Veylon

My view is that Alicorn are neither born nor ascended unicorns. Instead, they are created beings. I suppose that technically, they wouldn't actually be ponies in that case. I also view Cadence as a mutant rather than an "true" Alicorn, as - other than having both horn and wings - she appears to be a regular pony. Also, Prince Blueblood could easily be descended from Princess Platinum's line and thus have inherited his title that way.

I felt that it was integrated really well. And by "integrated" I mean kept completely separate. There was at all times a green glow keeping the 3D and 2D from each other's throats. Compare and Contrast with Titan A.E. I also find it somewhat interesting (and humorous) that Computer Generated Images are being criticized for being in a cartoon that is animated entirely in Flash!

I'm going to have to with the Wonderbolt Academy. I'm no Rainbow Dash fan, but so far it's the only episode this season that felt solid from start to finish. Magic Duel is almost up there, but there's a few things that just bug me about it.

I started to make a snooty comment about how much more mature TNG is and how naturally an adult show would handle character development much better and how you couldn't really apply that to this. Then I remembered that TNG had it's fair share of botching (including Q) and I rethought that. It really is something that's liable to turn into a conceptual trainwreck if mishandled, though. I'm looking forward to this with the same dread that I looked forward to the wedding with.

Maybe since he's effectively sealed away, they have to contact him via some sort of dreamscape that Luna could create. And they could always fail to reform him. Maybe the moral that it's important to try to reach out even if you don't succeed. That's the vibe I got from the Gilda episode.

It's not the writer who has me worried, it's the premise. Writing a story where you-know-who is brought in for therapy is more like defusing a bomb than making art. I hold no great hope for this one.

Ah. Just stumbled upon this. So this is why people keep getting knotted up about Season 3. I see. Well. I have a very hard time imagining how you can make Discord be good and still be Discord. There's sort of this whitewashing effect where most characters who switch sides lose all of their interesting character traits. What does Discord do if he isn't an evil manipulative bastard? He's such a primal force of chaos that toning him down would leave him completely neutered. Not that I'd be particularly excited about seeing him back as a villain, either. He's so grossly overpowered that you can't really have the ponies fight him and sealing him up yet again would diminish him by making fall for the same trick once more as well as diminishing the Elements by having his recent imprisonment be so short-lived as to be meaningless. So this episode, if it's really planned and not a rumor, is about 90% likely to be painfully saccharine and awful and about 10% to be game-changingly awesome. If they can somehow make this happen without ruining him as a character. Of course, the description doesn't actually say that he's coming out of his prison, so he may well stay in statue form the entire episode and communicate via telepathy or some sort of dream world.

Twilight needs to call Celestia out if only to show that she can, if need be. If the Princess is raising her student to be some kind of adviser or assistant as seems likely, she needs to be someone capable of challenging and contradicting her boss. At some point and in some way, Celestia needs to come down off her pedestal in her student's eyes. In the long run, Twilight's hero-worship is unhealthy and dangerous for the both of them.

Rarity has got to be the hardest. She's easily the least one-note of the characters and has an affected accent to boot. She's catty, ladylike, self-absorbed, self-conscious, and melodramatic. She also has this whiff of being ever-so-slightly self-aware that really makes her character shine but is very tough to do justice to. Even the real writers have trouble with her.

Discord probably could've killed them all anytime he wanted. Heck, killing one of them or simply dumping the Elements in some unreachable place would've sealed his victory without further effort. That'd be the logical thing to do. But he didn't want to win in the flattest sense of the term, he wanted to win in a way that demonstrated his complete mastery of his opponents. He wanted to see them give up after losing in the most pointless and humiliating manner possible. He seems to love ruining the moments of triumph of others. He steals the Elements in such a way as to make Celestia look incompetent instead of farsighted and gives them back once they've become utterly useless. I also kind of suspect that by the time Spike started regurgitating letters Discord had lost interest in the Mane Six anyway.

Played straight - that Alicorns are superior and therefore Twilight becomes one in some process of advancing - this is a terrible idea. It would portray the concept that right makes might and the only way forward is amass power. One the other hand, because it's a terrible idea, it'd make a great anti-moral for an episode. She might wrongly decide that to deal with a situation, she needs to "ascend" and become stronger. She might be terrified at seeing Celestia training another student and feel the need to prove herself better to avoid losing her special status. She could see transforming herself physically as akin to transforming herself spiritually and use magic as a (relatively) quick and easy road to self-betterment. There could even be a plot where Celestia falls off the very high pedestal that Twilight mentally keeps her on and Twilight feels that Equestria needs a replacement and that the replacement must necessarily be an Alicorn. In other words, I think there's a lot of bad reasons Twilight might turn herself into an Alicorn, but I don't really see any good ones.

I think if they counted all the "days" in Discord's reign they'd risk the Pony equivalent of the 1752 Calendar Riots. We don't know exactly how long a "moon" is in Equestria - or even if it's a consistent time period - so we can't really know how long it is in days. For all we know, a "moon" is seven days to give some cosmological support to the concept of a "week". I do find the calculation of "roughly seven years" to be reasonable - travel in oldentimes was rough and they might have trouble affording getting everyone together every single year. On the other hand, they've got rail service, so who knows...

Celestia's been running things for a thousand years. That's plenty of time for her to make some plans for what happens if - for any reason - she's unable to be in charge. If she hasn't gotten around to it yet, events at the wedding ought to have focused her mind. Almost undoubtably, Luna would step into the lead role, if she isn't already legally Celestia's equal. Cadance would probably be third, as she's both a princess and an alicorn (or close enough) and would seem a natural choice. After that... There'd almost have to be some way to keep Blueblood off the throne, or relegated to a figurehead. Celestia's inner council, who she already trusts for advice, would likely be the real rulers. If they couldn't openly rule, there might be some way to put the Mane Six - heroes several times over - up as the figure heads. Otherwise, I suppose there might be some way to resurrect the old pre-Celestial monarchies and have them rule jointly. Or maybe they'd just elect their rulers afterwards. Who knows?

There's kind of a problem with an "anti" Mane Six in that they wouldn't be terribly cohesive. I mean, would you trust someone who's the embodiment of Treachery to have your back? Would you leave your stuff out and expect it to be okay with Cruelty and Greed around? Could you believe anything Despair and Deception have to say? You may as well backstab your team before they backstab you.

We're wrangling over the definition of test here. It's true enough that any challenging experience is a "test" of one's abilities in a broad sense. But when Celestia summons Twilight, it's clear that Twilight expected a much stricter form of a test; a challenge administered by her mentor to gauge her skills in a controlled environment. The classic definition of test. The purpose of a good test to remove doubt pertaining the qualities of the subject. It only makes sense for Celestia to give Twilight a test if she wasn't sure about her. By contrast, a good mission is one where there are no doubts about the outcome. A plan is made out so that the goal is accomplished with as near-perfect certitude as possible. If Equestria is in danger, Celestia should be throwing whatever it takes into eliminating that danger. It's her self-imposed duty as a monarch to leave no possibility of failure. To do otherwise would be careless. If the fate of her nation depends on keeping Sombra's greedy hooves off the Crystal Empire we should expect her to take every measure to stop him. And so I'm back to trying to judge this as a test or as a mission. If it's a test, I'm very confused as to what exactly Twilight was being tested on. Her willingness to ignore Celestia's instructions when inconvenient? Her riddle-solving abilities? What? If it's a mission, then we've got to ask why Celestia would tell her that "this is something only you can do" when that statement could only possibly increase the chances of failure, which would (allegedly) be catastrophic for Equestria. It also begs the question of why Celestia didn't do any of a dozen or so things that would have lessened the chances of failure, such as sending more than one soldier or even letting the Mane Six bring the Elements of Harmony.

It goes something like this: I can criticize Celestia describing the dangerous mission she's sending Twilight on as a test. OR I can't take Sombra seriously as a villainous threat because he's no more than a test for Twilight and Celestia in fact has everything under control. Either of these criticisms could be valid but they can't both be valid at the same time. Many further things that are "wrong" in the episodes depend on one or the other of these scenarios to be correct, and thus fair game for criticism. I'll grant that the Phantom Menace has much more stupid above and beyond the overlapping plot hole issue, where the Crystal Empire really doesn't.

The "Alicorn's Amulet" was almost definitely pandering. Of course, like "good" pandering it doesn't take anything away from the show. It doesn't matter what the amulet is called. If they were doing something like trying to hang a plot point on our (assumed) knowledge of Lyra's obsession for humans or Celestia's past relationship with Discord, that would be terrible. Pandering's okay as long it's inconsequential, makes perfect sense from within the show or, better yet, both.

Doesn't really seem there'd be much of a fight. If Celestia knew he was coming, she'd just change the sun to whatever color would make him helpless (possibly teleporting somewhere secure if this process took a while) and then kick him to death. If she couldn't do that (or didn't know he was coming) he'd win because he's Superman. And I'll grant that magic could come into play if there was enough time to use it. Twilight could probably gin up a Kryptonite ray spell (apply that to the sun!) or actual Kryptonite if she had the opportunity to do the research and if that's allowed in a strict Celestia vs. Superman scenario. But really, the actual battle would be pretty one-sided when it came down to the fighting itself.

My theory is that all the ponies lost their special talents, which lost them their cutie marks. Rarity is no longer especially skilled at fashion, which is why you see the terrible patched-together clothes. Applejack is no longer good at farming, and so the abandoned crops. The same would be true of the rest of the ponies as they lost the ability and interest in what were once their defining characteristics. The pictures had a strong vibe that something terribly important yet subtle had faded or failed and the world was a lesser place for it's absence. But that's just what I think.

I really don't have much against the other episodes, it's just the Crystal Empire ones. The rest are just...episodes. None of them have been all that fantastic, but there's no Mare-do-Well's among them either. I've got complaints, sure, but they're fairly clear-cut and I don't have to use multi-branched conditional criticism in order to address them. I can just say "I don't like cars in Equestria" and that's about it.

You could also do a foil with ponies who are exaggerations or caricatures of the Mane Six. Or better yet, have them be apotheoses of the Mane Six. Give us mares who have not only mastered what the Mane Six are best at, and have turned their Elements into what amount to super powers while also lacking their self-perceived character flaws. Imagine a Fluttershy who's a master druid, can sense what others need, and is confident and well-spoken. Or a Rainbow Dash who's a professional flyer, inspires adoration in others, and is an effortless team player.

It's a matter of charitability. If you like something, you're more likely to overlook inconvenient problems or are willing to fix them yourself. If you don't, you go looking for problems. In both cases, it's to prove to others (and yourself) that your opinions reflect objective reality and that you have "good taste". I'm very curious to see how Anadu defends the Crystal Kingdom two-parter. That had the overlapping plot hole problem (shared by the Phantom Menace) where the validity of each section of the plot depended on other sections being not valid in a messy web of contradictions. It makes the whole weirdly resistant to criticism because there's no real feel for what's "right" that the "wrong" parts can be judged against.

I'm kind of confused here, too. I always thought Luna Eclipsed was a fan favorite. Most of the plot holes (like plot holes anywhere) can be plugged with audience imagination. I mean, I can see Luna getting speech lessons, but then dumping them aside in her eagerness to take on her Princessly role. Not unrelated would be her desire to, upon hearing about Nightmare Night, rush off to "fix" things via royal proclamation. Luna's speech, well...technically in Early Modern English, thee and thou are the personal forms of you, not the formal ones. Queen Elizabeth would use "you" to everyone except very close friends. It'd be a special honor. Besides which, even that is the English that existed five hundred years ago, not a thousand. Thousand year old English (or Middle English) is another language entirely and would sound something like Welsh. But really, everything in this show is nitpickable if you want. I generally only complain when there's structural things wrong with the plot, character issues, or thematic problems.