Axiom Crash

Just watched this video, here, and he has an interesting theory that seemed relevant to this post. Seems like rampant speculation with little basis in reality, honestly. To summarize: One person at a con said that Discovery Channel, which now has the rights to air G4, wanted money from Hasbro when they heard they were reusing characters from G4 in G5. Which is kinda dumb, since Hasbro probably still owns the rights to the G4 characters.

Okay, a few things are jumping out at me right away. Let me just say: Not trying to offend. I may be blunt or insensitive, but it's not intended to be violent, just direct and to the point. I don't think what you've written is bad, necessarily, just overtly risky. I'm mostly posting this, by the way, because I saw WickedGames's post's and wanted to try to respond to the question of "why would it be controversial and/or damaging to the brand". But I guess I'm offering my thoughts about everything to. Like, first thing, "new elements of harmony" immediately strikes me as worrisome, for a few reasons. The first is that MLP as a franchise has clearly reinvented itself at least once. The connections to G4 are clearly there to try to rope in the massive fanbase they had from the prior incarnation of the franchise, but they've got a whole new art direction and have to appeal to a generation that isn't quite the same as the old one. They absolutely had to include cell phones to be relevant to today's kids, for example, and that creates a whole host of problems. Here's the thing, cell phones suck. Sure, having a conversation at a distance is great, but being called sucks! It's so much nicer to receive a letter, handwritten and sent by dragon fire than to have your boss yelling in your ear to get to work already. So why would ponies invent something they didn't need? That absolutely rules out a smooth rollover from one generation to the next, there absolutely had to be a reset, from a worldbuilding perspective. I think what the writers were asked to do was asinine, honestly: Totally reinvent the world to appeal to a new generation of kids and recreate that sense of wonder and exploration Then tie it back to a generation where all the exploration has already been done But without pissing off the older generation, who is already known to generate tons of controversy over perceived changes in the canon, because it's very easy to confuse the ironed-out fanon with the full-of-merchandisability-inflicted-continuity-holes canon. And if I were a writer, I would be pretty annoyed at having to cater to two audiences with totally incompatible priorities! So they picked one of those things over the other, and I think G5 is stronger for it. But that third bullet point is the real kicker here. We've got fans here that write about immortal Twilight mourning her friends, and Lauren Faust telling us Twilight won't outlive her friends ... but Celestia and Luna retired? Who's going to replace Twilight? How many attempts did it take Celestia to produce someone that could replace her? Does she really expect Twilight to produce a replacement faster than she did? OMG. Anyways, I'm sure I had a point, but I don't remember it anymore. *Shrugs* Eh! ...has the tree ever talked before? Legitimate question. Haven't finished G4, like I said. Oh ... oh my goodness, umm... Imagine you're a kid, and suddenly, the characters from your parent's show intrude on yours, and start getting their muddy discordant hoofprints all over everything. The problem with this is that it caters *too much* to older fans over the identity of the new generation. Leaving aside that not everyone feels the same way about the mane six becoming alicorns, and Lauren Faust's insistence that alicornhood doesn't imply immortality, the bigger problem is that it's unlikely that fans of G4 would actually be attracted to getting into G5 by such an inclusion. I mean, if it works, great! But if it doesn't, it looks really, really disingenuous. People who like G4 and G5 are already watching, and those who don't like G5 are not likely to change their minds based on this inclusion. It's just kind of ... not great when you start thinking about how it would actually play out in real life. But I think it works in a multiverse sort of setting. A timeline where the mane six became alicorns is neat and functional, as that's kind of meant for 'what if' scenarios, but as long as we're dealing with a single timeline, that's just way too many pandora's boxes to be opening at the same time. I feel like shoehorning the new mane six into the elements of harmony is just kind of ... annoying in that it makes G5 beholden to the lore of G4 in a very rigid and inflexible way. I would much, much prefer something more creative, lore wise. To explain, we notice that in ancient times when the sisters wielded them against Discord (and each other, I think), the elements were simple gemstones, all uniform, so they've changed over time. There's no good reason they would remain the same from G4 to G5 and them having a new incarnation entirely is, I think, both appropriate and far more interesting. Hmm... Aside from that, what you've written does flow well, does seem to explain what you set out to explain (haven't watched enough to verify that myself, of course), and is probably still better than what we'll end up getting. I think the biggest issue with bringing a dozen characters being brought back is that none of them will get enough time to feel like more than a cameo, and if they do, then they're taking the spotlight away from the main characters of the show. While fanfiction can run on as long as we like, a show's runtime is a finite resource. Now I would absolutely love to see this, I would love to see what immortality does to the rest of the mane six and how their personalities have changed as they aged and gained wisdom. They would be entirely new characters, and I'd want to at least hear how their various ascensions went down and some of what they've been doing since the end of G4. And that, unfortunately, brings up the problem that the kids that haven't watched G4 won't have a clue about any of that background and won't benefit from it. Aaaand ... that is also time that could also be used on worldbuilding for a city of freaking alicorns. Ultimately, I think Hasbro would reject it because it takes way too many risks. This is an absolute firestorm of ragebait. There are many people I've seen say they stopped watching the show after Twilight ascended. The simple reality of the situation is that it's best to just let the past lie as much as Hasbro can manage and just reject the idea of honoring the past canon entirely. In my opinion, G5 shouldn't be beholden to G4, and I think making G5 an **AU** of G4 is far and away the best possible option. ... not sure this post is coherent. I wrote it over quite a few hours. But oh well.

Blegh. I don't know enough to comment fully on what you've written, but the canon of mlp:fim was screwy too. A lot of stuff had to be ironed out in fanon, and almost all the issues were created in the service of one goal: Merchandisability. Aaaaand that's always the cause of MLP's trash fires, and a fixed-up trash fire is still a trash fire. Point being, saying something like: Isn't necessarily an insult. MLP has only ever been coherent in fanfiction for me. The fact there are many ways you can iron out the details and "fix" the setting in your own way is, I think, one of the things that has made it such fertile ground for fanfiction in the first place. Anyways, Ember and Spike being married is certainly plausible, but ... also not necessary? I haven't finished G4, unfortunately, so I've never seen Ember, but from what I know about the dragons, they care more about strength than they do about laws, so all Spike has to do to become dragon lord is get enough of them to back him. Just like real kings. (Monarchs returning from campaigns in other lands would have to go through a process known as "reclaiming the throne" where they literally had to do just that, get a majority of the powers that be agree to let them retake power. They didn't always succeed. Power has always been like this. People have always cared more about stability than legitimacy. The only reason they appeal to legitimacy at all is because others are interested in protecting the institution of legitimacy insofar as it protects their own interests. The relevancy here is just to demonstrate that badassitude beats tradition every time, and we all know Spike is badass enough to become Dragon Lord if the seat is vacant.) Plus, you know, Celestia and Luna retired. Why not Ember? From what little I've gathered of her character, she never seemed too keen on ruling in the first place. Mostly, I'm just pointing out here that your specific resolution to that one problem has multiple ways of being addressed, and any time you put a ship in a fan theory (even if that's not your intent), you should expect some controversy. In any case, there's my (hopefully constructive?) thoughts. I only watched the Next Generation halfway through before my eyes glazed over. I haven't really made my mind up about it yet, but I've at least enjoyed the conversations I've had with the AI based on the characters, especially the part where Izzy told me there were a bunch of broken-down time machines just laying out there in the bay. And that, right there, is my theory: Magical singularity, ponies invent time machines and then absolute chaos and then this is just one of the crazy timelines that results from the subsequent chaos. Edit to Add: And now I'm reading the rest of your post. Granted, I won't really recognize the characters, but I don't want to just ignore most of what you posted. So ... second post incoming...

You got it! I'm on your team, whichever one that is, Dynamo!

Well, if you need a new Muffin, I'm game. I'll be a cupcake soon if I don't slow down, but I'm not sure if you had another one besides Wizard anyways.

Thank you so much for writing this response! I wasn't sure if anyone would read that wall of text, but it was something I needed to write, anyways, and I want anyone else out there going through something similar to know they're not alone, you know? It's not like I've even fully convinced myself I'm a quadruped. As soon as I start feeling better, the dysphoria goes away, and I'm like, "wait, maybe it's just unhappiness, maybe I am a human after all." And ... I don't know. ... but what I do know is that I get unreasonably happy whenever somebody calls me cute out of the blue, organically. I literally just want to just curl up into a ball and squee. I get embarrassed and blush really hard irl, and I have no idea what to do or say in response. I guess ... I just need to get used to what it feels like to be validated and loved in the way I need. And as I'm learning, it turns out I am in fact a much better writer than I give myself credit for. I guess only seeing my flaws is what marks me as an artist. Thank you so much again! The little dragon in my heart is bouncing off the walls in joy for me right now. He's been waiting a long time for me to get over myself and start listening to him. So yes, I will definitely be working on that story. It should be a real trip.

The dates are pretty fuzzy to me, but I was on 4chan when pony content erupted on /b/. At first they were ridiculing it up to the release, and then very quickly the attitude shifted to "wait, hold on guys, this is actually really good" and suddenly the whole site was filled with lore discussions all over the place. There was a lot of talk about running campaigns in the setting, which got me super excited ... and unfortunately, I just never pursued. I started watching with my bf as soon as we could get around to it, and it hit me way, way harder than I ever expected. It was only recently that I connected this to the fact that when I was very young, I did that thing where I'd take the name of a fictional character, and for a long time it was Tails from Sonic, but then it was Woof the dog from Where's Waldo (and I know this because that's how I signed my schoolwork) and then something else I don't remember, and then I Land Before Time and it was Littlefoot, right up until I "grew out of it", which really just means I got self-conscious enough to fear what people thought about me. And then that laid dormant until this random guy I met playing Enemy Territory messaged me out of the blue after two years of silence with something like, "Hey, do you think might be a furry?" Some of the things we'd talked about back then had made him think I might be, and after some back and forth he just said, if you could have a pet, what would it be, and I said a little dragon, and he said if tomorrow you woke up and you were a little dragon, how would you feel. And I said "I think I'd be the happiest little dragon ever." And we're still together, almost twenty years later. Given that, when I watched a society of quadrupeds animated with such accuracy and care, and then on top of that, it was good, and wholesome, and the lore was fantastic, I could immediately see the dark implications that were never said out loud (or at least, left room for interpretation) ... if I had been able to cry back then, I would have cried tears of joy. (Seriously, I was that stuck in survival mode, I haven't been able to cry at all until literally two days ago) It meant so much to me to see what it would look like for me to live in a world where I belonged, where I felt welcome and safe. If I had any idea how to relate to other people without social anxiety completely destroying me back then, I would have dove in completely, but back then my mother was still pressuring me to go back to college, and ... the burnout was so bad, I had no strength left to fight for what I needed. But I created an account on fimfiction, and according to the bookshelf I put all the stories I've read in, I read around 5,000,000 words on that site over 4 years or so. We watched through season 5, and then ... life happened. I was paying attention passively, but I couldn't even read anymore. I just had to shut everything out, and I couldn't focus enough to read, so I just played video games, essentially. There was more than that, of course. The pandemic is what really crushed my spirits, and then ... the company I worked for crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, and left me feeling jerked around and even more commodified than ever, and I couldn't even work anymore. I'm lucky to be able to live without working for the past 3 years, but things just got steadily worse. Finally I just said enough was enough and just shut out everything except a small few people. I only broke out for a wedding and a family trip to Disney World, and both of those fucked me up even worse. So after that, I shut my mom out entirely, finally, and almost one year to the day after I started concentrating on just myself, I finally dug up and dealt with enough stuff from my past and descended far enough to despair that I realized I couldn't let insecurities stop me anymore, and I saw a pony video on youtube, and I just started clicking through pony videos, hoping I'd find what I didn't know I needed in my life. And I did. I found Infinite Eclipse. And for nearly a week I played the prequel tracks on loop. The intense themes, worldbuilding and story, and the music that resonated with me just lit a fire inside and I just started writing, not caring anymore about what other people might think. I continued the trend I was already on of trying to construct characters in more pain than I am, and I think I finally tied it with this one. I really want to finish this story, get it into a readable state, but I'm going to need to learn a lot about writing to execute it properly. But after weeks and weeks of that, I've lost count, actually, I just kept sinking deeper and deeper into depression, feeling even more and more lonely than I always had. The people in my life try to be excited when I talk about things, but they really aren't. And I ... I needed to find people as passionate about this setting as I am, I realized. But I still didn't have it in me to reach out. Because I've been with my partner for a long time, and I don't want to ... I don't know why, but I've been afraid of meeting someone I resonate with more. He's just done so much for me, but after years of holding that thought in, I finally told him two days ago and he said, "don't worry about me. This has always been an open relationship." And I guess, all my autistic brain needed was an pony avatar I felt comfortable with, and my dad of all people helped me figure that out with his knowledge of how to pick colors that work together, and then, next day, I joined up on this forum, finally putting myself out into the world to be seen after so damn long. I am 38 years old now, and I think that makes me fairly old for a brony, but I know I'm not the only one. I'm finally starting to look for what I want in my life, and I'm so thankful that everyone has been so welcoming here. It's how I know I'm finally making the right choices for myself.