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Princess Twilight (Parts 1 and 2) (November 23rd 2013, 2 x 22 minutes)

Summary: Princess Twilight must discover where Celestia and Luna have disappeared to, and to do that requires a sacrifice.

Part 1

Twilight thinking about it too much.

There's an interesting question. Twilight's got wings, but did she get the ability to walk on clouds and the like as well?

No need for that now? Was there need for that before? I don't remember Celestia insisting that Twilight curtsy to her.

Celestia is surprisingly easy to ponynap.

Yes, that is weird. And kinda puts a dent in one of my pet theories. So the sun and the moon can actually be in the sky at the same time now. That's new. Even Discord didn't manage to pull that one off. However, the way it's presented it does *look* like the moon is capable of blocking the sun, the range is just less than I had hoped.

All the citizenship run to Twilight when they see her. So here Princess Twilight has some standing.

The Royal Guard take instruction directly from the princesses. No command structure apparently.

And another guard, this one with his own coat color. Whatever the enchantment that causes all the guards to look identical seem to be wearing off, or they've run out of the original enchanted armor and we're dealing with new harness being made. Might still be enchanted for protection, but they no longer seem interested in the 'uniform' enchantment.

More indication that Fluttershy's cottage is on the edge of the Everfree Forest.

Odd. The clouds have thorns as well.

Ah, the vines disrupt magic, or at least cause magic to go haywire.

When did Twilight get seatbelts installed?

Discord summoning, via the Elements of Harmony. Ah, so Celestia gave this spell to Twilight. Interesting, how did Celestia develop this spell?

And amazingly convenient Zecora arrives.

And how does she *know* that? How much alicorn magic is floating around for this purpose? That seems to indicate that alicorns are more common than we suppose.

Ah, a short history lesson. Here we have pre-Nightmare Moon Luna.

I still think Luna looks a bit surprised and confused for a second before the transformation. Not that that it still isn't completely her, of course, but that she was unaware of the consequences of her behavior.

Part 2

This entire sequence is way too short. Not that it should have gone longer for the viewer, but there should have been time skips to give the *impression* of going longer. Give the battle between the sun and moon more weight. As it is, the impression is that the entire Nightmare Moon episode a thousand years ago took about fifteen minutes at most.

At least this looks like Discord has been running rampant for quite some time.

And the Tree of Harmony. And again, it looks like Luna and Celestia had a hard time getting to this point.

A rockadile. Although they're calling it just a crocodile. Or crocodilly, according to AJ.

Honestly, Discord's behavior is more likely that he dislikes it when ponies try to not play his game.

The vines have 'flowers' that have the visual impression of distorted venus fly trap leaves. The venus fly trap actually does have proper flowers. The odd 'traps' are highly modified leaves.

This thing may look like a tree, but it's pretty much entirely crystalline. I notice while it has Celestia's and Luna's cutie mark (and a variant Twilight one as well), Cadance is not represented.

Discord uses the phrase 'thousands of moons ago'. He's definitely using that as a 'saying' rather than an exact measure of time, but it does seem to indicate that the vines were to germinate a couple of hundred years after his imprisonment.

And I assume Twilight's 'starboom' is more from magic than due to sheer speed like the rainboom. Society-wise though, it's interesting that is to be included. It wouldn't have been that unusual for Celestia and Luna to make this day all about them, but they've gone out of their way to include Twilight.