Peace was never an option in this version.

“bonk” laugh like Scout (?

“bat (weapon)” to not confuse with the bat (animal).

@Background Pony #5A56
 
xD
 
I was kind of expecting it, even though I knew the show wouldn’t go that far.

@Kazapsky  
Twilight didn’t know she was going to save the world, that was just kind of a surprise. But she did know she was moving to Ponyville.

“Thanks Twilight. You don’t know how much I have needed to hit you with a stick.”

@Background Pony #A5F0  
I might be able to shine a little bit of light on this. I thought I made great friends years ago. After learning what really great friends actually are, it turned out I was just really fond of some friendly acquaintances. So, my ideas of what a “friend” vary over the ideas over a course of a lifetime.
 
Also, as some others have said, “considering someone a friend retrospectively” is totally a thing that can happen. You know, once I understood how good, healthy friendships work, it’s easy to look back and see all the signs I missed.
 
I kinda think the same thing happened to Twilight. If anything, she’s kinda acting a little belatedly on those signs and building new friendships anyway. They may have considered her a friend, and now that Twilight can appreciate friendship, she may have felt bad for not reciprocating.
 
Oooh! There’s something else I love about the episode: I loved how Minuette totally recognized that Twilight was just sorta asocial and unappreciative, but Minuette liked Twilight anyway.
 

Also, since Twilight is the Princess of Friendship, it’s possible her perspective is a little skewed. She’s so used to being an avatar of friendship that she can’t remember when she wasn’t a good friend.

Twilight was their friend, but they were not her friends. They considered her a gruff, tough to get long with pony who was grudgingly their friend. She likely considered them acquaintances at the most (at the time at least), and only went along with them because they pressured her (and she still brought books to the gatherings, showing she probably mostly just read instead of interacted).

@Lawful Girly
 
I took it that she only considered them friends in retrospect. Not at the time.

RIP in Pepperoni

@PonyPon
 
@PonyPon
 
But that she didn’t care IS the sad situation, isn’t it? That’s the picture the first episode painted: a pony who even when others reached out to her refused to give something as ‘pointless’ as friendship the time of day.
 
Now, how she came to be that is something we don’t know. My guess has always been that Twilight was always a bit socially stunted, and the pressure from being Celestia’s student made friends feel even more like a distraction. So she kept to her books.
 
It took being shown the power of friendship in the most extreme way for Twilight to care and realize how important it was. Moondancer being a good example of where she would have ended up otherwise.

@Background Pony #B4BC  
Yeah, but those pics invariably paint it as a sad, almost tragic situation, and it seems more like she wouldn’t even care.

@PonyPon
 
Why won’t you be able to take it seriously though? She was a loner who didn’t take the oportunity to spend time with others because she didn’t think it was worth it.

@Background Pony #A5F0  

 
Maybe they proclaimed they were all friends and she just went along with it, not really knowing or caring what being a friend actually meant. That’s the impression I got from Twilight’s flashbacks.

@Background Pony #A5F0  

 
Therein lies the problem.

@Lawful Girly
 
I’m not sure I get it. We were always aware Twilight had the oportunity to make friends but didn’t appreciate it before Ponyville. To me this episode didn’t change that, as she still neglected the ponies arround her for her books.
 
What weirded me a bit more is that SHE called the trio ‘friends’. She shouldn’t have considered them as such?

@Background Pony #A5F0  
Yeah.
 
Which makes it all the odder she made great friends regardless.

@PonyPon
 
Well, we were told Twilight was a loner before because she didn’t see the point in friendship and was apathetic towards the idea (makes me wonder what led to that) right?

@PonyPon  
Yeah, they’ve slowly eroded her original character–not just in the good character development sense, in the bad retcon way.

@Background Pony #A5F0  
It implies that she always had friendship, but was apathetic towards it at the time, and even the friends didn’t mind that.
 
And now it’s going to be impossible to take any Lonely young Sparkle art seriously, if I could even attempt to before.

@Lawful Girly
 

 
Yep. Only Shining.
 
And yeah it does. The very concept is weird to me. It was always made clear that Twilight had not made friends before the mane 6, and yet this episode would imply she had and was just a bad friend to them?

@Background Pony #A5F0  
Alright, that might have been her memories retconning it. And yeah…I did notice that, too.
 
Basically, this episode opens up a whole can of continuity worms.

@Lawful Girly
 
Pretty sure there was only Shining there. And even that seems to have been thrown in for the song.
 
The fact that her room was left as a mess indicates she left in a hurry, to me.