BornAgainBrony

A certain conservative/libertarian slogan comes to mind: "Come and take it."

Odd thing about this is, I'm a horror fan and love a slaughter-fest as much as the next person. But I limit my slaying to obnoxious teens who fail to understand that making out in the graveyard after a car accident on the 666th anniversary of a Voodoo ritual that made an entire town disappear, is a bad idea. Also, I've seen "The Cell." That's the only time I needed to see a horse get split in half. Leave my Princess alone!

My suspicion is that Equestria once enjoyed a more ordered system long ago, more in line with how the physics in our world worked. Nature managed itself, more or less. Until Discord showed up. His magic screwed with things so much that even banishing him wasn't enough to bring everything back to normal, forcing the Ponies to start managing things themselves through the use of magic. Maybe they finally figured out a way to jump-start the "physics engine" so they wouldn't need magic?

It's the Season 9 release dates staggered in different countries, all over again.

So... is the book actually in stores? Or is this yet another checkmark on the list of Hasbro's inability to maintain control of anything?

Hard to say. Unfortunately we never find out for sure what his motivation is. There's very little insight into his character. By the time we get to talk with him at depth, it's all about revenge. Did he just want to run everything, or did he have an "end justifies the means" mentality with some grand vision for a (at least in his eyes) better society? Besides, I'm pretty sure this all fits Cozyglow too, but funnily enough, I don't see her as someone who has a God complex. Maybe it's because she was trying to get power? She knew she was almost powerless, and was doing whatever she needed to get the power she craved. Sombra on the other hand, isn't as delusional as your typical "god complex" individual, because almost IS at god-levels of power. It originally took the combined effort of two Alicorns to bring him down. That's nothing to scoff at. Then he came back and conquered the Crystal Empire, got Cadence's surrender without even having to fire a shot, and then out-foxed Twilight, slayed the freaking Tree of Harmony and shattered the element talismans. His eventual downfall was not knowing the Elements could be wielded without the Tree's power feeding into it, but then NO creature knew that yet, so can he really be blamed for it? Sombra is still quite probably the most competent villain in the whole series, with Lord Tirek coming a close second.

This could quickly derail into a pretty intense conversation about political influence, and I don't want to get the thread locked. But purely from a logical perspective, I don't think it would mean that Ponies are "better" than anyone else; anymore than when one culture develops a new piece of useful technology that gets adopted by the world. Nationalism or racial prejudice 'could' be injected into that, but ultimately it's in the eye of the beholder. Lightning strikes a certain tree, and a certain primitive human picks up the burning branch, and that tribe ends up being credited with the 'discovery' of fire. A LOT of what we see going on in FiM, isn't actually about Ponies at all. Their wisdom is coming from a higher source, ranging from gentle nudges to really blatant shoves by the Tree of Harmony. Whether or not it's moral to spread this discovery to other lands, well that's a very VERY complicated question. In the case of the Griffons, we could probably discuss that in circles for hours, because trying to determine "happiness" is a very complicated question. This is the same show that started off the "missionary" quest with the toppling of a pseudo-Communist dystopia. "We" can say the smiles are fake, but when is a fabricated reality that produces happiness worth destroying? Relativism is a very messy thing; where does one draw the line with the Griffons? They're apparently proud of their situation, and in general are opposed to change. But objectively, it's a very impoverished kingdom that has already collapsed. Viewing it through the rose-tinted glasses that Pinkie Pie wears is, honestly, not very good. But then we see how Gallus feels. The other students are all excited about winter break and celebrating the "Christmas" holidays, but Gallus doesn't want to go home. There's nothing warm waiting for him there. And that's not an isolated family issue. Evidently that's typical Griffon culture. To interfere, or not? There's really no right or wrong answer to that. The black and white all fades to gray.

It's kinda strange. My parents are pretty conservative. I'm almost sure they at least passively wondered if I was gay when I was a teen. My dad flipped out like a devout Catholic when he found out I was interested in the Occult. And I know they thought it was weird when I got into the Pony fandom. But I had always been a very depressed person, and they saw the positive impact it had on me. They saw me becoming happier. They saw me go from being terrified of people, to becoming very outgoing. After years of therapy, antidepressants, and psychological reprogramming going absolutely nowhere, In this case, it seems the results spoke for themselves, so they just stepped back and accepted it.

That's some pretty impressive mental gymnastics for villifying inclusion. Especially considering what the dominant opinion of the season would be had it been a "ponies only" school. It's no more or less bad than what was already going on ever since the Cutiemap first appeared, with the Mane 6 being "missionaries" of a sort, traveling to different lands to spread the "Good News." Their reason for opening the school was because the world as they knew it was rapidly expanding to new lands and they were getting spread too thin. Instead of globetrotting all over the place, all the seekers could come to them. The school is actually LESS imperialistic in nature. It's worth considering that maybe the teaching isn't nearly as taxing on the Ponies as we would expect. Also, the map quests had to already be taking up a lot of their time. Possibly moreso, because you have to factor in travel time, investigating to find where the problem is, and then coming up with a solution and executing it. Replacing all that with a school means you can have a predictable schedule to build your life around, instead of being "on call" 24/7 like a first responder. And you get to be home every night instead of off in distant lands. Also, Twilight could have structured it from the beginning to be more accommodating to part-time teachers by staggering class schedules; making it less like a public school and more like a university mixed with a spiritual retreat. Even for your basic public school teachers in Equestria though, we should keep in mind there are some things that Equestria handles far, FAR better than human society. It's probably not a lot to assume that being a teacher there isn't nearly as Hellish as it is on Earth, with irate parents screaming during PTC week, doing hours of unpaid work grading papers every evening, or worrying that "armed combatant to deter school shooters" will be added to the already ridiculous list of teacher duties. First of all, school is where kids learn social interaction the most. That can be done at any school. But more important, we have to remember that Friendship isn't just a passive social construct like in our world. It's right in the title. Friendship is Magic. This isn't simply a school that is teaching children how to be nice to each other. It's teaching them to wield magic. At the time of the school's founding, Friendship in the pony world is sort of developing into a spiritual path. This is a recently-discovered kind of magic that is accessible to all creatures. The classes delve into the theory behind it, both established and speculative, based on all the notes and research that Twilight has been taking over the years. In that regard, yeah, the school is a bit of a large-scale social/magical experiment. The culmination of this effort reveals itself in the final episode: all creatures are able to harness the Elements of Harmony. I think they knew that the show was nearing its end, and the S6 were an experiment to try and provide the "pilot episode" for a new series. That new series being what would become G5. So, that would have been a spin-off... sorta. This is evidenced by how the Student 6 were being treated at the time. The Tree of Harmony's roots spread to the school and then dragged the Student 6 into 'trials' very similar to what the Mane 6 had to go through in Everfree Forest. It seemed pretty obvious that the tree was searching for some new acolytes. All that came to an end in S9 though with the killing of the Tree (which if I remember right, was ordered by Hasbro). I also have my suspicions that Cozy Glow wasn't meant to be a permanent villain. Though she has a lot of malicious intent and is using them to her own ends, she worked with the Student 6 repeatedly throughout Season 8 and was very good at planning and coordinating them into a unified group. I could have easily seen her reforming and eventually becoming the "7th" member of the Student 6, like Spike with the Mane 6, or Stygian with the Pillars (both Stygian and Cozyglow got banished after trying to perform an arcane ritual that involved six powerful artifacts, which was something that I couldn't assume was mere coincidence). To all in this thread: I had no problem with the Student 6 or the school. At first glance, I thought it would be a disaster, and I hated the idea of it. In application though, the school was fine. I feared it would turn the show into something episodic, with every single story being about student life in the school, but fortunately it didn't do that. Not even close. There were still plenty of episodes that were detached both from the school, and the Student 6, so I don't see why everyone seems to act like this wasn't the case. I also didn't think I was going to like the new characters. "DHX, how DARE you replace my beloved Pones!" But I fell in love with them from the very first episode. Yeah, they did somewhat slip into the archetypes of the Mane 6, but there were a lot of things that separated them from being carbon-copies as well. With the S6 they were also able to address some problems kids deal with, that really couldn't have been done with the CMC without wrecking established CANON.

"Bring it. I'm morgoth than you are."

What, you mean, like in a Tweet or an interview? Something OUTSIDE media content?

That's an Obi Wan Kenobi level of "different point of view." Sorry Luke, your Father is dead. Yes, really. Denial Meter: 94.6/100 {Dangerously High} Here's another nice papparazi photo.

Hilarious how you can have a universe with a billion hetero couples, but the moment ONE gay couple shows up, it's suddenly an "influence."

It's kinda hard to separate the Thorax design from the overall Changeling design, so on that: Xenomorph fan, so I might be biased. Managing to put a parasitic hive species in a cartoon aimed at little girls was a pretty impressive thing to pull off. Aesthetically I prefer the original because the changelings really stand out more, in a world that already has a lot of pastels. But furthermore, it felt like too much of an appeal to outdated fairytale norms, to have changelings become "beautiful" by turning to the side of good. I would've been perfectly happy if there had been no wild transformation. Maybe they just could've looked more healthy and not frayed/cheese-legged like the dark changelings? Regardless, I wanted to hug thorax from the moment he revealed himself to Spike. He's just so sincere. The reformed pastel color scheme also seems a bit overdone. There's just TOO many colors, that don't go very well together. This might have worked fine in a more realistic art style, because maybe the intent was to emulate the iridescent color-shifting exoskeleton that some insects have. But in "Flash" it just kinda falls... well... flat. And a random question: Why does reformed Thorax have mandibles on the top of his head that apparently serve no purpose?

This is getting into crazy physics, since Tolkien doesn't deal with a picture that is any bigger than the planet (so "world" in this case might be a bit ambiguous), but I have to wonder how well Sauron's power would work with Discord's antics. We know Sauron can't die, but at least it seems he can't just pop-in wherever/whenever he wants. So if for instance, he was banished to the moon, what would he do? Seems his only recourse for getting back would be if some ship eventually showed up and he hitched a ride. Drop him into the sun, or a black hole? Or if he got sent somewhere even further away and became some other galaxy's problem, would returning even be on his to-do list, or would conquering this other place be satisfactory. And what of Celestia's Australian penal colony (Equestria Girls universe)? Thoughts on the One Ring, and Sauron's manipulation, I wonder how Ponies would fare against that. Is their willpower as weak as humans, or are they closer in nature to Hobbits? One could probably cite examples that would make some good arguments in favor of either.

The problem there is you're saying Spoiled Rich needs to brainwash her kid... to make her claim she was brainwashed by the CMC. I very much doubt that would work. If a "one word against anothers'" type of hearing came into play, Spoiled is going to need to conjure up a lot false witnesses to counter not just the testimony of the CMC, but the entire school. Remember, we're talking about a pony who manipulated the school board into obstructing Pipsqueak's project in an attempt to dethrone him. And then she went off on Diamond with a borderline abusive rant about "hanging out with lesser ponies" right in front of Cheerilee. Spoiled has a very weak hand in this trial, and no corrupt lawyer is going to be able to turn that around. A corrupt judge on the other hand, maybe. But then keep in mind, this is Equestria we're talking about. There's very little if any hint of sexism there. So the usual "kid in divorce automatically goes to the mom" mentality probably isn't there. It's likely that the usual "joint custody" rules would remain in play though, unless there are even worse things Spoiled Rich was doing that we don't know about. So Filthy would probably win the court case, but Spoiled would have visitation rights.

Jeeze, that's a bad sign if this is how Hasbro is still approaching things, and I wonder how this is going to impact how the film (and any subsequent future media) is handled. I've worried on and off that Hasbro may be leaning towards being anti-Brony, because they're more focused on the seedy stereotypes of the fandom. Even with profit being the main goal, getting additional fans on board from a previously-untapped demographic may not have been worth it to them because it came packaged with X-rated fan-art and rage-fisted protests over creative decisions. Furthermore, they could be completely uninterested in breaking the mold and doing something that invites all genders to enjoy. I suspect that Hasbro has a very conservative take on toys, even moreso than other conservative toy companies. There are toy lines for boys, and there are toy lines for girls. That's it. This even shows in the apparent lack of any attempt to capitalize on Bronies. You can get the shield of Hyrule, Triforce, Hogwarts houses & Order of the Phoenix, Hunger Games factions, Star Wars Imperial/Rebel insignias, etc, all emblazoned on pretty much anything you want, and all of it is officially-licensed. But if you want that with the Equestrian flag, it's going to come from independent artists on Etsy. Life-sized gonfalons, Sweet Apple Acres mugs, Elements of Harmony medallions, Storm King lightning-staffs, electronic unicorn horns, Wonderbolt flight jackets, action-oriented video games, etc. What the fans made in the absence of Hasbro is nothing short of a gold mine. That's a TON of money that Hasbro could have pocketed, if only they'd been more progressive about merchandising.

Storm King was too much of a mixed bag. He was plenty evil, but so much of it got sugar-coated by his apparent arrested-development. He seemed very much a blundering idiot with the emotional capacity of a five-year old, which made it hard to believe he was capable of being a tyrant who could maintain control of a vast empire. Indeed, it seemed like Tempest would have had NO problem overthrowing him just on charisma alone, to say nothing about the fact that she's clearly a FAR better leader. For all I can see, it seems like Tirek would make for a more charismatic leader too though. How scary the Storm King really is doesn't reveal itself until gets himself buffed up with Alicorn power. He smashes Twilight through a solid wall just to test-fire his new toy. Normal pony Twilight. Not Alicorn Twilight. That is probably the sickest thing I've ever seen a villain do in MLP. Then he goes even madder with his power and wipes out the majority of his own forces while dropping a tornado right on top of Canterlot. The Storm King is almost definitely more evil. While Tirek might be a power-hungry wannabe ruler, he doesn't seem like he really wants to kill or torture anyone. But as for who is a "better" Villain, I have to give that to Lord Tirek. Tirek demonstrates that he understands diplomacy and has at least 'some' etiquette that reflects his royal lineage. Even as an enemy, he addresses Twilight as Princess. He is also a negotiator, has a good amount of charisma, and is very cunning. Even when he's at his weakest, he can turn his bad situation into a good one. Comparitively, the Storm King doesn't appear to have anything going for him without a ridiculous amount of magic at his disposal. It's hard to say whether this extends to his usual royal duties, but it seems pretty clear that most of the credit for his success is owed to those closest to him. Grubber and Tempest are the ones doing all the work, while the Storm King tries to figure out how to operate a magical cellphone. I kind of suspect that he inherited the throne at a very young age, possibly due to the early death of his father, but that's just the head-CANON that makes most sense to me, based on his behavior. Becoming king in his early teens and having a thousand servants waiting on him, he never really had to grow up, and just lets others do the adulting for him.

Ask the Prince. He'll tell you.

Mudbriar. He's a stick in the Maud.

Aye. I wonder if she would have felt AS bad if she saw EqG itself. I was expecting a trainwreck and held off from watching it for a while. And while I like EqG and some of the gear that has come out since: IMO those old dolls still look pretty awful.

Discord has already learned that lesson sufficiently from Tirek. Of course, that's assuming Tirek wasn't actually set-up by Discord, and there's a certain degree of evidence to suggest that's the case. Discord set Twilight off on the quest to open the chest, and she couldn't have gotten the final key without freeing Discord. Then we see him trying similar in S9, and well, I think he's learned his lesson by then. Sauron isn't the only one with an all-seeing eye, (Did that Stained Glass just move?) so fooling Discord may not be nearly as simple as it sounds. He has the skills to go toe to toe with Sauron. He just needs to keep his ego in check. Same goes for shapeshifting. And shapeshifting is just the beginning. Discord has 'cartoon powers' beyond anything Pinkie can do. I bet Sauron couldn't rip one of his own arms off, turn it to stone. beat someone with it, and then wear it as a hat. Know who could though?

I know I posted in here a couple of years ago but as more time has gone on, I've realized just how sadly underdeveloped she was, which is a real pity. Not being like pony Twilight could have done a great service that really never got addressed. Like "Once Upon a Time" in its early seasons. Sci-Twi could've been a great opportunity to explore what our pony Twilight could have ended up like, if she'd had to grow up in our much darker and desperate reality, without being able to 'magic' her way out of the situation. Watching her struggle and ultimately persevere would have been really enjoyable, instead of just plucking her out of the "jerk school" at the first opportunity. Also, I'm just gonna leave this here.

Chrysalis had that dampening field around the hive that was capable of completely incapacitating Discord's magic advantage. Could Sauron replicate that? Could such a device nullify Sauron's power? Discord doesn't have to kill in order to win. If we assume he's literally as powerful as Q, he could just banish the guy to a penal planet made out of feta cheese.