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RainbowDoubleDash


“If the youth are not initiated into the tribe, they will burn down the village, just to feel its warmth.” — African proverb

More Blog Posts221

  • 120 weeks
    I'm (still) not quite dead...

    I'm sorry, I am so very sorry for the lack of updates on, well, anything. A few of you have probably noticed that I've still been putting in the occasional appearance or comment, but as for chapter updates...yeah I've barely written anything for months for various reasons - work sucks, arranging a couple vacations, a falling out in my D&D group of 14 years, and just a sort of malaise that

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  • 160 weeks
    When you're writing a chapter...

    And listening to music to keep yourself in the mood, and then you hear a song that has you suddenly realize that you've been writing the entire chapter wrong and should have instead been basing it around the song - not necessarily using the song directly (especially since that would be against site rules concerning wholesale copying of lyrics), but certainly drawing on it for inspiration.

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  • 165 weeks
    The Good News and the Bad News

    The good news is that I got a root canal on Monday. No more pain in teeth. Yay!

    The bad news is that I was 3/4ths of the way through the next chapter of Midnight Castle (~5000 words) and realized that I was writing it totally wrong. I need to go back to practically the start and change up a lot, though I'm salvaging lines and paragraphs wherever I can.

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    6 comments · 471 views
Oct
12th
2019

Thoughts on the Final Episodes · 3:07pm Oct 12th, 2019

So I’m at work for most of the morning and afternoon and thus can’t actually watch the series finale live. Typical, really. But that being said, a number of plot points were spoiled for me. Or rather I spoiled them for myself. I like knowing things, and I think I’ve been doing a good job keeping a lid on things.

That being said I have watched much of the three final episodes - enough, anyway, to know all the plot twists and stuff. And form opinions on them. Which I’ve keep bottled up for weeks. But now I can finally talk about them.

Let’s...get started. Oh, but one thing first:


Spoiler!

Discord is Grogar
Holy crap do I hate this. And also it kind of puts the final nail in the coffin for Discord as a character for me. When he first appeared I loved him; the antithesis of Harmony; a complete monster held in check mostly by a TV-Y7 rating. But then came his next episode, “Keep Calm and Flutter On”, and I make no secret of despising that episode. Every time I watch other bad episodes and I’m about to call them terrible I have to pause and ask myself, “but is it really as bad as the episode that tells little girls to just tough out abusive relationships?”

The fact that the series is closing on Fluttershy and Discord actually marrying - holy shit. I have no words.

Anyway. My gripes with Discord aside, he had sort of started to grow on me, just a bit. I was coming around to the idea of him being a recurring character, a Great Gazoo type figure. A trickster mentor like Q. I could appreciate it, even if I didn’t particularly like it.

But this? Him being Grogar the whole time?

Look, why did we even bring in the idea of Grogar in the first place? Little girls probably don’t recognize the name, probably haven’t watched G1, so the idea must have been to appeal to the older crowd. And that’s a great idea. That’s what happened when we brought back Tirek, and Somnambula for that matter.

Now the thing is that this Somnambula is pretty different from the G1 one. For one thing, she’s a pony; for another, she’s a hero instead of an evil witch. Cool, so we get a name we recognize but the character completely new. That’s fine and understandable. Gotta keep those licenses and stuff, I guess.

Tirek, conversely, is pretty much the same. He’s a brute in his own right without much in the way of minions, but his plan is still “disregard good; acquire power.” No Rainbow of Darkness in sight but he gets a pretty neat power set of his own. G4 Tirek is different from G1 Tirek but is a very lovingly crafted send-up to the character.

But Grogar?

Nope!

This isn’t the G4 version of Grogar. This isn’t a send-up to one of the most memorable villains of the original series. This is Discord wearing a mask and fooling the audience. We were promised Grogar, a Grogar, even if not the Grogar, but instead we get John de motherfucking Lancie pining for the days of The Next Generation. It’s a bitter disappointment.

I’m also guessing that no one at DHX has seen Iron Man 3. Or worse, they have and yet somehow missed the massive audience disappointment towards its “big reveal.” “I am the Mandarin!” screams a guy who is absolutely not the Mandarin, while the guy we thought was the Mandarin farts and gets drunk in the corner.

Silly audience, you fell for it! You didn’t think we’d really bring back Grogar? You were looking forward to it so much? Nope! Here’s Discord again! And he gets to marry Fluttershy!

Ugh. I’ve heard about a half-dozen ways this could have been handled better. And they are all of them better because they actually do involve Grogar. Hell, even a version where it turns out that it is Discord but in fact he was serious about forming a Legion of Doom is better, that he never reformed, just adopted a longer game. Still no Grogar like we were promised, but it does give the audience a meta-reason to hate Discord (as if we really needed that) even as in-universe the ponies now have to deal with the Lord of Chaos once more.

Ugh. My best guess is that DHX remembered all those fan theories from Seasons 3 and 4 that Discord was really Star Swirl and so wanted to do something like that. Except that the G1 Star Swirl was a Literally Who so I don’t think anyone would care if that had been the case.

I could go on, but I won’t, because I also have to address…

The Bewitching Bell
Honestly next to Discord turning out to be Grogar this feels like a minor, petty gripe, but it is one I have to make. The Legion of Doom already has two out of its three members as being naturally capable of stealing power and getting stronger from it, and Cozy Glow was pretty keen on doing it herself back at the end of Season 8. So...why is that basically all the Bell does as well? It’s just more of the same. We’ve been here before, why are we here again? We can’t even make the excuse that it was needed to defeat Grogar because no it wasn’t, Grogar was Discord, and Tirek has previously shown himself as perfectly capable of defeating Discord if he acts quickly enough and with the element of surprise!

You know what would have been neat? Ring the bell and the City of Tambelon appears and brings with it an army of Windigo or golems or flutter ponies or whatever that will obey the bell-ringers. Maybe Bray is there - Hell, throw in a whole mess of G1 villains like Lavan and Arabus and Catrina. Took me five seconds to think up, calls back to G1, and isn’t something we’ve really seen before. The Legion of Doom could even start fighting each other and inadvertently destroy their own army in the process. Would have been great.

Speaking of the Legion of Doom...

Discord’s Plan Only Makes Sense if he Is a Moron
By the way, there is like, zero consensus as to what words should be capitalized in a title. English. Ugh.

Anyway. So Discord decides that he’s going to gather up and reform the villains. Or else get them all in one place so that Twilight can in one fell swoop while building up her confidence in her own abilities - again, have not really watched the episodes. In either case, fair enough, that’s not actually a terrible plan.

Except why in God’s green Earth would he send them after actual artifacts that actually work as advertised?

This is Discord, Lord of Chaos. You can’t tell me that it’s beyond his power to magic up something that looks like the Bewitching Bell and has magic pouring out the wazoo from it, but when you try and turn it on all it does is go “ding!” And maybe boil an egg at fifty paces.

He’s a reformed bad guy himself. He should know that these idiots will try and betray him. Now I can totally buy that he’d have the arrogance to presume that they never could pull anything off on their own (even though he knows for a fact that under the right circumstances, Tirek could), but why proceed to hand out a weapon that could?

That would be like Dracula having a gift-shop at the entrance to his castle that sells garlic, holy water, wooden stakes, and chess boards. That level of arrogance transcends any kind excuse and just becomes plain stupidity.

This is Fluttershy’s future husband, people. I have a friend who hates Fluttershy and I’m pretty sure even he’ll agree that she doesn’t deserve this.

But I Wouldn’t Feel All Alone…
Everybody must get stoned! 

And it’s even Discord’s idea, just to cement (ha!) how much I’ve come to fucking despise the character.

Anyway. This one is complicated to unpack.

So on the one hand, unlike Discord, the Legion of Doom have not really been shown to have any remorse for what they’ve done at any point. Tirek, Cozy, and Chrysalis have done nothing to earn forgiveness and so there is no reason why forgiveness should be extended.

On the other hand, Discord only started expressing any sort of remorse when given a chance to, when ponies took reasonable precautions to see to their own safety and then reached out to him (and then he abused it and arrrgghhh I hate “Keep Calm” SO MUCH). The Legion of Doom...well, Starlight tried, once, to reach out to Chrysalis. But the Mane-6 were in fight mode the moment they got down to Tartaros at the end of Season 8, and Cozy Glow, a child, was tossed down there too. No attempts at reformation, even though it seemed to basically work for Discord FOR NO RAISIN.

Chrysalis was never in their custody so I can understand the lack of attempt there, but why didn’t Celestia pull up with Tirek in a cage at some point and throw him at, I dunno, Applejack to try and reform? And surely Cozy has parents somewhere! I may like to have my version of Chrysalis muse that there’s no way that Cozy is actually a pony, but, real talk: the show never gives us a reason to suspect otherwise.

The real reason why I have so much of a problem, though, is that this is the last we’ll ever see of them on screen. For all intents and purposes the characters were basically just killed. And in a show called Friendship is Magic, that feels wrong - especially since the Legion of Doom we’re pretty obviously becoming friends! Yeah, sure, they bickered and fought. So do Applejack and Rainbow Dash, but I don’t see them being petrified for the next millennium. The Legion were inches away from friendship with each other. And now they’re petrified. In two senses of the word from the look on Cozy’s face.

The thing is that there might have actually been a pretty neat lesson here about unhealthy friendships. Cozy, Tirek, and Chrysalis basically built up and fed on each others’ negative aspects. Their friendship was toxic, and in a season that started out dealing with some pretty mature topics that woud have been an impressive thing to end on: that, hey, not all friendships are good. Had this been given even a few moments of contemplation and acknowledgement, it would have been…something. But as it stands? Blegh.

It really doesn’t help that the season had even started setting up potential aspects through which each could be redeemed. Cozy was always just a kid. Chrysalis was shown to be cripplingly lonely. And Tirek...okay, less with him, but there was a potential to build a paternal relationship with Cozy. Or Hell, bring back Scorpan as looking to bring him home. Or his Gram-Gram! Apparently he genuinely cares for her! How great would it have been if friggin’ Catrina turned out to be his granny? Ha!

But no, in seriousness, would a single throwaway line like “we’ll unfreeze them in a week and see how they feel”, or a shot in “The Last Problem” with them petrified in different poses and maybe one or two of them missing, really been uncalled for?

I expect over the next few weeks we’ll be seeing a lot of fics centered on these three. They’re being let out on parole, or a thousand years pass and they break free and are pissed, or existential horror pieces with Cozy Glow not dealing with being petrified very well.

I also really hope that those Season 10 comics address this.

Twilight Sparkle Will Grow Up To Look Hideous
Not much else to really say here. She looks awful. I understand the desire to make her look like Celestia, but seriously, who greenlit her appearance?

Der Uberpferde
One last note. Luster, Twilight’s student, really should not have been a unicorn.

I understand the desire to cast parallels to Twilight at the start of the series. But...well, the original seasons of the show really tried to stress that pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies were equal. They had their strengths and weaknesses but all ultimately needed each other. The Hearth’s Warming episode really exemplifies this.

And the recent seasons...haven’t. I’ve really gotten a sense of the show’s writers feeing like there’s a hierarchy of ponies, with unicorns at the top, pegasi in between, and earth ponies on the bottom. Unicorns can do magic, see, but pegasi and earth ponies can’t.

It’s broadly subtle, and you have to read into a few lines…but the lines are there to be read into. I also don’t think it’s intentional on the part of the show’s writers. But that’s a moot point, because the road to Hell and death of the author and all that.

Honestly the biggest annoyance of this is that I can think of like four writers on this site off the top of my head who I’m sure are gonna take Luster being a unicorn and write unimaginative screeds about pony equality or something, and the problem is that the show as presented really doesn’t make them wrong to do so. At least one of them won’t be RealityCheck, since he left in a huff over...I think something to do with not liking ponies being in wheelchairs. Can’t remember.

Anyway. That’s basically all I have to say. Hopefully those Season 10 comics will help to fix some of the problems or wash the bad taste out of my mouth. I’ve always considered the comics canon except where they violate the show, a stance that Hasbro and IDW supports. Now there’s no more show left to violate.

So let’s see what they’ve got. Because the show may have ended…but the show must go on.

Report RainbowDoubleDash · 1,066 views ·
Comments ( 33 )

Finale episode at 8pm Eastern on Discovery Family. They are showing all of Season nine before it.

5135902
Wait, PM? Seriously?

Well...my thoughts are unchanged and I have clearly marked spoilers.

I've got a peeve to voice: Luna. Frozen in time (or at least an impotent bad-dreams-causer, from the comics) for a thousand years because she wasn't feeling appreciated enough, back for 5-9 years depending on timey-wimey, retires.
I mean, I guess there's an arc about not needing approval, but it feels like they're throwing out a slightly used demigod just because the other's going.

What I find oddest about them being turned to stone is that the only reason to do that would be to eventually let them out for a reformation. Otherwise just stick them in Tartarus to rot. It's not like Tirek or Cozy Glow actually escaped Tartarus. Discord busted them out while disguised as Grogar. So the only rational reason for Discord to suggest turning them to stone is so they can be turned back in a time and place best suited to reforming them, including looking for the right people for the job (Scorpan, as a possible example). It does seem at least partially set up with how the three seem to have a real budding friendship with each other, moreso than they have with anyone else at any rate.

I get the feeling they intended to reform then in show, but somebody, somewhere, got the idea they clouldn't pull it odd without more episodes, so they pushed that storyline forward to the Season 10 comics. Hell, for all we know, they'd intended this for a season 10 of the show, until Hasbro decided to end it at nine. I imagine we'll never know for sure. Either way, I'm 90% certain we'll see them get their chance at reforming in the comics. And if not, well, as a crazy purple alien once said...
i.imgflip.com/308kyx.jpg

5135923
Yeah...let’s just say that that may have been what made me start writing Trouble in Tiatarta even though I have so much else on my plate right now.

5135934
Well hey, it's a good fic and people clearly like it, proving reformed Chrysalis can be done right. The show's loss is the fanfiction realm's gain.

I think my biggest problem was that Discord received absolutely no punishment.

Yeah you could say he was regretful, but last I checked you don't earn medals for starting a fire just to make sure that the Fire Department is prepared. Then you have him be the one to decided their punishment when this was all his fault just adds more onto the pile.

Keep Calm and Flutter On I never liked, and this just cements to me that episode was a mistake. Especially because they directly are going after the idea of "Well Discord could just snap away their problems" but this was one of the worst ways to do it.

Honestly, when I was watching the episode, when I got to Discord being Grogar, after the intial "wait what that's stupid", I thought his motive was going to be revealed to be that he thought that if the Legion of Doom became friends, they won't be evil anymore, since when HE made a friend, he stopped being evil. But no, he was just holding a planet sized idiot ball.

It could have worked if like... I dunno, the damn Bell was in a volcano or something, and there’s an eruption, and it and like... Chrysalis and Cozy were all going to fall into the lava, and after several broadcast seconds of agonizing deliberation, Tirek runs for the Bell, then jumps past it and saves them instead. And after they get out and Cozy is like, “Associate Evils, what do we tell Chief Evil?” and Tirek is like, “Don’t worry about it, Small Evil. Between the three of us, we’ll think of something to calm Chief Evil down, but just in case, we should be ready to execute Plan B.”

I guess what I’m getting at is that it would’ve been fine if Discord’s “Plan” had actually worked. If they actually did become friends and did something, instead of what is obviously a cheap setup for the series-long antagonists for G5. I would settle for an expensive setup for the series-long G5 antagonists; it’s be better than this.

I honestly wish that instead, we had the return of Nightmare Moon. Think about it! It's clear that Celestia and Luna have made up since season 1, but look at how long it took Luna to get her own throne, Sparkle Seven showed that Luna and Celestia still have their arguments and I can guarantee behind closed doors at the episode's ending that they went at it, Between Dark and Dawn showed the two fighting and even splitting apart for a while because of their different interests, A Royal Problem's WHOLE plot was because of the sisters lack of understanding of one another's jobs! How did the writers not see any of this and not think that the most poetic end to the series would be where it all began, with Nightmare Moon?!

5136244
Funny enough according to the leaks the original draft was that things got so out of control with the trio making everyone racist that Twilight summons dark magic to become Midnight Sparkle and force everyone to get along. I don't know much more than that but I feel it would have been weird to have our hero become the last villain.

Considering the comics gave us the Reflections Arc and Anon-a-Miss without too many winners that I can remember, I wouldn't hold my breath on them being good. If the writers of the show let it go downhill like this for the last 2 seasons (A child being a total threat to Equestria whyyyyy), I don't see why comic writers would try any harder. Don't get me wrong, I really want them to be good, great even, but I've been let down too many times.

They wanted the Grogar twist since I believe 2017 according to leaks but I can't figure out why. Maybe it's to shove Grogar into the show without putting much effort into him. The idea of the villains teaming up with the heroes against him that almost everyone got from Frenemies turned out to be nothing but a lie. I don't get why they make one episode to make them more likable just to suddenly have them absolutely bloodthirsty in the finale. Cozy always has been nuts but were Tirek and Chrysalis always this murder crazy? They've both had captured the princesses before but didn't really do anything but keep them as prisoners.

5136196
It's not a bad idea. What if instead of Grogar it's Luna pretending to be Nightmare Moon? She tricks them into doing good deeds like "Hey, this villain is moving into our future territory! Let's stop him together!" and tries to warm up to each of them. That could of been something and at least Luna would be more responsible and have her moment to shine as a hero.

5137048
Insofar as the comics are concerned, Nightmare Knights (published between October of 2018 and March of 2019) was great and I highly recommend it. It's also recent, so that means that they can turn out quality these days if they want.

but were Tirek and Chrysalis always this murder crazy?

Not really. They were hungry, sure, and cruel, but not to this extent. Tirek is pretty clearly the sort who just drains your power and then doesn't care about you anymore; the most he got to "tormenting" anyone was to throw the Princesses into Tartaros. And yeah, Chrysalis' desire to torture and torment seems out of character, especially given her line in "Frenemies" concerning that bull snake thing. She keeps her enemies around so that she can keep feeding on them. I could totally see her wanting to personally torment Starlight Glimmer (although I don't understand why she seems to not really care about Thorax, given that Thorax is the one who actually beat her and reformed the Hive), but everyone else, you'd think she'd just want to pod them and feast.

Like I've said, I really am getting the impression that Discord by putting them all in the same room but keeping them from killing each other, instead basically just drove them insane, or more insane.

5137136
I posted that picture in the official ep 24 and 25 discussion that picture with the writers aiming for more simplified good vs evil stories and that's how we got Cozy Glow, probably the most dumbed down and shallow villain. McCarthy's philosophy was that no one was truly evil which is probably why Chrysalis was really going to take Starlight's offer before changing her mind last second. I do agree that Keep Calm and Flutter On was not a good episode because it was too easy to get Discord to change his mind. Discord was great villain material and keeping him as one for longer would have made for some fun episodes, although I think an episode like Discordant Harmony should happen right after he becomes a good guy as a way to nerf his power into the ground because he's just too overpowered. Reformation is easily something that can be made interesting but it takes time and effort to make it believable and enjoyable.

With these new writer it seems they think that the best villains are just completely violent and will just turn the land they want to rule into a desolate hellhole. I can't believe their first idea for a villain this batshit insane was Cozy Glow, a child. Chrysalis was my favorite villain before but she seemed to get lamer each time she appeared. First appearance it seemed like she was a villain with shades of gray as she and her people needed to eat but then s6 happened where they just made it all black and white with all the changelings being good except her. Then she was completely useless on her own which would have been interesting if it led to something, but it didn't. Tirek's family issues could have been cool if they actually bothered writing in Scorpan.

I'm glad to hear the comics still can make something good but I still think I shouldn't get my hopes up. Hopefully I'll be wrong.

Hey man, just want to say I just finished reading through some of the discussion that's been going down in FimFiction's own post for the episodes, that I hope the day itself hasn't been too bad for you. I've kinda tried to keep my own emotional distance from this finale, as like you I kind of spoiled myself on it. Like you I'm not a big fan of the direction the finale went, for similar reasoning to yours, although perhaps not with the same level of hate at Discord. Personally I'm trying very hard to look at the silver lining that the Season 10 comics are going to be part of the official canon and that its now, to me, near 99% certain that Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow will be a part of it. I don't know if they'll actually get reformed and/or redeemed, but it seems very unlikely that part of the story won't be addressed. I mean, the fact that they're not really shown in the The Last Problem seems to me like the most obvious evidence that they didn't want to confirm anything about those character's long term fates, in order to free things up for the writers of the comics.

Still sucks this wasn't handled better in the show itself, since it does feel like the show lost its identity and had a serious issue of mixed messaging that doesn't really line up with its own previously established ideals, but at least the chance for the canon story and setting to fix that exists. Still a shame that the end of this entire series has to come down to such a... well, sour note. For me its more a bittersweet mixed bag that proves what I've felt for awhile, that the show has had identity issues concerning what it wants to be. It still remains, like, 3/4ths a fun show that I'll enjoy revisiting certain parts of it. I certainly can't deny I've had, and will continue to have, a blast writing fanfiction for it alongside fine folk like yourself. Whatever else might be said about the show, it's had a positive impact on my life, and part of that has been running into you and all the gang in the Lunaverse.

I just felt that needed to be said, to maybe help perk up the day, as it were.

5137321
Thanks. You may have noticed that I tend to get...invested in things. And for awhile now I'd sort of been banking emotionally on a redemptive arc for Chrysalis. Not even necessarily a full one, just an attempt, the same chance that Discord got. Even if it failed. Plus I just can't, I refuse, to even entertain the idea that imprisoning Cozy Glow, a child, in stone is acceptable, especially not if she's conscious in there. My nightmare version of what death is like, is being trapped forever in just a single moment, frozen in a single thought. Petrification while conscious is disturbingly close to that.

It's mostly just...I don't understand the thought process here. I can't imagine myself in a room with a bunch of other writers seriously floating this idea, and I can't imagine it coming across as a good one. I don't understand not adding a single throwaway line that the three could be unfrozen at some later date. "We'll leave them like this for awhile" or "Maybe a moon in there will make them change their tunes", instead of Discord flatly stating "together, forever."

I guess it just goes on my pipe-dream list of "selfish things to change if I get access to a time machine".

5137338
I hear you, and my own thoughts aren't that far off from you're own. I might be a bit more cynical in that I can imagine the writers discussing the finale, and not putting the same level of thoughts into it that we, the invested fans might. I can see them basically having a conversation along the lines of:

"Okay so are we going to reform these three or not?"

"I don't know, we get a lot of complaints about people not liking our last reformations. Starlight Glimmer still gets bitched about, and when we did it with Stygian it also got a fair number of complaints."

"Yeah, but we've been working to address that by building up the idea of reforming these three here by having them become kinda sorta friends, and if Discord's whole motivation for being Grogar is to reform them, it'd be kinda weird not to."

"Okay, sure, but Hasbro has decreed we have to have a lot of slice-of-life episodes too, so we don't have time to really dedicate the episodes we need to make it work, and we're not getting Season 10 like we thought. Oh, wait a sec, what if I float the idea to Hasbro to do Season 10 in the comics?"

"Uh, sure, but what do we do with these three villains in the meantime?"

"Err, I don't know, freeze them in stone? That's how Discord was before he was reformed, so, it's like poetry? It rhymes?"

"...Well, okay, you're the boss. Maybe I should put a line in the finale that kinda suggests that then? Maybe have Discord say 'Hey, being trapped in stone for awhile did wonders for me' when Twilight asks about whether they can be reformed?"

"No, if we did that, it'd leave a loose end, and this is the end of the show itself, so we can't just have a loose thread."

"It's not really a loose thread-"

"Look, we'll just make sure the three as statues don't show up in The Last Problem, that way fans can speculate, and it'll drive up interest in the comics. And all those fans who hate villain reformations will be satisfied, while those who like villain reformations will buy the comics. It's win win."

"...*sigh* Whatever you say, boss."

So, yeah, I share your frustration, because I can imagine the show writers put about that much thought into things. Maybe there was more to it, maybe there wasn't. I've adopted the notion that I'll just see how Season 10 plays out, and treat the comics as I would the show. And I'm still curious to see what happens with the movie coming out next year, and the eventuality of G5. And if all else fails, like you, I've got my own fanfiction plans in the works.

xoid #19 · Oct 13th, 2019 · · 1 ·

As someone who largely stopped watching the show since season 4 and completely stopped with season 5, I wish I could say I didn’t see this coming. I really do. Oh, not this exact plot twist — that was fucking retarded even by Vogel’s standards — but that the writing would be shit. Not that it should surprise anybody. I, for one, can barely name more than a handful of mainstream shows, movies, books, or games in the last ten years which have been written better than “adequately”. (Admittedly, I am actively avoiding most media nowadays; after having nearly every franchise I’ve gotten invested in go to shit I refuse to read, watch, or play anything until after the series it’s a part of is complete, and only after having it O.K.’d by internet autists like MauLer.)

5135911
As such, here's a different take: instead of ripping off Iron Man 3, rip off Doctor Strange.
>1000~ years ago, a despondent Celestia accidentally promises a stranger anything if she can see her sister's return
>Luna was in stasis, the other three are aging normally; The only "immortal" outlier is Celestia. Drop a few past princesses in the hidden history if needed.
>The stranger, Grogar (actually Grogar) grants it in return for the sun, then flies off cackling.
>He's obnoxiously immortal and patient, so he can wait for her half, letting her fall into the time abyss in the meantime.
>Celestia realises this and starts crazy long term plans to get alternates to her: she has to give the sun up without fighting if he asks, but if he has to go through a bunch of heroes...
>Celestia has spent every day since Luna's return watching for him, while toughening her champions.
>Grogar's not dumb, and when he gets around to coming after the sun, he prepares his own cannon fodder
>Kneecaps Discord at the start because entropy hits harder than whimsy, also for the oh crap
>Toss in a big army of shadows or skeletons or something so we can have the "everything is bad and getting worse" montage, followed by the "every random character from the whole series shows up to kick ass (including suspiciously silent Tempest/Capper/etc.)"
>Inevitable betrayal cascade starts from Grogar's end, three way fight ends with Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy limping off and swearing vengeance, Grogar not as obnoxiously immortal as he thought... and Celestia no longer sustained by his shenanigans.
>tearful goodbye, but she goes out smiling
>A final letter from teacher to student, plus the old sun-raising spell and possibly keyfob
>Implication that the mane six et al might ascend in the future, definitely some Rainbow Power abnormalities
>An epilogue portrait of Equestria minus Celestia, but getting along just fine, tease one or more of the mane six wearing hats and side covers because I am an evil troll
>Luna's on the council, but Twilight's in charge, the Big Three are still out there, Discord's still recovering butas sassy as ever, happy song to round it out; Equestria won't be the same, but new friendships and adventures await

Now if only I had the energy to put flesh on these skeletons...

5137136
Talking about Chrysalis's habits, and the canonicity of the comics, she is WAY more violent in those. The land of puppy-kitties basically got genocided, and in a much later issue she threw one of her own Changelings into a volcano for annoying her.

When we first ever meet Chrysalis, it's turned out that she's kept Cadance conscious, and in solitary confinement of a cave. No blissful cocoon stasis for her. Then when she teleported Twilight down to the caverns, she kept mocking her just out of gleeful spite. Some people take it further; they see Chrysalis tormenting Twilight, while still disguised, in order to MAKE Twilight blow open the wall, and start beating the crap out of Cadance.

Everything you wrote here I agree with. Hopefully more fanworks like your "reformed" Chrysalis story will come out and act as an alternate ending to this travesty.

also the future of young 6 is kind of dissapointing, because many people wanted to see them as new elements of harmony or something similar

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They do seem to have done something, if the stained glass window is any indication. Some kind of fire turtle or something. I’m gonna assume Lavan.

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Buddy, I'm with you there. McCarthy's vision with the show was that no one was truly evil and with S7 ending on the lesson that you shouldn't give up on someone, I was really curious with what they were going to do with Chrysalis. Then S8 happened with a whole new team of people coming in and well look what happened. I like changelings and it's a damn shame writers would rather focus on yaks than them. Thorax and Pharynx just got shoved into the background to make way for Ocellus. Why bother giving the rulers screen time when you can focus on some random student for two seasons? The latest writers barely watched the show and most likely made the school and students to have a clean slate without worrying about continuity (although Noncompete Clause happened). I've seen the list of episodes given to each of the mane 6 to give writers ideas who they are but most aren't exactly the best at representing the character overall. Speaking of Cozy originally she was going to be some sort of creature other than a pony and they would try to teach her friendship. Don't remember much more than that but that might have worked better than what we got (though anything would have been.

As for the school, it seems it was created by the toy department and they were to put it in an episode just to sell it, but the writers decided to make a whole season around it. A school. Teaching friendship. Which contradicts Celestia saying you can't learn friendship in a book or class or something along those lines.

Back to the writers and villains, I think they tried way way too hard to make the villains good by simply cranking up the evil to eleven. The fact they picked Cozy as their first villain to show this higher level of crazy was a fatal mistake as she felt wildly out of place in MLP and forced the audience to ask many questions that the writers didn't want to bother answering in the show. That's why our villains are just shallow murder happy props for the heroes to knock down. They took Cozy's personality and copied that onto them because that makes them better, right?

Lastly, turns out Jim Miller's favorite character is Discord. I wonder if that had an influence on anything...

I also really hope that those Season 10 comics address this.

Same here. Btw.... wanna see a Hashtag that is sincere for Cozy Glow?

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Here's my Hashtag for her :) (it's a sincere one btw):

#loveandrespectforcozyglow


How's that? :)

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Seems fine. I imagine it's for twitter? I don't have a twitter...

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As I said, it's NOT a trending Hashtag. It's a sincere Hashtag.

You know, I can't stop thinking about Discord's "Plan".

So he gets the three (originally four) together to attack Twilight's coronation. He actually didn't have any plan to try and redeem them, so essentially he decides they're just tools to him for his "Trickster Mentor" ways. In essence too by threatening them to serve him or suffer something like Sombra did, he locks them into their deluded ways. Plus it doesn't help Chrysalis shut them out of embracing friendship.

I mean if he planned to use them to attack anyway and stage a confidence booster for Twilight: Why go through the trouble of the bell? He couldn't use his almighty CHAOS MAGIC to make something fake to give the villains a false sense of confidence? I mean he powered up Tirek easy, what's stopping him from making a fake bell and just doing that again or something else?

Honestly it makes Discord look horrible. He freely plays with the Legion's lives when the Mane 6 gave HIM a chance, but a centaur with family issues, a bug queen who has been going crazy, and a child are so far gone even he thinks the brilliance of friendship is not for them?

The more I think about it, the less sense this plan makes narratively and how BAD it makes Discord look as a character.

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It has been observed by some that ultimately everything Discord does this season benefits him. Sombra destroys the Tree of Harmony and thus the Elements which could be used against him, one threat (Tirek) that can steal his powers is eliminated, Discord gains access to another (the bell) and this can dispose of it at his leisure, pushes along the retirement of his two greatest enemies, and the pony sitting on the throne at the end is Twilight, who is very easy to string along or manipulate.

But I’m sure no conclusions should be drawn from this. Like, say, that now he can enjoy his vacation with the mortal Fluttershy, and once she passes on, get back to business. What’s a few decades of “friendship” to the immortal Lord of Chaos?

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Yep, we can totally trust the lord of chaos who we have no means to stop, probably is only holding back just because of one pony, has the main rulers stepping down who could oppose him, and the creators of the Elements will probably be gone soon. I mean he only did let out the biggest bad guys and cause mass destruction, but he was sorry so all is forgiven!

I mean, the pony who has a time travel spell to mess everything up almost relapsed a few times with her misuse of magic but we still gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Heck an artifact thief who kidnapped Rainbow Dash and threatened to kill her twice was even heard out!

But a little kid who followed instructions and we have no idea how she got messed up so bad to have this bloodlust? Nah, we gotta put her in maximum security. No questions asked.

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