DANNYJ REVIEWS: MLP SEASON 8 PART 2 · 2:39am Apr 26th, 2020
Episode 9 – Non-Compete Clause:
Season eight's timeline is fucked.
That's probably not what you expected my first complaint about Non-Compete Clause to be, but it is. Call me Rian fucking Johnson, because today I'm subverting expectations.
wHAT thE FUUuuuUUCkkkk
Yes, I'm talking about Fluttershy's eight previous Teacher of the Month awards. No, I don't think that it's nitpicking. And no, I definitely will not let it go. We have had zero episodes focusing on the School of Friendship since the premier to this point. Seven episodes of no school, and in that time, we skipped past nine months of the school operating, almost a year. Where did all the time go? What were the student six doing and learning during all that time? We never see. We just skipped pretty much their entire first year at the school.
And I want you to think about that from now on. Every student six episode after the premier in season eight takes place after this massive timeskip, assuming that this season is in chronological order (though admittedly, even that's not a given). So from now on, whenever we cover a student six episode, I want you to remember that according to this episode, they've already been at this school for at least nine months now. Nine months into friendship schooling, and they're learning about the concept of teamwork. That Hearth's Warming episode in the latter half of the season? That logically has to be their second Hearth's Warming together. Think about that.
Don't even get me started on what this does to the timeframe of the series, either, because this season already began with a huge timeskip, during which the school and the train route to Mount Aris were constructed. That one episode of season seven tried to imply that the entire series until that point took place over less than three years, and now season eight alone is already looking close to two years long. I mean, wow, if you thought the idea of the first three seasons taking place over a year was a stretch, just try to wrap your head around this timeline.
Ah... but you're not here to listen to me rant about timeframes and chronology, are you? You all know what the real problem of this episode is, don't you?
It's like season one again! Only, you know, worse.
What this episode is demonstrating is an extreme form of character regression. I briefly mentioned in the introduction segment how the show started doing this in seasons six and seven. It's a way for the writers to continue recycling character arcs, episode morals, and plot elements that otherwise should've been resolved by now, and it's pretty blatant in this case.
The comparison above demonstrates this. Applejack and Rainbow Dash learned their lesson about being overly competitive in season one. They resolved their differences in season one. In almost every episode since then (until this one anyway), they've gotten along and kept their competitive streaks under wraps. Yet now, all of a sudden, they're back to acting like children again, as if they never learned anything, and as if all that character development just never happened, because that's what needs to happen for the plot to work. Take that element away and there is no episode.
Only it's actually worse than just backsliding. Rainbow Dash and Applejack are not just going back to old bad habits; they're worse than they ever were before. Not just because this time they didn't even learn their lesson by the end, but also because of the roles this new season has handed them. Sure, them both cheating in the race wasn't a good look for them in Fall Weather Friends, but at least in that episode the stakes were trivial, and at least back then they were supposed to be young and immature characters.
But it's eight seasons later now. They're both older, more experienced, and have known each other for years. They're both supposed to be such experts on friendship that they contributed to a best-selling book about it, teach it professionally in a school, and are sometimes employed by a mystical omniscient map as friendship missionaries. You would think that characters with that kind of pedigree to their names would be better than this, but apparently not.
And what's more, this time there are actual stakes and consequences to what they're doing. Their petty squabbling is not harmless anymore; it's actively endangering themselves and others. It endangers their own students, the kids that they're supposed to be responsible for. The context of Applejack and Rainbow Dash being friendship teachers makes it so much worse that they still behave this way, especially when even their first year friendship students know better.
Try to move me, you alicorn pieces of shit.
And you know what? That's another thing. The student six are meant to be first year friendship students (albeit ones who've been attending this school for nine fucking months already, holy shit), yet as this episode shows, they're all more mature than their teachers, and already better friends with each other than they are too. It was so irksome seeing them being the sensible and productive ones, and getting frustrated with Dash and AJ, because it's doing the same thing that Starlight's worst episodes did – shitting on the familiar characters that we already know and like to make the new protagonist(s) look better by comparison. Fortunately, unlike Starlight, this turned out not to be a trend for student six episodes, but it's still a horrible reintroduction to them after their seven episode absence.
Not only that, but their competence in this episode goes back to a problem that I've had with their group ever since the premier, which is that their very existence undermines the concept of a friendship school by rendering it redundant. None of these characters need friendship lessons, nor did they ever, because they were already friends from their very first appearance! From the moment they cut class together, they were already a pretty tight-knit group, and they fostered those friendships even despite the supposedly stifling and horrible EEA rules.
So it's obvious from their two major appearances in the season so far that they learned all their most important lessons about friendship without any help from their teachers. Hell, even the premier episode's song, "Friendship Always Wins," admits that some things can't be learned in books, and I would say that the student six (and the entire first two seasons of this show, incidentally) are good indicators that friendship is one of those things. So all this just brings our attention back to the obvious question:
What in the name of FUCK is the point of this school?!
ALSO, "EVERYCREATURE" IS A DUMB FUCKING WORD. JUST SAY "EVERYONE." JESUS CHRIST.
Episode 10 – The Break Up Breakdown:
Phew. Okay, now that we've got that mess out of the way, time for another good episode for a palette-cleanser.
You guys know I like Discord. A good Discord episode makes my dick rock hard, and Dungeons & Discords was one of my favourites of season six. I loved the unexpected grouping of Spike, Discord, and Big Mac for an episode, and everything that it did with them. To say that I was happy to see that dynamic return here is an understatement, and I was all the more delighted by it for the fact that Discord's appearance in the episode was a total surprise to me. Season seven never followed up on the Dungeons & Discords group, so I had forgotten all about it, and just thought that I was in for a fairly standard Spike and Big Mac episode. You can't imagine the noises that I made when Spike called out Discord's name and I realised what was coming.
It was me. I was coming.
Now, that's not to say that this episode didn't have questionable moments. Although it makes a joke of them, I did think that the misunderstandings were a little contrived. The Crusaders totally should have heard Big Mac hiding in the hay bales in that barn scene. And frankly, the Big Mac and Sugar Belle relationship has always felt a little weird to me. It came right out of left field in season seven, like a canon crackship, and nothing about this episode helped me to understand just what Sugar Belle actually sees in Big Mac or why they're together.
All that said, however, I enjoyed pretty much everything else. Aside from the initial contrivance to set it up, I found the Crusaders subplot cute. I liked the little Lyra and Bon Bon moment. And of course, I loved everything to do with Discord. I already mentioned his dynamic with Big Mac and Spike, but he was also a great source of comedy in this episode, just because of how cynical and apathetic he was to Big Mac's plight. After how neutered he was in Discordant Harmony last season, I was so glad to see him being a dick again. Just the way he kept shitting all over Big Mac's relationship was so hilarious to me.
I dunno. Maybe I'm biased, but I liked this one. Chalk that up as two good episodes this season.
Episode 11 – Molt Down:
Right... Molt Down... What to say about Molt Down...
The molt effect in a nutshell?
This episode was... surreal. I'm not quite sure how to articulate it. Everything about it just felt weird in some subtle way. I knew that the wings were coming, because they were in the season trailer, and yet they still took me totally off-guard. The whole molting process was so oddly gross for this show, and ended in another of those Pokémon-esque instant transformations in a burst of light, just like Rockhoof and Mistmane in Campfire Tales, and I believe that I commented before how much I hated those.
And winged Spike in general is such a strange design. He looks exactly the same, only now he has wings. Every other winged adolescent dragon has been a lot slimmer and taller than Spike, and he just doesn't fit the established dragon aesthetic. I feel like if they were actually going to do this, if they were really going to permanently change Spike's design in a flash of light and give him wings, then the redesign should've been more substantial. I mean, I'm not exactly asking for his Last Problem design, because that was pretty weird-looking too (a critique for another day), but... I dunno, am I alone in this? Did anyone else think that season eight winged Spike looked weird?
It wasn't just that, either. There were a lot of other things that felt off about this episode. Little things. Things that bothered me in small ways, and just contributed to making it feel... I dunno.
Like Rarity's shouting because of her blocked ears. Didn't that feel weirdly out of place to anyone else? It's used for a few jokes, but... I'm not sure why it's in the story. It causes Rarity to miss Spike's warning and get snatched by the roc, but... did she need to be deaf for that? Storywise, did the roc even need to grab Rarity at all when it already had Zecora? I don't get the purpose of Rarity's blocked ears. It's not like a B-plot or anything. It's just there.
Or what about how Twilight immediately starts fighting the roc, remembering for the first time in ages that she's a super powerful alicorn princess, and yet she still can't actually beat it? Isn't that weird? Or what about her random angry jealous comment about Celestia? Where did that come from? What about when she asked Spike to leave and find somewhere "less flammable" than her castle made out of crystal? Is crystal known for being particularly flammable?
I'll tell you what really felt strange to me, though, and this is a weirdly specific thing, but... this episode is full of continuity. Like, chock-full of it, unlike most other episodes this season. There's a reference to Rarity's hair troubles in the previous season, a reference to Spike's greed growth all the way back in season two, and for some reason even a full appearance by Spike's former pet phoenix, Peewee, a minor character that hasn't appeared on the show since the unicorn Twi era. And yet, despite all of that, Spike grows wings, and has several major scenes with Twilight... and yet nobody comments on the parallel.
I'm not sure that it's a flaw, exactly, but it's just another thing that feels strange to me. This episode clearly remembers and hearkens back to episodes where Twilight didn't have wings, and Spike gets his own ascension to mirror Twilight, and it's just... nobody says anything? Not even a joke about Spike being a princess now? You know we would've gotten one if it had been Larson writing this. It's conspicuous in its absence.
I don't know. I just don't know. I genuinely can't tell if this is a bad episode or not. It's been almost two years since I first watched it, and I still can't figure out how I feel about it. It just baffles me, and not even for any particularly obvious reason.
One day I'll make my peace with this episode. One day.
Nice seeing Spike and Smolder interact, though. That was something. More on that later.
Episode 12 – Marks for Effort:
Okay, next we have... eugh, really? Alright... Next we have the Cozy Glow episode. The first one. I've got a lot to say about Cozy Glow, but most of it I'm gonna have to save for later. But I have a few minor positives to get out of the way first. For one thing, regardless of my opinion on Cozy as a character or a villain, I do like how this episode exists to set her up, and I'm glad that they held off on dropping hints about her true nature right away. I like that they waited until her later appearances for that, so that we could get to know the facade first. It gives it a better impact when later episodes reveal that she's evil, especially for viewers who didn't catch it the first time around, which I imagine would be most of the show's actual target audience.
Next, while most of what happens with Cozy here is total nonsense, I can at least understand her general plan. As she says, she deliberately fails her test to make the Crusaders look bad at friendship so that they can attend the school with her. On the surface, a sound enough plan for a child. On a deeper level, as a villain scheme, I suppose it makes sense to attempt to endear herself to the Crusaders this way. Maybe she was hoping to have them as easily manipulable minions or something. The later reveal of Cozy's true nature also explains in retrospect what initially looks like a plot hole, that being how and why she just happened to be outside the Crusaders' clubhouse when they met her, given that it's on the Apple family's private land. If she was deliberately seeking them out, then fair enough. That makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is why Twilight totally falls for even the surface-level plan. One of the questions is "Who is the Princess of Friendship?" and Cozy's answer is "Your mom." It's so obvious that this is a deliberately wrong answer, because there's no way that any student enrolling at this school doesn't know that. Twilight should have noticed this and known that Cozy was up to something, yet instead, she completely accepts at face value that the Crusaders sabotaged Cozy's test, and punishes them for it. It's like a show version of the Anon-a-Miss problem – not only does Twilight look incredibly stupid for falling for this, but she also shows a complete lack of trust in the Crusaders, despite knowing them for years and considering them friendship experts.
I like to imagine that Cozy's actual plan here was to deliberately fail the test, get caught, and then confess that she wanted to help the Crusaders when asked about it, thereby endearing herself to her teachers. But she totally underestimated just how dense Twilight actually is, and thus had to confess to Starlight instead. That's why she had that quiet little "oh no" to herself outside the classroom. It wasn't because the Crusaders were in trouble. She was just having a rare moment of sympathy for her headmare after realising that she obviously has worms eating her brain.
Much like Celestia, as Twilight ages, her condition will only worsen.
Another thing I need to comment on with this episode is the School of Friendship itself. I once again come back to the same point I made before about how the very concept of a friendship school is idiotic, but this episode demonstrates that in spades. We actually get to see some of the mane six's classes here, and it's immediately clear that this entire institution is just a huge waste of time. Pinkie's class consists of her giving out cupcakes. Rainbow Dash is having a Wonderbolt storytime in the gym, while Applejack is running a buckball game in her classroom. Cozy's test consists of basic questions like memorising the six Elements of Harmony, and her homework is just helping the teachers' friends with odd jobs. What is the point of any of this?
It's especially weird, because the Crusaders want to attend this school, so we get to see them and other characters directly compare it with Cheerilee's classes, and when held up against that, it's all the more glaring that Twilight's school actually does nothing. She tells the Crusaders that they don't need her school because they already know all about friendship, and they need Cheerilee's classes instead. So is that an admission on Twilight's part that her school does not provide a general education on subjects like math, science, and history? Because that's what it sounds like. And from the mane six's classes, that's what it looks like, too. I mean, this isn't even an accredited institution, so I wouldn't be surprised.
Then at the end of the episode, the Crusaders are declared honorary graduates of the School of Friendship, again because they're supposedly already friendship experts. I would like to briefly remind you all that in this episode they fake having a fight and breakup to prove that they're not friendship experts and get into the school, when in the last Crusaders episode Twilight saw them have a real fight and breakup, but whatever.
So being friendship graduates now, what does that mean for them? Okay, they can tutor at the School of Friendship. What else? Are they officially out of school now? Can they stop attending Cheerilee's classes? Does a friendship diploma count as a credit toward qualifying for any other higher education? Probably not, since the EEA doesn't recognise it. What about jobs? What jobs does a friendship diploma qualify you for, other than teaching at this school? I can't think of any, and even the student six in the final episode seem to go into mundane jobs that have nothing specifically to do with friendship.
Graduating this school doesn't seem to mean anything tangible. It just seems to be a vague affirmation that you "understand friendship," which is totally worthless in and of itself. It's not like every student that graduates this school can wield the Elements of Harmony or anything. The Crusaders never do. All it basically means that the graduate either has friends, or knows how to make friends. And like I said, the student six and every single character that attends this school were friends from day one anyway, so what are they learning? The only types of people that I could see benefitting from a school like this are socially awkward losers like Mudbriar, who we never see attending, or villains in need of reform like Cozy Glow, who it doesn't work on anyway!
Couple all this with the fact that "learning at the School of Friendship" has several times now turned out to mean providing free labour on Applejack's farm, and I'm increasingly beginning to think that this entire school is just one big scam.
The students, upon realising that they're not getting their tuition money back.
Episode 13 – The Mean Six:
I really wanted to like The Mean Six. I mean I really did, because it was a Chrysalis episode! In the seven preceding seasons of this show, she only appeared four times, and almost every time that she did, she was the best part of the episode (yes, even in her three second cameo in Times They Are a-Changeling; it's not like that episode had anything else going for it). And after how horribly Where and Back Again ended, and after how we were stuck with just Thorax and the skittlebugs for an entire season afterwards, I was praying for Chrysalis to come back and do something.
And then I finally got my wish, and... it was the biggest disappointment of the whole season.
To be clear, I was expecting villain decay. Every other time that Chrysalis appeared, she had a full army at her beck and call, and she doesn't anymore. And after how season seven completely squandered its chance to bring her back and do a proper changeling civil war arc, I knew that Chrysalis was going to be on her own, so I didn't expect anything as grandiose or impressive as what she managed before, especially not in a mid-season episode. But I was at least expecting her to be competent and intimidating.
I mean, sure, if you really think about it, you can poke all sorts of holes (hahaha) in Chrysalis's plan from A Canterlot Wedding, and her ego and megalomania have led her to make a few dumb mistakes, but she was never meant to be a stupid character. Until this episode, she was actually fairly successful as far as FiM villains go. She nearly took Canterlot in her very first appearance. She took down all of Equestria's leaders and great heroes offscreen in her last one. Both times she was only ever defeated by deus ex machina, and both times she got away alive and free in spite of that, which is more than any other unreformed villain can say. Say what you will about her, but you can't deny that early series Chrysalis was good at what she did.
But then we come to this episode, and suddenly Chrysalis is so stupid that her plan foils itself without anyone ever even realising that she was there. Seriously, think about this. Chrysalis made evil clones of the mane six to wield the Elements of Harmony, without even knowing for sure if that was even possible in the first place, and made them both more powerful than herself, and with the agency to betray her, and all this before she even knew where the Elements were. God only knows what she would've done if the mane six hadn't been coincidentally going on a trip to see the Tree of Harmony at the exact same time that she was planning this. And why make them evil clones when the Elements of Harmony are tied to virtues? If the clone plan had any merit at all, that alone would've fucked it all up.
No matter how many logical hoops I jump through in my head, I can't possibly justify this plan. This is probably the stupidest plan of any villain in G4, and if you've read the From the Shadows comic arc, you'll know that that's saying a lot. No character this stupid should be as successful as Chrysalis has otherwise been, unless the people who she's fooling are even stupider.
But what am I saying? Of course the mane six are even stupider than Chrysalis. One need only look at pretty much any other episode in the final three seasons to see that. A few of them come close to figuring out that something's going on, even if their guesses are wrong, but they never actually do work it out, even when they're all together again and openly accusing each other of saying things that they know they never said. This entire episode is the epitome of an idiot plot.
Remember when Twilight Sparkle was smart?
Also, I don't know if anybody else noticed this, but this entire episode was incredibly unoriginal. It once again reminds me of the Equestria Girls Holiday Special, in that it's basically just a rehash of multiple previous stories inelegantly stitched together. In this case, it steals from two major sources. Firstly, the mean six themselves are rehashes of the corrupted mane six in Return of Harmony, with Mean Twilight being the only original personality of the bunch. And secondly, the entire premise of the mane six being separated and having their friendships tested by evil doppelgangers of their friends is a rehash of Return of Chrysalis. Only in Return of Chrysalis, it was done by the changelings as part of a deliberate strategy, instead of accidentally by evil magic stick clones.
So really, this episode's story fails at every turn. And it's a shame, because I wanted to like this one. The voice actresses were obviously having a lot of fun here, and I wish I could have enjoyed the ride with them, but I just can't abide by this. Chrysalis deserved better. And sadly, this will not be the last time that I say that.
Episode 14 – A Matter of Principals:
Yeah, I'm reviewing these in the official order, not in the order that they were actually broadcast. I believe that Yakity Sax was the one that I actually saw next after Mean Six, but screw it.
A Matter of Principals is another one of those episodes which I simultaneously enjoyed but also thought was pretty bad. Obviously, I enjoyed it because I enjoy Discord, and there were a few other things about the episode that I liked, such as Iron Will's cameo, and all the Princess Spike references. But aside from that, the vast majority of this episode just doesn't make sense. You can look at almost any scene of this episode and find something questionable about it.
Like, starting small, Twilight says that all these magical artefacts she has were donated for this lesson by Celestia, because they come from various different cultures just like the students do, but why does Celestia have them? Clover the Clever's cloak, okay, sure. The Crown of Grover? Okay, Griffonstone doesn't have a monarchy anymore, so I guess some griffon scavenger might have sold it to Equestria at some point... Knuckerbocker's Shell? That's Daring Do's. It's from one of GM Berrow's chapter books. Daring uses it to call Knuckerbocker for help, because he's a friend of hers and helped her on a previous adventure. Why does Celestia have it rather than Daring?
The Helm of Yksler? Why does Celestia have an artefact of a famous yak hero? Equestria only established relations with Yakyakistan in season five. Prior to that, ponies and yaks had zero contact for centuries! How did Celestia get ahold of this helm? And how is there an artefact for a famous changeling at all? All the changelings were seemingly just drones under Chrysalis until Thorax's coup. We didn't see anything resembling fashion or culture in their hive, so who the hell is this hooded changeling in the portrait and how and why does she(?) have a special talisman?
"Fuck continuity, and FUCK YOU." – Mirage, I guess.
What about the substitute teachers? Twilight in this episode says that she has a plan in case the mane six are all called away for a friendship mission at once, and that's supposedly why she has six months of lesson plans ready. And yet she didn't prepare substitute teachers ahead of time? Starlight had to wait until the next day of class before hiring any? And there was a long enough period of time where they had no substitute teachers that Discord could just bring in his own? This comes off as horribly inept on Twilight's part.
Starlight's eventual choices for substitute teachers are pretty eyebrow-raising as well. Maud, Trixie, and Spitfire? Why them? Why any of them? I'd say it's just nepotism, Starlight hiring her own friends for the positions, but Spitfire doesn't fit the mold. Either way, they're all pretty terrible choices for teachers. Trixie is a raging narcissist that even Starlight can't stand half the time, Maud is socially awkward and most people don't get her, and Spitfire is... well, I don't know if I'd call her an asshole anymore, but I definitely wouldn't call her a friendship expert. All of these characters would be much more at home as students of this school than teachers, so why are they here? Why not ask the Crusaders? Aren't they supposed to be part-time friendship tutors now?
Why is Starlight suddenly so powerful? Okay, yes, I know, she's always been a powerful character, but she still at least scaled to Twilight's level of talent until now. Yet suddenly, she can take out the fucking Bugbear in one shot, a monster the mane six previously spent an entire episode struggling with in the background, and then not a minute later she casually defeats Discord in a single huge blast as well. Yes, I know it doesn't stick, but the mere fact that Starlight could even affect him at all already places her leagues higher than she should be. We never saw Twilight in Return of Harmony try just banishing him. Why not? Is Starlight really that much stronger than Twilight?
Of course, for as much as I enjoyed him here, unquestionably the biggest issue of the episode is Discord. I said in my season seven review that I enjoy Discord being a dick, and I wasn't overly fond of how neutered he was in Discordant Harmony. For this reason, I still enjoyed Matter of Principals in spite of its flaws. However, I cannot ignore that it goes way too far in the other direction, and the result is another instance of extreme character regression.
Discord in this episode is motivated entirely by jealousy and pettiness, which hasn't been a driving part of his character since season five. Make New Friends But Keep Discord and Dungeons and Discords were both about Discord learning that he can't always have things his way, and Discordant Harmony was an affirmation that he had accepted this. That's not to say that Discord isn't still a tool from time to time, but after his most major developments, it's usually within acceptable bounds. Unless he's pissed off with someone, he doesn't usually drag others into danger, and if he does, it's normally because they can handle it and because he wants to teach them something.
But that isn't the case here. Discord has no lesson to teach Starlight, much less the student six, and no reason to be doing this other than personal jealousy that Twilight didn't involve him in this School of Friendship nonsense, which doesn't make sense for him. Discord shouldn't still be such a jealous cunt after everything that happened with Tree Hugger. He shouldn't be so hostile to Starlight after the season six finale given their own history together. And he shouldn't even care about Twilight's school anyway, because since when did Discord care about this kind of mushy pap? I would think that he would be bored to tears by a school all about teaching friendship and harmony, which is probably half the reason why he goes out of his way to disrupt it.
Not to mention that in the course of disrupting it, he actively endangers innocent bystanders as well, not just the target of his ire. This is a line that Discord hasn't crossed since he betrayed Equestria for Tirek. Or, put another way, the last time Discord was this villainous, he was an actual villain. As fun as I found it to watch, this episode is a pretty serious derailment of Discord's character growth and reformation arc. And sadly, this was all just foreshadowing of much worse things to come in season nine, but I'm once again getting ahead of myself. My point is that he should be past this kind of shit by now, especially after Discordant Harmony. Why is he doing this?
Well, I'll tell you why. It's the same reason for Starlight's odd choice of substitute teachers, her inexplicable power creep, and Celestia's mysterious contradictory artefacts:
Season eight's writers did not watch previous seasons of the show.
That may sound like an outrageous claim, and to be fair, I am exaggerating and generalising for the sake of getting a point across, but for the most part, it is absolutely true. FiM had been running for seven seasons by the time this episode was in production, and by then, not a single regular writer was left who had been with the show since the beginning. By season eight, most of the writers were either new guys and freelancers, like the writer of Horse Play, or "veterans" who had jumped on at season five or six at the earliest. Josh Haber was probably the longest-serving writer by the show's end, and he started in season four.
Incidentally, did you know that Josh Haber worked on The Passion of the Christ? He was an assistant to Mel Gibson. True facts.
Nicole Dubuc, the writer of Matters of Principals, started on the show with season seven. Her first writing credit was Shadow Play, and you've all heard me complain about how awful that was, but then she inexplicably served as executive producer all through season eight and halfway through season nine, wrote most of the premiers and finales spanning that time, and laughably was a co-story editor with Haber, despite clearly not being able to keep her continuity straight.
This is not a judgement on the woman herself, by the way. I'm not saying that she's a bad person or anything. But I think that if there's any single individual to blame for the declining quality of FiM through the last three seasons, it's probably Dubuc (though I personally hold Haber just as responsible). She joined the show very late, took an executive position almost immediately, and right away started making creative decisions for a show that she obviously knew very little about, coincidentally just as it began reaching its lowest point.
Is it a stretch to say that Dubuc didn't watch any previous seasons of the show when she took over? Well, yeah, I guess. Like I said, that was an exaggeration to make a point. I'm sure that she watched some stuff for reference. She's obviously watched Princess Spike, at least. But I very much doubt that she watched everything. That's around fifty hours of television, not even counting movies, so it's easy to understand why she wouldn't bother. That's why, instead, new writers to the show are given cheat sheets, which come with a list of descriptors and basic character traits for each main character, and a few handy reference episodes to watch to get a feel for them. We know this because of all the leaks that came out in season nine.
Now, I'm not going to discuss the cheat sheets in detail, even though they're hilariously bad, because I'm saving that for the season nine review. But the point is that if the writers rely on cheat sheets rather than actually watching the show, it goes a long way towards explaining why the continuity is as fucked up as is. At best, they're watching one episode in twenty, and everything else that they know about the show and the characters, they learned through the in-house equivalent of Wikipedia summaries.
This is why I don't entirely blame Kaita Mpambara for Horse Play being garbage. New writers come into this show with no familiarity with its lore, but instead of being directed to familiarise themselves with it properly, they're just given a few reference episodes to watch and have to do their best, and straightening it all out is the job of the story editors. They just have to trust that the people in charge actually know what they're doing.
Only they don't. Dubuc was one of those people in charge who was supposed to keep the continuity straight, and yet, just like the freelancers, she seems to have little familiarity with previous seasons. She references things, but she doesn't understand them. She knows that the yaks are a thing, so she includes an artefact of a famous yak hero, but she probably hasn't actually watched Party Pooped, so she doesn't know that yaks and ponies only recently established relations. She knows that Spitfire is a recurring character who's friendly with Dash, but she probably hasn't watched any of the many episodes where Spitfire is a complete bitch, so she has no idea how weird it is for Spitfire to be teaching friendship. She knows that Discord was a jealous cunt once, because Make New Friends But Keep Discord is a reference episode, but she hasn't watched his entire reformation arc, so she misses the point and regresses his development.
This is even evident in Shadow Play. Dubuc knows all the Tree of Harmony episodes, so she feels qualified to give it a stupid contradictory backstory, but it seems like she didn't read Journal of the Two Sisters, so she probably didn't know that her backstory was stupid and contradictory. Though to be fair, Haber is just as much at fault there, and should probably have known better and corrected her, given that he wrote the episode that the Journal was based upon.
The most damning evidence of all, though, is Mirage, the famous hooded changeling whose portrait hangs in the school. Take a look at her in the leaked version of the episode:
I'm not even mad. This is just depressing.
Remember in my season seven review, when I joked that I was surprised that they remembered to put Luna's face on the moon in a flashback set before season one? This is even worse than that. The changelings went from black to colourful in season six, and by season eight, someone had already forgotten that there was ever a time when the changelings were not skittlebugs.
Now, to be completely fair, this is probably an animator's mistake, not Dubuc's. And credit where it's due, this was fixed by the time the episode actually aired, so I'm not counting this as a point against anyone. I just think that this is a pretty good illustration of a general trend of ignorance among the show staff through the last three seasons. It shows most clearly in the newbie writers' episodes, Dubuc's included, but pretty much the entire season suffers from it. Season seven did too, and so would season nine after this.
I think that the movie was the worst example, though, because its entire plot was predicated on this. Remember, Canterlot has been invaded before, and the last time it happened, the invading army had a much better plan, and Equestria had far fewer powerful defenders and allies. Yet with only two active alicorns, Shining Armor, and the Royal Guard, they still fought back and won. Come the movie, and a disabled unicorn can casually stroll into Canterlot unopposed, throw some grenades, and defeat four alicorn princesses in about two minutes. Then by season eight, the brief fight between the mane six and some jobbers versus the Storm King's forces at the end of the movie has become known as the "Battle of Canterlot." So what the hell do they now call the much bigger, previous battle in Canterlot, where the Royal Guard actually existed and did things?
This is all fairly typical of the Haber/Dubuc era of MLP. In fact, I'd go as far to say that it's the defining feature of it. Whenever you watch any episode of this show from season seven onwards, just imagine that it exists in a world where the first five seasons did not happen. Suddenly, doesn't it all make a lot more sense?
...Anyway, I've delayed and digressed long enough. A Matter of Principals was a bad episode. There. That's the review. I could've just said that at the start and saved us all some time.
Episode 15 – The Hearth's Warming Club:
So let's relax a little now and talk about another relatively decent episode.
I know I've been ragging on the School of Friendship constantly throughout this review, but I want to reiterate that I actually don't mind the student six themselves. With the exception of Sandbar, who I find even blander than Thorax, I think that they're all pretty likeable and well-defined characters, and even though it came late in the season, this episode was one of the ones that convinced me of that.
Before we get into what I liked, though, a few minor criticisms.
Firstly, this episode and later ones did a lot to flesh out the student six as characters, but Sandbar remained boring and one-note right up to the end of the series. This episode missed an opportunity to do something interesting with him, because even his Hearth's Warming story was a joke about how boring he is, which shows that the writers were aware of this issue. This would be fine if he was at least comically boring like Maud (i.e. boring to the characters, but entertaining to the audience), but he isn't. He's just a waste of a character. They should've had a zebra or a batpony or something instead to round out the student six. Having a token pony in there serves no purpose if all he does is make ponies look lame.
And secondly, as usual, Twilight was pretty dumb in this episode. Some mystery figure sabotages the tree and runs to the student quarters, so she immediately assumes that it must've been one of the student six. And yeah, she's right, but only because the script says so. Her entire basis for accusing them is that the back doors were locked. She says that there's no way that the thief could've gotten out, but in a world where even baby unicorns can accidentally walk through walls by magic (Baby Cakes, season two, episode thirteen), "the doors were locked" means absolutely nothing. Stupid. And then she decides to collectively punish all of them if one of them doesn't confess. Yeah, sounds great for fostering friendships. What if it wasn't them? Double stupid.
"Anon, I'm smart!"
Anyway, other than that, this was a pretty entertaining episode on the whole. It uses the setup of the tree being vandalised to both tell a mystery story and to deliver several self-contained vignettes about how the different species celebrate their holidays, which works as both world-building and character exploration (again, aside from Sandbar's). Yona's, Silverstream's, and Ocellus's stories are mostly just fluff, enjoyable but ultimately inconsequential world-building. On the other hand, Smolder's story was the comedic stand-out of the episode, while Gallus's was its emotional heart.
What was great about Smolder's story was how unexpected it was. This show doesn't do dark comedy often, so it always catches me completely off-guard when it happens. I still remember that squirrel stuck to the tree in Pinkie Apple Pie, and how Granny Smith just left it to die without even acknowledging it. That had me in hysterics, and so did Smolder's story. We're set up for a mushy tale about the kindness of this nameless Dragon Lord, but then it turns out to actually be a story about how dragons celebrate ruthless treachery and cruelty. It subverts expectations, but it's also entirely appropriate for the dragons, and that's what makes it hilarious.
But the best part is the added context of Smolder saying that it was the favourite story told at the celebrations last year. That means that whoever made it up was totally taking a shot at Ember and her policies. This is the dragon equivalent of political satire. Holy shit I love this.
As for Gallus, his story was a surprisingly sad and hard-hitting end to the episode. The mystery aspect of the story was not emphasised much, as we didn't see any of the actual investigation, but it was still a genuine mystery, as the audience doesn't know enough about the student six by this point in the season to pin any of them for it with much certainty. Obviously, it was someone who could fly, but just based on personality alone, I was more suspicious of Smolder than Gallus. It's learning their stories that leads to the inevitable conclusion, and Gallus's story which explains his motives, while also finally defining his character.
I find Gallus the most interesting of the student six for this exact reason. He's dry, sarcastic, and aloof, superficially similar in some ways to Rainbow Dash, but he's also bitter and cynical, and after learning in this episode that he's an orphan, it makes sense why he is. We learn here that he doesn't have any family who cares for him, not even Grandpa Gruff. He doesn't even know what a cousin is. Given that context, doesn't it make total sense why he's at this school, why it's such a big deal for him to have friends now, and why he'd do what he did just to stay with them a little longer? It's genuinely brilliant.
I also appreciate how the student six start fighting towards the end, and how Gallus tries to defuse it until he's finally driven to confess. It serves as both a showcase of Gallus's best qualities, and also an example of why the student six are still students. All their other appearances until this point only reinforced the pointlessness of the School of Friendship, because many times their friendship seems more solid than the mane six's, so it's nice to have moments like these to remind us that they're not as perfect as they appear, and to at least try to justify the school's existence.
Also, I really like how the Hearth's Warming tree has a miniature Fire of Friendship on it. MY FANFICS ARE NOW CANON.
Episode 16 – Friendship University:
Ahhh... right... this episode... Fuck...
Okay, so there are really two things to talk about with Friendship University. The first is the School of Friendship arc, particularly as it concerns Chancellor Neighsay, who reappears here briefly. The other is Flim and Flam, and the Friendship University itself. I should also probably mention Star Swirl's part in this whole mess, but he's less immediately relevant to the episode than you might think, and I don't really have much to say about him for now, beyond that he's an idiot for getting tricked by Flim and Flam of all people. I do have more to say about the Pillars in general, but it can wait until the Rockhoof episode. For now, Star Swirl's appearance here basically just amounts to an overblown cameo, and it's not worth talking about.
So, minor positives to mention first. I liked Flim and Flam's song. This show doesn't have enough songs anymore. And Rarity's disguise routine was funny. That's it. Moving on.
So Flim and Flam, then. First question, why on Earth are they doing this? Why are Flim and Flam opening up a bogus friendship university? I don't understand this. Yeah, I know, the episode says they're doing it to supplement their income to expand their casino RESORT, but for fuck's sake, they're successful casino RESORT owners in Las Pegasus. You don't get much more profitable than that. What in Christ's name are they building that's so expensive that they can't fund it out of their existing profits? And how in the ever-living fuckbiscuits can they fund it just by selling paper for what must be less than a week, especially after the upfront costs of opening up Friendship U in the first place? Remember, they don't charge for tuition. The episode says that. All their profits come from selling worksheets. How expensive are those worksheets? Seriously.
Next, let's discuss the particulars of the "scam" itself, and I put "scam" in quotes because it isn't one, really (at least not any more than Twilight's school is). The episode makes a big deal about this, but when you think about it... Flim and Flam did nothing wrong.
No, really, I'm serious. Think about this. They're operating a school, they're not publically funded, and they don't charge for tuition. It's free to attend. The only way they make money is through charging for those worksheets, and if you can't pay for the worksheets then you just don't progress any further. Now as I mentioned, those worksheets must be overpriced as fuck to fund whatever Flim and Flam have planned, but they're quite upfront about that. It's not a hidden cost that they spring on the students later. In many ways, it's fairer than real life student loans are. Star Swirl, the nameless background ponies, and even Rarity all willingly pay these costs, and then are given what they paid for. Yeah, I know, microtransactions are pretty insidious. Capitalism can be a bitch sometimes. But technically, nobody is being cheated here. If ponies don't want to pay Flim and Flam's prices, they can always go to Twilight's school for a (presumably) cheaper alternative.
The obvious place for Flim and Flam to scam their students on this would be to provide poor quality products, but they're not even really doing that. They're teaching actual, legitimate friendship lessons from Twilight's own book, as Rarity affirms, and they really are offering course completion in half the time, just as advertised. The only point that they're not totally honest and upfront about is what they do with the profits, leading to the dumbest line of the episode, "Using your students' bits to expand your resort is wrong." Bitch, shut your mouth. What are they supposed to do with that money? Buy a thousand sewing machines like Rarity did? And frankly, anyone who's dumb enough to pay for friendship lessons in the first place deserves to lose their money. Yeah, I said it.
"HOW DARE YOU RAPSCALLIONS FORCE ME TO PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES. I BANISH YOU TO THE HUMAN WORLD."
I guess there is one problem with what Flim and Flam are doing, that being that they ripped off their whole idea from Twilight's school and directly plagiarised half of her book for their courses. And yes, that does sound pretty bad, doesn't it? Only this is never presented as the central problem with what they're doing, and they make plenty of good arguments in defence of it.
As Neighsay points out, it's not like Twilight has a monopoly on the concept of a friendship school. Flim and Flam are perfectly free to open their own, and although Twilight is obviously seething at the very idea of this, even before she knows that it's Flim and Flam behind it, she is still forced to admit that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Plagiarising from her book is less defensible, but Twilight doesn't even complain about that part at all. She's perfectly fine with them teaching from it, probably because she knows that it's the definitive work on friendship, and that any other friendship school would pretty much have to use it. Her only reservation is she doesn't want them profiting from it, although I don't know how a private school is supposed to stay open without monetising in some way. We can't all be royalty, Twilight.
And that's another point I'd like to make. Twilight comes off really badly here. She's not an idiot like she is for most of the rest of the season, but she does come off as hostile, petty, and vindictive. I understand distrusting Flim and Flam, given their history, but Twilight obviously went into Friendship U looking for a fight. As soon as she saw Flim and Flam, she was immediately insulting them and implying that their university was a scam, and when she sees Chancellor Neighsay, she says to his face that she doesn't respect him.
Then they bring out Star Swirl himself to endorse the university, who tells her that Flim and Flam have changed, and that she should give them a chance. But instead of trusting her idol and practicing what she preaches, Twilight instead breaks into Flim and Flam's office to sneak through their papers. It's kind of hilarious when they catch her and take that incriminating photograph, because when they blackmail her by threatening to publish it and destroy her reputation, the threat works precisely because what Twilight was doing was wrong, and because it's hard to believe that she's not motivated by jealousy when she's so vehemently against Flim and Flam even with zero evidence. Even the scheme that she does eventually uncover does not in any way vindicate her, even though the episode thinks that it does.
And speaking of Twilight's faults, let's bring it all back to the stallion who pointed them out in the first place, Chancellor Neighsay.
Based and neighpilled.
Neighsay shows up only briefly in this episode to accredit Friendship University (as he should, since it's a legitimate school), express some admiration for Star Swirl, and remind the audience that he's a racist. And speaking of, that might be one of the few legitimate complaints Twilight could've made about Friendship U, if Neighsay was right that they really do refuse entrance to non-ponies. Pity that the episode never brings this up again, but oh well. But since he's here, I want to touch base on where we stand with Neighsay by the mid-point in the season, now that we've had some time to reflect on his words.
I want to present a thesis. I think that Neighsay is written to be a racist asshole as a way to distract the audience from his core arguments, because otherwise, they would realise that he's right about pretty much everything else. Aside from his ridiculous ranting about the non-ponies, Neighsay's points in the premier were that the teachers are irresponsible and unqualified, that the students skipped classes and endangered others, and that Twilight and her friends risked leaving the school unattended if they were ever all called away for an adventure at once.
These are all very good points, and moreover, they're points that Neighsay is consistently proven right about throughout the season. Irresponsible and unqualified teachers? Well, Rainbow Dash and Applejack nearly got several of their students eaten by magic piranhas, so check. Students skipping class and endangering others? Yes, the student six did in fact do exactly that in the premier, and Cozy Glow somehow managed to endanger all of Equestria, so he's definitely not wrong about that. Check. And the teachers all going off on a mission at once, leaving the school open for a massive, horrible disaster? Yes, that happened. Twice, in fact. The first time, the disaster was named Discord. The second time, it was called Cozy Glow. Double check.
The simple fact is that Neighsay being a racist, a hypocrite, and an all-around vindictive person has no bearing on that fact that he's right. Twilight's school fails by EEA standards. Even if Neighsay wasn't a racist, it still would've failed. But instead of shaping up, Twilight threw out the rulebook and just made up her own standards, and just like Neighsay predicted, the result was a rolling disaster. The EEA exists for a reason, and the more I saw of the school throughout the season, the better Neighsay looked.
But none of that matters, because Neighsay is a racist. He's an asshole, and he's the villain, and therefore he is wrong by default, and the characters and audience are free to just hate him rather than actually consider his point of view.
I think that the problem the writers ran into is that Neighsay is not a supervillain like Discord or the Pony of Shadows, even though he has the look and the voice for it. He's an ideological antagonist like Starlight originally was, an obstructive bureaucrat opposed to the opening of the school. He can't be defeated in a big fight with friendship lasers, so the only way for him to stop being an antagonistic force in the narrative is for him to give up and accept the friendship school. Only the writers accidentally created a character who was smarter than them, and who legitimately had good points against the friendship school. So how do you justify him losing the argument?
That's where the racism comes in. It distracts the audience from his actual good points. Neighsay doesn't have to be proven wrong if the characters can just show him that he's being an asshole. Then he'll apologise and say, "Oh no, I'm sorry I was such an asshole. I will stop now." And him changing his opinion on the friendship school and putting his stamp of approval on it is just an unstated requirement of not being an asshole, even though those are totally unrelated things.
It's sad, really. I like Neighsay, for the same reason that I liked Pharynx in To Change a Changeling. He may be an asshole, and he may have slightly different reasoning than I do, but I admire and respect him for being the only character in-universe who recognises just how badly the School of Friendship fails on every conceivable level. He is my husbando, and I want him to make love to me while screaming racial obscenities about griffons.
Okay, I'm done now.
On a final note, I'd like to remark that a lot of little things about the episode don't make sense, things which are not important enough for their own sections, but are worth mentioning.
Rarity buys dozens of sewing machines out of her own money for her classes without even a plan for what to use them for. Why? Twilight remarks that Friendship University has more students than her school does, yet Flim and Flam teach the whole school by themselves. How? Friendship U gives out degrees. For what? See my earlier rant about what the purpose of a friendship school is. And at the end of the episode, the characters question how Flim and Flam got a copy of Twilight's book to plagiarise from. Maybe because she published it, you utter fucking spoons?
Also, I'd just like to say that I find it hilarious that Flim and Flam fearlessly blackmail a princess of the realm until threatened with having their """scam""" revealed, and even then have no intention of returning their supposedly ill-gotten gains, but one stern look and disapproving tone from Star Swirl gets them to crumble. Remember when Star Swirl was supposed to be an obscure historical figure? Now he's literally more widely respected than Twilight. Even the villains defer to him. It's great.
Thank you, Star Swirl.
Did you notice they are apparently the only cross-tribal couple in Equestria? Well, just saying.
All I can say, it makes such an inconvenient dependency loop that I effectively gave up on settling chronology ever since.
My hatred burns eternal.
Oh my god. XD
I'll have to remember "skittlebugs", that is endearing.
Really have to disagree with you on Mean Six, though. Chrysalis is clearly unhinged, smart enough to wield powerful magic and make those clones, but crazy enough not to test them out first or really think through her plan at all. I need to defend this episode because you're not getting away with liking Break Up Break Down scott free, no sir. >:V
Well, I guess it had to be someone's fetish.
Also, where did you get that wizard picture, holy shit. :O
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Um, Lyra and Bon-Bon, excuse you. :V
I'm honestly lukewarm about Spike's appearance in Molt Down. Twilight getting her wings made her awkward to look at for a while afterwards, and this far into the show my main reaction to Spike getting the same is around the level of "About damn time!" His scene with Smolder is the clear highlight of the ep, though for me the roc itself was a close second (because I love rocs and I love the design of this one).
Count me as another who thought The Mean Six was a major disappointment. The most interesting part of the story was Fake-Twilight and Chrysalis confronting (and planning against) each other, and quite apart from that angle getting buried under a revenge plan with no foundations, a lot of underwhelming identity-mix-up shenanigans, and a lesson that's just weirdly back-handed (good friends remain good friends even if you can't tell good friends from obviously evil imposters!), the whole exercise is rendered moot by the ending anyway.
In one respect, it's worse than the meaningless Sludge episode later, because teasing and then denying a character's backstory is at least less annoying than actively degrading a hitherto-at-least-respectable character. This makes Chrysalis look less like a threat and more like a buffoon.
Have to admit I am kind of impressed by the case you make for Flim and Flam's scam not being a scam, though whether the episode emphasizes it or not, I still think the plagiarism issue isn't easy to gloss over (they are passing off someone else's work as their own, when all's said and done, and explicitly for profit). And I didn't consider those logical problems about the Hearth's Warming episode, though yes, it is the episode that made me warm up to the students and especially to Gallus.
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BEST FRIENDS.
No, they get married afterwards, but Big Mac / Sugar Belle get there first, despite their relationship being arguably much older.
re:"The Mean Six": I also couldn't help but notice how the Everfree went from a very visually distinctive monster-haunted magical forest that most people are afraid to so much as step into to a perfectly generic, countryside woodland with rose-lined paths that the main characters see no issue with just taking a casual picnic in.
Which is especially notable in light of the fact that both of the Everfree's previous appearances in this season ended up with characters getting attacked by monsters.
I noticed that as well. Especially the scene where he asks what Twilight plans to do if the Map decides they need to be in another country on no notice, which is a very good question to ask, but she makes an unrelated comment about the importance of teaching friendship and the issue is never addressed until "A Matter of Principals" comes along and we discover how Twilight does not, in fact, have any real plans for that.
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I am allowed my biases, you are allowed yours.
I really wish I remember. Probably 4chan? I pick up a lot of shit around the internet. Glad you're finding the review entertaining as well as informative, at least.
5250757
Oh thank God, I'm not alone!
I am kind of playing Devil's advocate with Flim and Flam to a degree. I can't really make much of a defence for plagiarism either. I merely note that Twilight herself seems to take no issue with it beyond them profiting on it. I mean, when you write the definitive curriculum on how to run a friendship school, every other friendship school is pretty much going to have to use it, and Twilight does seem to acknowledge this. Where it gets murky is in the more unknown questions, since Flim and Flam never negotiated with Twilight directly for it. Did they pay to obtain their copy, for example? How much do copyright laws apply to lesson plans, whether in real life or Equestria? Do textbook authors have a right to restrict how teachers use the materials they wrote after they are bought and paid for? I'm uncertain about a lot of these things. All I know is that Flim and Flam may be shady characters, but this scheme is a lot less clear cut than Twilight and the episode's writer seem to believe it is.
I think the entire school arc is just about / under one year, and that "teacher of the month" disaster is a combination of bad editing and out-of-order airing.
It is actually much, much easier to explain all of S1-3 being one year -- they turned episode ideas into scripts and art without any regard for when it was written, without even planning on having ongoing character development. It was all just supposed to be "entertain the child this week", and the whole fandom kinda surprised them.
Other than that, yea, you're summarizing everything wrong with season 8 really nicely. I did not know that they basically lost ALL historical knowledge and show bible data, relying on just Cliff's notes.
I mean, can you imagine if that was done with a serious property? Like, say, if Star Trek was given over to a director that never saw the original, didn't like what little he saw of the new stuff, and wanted to re-write everything from scratch, and justify it with a time travel alteration when there's a canon timeline maintenance agency that would have prevented it?
Yea, that would never happen. Didn't happen. That was a fake timeline that has been erased.
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Season one has a relatively coherent story chronology if you look close. It was just jumbled up in the airing order. You can rearrange all the season one episodes and get a fairly sensible timeline out of it. It does have continuity markers and observable character growth. We just never saw it in the proper order. Seasons two and three rather complicated matters somewhat, because they continued to be mostly out of order, and a lot of people just assumed that every season corresponded to a year, but then season four introduced the retcon of the first three seasons taking place over a single year, and working out a timeline for that is rather more difficult. Then seasons four, five, and six were seemingly intended to be another year or two between them. But once we get to season seven, that's when the timeline becomes absolutely impossible.
Sergeant Gilda swoons.
I will never not love this line.
And yet, my very first comment upon seeing her was, "Oh, here's our villain for the season."
And apparently quite a few other people recognized it immediately as well!
How did we guess? WE KNOW BASIC TROPE-LEVEL STORY WRITING!!
You NEVER throw in another apparently neutral character and hold off on giving them any defining intro or background or personal connections when that character is going to turn out to be the Big Bad. Seriously, it's a trope that's been used in anime since the 70's.
But, that was ok initially, as I expected there would be some big reveal of her connection to something. Maybe NMM, maybe she was the herald of Grogar, maybe she was a henchpony of Tirek in disguise, maybe she was Chrysalis or another changeling Queen. Lots of possibilities. But by the end of the episode, I already got the nagging feeling there wasn't going to be anything to her. Likely post-POS awareness of how awful the writing had become.
I am the mastermind who coined the term 'Skittlesbugs' immediately after the episode aired.
I have COPYRIGHTED and TRADEMARKED this term and shall now sue you for $19 trillion Bison Dollars for using it without paying me! (Alondro is taking a cue from Apple... who's suing every company that has a fruit-themed icon... and who keep making Alondro want to nuke their headquarters... which he could do since he knows how to construct a fission-fusion type nuclear warhead, including which isotopes of lithium and beryllium to use as tampers and neutron flux enahancers...)
Alondro now cries TEARS OF BLOOD!! "YES!! FINALLY!! SOMEONE ELSE WHO SEES THE LIGHT!!! I CAN NOW DIE IN PEACE!!!" Dramatic death scene set to "Ave Maria".
Much like all the arguments from a certain party who ALWAYS runs to the 'istaphobe' card to justify their actions and villainize the opposition with blunt hyperbole based entirely upon this singular declaration.
And the fact that EVERYONE knows who I'm talking about proves me 100% correct!
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Yeah, not me. My discord friends pointed it out to me. But then again, I really wasn't paying attention first time I watched it.
5356866 I'm old, so I've seen every villain trope 50 times or more in every form of media.
This was blindingly transparent to one schooled in 80's cartoons.
Moving on from previously...
What timeline?
Got nothing for "Non-Complete Clause". A lot of people cite it as a singularly maddening episode, but especially in light of this S8 and S9 retrospective... is it? It's held up as the single worst episode for this season, but it just feels like par for the depressing course, personally. Of course AJ and RD turn into unlikeable weird idiot versions of themselves. Look at how this second half of the show was made. Coherent stuff like "The Washouts" and "Sounds of Silence" are the true exceptions at this point, not broken wrecks like this.
What do you mean "like" a canon crackship? It is a canon crackship, which would be reason enough to declare it non-canon even if the episodes themselves didn't sound awful (Case in point: kissing someone in their sleep. Second case in point: braindead-sitcom levels of tedious misunderstanding).
I think the only reason these two got paired up was because Sugar Belle looks vaguely like Pear Butter while Big Mac looks like his dad (file that for an unintentionally dumb-sounding line) and her baking loosely fits the Chiffon Swirl connection. That's... about the level of any other spurious crackship, to my ears. You might as well pair up Rarity with background pony Amethyst Star because they share cutie marks and have a meta-level Sparkler connection. It's still complete nonsense, except when fanfickers do it, it doesn't impose canon on anyone else.
Bugger this for a lark. I'm not touching this damn fanfic-level material. Moving on.
"Molt Down" is still eh to me. Between this and the later Sludge episode, it at least gives Smolder a nice role as a sort of big sister figure to Spike (I'd argue Ember worked fine there, but redundancy is hardly the crime of crimes). And I still like the falcon-esque design for the roc where it's more usually depicted as aquiline.
Since last I was here, however, I've become much less warmly disposed to the weirdnesses you point out. I'm not sure why Rarity being deaf from phoenix feathers didn't bother me as much the first time around, or why I didn't complain about how bizarrely gross Spike's puberty stand-in ended up feeling. I don't even know why I wasn't bothered more by wings being something dragons just metamorphose into, when really Spike's lack of them seemed unremarkable after the variety of dragon forms paraded before us in "Dragon Quest". Heck, his fax machine breath has never been explained, and that's a much bigger departure from polymorphic dragons to my mind.
In hindsight, though, Spike getting his wings doesn't feel earned because it has nothing to do with his character. The closest thing he has to an arc at this point is being on good terms with Ember and Thorax, both being examples of cases where Spike's friendship-based upbringing among ponies led to him reaching out to two characters who otherwise might have had no friendly connection to Equestria. It's not like S1-5 treated him much better, but it's actually kind of astonishing how he felt like he had more of a point from "Gauntlet of Fire" onwards.
I mean, it's not like Twilight, where her ascension was at least nominally tied to a personal achievement. Spike just gets his wings because biology, and... cool. Now he can be drawn flying with Twilight. A certain "so what?" factor creeps in.
I think the main reason I never had much of a strong reaction to this episode is literally because there's nothing at stake in it. Well, apart from the phony drama around the roc, but we knew that was doomed even before Twilight inexplicably sucked at fighting it. Because of course the plot had to be rigged so Spike can have his big moment. This happens all the time now. Heck, we can accuse the Worfing of Celestia and Luna as far back as S2 of being examples. It's not like all this show's problems exist only in the second half.
"Marks for Effort", I honestly haven't watched. This review, and redsquirrel456's review, make it sound absolutely terrible, though.
No shock that the school's curriculum is complete pablum. Nor any shock that the CMCs have no genuine reason to care about it. Cartoon logic, y'all.
Barely any shock in hindsight that Cozy Glow is such an insulting joke of a villain either. Cartoon logic, y'all.
Oh, and look, the type of nonsensical ending that happens when you absolutely have to shoehorn in a happy ending despite literally everything that just happened, the other casuality of toxic positivity. Because cartoon logic, y'all.
Here's the secret: "cartoon logic" doesn't exist, any more than "it's just a kid's show" isn't an answer. It's a restatement of the problem, hiding some shaky-at-best assumptions (not least of all is the dumb non-effort philosophy it espouses, however implicitly). Cartoons can be silly and simple, but that is no excuse for them being crap. And it's frankly worrying that people automatically treat them that way. Like, what are people learning out there?
"The Mean Six", I've already commented on. Oh, apart from pointing out that there's yet another grimdark "bonus point" attempted here, despite the Mean Six posing absolutely no threat whatsoever. The morality of this Tree of Harmony makes Discord look like its blood brother, by this point, and we haven't even gotten to the child endangerment episode yet.
"A Matter of Principals" would just be reiterating points you and I have hammered into the ground by now. Needless to say that continuity slip-up and other continuity snarls leave me about as outraged as I felt for "Non-Compete Clause". What else can you say at this point except to reiterate the same obvious flaws over and over (Starlight's an OP Creator's Pet, bad behaviour gets rewarded because happy ending, characters like Discord backsliding so fast they barely have time to say "hi" to their early-seasons incarnations before shooting over the horizon, timeline carelessness...)?
I'd probably agree more strongly if Haber, for example, could even keep his own episodes straight. This is the same guy who coughed up two different and incompatible versions of the Pony of Shadows, randomly declared manes are fucking immune to magic no I will not let that one go because what the ever-loving fuck!?, and couldn't even remember that his two favourites Trixie and Starlight have already travelled together before and that one of them knows a silencing spell.
My own defining features of the second half of the show are:
They all come down to this: there was next to no care or respect for what had come before, too many cooks wanting to do things their own way, and a far more blatantly transparent mercenary approach to the show from on high. The evidence, to me, points to the one defining feature being the complete collapse of the old guard - directorial, writerly, creative - from S5 onwards. With them went any semblance of artistic passion that the show - for a corporate product - managed to display.
Heck, I'd even go so far as to use it to explain the gradual decline I experience from S1 to S7, with only S3 being a conspicuous outlier (though it having a smaller sample of episodes didn't help). I know you rank S5 highly, but to me, it marks the definitive transition between the first half and the second half, and the overall quality of the show dips accordingly, from one of the best season premiers to one of the worst season finales.
Literally the only reason I think the show kept going - and is apparently being revived at all - is that it's basically little more than a walking advert which has cottoned on to the power of a super-loyal fanbase.
I really don't like sounding like a cranky, pretentious nostalgic. The whole show is corporate product. My point is that it was good corporate product because it had a crew who gave a tinker's cuss about doing something worthy with its "just a kid's show", and crossed demographic boundaries, because quality is universal. Only now that goodwill impulse - and the unexpected audience it won over - has been hijacked by people determined to wear the skin but not to play the part. And it still works! It even has the gall to amplify flaws that have been there since the beginning (see: everything I said about Celestia above).
It's hard to ignore just how badly the show collapsed on every level from S5 onward, and definitely after S6, despite how popular it manages to still be. But who cares? Because at the end of the day, it's "just a kid's show".
And that's another phrase that, like the characters from before, became an empty mask to smuggle in some seriously hideous faces while pretending nothing really changed. Yes, it was "just a kid's show" before, but it had such a different idea of what merited being a "kid's show" that the sentence might as well be completely different, for all the meaning it has.
It can mean whatever you want it to mean, now. And that's the problem. It says MLP:FiM. It looks like MLP:FiM. It blended into what MLP:FiM was before. But it sure as shit ain't MLP:FiM anymore. Not under the mask.
God, I'm glad to get that off my chest.
Can't think of anything to add for your last two episode reviews here, so I'll move on.
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Never considered that before, but you have a point, yes.
I think the point is more just that he's actually growing, rather than staying the same until suddenly looking different in the epilogue? Which I approve of in theory. The series take place over at least five years, and the characters who were adolescents at the start of it should theoretically be approaching adulthood by the end, so visible growth should occur. I just wish we could've had something more subtle and natural than a Pokémon evolution. The CMC grew over the course of the series, and I didn't even notice it until somebody pointed out to me that their models were scaled up in later seasons.
You've mentioned this a few times before. I'm actually curious what it is that makes you hate the season five finale so much? Even setting aside my personal enjoyment, I'm still not sure how it compares disfavourably to what I would regard as the real worst offenders. Admittedly, given your feelings on Starlight, I can completely understand why the ending would piss you off, and her powers compared to Twilight's do come somewhat out of nowhere. Not to mention that the pivotal role of the Sonic Rainboom and its implications about destiny in Equestria probably aren't for everyone. But even just from the first half of the series, I'd say Canterlot Wedding was far worse about introducing new plot elements out of nowhere and screwing with power levels, and it also had that business about Twilights' friends turning on her.
But maybe I'm being presumptive. I'm guessing there's more to it than that?
If nothing else, I'm glad to have given you an outlet. You sound very frustrated in these comments, and it reminds me a lot about how I felt before I wrote these reviews. I only hope that finally getting to talk about it openly helps you to let go of some of it.
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Yeah, I dislike the "flash-of-light" insta-changes too. When the CMC got their cutie marks, for instance, I thought it looked groan-worthy and over-the-top. The Main Six merely got some humble sparkles for theirs, and "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" was far more clever in its plotting and emotional impact, so what gives?
I think I'll take this one to PM, It'd take this comment section massively off-topic, and I'm not hugely comfortable with it being visible to just anyone in any case. It's usually been enough to tell people "I just don't like Starlight, OK?" and hope they don't press the point.
I think I'm getting more emotionally invested in this show as the years go on, to say nothing of the fanfic connection keeping me coming back for more. Which means what I'd just dismiss as crap elsewhere touches a nerve of mine in this particular case.
Even I don't think it's particularly healthy to get too attached to a show, but on the other hand, it's hard to feel a special connection to something and not tense up when you realize how bad it can get.
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Fair enough!
Very true. I never considered myself especially emotionally invested in the show before, but the fact that I spent just shy of a hundred and fifty thousand words ranting about it proves otherwise.
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I feel like you and I are on the same page in general, which is a nice thing to be able to feel. :)
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As much as I like having different views to people and all (bet we'd have some episode disagreement to fight about sooner or later!
), it is good from time to time to confirm that people are on the same page indeed.
I wouldn't consider myself a nostalgic, but darn do I feel cranky and old in this brave new pony.
I thought this was pretty terrible writing personally. Having this be the race to be the first teacher on the board would have made for better narrative stakes, and (at the very least) a compelling ending when Fluttershy ultimately won.
Fluttershy being shown to definitively get over her shyness, something the writers remarkable stick to (mostly) and which her critics have been clamoring for since the early seasons, is a surprisingly development from an episode which also does dirty the two most competitive of its main cast.
I don't know if the Flutter gags are funny or not, but it's nice to see my girl finally succeed at something, and it makes sense that a positive school experience is what flips the switch for her attitude going forward (for the most part).
I personally think the entire episode could have been rewritten in such a way that you could still have the conflict without making anyone look as bad as they do in the final product. But that would have called for respect for the main characters, and we certainly can't have that!
I mean I wouldn't bet on it.
But yeah, I could see this being exactly what it looks like, on account of the show being so stupid at this point.
Pretty much sums up every issue I have with this episode, and Season 8 in general.
Plus, after the Premier made it unequivocally clear that the end result of any of the foreign students being harmed would be war and destruction, an event the main six were there for, you'd think they'd do a better job of protecting them.
It was a great episode. That said, I wish they had done more with the last-minute joining of Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. I hate how they never expanded on his relationships within the group of elements.
Well, okay they had that one awesome winter special between Rainbow Dash and Discord, but it wasn't like that was anything other than a one off.
I've got a pretty good idea.
Norman Osborn! What are you doing here?!
It's all in the name.
Seriously though, I've seen women go after dudes for way less than what Big Mac has got going on. He's big, strong, sweet, and did I mention big? Females like that for some reason.
They were pretty cute, I cannot lie. I usually can't get into romance in general and that was in full force by this time, so this episode did little for me, but I did appreciate their presence. Plus, Sweetie Belle getting a decent showing for a change was nice.
For all the media's talk of being brave and daring, getting close to someone whose probably paranoid schizophrenic is actually somewhat brave, so kudos to Lyra, I guess.
"The Bugbears are coming! Their coming for meeeeeeeee!"-Bon Bon
"Should we show the Bugbear hunting her or..." "Why bother?! The audience will totally buy that this is an intelligent being and not a wild animal, right?!"-Slice of Life writers.
"That Sounds Like a Reasonable and Totally Sane Take!"-Fans.
I just liked him for the fact he ultimately does step in (if only to satisfy his own needs) which if anything proves he can be taught to be productive if it benefits him, thus showing a glimmer of the potential Celestia supposedly envisioned for him.
Incidentally this scene is also proof positive that Discord can influence things without any sign of his presence. Frankly that's a skill most politicians would be thrilled to have, which might go a long way to suggest the actual reasons for which Celestia recruited him.
Still Dungeons And Discord's does a great job of showing how his power can benefit ponies (if only on a small scale) and this is a great demonstration of him doing that without much direct prompting.
Of course, he actually causes the breakup with his unfounded speculation, and his manner of helping revolves around inconveniencing someone (a foreboding foretaste of things to come) but it's still a nice character moment for Discord. Pity it doesn't last for the rest of the season.
I mean, I always assumed the pokemon thing and the lack of wings was due to Spike being influenced by Twilight's magic hatching him in this case. Garble's taunts even back in dragon migration are too specific to convince me this is a normal condition among dragons.
Smolder's casual attituded towards molting suggests to me that maybe she hasn't been through it yet, because it's not in character for her to be this ambivalent about something she's personally experienced. Of course, if this is before "Uprooted" maybe her character just hasn't shifted to being more aware of her peers yet. Who knows?
Incidentally the Pokemon thing we actually first see when Twilight ascends, so it makes sense that Twilight's power rubbed off on him when he hatched. And I do like the grossness of the transformation, if only to imply there's a usually longer biological process that Spike didn't go through.
I think any substantial change would have been disconcerting. This late in the series, I get why no one was eager to change up the art style, given how many people tend to bitch about that kind of radical change.
You kind of see this with Smolderm in that her face clearly draws more inspiration from Spike's with her relatively smaller nose and rounder snout, and not the angular faces of other dragons. Frankly I get why Smolder's design would be more popular commercially than say Ember's. Although I freely admit that some of that is my personal taste.
[quote I mean, I'm not exactly asking for his Last Problem design, because that was pretty weird-looking too (a critique for another day), Incidentally they just used the Spike's dream of himself as a heroic knight in "A Dog and A Pony Show" and it's super obvious when you go through that mess shot by shot.
I feel it's a very contrived allergy personally, and it unnecessarily limits what you can do with the character. Which given they already have trouble keeping continuity, is not something they should want to be doing.
Probably not, no.
Romantic subtext.
Yeah that bit felt really contrived watching it. I think they were trying to find an excuse to make Smolder's prediction come true without making Twilight feel too much like a jerk, but the whole thing felt off to me.
I like how even here, in a role that calls for her to clearly demoralize and discourage Spike, she's not trying to be an asshole and just calling it like how she sees it. This is what Rainbow Dash could've been had they doubled down on the things that made her likable in the earlier seasons.
Of course, I freely admit that I hated this episode when it came out, and had it been their only interaction? I would have felt way differently about their relationship.
Ohh Yeah!
Now we're getting to the good stuff!
And by good, I mean the character whose capacity for stirring up drama is equal only to Starlight Glimmer herself.
Technically, someone pointed out that they try to spoil it with Cozy's eyes when she's staring at the Element of Magic during her test montage, but after years of creepy mental breakdown faces from our main characters, I just thought she was really getting into her studies.
There are still interesting moments which tell us about the negative side of her character though, even in this fluff piece.
Like Cozy Glow questioning the CMC's on their motivation, reveling a more cynical mindset. Or her frustration at Ms. Cake making a cake with Rainbow sprinkles after Cozy and Sweetie Belle sorted them out so she wouldn't have to do that, hinting at her pragmatism and resentment at having her time wasted.
And what an adorable facade it is! Seriously the painting scene is by itself pure adorabities.
Might as well get this out of the way. At the time the episode dropped, I was sincerely considering getting out of MLP.
Twilight was acting more and more like a stupid prat every time we saw her on screen, and with "A Non-Compete Clause" the other Main Six weren't far behind. The CMC blatantly ignored a client's needs and wants to back his older brother's condescension to him instead. I didn't really know the Student Six yet, and while I don't hate "Molt-Down" as much as I used to, I didn't initially regard it as a great reintroduction to Smolder's character.
The Premier initially had me thinking the Student Six were going to be the typical obnoxious rule flouting teenagers, that generally exist to be an unnecessary pain in every other character's side, while buzzword touting snobs and similar obnoxious teens praise such actions as "fighting the power" or whatever.
I didn't have a dog in the show anymore and I was generally considering calling it quits before Cozy Glow flounced onto the scene. She was cute, socially awkward, kind of standoffish and seemingly simple, but well intentioned. She kind of gave me Muffin vibes when I first watched the episode.
More than that though, she was attentive and dedicated. Whereas some characters this season would undoubtedly have sat on their ass and not done anything about the pickle they had gotten the CMC's into, Cozy Glow involved herself to see her plan through and accomplish her objectives.
Something which the rest of the show was profoundly lacking, and which would carry onto her villain persona. Cozy Glow had ambition and in this episode I saw quite clearly why that was a good thing, as opposed to the lazy daze most characters were still stumbling through at this point in the show.
So yes, I like Cozy Glow as a character, and this episode was a big contributor as to why. My reasons for liking her as a villain are more technical, although still tied to what came before (for better or worse) but that we can cover later.
True story, I did not figure it out until the end of Uprooted, that's how oblivious I was to where this was going.
Decent. Execution was a bit lacking as you'll later address.
I honestly think she just trying to test her friendship making skills against experts. If she could convince them she was her friend, it would be evidence she could make friends with others, and it also gives her a in with her teachers.
I don't know if she ever considered them minion material at all. She certainly doesn't rely on their help in the final, even though they live in town a short jot away and are probably more familiar with her than the Student Six.
They did this a couple of times over the course of the last two seasons, and I think it worked pretty well when utilized.
Incidentally there's a truly hilarious comic strip where Cozy Glow is taking this test audibly from Spike and the look on his face when she responds with that is just glorious.
Which is ultimately my problem with it. Not that she falls for blatantly obvious needling, but that she's so objectively awful to the CMC's in the process.
I mean, come on you've known this kid for how long? Are you personally tutoring her or something? Why do you feel compelled to throw all your long-term acquaintances under the bus for some reason? You did it with Neighsay, and now you're doing it again with Cozy Glow. Bad Twilight! Bad Pony!
Makes sense. Actually, way more sense than anything I've thought of so far.
Most logical explanation for this scene (and Twilight's character) yet!
I mean they are just starting out, and its highly possible Cozy Glow is on some kind of modified curriculum since she's a kid. I won't spend too long defending the school's methods though, since I do have problems with its basic academia.
I mean it is an acknowledgment of successfully socializing from a princess who supposedly specializes in that. Now granted Twilight is considered a joke this season, but her students know her and Flim and Flam probably haven't had to work very hard to portray her as out of touch, given that her friendship academy opened up in the sticks. If Las Pegasus is anything like coastal cities here, they're probably run by snobs too so....
In a season where Equestria respected its princesses, I imagine a diploma like this would go a long way to certifying you as a trustworthy and reliable citizen if you could achieve it. So yeah, it probably would open some doors by virtue of being an endorsement by a technical ruling head of state, especially once Twilight became the sole sovereign on the throne.
Frankly, that more than anything else is why Cozy Glow needed a reformation arc. Because that would have at least helped justify the school's existence. Heck bring in Flim and Flam, Svengallop, Suri, Lighting Dust, and Discord. I would have watched that season wholeheartedly.
There was a great fanfiction which basically pointed out the massive amount of favors Twilight's friends have received from her, and Twilight realizes she's guilty of nepotism. It was depressing, but fairly accurate from what I have observed from the latter seasons, and a few episodes from the earlier ones.
I mean that last one is pretty damming, but we don't know if she controlled the variables for anything else.
I mean, from what we see the clones are tied to three things A: the life force of a tree. B: the genetic material of a pony in question. C: her magic. DNA is the body tree is the matter/lifeforce, and magic is the spark of life.
What do we know about unreformed Changelings? They naturally consume love to survive, so totally they deplete it at a rapid rate and are never satisfied. So, would any love show up in Chrysalis's magic? Probably not. It makes sense that the Mean Six are devoid of love because Chrysalis has none to give.
It makes sense that the clones are as powerful as they are because they're running off of the Main Six's genetic potential, and we don't know how OP Twilight could be with the right prompting.
That's pretty dumb I won't lie. Then again, evil clones don't immediately jump into my head as a likely solution. Although I would think Pinkie Pie could have guessed it.
Okay I loved the Mean Six here because they weren't the main six. I could never enjoy any of the jokes in The Return Of Harmony because it became blatantly obvious, especially with Fluttershy's Discording (which she herself describes as "the worst dream") that none of them were in control of themselves.
So, all I could think of for the duration of the episode is Aftershock part 2 from Teen Titans, where Slade Wilson uses the suit he gives Tera to puppeteer her body to do his bidding. It's still one of the creepiest, most disturbing and abusive things I've ever seen on television.* Only in this case, the Main Six can't even speak or think for themselves. I found exactly none of that episode to be funny. Not now, not ever.
The Mean Six, as tragic as their existence and ending was, do just about everything they do from free will, so I can enjoy their antics. And man, do I love their antics, especially mean Rarity. I have no idea why Tabitha St Germain cackling over run of the mill garden implements and camping supplies puts a smile on my face, it just does.
Fluttercruel isn't funny in of herself, but I do enjoy the contrast with Fluttershy. Likewise with Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
Applejack (while not particularly interesting) did make me chuckle with her story about "Jerome" if only because I know of a decent Joker espy with a similar name.
And Mean Twilight (while certainly not comedic in any regard) is arguably creepier than Tirek in how she handles herself and is certainly more intimidating for me personally than Chrysalis ever was.
I knew she was never coming back (that would have required more respect for the audience from the producers), but I enjoyed the limited time we had with her.
*Don't get me wrong Aftershock was a great episode, but it was never funny. Slade from that show did not do funny.
I just enjoyed Iron Will. Discord has a few decent gags and the Student Six have a few cute moments but they fall flat in the face of how overwhelmingly cruel the episode is.
The Student Six suffering is never something I wanted to see. It felt even worse with Yona as she seems genuinely afraid for her life in some segments, without so much as a hall of infinite doors gag or quirky background music to drain any of the tension out of those scenes.
And given how terrified Bon Bon was of the Bugbear, if we assume that she is not in fact crazy (as preposterous as it seems) then Discord may have warped the most vicious monster possible to the school outside of the Chimera.
Cozy Glow did nothing wrong in this episode, but I can't even enjoy that as it gives way too many explanations for her turn to villainy. Especially if she outright felt her life was in jeopardy because of magic users like Discord, not to mention Cranky outright equating friendship to servitude.
There are way too many bad lessons an impressionable child could take from this scenario, and I find that regardless of all my other ideas, this lines up perfectly as a breaking point for her. Especially given that after she runs away in the Bugbear scene, we never see her again for the rest of the episode.
Now what reason would a little kid have to run away and hide herself away after her life had been threatened? Well, if she was crying in her room, afraid Discord was going to come in and kill her, that would be a pretty good reason. And given what he nearly does to Spitfire's class, she had every reason to be.
To say nothing of Discord threating the lives of children nations have promised to go to war over including the baby sister of a hot head whose looking for an excuse and incidentally happens to be a member of the one species which probably could decimate pony kind. Because it's not enough for him to threaten to murder children, now he has to threaten the entire nation of Equestria.
How can you possibly make a protagonist's girlfriend look worse than your season's end villain? This is how you do it. And of course, School Raze references it, so it has to be a factor in the season finale, even though it's literally the worst episode of the season. And of course, it was written by the show's story supervisor, which tells you all you need to know about the direction MLP was going to be taking in the future.
Donation from Daring? Or maybe the writers are just ripping off stuff from the comics and books without any context.
Eh it's been what, several seasons now? Plus, Yaks tend to be overly trusting and not particularly mindful of material possessions. Who knows what inane thing they asked for in return?
I mean I have a head cannon, but you're going to hate it.
This image works to convey this sentiment far too well.
Sigh. Season 8 continuity everyone.
Apparently so.
I just assumed it's her grabbing up anyone who's available to avoid having to deal with Discord's choices.
You would think they could step in, but nah! Of course, maybe she was trying to keep them out of Discord's line of fire.
Yeah, it's weird. It's almost like the writers have no consistent rules for magic whatsoever. HMM.
But why though?
Heck the story director didn't. And we know that, because she wrote this piece of rubbish.
Yeah see, this is how I know you'll hate my headcannon.
I feel the exact same way about most things post season 2 to be honest. I can't deny that it works though.
Could you imagine if Sandbar was just some stoner who liked to stare at walls all day? Honestly, I heard his delivery in the premier and thought "that's totally where they're going with this isn't it?" I guess it was a bridge too far though, even for Hasbro.
Zecora attends the school of friendship in a ballcap and golden chain, spitting fiery raps at the top of her lungs.
A unavoidable fact of Season 8 sadly. The most interesting pony was literally its villain. And Rarity, but Rarity makes most things look pale in comparison.
Kind of a given in this season.
No argument here. I always thought this bit was dumb personally.
This is how Nichol Dubuc's Twilight rolls.
You don't have any bitchy Anon Fics do you? Because I would totally read them.
I wonder if it was Garble. Maybe that's why Ember shipped off Smolder as an underhanded way of screwing with him. Dang this show never fails to provide new ways for me to bum myself out does it?
I mean we've covered this before, but I personally never bought it. Gruff would have a need for the free labor Gallus could provide, and I don't see why he would allow Gilda and Gabby, but not Gallus to stay at his home. I maintain that he couldn't deal with Gruff's demands and walked away, as a fair number of teenagers are known to do.
Ah ha! So you do admit the school is good for him?!
It's a beautiful moment. Even if I don't buy the particulars on Gallus's story, it's still sad enough to make this whole episode work.
Well apart from Twilight being dumb, and the student six missing their time with family. Seriously, no one thought of just inviting him along on their trip? Hello?!
I mean so was Neighsay so...
I can barely remember the song apart from the choreography, which was impressive. I like Rarity dressed as a skateboarder, but the Sticky Note thing was really dumb. I suppose that could have been the point but it really feels like at the least Rarity sort of threw Twilight under the bus here. Of course, Twilight has done this all the time this season so it's hard to feel bad for her, but even so...
This episode. They are still con artists. Con Artists who should still have outstanding warrants from the A Leap Of Faith ordeal. Assuming Equestria believed in law and order, which it clearly hasn't since Season 3, when letting villains waltz off on their own without consequence became a thing.
Why does Neighsay trust these guys? Does he seriously not know about their reputation?
Yeah it's not a scam per say. It's definitely something that has the potential to blowback in a big way given how it's set up, but I don't see how it's illegal. At least from how it's operated.
Technically there might be an argument to be made that their cutting corners on the lessons, without making that clear they accomplish that by teaching only half of them. Maybe.
Yeah this is just all sorts of dumb right here. I have no idea why the writers took this tactic. I mean congrats for making a genuinely nuanced issue I guess, but if you're just going to act like the problem is simple when it isn't, how much have you really progressed beyond the days of exposing ponies like Starlight as being "tail on fire" liars?
Yeah that never made sense to me. Twilight is an over analytical nerd who never had friends until a few years ago, and now her treatise is the definitive work on Friendship? I mean, I knew they were going in this direction when she named herself princess over a field, she doesn't have an uncontested prowess in, but still, I'm going to have to call bull here.
This isn't like the bible. Is she seriously trying to act like no one else has made or been a better friend than her? Rarity is a better friend by default and she's in Twilight's friendship club, so I don't doubt there's someone out there that makes Twilight look like chopped liver by comparison.
I still think that if Equestria wasn't a lawless dystopia, someone should have written down what Flim and Flam tried to do in Ponyvile. I have no idea why that wouldn't be on the books, or if it is why Neighsay would have ignored it.
Cozy Glow has numerous reasons to be involved in this school's creation, either to use it as an example to make "friendship schools" commonplace, or very publicly and humiliatingly crash it, ensuring Twilight and by extension herself (once she begins plotting against Twilight on a direct level) retains the monopoly.
Incidentally, I maintain that the former turned to the latter is more likely, given how this follows the events of A Matter Of Principals and how those events mostly likely affected her. Especially given she's the one who makes Twilight aware of Friendship U's operation in the first place.
Either way, she's only loosely tied to the school, having possibly sent them the book via mail and has plausible deniability if it goes belly up. Neighsay doesn't have that, and the fact that he ties his future to Flim and Flam's shows how desperate he has become to destroy Twilight's school. As long as it exists the EEA cannot be said to have a monopoly on schooling in the country. He's effectively presiding over a day's numbered type organization, opposed by a school backed by the only power he can't directly touch. He has to make her school irrelevant somehow.
I just don't see why he would rely on Flim And Flam to do it when he almost certainly knows the book was plagiarized and Twilight could call that out at any time. Unless Equestria does not have copyright laws, this seems like a massive oversight on Neighsay's part.
Frankly he would have been better off pursing the publication of competing friendship journals to snow out Twilight's school and teaching practices with a litany of home brewed cheaper knockoffs. Maybe even get some of Twilight's secondary friends like Moondancer to publish one or two personal takes for semi-legitimacy.
Depends on what the rules for discrimination are in Equestira. These aren't simply people who look differently. They biologically are different, right down to potentially razor-sharp murder edges, and unspecified eating habits which could range to things mostly toxic for ponies to eat, not to mention grossly disturbing for them. A level of differing integration is almost guaranteed, even without the fact that different species integration is nowhere near as through as our own demographics in America.
I mean, pretty much yeah. Up and down the board he's right.
All valid points by him over the course of the season.
I think (and this purely my own theory about what happened) is that he was meant to be the main antagonist originally. Then some producer took a second look and said, "well no, you can't make a federal educator look bad".
So, they threw together the Cozy Glow magic drain plot at the last moment and hoped that no one would notice. Even if there's a compelling case to be made that she was always going to be an antagonist, a lot of world building comes out of nowhere and you can tell they were straining for a way to make her fit in the final.
I could easily see that she was meant to be originally helping Neighsay, under the mistaken belief that if she dethroned Twilight, she could have her magic and become a princess or something. It would explain why she's subtly shown to be fixated on it in her debut, and yet wants to get rid of it by the finale.
Probably just handing out paperwork and stuff like that. Nothing we see indicates that their trying too hard with instruction, when it becomes clear that a disguised Rarity is a better instructor than they are.
I mean, this time the school is accredited by the EEA, so it probably opens some doors. Not as effective as if they get Twilight to sign off on it, but still.
To be fair she published The Friendship Journal. The book we see her teaching from is much thicker, indicating that if it is the same book, that she went back in and revised it for her school, either with additional stories or observational notes produced by her and her friends.
If he wasn't so damn oblivious, he would be my favorite character in the later seasons. He actually believes what he says, and he's pretty dang impressive on an accomplishment level too, pillars or no pillars.
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Absolutely.
Yeah, you would think, huh?
Yeah, that would definitely have been worth seeing more of.
I would say it was the last good Discord episode, but TBH I enjoyed the finale of the SugarMac trilogy in season nine as well. In fact, it was one of the only two season nine episodes I enjoyed.
Interesting theory. It's hard to say for sure, just because we never see another dragon of Spike's age and size, but it's definitely an oddity.
I agree. It's just that I find Spike's redesign substantial enough for what it takes for us to get it. I feel like they should've at least made him as tall as Smolder.
They made some slight alterations. I don't think bulky Spike is quite as odd-looking as knight Spike, but they are similarly weird-looking.
I think you're right there.
I think that would've been an improvement, yes.
I think I missed that.
That's all fair enough. I am really not a fan of Cozy as a villain (as we'll cover in part four), but I'm glad you found something to like in her to reinvigorate your interest. In some ways, I wish I felt the same.
Do you mean What Lies Beneath? Because Uprooted was season nine.
Also possible!
Well, most of this episode was them all trying to get the Crusaders enrolled, but they technically failed to do so. Maybe Cozy would have used them as minions like she did the rest of the school if they had actually been attending as planned, but since they weren't, I guess she just didn't bother. She had the entire rest of the school at that point, so why go out of her way?
What were the other times?
I've seen that one. It's good.
Late-series Twilight is extremely disloyal in general.
What actually is the age range for the School of Friendship? I never found time to comment on it in the reviews, but this is another thing that I find really confusing about it. Cozy seems like a really little kid, and the student six seem like adolescents, and then you have a bunch of clearly adult ponies, late teens at youngest. It seems completely random to me.
Maybe, but three years seems an awful long time to spend learning no practical skills just for a royal endorsement.
This would've been so much better than what we got, it's not even funny.
Did you ever watch The Mentally Advanced Series? It started off as an abridged series of MLP, similar to Friendship is Witchcraft, and then later became a full-on animated series to avoid copyright strikes. It was pretty good, especially the later stuff, and it also spawned the Rainbow Dash Presents series, which you might also be familiar with.
I bring it up, because after MAS ended, there was a very short-lived spiritual sequel based on seasons five to six called The Nepotism Adventure Series, which makes this same point in a pretty funny way. The first episode has Starlight accidentally killing Mayor Mare, and then she sings a song about taxes.
How do you mean?
Sure, but if you're trying to steal the Elements of Harmony with clones, and you're incapable of creating clones with any amount of harmony in them, then don't fucking make clones.
I know we discussed the source of magic once before, but just for clarity's sake, is it your stance that a pony's magical potential is based on genetics, either fully or partially?
This is a fair reaction.
I do admire your attempts to give Cozy's plans context and justifiable motivations.
Yeah. I'm not gonna defend Discord's behaviour in this one. That's a no from me.
I'm gonna go with the latter.
Possible, I suppose.
Hit me with your best shot.
As good an explanation as any.
HMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Because it's a reference episode on the writers' cheat sheets~
I'm scared.
That unironically would've been better.
Nope. I do have a few HiE dark comedies, but they're not Anon.
It was absolutely Garble.
Possibly, yes.
I believe that having friends is good for him. I don't believe that the school itself was necessary for that.
Now that's an idea.
I don't believe Neighsay was tricked. Flim and Flam were exactly as racist as he wanted them to be, and they didn't make any of the fuck-ups that led him to fail Twilight's school. I think he was getting exactly what he wanted out of them.
Eh. I agree, but that's a fault of previous Flim and Flam episodes, not of this one. If they were alright to be working in Gladmane's casino and then to take it over, then I don't have a problem with them running a school as well. If they were going to face consequences at all, they should've already done so by now.
Maybe. I think there might genuinely be something to that, if the episode had actually pursued it. But then again, I've been contending all along that there's absolutely no reason for friendship education at Twilight's school to take as long as it does, so maybe Flim and Flam's course just cuts all the chaff. Like for example maybe they just directly tell you how loyalty works while skipping the five hours of self-aggrandising Wonderbolt stories.
That five hour Doctor Who video essay I linked to you in the other thread talks about this same issue in a number of Thirteenth Doctor episodes. It just seems to be a hallmark of bad writing.
Yeah. It goes back to what I said about Twilight taking the friendship education thing too seriously. She treats it like an actual subject which she earned a doctorate in, making her by default the most qualified person on the planet, but all she really did was catch up on the basic social skills that most other people already know by her age.
I think undermining Twilight's monopoly on friendship schools makes some strategic sense. If Flim and Flam had been the first of many alternatives to Twilight's school, and she remained the only unaccreddited one, then I think that would put on some additional pressure for her to conform to standards.
And even the fact that it's Flim and Flam I don't think entirely works against him. Sure, their school fails, but not because of anything they actually did wrong. They close it because Star Swirl intimidated them.
Given that Twilight doesn't try to stop them on these grounds, plus everything that happens with Daring Do in season nine, it very well might not.
Sure, the rules might be different, but I still feel like Twilight could've made an argument on moral grounds if she'd cared about the issue at all.
I'm not too sure about that myself, but it's certainly possible.
Pillar Star Swirl will always disappoint me, because he pales in comparison to his comic portrayals. I go over this a little more in the season nine review.
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I have no idea what was up with the writers' room for this show, or why there was such a sociopathic thread throughout it. Cartoons didn't used to be this blatantly cruel did they?
Looks back at Teen Titans humor...
Okay, maybe sometimes they were. There's a reason why I prefer 2003 The Batman series myself, or even Spectacular Spider Man.
Fair to say the show's cast did not have an impressive showing this season.
Seeing Rarity have to react to his whining and mockery would have been great. Plus, if they ever did come to an understanding, they could definitely make some awesome art together. I'm disappointed they never wound-up sharing an episode together.
That's a good episode. I'm glad we saw them tie the knot, and Discord was sufficiently non-threatening, so I have no outstanding moral complaints with him being there.
The Star Trek gag was pretty funny, and the scavenger hunt going wrong is a cute and relatable anecdote for having your plans being foiled.
You can go both ways, and I maintain Sweet And Smokey animators never gave us a clear look at the hatchlings sides for this very reason, but I like to assume baby dragons are born with their wings like Pegasi.
Eh. I kind of like the implication that he still has growing up to do myself. I feel like him skipping ahead to his teenager years would be weird, even if I like the excuse for him and Smolder to hang out more.
Oh yeah, I remember some differences now. I just never really particular cared beyond noticing that they were eerily similar.
From what I remember, Smolder never shows up at all, which I should be madder about than I am. I guess part of me is relieved I never saw a new design for her, because I was worried it would have turned out like Spike's.
Yeah a lot of that episode is surreal for me, because I understand what the writers were going with, I'm just not convinced the implementation works.
Just about anything would've been. I've had one idea for a timeline where she's a totally hard-ass loyalist based on her patriotic comments in the Premier and the Return Of Harmony, and I still think that works better than what we got.
It's a blink and you'll miss it moment. It's at the very end of the testing montage, when she's rattling off the names of the elements.
It was a long hard road to get through these last few seasons, I will not lie. I needed every bit of enjoyment I could squeeze from them.
There are more aspects I like about Cozy Glow, like her sass and observational humor, which reminds me a lot of Discord's when he was first starting out, before all the baggage of later seasons. But a lot of that is more linked to her villain persona, which I'll probably address when I get to either "What Lies Beneath" or your segment on her.
Probably. I'm most likely going to mix those up a lot. The title of "What Lies Beneath" doesn't spring to mind as often as "Uprooted" even though I like the former far more than the latter.
Quite likely given what we know about this munchkin.
Legitimacy? it gives her claims to be running the school far more credit if she's backed up by its other accredited graduates. (Yes it's silly and I agree, but it makes far more sense than anything else this season would have.)
I just don't think she wanted to take the risk of them being emotionally compromised once it became clear that their sisters weren't coming back.
Yeah might as well get this out of the way. First off is Tirek. In the Season 9 premier we see him counting down the days since presumably Cozy Glow got there. But there's no logical reason as to why he would do that, as he has no chance of parole, and we aren't given any indication that Cozy has any either.
This is an act of pure despondency. He's clearly depressed. In my experience, those feelings build over time, they don't just come out of nowhere. If he honestly thought he didn't have a second chance to escape and was feeling suicidal, then it makes perfect sense why he would work with Cozy Glow as a last "screw you!" response to Equestria.
His subsequent giving into the Main Six's demands is just him trying to rub salt in the wound about their predicament, and then get rid of them when they turn the tables on him, so he can die in peace.
Tirek's actions make more sense in that regard, and suicidal regret is not uncommon, so it makes sense why he's desperate to have his magic back by the end of the episode. It all fits with the romantic* warrior I imagine Tirek to be.
*Romantic in the classical sense, not the sexual one. The English language used to be so vast and grand before the sexual revolt ruined it.
Then we have Frenemies where Cozy Glow is clearly impatient talking to Rusty Bucket. Skip ahead to the final and we see her clearly rendered uncomfortable by the chilly weather, so her being unable to come up with a good lie makes way more sense if she was freezing her butt off at the time she was talking to him.
Love her or hate her, Cozy Glow had some of the best memes.
Indeed.
Adolescent to Young Adults. My guess is that Twilight was trying to incorporate middle school students with Cozy Glow, something she continues in Season 9 with the children who appeal to the different tribal factions.
Kind of like how the EQG school clearly has a small-scale program to teach some middle school students, despite mainly housing teenagers.
In some sense it is, but then again so is Twilight.
Depends on how many people consider Twilight worthy of praise. A royal endorsement probably goes a long way in an absolute monarchy.
Certainly I would've preferred it. It would definitely more in keeping with the spirit of the show then what we got, even if I can imagine all the criticism right now with hardly any effort.
Is that the one were Twilight is all logical? I've seen a bit of that. Not much sadly. It looked pretty funny.
This right here. I was really interested in the fan series especially after I watched Pinkie Pie's orphan song, but copyright strikes and blocks made it almost impossible to find anything. Then again, I discovered the parody series somewhat later in the show's development, so that didn't help me any.
Sounds interesting. I find it impossible to find fan stuff anymore, but maybe I should go looking again.
Not trying to get a location for the tree was dumb, but since censorship and required outcomes makes for stupid villains, it was unlikely she could come up with a better plan, and this was at least somewhat original.
Plus, she wasn't observed for a change, which is the mark of a good infiltrator. Now you can argue that it doesn't take much in the Main Six's case, but that frankly makes it more damming how constantly she was found out by them.
I mean consider it from Chrysalis's perspective. Her Changelings have never needed love to steal it, so why would she assume ponies needed Harmony to channel it? She's never seen the Tree in action before, she has no reason to assume it has its own agency.
She's been bodied by attacks powered by love before, but that doesn't mean she couldn't theoretically use the power of those attacks, if she figured out how to approach it the right way. This plan makes perfect sense given who she is and her life experiences. She's just at a disadvantage, because she's never gone up against something like the Tree of Harmony before.
Magic is in of itself alive and intelligent in a sense and generally the shape of neurology and some other biological elements helps determines how it manifests. Like how Unicorns can channel it through nerves in their horn, for example.
Magic generally helps determine and fix at least some neurology though, and it can use genetics as a base line, although not always. Basically, certain genes can lead to good neurology and good neurology usually leads to powerful innate magic. Magic can lead to good genetics, whether consciously or unconsciously.
If there's enough of it or its powerful enough, it can allow a user to alter genetics or surpass them altogether, much like Discord does. At the same time uncontrolled magic fixates neurology and biology (explaining species wide immaturity and durability) and can even stifle it if it runs out of control, which is what Equestrian "demon" forms are. It's basically a crisscrossing of multiple variables.
Thank you.
My problem with a reformed Discord is that he really comes off more as a horror villain to me in his debut, and while I can do horror reformations, I generally want a better excuse than what Keep Calm And Flutter On gives us. Both for why they set out to reform him and for why he agreed. Nothing of his actual reformation sits right with me in that episode.
I think it's similar to the problems you have with Discordant Harmony. I can buy his backlash to the idea, but not his abrupt turnaround, especially after he played Pinkie Pie so effectively for the first half of the Return of Harmony. The whole episode feels forced to me, and I usually find that's a terrible way to start a character arc.
Watching the episode originally, I was immediately ticked on her behalf because she was my favorite character at the time, and her treatment felt very casually abusive. I was never a fan of the way Spike was treated throughout the show, and this episode felt a lot like more of the same. Rewatching it I realized that Cozy Glow had never really done anything cruel until after this episode.
Later I was watching the Steven Universe movie and wondering why that villain was any better than Cozy Glow despite being a genocidal maniac trying to destroy a planet out of spite, as opposed to Cozy Glow's scheme, which leaves much more ambiguity about how much she knew about how many people her actions would have hurt.
Now I did like that movie, and I related to villain's tortured mindset, but it still baffled me why genocidal villains like her, or Darth Vader are given the benefit of the doubt about having a terrible life, when other villains are immediately assumed to have nothing similar in their life. Then I realized the writers had accidentally handed Cozy Glow a better woobie story than I could have asked for with A Matter Of Principals.
It's like Tirek. He's actually a very poorly written character if you just stop at the assumption that he was meant to be a foil to Discord, because then you see the plot holes in how he conducts himself a mile away. And I highly doubt he was meant to be more sympathetic than Discord even though in some sense (at least according to my take on events) he absolutely is. So, there's an argument to be made that my takeaway of him is absolutely the wrong one.
But with a little bit of headcannon, he immediately becomes one of the most interesting characters on the show. That's how I am with Cozy Glow. Incidentally I can look at Twilight's Kingdom as trash meant to sell play sets, or with a little imagination I can imagine it as a compelling drama. I generally want to do the latter if I can.
Well at least we can agree this episode really did him dirty. Incidentally this is probably the only episode I genuinely can't stand him in past this point, so I don't see me dunking on his actions too much in reviews past this one. Apart from how it possibly relates to Cozy's villain origins and the Trio's actions in Season 9.
If anything, I might be defending some of his characterization in Season 9. Although I still don't like his role in it, it does feel like a more natural progression of his arc, as dumb as it's been up until this point.
Fair enough.
I don't mind the Yaks, but I don't line up with their way of thinking all that often and I freely admit it.
Are you sure? This is some pretty disturbing stuff.
Someone has to be the responsible one this episode.
In all seriousness I wasn't found of her or Spike either this episode, because they have some really messed up priorities here, but at least Starlight is trying to address the problem. Or more accurately part of the problem.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Is there a bee in here?
Ugh. We will talk about this later, but just because I like Cozy Glow doesn't mean I like the world building surrounding her. Princess Spike (which is clearly the inspiration for far too much of Season 8) was a dumpster fire and I freely admit it.
My enjoyment of School Raze is my desperately salvaging some small amount of joy out of the disaster the show had become and which I maintain was inevitable since probably the mid seasons.
You should be.
Probably. Now what do you think about my rapping Zebra idea?
Pity. I would probably still read them though.
Oh quite possibly.
It just make sense, given what we know about his personality.
I mean, like it or not, he probably wouldn't have meet so many people from different cultures without it. I agree this is a concept which should have been better implemented or retooled entirely, but I do think it has merit, even if the show wasn't always great about the way it was handled.
There's a few fics that tackle him visiting the others' homes, and it just makes sense as an easy solution to the problem.
I mean fair enough, but this just points to the problems I do have with Cozy Glow, specifically the world building.
I find her episodes to be entertaining and better done than the past episodes they're based off of for the most part. Twilight's characterization takes a L, but that was becoming a fixature even before Cozy made her first appearance, so I'm not sure all of that is attributable to her.
But all of that is a product of rotten worldbuilding which (like the Flim Flam brother's issues here) were established in the main show long before this.
That's entirely possible.
And ideologues. Like when villains are reformed. Like good for you I guess, but are you seriously telling me that no one wants revenge or deserves justice? Of course, I'm an ideolog, so I'm not entirely immune to this either.
Incidentally the cringiest speech during the premier is actually delivered by Starlight giving moral support to Twilight. And that's about when I lost interest in her as a character, although I suppose it's not too different from her past pattern of behavior regarding her Cutie Mark Dogma either.
So, it's not entirely inconsistent with her love of regiments and obsessive adoration for a mentor figure. It makes sense, given Twilight is very nearly like her mother at this point.
Yeah, the whole approach to friendship was really cringe in the last half of the series.
Well yeah, it's a good plan. I maintain it's at least one of Cozy Glow's options going forward, and while it's definitely less risky for her, I don't deny Neighsay had a good opportunity here.
I just don't think it was the best opening salvo. He should have tested the waters first. Twilight nearly sinks her own reputation multiple times throughout the season, some of which is during the premier right in front of him.
I think he could have destroyed her and her school without even bothering to imitate it, and it's more likely to prevent retaliation (like Cadence opening an academy of love or something like that to piss him off) if he can destroy Twilight without implicating himself. Like the journal idea I mentioned earlier.
Or he could get Shutterbug to follow Twilight around, taking blackmail photos discrediting her institution. Now there's a season final right there. And all the Chrysalis fans would be happy as an added bonus. Of course, she would probably wind up trying to drain him dry, but we got to give him a "reformation" somehow.
Well yes but a better (or worse) class of conmen wouldn't have been. That's the point. They hold all the cards and have a pretty sweet gig going. Why give that up?
Entirely possible.
Well even if she does, she's relatively new to the party. She probably hasn't thought about it all that much. I maintain her interest in inviting foreign children to attend her school is more for diplomatic reasons than her trying not to be discriminatory. Although given how much better she treats Spike now, I would say there's an argument that she wants to do both.
Season 9 feels much more streamlined and consistently put together than Season 8. I suppose it's possible that Nichole was just that lazy starting out, but a lot of Season 8 feels like it was hastily rewritten on the fly to me.
The only comics version I saw of Starswirl was that one following Celestia and the good version of Sombra around and acting senile. Whatever else I may feel about TV show Starswirl, I'm very glad he wasn't that.
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People in general have lost their minds these days.
I'm imagining something in the vein of Inspiration Manifestation.
Frankly, him suddenly growing wings this quickly at all is weird to me.
In the epilogue episode? No, she's there. She appears in the song sequence someplace near the School of Friendship. I think I remember her sitting in a tree?
That characterisation would fit especially well with the Sombra timeline's Dash.
I'll have to go back and look sometime.
Perhaps.
Alright. Fair enough.
I don't remember those. Where did they show up again?
I actually can't think of a single time that Princess Twilight is shown respect by anybody outside of a crowd scene. Neighsay and Gladmane show the mane six respect for their deeds, but then they also turn out to be blowing smoke up their asses. Twilight can't get a cab in Manehattan, and when she goes to a backwater village to solve their colour problem, Rarity and Rainbow Dash both have fangirls in the town, but nobody even acknowledges Twilight. Even fucking Flim and Flam blow her off like she's nothing. It's actually hilarious, in a sad kind of way.
The series basically takes all the characters' existing (season one) flaws and cranks them up to a hundred. So Mentally Advanced Twilight is logical and well-educated, but she's also incredibly cynical, and doesn't believe in any of this friendship nonsense. She's only doing it at all because she's terrified of Celestia.
FiW had some great music. MAS/RDP's music isn't as great, but still pretty good.
Well, this is the channel that made the series. It's where you'll find the animated MAS (known as the minus series), Rainbow Dash Presents, and all other related projects and spin-offs. But the original abridged series isn't on there, and you should use this playlist for that. The humour and overall quality in the abridged series isn't quite up to par with the minus series, but I'd still say it's worth watching the whole thing. The minus series is presented as a reboot, but it actually is in continuity with the abridged series (there was an in-universe time reset, which a few characters are aware of).
I don't give points for originality if it's only original because nobody else could ever come up with an idea this bad. Chrysalis is a shapeshifter who knows mind control magic and can also create clones. Even alone, even with zero acting skills, and even being narratively required to fail, she still has no excuse for failing as badly as she did with all those advantages.
I am considering it from Chrysalis's perspective, and if she's never seen the Tree before and doesn't actually understand how it or the Elements work, then she shouldn't be fucking with them, and certainly shouldn't be building her entire plan around her dumb, unfounded assumptions.
Ah, so magic scales with intelligence. Very classical wizard.
Interesting take. Thank you.
It really comes down to whether the story cares enough about a character to want to explore these things (or in some cases, how dedicated a story is to the idea of reformation).
I don't think so. Maybe he isn't meant to be more sympathetic, but I don't think he's necessarily meant to be less, either. Tirek is the main villain of the story and Discord isn't, so of course he's shown in a worse light, but I don't think we're meant to hate Tirek or to not sympathise with him. He's given a lot of positive human qualities, and I do believe that that is intentional. He's not offered redemption, no, but neither was Discord in his first appearance, and I think that in another world where MLP had better writers, the door was open for Tirek to get a similar treatment eventually.
That'll be a sight to see.
lh6.googleusercontent.com/ylzMBMjFdiZOI5Blf7o0zHerv1R8bKZFB5e0QI0NqlR0y19H7aT9-wetpYmvfj4SSTwB-fCPqWgpk8iCQZtkhSxf7OcfW_ao3IZ-S4tgn0ez8ZfOpSh6Azf7IZkviUsjizB2upJQGAk2NL_s5G46VXxUMUa3zP_FCL6yYJKvcBZrw1N6Eu14RHeM1bxkvQ
When I was a teenager I wrote a fic which had a zebra character named Thug Lyfe. My black friends found it funny at the time, but every day I fear being cancelled on Twitter because of it.
I wrote three. Human was my first fic (and incidentally, was also the one with Thug Lyfe). It wasn't intended as a shitpost, but it may as well have been. It's also bad. Don't read it. My second one was When Suddenly a Manticore... which was sporking HiE cliches that were popular at the time (specifically humans appearing in the Everfree and fighting manticores). And then I wrote Dragonfall, a spiritual successor to Human (in the sense that it's a dark comedy that reads like a shitpost), but which is itself only an HiE by the barest technicality, because there's a random human character in it who only appears for one scene (so far). It's by far the one I'm proudest of, though.
Perhaps not, but I don't think the diversity of his friend group is as important as the quality of friends he makes. And he may not have gotten that back in Griffonstone, but there's no reason he couldn't have gotten it at flight camp in Cloudsdale. That's how Gilda made friends with Dash, and Gilda is way more of an asshole than Gallus.
Yes, but you don't write sermons and try to sell them to me as fiction, so I'll forgive you for that.
Oh, I agree. But let's not forget, this wasn't Neighsay's plan. Flim and Flam are the ones who wanted to open a knock-off school. All Neighsay did was roll with an opportunity, which I think was probably the best he could've done in the circumstances.
No, no, no. Don't reform him. Better idea: Instead of Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow, season nine's Legion of Doom is Chrysalis, Neighsay, and the Flim Flam Brothers. And instead of Discord bringing them together, it's the real Grogar, returning after a thousand years of slumber. And instead of whatever the fuck they were all planning in season nine, their shared motivation is literally just to close down this fucking school.
There. I did it. I fixed season nine.
Because the writer lobotomised them. It's a theme this season.
Well, season eight is juggling a lot of balls, so to speak. It had to follow up on the movie, course correct from season seven, introduce this stupid fucking school and six new main characters with it, as well as two new villains, and it's got to set up for the final season and start wrapping shit up.
Reflections Star Swirl was badass and I will fight you on this (in the season nine review).
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No argument here.
Naw too tacky. Even for a guy like me, who likes tacky. Discord and Rarity could do much better together (as long as Rarity is directing and at least somewhat sane).
Fair enough. I personally see it as the pony magic inside him trying to right what it took from him. And I make that distinction because he was clearly going through a much different biological process before the magic intervened. But that's just how I see it.
Oh yeah, I just looked it up. Not sure if I like the design change or not. And Bango Player really doesn't line up with what they were doing with her character earlier. Yona would fit better especially given her connection to Rockhoof.
Maybe. I think of it as a side effect of Fluttershy nearly dying during the race, and Rainbow Dash finding out about it. Which isn't entirely my own invention, but I do take it farther then said writer did. I have developed origins for the Discord's timeline, but I haven't given much thought to Sombra's, so I don't know why Dash would be acting that way.
Yeah, it's always good to get some perspective.
Highly probable with this little munchkin.
I imagine we will discuss both of those at length once we get to later reviews.
When the Young Six are explaining to their teachers in flashback how they got everyone together.
And I think when their evacuating the school we see a glimpse of them going into the tunnel. And another one before they work up the nerve to speak up, but I can't remember when that happens.
I mean crowd scenes are pretty important to establishing general mood of a society. And of course, ponies were obsessed with her enough to buy a cruse for the sole purpose of meeting with her, so clearly, she has some fans. Even if they only like her because she's a princess (which is entirely possible).
But even if most individuals don't like or agree with her methods, they still value her importance.
Well yeah, but this proves my point. They might not like the Main Six, but if they can get them on their side, so much the better.
Because even guys like them want approval from the crown, because it makes their efforts go a lot smoother for them, if they are perceived to have government approval.
Starlight thinks Twilight will be the key to something bigger for Our Town.
Even The Hooffields and McColts tend to treat her fairly and without direct hostility, despite her efforts to talk peace with their greatest enemies. In other circumstances, that could have gone ugly really quick.
Most of Twilight's life post movie is disturbingly tragic.
Yeah, that sounds like what I watched.
Good to know.
Thanks. I'll try to get around to watching it.
Well that's certainly something.
Well yes and if I was in charge, I could think of numerous things to do with her.
But when the best plot she ever had was literally "infiltrate our enemy's hierarchy so we have total control over their government" in other words, strategy 101 for a race of infiltrators, and it happened only after she led a race of shapeshifters into open warfare, that's how you know you have a lame duck villain. MLP was sadly full of those.
Well I can see the logic in that, but that's because I see the value in not punching above my weight class. Chrysalis took on beings that can move the sun. Her strengths have always been more power, arrogance, and luck, more than anything planning related.
Now if I'm leading the Changelings, I'm taking Yakyakstain. Big, loving, magicless, and woefully unprepared for war with a predatory species (whatever Prince Rutheford thinks). Even If I don't want to stay there, if I get a good feeding line going, that's way better than trying to take an unknown like Canterlot.
More like brain wave activity. It might be intelligence, or it might be insanity. The long and short of it is that most magic loves to move (whether it's productive or not) and it is agitated by and agitates the brain when it does. This is why magic users all tend to be emotional or bizarre in some other way.
It takes a focused mind to wield that much magic and not wander off with it, which is why Starswirl accomplished so much in comparison to his peers. This is also why Discord is as nuts as he is, because chaos requires frantic brainwaves to control and drives the user even more crazy in the process.
Certain brains can handle the strain of magic better and that's why Tirek can control Discord's chaos magic once he's advanced to a certain stage. He forgets he can do this after Discord messes with his mind.
Some magic parasites off of this activity such as "Hopeless Magic" which keeps its victims depressed, but most magic even many "dark magics" (a catch all term for any magic considered unhealthy for a pony) spikes emotions and erratic thought processes.
Perhaps, but I maintain that's the work of his voice actor and animators, more so than the script writers. He could have quite easily been another cartoon monster if they hadn't done such a bang-up job with him.
It's like Dr Facilier from Princess and the Frog. He's a fairly typical for-profit villain in his own right, but his voice actor and animators do such a bang-up job with him, that I actually feel bad for him, when he's not either being charming, funny, or convenient nightmare fuel.
I feel similarly about Dr Regies Blackard from Adventures in Odyssey. Incidentally he's the classic villain that my love of all other villain portrayals stem from. A charming voice will carry a simple villain a long way.
And "Twilight's Kingdom" has none of the script presentation or great lines that either of those productions did. The whole thing is just one big dressed up exposition dump, and it becomes really obvious once you go back through it with a critical eye.
Maybe. I think the writing was falling off by that point though. Certainly, I would have liked to imagine it as a possibility, but I don't know.
Some. Do I still disagree with him? Yeah, pretty much. Do I think his character was tolerable? Moreso than "A Matter Of Principals".
Do I think he had much better reason to believe he was in control here, than he would have been if say Smolder or the Student Six went home traumatized to their guardians? Yes, I do.
I freely admit I have no idea what the plan for "Grogar" was, but we will cover that later.
In the beginning there was a great race of M&M Bugs. And the M&M Bugs moved among the Rock Candy Horses. And there was peace.
Until along came Black Licorice, that most vile of confections. And he desired to own the Skittle Horses for himself. When he realized the M&M bugs existence, he devised a way to turn their hearts as black as night and deprive them of their beauty. Once he succeeded, they became crumbly and unable to live among the Rock Candy Horses. So, they fled southwards in fear and hungry for the life that was stolen from them.
Advancements crumbled, technology was lost, and lore disappeared. So, the M&M's, desperate that their culture survive, combined their chocolaty innards with the spicy red hots, and thus formed the Spiciest and longest-lived M&M of them all Chris Cross.
Chris Cross did not believe the tales of their origin and (more to the point) saw a day when M&M's would rule all. So, she when the old M&M's died out, she seized control of the M&M bugs. The last of their culture was locked away, and Chris Cross lead the changelings in an era of highway kidnaping to feed her people's appetites. So numerous were these disappearances that the Southern Skittle Ponies named the area where they occurred the Badlands and avoided it wholeheartedly, causing plants to dry up and wither away.
Still not satiated Chris Cross sought to strike at the heart of Cake Town and claim the land of the Skittles for herself, taking the infamous Pink Skittle as a hostage. Impersonating the Pink Skittle, she ran into an unexpected snag in the appearance of the neurotic rising star, Purple Skittle. The rest you know.
*This advent has not been endorsed by any of the candy companies mentioned. All rights reserved by their respective owners. And now I'm hungry for some Hersey's.
It's surprising how chill people can be about that stuff when they aren't being propped up by vain narcissism.
Aww. See now I have to read it!
Yeah I've read one or two stories like that.
I'll have to read it then. Incidentally I have read the first four or five chapters of "Human" and it's actually pretty fun. Enjoy that success a little.
I mean when you watch the clip of them meeting for the first time, it becomes pretty apparent that originally Gilly was a sweet shy little birdy.
Put together her bulling by Score, Hoops, and Dumbbell and the fact that we know Cloudsdale teenagers were assholes (see Fluttershy's trauma flashbacks in Hurricane Fluttershy) and I submit it probably was flight camp which resulted in her disdain for ponies later on. Hence the reason why she likes Rainbow Dash, because she stuck by her whenever one else was being a jerk. So yeah, the idea of sticking a bunch of friendless losers together does have some merit in that presumably everyone knows what it's like to be at least somewhat alone.
Well yes but that's because I know what people want when they look for escapist fiction. And I grew up on stories (including a great many Christian ones) which knew how to make a story stand on its own merits without only being an allegory or an Aesop.
Possibly. I do think he could have been shopping around and doing more though.
Frankly I always thought that Gladmane would have made for a pretty good reoccurring antagonist and (depending on how well know he was) a great replacement for Cozy Glow in Season 9.
I could get behind that.
I guess I could see a future where Starswirl badmouths them so hard they wind up losing everything including their resort, but I think the episode could have spelled that out better, since it was already doing that verbatim for every minor detail.
Then again, maybe having that communicated would have made Starswirl look worse. This episode is one of those things that I can't really enjoy for how bizarre the messaging is.
Doesn't explain why it needed two villains though. Again, the whole thing feels haphazardly thrown together. As interesting as Cozy Glow is even the slightest regard for the main characters would have done far more to redeem this season. Not to mention that as dumb as Chrysalis is with a cloning spell, she's practically handmade to be the main villain for this season.
Having her be Cozy Glow or removing all magic would have run contrary to the character's nature and ambition, but you could have her form a hit squad by breeding Changelings to capture the Main Six and had Cozy Glow sell them out to facilitate it.
Then you dedicate one episode of the Main Six being sent to check on Tirek. No need for the screwy worldbuilding of Tartarus. Don't even bother showing the entrance. And then Neighsay has no reason to appear at all. I just fixed the Season 8 final. You're welcome.
I lok forward to your take on it. I haven't seen the whole comic so I might be missing added context.
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Interesting theory.
No arguments there.
I developed my own ideas for all the different timelines, and let me tell you, working out a way to connect those butterflies to all those different hurricanes was a difficult task, creatively speaking. It took me several years. But I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.
I might as well link you, since 90% of our exchanges are debating headcanons anyway, though bear in mind this is specifically how it went in my own world, and probably doesn't work as well as an actual interpretation of canon.
No doubt.
Oh, right. Yeah.
Yeah, that's true. Overall, though, my impression is that strangers only ever seem to value her for her title.
No problem.
The invasion plan was indeed extremely unsubtle for a race of shapeshifters, but a military invasion of Canterlot was a sound plan in itself given Equestria's defences at the time, and it came very close to succeeding. And it has one benefit compared to a slow infiltration of government - instant gratification, which I imagine is a tempting thing if your driving motivation is hunger.
Well, I don't personally think Chrysalis ever intended to fight Celestia directly the way she did. I think she always intended to overwhelm her with numbers, and that when Twilight and Cadance exposed her early, she was just intending to hold out and distract them long enough for the shield to come down.
Yakyakistan is indeed a softer target, but I'd disagree that it's more of a known factor than Equestria is. Yakyakistan was cut off from contact with greater civilization for a long time, whereas Chrysalis knew more or less everything she needed to about Canterlot in season two.
You should try writing out your entire unified theory of magic. Might make a good blog.
I don't know about that. The script writers were ones who came up with the backstory around his brother, and who made him honour the deal with Twilight. No amount of voice acting and animation, however good, could have contrived that from nothing.
We most certainly will...
Okay, so cool changelings are the result of a curse of some kind, the skittlebugs are their original, natural state, and Chrysalis was born sometime after the anti-skittling and rejects this heresy?
It's plausible enough.
Yes, but unfortunately, vain narcissists are extremely common on the internet.
Do not read Human.
Damnit.
Kids are cruel. But there's also good people everywhere, if you look for them, and the student six are pretty decent kids on the whole. I believe that most of them would've turned out fine wherever they ended up.
A lost art nowadays.
Incidentally, what denomination?
I wouldn't go that far, but I am always up for more Gladmane.
It's badly written however we slice it, that much is for sure.
Thank you, Wild Stallion. Very cool and based.
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If magic was alive, it would be really personal and clingy, and it's either trying to help you out in its own weird way or ruin you. Spike got a big dose of the apologetic kind.
Yeah, I'm going to have plenty to say about how they mishandled these two when I get to Season 9. Not in a way that makes me dislike them, but it makes no sense story wise.
I can believe it. I think I went down the list and drew out my ideas at one point, but the only timeline I can remember for sure is Discord's.
I had an idea for some of the history in Flim and Flam's world and where the Main Six turned up, and recently I've been thinking about the world building for Nightmare Moon's timeline.
That's all I can remember right now though.
Sounds interesting.
I'll take a look once I get the time. I'm editing another guy's story in addition to these talks and work, so it might be a while before I can really jump onto another thread and discuss it in any detail.
Yeah it should be an interesting discussion.
You sound so thrilled.
Maybe. Certainly, we never saw the kind of problem solving or relational interaction from her I was hoping for, even if some episodes made a decent effort of it. But I'm a big believer in two things can be true and just because people don't love Twilight the pony doesn't mean they don't love Twilight the Princess as depressing as that may be for her personally.
Having watched the playlist it's certainly interesting. I definitely have a take on it. Might as well admit that I remember why I dropped this series now and the reason is because it butchers Pinkie's character (and her voice which may be the reason why her character bugs me sooo much). The Twilight abuse is funny though if depressng.
Mostly because ponies invested all their faith in Shinning Armor's abilities than anything else. Outside of Season 8, this is the most massive armed force we ever see produced by ponies with the possible exception of the Crystal Empire's guards.
And at least half of them mysteriously disappeared during the invasion, so if the changeling army had to fight the full guard and even half of them was as accomplished as the main six, my instinct says they'd be toasted.
True but impulsive strategy is not the same thing as planning. Impulsively Cozy Glow's probably quite the little sadist, but she still manages to curb those urges (most of the time) when they're non-productive. Chrysalis is significantly less adept at that and (like a super villain) it costs her every major engagement she's part of, aside from To Where And Back Again.
Possible.
I'd pick softer targets over a known one personally.
It's been years since I've seen the episode, but nothing I've remember indicates whether Yakyakistan was cut off from Equestira or civilization in general.
And what I've seen indicates that no one in this universe is particularly welcoming or used to interacting with foreign neighbors. It still wouldn't prevent Chrysalis from scouting out the land, unless Yakyakistan was a city state, like her hive, and the modern Crystal Empire, which I don't see any evidence for.
And while I'll grant you Chrysalis knew some basics, she clearly didn't know the specifics of Cadence's actual abilities or else she wouldn't have let her get so close to Shinning Armor. Magic is a huge blind spot she can't possibly understand quickly and it made no sense to go in blind to a country with that kind of power dynamic. To say nothing of her not knowing the immediate family of her finance.
Maybe. I've got so many headcannons they're coming out of my ears though. And with Gen 5 still running, it's hard to get too invested in something that might be retconned tomorrow.
I mean I'll admit his backstory is good, but it could be seen as a way to discredit him as much as anything else. He had a brother who saw the light, and he didn't, that kind of thing.
Even the whole Tirek letting them go thing could be put down to villain arrogance. Now I don't buy that, because it doesn't fit how cautious he was being up until that point, but I can't rule it out. It could be good writing, or it could be really bad writing that we're making excuses for because we want Tirek to be a complex and interesting villain.
Indeed.
Pretty much yeah.
Plus it makes for some great opportunities to tie them into the larger world. If you go back and really look at my goofy ramblings, you can see the references to other characters and factions in world of MLP.
Too true sadly.
Yes!
Honestly I really like it. It's got some great comedy, above average world building, and themes that fit perfectly within in the HIE genre, while still being fairly more mature than some of those stories accomplish. I'm loving it to bits so far.
Eh. I take a dimmer view of life, but maybe that's just me. Regardless, I wouldn't have wished the Cloudsdale treatment on anyone least of all the Student Six.
Indeed.
Raised Evangelical but I just consider my view of the bible literalist. So basically, I take it as literal except for those times when it's obviously invoking symbology. So, most of its prophecies basically. Some of which the author goes out of their way to explain depending on the book.
Maybe not, but if he lost enough at the hoofs of the Main Six, I could potentially see it happening.
As a episode for sure. As for its messaging, it feels very much like someone wanted a message in there of some kind, but I can't tell if it was written by a Marxist, or if it just comes off that way because they couldn't think of a non-obvious scam to snare the brothers with.
I'm glad you enjoyed.
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If you don't keep notes for all your ideas, I highly recommend starting. In my experience, even if an idea later gets invalidated, it may still be useful for other purposes. For example, you could revise it, or recycle it in a new context, or it might inspire something else. Or who knows, maybe one day you'll even write it.
Understandable.
I don't think there's a single frame of the finale where I wasn't criticising something.
That's true.
I liked Mentally Advanced Pinkie myself, but she is indeed the one furthest removed from her show characterisation, aside from maybe Sweetie Belle.
Well, it's a damn impressive ability. Especially for a unicorn.
Mysteriously disappeared to where? In the story's universe, what actually happened? If the changelings would've stood no chance against the full Royal Guard, then why didn't they lose militarily?
Technically no, but I think it's unfair to say that the invasion of Canterlot was not a plan, because it was. In fact, it was a complex, multi-stage plan. And moreover, it was a successful plan up until the very last minute.
I personally don't think Chrysalis is a bad planner at all until we get to season eight. Her plans could probably be better, but unlike in The Mean Six, the plans she actually comes up with in the earlier seasons still work. In both her first two appearances, she has the ponies outplayed, and is only defeated by her enemies pulling previously unseen or unheard of magic out of their asses at the last second, which is not really something you can plan for.
True. But let's be honest, Equestria is greater civilization on this continent. Looking at the official map, if Yakyakistan wasn't in contact with Equestria for all that time, I don't see anyone else they could be in contact with. Maybe the griffons, if either side were regularly crossing that land bridge in the far north? And Griffonstone was itself largely out of contact with Equestria, so it's possible. But I don't think it's very likely.
Yeah, Yakyakistan is apparently more like a village state.
Well, I think it's fair to say that Cadance combining her magic with Shining's to create a selectively anti-changeling shield spell on the fly is probably not something the royal couple have ever done before, so I don't consider it a failure of planning or intelligence on Chrysalis's part to not expect that. She shouldn't have let the two get that close, I agree, but the issue there was her being distracted and/or overly arrogant, not her plan itself being bad. It was an okay to decent plan with the information she had available.
To be fair, the episode implies pretty strongly that Twilight and Cadance haven't seen each other in a long time, and Twilight shows little awareness of their relationship. Shining says he's marrying a princess called Mi Amore Cadenza, and Twilight's first reaction isn't, "Oh wow, you and Cadance are getting married?" It's, "Who?" So I don't think "Cadance's" mutual lack of familiarity with Twilight is an unrealistic reaction.
Perhaps. I choose to believe the former.
I'll need you to translate for me. My Skittlese is rusty.
I would not call Human a mature story at all. It has pretensions of it, but by the end I threw everything including the kitchen sink into that story. Even a lot of people who gave it a chance starting out, it lost eventually. I don't think there's any single point where the story entirely goes off a cliff, but there's definite gradual descent from the first few chapters. The tone in particular was all over the place, and the humour in some of the mid to later chapters is definitely not for everyone. There are certainly a lot of jokes and scenes I regret, from extended referential humour and song inserts, to overly dark comedy that doesn't fit the earlier established tone, to political humour on subjects I knew absolutely nothing about at the time, and of course, Thug Lyfe, who was included purely because I was watching a lot of The Boondocks at the time.
Interesting. Would that include Creationism, or would you include Genesis among the books invoking symbology?
In the modern entertainment industry, it could be either, but I'll be generous and assume the latter. Because honestly, there are valid points to be made against for-profit universities, and there are a lot of scam colleges out there, so I think it's entirely possible that the episode was at least initially conceived with an actual sensible message which just got lost somewhere along the way in favour of a watered down "capitalism is bad."
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I can see the wisdom in that. I just don't know where I'd put them though is the problem.
I can barely find room in my laptop or on this site to edit the few stories I'm working on, and the files system on it are nowhere near as intuitive as I would like. I'm worried that even if I wrote something down, I'd still lose it in the shuffle.
All valuable points.
Thanks.
I will really quickly address one obvious difference between our headcannons though and that's the Ponyvile Five getting their cutie marks playing no obvious part.
In my timelines at least some of the differences come down to certain ponies being sidelined at different times.
Fair enough. I generally have a hard time disliking usage of kids in media though. They're my weakness. "Let the Little Children come to me" "Whoever causes one of these little ones to sin" and all of that.
Yeah it's a drag to get through that's for sure.
Plus, the voice just doesn't work for me. I can stand Rarity being an awful person because she occasionally sounds like Rarity, but this version of Pinks just grates on my ears, and I'm someone who enjoys the way Juniper Montage talks.
True, but it's still not something they should have been relying on. There are magical artifacts for everything else so you'd think they'd have figured out shield generators by now, especially with that being something that exists in cannon (Frenemies).
My headcannon is that they got lucky and were able to web shut all the entrances to the barracks, but it's still a big risk, especially if it was Changeling incompetence that tipped them off in the first place.
The Movie is awful but at least by virtue of it being a surprise attack, I can give them some strategic benefit of the doubt. I don't have that when it comes to the Changelings.
Perhaps, but the thing I realized when watching Cozy Glow is that as much as I love a good villain plot, the most adapt villains can still think on their feet and make the right call when plans go wrong.
Chrysalis dropping Twilight down a hole with the only person who could've outed her true identity was not the right call.
Well we've been over what I feel about her drones' acting skills.
Assuming it's not a biological thing, that's a reflection of her training, especially given how she herself acts over the course of the Wedding. Now maybe you could argue that ponies are dumb enough it doesn't make a difference, but Twilight figures out something is wrong, paranoid or not.
Add to her passing up a perfectly good chance to play on Twilight's guilt to get her on her side, in order to torment her instead, and her armies doing something to tip off Canterlot, and suffice it to say, she never did leave a particularly clever impression on me.
Because again, shapeshifters. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to sneak a few changelings in under the guise of tourists.
Up until a point, which is the problem. There's always that one detail she overlooks because of arrogance, that gives her opponents the winning edge.
I think the reason I give her credit in "Mean Six" is because she's overlooking something she couldn't have possibly hoped to understand, whereas in previous and succeeding episodes it is literally her business to understand people, and she still mucks it up.
The Magic of the Tree of Harmony is pretty much the definition of unseen and unheard magic.
Changeling Reformation I'll give you, but in hindsight the whole "Cadence empowering Shinning Armor" thing should have been really obvious if she thought about it for two seconds.
Incidentally, I'm not sure why Chrysalis underestimated Cadence. You'd think a bug who feeds off of love would be more intrigued by a Princess of Love than Chrysalis is, especially given Cadence is not exactly shy about performing her spells in public.
Certainly the most resource rich and prosperous, outside of maybe the Kirin or Mount Aris pre fall.
I keep trying to pull up maps and they're all awfully hard to read, so I can't actually give you an answer on that. I can't remember where Yakyakistan actually is in relation to the map.
I mean, both can be surely types in first contact, so they would probably get along as well as anyone else. I don't know what their resources are so no idea what their trade would look like, but it's certainly possible they have a coalition going.
Incidentally "Party Pooped" comes after "The Lost Treasure of Griffionstone" so it's entirely possible that Gilda or someone else referred the Yaks to Equestria after that incident without anyone in Equestira knowing about it.
Specifically I am referring to idea that there may be multiple farming villages in Yakyakistan. (The capital itself is pretty well fortified for a village.)
We never see the whole country (and I can't find a map, so I have no way to collaborate) but as long as there are Yaks living away from the main city, that means Chrysalis and her Changelings can claim to be out of town famers or something, and scout out villages, or even eventually the capital itself.
But it's really obvious that putting a Princess of Love with a Love Drained Prince would revive said Prince. That's my problem with it. It's a risk she shouldn't have taken.
Well any plan is only as good as the intelligence and adaptability of the person making it at any given time, and how much closer it gets you to your goal.
Chrysalis ultimately losses her amenity, and as far as I can tell, only gets to taste Shinning Armor's love before been kicked out, along with all her changelings who didn't get any. So, I guess if bumming an extended series of meals for herself at the risk of exposure was the plan, then it was a good one.
I mean her plan is okay. Some parts were good, some parts were bad, and some parts were just ehhh? That's what I dislike about Chrysalis's plan.
There's so much that she does that's blatantly unnecessary. Cozy Glow indulged a little too, but it was nowhere near as bad as Chrysalis. Chrysalis ultimately gets foiled because she makes a ton of admittedly little stupid mistakes that all add up to spell out her downfall.
Cozy Glow's mistakes in so much as the effectiveness of her scheme to be an Empress really only add up to two onscreen big ones, underestimating the true potential of Twilight and magic, and checking on Starlight's prison and using the opportunity to gloat (no I don't count underestimating the Tree Of Harmony, because I don't count that against any villain, including Chrysalis).
So yeah, Cozy Glow has "ehhh?" moments, but not quite as many as Chrysalis. But we can always debate Cozy Glow vs Chrysalis in the final of Season 8 if you don't want to get into it right now.
I just find it difficult to believe that Shinning Armor has never mentioned his baby sister to Cadance once throughout all the time he's been with Chrysalis, or brought up the fact that she used to foalsit for her.
Because Twilight doesn't know Cadence by that name. It doesn't mean that Cadence shouldn't know Twilight's name, even if only because Shinning Armor mentioned it to her.
If Chrysalis had simply not known the words to their dance, I could have maybe let it go as Shinning simply not bringing up a silly dance from 10 plus years ago (although he's totally the kind of guy who would), but there's no way that he didn't mention his baby sister and Chrysalis blowing her off like that sets up an really uncomfortable situation going forward.
Fair enough. Either way, it doesn't make a difference to me. The fact that the show never really contradicts it is enough reason to move forward with it.
I'll PM you the details.
I've only gotten so far as the political death matches so far, and the cutie mark on that one politician, so I guess we'll see where it takes me from there.
That might have been me the first time I read it to be honest. Of course, I was way more sensitive back then. And yes, going through it I do recognize reading it from back in the day, although I was a much different person back then.
Well yeah but if there's one thing I've learned throughout this whole politically correct mess, it's that most humor isn't for everyone. Heck, you go back to what God said about the Pharisees and it would definitely offend some people today.
Yeah I'm a creationist. I wouldn't try to argue the exact science too often, because it's not exactly written down, but I can look at the world around me and determine that as a system, it was probably made by something capable of organizing things, and God is the only explanation I've found that makes any sense.
Throw in the historical evidence and accuracy of the Old Testament Scripture, and the prophetic evidence pointing to the New Testament, and I honestly can't convince myself that anything in that book is in error.
Fair. And MLP has always straddled this weird line between believing in friendship while being mostly anti-Marxism. Just look at the takedown of Starlight Glimmer.
I don't actually know anything about non-government funded universities specifically. I can tell you about a few of the scam's universities pull in general that I've learned about, like making you take unnecessary classes as a requirement to take the ones you actually want, thus making you pay for more classes.
But I don't know the difference between those that are in bed with the government and those that aren't, besides the fact that the former can force you to pay for their institution through taxes, rather than simply having you taking on the burden voluntarily as a student.
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This thread, too, has earned titles.
COLLATING IDEAS:
Not a problem I can honestly say I've had, but if finding space and backing things up is the problem, then Google docs might be the answer. It has its drawbacks, since it needs an internet connection to read and edit, unlike a regular word processor. But the upside is that you don't need to worry about local storage, and it autosaves everything, so you never lose anything unless you specifically choose to delete it. Plus you can invite people to edit collaboratively with it, and you can directly copy-paste contents from a Google doc to FimFiction without losing formatting.
TIMELINES:
A valid approach. I tended to work by the assumption that things would always remain on the same course unless there was an obvious cause behind it deviating, so that let me mix things up with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash a lot, and occasionally Twilight, but I didn't see any obvious way to make Rarity, Pinkie, or Applejack integral to the timeline changes. I'd be interested to see how you did this, if you can collate your timeline theories in one place to read.
THE MENTALLY ADVANCED SERIES:
Understandable.
CHRYSALIS'S PLANS:
A shield generator could be sabotaged just as easily as a shield-generating pony could, and isn't guaranteed to be any stronger. The weakness isn't in having Shining Armor doing it. The weakness is having a single critical point of failure. This could maybe better be solved if Shining had some other unicorns supporting him and reinforcing his shield, so that its integrity isn't dependent entirely on him. But then, that's exactly what Cadance was supposed to be.
Why would half of the Royal Guard be in the barracks on the hour of the wedding ceremony while they're on high alert for an attack? I live in a country that actually has royal weddings, and when we do, it's all hands on deck for the Royal Guard.
Well, in the Movie we don't see the Royal Guard at all. They aren't even seen out on the street like in Canterlot Wedding. Not having an enemy force to fight was probably a bigger factor in Tempest's victory than it being a surprise attack.
This is true. I'll give you that. But it wasn't, in itself, an instrumental point of failure in the plan. For all the mistakes Chrysalis makes, none of them actually stop her, and even having made the mistake of allowing Twilight to rescue Cadance, victory was still easily achievable. There was room for error in the plan. The only mistake that actually cost her was not paying enough attention to Cadance at the crucial moment.
I have a counterpoint to this, but we can handle that over in the other thread, since I bring it up there as well.
Which is fair, as an audience reaction (and was clearly the writers' impression too, given season eight).
Maybe they did? You were saying how half the Royal Guard seemed to disappear. Having half of them be undercover changelings makes a lot more sense to me than half of them randomly hanging out in the barracks at the critical hour.
Well, yeah. But that's precisely the thing. She's a shape-shifter, she has an army, nobody seems to know that her species even exists until they show up, and she has the power and strategic capabilities to remove the Elements of Harmony and two out of Equestria's three alicorns from play, even while not using her abilities to anywhere near their full potential. She's like Discord; she unequivocally wins every time if you don't give her exploitable character flaws.
And sure, maybe they could've just crippled the changelings' abilities or taken away some of these advantages instead to solve this problem, but personally, I prefer a villain who's powerful and loses due to their character flaws over a villain who has no flaws and is not convincingly threatening to the heroes. And I believe this type of villain resonates better with the themes of the show anyway. Friendship and love wins because evil is flawed and self-defeating. So Chrysalis being arrogant enough to overlook one crucial detail at one crucial moment is a character flaw that I find believable and can forgive in the circumstances. If it was good enough for Tolkien, it's good enough for MLP.
But that just makes all the stupider for her to attempt it in the first place. Taking Canterlot, at least, is an achievable goal.
"In hindsight" being the key words here. Yes, Chrysalis overlooked Cadance's threat potential. But as far we know, until this episode, the full extent of Cadance's publically demonstrated power was a spell to fix relationship issues. This is relevant for the changelings, don't get me wrong, but if I were Chrysalis at this point, and I had been holding this mare captive and (presumably) feeding on her for weeks or months already, I would not assume that she secretly still had the power to defeat me and my entire army single-handedly if she reached her husband. And I would also note that Chrysalis didn't even let her reach him, because Cadance was restrained in the throne room. It's just that the restraints weren't strong enough. In the grand scheme of things, what ultimately defeated Chrysalis was a very, very small mistake on her part.
See above.
I think the believeability depends a lot on how long you imagine Chrysalis was impersonating Cadance. You are of the belief that changelings are bad at long term infiltration and that Chrysalis couldn't have fooled anyone who actually knew Cadance for very long without mind control, so I would imagine, taking your interpretation as a given, that she wasn't at it for very long, maybe only a few days.
I mean, I personally believe that it was longer, but I also interpret Chrysalis's character and actions very differently than you do.
"Cadance" doesn't demonstrate ignorance of Twilight's name. Twilight is the one who expects Cadance not to recognise her, and who feels the need to reintroduce herself, and Chrysalis-as-Cadance is just uninterested.
YAKYAKISTAN:
Incidentally, I'd be very interested to hear your theories on the kirin once you get to part three.
lh5.googleusercontent.com/QmsvhRQBXL8aNsBLtJ3Y8vIyviv90-MHLDKfutRn0kJ43Op10P6DANbKTBT9vFsXNEHDrGCAhowxrOTR2kpbbCBUzNITjOVILQO6K1S5tRJd6kO8riQPuVtdM3wPOojGzVZjmBa7cd-Q0SomWS7N_DQ
Don't know if this will show up any better on FimFiction, but look at the top left corner, in the mountains, near the moon.
They actually are shown having some kind of contact with each other in the comics. Yakyakistan and Griffonstone play some inane football analogue against each other. But obviously this was after both appeared in the show, so no clear answers on when they came into contact.
Possible.
The reason for my skepticism is that Yakyakistan is in the northwest of the map, and Griffonstone is the most eastern point we see. And the only connections between the Equestrian continent and Griffonstone are Equestria's rail bridge to Griffonstone near Trottingham, and possibly those mountains we see at the northernmost point of the map, where the airship is. And if that's the route either side were taking, they'd effectively be walking around the sea, through the northernmost point of the entire Frozen North, and on Griffonstone's side you'd also have to pass through the area labelled "Bug Bear Territory." It seems like a pretty dangerous route, and I'm not sure what would've prompted either side to even attempt it.
It is possible. Humans have certainly done crazier things in our history. But personally, I think it's more likely that Yakyakistan was isolated until it re-established contact with Equestria, and that relations with the rest of the world came after.
I was making a joke about how season seven portrays all of Yakyakistan as a single shitty village.
But more seriously, I agree that there are probably more Yakyakistani settlements that we don't see. Yakyakistan in Party Pooped certainly looked more impressive from the outside.
HUMAN:
Ah yes. Santorum. Good times.
Well, Human only got edgier and edgier as it went on. Some later chapters really leaned into the shock value and gross out humour. I absolutely would not blame anyone for being offended by the story's content, either then or now.
RELIGION:
That's pretty interesting.
Myself, I'm about as far from a literalist as you can get while still believing in the book (raised Anglican, though I wouldn't describe my current beliefs as orthodox for any major demonination). Creationism in particular I am very skeptical of. But don't worry, I have no interest in debating you on a foundational matter of personal faith. How you interpret scripture and what you precisely believe is between you and God, as far as I'm concerned (and frankly, I think men of faith have spent far too much of history arguing about and hating each other over these comparatively meaningless differences in interpretation, which I think rather misses the point of the broader message).
FRIENDSHIP UNIVERSITY:
Yes, that used to be the case, but then sensible middle grounds were declared an enemy of state, lined up against a wall, and shot.
I honestly don't know much about the subject either, just broad generalities.
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It's not a question of strength, it's a question of backups. If there are artifacts that can store and enhance magic (and we know there are because the Alicorn Amulet and the shield stones from Season 9 exist) then surely artifacts could be made which take magic and store and amplify said spells for latter usage.
Depending on how well they were made, a charge might be able to be maintained from anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. That would have been a crucial difference, especially if there were multiple numbers of them. Now given that Chrysalis had inside access, that might not have worked either, but at least it would have shown that ponies were thinking about this.
Well now you see that's why I hate A Canterlot Wedding. There are so many stupid contrivances and laughable decisions that it only makes sense as an episode if you bend over backwards to accommodate it.
How did Chrysalis get close enough to Cadence to banish her if the city was on high alert? Don't know. What put the city on high alert? Don't know. If Demons exist and possess people in moments of stress and Celestia knows this, then why wouldn't Cadence acting aggressively presumably because of stress warrant some kind of investigation or intervention? Especially with Twilight, who's usually a pretty smart cookie, actively calling her evil? Don't know. You starting to see just how dumb these episodes were? And I'm not even halfway through my complaints with it. Seriously, it's impossible to cover just how bad the episodes actually are. we'd be here arguing all night.
Yes but it being a surprise attack does a lot to explain why they weren't there, if they were out doing scouting like we see them doing for Celestia in the Crystal Empire, or maybe there were threats of a monster incursion from the everfree.
So it only counts as a failure if the mistake actually costs them the battle in the long run? I'll hold you to that then.
That's a little like saying that the only mistake Season 9 Sombra made was in not brainwashing the main six the second time around. I'm still going to mock and belittle his portrayal though, because it's laughably cliché and a massive step down for the show as a whole.
To quote everyone's favorite wifu.
You're going to have to explain this.
Then why not use them to guard Twilight and Cadance? Wouldn't have been outsmarted by throwing flowers to distract them, that's for sure.
As far as we see, her army isn't as magically inclined as she is, and they're not even as tough as the main six, who again beat them pretty easily, despite a lack of any obvious combat training. It's only through sheer numbers that the Changelings overwhelm them. Chrysalis herself is implied to only have the power she does through her consumption of Shinning Armor's love.
In an intelligent show, these are great plot points to capitalize on. Have the royal guard storm the capital and give the Changelings a real fight. Have Cadence and Shinning Armor team up to fight Chrysalis.
Instead, they settle for the same lazy Deus Ex Machine, which itself is only possible through a string of equally poorly and lazily made decisions. That can work sure, but it's not half as interesting as actually having to balance various elements and giving your heroes and villains difficult choices to make.
And that's not even getting into the fact that again, Chrysalis's choices don't make much sense in this context, given what we know about Changelings (which is confusing at best and contradictory at worst).
Looking at the flaws above Chryisalis is way less OP than Discord, which is honestly why I prefer some aspects of her villainy to his. I find Discord is a more interesting character but a lot of that is just personal bias.
I like a middle ground. Powerful, but not "all powerful" and they have psychological and physical weaknesses that can be taken advantage of. Too much in either direction and my interest starts to waver, unless the plot or the characters themselves appeals to me in some way or is at least somewhat well written. In "Human" Second is powerful, but he's not all powerful. There are rules he has to follow, which makes him an interesting (if bizarre) antagonist.
I was always more of a "what I like" over themes guy, and that was true before the increasingly terrible abuse of themes as an excuse to defend bad writing.
She overlooks multiple flaws. That's the problem. Had the others been more considerate, or Celestia more concerned about Twilight and Cadence, or absolutely anything gone wrong, Chrysalis would not have come as close to victory as she did, to say nothing of how laughably easy it was in the end to beat her. She practically handed them that victory.
And then what? Ponies go into hiding or declare war on you, and it's harder to find food than ever. Other species will become aware of you, and where you live, and will undoubtedly be plotting against you and shoring up defenses. Your best bet is farming ponies, but good luck keeping up "love" while keeping them in captivity.
Plus, you still have to find some way of handling the planets without risking Celestia or Luna breaking free and going ape on you. And good luck hiding because everyone knows you exist now and will be on guard against you. This is through and through a terrible plan. Frankly the only reason I could rationalize around how bad the later season finals were is because I was used to the villain's plan's making no sense at this point.
Someone had to send that letter to Twilight. Probably Celestia. She doesn't mention to Cadence that she invited her sister-in-law to the wedding?
Fair enough. She should have made an effort to be pleasant though.
And here's another problem. If Chrysalis is being awful because she knows she can get away with it, why bother making nice with Applejack? "Something, something, Changelings can't eat solid foods", but why not? That seems horribly inefficient. And in any case, Applejack's hardly used to nobility snubbing her.
Heck, if this whole thing is a manipulation to break them apart, why wouldn't you butter up Twilight, the powerful magic user, and a close personal relative of your mark, and leave the country bumkins you met yesterday in the lurch?
"Because Twilight's the main character and we can't have her be wrong, even if it would be a valuable friendship lesson on knowing who your friends really are." Megan Macarthy probably.
I might just shoot you a head cannon over PM's.
It's less scripture and more just nature. Like them finding sea fossils on mountain tops, or the insane mechanisms behind cellular reproduction (I'd swear you were looking at an assembly line). All things the bible hints at and discusses yes, * but I could care less if I didn't believe them to be factually true.
*Romans 1:20
Even Seasons 8 and 9 as dumb as they were, steered away from some of the worst of it. Do I like the final with the tribes turning on each other?
No, but they are not saying all Unicorns are bad, just because they have money or something like that, which was way more restraint than other franchises have shown. I dropped out because I knew from bitter experience it probably wasn't going to get better, not because it was truly at the point of Marxism yet.
Fair enough. I've glossed through a few documents on the stuff, but it's never really drawn my interest personally.
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The other thread is the Discord thread. This seems to be the Chrysalis thread now.
CHRYSALIS'S PLANS:
This is what I said, no?
Right, but I don't think "half the Royal Guard are missing" is an actual fault of the episode. The episode does show Royal Guards still on duty, fighting in the street, and losing. You assume that half of them are missing, but I always assumed that they were all still there, also fighting and losing, elsewhere offscreen.
She's a shape-shifter. And we don't know when the alert status began. Lockdown probably started after Chrysalis was already in the city.
Shining Armor says a threat was made against the city by an unknown party. I always imagined Chrysalis issued this anonymous threat herself as part of some larger strategy, but it could also have been a rogue changeling tipping off the Equestrians to give them a fighting chance.
I don't think demonic possession is that common a thing this side of the mirror, especially just from an emotional state. Everyone in the episode just treats it as regular wedding stress, and that's honestly as good an explanation as any. Hell, as you pointed out, in the original script that was literally just what it was.
I'd also further like to point out that all of the most evil and blatantly out of character stuff Cadance did, she only did in front of Twilight. As far as we can tell, nobody else actually saw that side of her, so of course Twilight sounds like she's exaggerating. At worst, everybody else saw a circumstantially excusable level of slight rudeness.
I always preferred FanOfMostEverything's explanation that Twilight gave the Royal Guard the day off for the festival.
I mean, it's still a failure definitionally, but yeah, I don't sweat a mistake if it doesn't have any serious consequences. This is a weird example, because its smaller consequences do allow for the opportunity for Chrysalis to make more serious mistakes later, so it indirectly has some serious consequences. But I think you probably know by now that I place a lot of value on how direct consequences are to initial actions. So basically, no, I don't think Cadance escaping at this stage was a big deal in and of itself.
Well, you absolutely should mock season nine Sombra. But actually, yes, I'd agree. Not brainwashing the mane six (or at least not holding them in better cages) was his only real mistake as far as I can see. If he'd done either of those things, then victory was in the bag (except for the part where Discord comes in, either as himself or as Grogar, but that's kind of a broader problem).
The writers, like you, presumably watched Canterlot Wedding and came away with the impression that Chrysalis is a short-sighted dumbass who's bad at planning. So then they wrote her as a mega-dumbass with even worse plans in seasons eight and nine, because that's what her character is to them.
Good question, because Twilight and Cadance certainly aren't closely guarded at all. The bridesmaid guards seem to be more of an afterthought. I think it's possible that Chrysalis wasn't too concerned about actually preventing escape at this point. The hour of the invasion was close, and she only needed to maintain her disguise for maybe a couple more hours. So my thinking is, maybe she called all changelings in the city to begin covertly taking down Royal Guards and weakening defences in preparation for the main invasion force arriving, and Cadance and Twilight she only needed to slow down slightly, because if the invasion had already started by the time they reached the surface, it wouldn't matter anymore. And she had the mind-controlled bridesmaids available, so I guess she thought... why not use them?
I mean, yeah, I won't argue that. I'm mostly just defending Chrysalis's plan, not the episode's writing.
Certainly.
That's fair.
Well, much of Second's personal motivation is to be free of these rules, and he does grow significantly more powerful as the story progresses. Remember, one of his primary powers is to pull new powers out of his ass at a moment's notice. And it's also worth noting that he goes into most battles fully intending to lose to the heroes, because he knows that's how the story goes. If ever freed of the rules that govern him, and allowed to use his full power, no holding back? There would be very little that could stop him.
Yeah, and that's a fair reaction, but I'm a pretentious wanker. I'm all about that thematic resonance.
If anything, I think Celestia and the others being more thoughtful and skeptical of "Cadance" would've made Chrysalis's victory more likely. Remember, her failure was only even possible in the first place because she sent Twilight directly to Cadance. If she were feeling the pressure and Twilight had more support, she might not have had any reason or opportunity to do that. At best, they might have exposed her earlier, but as established, Chrysalis can beat them in a straight fight, Shining is still weakened, and the army is still on the way.
And then she conquers the rest of the country, as we see in the changeling timeline.
I kinda always figured that's what the purpose of the pods was. Keep them dreaming happy dreams of love, and siphon off their energy. Like The Matrix.
Good thing Chrysalis is more powerful than an alicorn and knows mind control.
Well, according to the comics, this was always the case. Comic changelings had a long history of conquering kingdoms by force before Canterlot, and the only reason changelings weren't suspected during Canterlot Wedding is that they were all supposed to be imprisoned inside a volcano at the time.
Whoever it was, yes, I do think "Cadance" would've been made aware. As I said, I don't believe Chrysalis is ignorant to who Twilight is. In fact, I'm pretty sure she even knows that the mane six are the Elements of Harmony, since she makes a particular point of preventing them from reaching the vault.
This ties into some of the things I've said already in this comment, but my personal theory (and the explanation in the Borderworld) is that Chrysalis was trying to put up at least a passable front to everyone else (which includes being polite to Applejack), but was deliberately exposing her nastier side to Twilight in particular to stir up conflict within the mane six and (hopefully) weaken the bonds of the Elements. This would also distract Twilight from the larger issue of the threat against Canterlot, and isolate her for long enough that Chrysalis could eliminate her as a threat (which would in turn eliminate the threat of the Elements, and also allow her to take complete control of Shining Armor unnoticed and unopposed). Then obviously this went wrong around the time she sent Twilight to Cadance (though I'm undecided on where specifically the plan went wrong in that sequence, because there's any number of possible points of failure).
YAKYAKISTAN:
Sure. But the next part of the review asks a lot of specific questions about the kirin, which I'd be interested to hear your answers to.
RELIGION:
I getcha.
FRIENDSHIP UNIVERSITY:
It wasn't Marxist yet, no, but I think that Neighsay and the season nine race war storyline were definitely the result of someone hamfistedly shoving their personal politics into the story.
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Yeah, but you discounted an artifact's ability to make up the diffrence.
We saw bunches of them patrolling the area earlier.
Canterlot isn't all that big, and it makes no sense why they would be clustered together for patrols and spread out during an invasion. The exact opposite should be true.
Eh, not buying it.
Thorax? The guy doesn't strike me as that courageous before he meets Spike, and I can't think of any other changelings we meet that are that sympathetic to ponies. It's possible, I just don't see it.
No, but if I recently saw my sister freed from a possession that tore us apart for a thousand years, it's going to be on my mind as a possibility.
Outside of her banishing Twilight and taunting her in the mines, I struggle to remember what she actually does that's evil. The brainwashing yeah, but in fairness to her she didn't know Twilight was spying on her. Of course, she wouldn't have been had Chrysalis been playing nice, but I think I cover this point pretty extensively further on in my response.
Which doesn't really make a lot of sense. How would she trigger a credible lockdown without giving herself away? Yeah, she's a shapeshifter, but if she pulled the whole 'pretend the bug attacked me and took off in a random direction trick', it should cast some suspicion on her as Cadance, especially if Celestia knows shapeshifters exist.
She was worse than that. Excusable rudeness comes out of nowhere. This boarded on Sour Sweet levels of deliberate.
Yeah I saw that. Didn't like it. It strikes me as being really careless personally.
It sets in motion everything that happens from then on. So, it's worth a little sweat.
Which for me is a problem, and one of several things that kept the villains of this show from being as good as they could be.
Yes but even those are influenced by lesser considerations. Nothing ever takes place in a vacuum.
It sets up the entirety of her downfall. Kind of a big deal.
Fair.
Going by your standards, nothing Chrysalis actually does in Season 9 directly costs her the victory. Yeah, i think she's dumb, but short of not killing the main six, all her failures happen because of circumstances outside of her control.
I hold a more stringent view personally, but I'm going along with your standards for now, because I want to see how far you take them.
Another mistake.
I agree that they were probably used because they were on hand, but Chrysalis clearly expected them to stop Cadence if nothing else.
It's still pretty crucial to maintain it for those few additional hours. Plus, Cadence being above ground is what sets into motion her downfall.
Okay, except why wouldn't you deploy foot soldiers to handle that? If you want to know they'll be delayed, you should have sent something more reliable than glitchy mind controlled minions. Furthermore, Cadence has been down there for days. Why hasn't she been cocooned yet if Chrysalis had the Changelings to spare?
Because they've never been tested in engagements before and they have obvious weakness that Chrysalis didn't account for?
Sadly her plan is dependent on the episodes writing. They are interlinked, tragically for worse in this case. I wanted to like Chrysalis, but the writing does not do her justice.
She's just a much more versatile villain than Discord.
Among other things, I like those Swiss army knife villains. Lots of different powers, with different applications, that need countering via the different powers and abilities of the different protagonists.
I haven't reached that point yet.
Haven't reached that either. Or at least I haven't seen him abuse it, beyond the usual superman syndrome.
Yeah, he has Discord level powers, but even those have had some level of restriction so far. And he has yet to reach the level of omniscience that Discord has, so that's something in his favor.
Discord has one power minus hypnosis, and that's the ability to think up things into existence. It's just that he strains the laws of nature with it to such a degree it ceases to be believable as a specific power. It's more of a "watch me do everything now" type thing, which doesn't interest me in terms of conflict.
Well yeah. That's part of what makes him an interesting villain, is his specific and unique restrictions.
Well that's why delaying it allows the story to build tension. Something that isn't a factor in Discord's debut. There's no limitation for the villain to overcome there.
Even when I do use Discord as a starring role in my universe, I wind up altering his character to make him more of a straightforward gamesman, or nerfing him, unless I'm straight up thinking of horror, because there's nothing there to make a compelling conflict otherwise.
Eh, I enjoy a good theme on occasion, but I would prefer to be entertained first and foremost. Modern themes do not do it for me, and even shows I used to like no longer hold the same appeal. The problem when you're a critic is that you can see the weakness of certain elements and world building you never noticed before.
It might have exposed her earlier, which would have allowed them more time to come up with a plan to defeat and or repel her army.
But if they were investigating her already, they might well have come across the evidence that she was an impostor in the investigation. Even uncovering Shinning Armor's brainwashing would have revealed the Changelings involvement, and without access to his love bye, bye, Chrysalis.
Irrelevant if they were already investigating her and stumbled across her influence of Shinning Armor. Celestia diagnosed and broke Twilight's brainwashing in "Lesson Zero", so she could probably break this if she knew what she was dealing with.
Even if she can't, if they know Cadence is missing, they can interrogate Chrysalis and search the city, which still leaves them a few hours left to find her. Any crack in the believability of her facade, and Chrysalis's chances of winning go down.
Chrysalis beat them because she took a power up in the form of Shinning Armor's love beforehand, and it's clear she does the bulk of her feeding in between imprisoning Twilight and the Wedding. Stop her then and Shinning will be stronger and her own strength considerably weaker. And I've already explained why I don't think much of the Changeling military.
We don't actually know that she's conquered the country, at least in the traditional sense of owning it.
What we know is that a bunch of ponies are hiding out in the Everfree. Is it in the middle of occupied territory? Are they some sort of underground railroad springing ponies from captivity?
The map implies that cities have been destroyed, but we don't know how widespread that is outside of Equestria. Maybe Equestria's infostructure has vanished, but ponies could still be running wild all over the place.
Realistically it wouldn't be a replacement for exercise, regular food consumption, or a normal life cycle. Living things need to be replenished. Come planting time you need to fertilize the soil.
Ponies being drained of their "love" would need some way to recharge it eventually. We both agreed that without it, they would die, and I don't see the pods as doing that quickly enough to sate the Changelings' hunger. This is the most likely reason for pony fatalities in Changeling captivity, which we both agreed was highly likely.
Because she feed off of Shinning Armor's love which is implied to be highly powerful. Either because he was an incredibly strong unicorn, or because he was insanely devoted to Cadence. Where else is she going to get another meal like that? Because Twilight apparently wasn't worth the bother, even as a backup, so it's probably not a common thing, assuming Chrysalis didn't throw away a potentially valuable food source (which I will admit is highly possible).
Have I told you that I think that a lot of the stuff that happens in the comics is really dumb yet? Because I think a lot of the stuff that happens in the comics is really dumb.
And in true Celestia fashion, she never checked on their prison, or posted a guard, or considered their existence at any point afterwards, because of course she didn't.
I mean, it's pretty easy to tell she's mocking Pinkie Pie. She doesn't treat Rarity much better. Asking the bridesmaid dresses to be made "a different color" is a totally random thing to demand.
She could just be trying to run the main six ragged, which actually makes way more sense than it should, but given that plan fails anyway, I can't really judge how effective it really was in this instance. And incidentally pretending she likes Applejack's food doesn't help her with that anyway. If the goal is to run Applejack ragged, she should have just had her bake something different.
They don't show exactly how she treats the others, but it's readily apparent that she's a brat, and if the others weren't busy kissing her hooves, they would have seen it too, so I don't know what being nice to Applejack specifically was supposed to do.
If quantity over quality is a factor, or if admiration of authority figures is stronger than admiration born of childhood nostalgia, I suppose so.
But if the end goal is breaking up the main six, being nice to Twilight is much easier and puts the potentially very dangerous magic user close by where you can keep an eye on her.
There are also feeding concerns. Is the admiration Chrysalis get from five strangers in awe of their princess really eclipse Twilight's childhood admiration for Cadence? I don't know, because how Changeling feeding works is never explained.
At the least though, Chrysalis could have arranged for more time alone with Twilight, which puts her nicely in her influence. And if her spells are any good, enslaving Twilight in this fashion makes as much sense as anything else she pulls.
Now technically stealing the elements proved to be enough, so I don't know why she has to control the bearers, but Twilight is more vulnerable to that kind of thing than most, given her familiarity with Cadence.
Or allow her to bumble around town and walk right into evidence of it, sounding the alarm early.
Because it went so wrong in so many ways, identifying one screw up inevitably leads to finding more.
Fair enough. But I only can only give you generalities regarding the Kirin on the page itself. Their origins are more spoiler heavy in nature.
You sure?
Racism is a curious beast, because it does need to be addressed at some point. I just don't believe that most do it well. The takeaway I get from Gen 4 and what I've heard about Gen 5 is that discrimination should be based on morality, which is actually surprisingly close to the reality of it.
Now frankly I think it's an overdone moral at this point, and I'm less keen on how Hasbro as a company has chosen to deal with it, but I don't necessarily look at Season 8 or 9 and think they've gone too far off the beaten path, at least in regard to that specifically.
Neighsay is handled poorly too, but that is less the fault of that moral, and more lazy character and story writing.
I suppose it's possible that they were trying to discredit older ways of doing things, but by the end of the series Neighsay is the old guy saving the day from a psychotic youngster, so if that was the plan, it fell apart somewhere down the line.
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Okay, but what, specifically, could an additional shield-generating artefact do that an additional shield-generating unicorn couldn't? I grant that are many advantages to automation vs. human labour, but I don't think that any of them would make a difference to the effectiveness of Canterlot's defences.
They were shown in their largest numbers in part one guarding the castle walls and guarding the entrances to the city, which is exactly where the largest clusters should be. The majority of the action in part two take place out on the city streets and in the wedding hall itself, both of which were always shown to be more sparsely guarded.
I don't think it's Thorax, no, otherwise I think he would've mentioned it when he talked about the invasion. My money would be on the rogue changeling who was at Cranky's wedding.
Well, until the black smoke starts swirling around Cadance, it definitely wouldn't be my assumption. In a thousand years of Celestia seeing people be rude or cranky or acting oddly, I'm sure that there was an explanation besides nightmare entities more often than not.
Not evil, per se, but whenever Twilight's looking and someone else isn't, she's always pulling faces and being ruder than she is to people's faces. Her scene with Applejack is the best example of this.
Well, as I mentioned, the lockdown was triggered by Canterlot receiving a threat, not by someone catching a changeling running around.
Everyone else besides Twilight seems to think what they see is excusable.
Yes, leaving your capital city unguarded is extremely careless, but regardless of the reason for it, that's what they did.
Of course not. But by that same token, those lesser considerations aren't the single deciding factor. If a chain of dominos is falling because you accidentally knocked over one, you can intervene and stop the cascade at any time, and save that last domino. Smaller initial mistakes don't matter to me because they can always be accounted for and corrected before adding up to a worse one.
Applying this domino metaphor to Chrysalis, I think she did intervene and stop this cascade when Cadance was recaptured in the throne room. But then she accidentally knocked over a second domino in the process, this time much closer to the final one.
I view Canterlot Wedding as a solid enough core plan with room for error at all the stages Chrysalis made errors, except for the final confrontation, in which I believe she was defeated by something I don't think it's fair to expect her to anticipate.
What she was doing in season nine was not nearly as dumb as what she was doing in season eight, but she still had several fundamentally bad plans which depended entirely on luck and succeeded only by luck. Mostly I'm thinking about the plot to betray Grogar and the absurdity that was their adventure in Canterlot. Comparatively, I think that the Legion of Doom's attack in the finale was better, and yes, I don't think that anything Chrysalis did directly cost her the victory there. I think their plan was still salvageable up until Tirek was tricked into freeing Starlight. However, I think that the mistakes Chrysalis does make in the finale are still way dumber and way less excusable than the mistakes she made in Canterlot Wedding, regardless of whether they directly led to her defeat or not.
Good point. I don't think she expected the bridesmaids to actually stop Twilight and Cadance altogether, but I think she was expecting them to at least put up more of a fight. If they'd at least slowed Twilight and Cadance enough for the city to already be conquered by the time they reached topside, then I think Chrysalis would've been golden.
As I said, I don't think that actually preventing escape altogether was a priority at this point. We know in hindsight that letting Cadance escape led to Chrysalis's downfall, but that was much less obvious at the time.
Good question. I assume that Chrysalis was regularly conversing with her in captivity, mostly to interrogate her about things she needs to know for her role, and probably also to gloat. It's certainly not a question of manpower, because if Chrysalis wanted to put Cadance in a cocoon, she could've done it herself.
Well, yes. But characters are capable of having ideas that their writers didn't. I don't think that Meghan McCarthy would have coherent and consistent answers to all of your questions if you asked her, but I do, because there's plenty of room for me to interpret what we see onscreen in a more positive light. You do the same thing with Cozy.
Example?
I'd hardly describe Discord as omniscient.
If we boil down conflicts to power levels, sure, but I think powerful characters are best suited for emotional or intellectual conflicts.
Myself, I kind of have this problem with some depictions of Superman. I really have no interest in watching Superman fight villains. I just don't find it interesting when the protagonist is that powerful, even if the villain is of a comparable level. What I do like is Superman in a more grounded emotional or intellectual conflict. That's why I think Lex Luthor (done well) is Superman's best villain, and my favourite Superman moments are all just him talking to people. It sounds counterintuitive, but I've always thought that my ideal Superman story would be a slice of life where he occasionally punches a villain as an afterthought.
I don't think there's any basis to assume that Chrysalis hadn't already drained significant amounts of love from Shining by the time Twilight arrived in Canterlot. Freeing him from her sometime in the course of the episode might've helped the shield hold out a little longer, but I believe that Chrysalis had been impersonating Cadance and undermining Shining for long enough before the episode began that the damage was already done.
This assumes that they can capture Chrysalis, or get anything out of her if they did, neither of which is a given.
They beat the Royal Guard, so I wouldn't dismiss them.
You're right, but she's doing visibly better than King Sombra was.
Certainly, yes. But I don't doubt that the changelings have some method of providing this, if they cared to (depends how wasteful they are). In The Matrix, the machines fed the captive humans with a slurry composed of the dead ones. That's an option here too, but a world of magic provides more possibilities, depending on what we want to go with. There could be spells to alleviate hunger and other physical needs (or maybe the pods just do that automatically), or maybe the changelings send foraging parties to gather edible plants and make the slurry out of that. In Alara's stories, changelings use mind control to make captive pegasi handle clouds for them and provide water, and you could theoretically do the same with earth ponies to have a slave-run farm as well.
I don't think it's a common thing, no, but I don't think it's a level of power she can't get from anywhere else. Maybe Shining is a particularly high calorie meal, but Chrysalis is about to plunder an entire city. Even without Shining or any of the main characters, I think she could easily match that level with enough junk food.
Besides which, this is all secondary anyway. Chrysalis doesn't need to take down the princesses herself if they escape; she could just swarm them, which as I believe I've said, I think was her plan for the wedding invasion too.
And all that's assuming that the princesses even could break out of her mind control on their own.
I don't think Chrysalis threw anything away. I think once the invasion was done and the city was subjugated, Twilight was going in a pod just like everyone else.
It is, and that issue in particular contained a few dumb moments, but this particular fact is no dumber than what the show already established. Either Chrysalis revealed changelings to the world at Canterlot, or she revealed changelings to the world in a different invasion. Either way, the result is the same.
And I'd further point out that the changelings conquering by force makes more sense than the alternative if we go by your assertion that the changelings are too bad at acting for long term infiltration.
(In the Borderworld, the explanation for this is that changeling disguises cost a lot of energy to maintain long term, and the slow and subtle approach just isn't worth it for them, so their survival strategy is to uses disguises and infiltration sparingly for key strategic targets until they can get a big score and take it all).
Correct.
I think she believed Pinkie oblivious enough to not pick up on that.
Rarity certainly considers it a reasonable enough request.
Do you have a better explanation? Because it certainly can't be because she actually cares about Applejack's feelings at all. Occam's razor suggests that Chrysalis was polite to Applejack's face because she though that's what Cadance would do.
Turning Twilight against her friends when they've objectively done nothing wrong would require spending time with Twilight, playing nice, and spinning an elaborate series of lies, all while being careful that those lies and her own acting don't actually end up exposing her. Alienating Twilight from everyone the way it happened in the episode requires no special effort on Chrysalis's part, to the point that many viewers believe she accomplished it entirely by accident. This is just like your "Discord should have befriended Pinkie" plan. It's a nice idea in itself for a what if scenario, but it is by no means the easier path.
I really don't think Chrysalis was concerned about which of the mane six would be the better meal at this point. She was already feeding well from Shining, and was days away from having her pick of the entire city.
I don't think she had any way to actually steal them until the army arrived, so making moves against the bearers in the meantime is a sensible precaution.
The only evidence Twilight found was "Cadance" using magic on Shining, and I'm pretty sure that this was again something Chrysalis was deliberately exposing to her. She knew Twilight was in the house, she conspicuously took Shining aside in front of her, she started the argument and used her magic on him on the flimsy pretense of a disagreement over what he was wearing, and in the end, the whole thing conveniently looks like garden variety domestic abuse rather than a nefarious changeling plot. And on top of that, it was still just ambiguous enough for Chrysalis to spin it in a way to make herself look good, to the point that even Twilight doubted what she saw.
No, I mean I'm undecided on at what point exactly the situation deviates from Chrysalis's expectations. She obviously sent Twilight to the caves deliberately, but where did it go wrong? Was it Twilight breaking into Cadance's cell? Was it the two of them talking it out and attempting to escape together rather than Twilight continuing to attack her? Was it them successfully escaping? Or was it just them escaping too quickly? Obviously I'm sure you believe it was going wrong right away, but I've seen fics go many different ways on this, and even my own interpretation varies depending on how generous I'm feeling towards Chrysalis on any given day.
I like the sound of that. Spoilers imply a story in the works.
Sure.
Which is precisely my problem with it. I think the way they chose to implement the message does not work at all with the rest of Equestria's world. But we can discuss that in the season nine review.
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They wouldn't tire at the same rate as a pony for one thing. And it would allow for a much greater division of labor.
Which is very important, because I don't honestly buy that any of the royal guard are strong enough to maintain a shield of that size on their own. If they were, we should have had some mention of it in the show. The Royal Guard seems pretty average in their abilities for the most part.
Well-made artifacts have easily shown to be able to replicate even the most powerful of unicorn abilities, so I'm sure something would be able to keep pace with Shinning Armor.
See above.
I was under the impression the wedding hall was in the castle. Regardless, if that's where the royalty is, there should be a greater security presence.
It's possible, although that always struck me as a weird cameo personally, given the events of The Times They Are A Changeling.
Well yeah, but I'm sure Twilight has had to deal with rude people too. At the very least if stress brought on Luna's nightmare, you'd think Celestia would take more of an interest in making sure it doesn't happen again, to either Cadence or Twilight.
Frankly I'm not sure why she wouldn't schedule a break or something at the spa between the two of them to clear the air, if she's really that close with the both of them.
They say Celestia's a benevolent, emotionally close ruler and all that, but I find it odd that she never spends time with loved ones until the later seasons.
Well she also has that scene with the bridesmaids when they are clearly terrified of her. Now maybe Twilight went looking to interview them on why they're so scared of her, but if so, I don't remember it.
Well yeah, but even if she's writing letters, the paper and ink have to come from somewhere, and it has to be delivered by someone.
Stuck in one town as Chrysalis is, how would the guard not have cottoned on to the location where the letters were sent?
We know ponies have some idea of forensics from "Rarity Investigates".
There're only so many places she could send it from, and any owners or customers would immediately be suspect. And if one went missing after the lockdowns were intuited? Well, there's a suspect right there.
Why isn't the guard going house to house looking for whoever did it?
The bridesmaids are outright terrified of her displeasure. That would have been a warning sign right there if anyone was paying attention.
Yes, but it's more defensible if they were expecting a monster attack from the Everfree, not an invasion from the sky.
True.
Yes, but if your decisions suck in general, then I'm going to have skepticism about your ability to handle course corrections going forward.
True. Some characters do that, and Chrysalis eventually improved by latter episodes. In her first appearance though, the only reason she wasn't sunk midway through part 2, was because she had a convenient army that no one knew existed.
Fair. But again, Changeling army.
And oh what a domino it was.
When your strategy is backed by enough players, even the dumbest plan becomes workable.
She could have pulled out of the Grogar plan at any point until the last minute. Maybe the Palantir would have sniffed them out, but unless it had sound or Grogar can read lips, then he has no way of knowing who started the insurrection.
If he hadn't wanted their help, he could have gotten rid of them at any time, and if they handed the bell over, and it turned out that's the only reason he wanted their assistance in the first place? Bye, bye, Chrysalis and co. It's a calculated risk, one that played off in the long run. Especially given that Discord was setting them up to fail anyway.
As for Canterlot, up until the end she was sticking to her pony forms and not doing anything illegal. If anyone would have been caught, it would have been Tirek and Cozy Glow, and how much she instructed them on how to handle their part of the plan was never explained. So, we don't actually know how much of what they do was her idea, and how much of it was their own initiative.
So, at any point she could have cut, run, left them, and made up some lie about hanging around Catnerlot for scouting purposes. Or alternatively lie and say she never left the lair. It's not like anyone is going to call her bluff, unless Grogar intends on launching a rescue for them from the Canterlot dungeons. Anyone who escaped risks implicating themselves by sharing the truth.
Agreed.
Yep. I wasn't a fan of that scene personally for multiple reasons, but it is what it is.
Given what she had to work with, I'd say the final is probably a little better. There weren't many good options for how to take on Equestria with three people, and the only truly terrible mistake she made (besides not killing her captives) was not capturing Discord the first time around (which ultimately doesn't change anything anyway).
She seemed surprised that they didn't stop Cadence. Maybe she expected Twilight to fight her way out, but she certainly didn't expect Cadence to do so.
Maybe. Chrysalis certainly thinks she's won by the time they burst into the room, but that may just be her trying to save face and remain confident in her victory.
She very clearly was surprised to see Cadence. She didn't want or expect her escape.
Perhaps but considering even Chrysalis wasn't counting on Cadence escaping, my guess is she just underestimated Twilight's intelligence. Again.
Possibly.
Well she is pretty busy living it up above ground. She might have been missed if she went spelunking looking for Cadence. That's neither there nor here however.
In fanfic sure. There is however some distance between fanfic and reality.
Sure, but I'm going to argue it with you, the same way you'll probably argue it with me.
There's two major differences though. One Cozy Glow is an extremely vague character. She doesn't give us much insight into her thought process, so there's a lot more room to interpret what she thinks about and how she plans.
Chrysalis tells us all sorts of details about how she believes things will go down, even when it's entirely unnecessary and make her look so much worse. Go back and watch that confrontation in the wedding hall. It's absolutely cringe how much she admits to bumbling her way through the episode.
Second is that I acknowledge that Cozy Glow sucks. When your based in world building this bad, how can you not? I just think everyone by that point in the series was either a bit character or sucked worse.
She's a moderately intelligent person, in a room full of dummies. Chrysalis was an early season villain, and she set the precedent (along with Discord) for every sucky villain and oblivious character trope that came after her.
"All For One" the overarching antagonist of My Hero Academy.*
Basically, how I define a switch blade villain is a villain ideally with four or more distinct powers, all with their own limitations and strengths, that telegraph themselves before they impact their target.
Chrysalis and Starlight sort of meet the criteria, but when they cast magic, a lot of it looks the same and I don't know if they can pivot one spell into another on the fly, so I'm less comfortable with that as an example.
Tirek is a great example because he has multiple powers and you wind up seeing exactly what he's using at any given time against his enemies.
And of course, all of them stand opposed to Discord, who basically by all appearances casts the same spell to do everything and telegraphs it the same way constantly with the same flash of white light.
Sure. But if those conflicts can all be bypassed altogether by some sort of brainwashing power, than how exciting or intellectually stimulating are they really?
Jonthan Crane is a great mind control villain because he needs to expose you to his toxin to influence you, and even then, people can resist him, but it still cheapens the emotional and intellectual conflict when we know someone has been poisoned to think that way.
Mad Hatter is a great mind control villain, because his powers have limitations. He needs a remote conduit of some sort to work his influence.
Even then he's more of an action villain, because his victims act how he wants them to, and they have no control over it. The only time it becomes an emotional or intellectual confrontation is during those times when Batman actively resists him from inside his mind.
None of the Main Six can do that with Discord, and they're linked to the Elements of Harmony, the only artifacts who could take him down, so why should I care about their conflict if the only reason it happens is because Discord chose not to tie up loose ends?
He could have equally chosen to make Twilight throw all her paper into a bonfire, and she'd have no choice but to obey him. Making sense may be no fun for Discord, but if a villain is going to be really random, I shouldn't be able to figure out what their up to right away, or it should be genuinely random, the kind of thing that you never really figure out.
Say what you like about Cozy Glow, but her plans leave a lot of room for interpretation. ** Everything Discord does in the Return Of Harmony becomes painfully straightforward. And I wouldn't usually have a problem with that, but again he uses annoying, lackluster half measures sooo.....
**And yes, I am talking about the magic drain. I personally think she thought it would only mildly affect Equestria and that its main purpose was to dethrone magic users. I think it's an equally valid interpretation that she wanted to kill as many of the outside population as possible, so they'd be easier to control.
I could go either way with Cozy Glow, which makes her an interesting villain. Not to mention I don't know for sure what her motivation was. She says it's power, but does she mean influence? Military might? Wealth? There's a lot of room for interpretation there.
I know what Discord wanted, and the way he goes about it is a really contrived and scenario specific plan, so I personally don't find him nearly as interesting, given how little margin for error there was for it to be successful.
Especially when being a reality warper, there were far more interesting and creative ways to deal with Twilight and company. I accept that level of short-sightedness from Cozy Glow because she's a kid, and I expect a level of ignorance from her, but an adult villain should really know better.
Same.
For me it's a lack of versatility. The only ones who truly have a chance against him are those who can exploit his weaknesses and Kryptonians, and that leaves much to be desired.
Because of the way his weaknesses tend to be done, people using them while going up against Clark doesn't usually make for good physical fights, for a variety of reasons. I think a good Superman villain ironically spends more time being thwarted by his allies than the man himself.
And Kryptonians all use the same powers, and that gets old really quick when the bad guy and good guy are fighting on the same terms. If you have two almost unkillable titans going against each other, then fine, but if you're not going to make it clear that they can affect each other at least give them different abilities so I have something new to look at.
Agreed. Lex Luthor isn't my favorite superman villain, but he is the villain I like to see Superman with. Other villains do challenge superman and that's fun to see, but by his nature most wind up being more threating to his allies than to him.
DC's animated parasite has a fun dynamic. He needs to keep Sups alive to use his powers which is pretty fun. Although I do think sticking him in a more meta filled city might be an improvement.
Metallo can work when he's fighting sups, but it really depends on how good the supporting cast is written. And illumination is a good Superman villain but it's rare that you're going to be able to turn of Superman's powers and still have the writer make Clark be able to fight back on some level.
Incidentally have you seen Superman Vs The Elite? It's actually pretty good.
It's not my preferred show, because if I watch any superhero show I'd prefer to get action, but it might just work for a superman story.
He goes from reasonably strong and confident, to exhausted over the course of the episode, so it's likely Chrysalis's feeding was an ongoing thing.
I disagree. He's noticeably less exhausted before the rehearsal. I think she took a lot of love all at once in order to hurry her plan along.
I would. When has the Royal Guard ever been useful in a fight? Ever? Don't you dare bring up the comics again. And detaining a kid with sheer numbers barely qualifies.
Well yeah. He has considerably less resources and loyal manpower than the Changelings. Of course, it's going to be a slower advance. Sombra shows up much latter in the timeline too, so of course in addition to his other limitations, he hasn't conquered as much of it.
Another bit of head cannon I have is that villains show up at roughly the same time as in the prime timeline (since none of them are directly affected by the Rainboom) and that Twilight is landing at roughly the same point in history.
Nightmare Moon still has Timberwolves running around. If anything, the Everfree really rules her timeline, and she's had way more time to get her act together.
Thank you.
Well yeah, there's the problem right there. It also depends on how much feeding a pony can endure over time and whether or not a pony can replenish love over time.
EWW!
Potential possibilities at any rate.
All possible. Spells cost magic however and if disguises are too difficult, how draining must it be to keep a victim alive, and not suffering from physical distress of being coped up in a pod all day?
Well again, I would think that mind controlling that many ponies constantly would drain the hive of energy, not to mention create a system of physically free ponies who could potentially cause trouble if those spells ever failed.
It depends on whether Changeling power is derived from physical and magical prowess, or the strength of one's emotions. In terms of the former, I submit that we have rarely seen a character be as OP as Shining Armor is casually. Other characters can but they are almost entirely main characters. This is not easy to find talent we are talking about. If this isn't about emotions, she is quite literally screwing herself. She might be even if it isn't, as I struggle to think of many characters more loyal and devoted throughout the series. Especially when it comes to Cadence.
Still probably going to be difficult to make up the difference, for the reasons I mentioned above.
Again see above.
Possible. But given she got more powerful via the love she consumed, being feed is a strategic advantage going forward. It's certainly more important than micromanaging wedding details for an unnecessary ceremony.
Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't, but given the bridesmaids get sidetracked by a wedding bouquet, I wouldn't risk it. That very well might be why she doesn't use this power going forward, because it was so unreliable.
She could have feed on her early as part of a top off. Especially after Twilight was uninvited to the Wedding. No one would have been looking for her, and it would be the perfect way to stock up before the big invasion.
Disagree. For reasons I'll elaborate on later.
If she revealed the Changelings however long ago and Equestira and Celestia has already forgotten about it, and didn't prepare for their eventual return, then not only do I wholeheartedly buy the events of Season 9, but they deserve to be eaten by the Wendigos.
"Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it."
Celestia had a personal investment in protecting Nightmare Moon's identity. What the heck is the excuse for this?
True. Not the point though.
They could still use some decent acting lessons though.
And it's dumb. By this point as I recall Tartarus didn't exist as a prison for Tirek yet. Luna's prison she couldn't exactly examine. Celestia says she confined Discord, but she clearly didn't know how the spell works. It's entirely possible she thought he was technically dead.
So Celestia is not the totally negligent dummy she became by the end of the series. This destroys any credibility she might have had going forward, and accelerated my own dismal opinion of Celestia, not to mention probably inspired even more shitty stories for the rest of the show going forward. I will say it loud and proud from the rooftops. "The MLP comics suuuuuuck!!!!!!"
Probably. Still an unnecessary risk to take though. Pinkie Pie has been proven to be smarter than people think in the past.
Because Rarity is an artist who understands letting sudden bursts of dissatisfaction uproot her whole day. And she's serving a princess so "royal privilege". Or the writers forgot when Rainbow Dash's "it needs to be 20% cooler" was driving Rarity crazy.
To anyone else, this is an unreasonable request. And again, Cadence's bridesmaids are terrified of her, which shows that she's not just being rude.
Yeah. She's half assessing her performance. Like she does with all her acting until the later seasons.
"Or maybe Changelings get love from people having warm fuzzes and she knew Applejack would be turned off by insults" is what I would say, if she hadn't dismissed Twilight on a whim.
If changelings eat emotions, shouldn't her senses have picked up on that or something? Did I mention how much I hate the confusion surrounding how Changeling feed yet?
Or quite simply, she plays nice at their initial meeting, works her hoodoo magic and gets to drain two Sparkle siblings for the price of one. She gets Twilight to act batshit crazy for her and keeps her hooves clean not to mention gets a out of it bodyguard running interference.
She's clearly surprised at how much her power has grown feasting off of Shinning Armor, so she's very clearly not full. The additional power might have made a considerable difference, given its only Shinning Armor's stolen power she has when she's blasted away by his spell casting.
Frankly I see no reason to assume it wasn't an accident. Twilight's alienation directly leads to her defeat. If this was part of a plan, it backfired spectacularly.
Except she would be using magic, so it's not the harder path. Which incidentally, I also prescribed for Discord, so not the harder way there either.
You should always optimize your war chest. And while she's feeding some from Shinning, it's clear she still isn't full. Frankly another top off couldn't hurt at this stage.
Fair. It wouldn't have been necessary, had she managed to fool them, however.
As much as I hate to burst another man's theory bubble, here's what bug a boo herself has to say about Twilight's snooping.
See? No plan, no grand strategy, just Chrysalis being an utterly terrible actress. Have I mentioned how much I hate the lack of imaginative writers on this show yet?
Believe it or not I went through the same thing with Chrysalis I did with Discord. It just lasted for a much shorter period of time. As in I was disillusioned with her before the Plundervines even finished being a thing.
Again it's a great plot, for an AU where Chrysalis is written by someone who knows how to write a good villain.
Yeah, but I think she just got lucky here.
I mean, you know my opinion.
If so, projecting her image on that wall was some really bad placements on her part.
In an AU quite possibly this. It would explain why she was expecting Twilight, not Cadence.
In all seriousness it's probably this.
It's a mystery. The not so mysterious planning of Queen Chrysalis.
Well yeah. In an alternate universe where Chrysalis is smart, I can imagine there's any number of ways to explain it away. That's not what the episode gives us though.
It implies the possibility of a story. Although now that I think about it, I suppose I could simply write about the Kirin. It's not like I have a whole lot of ideas for them aside from some background information.
If you say so. I'm nowhere near patient or loving enough to be good at proselytizing. Certainly, I can't sell anyone else on it apart from its factual realities, and people don't always warm to those implication wise.
Fair enough. I don't like it from a personal perspective, but I did see it coming what with the bad world building, the immature cast of characters, and the inconsistent messaging and morals of the early seasons.
I don't buy that Equestria is as hardline against racism as you think, but I do find it dumb that any significant number of the tribes turned against each other. Then again, humans turn on each other for less, so I can't fault it from a practical perspective.
I'm going to leave this rant here, because it wound up being way too long.
*All For One's entire thing is stealing powers from others and using them himself or transferring them to others. So, he's not powerful in off himself, but he's built up a war chest of abilities that allows him to go toe to toe with some of the stronger protagonists in the series.
Even this power has limitations though. He can't use every obtained power equally because some of them need certain types of required fuel, or knowledge that can only be obtained through practice.
It's also implied that the human body can only advance so much biologically, so he can theoretically he can only store a limited number of powers for himself.
Lastly, certain powers can negate his more active abilities, leaving him relying on powers which purely enhance his body to get the job done. This leaves him open to be thwarted by a variety of different heroes.
It's significantly harder to hurt him, because again body building abilities, but heroes can and have gotten shots in on people with similar powers over the course of the series. It's very much a case of the man making the powers work for him, rather than relying on the power to carry him to victory.
It's not a scenario like Discord where he has to cheat his way to victory in the midst of his own element, and only accomplishes what he does because he's so OP. He absolutely is OP, but that's not all there is to him.
And because All For One's not constantly being spammed at you, when he does show up in one form or another, it makes an impact unlike some villains.
He's also got his character flaws, although he's more obsessive than arrogant.
Tirek himself is a good switch blade villain once he gets going, because not only does he steal powers to grow bigger and stronger, he also learns new ones based off of the magic he absorbs. He has telekinesis, energy generation, geomancy, weight reduction fields, interspatial gateway creation, energy syphoning and power replication, to name just a few.
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SHIELD ARTEFACTS:
Citation needed. Generating a shield of that size should logically take the same amount of energy one way or the other. And just because it's the artefact getting tired rather than a unicorn, that doesn't mean it doesn't still need topping up (presumably by a unicorn) once it starts to run dry. This doesn't solve the problem, it just kicks the can down the road.
In fact, it might even be more energy efficient to use a unicorn than an artefact, because unicorns, unlike artefacts, have a precedent for suddenly pulling additional magic out of their asses with the power of love or friendship. Which is what Shining does. The shield machine couldn't have done that.
Again, you could divide the labour without an artefact.
The show tells us that in the old days, ten random unicorns could move the sun by themselves with guidance from Star Swirl. I'm pretty sure ten random Royal Guards could support Shining's shield as well.
GUARD PRESENCE:
I'm pretty sure it is, but in the wedding hall itself, you have to make room for all the guests.
I also think Chrysalis might've been able to swing ordering the guards out of the room itself.
THREAT AGAINST CANTERLOT:
It was, yes. Though, that guy came first, so I'd say that it's more like Times They Are a-Changeling was a weird episode given the events of Slice of Life.
We don't know that the threat took the form of a letter. It could've been verbally delivered by a messenger, or foreseen by Celestia in a vague prophecy, or delivered by some other untrackable means.
CELESTIA IS NOT PARANOID ENOUGH:
Yes, and that's what Twilight thinks Cadance is for most of the episode.
She missed that Luna was torturing herself with the Tantabus, so I don't think it's unusual that she'd miss "Cadance" acting oddly.
I don't think anyone ever said she was emotionally close. Look at Luna and Sunset. Look at how terrified Twilight was of Celestia in season one. My impression of (early-to-mid-series) Celestia was always that however much she cared, she's just too busy to devote that level of care and attention to her personal relationships. She has a kingdom to run, and she already devotes an unusual amount of time to Twilight's personal education as it is.
BRIDESMAIDS:
"Terrified" is exaggerating. She glares at them for disagreeing with her over the quality of Rarity's dresses, and they make sad expressions. Lyra looks a bit nervous, maybe.
THE MOVIE IS BAD, FIGHT ME:
If that is indeed what they're doing instead, but we never see the Royal Guard intervening in Ponyville or the Everfree. Or anywhere that royalty aren't present, really.
CHRYSALIS HAVING AN ARMY IS BAD:
Yeah? So what? That's the core of her plan. She invaded this way because she had a secret army. If she didn't have a secret army, she wouldn't be doing it this way. That's how cause and effect works.
Would you say Tirek had a bad plan because it wouldn't work if he didn't conveniently have the ability to absorb magic?
CHRYSALIS IN SEASON NINE:
I think it's profoundly stupid to assume that Grogar wouldn't be watching and listening to their quest and wouldn't find out what they're planning, given the Bell's supposed importance to him (I mean, he doesn't, which is even stupider on Discord's part, but it's still dumb of them).
It's also stupid to assume that he won't find out after the fact. If Grogar actually gave that much of shit and was as big a badass as he makes out to be, he could easily go to the mountain himself and attempt to retrieve the Bell personally, and discover that they lied to him, and it's pretty clear that they're not prepared to take him on yet at this stage.
And then there's the fact that they hide it in his own lair, in plain fucking sight. They don't even understand how this Bell works yet. If Grogar had any special connection to this Bell that allowed him to sense its magical presence, that would've given the game up right then and there. In fact, for we all we know, the fact that this wasn't the real Grogar might've been the only thing that saved them.
She shares implicit blame for their idiocy by allowing them to come along and going along with their stupid ideas. There was absolutely no need to cause a huge ruckus all over the city to sneak into the castle and steal one book, and they were running a huge risk that the Equestrians would find out that Tirek and Cozy had escaped Tartarus.
Literally just let the shape-shifter handle it all. It's that simple.
No, she makes a lot of dumb mistakes. They're not dumb mistakes that actually directly cost her, but again, only because she's lucky.
She lets Discord go because he has no magic (even though she's been defeated by people without magic before, one of whom was Discord), negating their element of surprise, and she's lucky that the Equestrians weren't able to mount a better defence after his warning.
She agrees with splitting up the group and goes after Starlight alone, negating their numbers advantage, and leaving Cozy and Tirek to also fight their respective enemies alone. This could've easily resulted in one or more of them being defeated and depriving the others of support (in fact, Chrysalis herself was almost defeated by Starlight), and it was lucky that they all won.
She also lets Twilight go to reunite with Shining and Cadance because she assumes they're no threat alone, when she's been defeated by Shining, Cadance, and Twilight alone before, and she's lucky that Twilight immediately loses all motivation after this and that Shining and Cadance are useless now.
She even imprisons the ponies in slimy cages instead of pods, doesn't drain their magic with either Tirek or the Bell, and instead keeps them contained with the shards of her magic-negating throne, which were reconfigured to stop all magic, including her own. This is what allows Starlight and the princesses to make trouble for them once they escape, and she's lucky that the protagonists weren't smart enough to exploit this to full effect, because I think it's entirely possible that they all could've defeated the Legion of Doom right then and there if they'd really tried.
CADANCE IN THE CAVES:
Again, I think the only issue is that it was too soon.
Well, she teleports Twilight there, so presumably she can teleport herself too. All she'd need is a minute alone. Or she could've put her in a cocoon whenever she was first moving her down there.
WATSONIAN EXPLANATIONS:
If we want to talk strict reality with only facts and no theories, then the answer just moves from "the plan was good" or "the plan was bad" to "we don't know."
And yet I still find plenty of room to justify and make sense of her plans, because I like her, just as you like Cozy, and I'm willing to not assume the worst.
WILD STALLION ATTEMPTS TO BAIT DANNYJ INTO ANOTHER DISCORD DISCUSSION:
I see.
I enjoyed Return of Harmony just fine, and that's all I'm saying on the subject. We've spent long enough debating Discord's plans already.
SUPERMAN:
That's a big part of it, yes.
I'm not too familiar with Metallo or Parasite. Despite using him as my example, I'm not a big Superman guy. Most of my observations are informed by the live action movies, particularly the movies which didn't work for me (which the Snyderverse certainly didn't).
I have not. I'll take that under advisement if I ever find a place to watch it.
I think it's the kind of story I'd write if I worked in comics. Because I remember reading Superman: Earth One, and I was really enjoying all the stuff about Clark, and his origins, the first appearance of Superman, and how the world reacted to him politically, but then halfway through the first volume there was this random alien invasion, and I just remember being really bored by it.
CHRYSALIS BEING DISCOVERED EARLY:
I don't doubt that he was weaker at the end of part one than he was at the start of it, but I don't think that the difference is that big or that sudden. He's a lot worse off in part two, but I think the mind control is the bigger factor there.
Okay, so if your position is that even Equestria's military professionals just plain suck, then that by default makes the changelings competent by the Equestrian military's standards. No matter how you want to frame it, the fact of the matter is that the changelings do beat the Royal Guard, and therefore they are a threat that cannot be dismissed.
CHRYSALIS VS. SOMBRA:
Crystal Empire comes almost immediately after Canterlot Wedding, so the timeframe doesn't make that much difference.
Also, if we factor in season nine, manpower really shouldn't be a problem for Sombra.
And I'm not sure it's a problem even discounting that, since he still had those helmets in the Sombra timeline. I think the salient issue for Sombra compared to Chrysalis is simply that he and his army are not shape-shifters and thus not as versatile.
LOVE-FARMING:
I think they can definitely withstand it better over time than if the changelings took it all at once, and I assume that they must have some capacity to replenish, otherwise there's not much point in keeping their captives alive and feeding slowly at all. Whatever method of replenishment they have probably does work slower than it would in normal daily life, though.
I don't think keeping them alive is a problem. The main challenge with that, I think we agree, is food and water, but as discussed, there are options for that. Muscular atrophy over time is an issue, but only really for the victim. I don't think that the changelings would care all that much about that, since they're feeding on an emotional state, not on meat, and if they're perpetually asleep, that should be easy enough to influence. The primary magical cost, I think, would be however much it takes to keep them all asleep, but I think whatever they would be harvesting would make up for that.
If we're talking about my world specifically, these kinds of sleep spells and mind control spells are relatively low cost because they're a one-time casting, and then the effect lasts for a set amount of time until it needs to be refreshed, whereas the changeling disguise ability requires continuous expenditure of magic for as long as it's maintained, which is fine for short bursts, but really adds up over time.
How many is that many? Because the Apples seem to run a pretty sizeable farm with only two primary workers, both of whom regularly take significant time off from their duties.
CHRYSALIS IS NOT GREEDY ENOUGH:
(Moved some topics from later on further up, for relevance).
I would say the former is more likely.
Agreed.
Nah. I think Shining Armor is abnormally powerful, but I don't think he's that much stronger than everyone else that an entire city couldn't match his potential. I'd be hesitant to ascribe even Star Swirl that level of power, and I find Star Swirl absurdly overpowered.
I didn't say it wasn't. I'm just entertaining your hypothetical scenario of what Chrysalis would do about the sun and moon if she somehow had the princesses but didn't have Shining Armor's love.
Well, what I can say for certain is that the day and night cycle appears normal in the Chrysalis timeline, and that Chrysalis probably wouldn't be bothering with Zecora's resistance if the princesses were still a factor, so I think it's safe to assume that whatever plan Chrysalis had for the sun and moon was viable.
She could have, yes, but it wasn't necessary, and she has the rest of her army to feed after this is over.
Seems like an unnecessary logistical complication. Shining Armor she has an excuse to keep close to at all times, even when they go to bed. Twilight is independent and can't be expected to stay with her the entire time until the wedding. Plus, with draining or controlling two unicorns, you double the chances of them resisting, double the chances of getting caught, and double the chances of anything going wrong in general. There's probably a good reason why she wasn't fully mind controlling Shining and the bridesmaids all along.
Changelings are never full. According to Chrysalis, they're always hungry.
FIENDSHIP IS MAGIC IS KIND OF OKAY IN SOME RESPECTS, FIGHT ME:
The changelings weren't forgotten. Many of the mane six in the comic are already familiar with changeling history. But the changelings were assumed to be a threat already eliminated long ago.
Nobody expects Palpatine to return until somehow Palpatine returns.
They could, yes.
In my world, all the better actors had long term deep cover assignments, mostly infiltrating Equestria's intelligence agencies, and a lot of them died after Canterlot, so by the time of Where and Back Again, Chrysalis is working with a lower calibre of infiltrator.
The FIENDship series was published in 2015, and even included a Tirek issue, so Celestia's habit of imprisoning foes and then not checking on them until they become a problem again was already established by this point. Furthermore, Chrysalis's issue also establishes that she is currently imprisoned by Equestria again in this story, and is actually under active watch from the Royal Guard this time, so I wish this story had inspired the show's writers going forwards.
CHRYSALIS THE CHESSMASTER:
Right. In other words, it's an action that Rarity will accept and brush off, while Twilight will make a big deal over, which is the point in the scenario I propose.
In this case, giving a performance that Applejack buys, but not Twilight.
No, Twilight's alienation by itself is great for Chrysalis. It gives her the opportunity to remove Twilight as a threat with nobody questioning her absence. It's down in the caves that Chrysalis makes a mistake.
I disagree, but refer to previous argument on the subject. This thread is long enough without rehashing our Discord arguments too.
I think it would've been prudent regardless.
Chrysalis's statement here would be true regardless of how deliberate any of it was. It's entirely open to interpret any way you want. Hence me doing that.
Hi, my name is DannyJ.
If so, yes, definitely.
I agree. Again, defending the character, not the writing.
GOD, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING:
Much like our arguments on more trivial matters, I will say I understand your reasoning and viewpoint, even if I don't fully share it, and that will unfortunately have to be enough in this case. But you and I share a common foundation for faith, even if we differ in specific interpretations, and that is already more than a lot of people have when it comes to dialogue about faith, so I believe we should be content with it.
That said, I'd be interested to hear more about your branch of Evangelicalism. I've met a lot of Catholics, and I attended a Methodist service once, but I don't know many Evangelicals, and I believe that hearing other perspectives is valuable.
THE SEASON NINE RACE WAR ARC:
Indeed. A topic for more in-depth discussion in the season nine review, perhaps.
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Inspiration Manifestation. Rarity is able to cast Discord level spells without batting an eyelid. Name a unicorn who could do that.
My head cannon is that artifacts absorb magic from the environment, while unicorns create it via metabolism, albeit far more slowly.
Ponies can draw on outside sources for strength, but it's usually an ability rooted in instinct, talent, or forms of specific spellcasting. Even those that can do it, can't do it all the time, or do it equally well.
You could, but so could an artifact. And it won't call in sick or croak, leaving you in the lurch, unlike how ponies will.
Yes, but I barely remember that most of the time, because again Horse Play.
Maybe if the shielding spell works like that, which I don't assume it does, since in my head cannon, they're creating it wholesale, as opposed to tapping into preexisting spells. If it's a preexisting spell, then other ponies should be able to support it.
More to the point in my cannon, maintaining a spell like that requires physical objects to structure it, lest it collapse once energy is no longer feed through it, so again artifacts should be in play.
I'm still going to post guards at the doors though.
Not as Cadence. Celestia and Luna are the ones overseeing the defenses, and I think Celestia would ask if the guards she posted went missing.
I mean, I won't deny the order of events, but the idea of changelings hanging out with ponies in general is a weird thing for no one to talk about.
They were willing to genocide a bunch of clones who look like the town darling for being annoying and destructive, but no one complains about the shape shifting, pony love eating, monster? That episode is itself chalk full of confusing tidbits that make no sense.
Same problem. You'd have individuals you can track, so you'd have leads and witnesses to chase down.
That rather undermines the idea that Chrysalis was responsible for delivering the message, which is what this argument was aimed at addressing. Although it's a possibility.
Examples?
And Chrysalis couldn't keep that up either.
By Season 5, so it's a latter episode than this one, which doesn't leave much of a good impression for Celestia either.
And yet she has time to take care of a pet, come down to Ponyvile to eat cake, attend celebrations, and sort out Twilight's mental breakdowns. I'm sure she has some pressing engagements, but she's not nearly as busy as the show would pretend.
More than a little quite frankly.
None of which means they can't though.
They were apparently scouting out the north for the Empire's return, so they do in fact have duties outside of guarding royalty.
Yes, but if your only job is preventing people from finding out about the pony in your basement, and you fail at doing so through refusing to deal with issues in a basic sensible manner, your skills as a leader may be called into question.
But again assuming he didn't just snatch them up because he was unwilling to go to Mt Everhoof, he must have had a reason for recruiting them.
The Palantir has visuals but no sound from what I can tell, so good luck figuring out who started the rebellion. I suppose he could have killed the three of them immediately and together, but realistically whose he going to replace them with?
Cozy Glow is pretty disposable, but it's not like Tirek and Chrysalis are. Again, it's a calculated risk, especially if he was always planning to kill them off anyways after the fact.
If Grogar really gave a shit, then he wouldn't have bullied two backstabbers and a washed out egomaniac to retrieve his bell for him.
Whatever I thought about Season 9 Grogar, it was plainly obvious by Frenemies that he was going to rely on the other villains a lot, as opposed to doing much of anything himself.
When they first return, they stash it in a rush job yes. By latter installments they've come up with much better hiding places.
Possible. If that was the case though, I would've thought he would notice Gusty the Great stealing it way back when.
What does she care though?
Even if they figured out Tirek and Cozy Glow escaped, ponies are far too dumb and forgetful to assume Chrysalis has anything to do with it. Her cover is safe no matter how bad they screw it up.
Plus, Cozy Glow knows the layout of the castle (for some reason) and if push came to shove, Tirek is Chrysalis's best bet to fight her way out or cause a sufficient distraction so that she can escape.
Yes, but Chrysalis is a lazy sloth with an inherent need to order others around soooo....
Well yes, it's dumb and I agree with you. That's why I brought it up earlier.
Technically by Starlight. She was the one making the plans after all.
Yes, Discord helped, but quite frankly after so long dominating her hive, my personal guess of Chrysalis's character is that she only bothers considering the ones who call the shots as being truly people.
In her eyes Discord is just a drone, and not a clever one either, judging by how he was entrapped by the Fluttershy trick. And yes, he does fall for it. Even if he wasn't dumb enough to go wading through the middle of them looking for Fluttershy, he still hesitates instead of running away outright.
We know he can outrun Changelings, so the only way they could have jumped him is if he delayed out of worry for Flutters. Chrysalis would undoubtedly see that as a weakness. She ditched her own people once they were stolen with considerably less consideration.
True. It's just as likely that having the whole gang group on them while they were together would have also caused them to lose. That's pretty much what happens in the finale anyway. Splitting up allowed them to pick their battle fields and take some of their enemies by surprise, and they might not have won had they chosen another tactic.
Twilight teleported out. Chrysalis didn't let her go, because there was no way for Chrysalis to follow her. She vetoed Tirek's suggestion to hunt her down, but by that point, there's no way they know for certain where she was even going, much less what kind of resistance she'll have marshaled once they get there. There's a wisdom to staying put in the battlefield they know.
There are many explanations for this, but it's possible she just didn't want to or couldn't expend the level of slime to cocoon all of them. She only puts Celestia in a cocoon for the wedding, and in "To Where And Back Again" she had an entire hive to help with imprisoning the others.
Well the first is a guy she doesn't trust, has no upper power limit, and could probably wipe the floor with everyone in the known universe once he really got going, who has already become incredibly powerful in a short period of time. One more strong pony might very well put him over the top. And as you pointed out, Starlight Glimmer nearly beat Chrysalis by herself. She's not going to trust him with that level of power yet.
The bell itself is a rat hole, until they figure out how to handle Discord's chaos magic, and they've already dumped the princesses power down there, so no way of moving the sun and moon currently. I don't think she actually was thinking about that, but it probably makes sense not to get rid of any more resources.
Yeah this one weirds me out personally. Long story short, I think they should have just made this the material Starlight used to bottle up Cutie Marks, because it doesn't act like the stone from Chrysalis's throne at all. Instead of rendering magic inoperable, it blocks it physically, which changes the dynamic of the fight significantly.
Well first of all Tirek's magic does work technically. It's what freed Starlight Glimmer. And her magic casting is what frees the others. So, some magic casting is in fact possible.
Second of all, Tirek's a big guy, and in a small space, he has some considerable advantages, because they can't really maneuver around him like they need to in order to take him down. The guy has multiple ways to attack you, so you'd need a really good angle to attack him without getting slam dunked.
She says in fact that Cadence is too late. Chrysalis had no plans for Cadence getting out of there.
I always thought she phased Twilight through the floor. Or turned the floor immaterial. Certainly, the animation seems to imply that. I don't know if Chrysalis can teleport. Maybe in Season 9, but I don't remember it.
Well yes, but I'm talking about in the intermedium. I would have put her in a cocoon from the outset, if there was still time. In the case of Cadence, I'm willing to assume that the most likely scenario is that Chrysalis ambushed her at some point, and then dropped her through the floor as a means of disposal, in order to hide her from the palace staff or whoever may have shown up afterwards looking to talk with her.
We can blend facts and theories, but they should still follow the show to some degree, or at least mine attempt to.
Fair enough. I like her too, I just think her debut was cringe.
There are a few others like Dimento from Super Paper Mario. Incidentally he's somewhat under powered as an antagonist, if you want an example of that. You should really watch a video with all the cutscenes though, because if you like themes, you'll probably enjoy it.
All I'm saying is that my main problem with the guy is his lack of limitations.
Q had limitations. HIM had limitations. Trigon had limitations. Bill Cipher had limitations. Every villain I can remember off the top of my head has had some significant physical limitations, except for Discord. That's all.
Indeed.
I only know stuff from the wiki and the animated show Superman: The Animated Series versions. Their pretty good antagonists in their respective episodes though.
I was more into the animated series than anything else. I enjoy the IP's, but I'm not a big investor in them myself.
I've seen a little bit of the live action tv show, and Smallville which was a decent episodic show. I lost interest in it at some point after they started doing less with the metahumans though.
It's the argument between should a hero kill or not. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions it draws, but I won't pretend it isn't good. At least I remember it fondly. It's a lot like what you described, so I think you might enjoy it.
Mine would be a long-drawn-out crime drama highlighted by mass scale warfare conducted by Supervillains. That's what I find myself wanting to read these days.
I mean I enjoy action personally, but like you said, with Superman it's hit or miss. And I do enjoy having a face to an alien threat, even if they're just a bunch of one offs.
He gets considerably weaker in part two, to the point where he looks exhausted. I assume the bulk of his love Chrysalis takes after she sends Twilight to the caverns.
He has bags under his eyes, and his horn is barely sparking. It's clear Chrysalis's feeding has taken its toll on him.
It depends on how charitable I am disposed to the Royal Guard on any given day.
Yes, but it doesn't mean that there aren't ponies who couldn't clean their clocks, just that few of them are in the Royal Guard.
The reality is that if six ordinary mares can kick the swarm's ass for several minutes, either they aren't ordinary or the swarm's abilities suck.
It makes some difference. Consider every factor. Sombra's forces would still be on the border, whereas Chrysalis has miraculously been able to smuggle hers as far as the capital, because again shapeshifters.
Didn't we agree that Season 9 Sombra was most likely a shadow puppet created by Discord? In fact, it's those powers he demonstrated (all derivative of Discord's abilities by the way) that helped convinced me that's what he was.
Which assuming he doesn't have the creation powers of Season 9, he still has to manufacture and apply via an unwilling populace the size of a city, using only his own reputation and powers. I don't care how strong he is, population control takes time, and he hasn't had a whole lot of that.
Plus, the implication given off by the mines is that at least some of the helmet's components are buried underground, meaning he had to dig them up using the slave force that already doesn't like him and has every reason to resist his rule. So yeah, he's got loyalty issues alright.
And probably population issues too, depending on how many ponies he's captured and how effective his powers are at intimidating them. A large enough area and population, and he'd be hurting to establish trustworthy oversight.
Certainly that's a part of it.
Possibly.
Preservation for rationing. Chrysalis says as much in Frenemies.
Probably. We still don't know that they can replenish it, although I'll certainly entertain it as a possibility.
Eh, depends on what kind of issues the hive is facing at any given time.
It's possible there are options for that certainly.
I have only passing familiarity with the subject, but doesn't that lead to additional health problems over time?
Yeah I don't think they feed on meat per say, but I don't buy their feeding on emotions.
If they did, why are their senses so damn awful at detecting it? If nothing else, one would think they would learn how to be nice, or that feeding on it would cause some level of psychological problems, but the only thing that seems to be affected is stamina. These aren't emotions they're feeding on, I'm quite confident of that.
Season 9 kind of hints there might be more to it with that feeding scene in Frenemies, but even that scene doesn't give us much more to go on. Certainly not enough to convince me by itself that Changelings are feeding on emotions.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how fast they burn through love naturally, and how much that's accelerated by using magic or creating and maintaining a cocoon and its internal mixtures.
Well it depends. The Apples run a farm with full access to all relevant information and understanding of the best way to run it. Changeling hypnosis interferes with perception, so presumably some information is hidden from their senses, complicating the process.
Does Changeling hypnosis also interfere with special talents? Would they even have ponies with the special talents necessary to farm vast swaths of land? From what we've seen, artisan or magic cutie marks are more common. So yeah, there are potential flaws in this plan.
A sufficient number of enslaved ponies may help make up for a lack of innate talent, but you still have to deal with ponies who may or may not be conscious of or fully understand what they're doing at any given time. Frankly I'm surprised Sombra's slaves were as competent as they were, and their battle tactics were basically to swarm in mass. I have no idea how well a changeling farm would function in a serious analysis.
Agreed.
Thank you.
I mean he is shielding an entire city, so I don't think anyone else we see in town is going to match his potential.
Starswirl (at least in the tv show) was smarter as opposed to OP. Other than that banishing spell, which covered a relatively small area, I struggle to think of a spell he cast where he didn't have back up in the form of artifacts or a support cast. Shinning Armor generated a fixed shield that covered an entire city, while mobile for several days, and apparently either did it in his sleep or did without. All without any help from artifacts or other ponies. Now that's OP.
You're going to have to remind me what your talking about, because I've lost track of what this objection is in relation to originally.
But is that because she feed on the princesses life force and gained the ability to move the planets? Is she using them to move the sun and moon? Heck did Luan escape somehow? Is she moving the planets instead of Chrysalis? Who knows?
More power is always a good thing and once the invasion starts, everyone will be too busy running around to feed. Having an extra ace in the hole for the changeling cause doesn't hurt. Given that this is the only reason she took down Celestia, I can safely say that this is the only time where I acknowledge her greed as paying dividends.
Why not? Two girls hanging out. Slumber party! Yeah, it's unorthodox, but Celestia isn't going to care. She has way bigger problems to deal with right now. And if the Main Six complain, it's them against a princess and the princesses' student. That would be the rift you were arguing was vitally important to Chrysalis's plan right there.
Depends on the circumstances. Alternatively, you could make nice around Twilight just long enough to take some love from her at varying intervals. It's clearly not a thing Shinning Armor noticed at first.
Probably. But as you pointed out, full mind control may not be necessary here.
Yes, but if she isn't full, that means she hasn't eaten all the love she can afford too, which means she's not at full strength yet. Additional power can't hurt unless there are rules which prevent her from digesting more than one person's love at a time or something.
Then why does Twilight ask point blank what Chrysalis is and only Cadence responds? Information she most likely had through Chrysalis rambling about her life story to her. Did Celestia forget what her own nemesis looked like, despite having went to war with her years ago?
And yet it didn't occur to any of them that's what Chrysalis was? Only Cadence recognized her, despite Celestia meeting her face-to-face years ago? This is the problem with the comics. Even before the rewrites, they couldn't keep continuity either.
You said imprisoned not entombed. So, which is it? As long as their still alive they're a threat, a fact which Celestia and co should be aware of after all the eldritch beings they've dealt with over the years.
You can say the circumstances of the Wendigos return were stupid, but there's not a single pony in the show whose left wondering what they are, as to be expected from such widely dispersed tales of the bogeyman. If a guy in dashing gothic fashion with fangs shows up, no wonders what kind of monster, he is, because everyone knows. Wendigo's had that status. Changelings don't which tells me that no one remembered them.
And it only gets dumber because Chrysalis herself implies that her discovery of Equestria is a recent thing, which makes no sense if the changelings plundered it years ago as the comics portrayed.
Yeah, this sounds like you seriously compared MLP comics to Rise Of Skywalker.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, because plenty of the Star Wars books brought Palpatine back in some form or another, but linking something you like to one of the most roundly despised movie trilogies in history may not be the way to argue that the comics are in fact good.
Welp we agree on that.
It's possible, I suppose.
Fair. I must have misremembered the timeline again.
Sounds promising. Still doesn't alter the issues I have with the comics in general though.
We will address that later.
Yes, but here her performance is actually somewhat good. If it was just her muttering rude or vile things under her breath whenever Twilight was nearby, I might buy the whole alienation theory, but as it is, it's so obvious what kind of person she is, that the only reason it makes any sense for the Ponyville five to excuse it is their awestruck expectations of royalty.
How could Chrysalis have known that Twilight wouldn't have kissed her hooves like any pony else? It's what she does for Celestia.
Chrysalis herself is taken by surprise by Twilight's reaction when she confronts "Cadence" at the end of part 1, and is clearly terrified by it. So, I don't think her alienating Twilight was intentional.
Sending her to the caves is itself a mistake, as it puts her in close proximity to Cadence. Keeping Twilight topside is much safer for her plans.
Turning Pinkie Pie into a simp is not harder than turning all of them bitter, especially given she was halfway there already.
It gives him one mark to keep track off as opposed to six, and a mark who actually finds him pleasurable company, which is what little basis his relationship with Fluttershy supposedly has.
It also spares him the potential embarrassment from not understanding his targets, as in the case of Fluttershy. Because again one mark to research not six.
The only reason not to follow through on this plan is because he dislikes company in general, and doesn't want Pinkie Pie clinging to his heels, which makes no sense given his relationship with Fluttershy and how it started.
Yes but given pony gullibility, fooling them is the better ploy to aim for.
Possibly. The context and tone doesn't convince me of that though.
We've met.
Huzzah! We agree!
Well yes. Again, alternate worlds ectara. I just don't think you'll accept that as an excuse when we get to Season 8 or 9 however.
As long as I made myself clear, that's all I can do I suppose.
We believe in the same principals. I suspect for somewhat differing reasons though.
Well again, I don't know what I can tell you for sure, as I'm probably atypical of my church, but as near as I can tell there's a definite emphasis on the bible being the word of God, on the importance of the usual church things, etc.
Baptism is important, but it's a proclamation of faith, not some saving act in of itself. Commune is much the same. There's a heavy emphasis on belief in Jesus and that faith leads to good works. Pretty typical stuff as far as I know, but I haven't been outside of the church, so I don't know what else to compare it too.
Well again, not sure how typical I am, but feel free to ask.
Perhaps.
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SHIELD ARTEFACTS:
Using an artefact that somebody else already put a shitload of power into is easy and low effort, yes. Creating an artefact that's that powerful is an entirely different matter. If you want Canterlot to have a shield-generating artefact that's as powerful as Shining Armor, you need to put at least one full Shining Armor's worth of magic into it first.
Neat concept. But it's equally possible that artefacts don't work this way.
This is true, yes. However, you're operating by the assumption that Shining Armor is irreplaceable. You're thinking Shining Armor could die, therefore the ponies need to create an artefact that's just as powerful as Shining Armor for redundancy. But it's equally possible that there are other powerful unicorns who manage something comparable, or that one of the alicorn princesses could pick up the slack (Cadance does against Sombra in the following episode), or that several less powerful unicorns could collaboratively achieve it. In fact (and you're going to hate me for saying this) in the comics there was a previous attack on Canterlot generations before Shining Armor was born, and they had a giant city-sized shield back then too. Celestia is implied to have cast it, and the other unicorns in the city pitched in, and it worked just fine for that battle.
Well, Shining Armor isn't shown to be constantly casting the shield spell. The shield spell is already in place as a semi-independent construct, and he's seen periodically shooting a burst of magic into the sky to reinforce it. So I see no reason why another unicorn couldn't also shoot a burst of magic into the sky to support it (which is what they do in that comic I mentioned).
GUARD PRESENCE:
Celestia is most definitely not in charge of the defences. She's delegated that to Shining Armor. When he talks about Canterlot's defences, he refers to Celestia "requesting" and "asking" for security measures, not ordering it, and he also directly says that he's the one responsible for defending Canterlot. So as both the groom and the Captain of the Royal Guard, he should be more than able to order the Royal Guard out of his own wedding hall if Chrysalis wants him to.
THREAT AGAINST CANTERLOT:
I'm going to avoid commenting on the Pinkie clones for the sake of not spiralling off into another potentially controversial topic, but ponies absolutely do complain about the changeling in their midst. He's sitting alone in the middle of a bunch of empty chairs because everyone's afraid of him and keeping their distance.
Say they do. What is the problem? We're supposing that the message was verbally delivered either by a changeling in disguise, or by some guy who met a changeling in disguise. Any possible physical description of who they met isn't going to be useful. They'd just have an investigation going nowhere.
That's just my personal theory and what was going on in my world. I'm entertaining other possibilities as well for the sake of discussion.
Message that teleports in and self-destructs after reading. Fake witnesses that give no identifying information on the real threat. Messages delivered in a dream. Illusion magic appearing in the night sky. A regular letter with magic to fool whatever forensics you think the ponies have. There's a lot of ways to deliver an anonymous threat even in our world, and magic just opens up more possibilities.
CELESTIA IS NOT PARANOID ENOUGH:
What does that have to do with suspecting Cadance is demonically possessed?
Okay. What about how her neglect caused Nightmare Moon in the first place? That was a thing straight from episode one.
Overlooking odd behaviour in the people close to her has always been a part of Celestia's characterisation.
I don't think she has zero free time, but I think she's spending a lot of what free time she does have on Twilight. The Ponyville visit was very plainly for the mane six' benefit, and it had to be rescheduled at least once (due to Fillydelphia's parasprite problem), and she was interrupted and had to leave to attend to other business on the day of the actual visit, too.
BRIDESMAIDS:
static.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/1/16/Lyra%2C_Twinkleshine_and_Minuette_behind_Cadance_S2E25.png/revision/latest?cb=20120925024937
Doesn't look too bad to me. No wide eyes. No tense stance. Fear isn't my impression here. I'm pretty sure I've seen Spike or some of the mane six make this exact same expression to indicate embarrassment or regret after some sitcom awkwardness.
THE MOVIE IS BAD, FIGHT ME:
Nope. But it's pretty convenient timing for the Storm King that the city's entire defence force conveniently had a threat to deal with somewhere else this one time and no other that we know of. And it's still shit planning either way.
Yes, but that very evidently served the specific purpose of providing advance notice of Sombra's return, which is a princess-level threat, and which it was entirely the Royal Sisters' responsibility to deal with.
The princesses and the Royal Guard are never shown to be policing the rest of the country.
CHRYSALIS HAVING AN ARMY IS BAD:
This was far from Chrysalis's only job, and it wasn't even an especially important-seeming job by the time it went wrong. You say Chrysalis is a bad leader or bad planner because she sent Twilight to the caves, while ignoring that she successfully infiltrated the city, fooled everyone except Twilight, undermined their key defence, personally defeated Celestia, and then her military defeated the entire Royal Guard, captured the Elements of Harmony, and occupied the city. The ponies only won by a total deus ex machina. Chrysalis thoroughly outmanoeuvred them in every other respect, by Twilight's own admission, and in another timeline she then went on to conquer the rest of the country as well. And in the comics, Equestria isn't even the first kingdom she's toppled.
CHRYSALIS IN SEASON NINE:
Why on Earth would it not? Twilight can remotely record audio with a regular spell, but an artefact of the supposed "first emperor of Equestria" can't hack it? And we know for a fact that Discord can listen in on people without being seen, because he's done it before. In fact, Chrysalis herself is capable of remote audio listening.
I really don't think this thin veneer of plausible deniability is worth as much as you think it is. Even if Chrysalis somehow got away scot-free after Tirek and Cozy were found out, that's gonna be cold comfort when "Grogar" learns they fucked up his plans. He'll know the two of them were rebelling. And if the other two were caught rebelling, there's absolutely no way that Grogar's suspicion won't fall on Chrysalis as well, and if he questions her, she can't prove her loyalty or innocence, because is in fact treacherous and guilty.
I wouldn't think Sombra was disposable either, especially not with the massive power boost he had in season nine, but Grogar did indeed seem to dispose of him, so Tirek and Chrysalis should definitely not be assuming that he needs them that badly. They aren't even the only major remaining unreformed villains he could theoretically go to at this point. There's still the Storm King, the Sirens, the original Pony of Shadows, Ahuizotl, and the most fearsome of all, Zesty Gourmand.
Do we know that he didn't? I always pictured Grogar angrily running after the Bell like a buffoon, just like the Legion of Doom do in the finale.
What gives you that impression? If anything, I think Chrysalis loves taking a direct hand in her villain plans. She's always in the thick of it, even when she doesn't have to be.
Well, Starlight was basically alone, so if they attacked her first, all three of them, it would've been no contest. Tirek beat the Pillars quite handily on open ground with no strategic advantage other than raw power, so there's no downside to him bringing friends. And as for Cozy's attack on the palace, she's the least experienced with magical combat, and yet took on the biggest target, and unsurprisingly almost lost, and it's only the arrival of the others that saves her, so she definitely shouldn't have gone alone (and as an aside, Tirek and Chrysalis also never should've let Cozy run away with the Bell on her own in the first place, since she had already proven herself untrustworthy by this point, and also could've lost it to the heroes).
And also, none of them really had the element of surprise anyway, since again, they were all forewarned, because Chrysalis let Discord go.
So no, I feel pretty confident that sticking together could've only improved their chances.
Teleport tracking is entirely possible. We see Starlight doing it to follow Twilight in magic training. And we know it's tracking rather than pre-agreed destinations because they both accidentally end up underwater.
And Chrysalis absolutely let her go. Of course they're not going to know where Twilight's going or what support she'll have if they never even try to follow her.
If cocoons were outright not an option (which I don't buy, because this is most personally poweful Chrysalis has ever been), then draining their magic becomes even more necessary.
She trusted him in Frenemies, and trusted him enough to let him drain the Pillars. She also trusted Cozy to handle the Bell alone in this episode, despite Cozy proving herself far less trustworthy than Tirek. And even if trusting Tirek was a concern, is it a bigger concern than all of your enemies still having their magic, in addition to free movement of their limbs, when you have other enemies still at large who could theoretically teleport in and free them all at a moment's notice?
There is no excuse for this.
Okay. So then in addition to potentially interfering with the Legion's own magic, this method of imprisonment is also potentially ineffective at actually containing prisoners. That's even worse.
CADANCE IN THE CAVES:
She's too early because she exposes Chrysalis's identity early. She's too late because it's too late to stop the invasion. These statements are not contradictory.
Possible. Works out the same either way as far as the practicality of reaching the caves goes.
WATSONIAN EXPLANATIONS:
Mine also do.
WILD STALLION SUCCESSFULLY BAITS DANNYJ INTO ANOTHER DISCORD DISCUSSION:
I vaguely recall playing Super Paper Mario a long time ago. It kind of lost me on the gameplay, because I was a big fan of the original Paper Mario and was expecting something more like that.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Discord has many physical limitations. He's weak to harmony magic, will fade if he's not chaotic enough, can be held by strong enough telekinesis, can be affected by spells from high level casters like Starlight, is vulnerable to all forms of magic-draining or suppression, can become physically sick, his spells can be resisted or undone, and on top of all that, he's vulnerable to plain old emotional manipulation, too. He's way more limited than Q, especially putting both characters the context of their own universes, where Q is a god among mortals, and Discord is a decently powerful mage in a world full of magic.
SUPERMAN:
I am familiar with the comic it's apparently based on by reputation, but I haven't read it.
Sounds interesting. Elaborate.
CHRYSALIS BEING DISCOVERED EARLY:
I mean, I don't doubt that her feeding is a part of it, but I really think that the exhaustion has just as much to do with the mind control, because that's the major visible difference between part one Shining and part two Shining. Part two Shining is in full zombie mode, much like the mane six when they were under Starlight's control, and when that mind control was broken, they also were all tired and felt like shit, even with no love-draining at all.
Okay. So you're saying that the Royal Guard shouldn't be worried about the changeling army on the way, because they can just have the mane six handle it all?
Because the mane six are also defeated in the episode.
Yes, I agree, the mane six aren't ordinary at all.
CHRYSALIS VS. SOMBRA:
That's what I said. Chrysalis's abilities give her more options.
Yes. But again, considering all options for the sake of argument.
He does have a head start on that, though. We know the mining was already in operation when the Empire vanished a thousand year ago. Presumably it's only a matter of picking up where he left off. How far he got before his defeat is up for debate, but I'd think he would have to move fast to get his army raised and under control before the Equestrians could stop him. I mean, even assuming they couldn't find the Crystal Heart in time or stop him from entering the Empire in this timeline, the military still could've been at his gates in a matter of days. If Sombra raising his army was as slow a process as you assume, I don't think we'd be seeing an open battle. We'd be seeing the Empire under siege.
LOVE-FARMING:
That's true, I suppose.
At a casual search, muscular atrophy while being treated in an intensive care unit causes physical weakness, potential disability, reduced quality of life, and increased time in the ICU, none of which I would think would be a concern for the changelings.
One result does say that it can result in increased likelihood of disease. That's something they'd probably want to avoid, if only because it'll kill their food source faster, but disease-preventing magic health bubbles are a thing that exist, so that's an easy fix.
Alternatively, if ponies don't automatically replenish their love over time, and keeping them in pods is only for rationing, then the point where they catch a disease might just be the point they drain everything that's left and throw the pod in a fire.
What are they feeding on, then?
When do we see changelings failing to detect love?
Both of these occur in Where and Back Again.
Well, generally speaking, there's no way to get food without expending some energy. Even in our age of modern convenience where we can get groceries delivered straight to our door, we still need to walk out to pick it up. For the changelings, their options appear to be either just sucking all the love straight out of their victim, or putting them in a coccoon and draining them more slowly over time. Which one is more energy efficient I couldn't say, but we see them doing both at different times, and if one of them were a net loss to the hive's resources, it really wouldn't really make sense to do at all, especially not on a large scale.
Could do. But remember that my operating theory is that Chrysalis in the changeling timeline was mind controlling the Royal Sisters to keep them moving the sun and moon, so I work by the assumption that changeling mind control victims still at least broadly retain their skills, even if they no longer have the capacity to use them to their full potential.
CHRYSALIS IS NOT GREEDY ENOUGH:
Why not? We have almost no examples of other unicorns even attempting to cast shields like these, so how can we compare?* I agree that Shining is a notably powerful unicorn, but we have no reliable means of gauging how much more powerful he is than the average pony, or how rare that level of power is. For all we know, there might be plenty of other unicorns in his league who just aren't using their magic to its full potential, aren't as educated, or whose own abilities aren't as flashy or obvious.
*And even if we could directly compare Shining's shield spell to a bunch of other unicorns casting the same spell, it still wouldn't be a reliable gauge of his superiority on its own, because we'd also have to factor in that it's his special talent, and there's a strong possibility that he had help from one or more alicorns in the initial casting.
Star Swirl was the primary father of the Tree of Harmony, the primary handler of the sun and moon before the Royal Sisters, took on villains like Tirek, the Dazzlings, and the PoS without artefacts, and single-handedly held back the Everfree when even Twilight couldn't. He is at least as powerful as an alicorn just by strength alone, and I have no doubt that he could mop the floor with Shining.
So to recap:
1. You were saying Chrysalis trying to take Canterlot was a bad plan (in part) because you think Celestia and Luna would break free somehow if Chrysalis tried to do... something with the sun and moon.
2. I pointed out that Chrysalis both knows mind control (and thus could get the princesses to handle all that for her), and also has canonically beaten Celestia in a fight, and so could manage her if she ever did break free.
3. You started arguing about how Chrysalis could only do this because she had Shining's love. I'm not really sure what this had to do with anything, because if she has the princesses in captivity she presumably already has Shining's love, but we go on a lot of tangents like these, so I rolled with it
4. I argue assuming a hypothetical scenario where Chrysalis has the princesses in captivity but does not have Shining Armor, pointing out how she could potentially become powerful enough by other means, and also that she doesn't necessarily need to be that powerful anyway when she could just swarm them.
5. Topic drifts even further when you bring up the importance of feeding to her plan, and the original point is now fully lost, but that's okay, because we're still discussing that in the next quote.
No idea. All are possibilities. As I've said, my money is on Chrysalis mind-controlling the Royal Sisters. It seems to me like the simplest solution, and the one most likely to work. But whatever the case may be, it's quite clear that she knows who Celestia is and what she does, so the fact that she decides to attack Canterlot anyway tells me that she probably had a plan for the sun and moon. And in the timeline where she won, the sun and moon are indeed fine. And while this could just be a lucky coincidence, it's far more likely that her plan just worked.
I'm more thinking about dividing the spoils after the fact than immediate power boosts mid-invasion. As you pointed out, Chrysalis likes to ration her food and save some for later. Chrysalis could consume Twilight right away for an instant power boost, or she could save her for later and possibly feed several changelings. The deciding question is, how badly does Chrysalis want or need that power boost? And the answer is, not much, because Shining is already enough on his own, and she was never intending to fight Celestia one on one anyway.
Again, there's a lot of additional logistical complications here. Chrysalis has to juggle a second victim, maintain a more elaborate series of lies, and deal with additional scrutiny this way.
In my plan, Chrysalis was causing a conflict within the mane six with minimal effort or trouble for herself, and no actual suspicion on her from anyone other than Twilight, because only Twilight saw her acting oddly. But if Chrysalis instead wanted to cause conflict within the mane six this way, she now potentially has five or more people thinking either she or Twilight are acting oddly, which is a much greater risk to her, and which she'll need to work a lot harder to cover for.
And if we go by your interpretation that there was no deliberate strategy here and that she really is just a shitty actor who was just lucky that everyone but Twilight was willing to ignore her behaviour, then she absolutely cannot afford to be more suspicious than she already is.
So all in all, playing nice with Twilight and feeding on her in addition to Shining is a lot more effort. And once again, when considering this, we have to ask that same question of how badly does Chrysalis need to feed on Twilight? And for the same reasons as before, the answer is a resounding, "not much," which in this case also means, "not badly enough to make all of this worth it."
He doesn't notice, but I don't think that's because Chrysalis is doing it subtly. I think that's just because she keeps erasing his memories afterwards. We don't actually know if changeling feeding can be done in a non-obvious way. Maybe it always makes green energy float through the air and the victim feel immediately weaker. If that were the case, it would go a long way towards explaining why the changeling operate like raiders instead of just blending into wider society.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here?
Again, changelings are never full. We have nothing to suggest that there's an upper limit on how much they can consume, so she can theoretically "afford" to eat the whole city, if she wants. The additional power of an entire city also couldn't hurt, right? But that doesn't mean she actually will or should do that. She has other mouths to feed, and other objectives to accomplish in Canterlot besides personal gratification. Additional feeding at this stage is unnecessary.
FIENDSHIP IS MAGIC IS KIND OF OKAY IN SOME RESPECTS, FIGHT ME:
All of this literally doesn't happen.
In the caves, Twilight is attacking Cadance, Cadance says that Chrysalis is an impostor, she proves her identity to Twilight with the sunshine dance, and Twilight accepts this without question.
When they arrive on the surface, Twilight bursts into the ceremony and tells them to stop, and then Cadance runs in. Applejack asks how can there be two of them. All Cadance says in response to this is basically, "she's a changeling." Chrysalis then voluntarily unveils herself and monologues unprompted, has a back and forth with Cadance for a bit, and then Celestia steps in to fight her.
At no point does any character ask what a changeling is or how they work, and at no point does Celestia (or anyone else) express unfamiliarity with Chrysalis after she unveils.
When Celestia last saw the changelings, she had imprisoned them inside a volcano. So I think it's more than fair for everyone to assume that the changelings are not a present threat anymore.
How does one recognise a shape-shifter in disguise? Cadance "recognises" Chrysalis because she'd been her captive for an indeterminate length of time, but I'm not sure how you expect Celestia to have recognised her.
This is true, but not for the examples you're naming.
Well, in this metaphor, the comics would actually be the Lucas movies, and Canterlot Wedding would be Rise of Skywalker.
But the point isn't to compare the quality of the stories. It's to compare the situations.
The point is, the changelings, like Palpatine, were an enemy defeated long ago in what looked to be a pretty conclusive way, so obviously nobody in-universe was expecting them to come back until they actually did. So when they did, it comes completely out of left field and takes everybody by surprise, because none of the protagonists are privy to how the hell this actually happened.
The comics tell us that the changelings were eventually broken out of the volcano by a random dragon. But nobody knows this until Chrysalis herself tells the story in captivity. They're all in the dark. From everyone else's perspective at the wedding, it's a Rise of Skywalker situation:
Somehow, Chrysalis returned.
Nor should it. The comics deserve their reputation. I'm just giving credit where it's due.
CHRYSALIS THE CHESSMASTER:
Plus wedding stress, plus they didn't actually see some of it, plus Twilight could be exaggerating, plus Shining Armor vouches for her.
She could have just done research on Twilight and Cadance's relationship.
If we assume Chysalis is capable of good acting (which this entire theory is built on), then this could just be that.
I agree that Chrysalis made a mistake in the caves, but topside, Twilight can be fighting, or maybe even using the Elements of Harmony, which is by no means safer.
Fooling them will do nothing to impact to operational capacity of the Elements.
You will never convince me that the writing in season eight and nine is good, but I have always given fair consideration to your in-universe explanations for their characters and concepts.
THIS AGAIN?:
Yes it is, because Discord doesn't understand friendship at this point, and is objectively an asshole, and you're proposing a plan revolving around him being a better friend to Pinkie than the mane six, and her being fine with all the horrible, evil shit that he likes to do. It's a plan that requires both parties to be out of character.
Wrong way around. It gives him five active enemies still with full use of their Elements instead of zero. Also, the brainwashing plan failed at the end because one bearer regained their clarity of mind and was able to turn all five others back around. Your plan starts with five of them in their right minds, and its success rests entirely on Pinkie as the lynchpin, so all five of them only have to convince one mare with a rational argument in order to win.
GOD, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING:
Probably, yes.
Sounds pretty typical as far as doctrine, yes. But what's the building like? What's the structure of a typical Sunday service? Is it more lively, or sombre? Would you say the church as a whole is particularly traditionalist, or more modern? Do you guys do a lot of singing? If so, what kind of songs? Is your church a smaller, independent entity, or part of a larger organisation? What's its place in your local community? How big is the congregation? And what are the major points that you and your church differ on?
5713610
Ahh damn this isn't finished. Wait for a bit and I'll send you a notice when it's done. Don't waste time or space replying yet.
Second response take two. Hopefully it's as legible as the first if not as detailed.
Starswirl and the Pillars poured their magic into their artifacts. Celestia and Luna each put their magic into that dial that they give Twilight at the end of the series. None of them seem any worse for wear from it. I imagine there's a process, but I see no evidence that it can permanently deplete a pony's magic if it's done a bit at the time.
In my world a really good artifact maker can create an artifact that does more with less energy. Like how Cozy's spell takes magic and uses it as fuel to take more magic. Or how Twilight's device is able to move the planets with a fraction of the sister's power. Or how the Alicorn Amulet and Inspiration Manifestation were able to empower ordinary Unicorns to absurd levels of power. So, they don't need all the required power all at once, they just need enough to start the process rolling. Of course, appreciation the idea that a magical artifact becomes more powerful with the energy it accrues over time is a thing that happens with artifacts too.
Possible. I would like to hear your explanation for some of the nonsense artifacts are able to pull off then.
Because the episode itself makes it. The little guard defense we see is scattered and disorganized, and there were no backups for the shield, pony or otherwise. If this isn't a case of Shinning Armor being irreplicable, do you mind explaining exactly what it was?
Then why don't they? If there are any unicorns who can do Shinning Armor's job, then where are they and why haven't don't we see them at any point in the episode? Why didn't they pick up Shinning Armor's slack?
So any other unicorn in the city could have helped keep the shield up, but chose not to because reasons?
So you assert that despite Celestia clearly outranking him as a matter of course and having nothing going on right now in a city-wide lockdown, she still entirely seceded all control to Shinning Armor? She's not even going to ask him about troop placements? Lest we forget by the time of the wedding he's not exactly coherent. And where does Luna fit into all this? She's clearly monitoring the night guard situation. Does she have no oversight? Just a crazy lady watching through her telescope?
Welp I know where you stand on that.
Frankly the fact that they don't interact with him even more poorly tells me that at least one of the bride or groom interceded on his behalf meaning that they in fact know him. The first contact between ponies and changelings and it happens offscreen? That's almost more offensive than Times They Are A Changeling personally.
Yeah but assuming Celestia in fact does know shapeshifters exist why wouldn't a witness that no one can find in the middle of a lockdown be ringing alarm bells?
Well you have the same problem as before. It screams changelings.
I'm pretty sure there's no sure fire way of using magic to concel something indefinitely especially if you're actively looking for enchantments. There might be ways to forestall that discovery or hide it from the unwary, but not indefinitely if someone knows it exists.
Possible but this in fact assumes that self-destruction magic leaves no trace evidence, which I'm not prepared to rule as a certainty yet.
I see no evidence that Changelings can in fact dream walk.
Possible assuming Changelings can cast it.
We actually never see her neglect Luna until A Royal Problem. The impetus for Luna's fall is put solely down to jealousy. Sunset likewise assumes responsibility for her own fall, even when she and Celestia reunite for the first time in years. Unless you count Celestia not telling Twilight that she was right about Nightmare Moon in the first episode, then negligent Celestia was not a thing until A Canterlot Wedding.
So why not spend some free time with Twilight here to address what is obviously a issue between her and Cadence? If she's truly entrusted all her security to Shinning Armor, what else does she have to do in the middle of a lockdown? Because from what I see, she's just bumming around the castle.
Not this scene. The one right after she glares at them. They're much more uncomfortable there.
No worse than the guard all but disappearing during the wedding. For all we know the Storm King or Tempest caused something. Their soilders are big enough to hunt monster and drive them from the everfree.
One is shit planning because ponies were pressured to act in presumed defense of their nation and innocent lives. The other is shit planning because Twilight had the ludicrous idea to give all her troops a break at the same time and all of her fellow princesses went along with it and never questioned it.
So you maintain that they camped out the royal guard in the frozen north solely to report the empire's return even though they didn't know for sure when it was coming back and it could have been another twelve "years" for all they knew?
They literally flew down to Ponyvile to arrest Cozy Glow. I don't think you can make the case that they've never been used as a police force in Equestria.
Because ponies are gullible. In the premier, the main six are scared by trees. Rainbow Dash seriously considers joining up with a stunt group she never heard of before and just meet in the woods during the dead of night in what may be the apocalypse, because she thinks their uniforms and style are cool.
Applejack converses with the freakiest talking pile of apples ever and listens to their advice to look into a magical lake that she's never heard of before. Pinkie Pie has a conversation with Discord and doesn't realize she's being baited.
Yeah, Chrysalis is smarter than the average pony but that's not saying much. And she still managed to muck it up.
I mean what else is new? And it's not like she shouldn't have seen this coming. Love is literally her business. She should know how powerful it is. Cadence breaks her curse on Shinning Armor, while Chrysalis is in the room, which if she had been paying attention she would have known. Plus, Cadence literally gives away the thing which Chrysalis stole to disempower Shinning Armor.
If this is Deus Ex Machina than pretty much every villain in the series was a victim of it, including Cozy Glow. And I know how highly you rate her plans.
It's an older artifact. It may not have the capacity. An artifact which allows people to spy on personal movements, weather patterns, infrastructure creation, etc. would be infinitely useful. We forget because you can get visuals so much easier now, but back before things like video recording and spy satellites, something like this Palantir would be extremely useful, audio or not.
Again older magic. They may not have had that kind of magic back then. And Chrysalis wouldn't have any reason to assume differently given that he never demonstrates that ability.
Yes but they don't know he's Discord.
I'm sure you're correct but I would like the examples if you have them.
He can't prove her guilt though.
Technically Grogar let ponies dispose of Sombra after he tried rebelling against him twice. He went through a long song and dance to keep the others on his leash, which tells me he can't afford to get rid of all of them as easily.
It's not a risk I would take, but if she thought Grogar was only keeping them around until he got his hooves on an artifact of power, it might have been a risk worth taking to Chrysalis.
The Storm King offers only himself and his army, assuming they haven't disbanded yet. The original pony of shadows is a ghost and those don't play well with others, even if Grogar could give them back their body. Neither of them would be any more trustworthy than the trio.
Ahuizotl is himself reformed so while Grogar probably could intimidate him for a while, he would eventually turn on him too.
The Sirens have nothing to offer, save their gems which he might be able to repair, although there's a question mark there, as we never see him making artifacts. In gen 1 the bell was made by slaves, so I see no reason to assume it's a device Grogar made in Gen 4 either. They might bow and scrap before him, but their ambitious in their own right and would likely ditch him at the first opportunity.
And all of this assumes that EQG's dimension world is readily accessible to travel by outsiders which in my world it isn't, or else Discord would have come through to mess with Sunset ages ago. The dimension naturally nerfs magic wielding biology without very special bypasses, so any villains casually traveling there are going to find themselves in a strange world without any way out and without most conventional ways of using magic. Even the artifacts we see in EQG are noticeably weaker due to running on a much lower level of background magic.* At least until magic starts coming through first with the elements and then with the crack in the statue.
My personal pick would be the diamond dogs, as controllable saboteurs easily handled with a dog whistle, who nerveless hate ponies with a vengeance. Sludge who doesn't look like much, but again Greed Growth. And Gladmane whose the only other pony besides Cozy Glow that may be self-destructive enough to sign on with Grogar.
*Yes magic exists in EQG but there's no way of easily accessing it unless you bring an artifact with you and even then, there's not much you can do with it except to create a low-level background effect, which is why Pinkie's antics are so much more subdued and why the sirens are reduced to low level hypnosis.
Possible but I don't see it personally. Not unless Gusty the Great was as fast as Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie on the ground, and I don't see it as being very likely. Possible but not likely.
She stands off to the side and lets her swarm catch the main six. When it comes to guarding the royals, she instead settles for staring out the window at the battle and singing. In To Where and Back Again she stays back at the hive while the swarm goes and collects the food. The impression I get of Chrysalis is that she goes where the lion's share of the food is going to be, which is why she was in Canterlot. At the time it was relatively low risk, and it allows her to get a snack before the rest of the hive.
Tirek's biggest weakness once he reaches a certain stage is actually going to be his limited line of sight. If anything, the other two might get in the way against such a small crowd. I suppose a shape shifted Chrysalis or Cozy Glow could sit on his back and guard against rear or ariel attack, but it turned out not to be terribly necessary in this instance.
Well there wasn't much Cozy Glow could've done with the bell at this point. She can't use any magic she acquires until she figures out how to use Discord's magic, and if she drains theirs, she's left without any allies, which she really can't afford right now.
I wouldn't have let her run off with the bell regardless unless they were A: reasonably confident none of their enemies knew how to work it, which is exactly why they should have put Discord in a cage the first time around, or B: it was part of another assumed convoluted plot by Chrysalis where Cozy's apparent weakness would draw out the sisters firepower to being drained by the bell and she could swoop in soon after.
Well yeah and that was dumb. I think we agree on that.
But they didn't know when or where the trio would show up or what kind of weapons they'd have at their disposal, or if innocents would get caught in the crossfire. So Twilight wound up splitting their forces. I think if they had taken on the trio together, they would have had a better chance of winning.
Yeah but we don't know that Changelings can do it.
Assuming she in fact has the means to track her. If not they could theoretically search everywhere and find nothing. Securing their hold makes sense for now until they know her location.
We don't know that power translates to more cocoon slime. Maybe it's a biological thing were she only has so much to use at any given time regardless of power levels.
And she almost immediately has second thoughts about it, crying out for her magic after the bell is retrieved. She's also the one who drags them back into paranoia, so she's not the most trusting of the group by any stretch of the imagination.
She wasn't there for him draining the pillars. She didn't trust him to do anything save go off by himself. And she probably wasn't expecting him to run across anyone that might pose a threat to her. Once she saw how big he was getting she probably had second thoughts. The same way Tirek was initially comfortable leaving Cozy Glow with the bell and then gets second thoughts when she's messing around with it in part 2.
Well yes but again there's not much she can do with it at this stage unless she starts experimenting with Discord's magic again.
A split up group of individuals who would still have to coordinate actions between each other as opposed to Tirek who could theoretically bring the power of several armies together without hesitation? It depends on your perspective.
Theoretically. Realistically those rocks must interfere with some spell casting, and I think teleportation would be the first thing they wind up blocking.
It prevents magic from being used on some level, or Starlight would have been able to escape immediately. I see no reason why it couldn't have contained their prisoners had things gone according to plan.
Of course, they don't, but that's why if you're a supervillain who doesn't fear what lurks in the great beyond, you don't keep your prisoners around.
Not really. One still has Chrysalis having to travel the distance between her and Cadence and get back before anyone notices she's gone. Even if Cadance is confined to a single cave, that's still easier said than done.
How old are you?
Yeah from what I've seen the original was something special. But I watch games for the story and Super Paper Mario's is pretty decent, if you don't mind reading text bubbles.
None of which naturally tie into the story. It's entirely based on convivence. He's vulnerable to the elements, but only when their active and the rest of the time he can do whatever he wants with them.
See above.
Character suicide by any other name.
You mean Tirek after he absorbed the magic of a entire country? You're right. I don't know how I could have every conceived of Discord as anything other than the fragile boy he is.
Starlight knocked out a bug bear in one shot. A creature that Twilight only managed to irritate when she encountered it earlier. Regardless of how you feel about her overall she is most definitely OP here.
He's vulnerable to some. How extensive that is we don't know because we've never seen a unicorn cast such a spell on him. His spells shake off Twilight's magic pretty quick, so we have no reason to believe that any form of magic suppression will do a thing to him.
The only things to work so far are OP casters, thousand-year-old magics, bizarre worm monsters, and a guy empowered with the energies of an entire continent and all of them had to take him by surprise to be affected. So, no not as limited as you would think.
Worm monster.
Disagree. But you knew that.
His mind control sure. Twilight couldn't do a thing to his power otherwise.
When the script writers require it yes. Praise did nothing to affect him in The Return Of Harmony and it does very little later on. The only one he ever fully trusts is Tirek for "reasons". His relationship with Fluttershy comes out of nowhere and has him tip toeing around her in an effort to keep chaos while still being "friends". Even that doesn't actually prevent him from causing trouble for her. Emotional manipulation is hardly the failsafe against Discord that the writers would have us believe it is.
Q has oversight he has to listen to and rules he has to abide by. He's constantly being thwarted in his ambitions because there are in fact things he cannot do in his universe.
Discord has none of that. As far as the story is concerned, he could literally fragment the entire planet into pieces, and apart from a few select locations there's no reason to believe he couldn't do it.
I can't speak for the comic. The adaptation is pretty good though.
No I am in fact saying that if there are more ponies like the main six, they need to be looking for them. Someone should really review Canterlot's talent scouting policies.
Yes because they surrender to a force ten times their number. Assuming Season 8 represented even the totality of the Royal Guard they're at least a fifth of the changeling forces. Much better odds in a fight if they can all take down even half as many Changelings as the Main Six.
Fair enough.
Yes but that's only part of it.
Do we? The spell seems to have frozen time if the ponies confused reactions, are any indication. It seems like everyone picks up when they left off. The same thing happens again when the pillars come out of Limbo.
Yet when we see the Crystal Ponies though they aren't chained up or corralled or anything like that. Now it's possible that Shining arranged for them to be freed, but it's equally possible that Celestia and Luna had advance warning of what Sombra was going to try to do and stopped it before it reached that point.
Sombra is a Spanish name, so it implies he has some southern origins. If he came up from the south, he would have passed through Equestria at some point.
Depends. If Cadence and Shinning armor weren't present when he woke up, he could have potentially had things up and running much quicker. Minerals in MLP can be found close to the surface, so it wouldn't take too long to build up a defensive force even if he can't really expand it yet. Between those and his obstacle walls he could've deflected an army for a while.
The trains wouldn't have allowed for mass transportation in a short amount of time, and neither Sombra nor Celestia actually have a lot of personal on the ground. Plus, they seem to be on the outskirts of a thawed (if still very much dead) Crystal Empire dotted with Sombra's mountain creations. The scenario fits the image of a war in which neither side has really built up their forces yet.
Depend on how that affects the health of their prey.
Depends on if Changelings can in fact use those spells and how effective they are. I always assumed it was some form of quarantine bubble, but I have no idea what its effectiveness is on things already inside the bubble or passing through. Food comes with a certain level of bacteria as does all living things. Killing a person's personal bacteria may in fact be more dangerous in the long run for a prisoner then not.
Possible.
Passion. Vitality. Energy. Etc.
Assuming Love is in fact a sense of positive unspoiled affection towards someone (how the world defines it) why in fact would you want anyone mad at you?
Changelings can feed passively otherwise plopping a bunch of Changelings into the roles of celebrities and expecting them to bring back love with no extra effort makes no sense.
So why would you be spoiling future meals regardless of any perceived strategic benefit unless it was in fact not positive emotions you were feeding on? Spoiling Twilight's memories of Cadence now isn't going to make for great feeding later.
Not really. Some improve in their attitudes, but they still very clearly hate their prey. Flutter's Changeling takes a particularly cruel delight in twisting the knife. Discord's exists to lead them into an ambush as soon as possible. Twilight's gives some very simple low effort advice so she can get away from Starlight as soon as possible.
None of these lings like spending time with their prey, which is odd if in fact they can feed off of their emotions and are doing so constantly. Compare and contrast this with the Sirens' who can't get enough of lurking around humans and feeding off of their negative energy.
Or feed passively as suggested by To Where And Back Again.
It's probably not a net loss no, but there is a level of variation there probably depending on the victim amount of "love" present etc.
Ah! So you admit it's possible.
It's possible. The shambling husk that is Shinning Armor doesn't inspire confidence.
And yet in the city of Canterlot the nation's capital and arguably the greatest concentration of unicorns in the show, none exist that could help him with this.
He's the only one in Canterlot with this kind of power. That's no small feat especially with Twilight and Celestia present. Yeah, maybe Starlight Glimmer or some other such fringe dwelling person could combat him, but at the time of A Cantelot Wedding even Cadence could only support him directly. That's impressive. I don't see any other unicorn doing that at this point in the show.
The fact that it's his special talent doesn't invalidate it as an accomplishment. And he clearly has OP power if it was enough to make up the difference between him and Celestia.
Speaking of which if the other Alicorns are indeed capable of helping him maintain the shield, then why aren't they? Even in my view of the show they should at least have the power to equal Shinning Armor's contributions, so why aren't they using it? Cadence is imprisoned but what about Luna or Celestia? Why aren't they using their powers to help? Celestia doesn't look exhausted. Where's her contribution?
He did that with the help of five other ponies plus himself poring magic into it. In My world he helped co design it, but he wasn't its only father in terms of power because he had five other ponies contributing including Mistmane (who if we assume swapped her name with Medow Brook's for some reason) also contributed to no less than eight other magical artifacts.
With five other unicorns supporting him yes. Who (if legends are to be believed) all lost their magic as a result. Seems to me that if Starswirl could in fact carry the spell on his own he wouldn't have needed five unicorns to sacrifice their magic everyday.
He assisted the royal sisters in taking on Tirek. And didn't make much of an impression by the way Tirek fails to recognize him in the final. Compare that to how Tirek freaks out when he finds out there could be another Alicorn on the loose.
Were distracted by his associates until he came in at the last second with his interdimensional spell. Now punching a hole in the universe however small is certainly impressive, but we don't know how much of that is in fact strength and how much is being smart enough to figure out the secret behind interdimensional travel.
Actually he needed the help of the other Pillars plus their tools which were in fact endowed with magic to do it both times. He also required the power of Ponhenge and the elements respectively. In the first case Ponhenge was so vital to the original spell that the Pony Of Shadows destroys it so the spell can't be cast again and Starswirl despairs of beating him without it until he finds out about the elements.
He helps contain the Everfree with the help of the pillars and the royal sisters respectively. Hardly single handed.
While I have no doubt he has some magic strength, (some of those energy blasts in the season 9 premier are particularly impressive, as is his portal spell) I have yet to see anything to convince me he is as strong as Shinning Armor.
His intelligence probably makes him more versatile and allows him to compensate by making usage of other's talents, but he is by no means as strong as Shinning from what I've seen of him.