Well, I wrote a novel. Too bad I can’t publish it.

@Background Pony #A806
I mean I don’t care if people ship Discord with anyone. I’m really indifferent to shipping, but if people really wanna ignore what Discord has done then there really is something wrong here. This is something akin to seeing clear signs of an abusive boyfriend yet people insist to let things be because “She is nice to him”, like a one sided relationship where the kind and shy one is the one tolerating and making sacrifices. Poor Fluttershy is forced into an abusive relationship in which she has been betrayed, manipulated, and lied to. The best I can hope is Discord never does anything like that again. This honestly just proves that this fandom may also be the victim of Discord’s abuse and just like the in-universe characters, we rather keep letting him get away with it instead of making him own up to his actions. Seriously, what’s wrong with admitting Discord as a pet. What he is so prideful he can’t just accept a position like that? Then why did he become Tirek’s bitch in the first place?

Honestly I was also going to let go of Discord, but seeing so many people defending him and Badumsquish’s comments making me realize just how bad he is, I decided to stick to my guns. Discord is abusive, manipulative, childish, and a liar. He should have suffered punishments a long time ago but just like Starlight Glimmer, he gets away with everything scot-free. However, while Starlight eventually improved and actually cared about others, Discord continued to lie, hurt, and manipulate others as if he never learned anything and was ungrateful of being left free.

@Wayneponeth
Fans have a right to ship what they ship.

No, I’m not gonna go there.

But, the thing is, fans don’t care about the stuff discord’s done, they’re only here _mostly for the fluttercord ship.

@Wayneponeth
Ehh, don’t care much about discord, honestly.

@Badumsquish
Ha, if Cozy Glow ever did that. It would be because she is much more intelligent than Discord. She is literally just a pegasus and doesn’t possess omnipotent chaotic power, but she uses her charm and scheming to achieve something so much worse than Discord ever did. I mean that was the first time Canterlot used an entire troop on a freaking filly. Just imagine the difference between those two.

“Ummm, how do we tell if Cozy Glow is actually being genuine or is tricking us again?”
“That’s what makes her so risky. She is way too smart and adorable. She can always turn back against us without us ever knowing it. We need to make absolutely sure she stays on the right track.”
VS
“Ugh, Discord is summoning monsters to terrorize children again. Fluttershy, get the paddle, chain, and candle and keep your stupid pet under control.”

Actually, Cozy Glow was the one that foiled Discord’s plan in the finale. She was the one that united Chrysalis and Tirek to make them work together. She was the one that came up with how to retrieve the bell and hid it. She literally ruined Discord’s whole career because she is just way more intelligent. It’s funny how an actual child is more competent than a thousand year old chaos god who also acts like a child. That’s why I love Cozy Glow so much as a villain. XD

@Wayneponeth
In the end though, it’s a moral luck kind of scenario. Like, people argue that it was good to not attempt to forgive Cozy Glow in the same way as Discord and Starlight because she posed the exact same risk they did: that she’d go bum or fake redemption and then stab them in the back. It would have been neat if we got a bit of a back and forth acknowledging that, like imagine Twilight saying “We can’t trust Cozy. Nothing’s stopping her from just betraying us if we try to reform her”, then Fluttershy says “It worked with Discord”, then Twilight goes “Okay, but we got REALLY lucky with Discord”, then have Spike snarkily say “‘Lucky’ is pretty generous, Twi”. It wouldn’t be the first time Twilight’s been a hypocrite, so poking a bit of fun at it would have been pretty funny XD

@Wayneponeth
I’m envious. I speak decent enough Spanish that I can at least communicate, but calling it “fluent” would be strong XD

@Wayneponeth
Nice. I love a bit of diversity in places like these.

@Clever Clovers
It’s Chinese actually. I’m a Taiwanese person with Chinese as our primary spoken language. :P

@Wayneponeth
Did…did you just say English isn’t your native language, Wayne?

I’m genuinely shocked at that.

…wait. If English isn’t your native language, then what is? Now I’m curious…

@JustaPony
Thanks. English isn’t even my native language. I just learned for a long time. :3

@Wayneponeth
Damn, Wanye, keep that up, and you’ll be able to type entire books. :P

@Badumsquish
Honestly Discord is the only one that is set loose and goes wild. I mean Starlight has to be Twilight’s student and Sunset decided to stay in the human world. It kind of makes sense as other than turning him into stone again there isn’t really much that can keep him restrained. And it’s not like Fluttershy can actually restrain him because if he actually cared he would behave himself for her sake. However come to think of it, Tempest and Stygian are also let free and they never did anything stupid because they’re more mentally mature. What I’m saying is Discord is the most immature reformed character and they shouldn’t have let him go free with him still getting to keep his powers. They might think Fluttershy is keeping an eye on him, but first she is too sweet and kind to actually keep him locked up and second he doesn’t actually care about her enough to have self-discipline. Letting Discord go free would’ve been a good idea if he wasn’t a literal misbehaving child who throws a tantrum everytime he doesn’t get what he wants. :P

@Andyxdr
The only thing I can think of that’s really “wrong” with it, is the characters never have any meaningful reactions to it, and there’s never any meaningful consequences for when Discord does bad things. To me, a wild card who doesn’t get reactions for his wildness is like a “funny character” who isn’t funny: it just doesn’t work. Like, in terms of how he acts, Discord is always in-character with the way he’s selfish with no self-control and doesn’t care about the well-being of others: he’s an immortal god who spent thousands of years treating living things as toys for his own amusement and then was allowed to run free on the proviso he “sort of try to be good” with zero attempts to teach him right from wrong or correct his behavior. It makes perfect sense he acts how he acts XD

@Wayneponeth
Yep :P

It’s why I think they should have had his motive be to reform them, since such a motive is perfectly congruent with his actions. Also, the ponies reformed Discord by letting him run free and letting anything bad he did slide as long as he was TRYING to be their friend, so it makes perfect sense that he’d let the Legion of Doom run wild on the hopes they eventually became friends and decided to be good like he did. It also makes it much easier to stomach since it would show he genuinely HAS adopted their views on friendship and redemption. It also makes his mistake much more reasonable since he was basically just doing what the ponies have always done to reform antagonists: “set them loose and hope for the best” :P

@Badumsquish
Awww, we’re friends? :3

Honestly one of the most recent screencap on this site proves so much what you’re saying. It’s so fitting to put it here.

This guy is just so intent on forcing people to do what he wants. He just loves to make everything all about him. He is really good at manipulation. You’re telling me this guy who looks like he still wants to brainwash others with a full on malicious expression is “reformed”? He looks like a straight up evil villain here.
Abuser is right. He treats everyone’s kindness and concern for him like garbage and plaything to be toyed with. He throws monsters and danger around to attack others for fun. He treats Starlight who helped defeat the changelings with him like trash, insulting her and tarnishing her sense of responsibilities, yet somehow he is the victim. He always does things behind everyone’s back without telling even a single soul. He has definitely lied to a lot of people and come back around to say that he did it to “help”. And worst of all, Fluttershy is always at the receiving at of his abuse. As if the Tirek incident needs to be addressed anymore, he ruined Fluttershy’s attempt of working up a courage to make a new friend, pretended to be hurt to gain sympathy from her, sent her on a fake mission where she had the potential to get her and lied behind her back doing harmful things to the whole nation. Sadly, I’m sure a lot of fans are also being abused by him in a weird way. I mean why else would so many people go on the defense of “He was doing it for their own good. He had good intentions!” when he still lied to his “friends” and manipulated their trust, if he even sees them as friends. It’s like a weird case of Stockholm Syndrome, and Discord is able to achieve that both in and out of universe. That’s actually terrifying.

@Andyxdr
He is not “being a wild card and doing funny things for funny sake”. That’s Pinkie Pie. Like Badum said, he used the Mane Six, Spike, the royal sisters, and Starlight Glimmer and their trust. He lied to them right in their faces while knowing completely that he is letting 3 dangerous people run free. He guilt-tripped Starlight into apologizing to him harming and almost killing students. He played with their emotions to enact his weird method of motivating. He gaslit Twilight so she would feel shunned by her friends and worse, saying that he is “proving even the Princess of Friendship can get jealous”. And he abused Fluttershy’s trust for him by betraying, lying to, and mistreating her times and times again. He isn’t being “quirky wild card jerk with a heart of gold, haha look how funny he is”. That’s Gumball Watterson from TAWOG. He is abusing others by manipulating their trust, harming and even almost killing them, and pretending to be guilty or making others feel guilty so he can do it all again. Again, look at this face and what he is saying and tell me he is a “reformed chaotic good wild card doing funny things to be funny”.

@Badumsquish
What’s wrong with a character being a wild card?

@Glimenade
Because if I wasn’t allowed to socialize with friends here, I wouldn’t even be on this site :P

@Andyxdr
Because he did betray them. He might have thought he was doing well, he might have had noble intentions, but he still betrayed them. He betrayed their trust, their faith in him, and everything they believe in. Besides, he’s genuinely betrayed them in the past and he’s lied through his teeth to them about his motivations in the past. Honestly, believing his story that “he didn’t betray them, he was doing it for their own good” was basically the stupidest thing the main characters have ever done in that entire series even IF they were, by some grace of god, lucky enough that he actually was telling the truth this one time XD

@Wayneponeth
I’m sure he has genuine affection for them, but he very much acts like an abuser. He mistreats them to get what he wants, things have to be on his terms, and he constantly manipulates them with deception, guilt, threats, lies, and gaslighting. Like, how many times has he done genuinely bad things to them, lied about it until caught red-handed, and then convinced them he was doing it to “teach them a lesson?” It’s scarily close to how an abusive husband treats his wife D:

@Badumsquish
That would have worked if not for one member of the Mane Six: Fluttershy. I will always point out Fluttershy gets the worst treatment from Discord. Maybe the rest of the Mane Five should’ve treated him a bit better and actually taught him stuff, but Fluttershy always, always tries her best to help Discord. She was the one giving him a chance, she was the one seeing the good in him, and she was the one teaching him right and wrong. And what does Discord do to her everytime? Help Tirek drain the entire Equestria, put her in a cage and let Tirek do the same to her, try to throw a new friend she finally had the courage to make into a wormhole, exploit her kindness for him by pretending to be injured by Sombra, and fucking gather 3 villains to doom her and the entire Equestria. I’m sorry, if Fluttershy really is that important to him, he would have tried harder to take care of her, not throw her into a fake friendship quest just because he wanted to kill children.

And I mean, after so many setbacks, I’m pretty sure he knows what right and wrong is afterward, right? Huh, after trying to throw a pony into a different dimension because of my insecurities, maybe I shouldn’t do that again. Nope, almost killed Spike and Big Mac with a real life version of Dungeons & Dragons because of my insecurities. Huh, maybe I should stop the bugbear from chasing these students because one of them is literally begging me and they seem so exhausted. Nah, keep running children! Just don’t let the bear sting you to death! Oh and I’m doing that also because of my insecurities, again. Well, I trusted this one villain to not do something out of my expectations and then I got dunked on, I shouldn’t do that again. Nope, I gather 3 villains which include the one that backstabbed me and I just leave them free to do whatever they want. Surely they wouldn’t do something I never expect them to do, right? I mean Discord has to audacity to teach Twilight about being jealous when he is the king of jealousy. He insults Starlight Glimmer by calling her “incompetent, power-hungry”. He knows things. He knows what shouldn’t be done and what should. He knows Fluttershy giving up on him means he has no one ever. He does understand moral he just doesn’t care and commits anyway. Maybe the Mane Six should have tried to teach Discord, maybe. I mean Fluttershy certainly tries her hardest, but Discord still throws her kindness away like garbage all the time. Maybe it’s not that Discord wasn’t taught, it’s that Discord never actually wants to learn.

@Badumsquish
What makes you think he did what he did because he wanted to outright betray them?

@Badumsquish
Why are you having a conversation in incredibly long paragraphs?

@Wayneponeth
It’s kind of messed up of the Mane Six when you think about it. Like, Discord was handed to them basically as a servant on the proviso that he does what they want in exchange for not being turned back to stone. So that’s fair enough he’s basically a prisoner on a work-release program, and that’s a pretty good deal for him since they actually asked very little of him overall. But, the Mane Six basically interpreted this as a friendship instead of a responsibility and never bothered to actually try and correct his behavior. When you think about it, it’s largely the Mane Six’s fault that Discord never learned his lesson and kept doing bad shit, since they never actually bothered to teach him right from wrong and truly “reform” him: he’s basically a sociopath with a skewed-at-best moral scope who’s been left guessing “what should and shouldn’t and can and can’t I do if I don’t want to be turned into a statue”. It’s no wonder he thought betraying them in the final season was an okay thing to do XD

@Badumsquish
Yes exactly. He is abusive and manipulative. He fakes injury to play with their emotions and he tries to kill anyone just because he feels left out. That’s exactly what he is! :P

@Wayneponeth
It’s the most appropriate way to describe it. His relationship with them ranges from him being under duress to him being abusive to them XD

@Badumsquish
Oh man parole officer. That’s just perfect. XD

@Glimenade
Right now, just one :P

@Wayneponeth
I think Twilight just thinks “I’m not his friend, I’m his parole officer” XD

@Badumsquish
Yep, I admire the patience Twilight has toward Discord. I would have pounded his annoying noodle butt. XD