Twilight watched the floating castle burn from a nearby cloud. The rainbow above the structure flickered like a neon sign in the seedier parts of Las Pegasus. A few moments passed as she processed what she'd seen. "And that's how you see ponies?"
"Not quite," Discord said from her side. "This is how I see ponies without me. Flighty, insipid, unprepared for the slightest thing going wrong."
Twilight wrinkled her muzzle. "Ponies are far more resilient than that," she said, not so much pointing at the castle as jabbing at it from afar.
Discord nodded. "Yes, thanks to me."
"Even before you—"
"Before me?" Discord threw back his head and laughed until his mouth fell out of earshot. A replacement grew from the stump of his neck like an underachieving hydra and said, "Twilight, we both know you have no idea what came before me. I made sure of it. After all, history is so dull. Why spend your time looking at what dead ponies did in the past when you can go out and do things yourself in the here and now?"
Twilight quirked an eyebrow. "So you're saying that before you came along, ponies all lived in cloud castles, panicked at the sight of a caterpillar, and put on impromptu burlesque performances at the drop of a hat?"
"We'll never know for sure, now will we?" Discord chuckled.
"You do, based on what you literally just said."
"I thought you'd know by now not to take anything I say at face value." Discord's head dissolved into a shower of counterfeit bits. "But my point is not about ponies," said his third head of the day. "It is about harmony."
"Trying to turn me to the 'Chaos Side'?" said Twilight, making full use of her wings for the air quotes.
Discord took a deep breath, distorted by the bucket now on his head. "If you only knew its power..." He threw his headwear into the void beneath them. "But no. I'm trying to show you that excessive harmony is just as dangerous as excessive disharmony or chaos. Worse, in a way, since its danger is nowhere near as obvious. Excessive harmony untempered by strife and hardship or the slightest bit of independent thought is incredibly fragile. It has never been tried or tested. It falls to pieces the moment that first hiccup sounds in utopia, and you saw what happened after that." He extended a paw towards the castle. "The next thing you know, all Tartarus breaks loose. I find that sort of thing entertaining, but I'm given to understand that I'm in the minority in that regard."
"I see." Twilight considered the structure, where the bizarrely proportioned ponies were enjoying a small backup cake, the caterpillar-induced riot that had led to them trampling a larger one apparently forgotten. "They do realize that the castle is still on fire, don't they?"
"For one, they're magical automata I created to demonstrate a point. They don't realize anything. For another, in the scenario, they lack the capacity to even imagine an outcome as terrible as their home burning to the clouds. Something unfortunate happening to a cake is pretty much the limit of their hypothetical imaginations."
"I see." Twilight was silent for a few moments more. "So if I were to swoop down before them..."
"They'd either panic again, worship you as a goddess, or see you as some incomprehensible eldirtch entity." Discord smirked. "Which would probably mean both panic and worship. Care to roll that die?"
"Aren't you controlling them?"
He shrugged. "I only set the initial conditions of the scenario. The rest proceeded on its own from there."
Twilight looked around. The only possible witness was another of those allegedly overharmonized ponies, sitting on a lower cloud and eating a cake whose origins were probably best left unexplored. She grinned as she spread her wings. "Then I may be able to prove you wrong. Let's go introduce a bit more chaos to the system."
Discord followed with a grin of his own. "Attagirl."