Well, season two is now officially over. Much sadness for that!

However, we now have a third Princess! Since this is a group dedicated to another of our favourite pony princesses, I thought it could be interesting to see what your thoughts on the episodes were? And what did you think of Princess Cadence and Shining Armour?

Personally, I enjoyed the episode as a whole. Queen Chrysalis was the saving Grace however and without her, it would have been a flat showing. I'd give it a solid 7 out of 10.

Loved:
The Changelings:
I can't wait to see what fanfic authors will do with these! So much potential, such an awesome hostile species. I also have to quote a Youtube comment:
The cloned ponies... They weren't mistakes/shortcuts taken by the animators. THEY have been among us all along... Infiltrating every Equestrian village, town, and city; every social circle, and every family...

Now only one mare can make the difference between friend and foe.

*IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE*
(Credit: LuaPineapple)
Queen Chrysalis:
This is one fantastic villain. Kind of a shame how the "power of love" was enough to defeat her, but eh. Pretty much expected in a show like this. I still thoroughly enjoyed her personality and the way she was portrayed. I'll enjoy seeing her return in fanfiction.
Second Song:
Great Disneyesque song this one! Loved the duality between "good and bad" Cadence. Nice shifts throughout it as well.

Disliked:
Princess Cadence:
To start this of, I have to quote my Finnish neighbours: Perkele! Perkele! Perkele! Perkele!
I would probably have been fine with Cadence if she had been a regular unicorn, but even then her special ability is Creepy.
Seriously. She seemed to be doing some form of mind manipulation to that couple who were arguing. YOU WILL LOVE ME! from Fluttershy comes to mind.
I'm going to be hung up on her being an Alicorn for Ages. She doesn't fit in as one! At least she didn't seem to be immortal, what with appearing to be the same age as Shining Armour.
Shining Armour:
I'm not sure I'll ever Like this character. Twilights brother introduced out of nowhere? Marrying into royalty? Captain of the guard?
Frankly, this guy Sucks at his job. He have completely failed to do any difference during the last two crisis situations that Equestria had, and even here he spent most of it as a puppet.
He sounds like a fanfic character. From a Bad fanfic. Possibly a trollfic. I propose ample gasoline and fire.
First Song:
Alright, what was up with this one? It was horrible. Seriously, I had to take off my headphones. I just couldn't stand it xD.
I'd probably even say that this is as horrible as the Strawberry Shortcake songs I've heard. Oh well, can't win them all!

Pardon if I've filled this thing with errors. It's three am over here and I might soon pass out, but this was fun to write so I Regret Nothing! :D

293092 Frankly, a lot of the concerns about Cadence and Shining hold good points. It's mostly just a marketing ploy by Hasbro to sell the wedding toys. It's up to the fandom whether or not to allow them into the canon, though. I'll most likely be looking at fan-made backstories or the likes, they always spice things up pretty well.

My proposal is Cadence is a demi-alicorn that lacks immortality and possibly earth pony traits and high tier magic abilities.

293093
I agree.
It's only at a single point, during the song, that Cadence actually uses her wings as well. But that doesn't mean speculation and discussion about them can't be fun as well.

293098 Now that is an interesting idea. Of course, that raises the question of how such an alicorn could come into existence in the first place, since the only two other known alicorns are Celestia and Luna, and I'm quite sure Luna wasn't really in the position to have a fling while being banished on the moon...

Ah, speculation. Gotta love it.

293100

She is specified as Celestia's neice (though Blueblood was called a nethew and is something like 20 to 30 generations down the line...) so they are some what related. Maybe sufficent inbreeding occured to make some alicorn features surface (wings and horn).

Anypony else feel waking up in a cacoon was the least Celestia deserved for telling Twilight "You have a lot to think about" after the big confrontation is part one?

Hmm... Maybe dealing such a big blow to somepony so close to her weakened Celestia's magical abilities for when she faced off with Chrysalis?

293092
>Cadance
Her special power isn't manipulating minds into loving. It's "spreading" love. If ponies havelove within their hearts, she brings it out to the surface. Therefore those with hate in their heart can't feel it's effects other than being repelled by it.
>Shining Armor
I can understand being against them suddenly throwing him in there and I'm pretty sure Twilight was originally intended to be an only filly. But aside from that, he didn't seem to be that bad of a guy. During Nightmare Moon's assault, there's a number of things that could have happened: He could have been preparing to take an army to the Everfree Forest, but the situation was resolved before he made it over there. Or he could have been asleep for all we know. He's probably too tired from working with his troops all day to take part in Summer Sun Celebrations. With Discord, I don't know if they stated that his reign of chaos had spread outside of Ponyville yet, but if they didn't we can assume that he didn't have a chance to respond.
293093 The fandom can decide whether or not they like the characters, but the fact is they're pretty much canon at this point. They appeared in the series: They're in the series: They're canon.
293112 I think Celestia's getting more heat than she deserves for that. She didn't say "I hate you, you're a bad pony." She just scolded her because she didn't understand what was going on. For all she knew, Twilight was ruining her niece's wedding by making wild accusations because she was being so possessive. If a student of mine made my niece cry on her wedding day, I'd be pretty disappointed too.

WALL OF TEXT COMPLETED

293902 I agree, they are canon now. Abruptly made canon, yes. I guess the fandom can just fill in the backstory with them. We have plenty of creative minds so I'm actually eager to see what'll be cooked up.

293904 Yeah, that's more reasonable. We don't really know much about them except that Armor is a captain, and Cadance was a babysitter. So everything else is still fair game!

293902

And then she never apologized.

To me it is less that she told Twilight she was in the wrong, but how she said it. Especially when Twilight was clearly already feeling bad, which is refered to as kicking a pony when they are down.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Shining apperently the cast knew Twilight had a brother, and we hardly see everything.

293908
When I was a kid, I would cry when I got in trouble. My mom didn't take pity on me, she would ask me if I had learned my lesson yet. It's called "tough love"... baby

293911

Except Celestia has never been portrayed as the type to do that; if she was then why did she let Twilight off so easily in Lesson Zero?

Really they needed to allot more time to dealing with such things that came up properly.

293922 Because Twilight had a chance to explain herself, so Celestia had some time to reflect and realize how she had inadvertently put a lot of pressure on her student. It was partly her own fault in a way. Besides, the situation had been resolved, the town was back to normal, she had settled down somewhat on their walk to the library, she was probably feeling more lenient by then.
Let's consider what Celestia knows (or what she thinks she knows) up to this point:

-Canterlot has received an unknown threat
-Her niece is getting married
-The groom is overworking himself to keep the city safe
-Her niece has been stressed out from having to do all of the planning by herself
-Twilight is making wild accusations about her niece being evil when she has known her for so long and would never consider her to even think of being evil, and making her cry the day before her special day
-All of this could be time spent eating delicious cake
-"You have a lot to think about" really isn't the worst thing she could have said

Imagining that Cadance could have been consoled, I'm sure that Celestia would have found her way back to Twilight later and said "Okay, let's talk about this." Because she's not the type to hold a grudge. She'd want her student to learn from her mistakes and become a wiser pony as a result.

293927

By how I mean tone of voice. And they did not ever deal with it for Celestia.

I did not watch the full scene, but it does speak baddly if they never addressed her going by the full name rather than just Cadance. Cause then it means Celestia does not know her very well, if no reason to accept that was given.

293928 I dunno man

293902
Walls of text are awesome.

Regarding Cadence:
Can't agree with you there. No matter how you go about it, "bringing out the love in their heart" sounds just as scary when you think about it.
It's one thing to have a talent for spreading love, it's another entirely to use what looks like the Want It, Need It spell in order to do it. It would have been another issue entirely if she had done it with sheer force of personality, a Pinkie Pie of love if you will.

And then there's the whole foalsitter thing. Equestrias nobility must be Really bored if they let their princesses babysit random fillies. (Twilight didn't have her cutiemark yet. Which means it's before she became Celestias student. And both Cadence and SA looked like they were in their teens, so I doubt SA was captain of the guard yet.)

Shining Armour:
First, regarding Discord we can with full certainty say it wasn't limited to Ponyville. 1/3d of the episodes was placed at the maze right in Canterlot. I mean, they were in the castle and could look outside at it.

Even then, I didn't like what little was shown of his personality, even if I can't say how much of it was changed due to Chrysalis mind control. That doesn't mean he's a bad guy, but he felt shoehorned in as Twilights brother. Honestly enough, I think he came of as having a rather big ego too. (Though having his special ability be shield spells was pretty cool.)

And what was up with all that "BBBFF" crap? xD I couldn't help but wonder if the writer is an only child, because wow, that's an odd way of acting around a sibling. It's one thing to love your family, but that whole bit seemed horribly unnatural, at least I've never seen anything like it.

On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with Celestias comment to Twilight.
Celestia was as fooled as everyone else. It's only because of Chrysalis clumsiness there at the end that Twilight got her comeuppance. (If Chrysalis had never tried imprisoning Twilight, everything would have gone without a hitch, since Twi would never have found the real Cadence, haha.)

In the end, it'll be interesting to see what fans make of them. Personally, I'm going to pretend they don't exist, or replace them with characters that simply make more sense.

293986

And then there's the whole foalsitter thing. Equestrias nobility must be Really bored if they let their princesses babysit random fillies. (Twilight didn't have her cutiemark yet. Which means it's before she became Celestias student. And both Cadence and SA looked like they were in their teens, so I doubt SA was captain of the guard yet.)

My take on that is Celestia had plans for Twilight even then.

Her knowing Twilight was special before the entrance exam would explain why Twilight hatched a dragon egg, which seems like it would be an unusual test if there is so little interation with dragons (seen in Dragon Quest).

293993
Hmm, not sure about that.
I mean, it seems somewhat odd that Celestia would have plans for a random filly. I suppose she might have been very perceptive and seen her in the crowd when Twilight gained her adoration for her, but I would imagine that Celestia has seen that happened many times before.

293998

Unless she could tell Twilight had a lot of magical power already. All things considered, her brother would likely have displayed quite a bit of power already seeing as he can make a city wide shield. And her parents' cutie marks suggest they are (lesser) magical talents.

Celestia had been planning for her sister's return for a long time, as seen by her arranging for some farmers (the Apples) to settle near the old castle which results in Ponyville being founded. She may have marked Twilight's family as being very likely to produce a bearer for the Element of Magic before Twilight was born, or in a more extreme case could have been involved to some extent in arranging for a bearer to be bred.

Or if not the family there is always any displays she may have had as an infant.

294000

I'm not sure Shining Armour is very powerful magically. If you look at his cutie mark, it is specifically a shield and apparently, it's not a general "protecting people" cutiemark, but more specifically Shields.

I find it likely that you don't need much general power in order to be good at your special ability.

In general, all the other theories of Celestia masterminding it all that far back sounds rather far fetched, and bordering on Tyrantestia territory. Selective breeding to bring out the right ponies? Well, at least someone with Cadence ability would be quite useful then xD.

That said, I can't see how Twilights parents cutie marks would show that they are good at magic. Many Canterlot ponies seem to have stars or other such objects as their cutiemarks, I'm not sure we could use that as something showing they are good with magic.

I do not think Cadence is particularly powerful in any way.

She is not physically strong. Twilight was able to take her on easily, for example.
She used no offensive/defensive magic at all, her only trick appear to be "love". She could not escape the cave even after several days (weeks?), while Twi busted out right away.
She does't even seem to be a very confident flyer. She only glided with Twilight, and waited to be teleported out rather than just flying through the hole...

On top of that, Cadence is clearly not immortal. She was seen as a youngster, and seems to be perfectly normal.
It even sounded like she was foalsitting as an actual job, so I suspect "princess" doesn't mean much.

I think she is simply a unicorn with wings and a title.

293986
I don't see it that way at all, but that's just me. It sounds like a wonderful talent to bring out love within ponies. They don't seem to be in a crazed state of love, or shirking their responsibilities, so no harm no foul.
>Cutie mark
Hang on, I can make this work, just gimme a minute...
Okay, so in Cutie Mark Chronicles after Twilight goes all Dark Phoenix and gets calmed down by the princess, she says "Twilight Sparkle, you have a very special talent; I don't think I've ever come across a unicorn with your raw abilities." That doesn't say anything explicitly indicating this is the first time meeting her. Remember, she has a brother who serves as captain of the Royal Guards, so maybe having connections like that gives you perks like having a princess as a babysitter?

nailed it :3

294021

Ah, no, sorry. Almost, but it didn't get you all the way there :).

If we look at the flashbacks, Shining Armour would have been approximately a teen at that point. (At least Cadence was.)

Since we're not watching a Japanese animé, I suspect Celestia wouldn't make a teenager the captain of her guard.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the love spell though. That thing is scary, and I know that I'd rather be angry at someone than have a random stranger force some "love" onto me xD.

294019

Worth noting here, as a friend told me, is that we don't know how long Cadence was stuck down there.

She was likely exhausted, had probably already spent her magical reserves and was in all likelihood malnourished.

But yeah, she is clearly not immortal. The whole episode could have played out Exactly the same if she had been a regular unicorn, with the minor change that Twilight teleported them in mid air rather than that 4 second flight scene xD.

294034
>Not watching an anime
Aren't we though...?

294015

But there is not evidence that is a special talent for shielding an entire city. The shield in question is a sphere, therefore the power needed would increase as the surface area does (which is quickly). And since it was hurting him it is to be concluded there are no other ponies around that can shield the city as he was never given a break. I would think any pony with a talent for shield spells would be military unless they are a noble or something, so he most definately is not of normal magical abilities relative to the others in the guard.

I did say selective breeding (or just encouraging it stealthly) was a more extreme way of explaining how Celestia would know before the test that Twilight is at least very likely to be very good at magic. One that is left out is she noticed Twilight's ability without seeing it in action (either by detecting it in her directly or noticing there was a unicorn with high potential and tracking back to her). Another (the most extreme) would be she had a deeper involvement than breeding (like creating a golem like in the fan fic Sunset). It is a list, not stating any particular one is true.

End result is there are a lot of way to know long before the entrance test, and having Twilight hatch Spike (showing that she had good reason by then, cause it is clear no other pony has before or then she would have been able to anticipate the greed thing and know how to deal with it) and having Candance as a foal sitter would indicate that she did (not as strong, but if it is then it was at least strongly suspected long before the test).

In support of it being because Twilight is special, do recall her saying to filly Twilight:

You are anything but a regular old unicorn.

(Source of quote: http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Transcripts/A_Canterlot_Wedding_-_Part_1)

294037

Big eyes are hardly the only requirement for an animé :P.

294040

I would say that it has to be a special talent just because no one else could do it. If it was just because of pure magical Ooomph, then there would likely be plenty of unicorns who could keep the shield up. If nothing else, Celestia or Luna could, but I'd also assume that most teachers at Celestias school could have taken care of it.
Besides that, he is in the military after all. Or at least we have never seen anything other than the royal guards. I'm sure you would find that a lot of ponies in the guard have offensive or defensive special abilities.

As for finding Twilight: The Golem from Sunset feels like the most likely of these versions. Or any of the fanfics where she's secretly Celestias daughter. All other theories seem far-fetched to me and would have required an absurd amount of her personal involvement in the events leading up to Twilights birth. It'd be a hard sell, at least to me, to imagine that Celestia could just "know" the magical ability of other ponies, it makes sense that the magical outburst is what made Celestia take notice of her, it was a very visible display of wild and powerful magic after all. For Spike, it made more sense to me that the dragons egg was used simply as an unsolvable test. Students were judged on their effort and creativity, rather than with the expectation that they'd succeed. I believe there is a fanfiction where they had used the same egg for hundreds of years, until Twilight came along.

As for the quote: I'm not sure what it is supposed to prove. What else should Cadance have said?
That's a pretty common platitude to say to a kid and almost any other response would have been rather mean.

294044

I did say there would be alot of ponies in the guard with defensive magic talents (amoung the unicorns), or at least if there are any others they would likely be there. Hence he is exeptionally strong or his talent itself is exceptional.

Considering how close it was getting to the time for Luna to return, if she wanted to have bearers for the Elements she was running out of time and would need to be looking or have been looking.

Actually there is one way to have traced families lines to see where it was likely a suitible pony would be born: keep records and check them. Either from various instituions that have powerful unicorns come through (School for Gifted Unicorns and the Royal Guard being two likely ones) or less likely (though it has shown up in at least on fic) have magic testing for the general population (at least for unicorns) that is something like census or maybe even be part of their medical records to check that they are developing correctly in terms of magic. Goverments love their statistics, and knowing who all the powerful unicorns are would be a major one to look into collecting.

Having signs while Twilight was an infant would be simple if the mayhem they cause during magical outbursts has much of a correlation to their potential.

Yes knowing magical strength passively would not work, but if she is searching actively there could quite possibly be magic that can be used to find strong unicorns.

Well damn... how did I miss this?

First I would like to say that both episodes were awesome and a darn good way to wrap up the season, hell if there wasn't a third season it would have been a great way to finish the series as well.

Now onto the characters:

Cadence- I don't see what people's problems with her are, maybe it 'cause I've work out how she fits in my headcanon or maybe it's that I don't have enough info to hate her. I won't go into her powers since that has been done to death.

If she is a noble why did she foalsit?: Because not all nobles are like what we see in pro-democracy fiction, crappy fairy tails, or as big of twits as Blueblood. Or in my headcanon she wasn't raised by nobels, and the title of princess is mere courtesy because she is an Alicorn. She foalsat since shows responsibility and it is a chance to earn money.

Is she a real Alicorn: After the first time seeing it I got tired of seeing Cadence as weird mutant child of an unicorn and a pegasus, or she somehow merged with her supposed twin. She is an Alicorn, a real one, just one that hasn't fully come into her powers yet, much like how Luna was after she was cleansed. As for were she came from, it's complicated

Shining Armor: To be frank the only thing I disliked about him... ok two things was 1) His voice, he sounded too young to me, like he was younger than Twilight, and too immature. 2)Him not sending a letter telling Twilight about the wedding, even being mind controlled that is inexcusable. As for the rest, he seems to be a good brother to her and a good Guard (despite the mishaps), but I don't think he is The Captain of the Guard, but he is A Captain of the Guard, just not the top guy. He is too young for the job.

Chrysalis: She is probably one of my favorite villains in the series so far, but doesn't mean I love the fact that EqD is flooding the Drawfriends with her.

Celestia: To be honest I was happy to see her going all badass on Chrysalis, even though she lost (it was for the plot, not that I'm not scratching my head). Her chewing out Twilight was a bit unexpected but in the situation it was understandable, there is a time and a place for everything and call the bride evil during the rehearsal is not the time nor the place. I do believe that Celestia apologized to Twilight, even if may have been off screen.

Luna: She either was sleeping, out of Canterlot, or trying to help in the defense of the city.

As for the the comments about the episodes made no sense or that Hasbro was just trying to sell toys... Congrats you just discovered that Hasbro is a toy company.

while i did have a bit of trouble with the sudden third alicornness.
i liked shining armour, the reason he never showed up before was to create a dynamic of distancing between the too. shen she left they were seperated and lost track of each other for a while.
if she had had regular contact with her brother, then alot of things in the finale wouldnt have made sense
also, bbbff song is amazing. i dont see why some seem to dislike it so much. ill admit when i firist heard it it wasnt exactly my favourite, but sense then it has become one of my favourites. its so emotionally charged, it really get my feels all rustled. and you know its kinda catchy. (i like to think of mandoponys shining armour as shinings answer to twilights bbbff song)