So, this is kind of a rant, but I've encountered this problem a lot lately, especially so with Season 9 and I want to talk about it. This really should be obvious but apparently to some people it just isn't.

If there's one thing I've gotten real tired of lately, it's getting into debates with people about what happened in Season 9 and having them justify what happened by just making stuff up to make it less bad. Trying to point out the moral issues with Season 9 and just getting back something like "Well, obviously Discord was just trying to reform the villains by teaching them the power of friendship, and he chose to turn the villains to stone at the end of the episode so they could get a shot at reformation just like him later, see?" makes me want to tear my hair out. Discord never claims anything like that in the series, there is no significant evidence that he planned anything like that, if anything his actions very clearly show the opposite. How does resurrecting Sombra and then letting him get killed again so he can use his death to threaten the trio fit in with "Reforming" anyone? As for the stoning, "Together Forever" sure doesn't sound like he wants to give the trio a chance of any kind.

I get it. Headcanons are fun, and chances are your headcanon about Season 9 is probably 100 times better than the actual thing. But they're just unwritten fanfiction at the end of the day, until you write them down and then they're literally just fanfiction. I wish Discord had been trying to reform the villains instead of what he actually did, I wish the characters had indicated that the trio's stoning was just a temporary measure until they could figure out how best to try and help them later on, I wish Discord had gotten some kind of punishment for his actions, even just a slap on the wrist. But none of that actually happened no matter how much anyone says it did just because they daydreamed it.

This goes for headcanons that make the trio look worse too. Justifying their treatment because the trio "Canonically murdered thousands" when they destroyed Canterlot Castle doesn't work. This is not that kind of show, there is no indication that happened, and if it did happen you do realize that it also makes Discord look way, way worse too, right? Like if his actions got thousands of innocent civilians killed then him being forgiven again just becomes even more ludicrous. If you want to write some mature, dark fanfiction where that is the case, go right ahead, might be interesting. But it's not canon.

I'm encountering this right now on another site and I've seen it enough times it's started to bug me. There's nothing wrong with coming up with and sharing ideas to deal with what happened in the show, or writing fanfics about it. That's great and fun and a good way to deal with things. But headcanons do not fix actual canon. No amount of "In my headcanon the trio were only a statue for a week before they each got a full 22 minute episode dedicated to trying to help them" makes it actually happen. Otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have willed such a thing into existence by now.

You and me both, hombre. You and me both. “Headcanon” has another, more apt name - fan fiction. And don’t get me wrong, I obviously love fan fiction. But no one should be pretending that their fan fiction replaces the stuff that actually happened.

Pretty much. I love any story that addresses this and actually tries to work on it(fix fic is a dirty word but there are problems that could do with a remodel) but the show itself soured it's ending and that's what we got.

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I think what drives me the most nuts about it is that a lot of these people clearly do see a problem with Season 9's writing because otherwise why would they see a need to make stuff up like this? But rather than acknowledging it they just play this game of pretend instead and then act like anyone pointing out what actually happened is the crazy one. I'll just describes the 100% canonical events to them and they'll just be all "Wow, that sounds awful! Why would you think such a negative thing? Clearly that's not what actually happened because insert fanfiction here and that's what the writers really intended!".

Like, I think these people would sometimes agree with me if they just quit playing pretend for 5 minutes and I think that's the most annoying part of it all.

They most definitely do not. At best, headcanons in the face of objective flaws with canon are coping mechanisms.

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I strongly agree. I didn't like how movies and shows leave holes out so that audiences can theorize to fill in the holes, because even if people try to fill in the holes, the story is still bad. Don't get me wrong, The Thing does leave everything unexplained, but it does tell its story and play out the themes of paranoia and distrust. The plot of Friendship is Magic doesn't establish the story that we expected to hear, it now reveals the show established a B-movie territory about the protagonists' goal to rule over Equestria, and the villains are treated like obstacles rather than characters

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This is why my own headcanons deals with the psyche of the characters, rather than their actions.

One of the biggest being Cozy Glow in-relation to her Cutie Mark and how she views the world of Equestria around her.

At first glance, one would just assume that her Cutie Mark is of a Red Rook: a symbol iconic within Chess, hinting at her manipulative stance that is seen, but many are unaware that there's another symbol of similar importance that shares a personality trait with her:

In Tarot, The Tower is seen as a symbol of great calamity: the collapse of everything that one stood for. A disaster that is said to be unavoidable. What had happened since the series began? Calamities affecting all of Equestria ranging from ancient enemies, tyrants, and warlords pouring out of the woodwork, along with Heroes to rise up and challenge that disaster. Many also seem to forget the other side of the cards' meaning: after that destruction, there comes a fresh start and a new beginning after that calamity has passed, a renewal of the land and a chance to embrace new values or philosophies. A chance to learn and to reflect on how the calamity came to pass in the first place.
The core of the matter is that no matter what happens within Friendship is Magic: no significant changes have been brought about by all this pain and destruction, because of the Publics' obedience to Princess Celestia; and Celestias' own obsession with Destiny: constantly looking to the future instead of what is right in front of her: be it the welfare of her sister, or the safety of her subjects.
Before Cozy Glow came into the show, we had the events of The Storm Kings' Invasion: a massive invasion that saw to the complete collapse of Equestria literally overnight without the nation so much as putting up any sort of fight or making a valiant last stand. From the perspective of an everyday citizen, one could have said that the Princesses just gave up with Twilight Sparkle and her friends: all national heroes, just running away without any reason. Then following the Storm Kings' defeat just three days later without any sort of intervention or direct action conducted by Twilight Sparkle, all of this might have served as the metaphorical breaking point for Cozy: having put up with this Stagnation and Status Quo for all her life while everyone around her did nothing with their lives; pursuing needless dreams and goals without attempting to make a lasting change for the better.

Equestria had forsaken the nature of The Tower as Change: demonizing the Destruction aspect, and ignoring the Rebirth that comes after that Destruction passes.

Equestria constantly glorifying their past achievements and the achievements of Princess Twilight Sparkle does nothing at all to uplift the core issues that are facing the people. Twilight is just an icon; one that had not yet earned to be seen as an actual leader beyond that of her team or organizing a small towns' festivities. Eventually, something will inevitably snap for Twilight Sparkle that will see the downfall of Equestria in some disastrous form. A form that in any other way SHOULD have been avoidable with insight and self-determination, rather than looking towards the far future of something you have blind faith in without questioning that devotion...

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Discord never claims anything like that in the series, there is no significant evidence that he planned anything like that, if anything his actions very clearly show the opposite. How does resurrecting Sombra and then letting him get killed again so he can use his death to threaten the trio fit in with "Reforming" anyone? As for the stoning, "Together Forever" sure doesn't sound like he wants to give the trio a chance of any kind.

You're correct about that. In my view, Discord was just using the villains as tools for Twilight's progress to be a better ruler. I failed to see how Twilight and her friends just allow that mutated weasel to get away with his crime when he himself was to blame for everything. I mean when he even convince Celestia and Luna to turned the Legion to stone, which was an excuse to get them to forget his crime to Equestria as he gets away with it scot-free. There was no acts of reforming them, just the Lord of Chaos using whoever and whatever to get what he wants to happen which Friendship allowed to happen without any consequences sickens me that everyone just sees it as a good thing for Twilight and her friends to win. I'm starting to think that Opaline might be an example of Friendship's dark side.

Unfortunately, since this franchise has a history of not doing backstories, we'll never know what the true nature is of the characters or even other things that are in the show.

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With that being said, do you also have problems with the creators of this show and every other franchise not giving the audience proper conclusions about certain plot holes and said creators declaring them, “up to interpretation?” I’m asking because I’ve seen some folks here express fury and disgust with the response.

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Opaline being a product of the downside of the Magic of Friendship has potential. I hope they go that route later in G5’s future.

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With that being said, do you also have problems with the creators of this show and every other franchise not giving the audience proper conclusions about certain plot holes and said creators declaring them, “up to interpretation?” I’m asking because I’ve seen some folks here express fury and disgust with the response.

It really depends. When it comes to plot holes, of course they're an issue and I'd prefer they get filled in when possible. Writers leaving certain things open or up for interpretation are fine though, depending on what it is. But you can't just say something is "Up to interpretation" as an excuse for poor writing.

Basically, it depends on how important the thing being left open is to the actual story, and whether there's a good reason for it to be that way or not.

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Case in point, for example, Emperor Palpatine was invented way back in 1977, first appeared in 1979 and was defeated in 1983. But it took until 1999 for us to learn literally anything about his backstory, and even then all we learn is that he was a senator for a planet called Naboo. It took until 2014, thirty-seven years after his creation, before we even learned his first name, or that he even had a first name.

I still think it should have been Frank.

But that’s okay because none of his background details really matter to the character of the Emperor or would help explain him all that much or add any kind of needed context.

Conversely, looking at Cozy Glow; how can anyone not want to know her backstory?

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Yeah, that's a good example. For an MLP one, I've always thought that Spike's lack of origin story is perfectly fine. I know some fans have always wanted to know where he came from or who his biological parents are, but both times the show dealt with his past that wasn't really answered and instead we had Spike decide that it doesn't really matter, because Twilight and her family and his Ponyville friends are his real family. The one that actually matters to him and have helped him grow into the person he is, and I think that's a perfectly valid and acceptable answer to the question.

Admittedly I would have liked to know why Celestia had his egg, but if I were to write that story I'd probably have it be something that gives no real answers either. Just that she found it abandoned with no nearby parents. Just to drive home that there's no real answers for Spike, and that he just has to live with that and that's okay too because he can still be happy without knowing. This is a case where I think not knowing something and it being left open is fine, because there's an actual point to it and because I don't need that info to know who Spike is.

With Cozy though, her lack of backstory does just feel weird and like something important is missing from her.

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I don’t think she even necessarily needs a backstory so much as just a reason. Something that gives us an idea as to why she wants power.

For example, years ago I wrote a story with Grogar in it as the big bad. I presented him as an absolute monster, a necromancer of vast power who’d killed an entire civilization as part of his quest to become an undying lich.

I never gave a single thought to where he was born or what his childhood was like, but - in a flashback where he’s masquerading as just a wise old sage - I did have him tell a story about having once worked with a town to save a beached whale, only for the whale to beach itself again, and then when it was saved to beach itself for a third time. When the townsfolk and Grogar inspected it to figure out what was wrong, they discovered that the whale was mostly paralyzed. In deep water it would drown, so it kept beaching itself to keep breathing, even though that meant its own weight was crushing it. Faced with a choice of drowning in minutes or suffocating for hours, the whale chose the latter because that meant that it would get to live that much longer. Each breath would be agony, but it would still be alive.

Whales actually do this sometimes IRL, by the way.

The story was anecdotal and Grogar could have even made the whole thing up, but even still one can listen to him telling it and kind of see it as explaining his entire philosophy and attitude in that fic: life, in any condition, at any cost, is preferable to dying, in his view.

Cozy Glow needed something like that. Something that gave us an inkling as to why she was the way she was. Something more than just power for power’s own sake.

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Exactly, which is why we all owe it to ourselves and MLP itself to get Hasbro to revise Season 9.

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Would that include the status of popular ships like SpikexRarity, FluttershyxDiscord, RDxAJ (aka Ashleigh Ball dating herself)?

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Eh, I think that's all stuff that's fine to leave open to interpretation and unanswered. I found the shipping confirmations and hints with the main cast the show did do in the finale to be mostly pretty awkward and forced. The show never really focused on that much, relegating it to mostly little jokes and such, the characters love lives have never been very important. For the time skip epilogue the important things to show were that the main cast remained friends.

So yeah, that stuff was never very important and was more just a thing fans obsessed over on their own. So I think leaving them open to interpretation is perfectly fine and probably ideal even.

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Eh, I’m okay with that. Even though I think establishing the state of relationships between characters is important as well, I respect the creators’ decisions on them.

To be fair, the other option is to be forever bitter and endlessly debate over how the show should have gone.

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Understatement of the century.

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Or people can have their fun headcanons and fanfictions and enjoy those while also still recognizing they aren't actually canon? And thus not weirdly try to convince people they debate with that things that didn't happen actually totally did happen just because they say so.

If I want to headcanon that say...Fluttershy is in a loving polygamous relationship with Tirek and Chrysalis and they've all adopted Cozy Glow as their child and Discord cries himself to sleep every night over it, I can totally do that. But if I try to have a conversation with someone about the show acting like that actually happened they have every right to think I'm crazy.

But that's my headcanon now. I just thought of it but I say it's my headcanon and that's the magic word so it's official and you can't prove me wrong.

Reasonable headcanons extrapolated from existing material than enhance the story are fine

Making things up wholesale to justify garbage writing, on the other hand, keep that to fanfic

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For the last time, Hasbro isn't going to redo a generation they have long finished and moved on from, so give it a rest.

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I can understand why don't like certain fanfics, but you have to understand that they are fanfics, and we have the rights to make them in whatever way we want to even if you don't like them. Maybe some head canons don't feel right, but that's also the purpose of a fanfic. Also, I know you don't like some of them that are done with an alternate universe tag so that certain episodes can be reimagined to the way the author likes them, but that's really up to the author themselves, not you. I will admit that even I recently did an alternate universe style fanfic by showing what it would have been like if Megan really was introduced into G4, which I have always viewed as a missed opportunity, and it probably would have been titled that way if Hasbro actually did do that. Overall, if you don't like the way some fanfics go, then simply don't read them, because nobody is forcing you to do so. BTW, there are a number of fanfics here that I don't like, but you don't hear me dumping on them, so I expect the same from you.

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Same can be said when the original creators "confirm" or "joss" information in interviews and random internet posts. If you want your audience to know something then put it into the story. Do not expect us to dig up old twitter posts.

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Agreed.

Glares at RT

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I can understand why don't like certain fanfics, but you have to understand that they are fanfics, and we have the rights to make them in whatever way we want to even if you don't like them

No, you've completely misunderstood the problem. I have no beef with fanfics. The problem is with "Headcanons" and people acting like they are a "Solution" to canon, or just outright insisting that they are canon somehow. The first is people either saying things like "Well, you can just headcanon the trio were released and reformed later, so there's nothing wrong with the finale" as if that actually makes the problems with the canonical finale of the show go away. Trying to point out the problems and moral issues I have with the finale and just getting dismissed because I can make believe something else is ridiculous.

Then there's the second set, the people who say things like "Discord was obviously trying to reform all the villains in Season 9. Clearly those were his true intentions and the writer's intentions, they just weren't stated. He only turned them to stone so they could get a chance later like him!". As in, they're making something up completely and then acting like it actually is true for some reason, and then often acting like I'm somehow crazy or stupid or "Missing the point" for not seeing it, despite there being no evidence of these things. I've had people in debates say things like this to me on multiple occasions.

People can write whatever fanfics they want, I don't care. I think writing a fanfic to address the issues you had with the finale and write something you'd like to see instead is a great way to deal with things. People can also have whatever "Headcanons" they like, since headcanons are really just unwritten fanfics. As long as they recognize their fanfictions and headcanons are just that, fanfictions and headcanons, and that they did not happen in the actual source material and do not change anything about it, I've got not issue.

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Never going to happen.

Your delusions are kind of amusing though.

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Personally, I never saw any fanfics here as being canon to start with. The very concept of the idea is to not be related to the show itself. Just putting in characters that weren't part of the show from other existing shows or even OCs shows that they aren't canon. Even the ones that are alternate universe are meant to be reimagined or in some cases be wishful thinking. For example, when I did the fanfic Unexpected Arrival, it was pretty much giving the idea of what the show would have been like if Megan, who is originally from G1, would have been like if she really was introduced into the show even though I know that she wasn't in reality. Meanwhile, the ones I did before was part of a series that I did that pretty much took place in between where the last battle ended and went to Twilight's actual coronation, though I did manage to extend it with some bonus stories with G5 characters as well. Nonetheless, I'm not trying to make them canon to the show. On a side note, if you don't know what Megan looks like, she is in my avatar standing right behind the Mane 6 in a relationship that I wish really did happen, but didn't hence what I will always see as a missed opportunity.