The King is Dead; Long Live the Princess · 11:58pm Nov 10th, 2012
Wow. That premiere, huh? It certainly managed to live up to the hype.
I, personally, really liked it - not so much because of the plot, though that was well-executed, and had an excellent flow, but mostly because my personal headcanon Equestrian magic system escaped from the episodes, not only intact, but with a fair amount of backing and enhancement.
For starters, it has been shown that Darkness(or Shadow, or whatever one wishes to call it) is an almost entirely separate aspect of Black/Evil/Dark/Otherside magic from Chaos. Not only that, but Darkness is an aspect of such magic that is accessible, usable, and entirely embraceable by harmonic beings, as shown by Celestia, Twilight, and the fact that Sombra was originally a unicorn.
I'll have to watch the episodes a few more times to fully over-analyze everything, but overall, I'm very pleased. I can't wait for the rest of the season.
So, when you're writing an epic that takes place in the past...do you have a moment of trepidation when you sit down to watch the premiere, like, "Are they going to put anything in here that is going to upset my headcanon and render my entire story Alternate Universe?"
Twilight and Celestia using dark magic were highlights for me. Also, when Twilight went through Sombra's door. That moment was great.
My biggest gripe with the premiere is that, just as in the finale of last season, the rest of the Mane Six are practically background ponies, not integral parts of the story and conflict as they were in the premieres of seasons one and two. I can almost forgive this since we got to see a focus on Twilight and Spike's friendship instead, and that is something that deserved the epic treatment.
Anyway, I did like the premiere, even though the villain was completely without personality. (And was this the first villain they actually destroyed? Don't mess with Cadance!)
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Oh yes, ALWAYS - especially because the sorts of things that will happen later on in the story are the kinds of things that will never be able to happen in the show canon, simply due to the nature of the show. (I won't give away any specifics, but I will have to crank the rating up to at least Teen, eventually.) A major part of my motivation for finishing this now is that, when the show has barreled through it, I will no longer want to finish it. (And really, having his story never be finished would just make Phobos' life even more depressing than it already ends up being.)
My house of cards has taken a few blows already, of course. This story started shaping in my head a while before the Royal Wedding aired. The mere existence of Cadance, let alone her destiny to go and save an empire that had been cursed to disappear right around the same time as everything else important occurred (how convenient), was very difficult to weave in, and even now, the way I managed it feels uncomfortably like deus ex machina.
Most of the time, however, headcanon is nebulous enough that information provided in the show does not nullify it, but instead shapes it. For instance, I wasn't quite sure how dark magic worked just from seeing Celestia use it in the 8-minute preview, but now that I have a bit of context for the system, as laid out in the whole 2-parter, I can write accordingly. Harmonic beings cannot use Chaos magic, but they can use Darkness - or, at the very least, Harmonic partials and Celestia's bruised and battered soul can. (That's another major part of preserving one's headcanon - when possible, always assume that you are right.)
I didn't really notice the background-ness of the other 5 - I was far too caught up in gasping at Twilight's magical badassery. But, to be fair, they did preface the entire adventure with "Twilight has to do this alone."
As for Sombra, It certainly did look like he was destroyed - but considering that we saw pieces of him flying away, and that those pieces of him, earlier in the episode, could spread himself virally? I wouldn't rule him out just yet. A shadow cannot be destroyed by the light that casts it.