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Pixel Stick

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  1. Pixel Stick
    I was about a week late to the party this time around: I didn't get to watch the MLP:FiM Season 4 finale, Twilight's Kingdom, until just this evening, six days after it aired. By that time, more than 300 people had voted for it, with close to 90% of them saying they loved it. Easily the highest-rated episode of the season, and I'd bet one of the most highly-rated of the whole series.
     
    I think that's awesome. Yet, I was not among that 90%. In fact, after a couple of hours of conflicted thought and agonizing, I ended up voting only "Meh, it was okay."
     
    Why, after such an epic finale?
     
    This two-part episode brought Equestria to the brink of total destruction, and brought even the most powerful of creatures to their knees. Even the almighty Discord was hamstrung. The episode capped off everything that not just this season, but the entire show, had built up to.
     
    And yet, it's just the end of a season. There will be another season, it seems, and now we're going to have to wonder, how are they going to top that?
     
    In my opinion, they pulled out all the stops for this finale. They gave the fans just about everything they ever wanted - singing Luna, the four princesses working together, validation of Twilight's role as princess, a great villain (from G1, no less), a test of Discord's loyalty and a fleshing out of his character, Derpy, a helpless Celestia, and an epic Dragonball Z-style fight involving Twilight. They gave us cameos of every important character in this season, flashbacks to some of the season's most important moments, more pop culture references, 3D spins, closure to the keys subplot, and even a bit of shipping as canon (particularly Discord + Celestia). They even gave us a couple of great songs, and they didn't overload it with songs (like they did in Season 3). What more could you ask for?
     
    And yet, now that they've done that, how can they possibly top it next season?
     
    My fear is that they're going to have to pull out even more stops to keep the show going. If they don't, fans will lose interest - the wad has been blown, as it were. And if they do, they're going to go to even more ridiculous lengths than they already have - a phenomenon known as "jumping the shark". And in all of that, I fear they're going to lose what made this show special in the first place: How relatable it is to real life.
     
    Don't get me wrong - I thought this episode had a GREAT plot, and the best villain since Nightmare Moon. It had a great lesson, a great tie-in to the Elements of Harmony that were central to the first three seasons, and it did not disappoint in both its depth and breadth of entertaining values. On its own merits, it's a fantastic bit of animation, writing and production.
     
    But I found myself wishing for the simplicity and relative innocence of my favorite slice-of-life episodes in Seasons 1 and 2. Those were episodes I could relate to. Those had lessons that helped me, directly in some cases, become a better person. Those were the things that attracted me to this show and this fandom in the first place. What lesson was to be learned here? That if I possess enough magic and then sacrifice it to save my friends, I'll save the world? It was just a little too far-fetched for me.
     
    Also, I fear that the Mane 6 as a group just went through the same fundamental transformation here that Twilight went through at the end of Season 3: In the same way that Twilight rather suddenly went from a student to a Princess, now the whole group has gone from being just a bunch of friends - and, mind you, ordinary ponies that have other ordinary friends, families (in most cases), and responsibilities - to a group of rulers, with whatever additional responsibilities those entail. Their lives are now irrevocably changed.
     
    Perhaps it's about time they got the recognition they deserved for saving Equestria, what, nine times over? But they aren't the same Mane 6 they were before.
     
    I came out of Season 3 arguing with a large portion of the fandom - even with my own wife - that Twilight Sparkle's ascension to princesshood was a good thing. That it opened new doors in her development, new amazing growth opportunities for the Mane 6, and all sorts of new and important lessons for not only children, but even adults, to take to heart. I was brimming with ideas on how they could use this transformation to take the show in a whole new direction, and make more of this change than just giving Twilight wings and a new line of toys.
     
    Unfortunately, my disappointment is twofold. First, they didn't do nearly enough with Twilight this season - she was a princess and an alicorn in name only after the first two episodes, until more than halfway into the season when a bunch of kids finally noticed her status and turned into a zombie horde as a result. It wasn't until the last few episodes that Twilight actually started getting to BE a princess, and the central point of the finale was that she had to discover her place? While I appreciate that the studio was being honest about her marginalization through out the season, it just felt... wrong to me somehow.
     
    And second, as I mentioned, the Mane 6 as a whole just underwent the same sort of transformation. While it's been obvious throughout the whole show that their fates will always be intertwined, now they've become co-leaders - without any real indication that that's what they wanted. Now that they have this crystal castle to replace the library that used to be Twilight's home, there's really no way they can just continue being the same pony folk they were up to now... is there?
     
    Funny, I remember lots of people saying that about Twilight last year. And many would be right to say that she wasn't the same this year. But now, I find myself wondering, just how is this show going to change going into Season 5? What'll happen to our favorite ponies? What'll happen to the slice-of-life stories that made this show awesome, the relatable everyday ponies that I fell in love with? Will Hasbro and DHX be able to keep up the momentum they've built up?
     
    My fear is that whatever they do in Season 5 won't be enough. My fear is that this finale will have set the bar too high, and in order to top it, they'll need to do something so utterly ridiculous that the magic will be lost.
     
    I think that Twilight's Kingdom was too much, too soon. Too many loose ends still not wrapped up - Rainbow Dash's quest to get into the Wonderbolts. Scootaloo learning to fly. The CMC finally earning their cutie marks. Had this been the last two episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, it would have left the show incomplete. This excellent two-parter certainly had the production value of a series finale, and as such, it should have been reserved for a later time. But it's merely the end of a season. And unlike the similarly over-dramatic finale of Season 3, this one was so amazing...
     
    ...that it makes me feel like there's little left to look forward to.
     
     
    Source: S04:E25+26 - Twilight's Kingdom
  2. Pixel Stick
    I've been thinking for a while about starting up a series of blog posts looking into various characters in MLP: Friendship is Magic - specifically, looking at how they've evolved throughout the series and addressing concerns about whether they've been treated consistently. I decided to start with Discord, everyone's favorite trickster villain.
     
    In this post, I'll examine Discord's appearances throughout the series, explain his motivations and the sources of his power, and discuss how he has changed as a character over time.
     
     
    Discord's appearances, in chronological order (as of 3/18/2014):
     
    (Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2) In flashbacks, Discord is seen causing chaos and, just before Celestia and Luna defeat him, sewing the seeds of darkness that he had intended to use to capture and imprison the princesses.
     
    (The Return of Harmony, Parts 1 and 2) Discord breaks free of his stone prison and once again starts creating chaos. He hides the Elements of Harmony and sets the Mane 6 on a wild goose chase to find them, and in the process successfully turns them all against each other. It's only when Twilight Sparkle is reminded of all the friendship lessons she's learned that she's able to turn everyone back to the good side. Once reunited, they turn him back to stone.
     
    (Keep Calm and Flutter On) The Mane 6 free Discord at Princess Celestia's request, and while he causes more chaos, the scope and scale of his chaos is markedly reduced. Fluttershy insists on befriending him despite plenty of evidence of his antics, and this eventually causes him to see the error of his ways. At the end, he voluntarily promises to use his magic for good instead of evil (most of the time), and remains a free being.
     
    (Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2) Present-day Discord is obviously amused by the advance of the dark vines from the Everfree Forest, but he is only partially responsible for their presence. In his own twisted way, he teaches now-Princess Twilight a valuable lesson about friendship.
     
    (Three's a Crowd) Whether it's real or not, Discord presents himself with a sickness and begs for treatment. Since (or perhaps because) Fluttershy is unavailable, Discord turns to Twilight and Cadence for support, and has them fly almost literally to the ends of the earth to find a cure for his mysterious ailment. It appears that part of his purpose is to drive a wedge between Cadence and Twilight, which he fails to do. At the end of the episode, he appears to contract another disease, and must rely on Fluttershy to make him well.
     
     
    So, is Discord evil?
     
    In episode and show discussion threads, I frequently see people point to "Keep Calm and Flutter On" as a significant weakening of Discord's character - he goes from being a powerful villain to a weak and insubstantial character. Some have also said that this weakness is made even worse in "Three's a Crowd", in which he simply causes chaos to get attention. But I believe the reason people see these episodes as showing weakness in him is because they tend to assume that Discord is a classic villain - evil to the core. And I believe that isn't actually true of him at all.
     
    Evil, of course, is a subjective term. Villains usually don't see themselves as evil, but the good guys see them as such. Most of the time, the villain's motive (usually power) is where that term derives from. King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis are well and truly proper evil villains - they each had sole purposes, to reign supreme over their subjects. It appears that there was only one way to deal with them - to banish them - and that there was no hope of redemption for them.
     
    At first, Discord was portrayed this way as well. He had an unusual motive - chaos, which only has some roots in power - but just the same, nobody could fault you for calling him evil when he first appeared in Season 2. In particular, the peculiar way he turned the Mane 6 against each other was most certainly evil in nature.
     
    However, "Keep Calm and Flutter On" established that Discord is more than just an evil villain. In fact, it showed that he's not really a villain at all - he's a trickster, a class clown, a bully - an attention whore, if you will. He thrives on getting attention through whatever means necessary, and he has the power to force attention upon himself in ways no ordinary class clown could. But in many ways, this doesn't make him evil.
     
    When I was in school, I was a bit of a class clown myself. I had a deep-rooted need for attention, and I spent a couple of years in a private school full of other children who had similar behavioral problems. Every once in a while, I'd tip my chair far enough that I'd fall backwards. I'd drop pencils and pens, I'd get glue all over my fingers, I'd sneeze and cough loudly, play with my beepy watch, and do all sorts of other things my classmates and teachers found really annoying. Others in my class took more violent approaches to attention-getting - frequently getting into fights, literally throwing chairs, and shouting and screaming when they were restrained. All in all, it wasn't exactly a happy time.
     
    But would you classify any of us as evil because we did these things? I can't speak for anyone else in that class since I've never seen them again since I left it, but I know for myself that I grew up to have a successful career and a successful marriage, and I like to think that I'm a pretty ordinary guy now. But looking back, I see that all of those little behavior tics were ways of getting attention - even if the attention I got was negative. It was better than being forgotten.
     
    This, I believe, is what drives Discord. I won't attempt to psychoanalyze him too deeply, but all the forms of his chaos have been temporary disturbances - he's never been seen making permanent changes to any landscape he's messed with. (In fact, "Keep Calm" clearly showed that he was capable of instantly undoing everything he'd done.) Just as dropping my pencil on the floor was a momentary disturbance done mostly for my own amusement, Discord's ability to mess with the day and night cycle in Ponyville was little different - just at a much larger scale.
     
    In short, Discord doesn't appear to want to subjugate anyone - he doesn't show an interest in literally controlling ponies. He simply does things to amuse himself, and he thrives on the responses he gets. The selfishness of this trait can be properly considered evil, but it nonetheless doesn't fit the classic definition of the evil villain.
     
     
    Discord's Power
     
    Unfortunately for Equestria, Discord is an extremely powerful creature - he possesses magic far beyond the capabilities of even Princesses Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Twilight combined. But what kind of magic is it?
     
    Evidence would suggest that most of his magic is simply illusory in nature - ranging from tangible and visual illusions, to hypnosis and simple transformations. But he can act on an enormous scale, providing one grand illusion for an entire village. And the changes he makes can, in fact, have real consequences - the flooding at Sweet Apple Acres, for example.
     
    But even more important than what he can do is why he does it. As I mentioned above, his motivation appears to be self-amusement and attention. Thus, when someone reacts negatively to something he's done, he receives validation for his actions and has motivation to keep doing it. This is just like that class clown you hated in school - tell him to stop it, and he'll not only keep doing it, but he'll find other ways to push your buttons. Sound familiar?
     
    In addition to simply providing him with motivation, the negativity Discord receives actually helps to fuel his power - it seems to grow stronger the more everyone responds to him. Consider these points:
     
    - When he frees himself in "Return of Harmony", just the fact that he's returned draws significant attention to him. It's suggested that the scale of Discord's power is relatively low at this point - he only taunts Celestia and the Mane 6, and hides the Elements, and of course he caused the strange events at the start of the episode as well. But otherwise, there's not much going on yet. But as the ponies get increasingly agitated by his antics, his power continues to escalate until, as Rainbow Dash says, Ponyville becomes the "chaos capital of the world".
     
    - When Discord begins turning the Mane 6 against each other by hypnotizing them to become the opposite of their true selves, he succeeds with everyone except Fluttershy. Fluttershy resists his subterfuge as a consequence of her purity of spirit, and he has to resort to brute force to corrupt her. He clearly doesn't enjoy doing this - he much prefers it when he can make them corrupt themselves.
     
    The theme here is that DIscord remains powerful as long as the ponies keep fighting back. The fighting, and more generally the negative energy that comes from it, seems to be what gives him his power. When the Mane 6 reunite and use the Elements of Harmony together to defeat him, his power is very suddenly and literally gone.
     
    Now, look forward to "Keep Calm": Fluttershy is given the task to reform Discord, and the method she uses is an ambitious one: To become his friend, no matter the cost.
     
    - When he's initially freed, Discord immediately starts causing chaos again, though he keeps it to a relative minimum since the Mane 6 are already prepared to immediately turn him back to stone if they have to. But when he takes up residence in Fluttershy's cottage, he continues to wreak havoc in small but annoying ways. Each of his actions elicits a negative reaction from the rest of the ponies, but Fluttershy remains calm and lets him play. He seems to not have as much power at this point.
     
    - In the dinner scene, he continues to push the Mane 5's buttons through small, annoying actions, appearing to successfully create a rift between them and Fluttershy. However, he also begins to realize just how meaningful Fluttershy's friendship is to him, which causes him to doubt, for the first time, whether his antics are really getting him what he wants. But that thought is cut short when Angel tells everyone about the flooding at Sweet Apple Acres.
     
    - The scale of the flooding is quite huge, but in this case, it's not a direct result of Discord's power. He simply transformed a small group of beavers, and the flooding occurred as a result of their extraordinary dam-building capability. However, by now, everyone is mad at him, and his power is gaining strength. He successfully creates the rift he needs by getting Fluttershy to remove her Element as a sign of their friendship, which in turn gets him all the negative emotions he needs for his power to flourish. This is proven when he transforms the flooded orchard into an ice rink, and his power seems to continue to grow when Fluttershy herself starts getting mad at him.
     
    - The breaking point, though, comes when she renounces her friendship with him. After his initial "I don't need you!" reaction, he realizes that losing that friendship actually does mean a lot to him. Like an obstinate horse, Discord is broken and tamed, and he restores everything (including the dams he was responsible for causing) to its former state.
     
    At this point, it's not clear how much power Discord has, but his motivation has clearly changed. As such, it likely no longer matters whether he's powerful or not.
     
     
    Discord's reformation and subsequent need for attention
     
    Through all of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", we can see an interesting combination of power and strategy being played out in Discord - he plays Fluttershy for a fool at first, but her persistence in forging a friendship with him gets through to him better than all other forms of opposition. He seems to resort to ever more powerful forms of provocation to get the responses he wants, and when those tactics work, they give him power. But the thing he didn't expect was the reality that someone could genuinely care about him and want to be his friend - something he says he's never really had before, and that proves to be far more powerful a motivation than he realizes.
     
    Note that at the end of that episode, he promises to use his magic for good instead of evil "most of the time". He's not quite ready to give it up completely yet.
     
    And indeed, in both "Princess Twilight Sparkle" and "Three's a Crowd", Discord seems to miss the attention he'd gotten as a mainstream villain. He stays within the lines, partially under continued threat of being turned back into stone, but he still finds ways to get under the Mane 6's skin and to get some satisfaction from their responses. He shows shades of his former evil in "Princess" by messing around with the two background ponies while the Mane 6 are away, but otherwise he's simply there, and obviously bored.
     
    His motivation for attention is made much more clear in "Three's a Crowd", where it's pretty obvious to everyone that he's acting like a baby just so he can get attention, whether he's actually sick or not. He clearly tries to drive a wedge between Twilight and Cadence, and seems visibly irritated when this plot fails (Twilight and Cadence grow closer, and Cadence confides that the trip, while annoying, was the most fun and interesting thing she's done in quite a while). But just the same, he still seems happy that the attention is focused on him for most of the episode.
     
     
    Conclusion
     
    What I took away from all of this is that, like class clowns and bullies everywhere, Discord is basically just a big, powerful attention seeker, and nothing more. He doesn't desire power, per se - he can clearly conjure all the wealth he could ever want, among other things. He simply wants attention. Prior to his reformation, he would stop at nothing to get it, and while he still acts up from time to time post-reformation, his tenuous friendship with Fluttershy and the trust he's received from Celestia give him a moral compass and a framework within which to live.
     
    Has Discord changed? Absolutely. He went from being the most powerful villain Equestria had ever seen (at least according to the show thus far), to being a tamed demigod. But has he fundamentally changed? I don't believe so - he's still a demigod, his central powers are still all about creating chaos, and he still thrives on attention. If anything, the fact that he has to resort to pity parties to get his attention is quite in-character for him since that's about all he can do without violating his trust with Celestia and Fluttershy.
     
    All in all, I've been pretty pleased with Discord's portrayal as a reformed villain. He started off as a villain, but he was reformed in a convincing way, with a powerful reason for doing so. And since then he's actually become a bit of a mentor for Twilight, in a way - perhaps the only being left who could teach her valuable lessons now that Celestia has effectively bowed out of that role.
     
    As always I welcome your comments - I don't claim to have covered every aspect of his appearances, and I'm sure with the great volume of text here, I've repeated myself, contradicted myself, and/or missed very obvious points. And of course, I don't expect everyone to agree with me on this - I welcome debate.
  3. Pixel Stick
    I gave myself a little challenge this morning - after having watched "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies" last night and realized how strongly I disliked the episode, I decided to go through the full list of episodes for the whole show, pick out which ones I liked from each season and which I disliked, rank them, and then put them on display. Perhaps to compare notes, perhaps just to satisfy my own curiosity. It's just a data dump - I may go deeper into why I like certain episodes more than others in later blog posts.
     
    This ended up being a big enough list that I felt it would make more sense to post it as a blog entry than to try to shoehorn it into a "Favorite episodes" forum discussion. This list is current as of 3/2/2014 (most recent episode = S4 E16: Breezies).
     
    I'll start with my favorites. These are ranked (approximately) with my most favorite on top.
     
    Season 1 (12 of 26)
    Sonic Rainboom
    Green Isn't Your Color
    Party of One
    Bridle Gossip
    The Cutie Mark Chronicles
    A Bird in the Hoof
    Suited for Success
    Dragonshy
    Swarm of the Century
    Fall Weather Friends
    Boast Busters
    Winter Wrap Up

    Season 2 (12 of 26)
    A Friend in Deed
    Putting Your Hoof Down
    Read It and Weep
    Hurricane Fluttershy
    The Last Roundup
    The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000
    The Return of Harmony (Part 1)
    The Return of Harmony (Part 2)
    Luna Eclipsed
    Sweet and Elite
    Ponyville Confidential
    MMMystery on the Friendship Express

    Season 3 (4 of 13)
    Sleepless in Ponyville
    Wonderbolts Academy
    Magic Duel
    Keep Calm and Flutter On

    Season 4 (5 of 16 so far)
    Rarity Takes Manehattan
    Filli Vanilli
    Pinkie Pride
    Bats!
    Three's A Crowd

    And my least favorites (By season, then worst first):
    S1: Feeling Pinkie Keen
    S1: The Show Stoppers
    S1: Griffon the Brush-Off
    S2: Lesson Zero
    S2: Dragon Quest
    S2: Baby Cakes
    S3: Spike At Your Service
    S3: The Magical Mystery Cure
    S4: Daring Don't
    S4: Twilight Time
    S4: It Ain't Easy Being Breezies
    S4: Simple Ways

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