@Tavi959
 
I think they still had a head of steam for a while after that. honestly lauren was great, but there were plenty of others on the team who had ideas she couldn’t even have dreamed of. a canterlot wedding was just when it really felt like the hammer came down, and the executives started pushing their private agendas.
 
the writers were left with little choice but to make changelings, a sports arc, that abomination of a baby, and basically stealing twilight’s ascension in order to promote the royal wedded couple.
 
that’s the real problem with magical mystery cure, is that twilight should’ve ascended in the season 3 opener, when she saved the crystal empire. but instead they had to hastily crowbar her ascension in later, in an episode that didn’t do it justice.

@redweasel  
I remember the show being ruined forever the moment Lauren quit, about halfway through Season 2.

ppl who hate it for mmc are like little babies. I remember when the show was ruin forever…
 

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Leave it to 4chan to still be whining about this. She’s been a princess longer than she hasn’t. It’s time to grow up.

Twilicorn angst aside, that’s one hell of a get.
 
I’m a pretty devoted Twilight fanatic, but I’m ambivalent on Twilicorn and always have been. On the one hand, Twilight as an alicorn might look forward to a longer lifespan (unless, y’know, “she won’t outlive her friends”) and is more powerful than she ever was as a unicorn. More power and prestige to Twilight makes me happy. It’s not completely illogical in terms of the plot we see from the first couple seasons; it’s clear that Twilight was being groomed for power from the very start. Twilight Sparkle has kind of a dark, obsessive personality, and my pet theory is that Celestia feared what Twilight could become if she remained a studious recluse, and that fear is essentially what kicked off the events of the show. She probably would’ve ended up like Moon Dancer - bitter and hollow - or Sunset Shimmer, rebellious against the crown. Twilight’s responsibilities as Celestia’s protege are a distraction. Something to keep her fearsome intellect occupied in a productive manner.
 
On the other hand, it reeks of executive meddling. You can just see, in your mind’s eye, the balding, humorless bean-counter waltzing into the writers’ room whining “What the hell is going on? Why are there so many adult fans of the show? We’re not reaching the target audience! Put a… put a pretty, pink princess in there! Purple? I don’t care, just do it!” And that’s how we wound up with Twilicorn.
 
There are some structural problems with making Twilight Sparkle an alicorn princess.
 
I was a fan of the Powerpuff Girls before I was a fan of MLP:FiM. First off, Lauren Faust’s original vision for the show was one with clearly-defined character archetypes for the Mane Six. The pilot of the first season is a good example of the kinds of things they do; teamwork, together, as one. Notice how hollow the idea of friendship seems in later seasons? It’s discussed in the abstract, but we hardly see the practical effect of it. Early on, the Mane Six are able to cooperate only when they resolve their differences. Later on, they don’t have any conflict to resolve. That’s part of what makes the Movie so irritating. It’s a tiny glimpse of the show that we could’ve gotten.
 
Secondly, the whole message of the show was that you don’t have to be a pretty princess to be respected. Think for a moment about what being a princess entails IRL. It’s the ultimate domestication of a human female. You don’t have to be smart to be a princess, you don’t have to know things or be even remotely competent at anything; that’s totally optional. You just need to have good manners and good grooming. If you can wear white finery and hold a gloved hand over your mouth while tittering softly, you can be a princess. The endgame of a princess is to be the perfect, ideal wife for a member of royalty. The whole idea that your protagonist has to be a princess in a show targeted at a young, female audience is a smug put-down of girls in general. “They’re not interested in science and engineering, just make her royalty, that’ll bring in the ratings and toy sales”. Now, contrast that with what Twilight Sparkle actually is, which is a librarian, chemist and astronomer, much resembling an ancient Greek scholar rather than anything else, and you start to see the problem. All of the Mane Six already had jobs and roles to play from the outset. Now, they have a School of Friendship that they teach at, and you’ve got to ask yourself, how do they find the time? What about their other responsibilities? While Rarity and Applejack are teaching, who’s sewing clothes or minding the orchard?
 
Third, it imbalances the Mane Six. Two Unicorns, Two Earth Ponies, and Two Pegasi. Pegasuses. Pegasusususes. At the start of the show, they are essentially equals in terms of social status, and any edge that Twilight has on them as Celestia’s personal student is subtle. Twilight suddenly becoming royalty and having five commoners as friends throws a monkey wrench in everything. It roots Twilight to one spot and gives her all these new duties that replace what she was doing before. Suddenly, her life is too important to risk on any truly dangerous escapades, unless trouble comes looking for them and they have no choice but to respond in kind. They each had complementary roles to play; they each completed one another. With Twilight as a princess, suddenly, you have this lopsided relationship where Twilight has to be on her best behavior at all times and isn’t allowed to show any flaws for her friends to correct (again, the Movie showed us a tiny glimpse of what we could’ve gotten from the show, with Twilight using her friends as a distraction while she tries the Renegade option). Contrast this with the first couple seasons, where Twilight’s obsessive behavior gets her in trouble more than once. It’s easy to say, oh, she learned her lesson and this is character development, but is it really? Does a character “develop” when the writers suppress what makes them unique? Twilight Sparkle without wings is our adorkable, flawed librarian. Twilight Sparkle with wings could be anyone. That’s what makes it irritating. The only time Twilight’s personality shines through is when she’s allowed to be a person, not just a princess keeping up appearances, and for that to happen, she has to be allowed to make mistakes, like when her control-freak nature leads her to try and drive a wedge between Starlight Glimmer and Trixie in No Second Prances because she still doesn’t forgive the latter.
 
Fourth, the castle and the map table. Terrible idea. The map pairs off members of the Mane Six in such a way that you’ll hardly ever find them doing anything collectively as a group anymore. It makes their interactions seem artificial and forced rather than being a spontaneous, emergent property of the world around them.
 
I don’t know. Am I satisfied with the way the show has been? For the most part, I’d say yes. Do I think the show went off the rails a little bit? Yes and no. I don’t know. Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 were fantastic. Season 3, the acting was a little flat. Season 6 and onward, Starlight Glimmer is basically on the road to becoming our substitute main protagonist. All along the way, tons of missed opportunities. Oh, and the soundtrack to the series (not the musical parts, but the actual background music) seems to get progressively softer with each season. Compare and contrast how badass the orchestration was in Lesson Zero or Family Appreciation Day, to the stuff we got later on. Again, it just feels like executive meddling. You had this show with a whole lot of bold character to it, and somewhere along the line, there was Hasbro, telling them to dial it back for the kiddies. Makes me sad. Oh well.

And the butthurt continues. 5 years after the fact.

wowie