@Background Pony #25FD  
God, glad this discussion is over.
 
Now then, I’m actually curious if Twilight will retell a Legend about Starswirl in E25 before he shows up in the flesh in E26, since the other five had their moments with their respective Legends before the upcoming finale. :3

@thps48  
You’re reading what I’m saying, but you’re not taking my meaning. If we found out that George Washington was actually a Japanese Samurai, that would be huge. Scholars would be losing their minds and talking among each other across the globe. You see what I’m saying now?
 
Fans might be willing to chalk this up to history being wrong, but nothing in the show suggests that is the case other than the inconsistency itself. The truth is, the writers likely fudged up their own lore and didn’t realize it.
 
@Philweasel  
The problem is that ‘throw away line’ stopped being one once Meadowbrook was made an authentic character. The moment she became realized, that line became important, because it forged an inconsistency in the lore that the show not only doesn’t explain, but it pretends it’s not even there. That’s just lazy writing.
 
@cheezedoodle  
Except that was not the lore they established. As I said to others, they forged an inconsistency then did nothing to explain it and in fact ignore it entirely like it’s not even there.

The wiki has some info that is relevant. Her original name in The Cutie Map was to be Jasmine Flower. It got changed later to Meadowbrook, which was a G3 earth pony they probably still had a trademark on (and an early contender name for Fluttershy’s character).
 
When they started to write the new stories, Meadowbrook’s previous incarnation was an earth pony, so they stuck with that.
 
For myself, this entire problem goes away if you just replace Meadowbrook’s name-drop in The Cutie Map with Mistmane’s. Then the character is both an “Eastern Unicorn” and a sorceress of note.

@Background Pony #25FD  
I think you’re putting far too much weight on a single throw away line that most of us didn’t even remember. It’s hardly a ‘Luke I am your father’ as their entire relationship changed from that point and it pretty much formed half the plot of the next movie. Twilight in comparison has only a little to do with Meddowbrook, she’s all about Fluttershy.

@Background Pony #25FD  
Darth Vader isn’t one thousand years older than Luke.

@Philweasel  
You seem confused - I’m not bugged by Meadowbrook being an Earth Pony, I’m not even bugged by the contradiction, what I’m bugged by is that they did absolutely nothing to call attention to it. Twilight never stopped and said “wait I thought she was an Eastern Unicorn, not a Southern Earth Pony.” There’s no explanations. We aren’t given an actual “reveal” as to why Meadowbrook is nothing like what we thought she was. We’re just told as much and the show moves on as if everything is normal. There’s no weight in the reveal, no impact, it’s just there.
 
Imagine Darth Vader telling Luke ‘I’m your father’ and Luke just responding with ‘okay.’ It’s kind of like that.
 
 
@thps48  
Read above.

@Background Pony #25FD  
I think you’re a lot more bugged by it than most people. It kinda just sailed by my head with a ‘eh, that’s wierd’ and I’ve written whole essays on obscure background lore.

@Background Pony #25FD  
Still her breed was misconstrued thanks to the passage of time. It’s a little like how some think Jesus Christ was white, not brown. >w<

@Philweasel  
You may enjoy figuring things out on your own, but presentation is important, and in this instance we’re not given proper presentation. Even if they didn’t reveal all the knitty-gritty, they didn’t even take the time to go “oh yeah that’s weird.” As I said, they did nothing to call attention to any of it. In terms of writing, this is very poor exposition, because the writers don’t even seem to acknowledge that it comes completely out of left field.
 
You may figure Twilight was wrong, but nothing in the show gives you that image. There’s nothing to push us to that answer other than the fact the writers contradicted their own story, which is a pretty major mess up on their part. If they wanted to establish that Twilight was just wrong, they should have actively expressed it – give Twilight that ‘wait a minute’ moment where she realizes she was wrong or something. We don’t get that. Nobody in the show seems aware of the contradiction. It goes completely unnoticed and unexplained. This isn’t a small mistake, especially considering Twilight prides herself in her knowledge of magic.

@Background Pony #25FD  
I love figuring things out on my own. And though I figure it was probably a retcon, I hate talking about the writing mechanically.
 
It’s not really that difficult for me to just figure Twilight was wrong. The unicorn thing wasn’t specifically mentioned, but Twilight was astounded that Mage Meddowbrook and the Mystical Mask were the same pony. She wouldn’t have been so shocked if she knew anything about the mare.
 
Twilight’s also the only one who called her a sorceress, everypony else has called her a mage. Given we’ve never heard that word used for a unicorn and the term is undefined in this universe, it seems legit to me. Science and magic are intertwined in the pony world (Sunset outright states that her training in magic crosses over to human world science) and Meddowbrook is clearly a medieval era biologist and chemist.

@Philweasel  
I doubt that, otherwise I’m sure the show would have made a point of calling attention to the error, Twilight realizing that Meadowbrook didn’t live in the region she thought she did, or realizing that she was an Earth Pony instead of an Eastern Unicorn.
 
Given that recorded history in Equestria tends to be more resilient than in the real world, doesn’t it just seem more likely that the writers forgot? After all, like I said, they didn’t do anything to call attention to it. They don’t even go to the trouble to explain how an Earth Pony could be a sorceress; we’re left to sort of figure that out on our own.

@Background Pony #25FD  
I wonder if she got her mixed up with Mistmane. “A Health of Information” clearly shows that historical information about these guys is rather muddy.

@Philweasel  
Except Twilight specifically stated Eastern Unicorns. That’s a pretty big gap of error in judgement for Twilight, especially seeing as Meadowbrook was apparently a Southern Earth Pony. Really, this is something I think is best chalked up to the writers forgetting their own established lore, or perhaps one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

@Background Pony #F185  
Here  
Gathered together from the far reaches of Equestria, are the greatest Legends of Magic ever assembled: Rockhoof! Starswirl the Bearded! Mistmane! Somnambula! Flash Magnus and Mage Meadowbrook! Dedicated to Magic, Friendship and Harmony for all Ponykind!

Twilight called her an eastern unicorn. Given Meadowbrook was a mage of some renown, Twilight might just have assumed based on her personal bias (being herself a unicorn mage).

@Background Pony #1E77  
That Meadowbrook was considered a unicorn could have been a detail lost in time, but then, it would seem Campfire Tales may depict her (if she appears) as a earth, so it all comes back to how the show is written by ostriches. >w<

I wonder if they end up bearing the elements of harmony.
 
Time to do some re-reading of what Star Swirl’s relationship to them was.

@thps48  
I think the writers just forgot.

@Background Pony #39E5  
No idea, lol.

@thps48  
Wait, then why the hell did the S5 premier call her an eastern unicorn?

@Background Pony #39E5  
Meadowbrook is an earth.

@Twitter-Mites  
Mistmane was shown to be about animal affinity in her comic though.
 
 
@Twitter-Mites  
You’re going to run into issues no matter what though, there’s only 1 earth pony, so someone’s not going to fit.

@immblueversion 
Ah, yes, Somnambula is Surprise, Meadowbrook is Posey, in a sense more.

@Twitter-Mites 
I’m positive Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie’s characters should be reversed. For one, “Meadowbrook” was one of the names Lauren considered for Fluttershy, according to concept art in “The Art of Equestria”; they even look similar. Second, I saw line art of Somnambula showing her to be quite perky, much like Pinkie. And third, if you’re going purely by what kinds of ponies they are, keep in mind that Pinkie was going to be a pegasus and Fluttershy an earth pony. But even then, I’m race has little to do with it.