So, the next issue of the G5 comics leaked a day early and we now have an explanation for where the crystals came from, and oh boy is it a "Fun" one. Needless to say there's big spoilers here for the G5 comics.

So, basically some time around "The Last Problem" some shadowy new villain appeared that started turning the three tribes against each other by making ponies believe they were superior to others due to their magical abilities. We even get to see a few panels of things like earth ponies being banned from stores, or a little filly saying she can't come learn from Fluttershy since her parents told her she has "Nothing to learn from a lowly pegasus who can't even levitate an apple"...despite the fact that said filly is an earth pony, by the way. Which made me laugh, how did the comic artists not notice the problem here? Maybe her parents are unicorns though, but I'd hate to think of how racist they might be to their daughter if that's the case. Apparently a bunch of terrible stuff happened due to this, but the Mane Six were able to fix it all in the end.

In response to this though, Twilight and her friends made the Unity crystals to basically threaten everypony into getting along and keep them from fighting each other based on their abilities, by making it so that their magic would be taken away from them if they stopped living in Harmony. So that way nopony would be able to feel superior to others, because they'd all either have to rely on each other to keep their magic or they'd all lose it.

You know, I already thought the racism plot in Season 9 was dumb. It was just way too easy for the trio to break the three tribes apart and made it look like everypony in Equestria was just waiting all their lives for an excuse to be racist. But the fact that they're actually going with that idea again, having another villain do the exact same thing and succeed even better at it only 20-30 years later is actually hilarious to me. All of Equestria apparently learned nothing from "The Ending of the End". Sure, it's said the Mane Six ultimately stopped it, but then they felt the need to make the crystals to literally threaten everypony into not being racist and then the three tribes fell apart again anyway.

This just feels like such a deeply cynical thing for a franchise like MLP, making it seem like everyone can just turn into racists at the drop of a hat, their society's harmony can crumble at even the slightest prod and only threats of terrible things happening is what kept them together at all, apparently. I never saw Equestria as a perfect utopia but I thought it was intended as an optimistic series, this is just kind of depressing.

No idea if the actual animated G5 will run with this or not, but if it does...I'm not even sure I'll be mad. It's stupid but I'm to the point where I'm just kind of laughing at it.

7704867
Jesus Christ.

7704867
If I may ask, did Spike showed up too?

As for the Crystals bit, I am quite mixed on how it was made by the Mane 6 to basically threaten the 3 tribes to not turn each other.
Especially since it horribly backfired in so many ways and it feels so wrong too

Lets also not forget that by doing this Twilight basically shackled every other magical race to Equestria since otherwise they're fucked as well.

The show always had a horrible habit of not fixing problems and after the season 9 finale and the constant pushing of problems under a rug on top of it, I can't say I'm surprised.

I had this loose, probably never to actually be finished story I've tapped and picked at like a bird because I *know* my writing is mediocre.

About how after nearly ten years enough of the world was getting fed up that a Spirit with an axe to bury in Equestria for a few hundred years finally garnered enough support to actually start a fight on equal footing rather then trying to single handedly topple the place for their own gain.

Never thought that it could be a feasible Canon option all things considered.

7704867
Well, I'm glad I've managed to avoid G5 thus far. Sounds reeeeeally stupid.

Just another way of rubbing salt in the wound by explicitly showing G4’s story was all for nothing.

7704876

If I may ask, did Spike showed up too?

Chad Spike showed up in two panels of the flashback, one referencing the final scene of "The Last Problem" and one at the meeting where they were making the crystals.

7704879

Lets also not forget that by doing this Twilight basically shackled every other magical race to Equestria since otherwise they're fucked as well.

Yeah, there's that too. It'd be one thing if it was just the ponies magic, though I'd hate that too. But the comic does say it was "All the worlds magic", so if that's literal she's basically just screwing over everybody she can, regardless of if they were involved in the problem or not.

7704867
...well. That's dumb.

7704867
Sounds dumb.

I just pictured it as the result of a foe who couldn't be defeated as long as magic was present, so the magic was sealed away to keep the foe from drawing on it.

Oh for fuck’s sake, and I thought my contrived backstory was, well, contrived.

For the record my idea was that the G5 world isn’t Equestria, though it does take place in the same overall narrative world as G4. It’s just that G4 gave us, remember, those mirror portals that lead to other worlds. So my thinking was that Equestria began making those to explore the multiverse and create colonies. The G5 world is a colony that was set up on a world with no (known) sapient life of its own. But then not long after the first wave arrived, something happened to the mirror network and the G5 world was cut off.

It’d explain the lack of other known races (changelings, yaks, griffons, etc), why there’s some geographical discrepancies, it’s make sense that in a high-stress situation like being cut off from a larger network the stranded ponies might revert to tribalism, and lastly it wouldn’t require Twilight and her friends to be abject failures or for Twilight to be unable to maintain Equestria for 1,000 years the way Celestia was. G4 Equestria might be doing fine, just cut off from the mirror network.

It’s over-complicated, sure, but it’s better than “turns out the ponies are all jerks deep down.”

7704886
7704887
Both of these ideas sound much better to me. Way less thematically at odds with what G4 was about and not just doubling down on the racism angle which they're terrible at writing.

That’s why the comics have their own canon and The TV show has its own. 👎

7704896
Who knows if that's still true though, they've felt like they've flip-flopped on that multiple times. For all we know in G5 there might be a more consistent canon between them. I'm hoping not after seeing this, but who knows?

7704901

7704896
This seems like it's meant to be a bridge of the two series rather then funding the episodes for it.

For better or worse this may be a case of "Canon till proven otherwise" rather the "not canon till confirmed" like the rest.

It seems like everyone is just taking Discord's word for everything.

He's not exactly a reliable narrator

7704867
Ever heard the saying, 'We become what we behold'? It goes quite well with another saying, 'It's easy to destroy, but hard to build'.

It seems that we just can't get off this merry-go-round.

7704889
I’d have tried going at the path of creating this vast mythos that previously shaped Ponykind into what we saw of them in the show. Three separate groups that had a hand or talon in shaping The Three Tribes in some fashion or other that almost all Ponies once knew about and deeply revered:

The Earth Ponies raw power and strength came from The Giants: colossal bipedal beings that ruled over the lands of Goria in what is known today as “The Undiscovered West” which is a vast stretch of land with environments that waver in the most extreme conditions possible. The group that would eventually become the Earth Ponies learned how to manipulate the earth and stone to their advantage; even being capable of transforming their own bodies into stone at will if concentrating hard enough. Through the manipulations of their genetic code performed by Gargoyles; a small group of Earth Ponies were transformed into a hybrid species that embodied the nobility of the Earth Ponies and the raw power of the Giants that would eventually become the first Centaurs.

The Pegasi were created by the Anhar Court: A pantheon of various bird gods who held domain over everything pertaining to The Sun, The Light, Healing, Justice, and The Day. The Pegasi as we know them today are in-fact one of three such species created by the Anhar Gods that are collectively known as “The Aurorae”; with the other two species that make up the Aurorae being the Griffins and the Hippogriffs. To various degrees, the latter two have roughly held onto their beliefs and faith in the Anhar Gods to some capacity; with the Hippogriffs adoptive homeland of Mount Aris having been carved into the rough shape of Rukhmar; the Firehawk Goddess that presides over the Anhar Court and is the mother to the Anhar Gods and Goddesses.

And lastly the Unicorns were adopted by the Skalax Court: The Anhar Courts’ counterpart pantheon that held domain over The Moon, Magic, Nature, Dreams, and The Night and whose varied Gods and Goddesses were responsible for many wonders: The Everfree Forest, Mount Everhoof, The Abysmal Abyss, The Mirror Pool, The Stream of Silence, The Harmonizing Heights, The original Staff of Sacanas and even the Hippogriffs’ Pearl of Shapes were all the products of one or more Skalax Gods or their servants working together. The Skalax Court holds their congregation over a perpetual moonlit ocean of waterknown as The Shadowmoon Lagoon; which is presided over by The Shadowmoon King: Anzu; the Raven God who is the patriarch to the Skalax Court and father to the Skalax Gods and Goddesses. Unlike with Rukhmar who gave her blessing freely to The Aurorae, Anzu wanted to test and train the early Unicorns; then magicless horned Ponies known as Monoceri and had taught only one small family the art of Magic before returning them to their people in order to teach other Ponies how to harness Magic with the Earth Ponies developing a connection with Nature while Pegasi learned how to manipulate the clouds and create weather; the only thing that was forbidden to the Unicorns from manipulating was The Sun as it was part of Rukhmars’ Domain. And she doesn’t take kindly to Magic interfering with Light: part of the reason why Unicorns lose their Magic when trying to manhandle the Sun instead of the Moon.

How does this not get spoken of? Well, it all boils down to a group known as The Sethekk; a widespread cult within Ponykind that have dedicated themselves wholly to the worship of Sethe: An overly-violent insane Winged Serpent God who was diametrically-opposed to both Anzu and Rukhmar long before Ponykind was even a thing. Unlike with his fellow Gods who cared and respected the members of their own flocks, Sethe was a brutal taskmaster and tyrant to his Winged Serpents: often killing and butchering them for the slightest infraction: both actual or imagined. It was when Sethe tried to have Rukhmar killed that the two other Gods united to kill Sethe; only for him to utter a dying curse that would devour their ancient homeworld.

“My blood shall blacken the sea until it runs thick as tar! My flesh shall fester and spoil until the very sky rots with it!”

A portion of this cursed blood latched itself onto one of the Colossals; whom would become the Progenitors of Giantkind and travel to the world that the Gods would emerge into. The Colossal was known as Tambelon, and as Sethes’ Cursed Blood consumed his corpse; monsters would emerge from the pools and work to try and subjugate this new world to madness.

The War Against Tambelon saw the rise of many new races that were described before, and when the empire of Tambelon collapsed and its foul armies fled into the south; the Giants and Court Gods chased after them with a large number of their servants. However, a portion of Tambelons demented slaves remained behind to cause trouble and havoc for the Ponies; having masqueraded themselves as decent folks when in-reality they wanted only to continue the eradication of all other cultures and life not created by Sethe or by his Tambelon-borne children.

The Sethekk went about subverting the Ponies ancestral cultures and histories; rewriting them to suit their own agendas to make it seem like Ponykind had no outside help to become who they are today, destroying any religions that had cropped up to support the Gods or groups that praised Giantkind with the end goal of finally doing away with Ponykind for good...

The Events of G4 are just one result of this, and G5 is the end result of their latest partial victory against The Giants and the Gods; having destroyed every other trace of the Gods influence and wiping their believers and servants out...

7704913
Huh. I was thinking that ponies splitting apart made no sense, and then I realized just how negative a effect a guy like Discord could be.

Heck with his powers he could start the war single handedly, and everyone would think it was someone else's fault. I may have to rethink that improbable premise after all!.

Obviously sarcasm, but honestly after the last two seasons, I can't exactly put it past him.

7704912
True, if what he's said turns out to be a lie that'd be nice. Of course, it's also possible that he's lying in that things were even worse than what he's said.

7704917
"It was just a test, I swear. I wanted to see if everypony was truly back to being all harmonious with each other again, so I pretended to be some shadowy new villain and went around doing what I do. It got a bit out of hand. It was all with good intentions, I assure you!"

7704867
Honestly, the entirety of the overall flashback sequence in the second comic still doesn’t answer how MLP G5 is a continuation of MLP G4. Hardly anything about it answers why there are so many visual inconsistencies, and every attempt it made at explaining the overall connection between the two series only caused it to become all-the-more muddled and confusing.

And just like the MLP: ANG movie, it basically felt like the writers and artists were purposely turning it into a savage ridicule of G4.

How they were even trying to connect both series through these comics doesn’t even make sense! And not only was Discord badly portrayed and characterized, but the overall story treated the Main Six mean-spiritedly and caused them to seem stupid.

7704930
Season 8, meet comics. Comics, meet Season 8.

7704918
"And it's totally not a prelude to Fluttershy dying or anything! I'm not unstable, I promise!"

"Ignore that time I terrorized your school, because I thought Fluttershy was ignoring me, and I couldn't be bothered to talk to her about it."

7704931
I beg your pardon?

7704934
Have you not seen Non-Compete Clause?

7704933
There's this lovely moment in the comic right after Discord shows up where Sunny starts fangirling over him. "You're Discord! The Discord! The Lord of Chaos who was friends with Fluttershy and helped Starlight Glimmer, Trixie and Thorax save everypony from the changelings!". But that's all she mentions, the one time he was genuinely helpful in the series. I thought it was funny, like there was so little nice to say about him that was all they had.

But it also made me wonder, in-universe does everypony even know what he did anymore? Do the history books mention his reign of chaos, or his betrayal with Tirek, or the Grogar/Legion of Doom situation or what? How much did his friends cover for him, exactly? I guess maybe you could say some of his "Misadventures" were lost to time but how convenient it is that the one time he was unambiguously helpful survived.

7704935
I have. And, similar to you, I very much consider it to be one of the worst episodes of MLP: FiM.

7704936
Yeah, you know that they probably cleaned his history up somewhat.

They certainly didn't go out of their way to mention his villainy, even if Sunny was the kind of pony to look past it.

They barely acknowledge it, even when he's actually doing it in the present.

7704938
Pretty much all that needs to be said then.

That's a horrible backstory to explain the crystals. Also really starting to hate how much of a plot device the crystals are becoming.

7704867

Twilight and her friends made the Unity crystals to basically threaten everypony into getting along and keep them from fighting each other based on their abilities, by making it so that their magic would be taken away from them if they stopped living in Harmony.

Are you fucking serious????? That just turns Twilight Sparkle no better than any of the villains. "Let's control citizens through fear because that is totally something heroic to do!"
7704880
The film is fine, cute horses doing cute stuff as they should. But the Make Your Mark special has its own problems. I recommend to watch the Tell Your Tale series, it explores the characters further and they are all fun.
7704882
7704886
7704887
7704889
It could have made more sense if the whole "turning against each other" thing was actually a slow burn that took millenniums or something.
7704912
How much do we bet?
7704933
"It is not like i am actually a necromancer or anything."
7704936

"You're Discord! The Discord! The Lord of Chaos who was friends with Fluttershy and helped Starlight Glimmer, Trixie and Thorax save everypony from the changelings!". But that's all she mentions, the one time he was genuinely helpful in the series. I thought it was funny, like there was so little nice to say about him that was all they had.

Funny thing is that Discord turns out to be completely useless in To Where And Back Again. Everyone else, Thorax, Trixie and Starlight Glimmer actually do something to help their team meanwhile Discord is gone in seconds.

7704887
Posey enters the chat

7704913
I remember that game

7704908
Always has been

7704961

Are you fucking serious????? That just turns Twilight Sparkle no better than any of the villains. "Let's control citizens through fear because that is totally something heroic to do!"

The comic tries to make it sound all heroic and great. It was "To make sure magic would never pit the tribes against each other again!" and all that, and as long as everypony behaves they'll get to keep their magic. But no matter how nice it makes it sound it's still basically Twilight forcing them all to behave under threat of losing something they all see as an essential part of themselves otherwise.

Funny thing is that Discord turns out to be completely useless in To Where And Back Again. Everyone else, Thorax, Trixie and Starlight Glimmer actually do something to help their team meanwhile Discord is gone in seconds.

To be fair, he does use his "Annoying personality" to distract some guards so the other three can sneak by. Plus he provided the quick travel time and their supplies, as none of them had any bags packed prior, those all just appeared after he snapped them to the hive, which does include the magic act stuff Trixie used to do her part. So he wasn't useless.

Yeah I don't like the idea of Twilight taking all magic away. That's literally what half the villains of G4 did. Unintentional or not, it makes Twilight feel hypocritical.

7704966
Back then when the tribes fought they should have feared the windigos and freeze to death. Now they should fear to fall into an endless void. How the fuck does that fix anything?

The canon of the comics were always stupid, and always separate from the main canon of the source material.

7704966
Yeah, much as I despise Discord, I do have to give credit where it’s due in TWABA. This is the first episode he’s in where he is neither the cause of the problem nor deliberately making an existing problem worse. While he helps out for selfish reasons (he doesn’t seem to care about the changeling infiltration until he learns his personal life coach has been taken), he does genuinely try his best to be helpful. His original plan was apparently to just straight-up Scry-And-Die Chrysalis and I gotta give him style points for that, too.

No, I have no issue with Discord in TWABA, and nor for the next three episodes after it, with “Discordant Harmony” being probably the episode where he’s at his best as a person and “The Break-up Break Down” being a close second. I could have liked Discord if he’d stayed on that trajectory.

7704867
Well, there are episodes that I like in season 9. But I say season 9 is not my cup of tea and to be honest, I not a big of fans that ponies turning on each other due to one rumor on each other.

7704961

"It is not like i am actually a necromancer or anything."

I still say Sombra in Season 9 was a shadow puppet of Discord. His enhanced powers make no sense otherwise.

And I don't buy that Discord actually revived him at the lair either, else the other villians would have committed on it.

Throw that in with the shift in personality (into exactly the short of character Discord would imagine a tyrant to be) and the evidence is vastly in favor of Sombra not being who he says he is.

Face it the franchise has been going down hill ever since season 9 and the comic's have always been hit or miss mostly miss

7704961
Can we all just collectively agree once and for all that putting Twilight on the throne was a mistake all along and never should have been attempted? It would silence a lot of arguments that have been simmering for the past ten years.

Honestly, it’s like Hasbro and IDW are actively trying to make everyone feel stupid for having ever defended Magical Mystery Cure by this point.

7704867 Even assuming Discord left out some key details or his story is widely exaggerated, why did anyone think this was a good idea?! The conflict is literally a rehash from "The Ending of the End" where it was already contrived, and yet things turned out okay when they happened there. So what was different this time?! And why didn't Twilight or her friends act sooner to stop that racist pony? Heck, where the student/young six or the CMC while all of this was going down?! Did they just stand by and let it happen?!

7705151 It's a little late for Hasbro to be having second thoughts when they were the ones who pushed for it. They made their bed, so they should sleep in it.

7705151
I don’t think it was necessarily a mistake, I just think it was handled awfully.

But like by contrast, if that plot line has been wholly removed from Season 9, but then “The Last Problem” had shown her as the ruler of Equestria, with it being ambiguous as to what happened that made her the ruler but with it being clear that she’s good at it, I wouldn’t take issue with it.

7705166

Even assuming Discord left out some key details or his story is widely exaggerated, why did anyone think this was a good idea?! The conflict is literally a rehash from "The Ending of the End" where it was already contrived, and yet things turned out okay when they happened there. So what was different this time?! And why didn't Twilight or her friends act sooner to stop that racist pony? Heck, where the student/young six or the CMC while all of this was going down?! Did they just stand by and let it happen?!

There's no mention of the CMC, Student Six, Starlight or pretty much anypony else. They might have been left out just to keep the explanation simple but it really does make you wonder. The villain wasn't exactly doing all this from the shadows, there's some panels where she literally shows up in Ponyville, cuts in front of Fluttershy in a line, spouts some stuff about unicorns being better and then even shoves Flutters to the ground. Of course all we see her as is some shadowy unicorn figure, but she was out and about in public. You think the heroes would confront her or something.

7705192

The villain wasn't exactly doing all this from the shadows, there's some panels where she literally shows up in Ponyville, cuts in front of Fluttershy in a line, spouts some stuff about unicorns being better and then even shoves Flutters to the ground. Of course all we see her as is some shadowy unicorn figure, but she was out and about in public. You think the heroes would confront her or something.

You do realize that for most of the last decade, Ponies seem to severely lack in the common sense department. Right? This is a world that seems to run on pure Apathy Killed The Cat, where the Royal Guards are useless in a fight, The Princesses stay on their thrones and barely contribute, and even the everyday citizen doesn't even see need to stand up for themselves.
Remember the Season 2 finale? When the Changelings first invaded it should have served as a wakeup call to revise their defense strategy to try countering Infiltrators, something which a fair many fanfic writers had created already from disguise-altering runes to specialized lanterns that distrupt and break down a Changelings' active camouflage, to even Changelings that have turned coat on Chrysalis that sided with Equestria in much the same vein as Thorax did.
Outside of Thorax, the show did nothing at all to try capitalizing on this new threat in order to combat it. And the one time when a prime opportunity to get an edge over the Changelings in the form of a salve created by Zecora from an alternate timeline was presented to Twilight Sparkle: a salve that she could have asked several samples of to reverse-engineer, a recipe list for what ingredients are required to make it, or even simply going to her own Zecora and asking if she could make this Anti-Changeling Salve in the first place... she just drops the matter altogether and leaves the timeline behind without taking advantage of this prime opportunity, and simply telling it to her friends who just treat her escapades in the alternate timelines like it was just another adventure. And we all know what happens in Season 6: Twilight Sparkle and everyone else gets kidnapped and replaced by Changelings.

It is this example alone that I feel justifies Twilight Sparkle being immediately moved over into the Reed Richards Is Useless category, despite many idiots protesting otherwise.

No one ever talks about it... they just do it. And you go on with your lives ignoring the signs all around you. And then one day when the air is still and the night has fallen; they come for you. It is only then when you realize that while you're talking about 'Organizing' and 'Committees', the Extermination has already begun.

-Erik Lehnsherr, X-Men, The Last Stand

7705218
That’s the point where suspension of disbelief becomes an active detriment to the product. You can’t really justify it by that point and it shows the writers are becoming too reliant on it.

7704876
Like people predicted when G5 dropped...Twiggles destroyed Equestria. *slowclap*

7705254
I do so love being right.

7705173
Season 9 only validated the concerns of those from as far back as season 3 and proved how maligned a concept it was. The only thing the lack of Season 9 would have done was keep the logical conclusion of that concept restricted to fanfics and conjecture built around hoping it wouldn’t be so bad in the end.What made Season 9’s finale so painful was that it showed the viewers exactly what they did not want to see and wanted to remain theoretical. Any benefit of the doubt was always built on false hope while the analyses and criticism of the longtime detractors proved to be a Cassandra Truth. To all the diehard fans who spent 7 years attacking and admonishing detractors for “being negative” and “not liking change”, I hope you’re happy with what you got in the end.

Season 3 gave us something that was a bad idea. Season 9 showed us why it was a bad idea.

7705318
No, what made Season 9's finale bad was the bad writing throughout most of it, and my dislike of the finale of Season 9 has nothing to do with Twilight's coronation in and of itself. My issue is that after Twilight opened a school in Season 8 - an oddly inspired choice on the part of these particular writers - Season 9 coronating her robs Twilight on what felt like a natural direction for her character to take. Twilight the Headmare was a role she should have been allowed to play for longer.

Also? We had four good seasons and a movie of Twilight the Princess that produced plenty of good episodes and stories, and even Seasons 8 and 9 had the occasional gem. And there were many, many, many ways Twilight's coronation could have been handled that would have felt natural. We just got unlucky with getting largely shit writers to close out the series.

Finally,

I hope you’re happy with what you got in the end.

There is absolutely no call for this level of spite.

7705333
You’re free to call it what you will, but I will not be getting into an argument over it. This isn’t the place for it.