Veylon

Forget about horror; I wonder what The Land Before Time or The Secret of NIMH would score. Heck, Watership Down? Well, Watership Down's the only one to actually have numbers over there, so here they are: Sex & Nudity: 3/10 Profanity: 4/10 Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: 0/10 Frightening/Intense Scenes: 8/10 Huzzah! Who's got the high score now?

This is very much how I see Celestia, right down to the word 'gamble'. Seeing her caught off guard by Discord and later Chrysalis really puts her earlier plan against Nightmare in a different light. She did have the other option of meeting Nightmare with force though, if she won, this would only have ended by killing or re-banishing her. But she loves Luna, so she took the riskier plan, for her sister's sake.

I think we're arguing past each other here. When I say "Chessmaster", I'm referring to the trope; a character who has everything planned out to the nth degree, including that rogue chesspiece. You say Batman - or at least that particular fat Batman - and that's essentially what a Chessmaster is. A boring character as a result of bad writing. So I'm pleased that that's no longer - or at least wasn't for once - the case with Celestia. Her answer to the return of Nightmare Moon scenario was very much a Chessmaster gambit. But now she's an ordinary Chessmaster who must act with limited knowledge. This is a good thing and I hope the writers remember it. Maybe Celestia considered the Changeling Queen so little threat that she could afford some theater? I don't know.

The key word here is reasonable. Celestia did what was prudent and sensible. But that's not what's expected from a Chessmaster; what's expect is that they perform the correct action regardless of evidence or common sense. So I'm not trying to claim she's some kind of fool or reckless. I'm saying that she's fallible and that it's fair for the other characters to challenge or reject her plans if they judge them too risky. There's also the key point of Celestia being in charge. She can't hide in amongst the others and say "oh, you can't blame me without blaming other ponies too" (not that she would do that) because the others are only there because she put them there. If the guards aren't up to snuff, it's her responsibility to replace them. Granted, Shining shouldn't let things get to that point, but if he does, she's responsible for replacing him too. Luna is about the only other one that you can blame directly. If she has the authority to make decisions then she's responsible when they turn out to be wrong. Again, though, I'm not trying to say that Celestia is stupid or shouldn't be in charge. It's fair for her to ask that her authority not be abrogated over a mistake that almost anyone would make. She can make her case to the general public and hope that they won't think less of her for what happened. Also, when I mentioned contingency plans, I wasn't talking about the shield or the guards. I was talking about the moments leading up to her fight with Chrysalis. She just kind of dove in there without trying to set anything up. She could've yelled at Twilight & co. to get the Elements. She could've called in any guards and/or martially-inclined ponies within earshot for support. She could've fired off a magical flare of distress (assuming that something was set up ahead of time). Granted, any or all of those might have failed. But they would've given better odds for success.

People are mad because Celestia failed at something she intended to accomplish. She was wrong about something and it cost herself and her ponies. In the other scenarios, Celestia - though outmatched - was still in the game on her own terms. Against Nightmare Moon and Discord, her agents took up the battle with a plan of her devising and ultimately succeeded. She played the Chessmaster role very well. Against Chrysalis, she botched a whole series of decisions. She missed a Changeling right under her nose, placed her city's defence in the hooves of a pony under said changeling's sway, missed the replacement of a key ally, Princess Cadance, failed to heed Twilight's warning, picked a fight she couldn't win, and failed to have a contingency in motion in case she lost. All of which hit her Chessmaster credentials very hard. In a tougher setting, it would lead to characters justifiably questioning her judgement when the chips are down. She wouldn't be able to say, in effect, "I'm Celestia, so you should just accept what I decide is right." No, she'd have to offer reasons and explanations to win them over. This isn't one of those settings, so we get the Crystal Empire episodes. Personally, I don't mind Celestia failing once in a while. It humanizes her by pulling her away from the inhuman Chessmaster role and show a wider range of emotions and character. The show doesn't actually go to the extent of characters challenging her decisions or hedging their bets against her being wrong or showing her experiencing the mortal pain of screwing things up. Though any and all of those would be nice.

There ought to be (but probably isn't) a massive book somewhere containing every possible detail anyone could ever want to know about the FiM-verse. Everything from guard shifts to demographics to griffin anatomy to the workings of the cosmos would be in there. Every writer, storyboarder, and artist would have it available to fact-check against. So if there's an episode where the ponies are on a train, it'd be known what scenery would be in the background, how many and what type of ponies would be on board, and what kind of cargo it might be carrying. Odds are none of that would get more than a fleeting glimpse - if that - but it helps build a deeper portrait of the world that sits in the back of the audience's mind.

I think we all want to see more of these guys. I feel like there ought be some kind of changing of the guard every evening and morning where the gold-armored guys and the bat-ponies switch places. I wouldn't necessarily want an episode revolving around them or anything; it'd just be nice to see them doing their guard stuff in the background the way the other guys do.

It's a MacGuffin when it serves no purpose in the story beyond being the thing everyone's trying to get. The Elements were a MacGuffin in the premiere, but haven't been since. It's relatively lazy to create a story where everyone's just trying to grab ahold the Shiny of Sparkles without making effort to define it's supposed wonderfulness. Like anything, it comes in degrees, with the Elements not being all that bad in the grand scheme of things. With Mary Sues, I only really plant the label if they are never blamed or required to pay the reasonable consequences for doing things wrong. Mary Sues don't make mistakes, or, when they do, everything turns out okay and no blame is allotted them. (e.g. Celestia misses a Changeling under her nose and picks a losing fight, but nobody ever questions her judgement afterwards.) Secondarily, I feel it's only worth calling out main characters, as they are the ones with the amount of screen time or verbiage that makes Suedom matter. Cadance may well be a Mary Sue and Celestia almost certainly is, but so what? It's not like the show is about them.

I'm really surprised at the depth and scale of the antipathy for Alicorn Twilight. Sure, I think it was a bad idea, but I'm prepared to shrug and move on. Most of the other controversies - like the Canterlot Wedding - seemed to die down once the episode in question came out, but this one just keeps going on and on. Most of the reasons seem kind of silly, too. Twilight leaving her friends and/or being more important and powerful? Well, yeah, she's the monarch's right-hand pony. Were these ever not going to be issues? Or the problem that the pony type ratios are off now. Because what type of pony each of the characters are utterly defines them. And then there's the longevity concerns, which not only have no basis in the show - or support from the writers, but wouldn't actually become an issue for decades. And...we haven't had a full episode with the Twilicorn yet. While I have my doubts about the concept, I'm willing to suspend judgement until I see how it works in practice.

If there's going to be an episode where a villain manipulates Twilight, it's going to have to be a little genre savvy about it. Twilight knows what happened with Luna and she knows that that the villain can't be trusted. So the villain is going to have to work for it if they are going to turn Twilight. We've already seen that Twilight's greatest fears are losing her bond with her mentor or losing her friends, so trying to talk her into abandoning them would be a non-starter. I can see Twilight eagerly grabbing power if she thinks she can impress Celestia, so that would certainly be a route to follow at first.

Villain team-ups suffer the problem of having very conflicting goals. Although that can be un-problemed by making that very problem the story. Nightmare, Chrysalis, and Sombra team up, and start to win. But as they win, they start plotting and working against one another. After all, once they defeat Celestia and the Mane Six, their greatest enemy will be each other. They know this, and each tries to set the stage for victory in the upcoming war during the current one. So there's plenty of backstabbing and treachery and double-dealing going on whenever they think they can afford it. Another scenario for creating a villain team-up might be a Big Damn Villains moment. People keep wanting some kind of Ubervillain, and needing to bring in the current set of bad guys to help out the good guys helps demonstrate the Ubervillain's power as well as providing a chance for the traditional villains to go all out and be cheered for. This is more of a movie idea, where there's time to spare and special effects money to burn. If there's any of them that I'd want to see team up, it's Gilda and Lightning Dust. They seem like they'd make a cool duo. You could even have a story where, although they originally team up for revenge, they end up finding they genuinely like working together.

Constitutions serve the purpose of legitimizing an otherwise-illegitimate authority through an agreement whereby the authority agrees to operate within certain bounds, usually by granting the residents of the territory citizenship with a subset of sacrosanct rights. I doubt Equestria has one, as Celestia is in very little need of further legitimacy. Further down, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some form of democracy. The nobility don't appear to do anything and I doubt that Celestia wants to micromanage every town and city in Equestria. Mayor Mare seems normal, and not some kind of expert or noble. It wasn't uncommon for towns (and even cities) to choose their own leaders back in the medieval age or antiquity. There could, conceptually, be an episode down the line where Rarity or somepony gets flattered into running for a place on the town council.

Well, in real life, Napoleon and Julius Caeser managed to spawn royal families despite not being royal themselves. Win enough and you can just declare yourself royal and put a crown on your head. And everyone has to go along with it. This is where royalty comes from in the beginning. If you want to go by the Bible, neither Saul nor David had any special blood, but both were quite the warriors. And there are many, many more examples of families declaring themselves royal. There are a good many "royals" today with less legitimacy than Twilight. As for the transformation, the best I can figure is that Celestia dumped Starswirl's journal on her in hopes that unravelling it's riddle would provide Twilight the necessary spiritual boost to ascend. I'll grant that it makes next to no sense, but I had to come up with something. As for the Pegacorn/Alicorn bit, well, we've got - in my mind, anyway - three distinct types of winged unicorns. Celestia and Luna are some kind of ageless demigoddesses. Cadance was apparently born with it. And Twilight earned it through her scholarly struggles and singing. Alicorn seems to have special mystical connotations, so I'm inclined to give it to Celestia, Luna, and Twilight. Cadance is a pegacorn as she's some kind of mutant and the least unnatural. I'm also kind of baffled that Hasbro has managed to screw up the definition of "Princess" in the context of a little girls' cartoon to such a degree. This is absurd.

I love how every single response is completely blase and unconcerned. "Eh, it'll be fine. Don't worry." The guy (assuming he's serious) is completely undercut.

I was in high school the 90's so I was completely unaware that "cool speech" had moved on since then. I suppose there are people now who don't remember the Clinton Administration or Y2K or the NES or DOS. Huh. I'm betting the reasons for her speech is that the writers were likewise in High School in the 90's at the latest and thus are also not fully up on how the in crowd mangles English these days.

The ponies have way broader mental horizons than most humans. We have a very sophisticated understanding of the world that clearly defines what can and cannot exist. Since magical talking ponies are in the cannot category, we'd have a pretty rough time of it. Medieval peasants or Stone Age tribes might handle the encounter better, as they haven't invested so much of their ego into the idea that they have a firm grasp of reality. Ponies, likewise being less sophisticated, would have a far easier time accepting a human into their midst.

Ah, yes. This is where the stakes get raised. Again. I was wondering what threat she could possibly pose at this point. Imposters stop being dangerous once they're exposed and she's standing in the middle of a crowd surrounded by guards surrounded by a force field. The bloody Sun Goddess is within arm's reach. What's she gonna do? She's finished. So, this was a pretty epic scene, all the more so because I thought we were already on the downward slope. I hadn't heard the word Changeling until this very moment and had no idea that things could ramp up from here. It was pretty awesome; I like being surprised.

I always figured that the cosmology of the Equestrian world was based around Celestial Spheres: Each heavenly body is locked into the surface of one of the concentric spheres that surround the world. Celestia and Luna control their respective sphere's rotation and thus the position of it's associated body. It seemed kind of messy having all this stuff just free-floating around.

You could always go over the "watching it ironically" camp and take pleasure in mocking it, MST3K-style. Personally, I'm of the "intrigued" persuasion. Making Twilight into an alicorn effectively ended the show for me. I'm happy to draw a line here and say that it's over. The key story arc has been completed and the tale is told. The End. So the concept of there being a Season Four seems bizarre and inherently unworkable. And yet, the writers are obligated to make it work anyway. I'm looking forward to see if they can land this trainwreck of a premise with any kind of style.

Their social standing is whatever makes for the episode du jour. Most casual antagonists would've have the gall to knowingly...err...antagonize the Heroes of Equestria. Rarity isn't going to be embarrassed to be associated with people who have been immortalized in stained glass by a living goddess not once but twice. No noble is going to offend someone who has a direct line to his sovereign. Heck, someone as status-conscious as Diamond Tiara wouldn't want to be in a rivalry against the sister of a National Hero. So, yeah, they kind of have to be the hicks from the sticks - however illogical that may be - if the show isn't going to be about a bunch of ponies who get sucked up to a lot.

Princess, like any other title of nobility, is not a job and does not come with any particular rights or responsibilities. Naming her a Princess merely means that Celestia thinks she's wonderful and wants everyone else to think she's wonderful too. She hasn't established any authority or legitimacy in her own right just yet.

Yes. But no more so than if she completed her training and went back to work for Princess Celestia in a more mundane role. And no more so than Rainbow Dash travelling around Equestria as a Wonderbolt or Rarity going to Manehattan or where-have-you to do fashion for the elite. Some of the ponies simply have dreams and ambitions they can't fulfill within the bounds of Ponyville and that's that. Their friendship won't end, it'll just be stretched and attenuated.

I think this is one of those "What if Morgoth got the One Ring?" kind of questions. Giving a sword to an unarmed person makes them more dangerous, but giving it to a robot with whirring sawblades for hands really doesn't. He might want it for his collection but, aesthetics aside, it isn't going to do much for him.

I'm pretty sure this is false. Season 1 Luna was much lighter colored, if not quite the bright pink of Cadance. Hasbro likes light-colored ponies; every time they've made a figure of Luna, they altered her to make her lighter. Season 2 Luna is dark colored, loud, and threatening. Which is why Hasbro excludes from her toy lines and imagery whenever possible. There are a few animation errors in "Luna Eclipsed" which suggest the original blue-haired Luna was intended to be used, but the show creators changed her at the last minute. I, too, prefer the explanation that she's been regaining her powers all this time. Though I would like to see more of her.