• Member Since 27th Feb, 2013
  • offline last seen Tuesday

Sprocket Doggingsworth


I write horse words.

More Blog Posts281

  • 12 weeks
    Audiobook Announcement

    I'm excited to announce that I'm working on an audiobook for Hooves of Fate. I started with Chapter 63: Rivers. This way, long-time readers of HoF can reorient themselves to the momentum of the story before the upcoming release of Chapter 64 (text) this Saturday.

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    2 comments · 123 views
  • 17 weeks
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  • 20 weeks
    A Night to Remember (2023)

    Reblog from 2016

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    1 comments · 207 views
  • 21 weeks
    The Voice of the People

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    3 comments · 127 views
  • 21 weeks
    Flurry Heart's Reign of Terror

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    2 comments · 134 views
Aug
30th
2020

Help! My Heart is Full of Pony - The Series is Reborn, Pt. 1 · 5:41am Aug 30th, 2020

Regardless of whether you loved or hated Magical Mystery Cure and alicorn Twilight when you first saw it, it was still the Season 4 premiere that followed (Princess Twilight, Pts. 1 & 2) that made the overall story viable in the long term.

Season 3 had made several abrupt changes without really dropping us any clues as to how they were planning on following up on them. Discord was reformed in Keep Calm and Flutter On. Did that mean that they were going to try to make him into some lovable, friendly, not-Discord-y type of character? Twilight got alicornized at the end of Magical Mystery Cure. But what was her princessness going to entail? Was she an actual ruler now? How was this going to shape the scope of the show? Would she become immortal and move to Canterlot? How could a slice of life show still remain down-to-earth if one of the main characters was suddenly royalty?

None of us knew, and we all had to wait almost a year to find out.

But the Season 4 premiere managed to do the impossible. It tied up all of those loose ends brilliantly, and in a very short period of time.

For those who don't remember, the main conflict of Princess Twilight is that a mass of black thorns has taken over the Everfree, along with most of Ponyville. Princess Celestia and Luna have also mysteriously gone missing in the chaos, leaving Twilight Sparkle suddenly in charge of all Equestria.

She has no idea what to do.

Discord hovers around throughout the episode, snidely poking at Twilight, dropping clues - trolling her towards truth the way only a genuine trickster can.

Eventually, through a series of time-travel-flashback-visions induced by one of Zecora's potions, Twilight learns much of Equestria's history, including the discovery of the Tree of Harmony. The thorn invasion is ultimately quelled by returning the Elements of Harmony to the tree from whence they came, and the characters are shown a mysterious box at the tree's base with six keyholes representing various mysteries that are to be unraveled throughout the entire season.

So what was accomplished here? We learned that Discord is as big a jerk (if not bigger) as a reformed villain than he ever was as an adversary.  We learned that Twilight was not at all prepared to rule (since much of the episode revolved around Celestia and Luna's disappearance).  This episode also reimagined the Elements of Harmony themselves, and kept their role in the story relevant. It made a gigantic change that miraculously managed not to be disrespectful to the original source material. 

This episode also filled in so many blanks in Equestria's history by showing us Celestia's battle with Nightmare Moon, and by actually showing us how Celestia and Luna had defeated Discord over a thousand years ago.

It answered so many questions while still creating a marvelous sense of mystery.

This two parter managed to look to the origins of FiM - honor its mythology and legacy - and at the same time, committed itself to moving the story forward in new directions that gave it room to actually grow. It laid the groundwork perfectly for everything that was to follow, right down to the twist in the series finale that revealed that Discord had been gently leading Twilight toward her various victories all along.

This, more than any other episode in the entire series, transformed pony.  I would even go so far as to say that it saved My Little Pony.

Discuss.

-Sprocket

If you enjoy essays like these, please consider supporting my work on Patreon. You can also follow Heart Full of Pony on Tumblr

Comments ( 4 )

"None of us knew, and we all had to wait almost a year to find out."
...It's kind of amazing, thinking back to when that was the present, instead of years ago.

"It laid the groundwork perfectly for everything that was to follow, right down to the twist in the series finale that revealed that Discord had been gently leading Twilight toward her various victories all along."
...Hm. Interesting way to look at it, him starting that that early. I suspect he wasn't serious (well, by a gauge calibrated to Discord) about it at that point, since he still hadn't had the revelation from the finale of that season, but now that you've mentioned it, quite possibly he was indeed playing around with it!

And your idea about the episode pair saving My Little Pony... as usual, not something I'd thought of, but trying to think back, it seems plausible! I don't remember exactly how I was feeling at the time, but they certainly could have ruined the show there, aye. I'm having a hard time judging how likely that was, since I know how much came after (and while I didn't spend as much time with the show as some, here mostly for the fanfiction, I did watch every episode up to the finale and cried at the last); it feels unlikely they could have broken it there, with everything they had going. But then I think about some of the more... questionable decisions that got made over the course of the show's run, and how big a thing Twilicorn was at the time (as much as I remember, at least), and... yeah, it seems possible.

Very glad they didn't. :)

This is kind of frustrating for me. For many episodes, my review articles preserve my day-after feelings quite clearly... but "Princess Twilight Sparkle" was the first time I tried posting something the following Sunday, and I felt that the market was oversaturated with people giving their thoughts on the episodes. (And in 2013, it kind of was. :derpytongue2:) As such, I can't actually look back and see how I first felt about it without the benefit of greater context and hindsight.

Still, I do agree that it did a great job of transitioning from the worn-out "letters to Celestia" format that Season 3 still follow at times to something a bit more robust.

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Season 4 did keep the letter format, though. The Mane Six kept a journal.

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I suppose. It feels different since they're recording the lessons for their own future reference rather than reporting them to the big mare in the sky.

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