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My thoughts and opinions on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (WARNING: 12,000+ word post!)

WARNING: This post is very long and has thoughts I’ve been bottling up about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for the past 2 years. I’ve been wanting to write this post for months, but either I kept forgetting or couldn’t find the time. Congratulations if you’re able to read this from start to finish without skimming. If you can answer my questions, great!

WARNING: This post might get ranty.

BIG WARNING: There will be LOTS of unmarked spoilers about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Pokémon X and Y anime in this post! DO NOT read it if you are watching or plan to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or the Pokémon X and Y anime.

tl;dr And so, to make a SUPER long story short, I like the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic franchise, but I don’t like the show.

To clarify, I like most of My Little Pony’s concepts in an abstract kind of sense, like Magic, the Elements of Harmony, the Sonic Rainboom, Alicorns and Alicorn ascension, and NOT naturally born Alicorns, (the franchise), but I don’t like way the developers of the show decided to use and implement those concepts (the show). Basically, I would like the show more if the concepts were used in a different way, like a Dragon Ball Z-like way, to be precise.

Table of Contents (Yeah, this post is so big that I need to include one. Use ctrl+F and type in an abbreviation in the table to jump to that section.)

INTRO (IRO)

THE SHOW (SHW)

Friendship is Magic (FIM)
The Sonic Rainboom and other wasted concepts (SRB)
Twilight’s Kingdom (TWK)
Cutie Re-Mark (CRM)
To Where and Back Again (WBA)
Twilight Sparkle becomes an Alicorn (TSA)
The Crystalling: By FAR the worst episode in the show (CRS)
Final Remarks about the show (FRE)

THE FANBASE (FBA)

The Bad Side (BDS)
The Good Side (GDS)
Questions (QES)

CONCLUSION (CCL)

INTRO (IRO)

Please note, when I say My Little Pony, Mario, Zelda, etc., I’m referring to the franchise directly. When I say, “My Little Pony”, “Metroid”, “Earthbound”, etc. (a franchise name in quotes), I’m referring to the style, equations, skeleton, framework, formulas, art style, etc. of the franchise. In other words, I’m referring to the stuff that makes Mario Mario, which are platforming adventures, jumping on enemies, hitting blocks, collecting coins for lives, rescuing a princess, etc. Giving Mario a gun and putting him into a realistic, non-platforming environment is NOT “Mario”.

I’ve been exposed to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic before I got into it. I saw tiny bits and pieces of it, like what some characters look like, but I didn’t get into My Little Pony until the summer of 2015. My little brother was into it then, and he told me some stuff about it, but that wasn’t the biggest reason why I got in. The biggest reason I got in is because I thought, “This franchise has a HUGE fanbase! That means there must be a HUGE amount of high quality fan games!” I am a gamer, and I love Nintendo and fan games, so I decided to watch a little of this Nintendo-like franchise just to get some background info and see what it is like, and then look for high quality fan games and fan fics.

THE SHOW (SHW)

Friendship is Magic (FIM)

So, I started watching the first episode, and I started getting excited. This is because the show starts with an introduction that’s VERY SIMILAR to RPGs and Zelda games. I LOVE those type games to death. The intro even mentioned how 6 Crystal Star or Chaos Emerald or Dragon Ball or Triforce piece-like items called the Elements of Harmony were used to defeat the bad guy just like in an RPG or Zelda game. So I started thinking, “WOW, this is going to be an AMAZING TV show! It’s going to be a HUGE adventure with characters going all around the world looking for these items while fighting bad guys, going through towns, making friends, and doing a lot of RPG stuff!” I mean, after seeing an introduction like that, who WOULDN’T think something like what I just said will happen?

However, after watching the 2-part episode, which is called Friendship is Magic, I was very disappointed. In the 2-part episode, one character who knows next to nothing about friendship is sent to a town she knows NOTHING about and instantly makes 5 friends, which, is UNREALISTIC. These 6 characters, with ZERO battle and friendship experience, go into a forest TEAMING with powerful monsters, which they should not be capable of dealing with yet, and they find an old castle. Inside the castle, they find the 6 Chaos Emerald/Crystal Star/WHATEVER-like artifacts ALL IN THE SAME PLACE! (Seriously?) They then use the artifacts to CURB STOMP (!?) the villain and save the world, even though they JUST STARTED an adventure and have NO BATTLE OR FRIENDSHIP EXPERIENCE AT ALL! The bad guy doesn’t fight back at all and just sits there! If I was developing the show, I would make it so that you’d have to weaken the boss before you could use the Elements of Harmony against the boss. That way, a proper fight would ensue. The episodes also felt rushed and the pacing was so fast.

The first 2 episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is basically like a Pokémon game. You know, start in Pallet Town, get your Starter, go through Viridan city, go through a forest, and challenge the Pewter Gym and win. Except in this hypothetical Pokémon game, instead of getting the Boulder Badge from Brock, you get ALL 8 BADGES AT ONCE! Not only that, we’ll say that the badges increase the levels of all your Pokémon to 100. Then, all you must do to beat the game is go south to Victory Road and the Indigo Plateau and beat the Elite Four and Champion and beat the game! It’s as anticlimactic and anti-adventure as it sounds! You could be exploring the entirety of Kanto or Equestria going on a big adventure fighting bad guys, going through towns, and making friends as you find the Gym Badges or Elements of Harmony scattered around the world.

Heck, my current demo of my Super Mario World hack, My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure is the first 2 episodes in video game form with only minor changes, and it only has 3 levels. Yeah, that’s right, just 3 levels! It can be beaten in just 15 minutes or less by a skilled player! The hypothetical Pokémon game could probably be beaten in 30.

I played a My Little Pony fan game called My Little Pony RPG: The Elements of Harmony. It’s a VERY amazing game, and I only look for high quality content. Now, this game is basically the first 2 episodes in video game form, except in this game, the 6 My Little Pony friends really DO go on a big adventure fighting bad guys, going through towns, and making friends while looking for the Elements of Harmony. In this game, instead of finding all 6 Elements of Harmony at once, the characters, by doing quests or helping others, discover that they represent an Element of Harmony. For example, at the beginning of the game, the starting town of Ponyville has lost its crystal or whatever it is, and you have to go to a temple and get it back, fighting enemies and a boss along the way. Upon giving the crystal to the people you need to give it to, one of the main characters, Rarity, discovers that she represents the Element of Generosity because she got Ponyville’s crystal back and gave it back to the proper person. Later in the game, one of the main characters, Fluttershy, discovered that some animals were in trouble. After rescuing the animals, she discovers that she represents the Element of Kindness for caring about the animals. I just love the Elements of Harmony being found this way. The characters go on a quest discovering their destinies. And when you get to the final boss, the friendship and battle abilities and everything the characters have learned throughout the adventure are tested like a final exam in one big epic fight. Now THIS is what the first 2 episodes should have been like. It should have been a season wide thing like Dragon Ball Z.

And in the 24 episodes that follow, the characters are in an ordinary slice of life setting learning about friendship. Well, they should have been in the slice of life setting learning about friendship BEFORE going through the forest and fighting the boss, and the boss should have been fought at the end of Season 1. That way, the characters learning about friendship would be for a cause. There would be a reason why these characters are learning about friendship. And when they were to fight the boss, everything they would’ve learned would have been tested. They would have had adequate battle and friendship experience to get through the dangerous forest, too.

That fan game I wrote about earlier, My Little Pony RPG: The Elements of Harmony, is amazing from a gameplay perspective, too, and I honestly don’t think a game can get much more perfect, either. See, when I played the game, the difficulty balance was just PERFECT, to the point where ALMOST EVERY BATTLE I FOUGHT was memorable and kept me on edge. The game seems to have mastered immersing the player, because when I played it, even though it seemed like I was going to get Game Over constantly, I almost never got Game Over, and, therefore, I was immersed like never before, and the game was EXTREMELLY fun. Seriously, I’ve never played an RPG with such good difficulty balance, and I doubt I’ll find an RPG with better difficulty balancing. In other RPGs I’ve played, battles were almost always too easy, but in My Little Pony RPG: The Elements of Harmony, enemies always seem to inflict exactly the right amount of damage to the characters, where a smaller amount would make the game too easy and a larger amount would make the game too hard. You can also find a secret area where you can fight ELEVEN Final Fantasy titans as super bosses! (At least I think they’re from Final Fantasy.) They’re quite difficult, even when your characters are at the highest level, 99. They’re difficult in the fun way though, not the artificial way, and I LOVED fighting them. They were some of the most fun battles I’ve ever had in an RPG. There are even 2 more secret areas with even more super bosses. I had LOADS of fun with this game. It was one of the best games I’ve played. It took me 55 hours to 100% complete, which is A LOT, at least for me. Now, there are a few small hichups and artificially hard parts, but they shouldn’t affect your enjoyment too much, especially if you save often and use the item that makes you not encounter enemies. Seriously, you should REALLY check this game out.

The Sonic Rainboom and other wasted concepts (SRB)

And so, I kept watching the show. The first 2 and last 2 episodes of a season would almost always be a 2-part episode where the characters fight an evil demon trying to take over the world. The rest are just slice of life-y stuff where characters are doing ordinary things that you’d expect in real life. And by ordinary, I mean REALLY ordinary.

The show has Unicorns that can shoot magic from their horns. Now, whenever I think of magic, I think of characters using their hands, mouth, or words to create huge firestorms, blizzards, thunderstorms, earthquakes, and the like to defeat their enemies. I think of characters healing wounded or fallen allies or poisoning their enemies or increasing attack power or defensive capabilities of allies. I basically think of the stuff that Pokémon or Final Fantasy characters do.

But in My Little Pony, magic is used for NONE of that. There may be a few isolated cases, like once or twice a season, where characters fire generic magic beams to ward off enemies but not defeat them, but it’s never to the scale of a typical Pokémon or Dragon Ball Z battle, except for one case in the entire franchise, which I’ll get to in a little bit.
Instead, characters in My Little Pony use magic for generic, everyday things, like levitating a pencil to write a letter or rearrange a house. Yeah, GENERIC, EVERYDAY things. Talk about a concept that’s completely WASTED.

Now, at one point in the franchise, which is the Season 6 finale 2-part episode, To Where and Back Again, the characters go to a location where magic can’t be used, and it’s the ONLY location where magic can’t be used in the entire franchise. I thought, “Wow, Hasbro FINALLY starts to innovate,” when I got to this point. (They probably innovated before, but this was the first time I was aware of an innovation.) But magic being unusable is moot because magic isn’t used much in the franchise to begin with. While the characters are travelling through this location, they acted all helpless and scared because of all the “apparently powerful” creatures in the area. But even when characters CAN use magic, they still act helpless and scared, and they want to run when their way is blocked by a hostile creature, even though they could probably defeat it easily by just shooting fire or ice out of their horn.

Now, in my Super Mario World hack, My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure, you are going to visit the location where magic is unusable that I was writing about in the previous paragraph in World 2. But in my hack, where magic plays a much bigger role than the show and is used to attack enemies and fly, not only will Twilight Sparkle feel helpless, but the player will too when going into this area, am I right?

My Little Pony also has various hostile creatures. One of these creatures is called a Timberwolf. It’s basically a wolf made of wood splinters. It’s basically like a Dry Bones from Mario. Defeat it and it just gets right back up. It’s assumed by fans, though not directly revealed in the show, that if these are hit by fire, they’ll get defeated permanently and won’t come back. This is a nice gimmick, but it’s also pretty much wasted and isn’t really used in the show. Characters usually always just run away and never directly confront them, even though you could probably defeat it or cause it to retreat instantly with a simple Fire spell. Honestly, it would be better to use this creature in a video game or an RPG.

There is another creature seen in only one episode called a Cockatrice. It basically looks EXACTLY like a Slither Hen from Mother 3, except if it looks at you, you’ll be turned to stone. It can also un-petrify petrified creatures, and that’s how a petrified character turns back to normal in the episode the Cockatrice appears. Why they couldn’t have just used a Gold Needle is beyond me. There’s a herbalist who collects healing plants and makes potions in the show, and if there are creatures that can petrify, then surely said herbalist would have a cure. I don’t think this concept is used enough or expanded upon either. Cockatrices would also have a better use in an RPG.

Do you know in RPGs, there are palette swapped creatures where one is stronger and one is weaker? Well, I have an idea for a stronger, rarer Cockatrice with a red or pink snake tail called a Diamond Cockatrice. Instead of turning you to stone, this one diamondizes you like in EarthBound. It would be much harder to cure diamondization than petrification.

But there is one wasted concept in My Little Pony that I’m MUCH more disappointed about. In My Little Pony, there is a technique that flying ponies can perform called the Sonic Rainboom. It’s this huge explosion that honestly looks like something straight out of Dragon Ball Z. It looks so awesome and so POWERFUL! When I first saw it, I thought, “Wow, what an amazing concept! The characters are going to use it for combat! They’re going to use it to defeat their enemies! They’re going to use it to DESTROY the enemy base! This franchise is going to get a lot more like Dragon Ball Z!” Seriously, do a Google Image search for “sonic rainboom” and you tell me if it looks like something out of Dragon Ball Z.

So, you must be asking, “Is this technique used for defeating enemies? Is it used to destroy the enemy stronghold or for anything practical?”

The answer is, “no”! NOOOOOO! OH, NO! Nada! Zilch!

First, the move is only used, like, 4 times in the entire franchise. 3 out of 4, it’s used to show off. Yeah, to SHOW OFF, which is RIDICULUS! Well then, maybe that fourth use is for something practical. The answer is, again, not really! The ONLY time the move is used to do something practical is to destroy a barn. Yes, TO DESTROY A BARN that’s fallen into disrepair for no reason, I may add, and needs to be demolished! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!? Again, it’s an ordinary slice of life-y thing!

A truly epic and amazing Dragon Ball Z-like concept has BEEN COMPLETELY WASTED! THIS really makes me want to cry. I can’t believe Hasbro WASTED a concept like this! There are so many things that could have been done with it, and fan fics certainly have used it for more practical uses. In most RPG fan games I’ve played, the Sonic Rainboom was one of the most powerful moves in the game, able to do the most damage to enemies.

It truly sickens me to see a concept wasted like this. Alright, moving on.

Twilight’s Kingdom (TWK)

My Little Pony has a bunch of demons who want to take over the world. The name of the boss I mentioned in my review of the Friendship is Magic 2 part episode is Nightmare Moon. She is an evil spirit that possessed an ally of the main characters. She wanted to plunge the world into an everlasting night. The character was exorcised and was returned to her old good self.

There is another weird-looking villain with a serpentine shape. His name is Discord, and he is like a god of chaos. He likes to create weird stuff like chocolate milk rain, flying pigs, checkerboard floors, and other things that make no sense. He can do crazier things like change the personalities of characters. He would certainly be capable of creating Mr. Saturns and the other weird things in the EarthBound franchise. I don’t think he would be too out of character if he made a Mr. Saturn. In the show, he wanted to conquer the world and turn it into his playground. He’s preaty darn evil, playing with ponies, the equivalent to humans in this franchise, as if they’re dolls in a dollhouse! He’s also EXTREMELLY funny.

There is also a race of evil shapeshifting bug monsters called Changelings. They’re ruled by a queen whose name is Queen Chrysalis. These bug monsters can change their appearances to make them look exactly like their enemies. This race relies on fooling and tricking their enemies so the Changelings can conquer their enemies’ homelands. They almost did just that to the capital city of the ponies’ country of Equestria, but the Changelings were stopped.

There is also an evil tyrant who uses the power of darkness and shadows to attack his enemies. His name is King Sombra, and he wants to conquer the world by enslaving everyone. It’s pretty much your typical tyrant. There isn’t anything special about him.

But my favorite villain has got to be Tirek who appears in the Season 4 finale 2-part episode, Twilight’s Kingdom. He is a big centaur monster who looks like Ganon from the Zelda series. He is the evilest of them all. He is basically the Ganon/Ganonforf of My Little Pony. It’s the King of Evil. He uses truly evil methods.

Tirek starts out small and feeble. He could be defeated by any experienced battler. But he wants to conquer the world by stealing the magic power of ponies. Whenever he steals the magic of a victim, the victim is left unable to use any magic. The victim also feels very tired and is unable to do much. However, Tirek’s magic power gets a little stronger, and he gets a little bigger, too. He also learns all the spells his victim was able to use. It’s basically like an enemy in an RPG who uses a spell that decreases your maximum MP and increases its maximum MP and learns all your spells. Yes, I said MAXIMUM MP, not current MP. That’s how evil the spell is. When you defeat the enemy, you would get your MP back.

At full power after he has absorbed the magic of everyone, he’s HUGE and virtually unstoppable. He is stopped in the end after the main characters “Mega Evolve”. Seriously, to stop him, the main characters change their appearances to look exactly like what you’d expect a Pokémon Mega Evolution to look like and blast him with a giant beam. The franchise calls this transformed state “Rainbow Power”, and it CLEARLY looks like a Mega Evolution or Super Saiyan rip-off. Anyway, but Tirek winning would be worse than any other villain winning. If Tirek won, he would have ruled over the ponies like an omnipotent GOD with him having all the magic and the ponies having none. The world would be an icy wasteland due to the Wendigos helping Tirek due to there being no friendship left, and the ponies would be starving, cold, and in rags. The world would basically look exactly like 12,000 B.C. from Chrono Trigger after Lavos destroys it, and that’s what World 4 in My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure will be like.
There’s a very, very, VERY good reason why Twilight’s Kingdom: Part 2 is my favorite episode. It’s because that episode has AN ACTUAL DRAGON BALL Z-STYLE BATTLE IN IT!! Yes, in that episode, Twilight Sparkle and Tirek fight like DRAGON BALL Z characters throwing HUGE energy beams at each other! That’s like a DREAM COME TRUE! I’ve been WAITING for a Dragon Ball Z-styled battle in this show! It is just AMAZING and EPIC, and there is just something special about ponies throwing around that kind of power, and I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see that! The battle also kind of reminds me of the Giant Battles of the Mario and Luigi games. Now this battle only lasts a few minutes, and I think some battles in Dragon Ball Z can last for 5 episodes, even, and the battle is disappointingly cut short when the fighters agree to settle the conflict by talking instead of fighting, but who cares. At least something is better than nothing.

And just to drive home how evil Tirek is, Tirek is the only villain to have caused PERMANENT, irreversible damage to the world. See, the damage that all the other villains caused to the world was instantly fixed when the villain was defeated. In the show, there is a library that doubled as the house of one of the main characters. It’s one of the most major places in the show. But in one of the Twilight’s Kingdom episodes, Tirek just goes and DESTROYES this library that we’ve all known and loved the PAST FOUR SEASONS, RIGHT LIKE THAT! All those irreplaceable books and memories are GONE! Now, this character eventually gets a much better, more elaborate-looking home at the end of the episode, but it is just so MIND BOGGLING to see such a major location like this suddenly get DESTROYED, never to return, in a kid’s franchise where NOTHING gets permanently destroyed! Now, let’s just hope all those books also got replaced.

Tirek in general REALLY reminds me of Ganon from the Zelda series. I mean, these two characters are so similar it’s mind boggling. Both look fairly similar to each other. Both are giant behemoths intending to take over the world in similar ways. They’re both defeated in similar ways. In Hyrule Warriors at least, Ganon is sealed away by the Triforce’s giant beam. Tirek is sealed away by the giant Friendship Beam that the “Mega Evolved” main characters use. Both are the evilest beings in their respective franchises. Basically, for everything that Ganon and Ganondorf can do except stuff involving swords and weapons, I can imagine Tirek doing, too. I can imagine Tirek using Ganon’s Burning Breath, Ganon Bomb, Fury Horn, and other moves from Hyrule Warriors, and it would still make sense and suit Tirek’s character and abilities. I can imagine Tirek using Ganondorf’s light ball attack that you must reflect back at him in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and that will be how you damage Tirek in his boss battle in My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure. Heck, even if I were to replace Tirek’s voice and laugh with Ganon/Ganondorf’s, I think it would STILL make sense and wouldn’t be too far-fetched.

So Tirek is just an AWESOME villain, and I just LOVE him. Right now, I’m currently trying to replace Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s Beast Ganon model with a fan made model of Tirek. When I watched Twilight’s Kingdom, I thought, “Wow, that episode and villain really reminds me of a typical RPG final boss.” Tirek really would make for an EPIC final boss fight, maybe even a Yoshi’s Island-esque one because he’s so big.

Cutie Re-Mark (CRM)

It would have been great to see My Little Pony get REALLY dark, like, a post-apocalyptic Equestria where the bad guys win. Well, in the Season 5 finale 2-part episode, Cutie Re-Mark, not only do you get to see a post-apocalyptic Equestria, you get SEVEN of them in one package. Cutie Re-Mark is about time travel, which is a theme I thought I would never see in My Little Pony, and is one of the darkest episodes in the series. It’s AMAZING seeing My Little Pony so dark like this. There is even an ongoing WAR in one segment, which is AMAZING and another thing I would have wanted to see in My Little Pony. I like Cutie-Re Mark so much, and there is so much that can be done with this time traveling concept that I decided to make a game based on this 2-part episode. It’s my Super Mario World hack, My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure.

To Where and Back Again (WBA)

Now we’re getting into REALLY poorly written episodes. After the epicness that was Twilight’s Kingdom, Season 5’s 2-part episodes felt weak, probably because the main villain in them was an ordinary pony instead of a demon. But Season 6’s 2-part episodes were DEFINITELY some of the worst written episodes I’ve ever seen. The Season 6 opening 2-part episode is called The Crystalling, and I’ll get to that one later. I’m now going to discuss the Season 6 finale 2-part episode, To Where and Back Again. I already discussed a little of this episode before when I wrote about magic, but there is more I must say about this episode.

The episode starts with one of the secondary characters wanting to go to a place where she did some really terrible things before. She wanted to apologize to the residents there. Please note that, before this character leaves home, everything is fine and dandy. Equestria is as peaceful as peaceful can be. She’s only gone for, we’ll say, 24 hours, but when she gets back home, everything is NOT fine and dandy.

The Changelings, those shape shifting bug monsters I wrote about before returned, and guess what they did? They conquered almost the ENTIRETY OF EQUESTRIA, and kidnapped almost EVERY ONE of the hundreds of thousands of ponies, including the most powerful ones and all the main characters who should be capable of handling hundreds of Changelings each, COMPLETELY OVERNIGHT!

THAT is so BLATENTLY UNREALISTIC it’s ABSURD. When I found that out, I was speechless and I face palmed at the sheer absurdity of the situation. Earlier in Season 2, the Changelings had trouble conquering a single city. Everyone was on high alert, and the city increased it security. Not only that, but Changelings feed on love, and it makes them stronger. Well, in To Where and Back Again, there is no evidence that they have powered up at all. They would be weak and easy to defeat if this was the case. And now Hasbro is suddenly saying that these Changelings have conquered an ENTIRE COUNTRY OVERNIGHT!

That just can’t happen, man. It would take MONTHS and MONTHS and MONTHS and MONTHS and MONTHS of struggle to conquer a country. What makes it even more unrealistic is that there are super powerful ponies, almost goddesses, even, like Celestia and Luna who certainly wouldn’t be defeated so easily. Now, if there were no super powerful ponies, and everyone had an ordinary or average power level, then the Changelings might have a chance. They certainly wouldn’t be able to conquer the hypothetical country OVERNIGHT, that’s for sure. But what truly makes this “conquering a country” thing unrealistic is that they had trouble conquering a single city in the past over several days. What makes them think they can conquer a country overnight?

Now, World 2 in My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure is going to be a video game version of To Where and Back Again with slightly altered events. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that the Changelings had trouble conquering the capital city of Equestria in Season 2. Well, World 2 and its corresponding arc in the Cutie Re-Mark episode is an alternate universe where the main characters fail and the Changelings have succeeded in conquering that city and kidnapping Equestria’s rulers and most powerful ponies, Celestria and Luna. Celestia and Luna lead the country and the military. With the most powerful ponies gone and the pony military forces without a leader and therefore unorganized, it wouldn’t be too terribly difficult for the Changelings to conquer the country now. They still wouldn’t be able to conquer it OVERNIGHT. It would still take months or years. And as seen in Cutie Re-Mark, there are still several resistance forces all around Equestria fighting the Changelings. Twilight Sparkle would have to make friends and go to the Changeling Castle to defeat Queen Chrysalis like in To Where and Back Again. Doesn’t my idea for World 2 seem to be much better written than To Where and Back Again?

Twilight Sparkle becomes an Alicorn (TSA)

In the TV show, there are 4 races of ponies. Earth Ponies are like ordinary horses with no horns or wings, but they’re strong and they grow food and tend to the land. Pegasi have wings and can fly. They can also move clouds and create weather. Unicorns have a horn and can use magic like the countless characters in RPGs.

There is also a fourth race called Alicorns, also sometimes called princesses, that have the attributes of the other 3 races. They have both horns and wings, and they’re super strong. Not only that, the average Alicorn has BETTER magic, flight, and strength capabilities than the average Unicorn, Pegasus, and Earth Pony respectively. Understandably, Alicorns are SUPER powerful and SUPER rare. Out of hundreds of thousands of ponies, only 4 Alicorns are known to exist. Their names are Celestia, Luna, Cadence, and Twilight Sparkle. (There is actually a fifth Alicorn in the show, Flurry Heart, but she is naturally born, and I refuse to acknowledge that she exists. I’ll discuss her more in the “The Crystalling” section.)

Celestia and Luna are enigmas. No one knows where they came from or how they came to be, and I prefer to keep it that way. Ordinary Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies can become Alicorns. If a pony represents a particular trait, like love, courage, or friendship, and if he or she does something EXTREMELLY good for the world, that pony can turn into an Alicorn. It’s like Pokémon evolution or a graduation. Please note that it is EXTREMELLY difficult for a pony to become an Alicorn. Out of hundreds of thousands of ponies, only TWO have become Alicorns, Cadence and Twilight Sparkle. It takes an INSANE amount of dedication. Even saving the world multiple times over isn’t enough. It’s a HUGE honor to be one.

Now, in the very last episode in Season 3, Magical Mystery Cure, one of the main characters, Twilight Sparkle, transforms from a Unicorn into an Alicorn. When she did this, I got all happy and excited, thinking thoughts like, “Wow, Twilight Sparkle became an Alicorn! She just got SUPER powerful. Her HP, MP, and other stats increased drastically! This TV show is going to get a lot more RPG-like, and the characters are going to go on many more adventures!”

In the next 2 episodes, the Season 4 opening 2-part episode called Princess Twilight Sparkle, it seemed like there really WAS going to be more adventures and RPG elements, because it was revealed that the main characters had to find 6 keys to open a locked treasure chest that they were going to find over the course of the season. It seemed like Season 4 was going to be filled to the brim with RPG-like adventures.

It turns out that this is VERY DISAPPOINTINGLY false. First, I watched the entire season and never saw a single key get collected. Twilight’s Kingdom revealed that the keys were actually inside items that the main characters collected over the course of the season. But the main characters never really left their hometown. Instead the owners of the keys came to the main characters. Talk about anti-adventure. There’s a reason RPG don’t do things that way. Now, I want to discuss the problems I really wanted to discuss since the beginning of this section of the post.

So, Twilight Sparkle became an Alicorn at the end of Season 3. But the most powerful pony in the country and one of its rulers, Celestia, guided her. Celestia taught Twilight Sparkle and ONLY Twilight Sparkle and gave her the skills and power necessary to be an Alicorn and help rule and defend the country. As expected, the training was EXTREMELLY rigorous. Twilight Sparkle learned all sorts of life survival skills, leadership skills, battle magic, and such. She must be able to command an army and defend the country during wartime, right?

At least that is what can be inferred. But the show seems to imply that Twilight Sparkle did none of that. In fact, the show seems to imply that Twilight Sparkle is, NOT an Alicorn, but a Unicorn with wings, a glorified Unicorn, a fake Alicorn, a figurehead.

Throught Seasons 4, 5, 6, and probably 7, she never does princess-y or Alicorn things, she does EVERYTHING SHE’S ALWAYS DONE! She has huge amounts of free time. She goes out and does everything she has always done as a Unicorn, like play with friends and read books. She is certainly not acting like an Alicorn. Heck, she’s actually the Princess of Friendship. I would expect people to start flocking to her asking her to solve their friendship issues. Instead, everyone seems to act as if she is still a Unicorn. Her spells and magic still seem to be the same, and it doesn’t seem like she got more powerful. Basically, nothing about Twilight Sparkle or the franchise changes when she becomes an Alicorn. Everything is the same as it always was. If this is the case, then why make her an Alicorn? Why make her an Alicorn if she is not going to act like one and if nothing about her or the franchise is going to change? Now, I guess it could be argued that she is doing all the princess-y things between episodes, and everything we’re shown is in her free time when she’s not helping people with friendship problems or helping to rule the country. The show even defines a type of magic called “Alicorn Magic”, which is distinct from Unicorn Magic. Twilight’s Kingdom even outright shows that Alicorn Magic is far more powerful than Unicorn Magic. So why does Twilight Sparkle’s Magic and power level seem to be the same as it was when she was a Unicorn. That doesn’t make sense.

Now, I have a concept where Alicorns can do stuff with their magic that Unicorns can’t do. For example, if a Unicorn uses a fire spell, the fire will be your standard red and yellow and such. If a Unicorn uses an ice spell, the ice will be your standard blue. A lightning spell would be your standard yellow. But if an Alicorn uses a fire, ice, or lightning spell, the fire, ice, or lightning will be the same color as the Alicorn’s magic aura. Also, fire that an Alicorn creates could burn through things that Unicorn and normal fire wouldn’t, and the fire wouldn’t need fuel, oxygen, and the other components to burn. It would be much easier for the Alicorn to control its fire. The Alicorn can put its fire out whenever it wants, and it’s more difficult for a Unicorn to do that. If an Alicorn were to freeze you with an ice spell, the ice would be much harder to break out of than a Unicorn’s ice spell. That is giving more uniqueness to Alicorn magic, and is clearly showing that Alicorn Magic is distinct from Unicorn Magic and is more powerful. This is even seen in my hack’s current demo, where the fire of the Shadowbolt Unicorns is standard fire, but the fire that Nightmare Moon, an Alicorn, shoots out is blue, the color of her magic aura.

See, in My Little Pony, whenever a pony uses magic, a colored aura appears around its horn. If the pony is using Levitation magic, the aura also appears around the object it's levitating. This color is different for every pony. Twilight Sparkle's is a pinkish red color as seen in my hack, Rarity's is a light blue color, Celestia's is a golden yellow color, and Nightmare Moon's is a light blue color, to name a few. Please note that Season 1 has a case of early installment weirdness, and that this different aura colors concept wasn't finalized until Season 2.

There are more egregious examples that prove that Twilight is a Unicorn with wings and NOT an Alicorn. In the Season 1 episode, Boast Busters, I believe it’s the sixth episode, Twilight Sparkle is a Unicorn, and she lifts something that probably weighs tons with her magic. It takes an ENORMOUS amount of magic power to do that, and the show shows that. The thing is, this is only the sixth episode when she hasn’t really learned anything yet. We can assume that she has gotten much stronger, but the show never shows that. Gee, it seems like she was more powerful as a Unicorn than an Alicorn. She’s probably not, but that’s what we’re shown.

In the Season 2 episode, Lesson Zero, it is shown that Twilight Sparkle is prone to VERY SERIOUS panic attacks, like, if she’s about to miss a deadline. Now, I don’t remember if she has had any panic attacks as an Alicorn, but hopefully not. Surely, Celestia has put her on an intense mental training program while she was a Unicorn to get rid of the panic attacks. If you were a soldier on the battlefield, you certainly wouldn’t want your commander scared and panicking, would you?

One of the most egregious examples I’ve seen was in Cutie Re-Mark. The main villain is an ordinary Unicorn named Starlight Glimmer, and, for some BIZZARRE reason, Twilight Sparkle had difficulty capturing her…SEVEN TIMES! That’s ridiculus. Twilight Sparkle, with her much greater training and experience, should have CURB STOMPED THE HECK OUT OF Starlight Glimmer. It’s an Alicorn versus a Unicorn, man. The Alicorn wins. At one point in the 2-part episode, they’re firing magic blasts at each other. Twilight Sparkle keeps missing and missing and missing and missing. Starlight Glimmer, the villain, even says to Twilight Sparkle, “You really have to work on your aim.” That’s INEXCUSABLE! If Twilight Sparkle is going to be defending Equestria from WAR, she’s going to have to be a master marksman! She’s going to have to snipe at enemies that are miles away, right? If you were a soldier on the battlefield, you wouldn’t want your commander missing every attack now, would you? Twilight should have had to fire only once at her enemy, and she should have hit her target. She should have used a spell that homes in on targets. Was Celestia drunk while teaching Twilight Sparkle about marksmanship or something? Again, Twilight Sparkle is no Alicorn as far as the show is concerned. She is just a Unicorn with wings. If Twilight Sparkle seriously can’t AIM very well, THEN WHY THE HELL IS SHE A F***ING ALICORN IN THE FIRST PLACE?! Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to think of how Starlight Glimmer would win 6 or 7 times for my hack? YES, it’s very difficult! I’ll have to keep having Starlight Glimmer win by using the element of surprise, but Twilight Sparkle will just keep learning from her mistakes.

Another of the most egregious examples is in the “The Crystalling” 2-part episode. There are so many things wrong with that episode, and I’ll start discussing it properly in the next paragraph. The episode features a naturally born Alicorn named Flurry Heart. In the episode, an artifact is broke, and Twilight Sparkle tried to figure out how to fix it. Now, please note that Twilight Sparkle is a GENIOUS and loves to read all the time just like Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. So, she found a spell in a book and thought it might fix the artifact. She tried it and it didn’t work. A Unicorn then immediately told her that the spell she tried wouldn’t work, and the Unicorn told Twilight Sparkle what to do. Please note that this takes place in a location that Twilight Sparkle doesn’t go to very often, and that the Unicorn lives there. Twilight may not have known how to fix the artifact, but, if she really is a genius, she probably should have known that the spell she tried wasn’t going to work. Instead, she acted COMPLETELY CLUELESS in the episode, and that’s inexcusable, considering that this is Season 6. Not only that, but the baby Alicorn in the episode is throwing extremely powerful spells it has no control over, and it’s destroying everything. Guess who tames the baby Alicorn? Twilight Sparkle? She would CERTAINLY be able to do that given that she’s an Alicorn and a super smart one at that, but NO, a UNICORN tames this baby Alicorn. A UNICORN! That’s ridiculous! This particular Unicorn is not NEARLY as smart as Twilight Sparkle and almost certainly lacks the magic power necessary to do something like that. Heck, maybe Unicorns shouldn’t be able to do that PERIOD because Alicorn Magic is different from Unicorn Magic, and only an Alicorn should be able to do something like this.

I’m sorry, guys. Hasbro decided to make Twilight Sparkle an Alicorn, but the show doesn’t really show that she deserves to be one.

The Crystalling: By FAR the worst episode in the show (CRS)

I already discussed a little of this episode a few paragraphs ago, and now I going to discuss more of it. I seriously think this was the worst episode in the show, and Hasbro must have been drunk while writing this episode. There are SO MANY things wrong with this episode that I refuse to acknowledge that it and its concepts exist. I am experiencing a case of fanon discontinuity here. The same goes for To Where and Back again, but that episode isn’t as bad, and it could have been better if it was written better. But The Crystalling is so bad it CAN’T get good no matter how it’s written.

The biggest point about this episode is that it reveals that Alicorns can be naturally born, and this 2-part episode has the characters dealing with the problems of an Alicorn baby.

I HATE Flurry Heart and the concept of naturally born Alicorns because it DOESN'T make sense. It WOULD have made sense if Flurry Heart was a Unicorn or NOT an Alicorn. I believe naturally born Alicorns shouldn't exist, and I think new Alicorns should only come into existence with intense training because an Alicorn is an honor. They're EXTREMELLY prestigious. An Alicorn makes ponies aware of the intense training the pony had to go through. Naturally born Alicorns being canonized removes that prestigiousness, and now Twilight and Cadence's training has lost its value. I feel that naturally born Alicorns suddenly being canonized is basically the equivalent of the chances of getting a Shiny Pokémon drop from 1/8,192 to, like, 1/32 in between games. How can you tell which Shiny Pokémon were gotten with the 1/8,192 odds and which ones were gotten with the 1/32 odds? How can you tell if an arbitrary Alicorn was an Earth Pony, Pegasus, or Unicorn who got the training and ascended or if the Alicorn was naturally born? You can't!

That was part of a YouTube comment I made, and someone replied, “I agree soooooo much.”

This concept of naturally born Alicorns is utterly DISGUSTING (ugh, my most extreme negative adjective yet) and GREATLY contradicts the show’s established lore. When I told my mom about how contradictory this naturally born Alicorn concept is, she apologized and said that she has seen shows where contradictory events like this happen. She said that the shows she watched usually give a very good explanation later and say that what happened doesn’t contradict the show’s lore, but I haven’t found any convincing explanation as to why the baby Alicorn exists, yet.

Now, there IS a way to make this naturally born Alicorns concept a valid concept that’s NOT stupid.

A few months ago, I watched the last third of the Pokémon X and Y saga of the anime on Netflix, it was VERY good, but it introduced a concept that, at first, REALLY bothered me. The concept is the Bond Phenomenon, and my skeptism with this concept was similar to the naturally born Alicorns concept of My Little Pony. The Bond Phenomenon is something in Pokémon that can happen when the friendship bond between a Pokémon Trainer and a Pokémon is so strong that they think as one. The Pokémon takes on a similar appearance to its Trainer, and the Pokémon gets a MASSIVE increase in power. It doesn’t always happen.

I thought when I saw this concept, “This concept is STUPID and TOTALLY UNNECESSARY! We already have Mega Evolution! Why introduce ANOTHER CONCEPT?! Why not just have Mega Greninja?” See, in the show, Ash Ketchum and his Greninja experience the Bond Phenomenon, even though the friendship bond between Ash and Pikachu is FAR stronger! I thought, “Ash and Pikachu should be experiencing the Bond Phenomenon, not Ash and Greninja!”

But Pokémon has MUCH better writing than My Little Pony. First, Pokémon dedicates ENTIRE EPISODES where the ONLY thing the main characters do is research, analyze, and study the Bond Phenomenon with Clement’s various scientific devices to find out how the Bond Phenomenon occurs, when it occurs, what exactly happens, how it ends, and other aspects of the Bond Phenomenon. The characters also find out that only certain Pokémon can use the Bond Phenomenon. Greninja is one of them. We can then assume that Pikachu is NOT one of them because Ash and Pikachu aren’t using the Bond Phenomenon despite their MUCH stronger friendship bond.

However, there is one piece of evidence that tells the viewer, “The Bond Phenomenon is a valid concept and is NOT stupid.” At the very end of the XY saga after Team Flare’s plans have been foiled and the world is “apparently” saved, it is discovered that there are bits and pieces of Zygarde remaining or something. I can’t remember what it was, but if these existed and nothing was done about them, the world would be destroyed. The thing is though, no one can detect these anomalies…EXCEPT for Ash’s Greninja with the Bond Phenomenon activated. Yes, that’s right the Bond Phenomenon exists SOLELY for the purpose of destroying these anomalies that will destroy the world if left alone.

Similar logic can be used for My Little Pony’s concept of naturally born Alicorns. If there was something in Equestria or the world that Flurry Heart and ONLY Flurry Heart could detect and NO ONE ELSE, and if, if that “something” is left alone, the world or Equestria would get destroyed, then Flurry Heart and the concept of naturally born Alicorns WOULD make sense because then there would be a valid reason for Flurry Heart to exist, and I wouldn’t be NEARLY as mad. Now, if that “something”, if left alone, would NOT destroy the world, then the concept of naturally born Alicorns would still be stupid and invalid because leaving that “something” alone wouldn’t upset the balance of the world.

I mentioned at the end of the previous section that an artifact gets broken in the “The Crystalling” 2-part episode. Well, said artifact is a magical artifact called the Crystal Heart, and it is something that, honestly, shouldn’t be breakable. It has untold power, and it protects the northern city it’s in form bad guys and from the bitter cold and blizzards of the north. It is equivalent to the Elements of Harmony in the franchise or the Spiritual Stones, Ocarina of Time, and Medallons from Zelda: Ocarina of Time or the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic or the Crystal Stars, Star Spirits, and Pure Hearts from the Paper Mario series.

Now, in this episode, the baby Alicorn, which SHOULDN’T exist, BREAKS this Crystal Heart, exposing the city to bad guys and the blizzards of the north, and the main characters must fix the artifact and restore peace to the city. When I saw the Crystal Heart break, I got extremely mad because this artifact shouldn’t break! It can’t!

You can’t just throw Din’s Pearl from Zelda: Wind Waker onto the floor and break it. The world just doesn’t work that way. If she could, Zelda would have just thrown the Ocarina of Time into the castle wall to break the ocarina. Then, no one would have been able to open the Door of Time, and Ganondorf wouldn’t have been able to conquer the world. But she threw the ocarina into the moat because she knows it can’t break because of its connection to the Spiritual Stones, the Door of Time, and the universe. You can break the Fairy Ocarina all you want, though. It doesn’t have any magical connection to anything important in the universe, and there are probably lots of them in stores and such.

There’s a reason why the fake Crystal Stars in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door or fake Dragon Balls in the Dragon Ball series break. It’s because everyone knows the real things won’t break and why they won’t break, and they instantly know that the artifact they broke is a fake. As Arceus says in the Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life movie, “The Jewel of Life is a part of me, and IT WILL NOT BREAK!” as he stomps his hoof on the fake Jewel of Life, shattering it.

All I’m saying is, you can’t just walk up to one of these magical artifacts and break them. You just CAN’T! It’s a bit difficult to explain why, but you just can’t. Now, it may be possible to neutralize or disable the magic of these artifacts and/or hide them, but you can’t break them and/or make them permanently unusable.

Now you must be thinking, “But DPBOX, you didn’t give a strong enough explanation as to why the Crystal Heart can’t break.” Well, I’m about to put the final nail in the coffin and tell you EXACTLY why making the Crystal Heart breakable canon is one of the most poorly written things in the show. It’s because canonizing the Crystal Heart being breakable DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS previous events mentioned in the show.

The Crystalling is the Season 6 opening 2-part episode. The Season 3 opening 2-part episode called “The Crystal Empire” featured an evil tyrant named King Sombra as the main villain. I wrote about him earlier. Anyway, it was revealed in this 2-part episode that the city I mentioned in the last few paragraphs existed, then disappeared for, like, 1,000 years, then reappeared again in this episode. However, King Sombra reappeared with the city, and he was ruling it and enslaving the people there. If he wasn’t stopped, he would try to rule the country, Equestria, then the world. The Crystal Heart is the only thing that can defeat him. (Well, the Elements of Harmony might be able to, too, but I don’t think the show tells us that.) There is a problem, though. King Sombra neutralized the Crystal Heart’s magic and hid it so he couldn’t be defeated. In the “The Crystal Empire” episode, the main characters are tasked with finding the Crystal Heart, activating it, and using it to defeat King Sombra. They do just that and restore peace to the city.

Now you can see exactly why I’m so mad and why canonizing the Crystal Heart being breakable was a terrible thing. If the Crystal Heart was breakable as the “The Crystalling” episode reveals, then King Sombra would not have neutralized the Crystal Heart’s magic or hidden it. He would have outright BROKEN it! It makes sense, right? Why hide the thing and HOPE no one will find it and defeat you with it when you can just BREAK it and ENSURE you won’t be defeated? Then, King Sombra would conquer the world, plunging it into slavery and chaos, and My Little Pony would end in a tragedy where the bad guy wins.

Yeah, “The Crystalling” is so bad, so terrible, so poorly written, and is so wrong in so many ways that if there was a top 10 list of the worst My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episodes, the 3rd worst episode would be on the 10th spot, then there would be 7 blank spaces, then “The Crystalling: Parts 1 and 2” would be at the number 2 and 1 spots. It’s that bad. I refuse to acknowledge that the “The Crystalling” episode exists, and it’s a case of Fanon Discontinuity.

Final Remarks about the show (FRE)

In conclusion, this show is poorly written with lots of unused potential and wasted concepts. The show only seems to give me inspiration for my own concepts, and that is one reason why I continue to watch it. Another reason I continue to watch it is because, even though after thinking about the episodes after I watch them, they seem poorly written because I’m trying to connect all the episodes into a big continuity, WHILE I’m watching them, the show has good humor, and I’m enjoying the humor. If I DON’T connect the episodes to a larger continuity and just think about them on their own, I think the writing is a little better. Unlike a lot of the other stuff on Netflix, this show is easier to understand. I can usually have trouble identifying characters in movies and TV, but in My Little Pony, every character is a distinct color, and it’s easy to associate each character to a personality. Then again, a lot of kid shows are probably like this. But My Little Pony is a bit more action-oriented than other kid shows where characters mostly just talk. My Little Pony is a bit like a less intense version of Pokémon or Dragon Ball.

Something I’ve done is scroll through the episodes on Netflix and think about what would have happened if the episodes didn’t have a happy ending. The results are highly inconsistent. In one episode, a town would get destroyed. In another episode, the main characters would simply fail to make a new friend. The next episode…CAN’T have a sad ending or NOTHING bad would happen? In Pokémon on the other hand, something truly terrible would almost always happen if the main characters don’t win. Team Rocket might succeed in stealing Ash’s Pikachu, for example.

Most of the show is deals with ordinary friendship issues where characters just talk, but My Little Pony can get dark at times, and I mean REALLY dark. There’s one episode, Magic Duel, where a main character is fighting an antagonist. At one point in the episode, the bad guy tries to cast a spell on a main character that’s equivalent to THE CRUCIATUS CURSE from Harry Potter! Seriously!? That’s just UNBELIEVEABLE! The spell ends up tickling the character instead, but just imagining the My Little Pony character screaming in excruciating pain and flailing about like someone under the Cruciatus Curse just seems WEIRD because that’s not something that would happen in this show.

There is another episode, Party Pooped, where visitors from another country threaten TO DECLARE WAR over trivial matters such as not liking the food of the country they’re visiting. And in Twilight’s Kingdom, TVTropes says that Hasbro used a sound effect from the “Aliens” movie (Alien 2) for when Tirek drains someone’s magic. I can’t confirm that, though, because I’ve never seen Aliens and I haven’t watched the Twilight’s Kingdom episode in a while, but if it’s true, then I would think, “Holy crap! Did they REALLY use a sound effect from a movie like ALIENS?! That’s a REALLY mature and scary movie! And it’s live action, too. They seriously put a sound effect from a movie like that into a KIDS SHOW?!” It would show just how dark My Little Pony can get. My Little Pony may look like a cute little saturated cartoon with cute little characters doing things involving friendship, and it is like that for the most part, but when it gets dark, it gets really, REALLY dark, just like…EarthBound.

Oh man, speaking of EarthBound and the Mother series, where do I begin? My Little Pony REALLY reminds me of the SNES RPG EarthBound and the series it is a part of. I feel like My Little Pony is heavily inspired by EarthBound. Both franchises have very similar styles, formulas, equations, skeletons, etc. Both franchises have very similar humor. Both franchises have a friendship theme. I feel like My Little Pony is basically the EarthBound series without the adventure and combat. I keep seeing a lot of EarthBound references in the show. In To Where and Back again, for example, there is a scene where you see characters trapped in capsules with green liquid inside of them. “That’s EXACTLY like this scene from EarthBound!” I thought when I saw that scene.

However, there is a 2-part episode called The Cutie Map. It’s the season 5 opening. The characters must go to an unnamed village to solve a friendship problem. The thing is though, the plot and everything about this episode IS SO SIMILAR to the Happy Happy Village subplot of EarthBound it's almost UNCANNY! The initial situation when you first see the villages are similar. At first, everyone seems happy, but the viewer or player can't help but think something's amiss. In EarthBound, you hear weird unsettling music. In the episode, Pinkie Pie says something like, "Those aren't real smiles!" After the crisis in both villages is over, everyone is saved and genuinely happy. Even the way the heroes resolve the crisis in both story arcs are similar, except the My Little Pony episode does a little more and has more plot twists. Both villages involve a cult that's trying to make people happy, brainwash them in similar ways, and make them do weird things. Happy Happyism for Earthbound. Equalization for My Little Pony. It's unbelievable how similar the 2 cults are! Both villages and cults have a jail that they send dissenters to. Both cults have a leader whose plan is foiled by the heroes. Not only that, both villages have a cave off the beaten path that leads to a dead end, the Cutie Mark Vault in the My Little Pony episode and the jail in EarthBound, and both villages have a much larger and more mazelike cave next to them. It almost seems like the entire 2 parter was heavily inspired by the Happy Happy Village arc in EarthBound, and that the 2 parter wouldn't exist if EarthBound didn't exist. I like to call that unnamed town Equals Equals Village because the name follows a similar naming scheme to Happy Happy Village. I haven’t found ANYONE ELSE on the ENTIRE INTERNET who noticed these similarties! Hasn’t anyone in the My Little Pony fanbase played EarthBound?! Obviously yes.

By the way, I just linked to an EarthBound ROM hack that’s basically EarthBound’s story with My Little Pony characters. It has slight script changes to make the story more suitable for the new franchise. It’s called EquestriaBound. I actually like EquestriaBound more than EarthBound, and there’s a good reason for that. EquestriaBound just seems simpler and less complicated than EarthBound> I can’t really describe it. But what really REALLY surprises me about EquestriaBound is that it shows that original EarthBound concepts actually make MORE SENSE in the context of My Little Pony than EarthBound! One example is treasure chests being gift boxes with a bow and ribbon and everything. When you start playing EarthBound, you might think, “Why the heck are treasure chests presents in this game?” But when you start playing EquestraBound, given My Little Pony’s humor style, you’d immediately realize that it would make perfect sense for items to be contained in presents.

Seriously, I feel that My Little Pony is so similar to the EarthBound series that I think that if EarthBound didn’t exist, My Little Pony wouldn’t exist. I think My Little Pony is basically EarthBound without the adventure and combat.

THE FANBASE (FBA)

So, if My Little Pony is so poorly written with tons of wasted concepts and unused potential, then, with a fanbase as big as My Little Pony’s, SURELY they’ve tapped into this unused potential and made My Little Pony more Dragon Ball Z-like, right? Well, for one part of the fanbase, the answer is yes, and for the other part of the fanbase, the answer is no. See, I can group the people in this fan base into 2 distinct groups, and they’re like the 2 sides of a coin. One group, the people who write fanfics and draw most of the franchise’s fan art, clearly pour their heart and soul into their work, and their work taps into My Little Pony’s unused potential, is incredibly epic and amazing, and is certainly “My Little Pony” and not crap. I like to call this group, “The Good Side”. I’ll discuss it in the next section. The other group, who draws the rest of the fan art and makes everything that’s NOT a fanfic, including music, music videos, fan games, makes absolute junk that’s not “My Little Pony” at all. I think there are many more people in “The Bad Side”, as I like to call this group, than The Good Side. The Bad Side also includes people who are over obsessed with memes, cosplay, and other stupid stuff. I’m going to discuss the Bad Side now.

(Please note that, although I said “all” people who write fanfics or “all” people who make music, I don’t really mean “EVERY single person”. I mean the vast majority of people, like, 99%. And please remember that “My Little Pony” in quotes means that I’m referring to the style, formulas, framework, equations, skeletons, etc. of My Little Pony. I’m referring to the things and elements that make My Little Pony My Little Pony.)

The Bad Side (BDS)

I consider anyone in this side a Brony, and The Bad Side is the side I really don’t want to get involved in. I only look for the highest quality, most faithful stuff, and these people certainly don’t have that. These people, in my opinion, are just stupid, obsessive jerks who are only interested in memes and showing off than creating high quality content, and I the only fanbase I’ve seen with this amount of these type people is probably Sonic the Hedgehog. They basically treat the show as if it’s a meme. I HATE that! It’s not a meme, and I feel that these people are RUINING the franchise and giving it a bad image!

One thing these people started doing is doing the not “My Little Pony” thing of turning the ponies into humans, and you know what? Hasbro ENDORSED this and created the Equestria Girls sub franchise. I’m livid at this. Seriously, I can’t believe Hasbro endorsed this low-quality crap! There are so many ascended memes in the show and other things that cater to the Bad Side that it's extremely RAGE INDUCING for someone like me, and I believe the quality of the show goes down, too. I HATE MEMES, and I don't understand them either! They seem so pointless and stupid, and they're EXTREMELLY unprofessional and low quality, too. I’d rather have a company endorse something high-quality like AM2R or Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii.

I got into this franchise because I thought a huge fan base means more high-quality games. In reality, I’ve only found, like, 3 fan games that are genuine “My Little Pony” games that are worthwhile playing. The fan game I reviewed at the top of this post is one of them. If you go onto Equestria Daily and go to its “Game” section, all you’ll see is junk and junk and junk and junk and JUNK AND JUNK AND JUNK AND MORE JUNK that’s NOT “My Little Pony”! Seriously, I can’t BELIEVE there is so much junk on there! I’ve seen a lot of dating simulators and hyper-realistic games, and I keep seeing a lot of Fallout stuff. Why are people so interested in making dating simulators and hyper-realistic My Little Pony games? That’s not “My Little Pony”! WHY!? Doesn’t ANYONE know how to make a “My Little Pony” My Little Pony game?

Here’s a nice analogy for what I think this side of the fan base is like. Imagine a hypothetical SMWCentral. This hypothetical SMWCentral still likes to hack Super Mario World, except this site’s users work a little differently. Instead of creating a proper Mario platformer with diverse, epic levels with amazing level design, these people like to show off, and almost all the hacks on the site are FILLED TO THE BRIM with these type levels. It’s just flat empty ground with a very impressive-looking background. These hacks can have a lot of automatic Mario levels and aren’t really platforming adventures.
Now, along comes me and thinks, “What IS this crap!? What are these people DOING?! These aren’t Mario platforming adventures! Look what can potentially be done with Lunar Magic! Are these people STUPID?!”

Now, we’ll say that, along comes Nintendo, sees these automatic Mario levels, and decides to put some in their next New Super Mario Bros. game. And now, Mario’s not the same anymore! These Mario fans just RUINED Mario! That’s basically just like the Equestria Girls situation.

Basically, the people in this hypothetical SMWCentral just want to show off, and it can make people who want a genuine Mario platformer really mad. The people in The Bad Side of the My Little Pony fan base just want to show off, and it can make people who want a genuine “My Little Pony” My Little Pony experience really mad.

The Good Side (GDS)

There is a side of the My Little Pony fan base where the people in it REALLY pour their heart and soul into their work and make EXTREMELLY high quality “My Little Pony” content. These people make fanfics. While fanfics are good, I’m a gamer, and I want games. But some of these fanfics are truly TRULY amazing!

Fanfics actively tap into My Little Pony’s unused potential and use the show’s concepts in much better ways, and they’re just AMAZING! The authors may even make their own concepts, such as Dragon Magic, and they adhere to My Little Pony’s style, formulas, equations, etc.

All this fanfic and its sequel really is IS A BUNCH OF DRAGON BALL Z-STYLED BATTLES! This fanfic (I think) is styled like a My Little Pony 2-part episode, but instead of talking the villain out of his evil ways or curb stomping the villain, the characters BEAT THE HELL OUT OF IT like in Dragon Ball Z!

A very good fanfic I’ve read is a fanfic called The Witching Hour. It’s basically an alternate universe fanfic where the events of the show happen but with a new character added. Said character is a TRULY UNIQUE and innovative character because she a dragon-pony hybrid! How cool is that! I love dragons, and she’s one of my favorite characters. You’ll see why I love her so much if you read the story. If I tell you the biggest reason, I’ll spoil the story. Not only does the fan fic retell the same events that happen in the show in a much more well-written way, the fanfic tells a story of its own.

One of the best fanfics I’ve read is called The Origin Chronicles, and I'm very surprised it's not on TVTropes's fanfic recommendations. In the fanfic, the author invents a whole new kind of magic that only dragons can use. The 2-part series is a PHENOMINAL story of good fighting evil. Words can’t do it justice. At one point, Fluttershy’s animals are used as AN ARMY to break into the enemy base. I just LOVE that! It’s an INCREDIBLY innovative use of one of My Little Pony’s concepts, and it even adheres to My Little Pony’s style of humor.

But the best fanfic I’ve ever read has to be Metroid: Equis. This sequel was completed, and this sequel is in development but is likely dead, sadly. It’s a Metroid x My Little Pony crossover. Now you must be thinking, “How would a crossover like that be any good? One franchise is super cartoony and the other is hyper realistic.” The thing is, the fanfic is so well written that the author actually makes the crossover WORK! There’s another reason I like it, though. The Metroid fanfics I’ve read were just junk and not “Metroid” at all. There’s no exploring or upgrades found or anything. The other Metroid fanfics I’ve read were basically as junky and The Bad Side of the My Little Pony fanbase. Super Metroid hacks and AM2R are amazing, though. But this fanfic is actually written in the style of a Metroid mission. Samus explores, fights bosses that actually wouldn’t be too out of place in a Metroid game, and even gets upgrades. Oh man, the incredibly innovative upgrades and seeing what Samus gets is probably the best part. This fanfic was so good that I drew up a mock-up image of Super Metroid’s inventory screen with the upgrades Samus gets in this fanfic.

Oh man, the My Little Pony fanfics I’ve read are just PHENOMINAL! Basically, I’m looking for a fan game with the same super high-quality as these fanfics, but I can’t really find any.

Questions (QES)

One thing I’ve really wanted to know is, “Why is My Little Pony so popular? What’s the index case? What started My Little Pony’s popularity?” I’ve been researching these past 2 years to answer this question, and I can’t really find a conclusive answer. One thing that really really REALLY baffles me is 4chan. The only 2 franchises that 4chan has dedicated boards are Pokémon and My Little Pony. That makes me think, “What the heck!? Why in the WORLD does My Little Pony have its own dedicated board on 4chan?! Is it, like, the 2nd most popular franchise in the world or something? That doesn’t make any FREAKING SENSE!” So why is that? Is My Little Pony REALLY that popular? But why? Is that Pony board still active today? Why doesn’t Mario or Zelda have their own 4chan boards? Why doesn’t Adventure Time have its own 4chan board? That show also debuted in 2010, right? Why doesn’t Steven Universe or Gravity Falls or Dragon Ball have their own boards? Why doesn’t, ahem, HARRY POTTER, like, the most popular franchise IN THE WORLD have his own 4chan board? Can anyone answer these questions? I’ve actually read that, when My Little Pony was first released, 4chan’s Comics & Cartoons board was so flooded with My Little Pony discussion that 4chan actually BANNED all discussion of My Little Pony content! This is coming from 4CHAN, the absolute LAST website you’d expect to ban a topic! Well, what about My Little Pony generates that kind of discussion? Why hasn’t Adventure Time generated that kind of discussion? Why hasn’t Harry Potter generated that kind of discussion? Why My Little Pony and nothing else?

I’ve been trying to figure this fanbase out for the past 2 years, but my autism can make it difficult to understand this fanbase. It seems so social.

CONCLUSION (CCL)

In conclusion, with the TV show having so much unused potential and so many wasted concepts, and with only fanfics tapping into the unused potential and using the wasted concepts in better ways, you have a pretty angry DPBOX. I am SO DESPERATE for a “My Little Pony” My Little Pony fan game with the same super high quality as the fanfics that I’m making my own fan games. I am being SUPER dedicated with my ROM hack, and I’m showing no signs of canceling it. The overwhelming desire for a good My Little Pony fan game is keeping me motivated to work on my hack. Not only that, but the fanbase is so incompetent that I believe that, once My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure is finished, it will be the best My Little Pony fan game EVER, and it will shine above all of the other fan games like a beacon and people will flock to it. I won’t stop there. I’m a computer science major at my university, and I plan to make a big, epic, show-accurate Mario and Luigi-styled My Little Pony RPG completely from scratch using C++ and the Simple Directmedia Layer library.

I feel like My Little Pony would be better off as an RPG instead of a TV show. One of the characters in the show constantly breaks the 4th wall, and the other characters don't know what she's talking about. Well, a lot more can be done with that in a video game setting. This character could explain the controls and the other characters won't know what she's talking about, and it will be funny. More can be done with 4th wall breaking in a video game setting. One of the characters loves adventures, beating up monsters, and winning. She never gets to do much of that in the show, but she'd have a field day in an RPG. The worst part is that, even though this stuff is obvious, no one except me seems to realize this.

Click the character on the right side of my layout to visit my Discord server and discuss and play and look at and get updates and sneak peeks of the games and other things I'm making.

The authors of these 2 My Little Pony fan games have removed their games from the Internet.
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has been updated! Download My Little Pony: Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX: Director's Cut and My Little Pony: Magic Shards now! Spread this link!

I only skimmed through that insanely long post (to be fair you admitted it as such from the outset) but you really don't seem to understand what Friendship Is Magic is supposed to be. It's not Dragon Ball Z or an RPG or whatever, it's a silly show about cartoon ponies that happens (thanks to Laura Faust) to have some above average quality writing. You seem to have really wanted/expected want this to be some kind of epic Shonen battle series only with ponies, and it just... isn't. There's like a zillion series that fit all the criteria you're looking for (well, okay, except the ponies), and frankly I don't know why you've homed in on My Little Pony in particular when you seem to want it to be a completely different show then it actually is.

Some of your individual points are kind of illogical as well. For instance, you complain about the characters using magic for "generic everyday stuff" instead of dramatic battles and the like. But realistically, a society where magic is as common and easy to use as it is in the show would be using it for "generic everyday stuff" just like we use technology. Obviously ordinary people aren't going to be saving the world or fighting epic battles every day of their lives, and Friendship Is Magic is primarily about the everyday lives and friendships of the mane cast. The save-the-world quests, magic battles and the like are really just flavoring, not the main draw of the show.

Similarly, the sonic rainboom is a racing technique, not something intended for fighting. Would you say all sports are totally wasted and boring because they're not used for violence? Honestly, I think that tells me a bit more about you then the show itself...

All I can get from this post is that you really don't understand the slice of life genre, since you seem to think any series without tons of fighting and drama is instantly worthless and "wasted". I don't like SoL that much either, but I at least don't watch SoL shows and then make huge 12,000+ word long rants complaining about them for being SoL. That'd be like watching a comedy show and complaining it's full of too many jokes, or watching a tragedy and complaining it's not laugh-a-minute.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
please provide a tl;dr I can't be bothered to read all of that...
Originally posted by RoydGolden
For instance, you complain about the characters using magic for "generic everyday stuff" instead of dramatic battles and the like. But realistically, a society where magic is as common and easy to use as it is in the show would be using it for "generic everyday stuff" just like we use technology.

Well, it's just that, in almost all other franchises I've seen characters use magic in, such as Final Fantasy and EarthBound, they have always used it for battle purposes. But your post made me think about something. I guess if I were to think outside the box and between the lines, I guess Final Fantasy characters really DO use magic for everyday purposes, like using Fire or Fira to start an oven, grill, or campfire to cook food with or Thunder to power electronic devices, you're just not shown this stuff and the games just place a much bigger emphasis on the adventure and battles. The Harry Potter franchise uses magic for both everyday purposes and battling.

Originally posted by RoydGolden
The save-the-world quests, magic battles and the like are really just flavoring, not the main draw of the show.

I haven't thought of it that way. I didn't realize that.

Originally posted by RoydGolden
Similarly, the sonic rainboom is a racing technique, not something intended for fighting.

I didn't know that. If I did, I might have been a little less ranty about it. I interpreted it as some kind of ultimate battle technique.

Originally posted by RoydGolden
All I can get from this post is that you really don't understand the slice of life genre

You're exactly right. I really DON'T understand the slice of life genre. I watch a lot of shows and movies and play a lot of video games with action and adventure, like Pokémon, Zelda, and Dragon Ball. So it's only natural that I'd expect the same from My Little Pony. I guess the reason I'm so ranty is because, instead of not using this action, adventure, and RPG stuff at all, which would cause me to not be interested, they've sprinkled it around, and I'm the type of person who wants that stuff to be the primary focus, when it's secondary in this show. I've also seen other shows and video games where friendship is a big theme, such as EarthBound, but there's also a lot of fighting and action in it. And, I don't know, maybe I really am interested in ponies doing Shonen-type stuff.

Originally posted by ChirunoSukaaretto
please provide a tl;dr I can't be bothered to read all of that...

There is one. I'll put it closer to the top.
Originally posted by my post
And so, to make a SUPER long story short, I like the My Little Pony franchise, but I don’t like the show.

Click the character on the right side of my layout to visit my Discord server and discuss and play and look at and get updates and sneak peeks of the games and other things I'm making.

The authors of these 2 My Little Pony fan games have removed their games from the Internet.
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has been updated! Download My Little Pony: Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX: Director's Cut and My Little Pony: Magic Shards now! Spread this link!

Originally posted by DPBOX
And so, to make a SUPER long story short, I like the My Little Pony franchise, but I don’t like the show.


Now I'm even more confused. If you dislike the "slice of life" elements in Friendship Is Magic then I can't imagine how you'd like the other entries in the franchise, where (from what I understand) those elements are far more pronounced. The more you write about it, the more I'm genuinely curious how you got into My Little Pony in the first place.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
What do you mean "other entries in the franchise"? Do you mean stuff like G1? I'm not referring to stuff like G1 in that sentence or anywhere else in the post, and I don't plan on watching G1 or any previous generations. If you read the next paragraph after the sentence you quoted, you would have known what I meant.

Originally posted by my post
To clarify, I like most of My Little Pony’s concepts in an abstract kind of sense, like Magic, the Elements of Harmony, the Sonic Rainboom, Alicorns and Alicorn ascension, and NOT naturally born Alicorns, (the franchise), but I don’t like way the developers of the show decided to use and implement those concepts (the show). Basically, I would like the show more if the concepts were used in a different way, like a Dragon Ball Z-like way, to be precise.

Click the character on the right side of my layout to visit my Discord server and discuss and play and look at and get updates and sneak peeks of the games and other things I'm making.

The authors of these 2 My Little Pony fan games have removed their games from the Internet.
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has been updated! Download My Little Pony: Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX: Director's Cut and My Little Pony: Magic Shards now! Spread this link!

Originally posted by DPBOX
What do you mean "other entries in the franchise"? Do you mean stuff like G1? I'm not referring to stuff like G1 in that sentence or anywhere else in the post, and I don't plan on watching G1 or any previous generations. If you read the next paragraph after the sentence you quoted, you would have known what I meant.


Sorry about taking you out of context. I didn't even bother to check the OP to see whether you'd updated it, so I was just going by the one line you quoted.

Still though, I wouldn't call the concepts of a show the "franchise". In my mind the franchise is the wider series the show is part of, which for Friendship Is Magic would definitely include the previous generations of My Little Pony cartoons. It's perfectly fine to say you like the underlying concepts but dislike the execution; I just think the word "franchise" in that context is rather misleading. I'll admit this is kind of semantic quibbling though, so feel free to ignore me.

I am curious as to what drew you into Friendship Is Magic/MLP in the first place though. It's not like concepts like "the power of friendship" or magical plot trinkets giving powers in accordance with the virtue of their wielders (Triforce, anyone?) are exactly unique to My Little Pony after all.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
You may not like the show for being too "slice-of-life" and not taking full potential of being more dramatic, but remember, little girls are still watching the show and you need to still think about how they would feel about things being perhaps "too violent" or at least how parents might feel about their kids watching MLP if it was as such.

Even then, it's not really supposed to be so dramatic, it's a kids' show, not Dragon Ball Z, it's a show that teaches kids important life lessons. If you want to make a hack or story that much more dramatic, or check out fanfiction or fan works that have a more dramatic view of MLP, that's fine. But just don't expect MLP to be like an RPG and have such "higher quality", it's not that poorly written as you think it is, because the writers chose not to go that dramatic, that's the true style of the show. Just deal with it and move on.

You can still make your MLP hack and such, no one is stopping you from doing so. All it is, is showing a more dramatic light to the MLP lore, like with fanfiction, but it does not mean that the stories are actually part of the official MLP lore as made by Hasbro, all you can do is imagine an alternate universe or something with your own take of the lore yourself.

Overall, ranting about the show for not meeting your expectations and with them being based on your personal preferences and not understanding the actual style of the show will not help you in anyway.
Hey y'all, Scott here!

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what
i just lurk sometimes
I completely agree. Hasbro should take some cues from Homestuck.
Why yes, and they should also take notes from Game of Thrones and The Brothers Grunt.
Hey y'all, Scott here!

PFP by: https://twitter.com/GinCalico (🔞 Warning)