an idea of what the show is like, I'd recommend watching Dragonshy. The actual pilot, while it introduces the characters and sets up the first season's plot, isn't actually that great as a stand-alone (plus, it's a two-parter). Dragonshy is pretty illustrative of the cast and world and has an enjoyable plot that stands well on its own. (There are some other episodes in the first season that I would say are better episodes, but they either focus mainly on a small subset of the cast or they require more extensive familiarity with the characters/setting or both, so they are not better introductory episodes.)

If you'd like to watch the show but don't have time for every episode, I could probably come up with a good abridged episode list for the first season that just includes the ones most worth watching (the funniest, most touching, most plot-relevant, etc). Beyond the first season I haven't seen every episode, though, so I couldn't do that for later seasons. If you got into it enough to watch the later seasons, though, I'd say you should really just watch every episode :P

Edit: Whoops, I went through the episode list for season one and wrote down my opinions on each one:

1. Friendship Is Magic (Part 1) - introduces cast and world
2. Friendship Is Magic (Part 2) - introduces cast and world
3. The Ticket Master - okay twilight episode; not great, but sets up some important plot
4. Applebuck Season - good applejack episode
5. Griffon the Brush-Off - okay pinkie pie and rainbow dash episode; worth watching if you're into them, otherwise missable
6. Boast Busters - great twilight episode
7. Dragonshy - great fluttershy episode
8. Look Before You Sleep - okay applejack and rarity; worth watching if you're into them, otherwise missable
9. Bridle Gossip - fantastic full-cast episode
10. Swarm of the Century - great pinkie pie episode
11. Winter Wrap Up - great twilight episode
12. Call of the Cutie - not a great episode, but introduces the CMC
13. Fall Weather Friends - good applejack and rainbow dash episode
14. Suited for Success - fantastic rarity episode
15. Feeling Pinkie Keen - bad twilight and pinkie pie episode; not worth watching imo
16. Sonic Rainboom - great rainbow dash episode
17. Stare Master - good fluttershy episode
18. The Show Stoppers - CMC episode; worth watching if you're into them, otherwise missable
19. A Dog and Pony Show - another fantastic rarity episode
20. Green Isn't Your Color - great rarity and fluttershy episode
21. Over a Barrel - bad full-cast episode; not worth watching imo
22. A Bird in the Hoof - good fluttershy episode
23. The Cutie Mark Chronicles - full-cast backstory episode! pretty much a must-see
24. Owl's Well That Ends Well - okay spike episode; worth watching if you're into him, otherwise missable
25. Party of One - fantastic pinkie pie episode
26. The Best Night Ever - full-cast season finale!

I italicized the ones I think would make the best MLP Season 1 Abridged, but if you find you like certain characters more than others then you can swap out or add in episodes to focus more on them.

[Bluelantern]

Will we ever see... a "independent" Peal show up?

[Alicorn]

The plots I'm doing with Aestrix might eventually coalesce into a peal. It is not literally outside the realm of possibility that such a peal could collide with the Effulgence peal (in threeway sandboxes or out of continuity) but going much of anywhere with that would be a big commitment with serious coordination hurdles. There is no plan within Effulgence to have a peal form apart from the main peal.

[Bluelantern]

The plots I'm doing with Aestrix might eventually coalesce into a peal. It is not literally outside the realm of possibility that such a peal could collide with the Effulgence peal (in threeway sandboxes or out of continuity) but going much of anywhere with that would be a big commitment with serious coordination hurdles. There is no plan within Effulgence to have a peal form apart from the main peal.

I was thinking more of "canon" peals with Kappa, but likely with an alternative mode of transportation that doesn't involve Milliways too much, they would join the main Peal after some dimensional adventures

[Shoal]

The co-ordination problems would mainly come up for Bell parties, which are fairly infrequent. You could have the Asterix-peal form closer friendships with each other than with the main peal, or just happen to visit with each other more often and for reasons unexplained in plot just get together less often with the kappa-peal, and have them get together with the main peal only on the occasions that you can co-ordinate everybody being online at once. Like, you already don't have long threads where alicorn characters are talking to other alicorn characters with no kappa interaction, or visa-versa no long threads where a joker is talking to sherlock, because it's more fun if there's back and forth between two real people. I think you probably could arrange it to not have alicorn-kappa-asterix characters interacting with each other all at once all that often, even post pealing, in a natural "it just doesn't really come up that the joker and sherlock are having a long conversation" sort of way.

It would be a long term commitment in that asterix would need to want to continue doing effulgence for long term, of course. but it could also be an interesting way to let one person take a break when needed: effulgence would focus more heavily on the asterix-alicorn plot points when kappa needs a break and more heavily on the alicorn-kappa points when asterix needs a break, and we'd get more little fluffy moral - endarkened plot points when alicorn needs a break.



I think it would be interesting for there to be a temporary sub peal that forms in millways that eventually meets up with the main peel, for example katie-aya-kiri or whatever.

[Alicorn]

The main problem is accessibility of characters to each other. Whenever someone could benefit from the magic/expertise/whatever of a person in another world, once they're pealed, that can happen, in-character. We don't have long threads where a green talks to another green on-screen, but we do have plenty of greens exchanging resources and so on in the background. We have a finite number of ways to take Jane out and don't prefer to do the majority of our plot like that anyway.

[Shoal]

i meant more like: deciding which threads to work on based on the people that are available. so you might have storyline a which is just you and asterix, and storyline b which is just you and kappa, and storyline c, which will need all three of you, so you get c to the point where it will need all 3 of you, and then work on a or b while waiting for everyone to be available for c.

no need to take Jane out for this, just deciding to write on thread a (darren and bella go ice skating together) instead of writing on thread c (edariel going to visit clarity to help joy with something) until the time is right.

but i can understand if you don't want to add to the list of ways of that a thread can get stalled and have its progress interrupted.

[Bluelantern]

That doesn't sound fun at all to coordinate, anyway...

...one idea was using that books from myst so you have a set of Bells that work together, or maybe came up with an entire different magic.

Another possibility, is not have a Peal, not exactly, but a Peal-like group of transdimensional travelers with Peal/Bell like traits (and with one or more Bells)

Will there ever be Bells that are pealed without threads?

[Shoal]

How can they be pealed without threads?

I did have a thought. We already know that Adarin's teleporting is somewhat limited -- when he is summoned to elcenia he realises it would take him several lifetimes to get home. So if you wanted to have a non-connectd-at-all-to-effulgence-ever peal, you could just have all of the adarin worlds be close enough to each other that adarin can build portals between them. perhaps adarin will meet another adarin-and-his-bell while on a quest to find something else and then it will occur to them to scry for more adarins and bells. they won't find the ones in effulgence because they're too far away for adarin to reach, even with multiple hops.