So, from what I've gathered, people are split on both the students and the school concept. I thought about this a few months ago and want to pose a question.

Say the school concept was kept out of the final two seasons, but we kept the new characters introduced (The Young Six, Cozy Glow, etc.) How would the final two seasons work if the concept was removed, but the characters were kept? Perhaps Twilight invites the Young Six to be part of a cultural exchange and they live in the Castle of Friendship with her while bonding with the Elements of Harmony they correspond with.

What do people think?

sounds like a good plan to me!

That would be pretty interesting to see on how that goes actually.

7306960
Sounds really interesting to me! Better than what we got.

7306960
That actually sounds like a 100% better idea than what Hasbro went with. Though that would Season 8's premier villain role up for grabs, since this would be a cultural thing, Neighsay would have no say in the matter I would think.

That's a good idea. Perhaps also actually explaining Cozy Glow would be a huge plus in my book

7306960
I really like this idea

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Sounds like I'm getting a lot of positive responses. Would you guys do anything differently from what I laid out, or would you do exactly what I suggested?

7306985
I'd go with what you suggested, if we're talking about you writing it. The idea of the school isn't bad, just seems as though it's a spin off sort of concept. Personally, the main issue is Cozy Glow herself. I just don't like her.

7306993
Same. I like the school concept because it fits more as Twilight's true calling than ruling Equestria does. I think Cozy Glow could still work as a villain, it would just be a matter of tracking her down to stop her scheme.

7306993
The concept of a villain trying to use Friendship for power is interesting.
But yeah, the writers did not think things through when coming up with Cozy Glow there.

7306998
Indeed. For one thing, it was obvious that she was going to be the villain. Cozy Glow isn't given any backstory or even a motivation for trying to steal all of Equestria's magic. She's just an evil kid, which really wears off rather quickly. Also, how did she contact Tirek while he was in Tartarus? Why did she decide to contact him? What about her parents? A minor ends up locked up in Tartarus and her parents are never notified? So many questions, no answers. As a villain, she's just uninteresting when compared to past baddies.

7307003
I liked Cozy Glow because an evil kid like her is rare to come by, but I could do with some answers about her backstory.

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Interesting idea. I think it may work for your rewrite of Friendship is Magic.

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And how the fans got split by her fate in season 8 and season 9 didn't help either.

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Is she? I've seen plenty of evil kids in media so it wasn't anything new. That, and there wasn't anything that differentiated her from the others.

7307018
I'm working on my own head-canon series that partially reworks events in the show. I'm not only going to give Cozy Glow proper motivation but, without giving out any spoilers, I'm not going to have her really be a kid...

7307036
I always wonder what would she looked like if she was an adult or something.

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I thought she was. There are mean kids, which are common, and then there are genuinely evil kids like Cozy Glow or Darla Dimple, which are very uncommon.

7307039
Well, it'll take some time but you'll see eventually...

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In just children's animation or fiction in general? There are a lot.

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I was talking animation. That's what I primarily watch.

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8 would need about half the episodes, including key plot ones, reworking. 9, on the other hand, would only need to change out a few, non vital. But 8 would need a whole new spine.

7307056
Well, there's Baby Eddie (Jimmy Neutron), Angelica Pickles (Rugrats), Princess Morbucks (Powerpuff Girls), Edward Platypus (Camp Lazlo), Elmyra Duff (Tiny Toons Adventures), Francis (Fairy Oddparents) and Gizmo (Teen Titans, just to name a few.

7306960 That seems like it would work better, though it might not have solved the problem of the young six not getting more screen time.

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Not to mention Lila Rossi from Miraculous Ladybug. UGH, hands-down one of the WORST fictional villians I've ever seen!

7307082
Not to mention Lila Rossi from Miraculous Ladybug. (shudders) She's a real piece of work...

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I've never seen that show so I'll take your word on it

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I think Eddie, Morbucks, and Gizmo were the only major villains on that list. Everyone else was a bully at most that didn't pose a greater threat.

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Who knows? Maybe it would have. Especially if you have episodes focusing on the Young Six bonding with their respective predecessors in the Elements of Harmony.

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Yeah, she is pretty terrible. Just look at the effect she has on the Miraculous fandom.

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As much as I dislike the school concept in general, I do confess it makes a lot of the introductions of new characters easier for the show (more in Season 8's case than 9). The Student Six could be part of a foreign exchange group each nation sent to Equestria for friendship lessons, and Cozy Glow could just be a filly who manages to worm her way into Twilight's trust via her involvement in another friendship problem. It's certainly doable, but the way Season 8 was written, where so much of the story revolved around the school, it's really hard to make up situations where characters would still be in the same dynamics.

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Cozy in particular flies under the radar by being just another student - the Young Six can't help but stand out a bit, but she's one of dozens.

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My personal gripe was the characterizations throughout Seasons 8 and 9 and the fact that Twilight's school didn't have any concrete principals or values to teach. No one actually believes in anything, they're just doing what ever is most convenient.

Twilight certainly doesn't model friendship when she ignores her friends concerns, or when she outright refuses to listen to the CMC. Starlight outright praises Cozy's efforts in Marks For Effort and makes no effort to curb her lying tendencies. She also offers the Vice Head Mare position to Discord after he embarks on a campaign of terror and bullying against the schools students. It may have been a delaying tactic to keep him from tearing the place apart, but it still sets a bad precedent.

Even in Cozy and Twilight's confrontation in the Season 8 final Twilight chokes. She's unable to answer Cozy's claim that "friendship is power" even though she could point out how friendship is more than power, and by doing so both shut down Cozy's toxic way of thinking and unite the School's students behind her, something she's been struggling with all season. Instead she chooses to offer a platitude about how getting power isn't why you make friends, despite her using her power to influence other ponies throughout the season. Power that she got by supposedly "making friends", despite her putting her own wants ahead of theirs in the season premier.

The students only join her because they feel used by Cozy, not because they actually learn anything from Twilight. I could go on, but the fact remains none of the main characters remain the same from the earlier seasons and most of the key episodes rely on faulty moral reasoning (even more so than the previous seasons).

7307149 The school in general seemed to be something that brought out the worst of all our main characters and even some side characters, almost as if to make the young six look better. Honestly, it got so bad it felt almost like self-sabotage, and Twilight in particular became a bad parody of herself.

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I like this idea as well.

The Student Six have always been characters that have piqued my interest, and to me...they hold remarkable potential and deserve more than two season appearances.

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I wouldn't called most of these characters evil, just big jerks. You also forgotten Remy Buxaplenty from the Fairy OddParents.

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Here's a pic of Cozy Glow as an adult.

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With how the Royal Sisters ended up falling flat on their faces badly many times so the Mane 6 looks good, with how the Student 6 look like they will become new bearers, it seems like fate is trying to make the Mane 6 look bad so the Student 6 look good.
Kind of scary when it seems like history is sort of repeating itself with the Mane 6 nearly end up suffering the fate Luna and Celestia had gotten.

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Interesting

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The school in general seemed to be something that brought out the worst of all our main characters and even some side characters, almost as if to make the young six look better.

The sad thing is that they couldn't even accomplish that with the writing. The Young Six first running away from the school the way they did, then returning to cause the kind of havoc they do (Ocellus knocks over a building which results in pony students nearly getting killed by the falling stones) did nothing to win me over.

It doesn't get any better when they carelessly run away and almost start a war. Between that and the over the top reactions of the other ambassadors being paranoid and blaming everyone and everything on each other, rather then actually focusing on finding and bringing home their children safely, it was hard to care about anything to do with the school after it's debut episode.

To recap, the school managed to intellectually and emotionally imbalance the "Ponyvile Five", nearly start a all out race war, and almost resulted in the deaths of innocent ponies, and we are supposed to see it as a good thing why?

That's not even dealing with Cozy Glow and how that entire arc could've been prevented, if Twilight had learned her lesson and kept magical artifacts and knowledge away from the student with honesty issues, especially given what happened the last time she let foals play with potentially dangerous knowledge or a magical artifact fell into the wrong hooves. Seriously did she learn nothing from Hearts And Hooves Day?

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Baby Dahl had an explanation. Not sure about Darla Dimple in that she's just extremely jealous. Cozy to me is some generic villain.

7307177
I knew I was missing someone. Okay, even if most of them aren't "evil," they're still antagonists. And I think the writers were patting themselves too hard on the backs when they came up with the idea of Cozy Glow. The novelty of her age wears off pretty quickly and what does that leave us with? She's not particularly interesting and we still have no idea why she did what she did. She is an evil filly...and that's supposed to be it.

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Exactly! And she's the last major antagonist introduced in the series? The writers teased us with Grogar, promising not only a dangerous new adversary and a favorite G1 baddie only to reveal that it was Discord, leaving us with Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow. There are so many possibilities in the set-up and yet they squandered it just to subvert expectations and to keep the focus on these three returning villains. Good Gods, this is Rian Johnson and Snoke all over again!

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I liked the Student Six, but not the friendship school. But I doubt removing the school would make much difference, unless we removed the mindset that led the writers to create the school in the first place.

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Snoke did not, in fact, have any great potential as presented in TFA. His was by 2015 a well-worn type in Star Wars, and there was little of that ground left to explore.

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Nonetheless, he was presented in TFA as this mysterious overlord, an enigmatic being that challenged the New Republic and corrupted Han and Leia's son. He was described as spending decades watching from the shadows and taking advantage of the Empire's fall to seize control. Then in TLJ, he was killed off. Hell, up until that point, his freaking slippers had more of a backstory than him. After that, Palpatine was retconned back into the series as the main villain. The situation with Grogar is remarkably similar and that is somewhat upsetting.

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In fact, the two situations are quite different. Snoke, even if you believe all the teasing about him is simply not interesting. We've been down this road before, we know where it leads. Johnson, seeing no point in treading well-trodden ground, forecloses the possibility as soon as the character has outlived his immediate plot usefulness. This is a fine economy.

"Grogar" being a masquerade was also perfectly fine, for both similar and different reasons. His "demon of the ancient world" schtick has also been done before, by Nightmare Moon, Discord, Sombra, and Tirek, even if he presents themselves as older and more demonic than they. "Grogar" per se brings nothing new to the table other than an increase in scale (which was already so absurd by Season 4 that the staff rightly decided to focus on more intimate stakes going forward) and the entertainment value of Doc Harris's performance, which is perfectly serviceable but nothing on DeLancie's Discord. Unlike Snoke, however, he isn't disposed of because just he's useless and nothing more can be done with him. His reveal serves to set up both Discord's and Twilight's character arcs for the two-parter (both of which were poorly handled, but that's a separate matter).

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Grogar could've been interesting, based on how he was initially brought in. Unlike, say, Nightmare Moon or Discord, who made themselves known, Grogar kept to the shadows, lying in wait to observe his enemies and discover their weaknesses. He saw that the Main Six's unity is what made them strong and decided to form a group of his own. He would've been more of a schemer, a chessmaster that lets his underlings do most of the dirty work while he beats his foes by outsmarting them. He was also stated to be the Father of Monsters, a tyrant that created unspeakable horrors, bringing life to hideous lifeforms.
Grogar was also much more serious than the other villains, more stoic and dignified. All of this could've worked. Instead, the writers played it safe and decided to have Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow have the final villains of the series just because of their past ties to the Main Six. Their defeats in the past just made them lose any intimidation factor, especially given that Chrysalis was reduced to a lunatic giggling to herself and talking to logs while Tirek, other than his manipulation of Discord, was just a big, loud bruiser. And Cozy Glow...yeah, she's one of the series' weakest villains. King Sombra was also swept aside in favor of propping up a fake villain and to allow room for these three jokers.
Like I said, a lot of story potential.

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I guess her appeal is subjective. Personally, I find her more interesting than Grogar, but...