Latecomer

If she did have any kind of fashion success on her own, it likely imploded after the publication of the Journal of Friendship - unless Rarity was generous enough to redact all mention of her.

But the windigoes are an embodiment of anti-friendship, so a suitable final boss. And the villans being taken out by them would keep our heroes hooves clean. (Those who call such things cheap contrivances should see what happens in their absence.)

It only works as a final CMC ep for a CMC that never grow up - in fact not even then, because that breaks it's own moral of "adulthood comes to those who wait". Forever FIlly, on the other hand, is an episode about the CMC (well, one of them at least) growing up.

I think they should have been frozen by the windigoes due to their powerful hate, leaving the army to face a windigo swarm with the power of their combined friendship.

It doesn't make much sense at any point after Forever Filly, to be honest.

Hmm... I'd give LoE the edge in that it's more coherent than Friendship Games, which tried to reconcile a lot of different elements. it was also nice to get away from Canterlot High, which had dominated the previous three movies, for a bit. (BTW, Rainbow Rocks is better than both and Through the Mirror close to Friendship Games - perhaps a bit under.)

I don't think it's possible under normal circumstances. We have seen powerful magic messing with them on occasion, but the results are not usually healthy. It's possible future reaserch in that field might yeild results though. Of course, it matters her what you think a cutie mark is. In my opinion, it's only a picture, and we know it can be covered by makeup. So if you really don't like yours, you can always make it disappear - even paint another one. But you will always know that it's a mask.

Twilight's key conflict should have been choosing Magic over Friendship. That is, it should have been her idea to face Tirek alone rather than getting help from her friends. It makes perfect sense given the vast power disparity between them at that point, while also missing the point of the show's main theme. Because she's so busy hiding her powerup from them, they get captured and used against her. Because she didn't trust her friends and tried to handle it all herself, she couldn't beat Tirek even with the magic of four alicorns.

And he would never admit this part because it compounds his failure?

Hell if I know - I guess if Twilight can offer it to Rockhoof, it makes sense that those three can use it too. But I really don't like the idea, especially since it opens up the whole can f worms that is Celestia's statue garden again.

In your opinion, at least.

We don't know if she'll still dreamwalk, or if she might choose a successor in that role - but if she doesn't, then Equestria managed without for a thousand years already.

Hmm... I'd say there's no reason using pictures to set the scene instead of words should change that, but thinking about it, it does shift things away from the internal narrative. But not all literature is internally focused anyway.

The precise nature doesn't matter (although I hold him to have been a Crystal Unicorn at least originally and Discord to not be able to raise the dead) as much as the stupidity of it and it's consequences. If his crimes are on Discord's head, then I don't think I could forgive him, certainly not easily.

Over time it became clear it was free of pony magic becuse it had it;s own, though. It's not pony-controlled, but it's not what we would call natural, either, except by comparison.