Veylon

I had to wait until just a few years ago to finish the series. I thought it had been completely cancelled - on a ludicrously epic cliffhanger, no less. Well, at least we can hope that since Hasbro's making enough money off the show - and has their own network to broadcast it - that the same won't happen here. We just have Derpygate and Twilicorngate and any other character a gate can reasonably or unreasonably be attached to.

I've always viewed the cutie-marks as a survival mechanism. Having ponies who naturally specialize in one thing or another gives them a leg up. Of course, ponykind is not only surviving, but thriving, so fillies and colts who would normally be hungrily focusing on how to get the next meal or how to deal with some horrific magical threat are instead thinking about fairly abstract things like social standing or scholarship. The sense of destiny and passion tie into that survival the same way that the sense most people have of being exceptional does to ours. They have a constant sense that they need to be exercising their talent. Of course, they are intelligent, so they can wrestle with this need in the back of their minds and talk themselves into finding a way to satisfy it.

The problem with the High Schools isn't the drama, it's the melodrama. Good drama puts something that the characters care about at stake and convinces the audience it's worth caring about. Melodrama puts nothing of much importance at stake and acts like we automatically care. It's the amount of emotional investment that separates the two. If the writers want us to care whether or not Rarity goes out with the captain of the hoofball team, they've got to show all the hopes, fears, and nailbiting that lead up to it.

You can't really talk about immortality without talking about mortality and since one's off the table, so is the other. So, unless the show's suddenly going to be aimed at the "After School Special" audience, it ain't gonna happen.

Do we need a reprise of "May the Best Pet Win" starring Luna and swarm of nighttime/darkness creatures? I sort of envision Cadance having a bird of paradise or, for the puns, a lovebird.

If there green-to-red Mary Sue-o-meter, Twilight would be in the yellow, bordering on red. She's spearheaded pretty much every solution and been right about nearly everything. She's been elevated above her former peers to universal applause. Everyone likes her and tells her how wonderful she is. Her one major flaw has been downplayed and effectively excised. So, as things stand right now, at the end of Season 3, I feel pretty comfortable labelling her a Mary Sue. But I'm also looking forward to Season 4. Depending on what happens there, her Mary Sueosity could easily change. She's in an entirely new position with entirely new challenges. We get to see how she deals with stresses she'd never faced before. And so there's plenty of opportunity to reverse my verdict.

If we're going with Big Bad Supervillain-type villains, I favor someone/something that doesn't have an obvious physical presence to retaliate against. Things in Equestria go...wrong. There's some kind of curse upon the land, they're up to their eyebrows in blizzard-causing wendigos, ponies' cutie-marks starting fading away, magic starts failing. That kind of intangible but all-too-horrible decline. So the ponies have do some searching to get at the root cause. Alternatively, I'd be interested in a Zebra villain. Zebras don't seem to have any overt magic, but they (or Zecora anyway) seem to have a sort of subtle power. This more or less goes along with the idea of an enemy that doesn't directly strike at the ponies, but neither can effectively be attacked.

I can see that I'm not the only one envisaging the Griffons as being a kind of warlike Germannic Tribal culture sprawled across the mountains. I also see them as being fiercely independent and arrogant; the King would merely be the chieftain of the most powerful tribe. The death of one would encourage provoke a mad scramble among everyone who thinks they are strong enough to be the next. I tend to view them as the crass, aggressive, and individualistic counterpart to Celestia's nice "let's everyone get along" kingdom. Not to say they are evil, they just have a vastly different philosophy about life.

I'm still more in favor of having the changeling du jour that's used to show they're not all bad be one that did willingly follow the Queen. Because if we pick from the "good" side of a putative Changeling Civil War, we're still declaring open season on all the ones on the "bad" side. If we're willing to give Luna a second chance after Nightmare Moon, we should be willing to offer the olive branch to random foot soldiers as well.

I thought they didn't really "meet" until Twilight showed up. Sure, they lived in the same town, but they didn't really know each other or have reason to cross paths until they shared Twilight as a friend. Them getting to know each other was kind of a theme of the first season.

From a worldbuilding perspective, more would be fine, if they can be justified. But from a storytelling perspective, adding more alicorns would force the show to devalue them in order for the Mane Six to be the go-to group in a crisis. It'd also play havoc with continuity; was Nightmare Moon or Chrysalis or even Discord that big a deal if every neighboring country or metaphysical concept also has an alicorn overlord who could be called in to help? Heck, it takes handwaving and fan explanations to justify not using the power that's already on call.

I'm kind of torn here. On the one hand, almost no evidence is handed out positioning Twilight as Princess. But on the other hand...what would that evidence even look like? What do you do to train to be a Princess in this world, anyway? The only sort of governance we see Celestia doing is making random public appearances, doing paperwork, holding intense conversation with arch-villains, and then proving helpless against said arch-villains. I'm pretty sure Twilight can handle this kind of stuff. She might want to bone up on combat magic, though. It's not like she can write a letter to Twilight to fix things. On the positive end, spending time with her friends and their quirks in give-and-take relationships probably prepares her better to deal with others than any amount of book reading. Rulership is all about dealing with others. So we're left with...what? Protocol? Knowing who's who in the nobility? I'm guessing that if she can master the arcane rules of magic, the arcane rules of the court ought to prove no great challenge. Assuming that she's even subject to them, as a Princess. Knowing the ins and outs of the court system would be important, even if the nobility isn't. She isn't going to be able to do everything herself, so knowing who should be entrusted with what and how much can be expected would be vital. If we were (theoretically) ending the show here, this is what I'd imagine she'd be spending her time learning.

I think the writers have really painted themselves into a corner here. It'd be fine at the end of series when they can hang up their hats, show the other ponies achieving their ambitions, and sort of have everyone gallop off into the sunset. It's going to be very tough to make excuses to keep the gang together through a whole 'nother season now that Twi's a Princess. Heck, I'm surprised that Rainbow Dash is still around. Isn't she supposed to be a Wonderbolt now? On the other hand, tough scenarios can make for the best writing...if they don't cheat. When Season 2 ended, I was full of ideas for Season 3. But now that that's ended, I got almost nothing for Season 4. What do the writers think they can do with Princess Twilight? If they can answer that satisfactorily, they'll have earned their pay. If not...well, it was a bad idea to begin with.

I've been going with the same theory, except that the original adoption happened so many generations ago that it's just assumed they are related at this point.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing the show tighten focus on newly-crowned Princess Twilight for a while. Of course, that may just be because Twilight's my favorite character. We could go back and forth (though maybe not in the same episode) between Twilight doing Princess stuff and the Mane Five doing what they do and eventually tying it all back together. How, I don't know, and I don't think that something like this is in the works anyway, but it feels like the sort of thing that ought to happen. As far as the whole season, though...I really don't think Princess Twilight - even with Celestia and Luna - can carry that many episodes.

Princess is just a title. I doubt that in practical terms Twilight's title will amount to much. Sure, she'll have authority should she need it, but everyone's still going to expect Celestia to be the one who runs the country. Twilight's sphere is probably going to be doing high-level research and keeping the various scholars of magic organized. Stuff she's actually good at and would want to do. She can probably handle the occasional ribbon-cutting ceremony or symbolic attendance of [insert event here] without too much trouble.

Well, the Sunset rivalry could always be rolled in the other direction with Sunset being Celestia's new student and Twilight feeling that - despite her elevation - she's lost her place. I think that might be more interesting than having her as another vengeful avenger bent on vengeance.