Going back to old avatar, brief note on the episode.

Welp, here's hoping that all the alicorn-drama will die down now and the drama-princesses will go back to making their own outrage.

The episode was... great and tremendously emotional, if with one ginormous problem: the ending third part of it felt incredibly rushed. That, of course, is not quite the creator's fault as they had a stumpy season, and couldn't make it a two-parter like in the last two seasons. Mind you, I still consider that just an excuse, even if a good one. MA Larson hinted that there is more to come.

But did the episode deliver? After the previous, weaker episode I thought I was building and setting my expectations too high. Yet, it did manage to fulfill the greatest fear, that Twilight will simply have wings glued unto her and then declared a princess and then end. Well, that halfway happened: her becoming an alicorn was given enough emotional impetus and drive that it felt right, felt like she EARNED that pair of wings rather than just given to her. Note that the bit that changes her comes from HER, rather than stacked upon her by Celestia.

That, and all the singing and stuff make it work.

The "Princess" stuff however is... what feels rushed. Then again, I'm European who has a tiny bit of understanding of medieval history and the word that comes to my mind of a "princess" is decidedly and radically different than what Americans think, especially the stereotypical American little girl.

To elaborate: to me, a (mind you, real and in-this-world, not Equestrian) princess is merely an unlucky woman born of a royal family, to be traded like cattle and married to another royal or high-noble family in the political power games of the feudal age. My image of a princess is that of a woman locked away by her parents, with little to no power over her life, isolated from all but fellow high-noble girls, all while she is to prepare to be married to a man she likely never has met or spent time with before the marriage. Such man of course, will likely be someone who has spent a great deal of his life preparing to wage violence and rule those born above his rank, and likely gained the honour of being married to a princess by some means of power.
All while preciously preserving her virginity, because of the obsession of the noble aristocracy about "purity", whose results can be best seen in pedigree dogs. Once a princess is married, her only duty is to endure sex with her newly-married husband and give subsequent births of the man. Beyond being presentable and pleasant while her husband rules, that's all her job is and that's my image of a princess.

Naturally, the reality is immensely more complicated in reality, especially evidenced how some queens later held themselves in power. Mind you, I do not have the idea that princesses were utterly powerless: I am fairly confident that they wielded more power than the average person, probably even more than the average female noble. But the thing is, to me, a princess is just a chess-piece in the game of feudal politics, to be bargained and controlled like many others.

I should also say that this is not how I imagine how Equestrian princesses are and how they might work. Celestia and Luna are certainly ponies with great agency and power, and obviously the rulers of Equestria. According to interviews, Faust wanted Celestia to be QUEEN Celestia, but Hasbro overruled her partly due to Disney movies somehow always ending up with evil queens (I would guess that it is due to the idea of "female protagonist should have male protagonist" to avoid stepping on toes not intended to be stepped on); and partly because the word "Queen", as a woman of authority and power when absolutist monarchy gained strength, just doesn't have the same taste of innocence and benevolence.

I am curious how the rest of the show will go on. I certainly hope this will bring change and perhaps allow exploring more complex, season-spanning stories. Hopefully, it will mean more interest, better stories, stories that the creators would want to make because they have less shackles constraining their creativity (*grumble.* reset button *grumble*). But perhaps that is still asking for too much. Either way, change can actually be a good thing. I remember watching and loving Babylon 5, precisely because it was a show where things changed and the story was ABOUT that change.
Twilight's new position has to be dealt with and likely will BE dealt with the whole "coronation" extravaganza. But I doubt that this will overshadow the others in the Mane6 for more than necessary.

As for me, the episode also means I'm going back to the old bunny avatar. When I picked it, I picked it because it resembled my then-pet bunny, Mümi, who was black. The following is the story of who she was and why I want to restore that avatar.

She died since then, because I didn't realize how dangerous it is for her to keep her uterus and never actually birth babies. It might have cut down on some of her bad habbits. You see, her uterus got imflammed from some infection. The biggest, real hint was that she was leaving drops of blood from places.
When we took her to the vet, the first signs were promising: the place was nice and clean, had plenty of ads (it was more of an animal hospital, complete with perhaps the city's biggest pet-stuff store) and the doctor was willing to run all sorts of tests. X-ray, ultrasound and perhaps what should have been a big warning to me, giving her fluids intravenously to see whether it was her bladder or her uterus that is infected. They did it until she started bleeding again, and this is where I should have been smarter, they kept doing it. After some more tests, the doctor told me that her uterus is inflamed and should be removed. I agreed, thinking that the odds of her surviving the procedure are better while she is relatively healthy.
About half a day or a day later, we got her back. She was very numb from the surgery's drugs, but her heart was still beating. We brought her a little cone so she wouldn't rip out her stitching, just to be safe. I placed her in a clean cage. I even put a small pillow's cover over her body.

As one would expect, this sob-story ends with her dead the following morning.

I would like to say that I blame solely the vet, as rabbit-surgery has to be done with different sleeping-drugs than with other mammals of similar size. I would guess that it has to do with the fact that rabbits don't sleep like dogs or cats or humans do. But the worst part, I guess, is the guilt. Have I handled too roughly after such a delicate procedure? She was so unresponsive, so limp after the procedure that my imagination recalls that I might have broke her neck and not have noticed, but my memory also recalls her breathing before I went to bed. I feel know that I shouldn't have gone to my brother's that day, that maybe I should have stayed with her (thus I would lost my chance to meet my two cousins). Or maybe I shouldn't have opened the window, as I do at night to let fresh, and consequently cold, air in.

But either way, I feel that the avatar showing her should be there.