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I hope you guys will read this

Oh boy, what should I say? When I first heard about Alicorn Twilight, I wasn’t mad or offended. As long as it’s good, the writers should do whatever they want. But I knew a lot of people weren’t going to be happy. As it turns out, some people like it, some people don’t. But enough of that, let’s talk about the actual episode.

Well, first of all, I wasn’t expecting this episode to be a musical. I’m not complaining though, the songs were actually good. I liked the beginning when Twilight’s friends had the wrong cutie marks and Twilight had to find a way to change them back… then Twilight became a princess and it all went downhill. The ending was shocking, at least it was for me. I was expecting everything would go back to normal… but no. I don’t want to say this was a bad episode because, well, it wasn’t. But when compared to the other season finales this show had, it was disappointing. ‘The Best Night Ever’ was good, ‘A Canterlot Wedding’ was great, this one was not so great. I feel this episode would have been better if it was longer than one episode. Now I guess we’ll have to wait until season four to see what happens next.

I don’t hate this episode. I think it was good episode, just a disappointing finale.

Stargazer you are my fucking hero right now – I was F5ing the shit out of equestria daily for the past hour.

@the finale

YOU DUN GOOFED SPARKLE.

Fuck yes! something along the lines of a body/role swap episode is something I wanted to see happen for a long time and it was just as silly as I imagined it'd be! But the way they just kinda dropped the circumstances on our laps like that was wasn't so good imo. Anyways I liked how Pinkie's hair finally straightened out to adjust to her mood again and Rarity trying to control the weather was awesome! As for the songs, the cutie mark one at the beginning was probably my favorite.

But seriously now, I really think Twilight's promotion to alicorn princess should have happened as a result of her achieving something more epic. On top of that, it transitioned from being little more than just another crazy day in ponyville to an all out royal affair way too quickly.

But I enjoyed it – even though trying to understand how they managed to cram all of this in one episode hurts my brain.

DisturbedBrony Wrote:

I don’t hate this episode. I think it was good episode, just a disappointing finale.

Well… I can't argue with that. It was probably the best episode in my opinion, but as a finale, it feels like there's going to be another episode next week.

…Only problem is… There isn't.

It feels like the beginning of a season rather than an end. Seriously, I feel it would have been better to have make it Episode 1 of Season 4. But as the Finale to this season, it feels way too open ended.

Previous Finales felt like New Years Eve Parties, celebrating a year well Spent. This Feels more like a New Years Day Party, celebrating a year yet to be had.

@Today's episode

That is all.

Yeah… It was… okay, I guess.

Let me rephrase that. It was not the complete and incomparable disaster we were told it would be. However, it was not the "everything will be okay" episode we were told it would be either. I enjoyed it, and the musical was surprising, yet fun, but it was not as good or fulfilling as I hoped it wouldbe. Let's just say I'm hoping for Meghan McCarthy's tweet to be true, and that this arc will continue this fall.

The episode was great! Except for the last FIVE FREAKING MINUTES! I felt it was rushed, but as Meghan McCarthy said, we will have to wait…

i give an 8/10

greats songs

good animation

and…well i liked the episode overall.

cons:…too much singing…..not big fan

I just saw the episode….SO MUCH LIQUID PRIDE!!

THIS IS GONNA BE ONE LONG ASS HIATUS, WHAT'S GONNA TIDE ME OVER 'TIL THEN!?

I will agree with some that the ascension did feel a tad cheap due to it primarily being thanks to Twilight making a single new spell (but let's not forget that her character development from "loner that doesn't want friends" to "friendship preacher" also played a part in that), as well as the whole rushed feeling that was pretty much unavoidable due to Larson having to cram pretty much two whole plots into one episode. I think it still turned out okay, though (both the finale as a whole and the coronation business).

Also, 'True, True Friend' is now probably my favorite song of the series. It had me squee'ing like a little fangirl. That cutie mark song was also pretty damn good, but everything else I felt was differing degrees of meh.

After watching it again (if only I waited a bit longer for that fucking HQ video!!!) I can safely say….I still loved it. It's only now after being able to see how long running time I could see how rushed it was. At almost exactly 7:00 Twilight's like "I know what to do!" but like I said the whole season has been rushed sadly so I forgive them for that but if they pulled this shit in season 1 or 2 you better believe I'd be fucking pissed.

Really the only things I didn't care for was Twilight's big flyby at the screen at the end….It actually makes me dislike that one scene for two reasons.
1. She already knows how to fly and….she's pretty damn good at it. There goes a potential Rainbow Dash teaches Twilight to fly episode.
2. It just looked really cheap, it's almost like that was put in at the last minute using Microsoft Powerpoint and it really made it look out of place compared to all the exceptional animation in the episode. Almost as if Hasbro told them to put it in there as a way to say "BUY MORE MY LITTLE PONY TOYS! PRINCESS TWILIGHT COMING SOON!"

I still think the whole Celestia/Twilight scene should go down in the "Best moments of the series" videos people make on Youtube. If you didn't feel during that you have no soul and I pity you. Then there's the music….I've been waiting for a musical episode and I finally got it and I can't be anymore happier (maybe THAT'S why I'm not as harsh on this episode, fuck you) and since that Daniel and Steffan (That's his name right?) were involved in the regular bgm of the episode it just made the episode feel so much better (Some of the best BGM of the entire series right here).

Another problem I have with this finale is this….That MLP movie they're making…I think this should've been it. Can you honestly say while watching this episode you didn't get a 'movie' vibe from it? The constant music, the background music, the stakes, all the crap they crammed in this thing. It kind of makes me feel a little less hyped for the movie because now I don't know how it can live up to this or the two parters since this one feels the most movie like (despite its measly 22 minute length) and I think this one greatly needed the title of 'MLP movie' considering it's shaking things up quite a bit, and unlike the Transformers movie they didn't wipe out the entire cast!

This episode also makes me realize Pinkie's place in Ponyville. In her Smile song she says the only thing that makes her happy is to make ponies smile, then in this episode it reveals that Ponyville NEEDS Pinkie Pie or they'll be the most depressing bunch of ponies ever. This is actually a pretty big deal gaise.

/end wall of text.

Well, the episode is quite intriguing and I the plotline is not what I had in mind, totally out of my speculation. I agree that the episode is rushing too fast that the plot seemed to be abridged but I very much loved this episode. The songs are fun to listen. The situation they got themselves in is very clever from the writers but the last few minutes kind of killed the mood. But I also happened to catch a flicker of though in my head while watching the episode. IMO, I think this episode is more directly pointing towards the milestones where have walked all these long while with the show along with the unexpected, existing and growing fandom. It's not about Twilight's transformation, it's not about the thickening of plotlines, it's not about trying to ruining the fandom(I'm just saying) but somehow it's trying to give us the a quick rewind of the show from since the day it all started, like a nostalgic flashbacks or some sort, noticing they put in previous episodes in it and those 'I CAN SEE FOREVER's. To see how the show made us to the date we have become. I personally think that this episode is made in the figuratively sense of reflecting the past few years of the bond between the fandom and the show. Now what I'm very eager to see is that how Season 4 will start out as the said 3-parter. Part 1 for anticipating prologue(supposedly for the meaning mentioned in the above lines), Part 2 for rising action and finally Part 3 for epilogue of revealing the episodes true meaning.

TL;DR:
The episode is embraced. I think it's meaning of the episode is misunderstood by people. Should wait for the 3-parter to finish.

Correct me if I'm in flaw somewhere. Not much confidence in my opinion.

Pictured here: Rarity in her natural environment.

Would've been better if she was an Alicorn.

Oh PS folks.

I believed in M.A. Larson, and he delivered (and did his damn best to shove all this into one fucking episode!)

Sweet Celestia, the quick pacing probably was choking up the episode and I couldn't really enjoy it. It's possibly one of my least favorite episodes if I am to be completely honest with you but it's pacing works in it's favor seeing as I'll probably have to watch 5 more times just to get everything down to make a legitimate judgement on it.

I'll give it a Meh/1998 for now. I know it's nothing for me to go "ABANDON FANDOM" over though.

Oh hey sorry for the frequent posting here right now guys but I have to say this

Ahem

HORY SHIT!

>To be continued
>day before hiatus ends show's cancelled
>Hasbro's face when:

Hey guys I found this on tumblr.

TWILIGHT ZONE

Studio B:

Also, the whole thing was pretty good. I enjoyed most of the musical numbers, and I think it turned out well. It was rushed as hell, though, and probably should've been two parts (not that that's in Studio B's control).

I think the coronation was the weakest part of the whole thing. Her becoming a princess turned out fine, but the actual coronation with the weird versions of Fluttershy with Surprise's color palate carrying the banners was odd.

I honestly felt today's episode was rushed, but as Jyron stated, cramming two whole plots into one episode is a pain in the ass, so I got to give it to Larson for that.

I never thought I'd like a musical until this day.

It was beautiful.

And let's not forget all of those lessons Twilight Sparkle learned that would lead up to this, along with her basically becoming the embodiment of Friendship.
What factors (could have possibly) contributed to her coronation:

-All of those lessons she learned
-A whole plan that was set up by Celestia
-Her friendship with all of her friends
-The elements (of course)

So yeah, I guess that's my two cents, but I do feel like the episode was rather well done for a two-plot compressed episode.

Hm…

Better than I thought, worse than I hoped… (Yeah, I said it.)

Better than I thought:

• I think ZeroBlue said it first, but the musical approach to the episode made all of the events they needed to crunch in work really well. And if there was an episode before the end of the series that needed to be a musical, then this was it.
• I'm no music expert, but I did like the songs a lot. They're not really things I can listen to on their own, because they didn't seem to be productions in and of themselves. But I enjoyed them as they played out in the episode.
• I was simply entertained by the events in the episode, implications not being considered. It had humor and cuteness…it was a good episode. I liked it better than the premiere. I can tell you that.

Worse than I hoped (but about as bad as I feared):

• I haven't adjusted to
  • Twilight being an alicorn, and the implications of outliving all of her closest friends, parents, brother, etc.
  • Twilight looking like an alicorn. And her flying at the end was absolutely cringe-inducing for me.
  • Twilight being a princess.

That's probably the biggest one. The role of princess isn't necessarily defined, but the ones we've seen have their own kingdom/empire, have their own castle, have their own servant ponies, and (more "concerning") have their own duties.

So even though Twilight's castle looks to be between Canterlot and Ponyville, her not living in Ponyville, sorta removes a lot of seemingly coincidental interactions for her and Spike to run into Scootaloo or Granny Smith or even Pinkie Pie or Rarity.

It appears that the other princesses don't get out much for any extended period of time and that they have their own duties to attend to most of the day, and only seem to appear in the previous context of the show for events (e.g., Nightmare Night, Young Fliers' Competition, royal visits, etc.)

(But we wouldn't know that, because we haven't had many princess-focused episodes especially for Celestia I'M JUST SAYING THINGS OK I'M JUST SAYING THEM.)
 
A slight tangent/concession: One could say that there doesn't need to be a focus on the princesses, because they aren't part of the main cast anyway. But…
 
With the above princessly duties in mind, if Twilight Sparkle resembles Luna, Cadance, and Celestia in their own duties with their own special talents, then I fully expect (and almost hope) that her duties would keep her from her friends. (It really is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation as I see it:)

• Princess Twilight Sparkle (if she must become a princess) needs to act like, have duties fitting of, and conduct herself as a princess. We have evidence that she was being trained for that down to controlling her own personality flaws unfitting of a princess (i.e., the whole "breathing exercise" she apparently picked up from Cadance in the previous episode,) and a lot of Season 3 going back to being part of foreign relations (i.e., Magic Duel) and handling conflict on her own with no help (i.e., the Season 3 premiere.)
   
  Surely, Celestia isn't going to "test" and train Twilight to do the same thing she has always done. Of course, she'll learn, but she's not solely a student anymore. I think Celestia herself said that Twilight would be the "go-to" for matters of friendship. If she was simply Equestria's best known scholar on a topic, then that'd be one thing, but the canon of the show has led her to be a princess instead. A princess (as we've seen them) does not have the same freedoms that Twilight had been afforded before in terms of time and (lack of) obligation.
   
  So with that in mind, it would seem out of place for Twilight to go off on a more-or-less impromptu adventure to hunt down Applejack, or to help Fluttershy out in being more assertive
   
   
  Now if you want to look at how Twilight could be different from Luna, Cadance, and shiny butt, then those are totally there. Twilight has no definitive subjects as of yet. The ponies bowing to her bow merely out of respect to royalty and not because she rules over them. Luna and Celestia seem to share the kingdom of Equestria, and Cadance seems to reign over the Crystal Empire. So perhaps the time the other princesses would spend on audiences and governing their people wouldn't be time Twilight would have to spend (potentially leaving time to go to the spa with Rarity or to do experiments in her lab.)

• Alternatively, if she isn't like a princess and DHX just created an episode (quite masterfully, I must say, given the hypothetical circumstances and hypothetical pressure from Hasbro) based on needing to present Princess Twilight Sparkle in the episode, then it sorta makes a good episode "non-canon." Through some event, Twilight becomes an alicorn (obvious in every episode) and a princess (not noticeable for the most part) and things stay the same as they always have been.
   
  That would sorta take me away from my own suspension of disbelief. That's not usually a problem with me as long as the show is entertaining. But Princess Celestia and the concept of what is close to a theocracy (i.e., "As Celestia is my witness" via Rarity) and what Luna and Cadance have come to be as princesses sticks in my mind a bit too much. If Twilight moves back into the treehouse to study like she always has, then the episode really would feel like a self-contained episode that was meant to, well, sell a toyline within the MLP brand.
   
  Perhaps that sort of thing is something to get used to, but it's hard to accept that with something like the main character becoming a princess. It's not easily retconned (or even implied to be retconned) by downplaying her royalty and/or somehow "hiding" her wings with magic until she needs them.

I really did enjoy the episode. But I really felt (and DHX probably feels similarly) that this should have been reserved for a series finale thing more than a season finale.
 
Hasbro, and rightfully so, wanted to get the Princess Twilight Sparkle toys and dolls out there while the iron was hot. If you had waited for the series to naturally end, then the appeal of the show might not have been as high. Hasbro doesn't need to take that sort of gamble when Friendship is Magic is as popular as it has ever been.

This boom of popularity is when you bust out your new toys, spinoffs, comics, other merchandise to have any chance of making My Little Pony as big as something like Pokémon (or to simply raise My Little Pony from being that brand for little girls.) They can probably easily break into a "tween" and adolescent girl demographic, while probably still hanging on to the little girl demographic and the brony demographic.
 
And so the show that helped MLP take off (again?) was the very best agent to promote the Princess Twilight Sparkle products as well as the "rebranding," the movie, the spinoff series, and the new chapter in the show itself.

And I think DHX should take the time to simply go with the change. Not dumb the show down to "Look at how pretty my wings are!" But to come up with future episodes that can somehow keep the Mane Six (and others') interactions intact.

I feel like that means Twilight Sparkle won't be around for a lot of episodes, and the opportunity to get everyone involved in a "small potatoes," low-risk scenario plan like in Spike at Your Service will probably decrease. But I think a kind of separate universe where Twilight is apart from Ponyville works while still being able to interact in a meaningful way is still possible.

So I guess a good episode still leaves a sour taste in my mouth until I know how things will play out in future episodes. Perhaps the confidence from the writers come from already writing the episode concepts and knowing that things will still be entertaining.

But I hope they don't play it like the whole alicorn princess things didn't happen.

Here comes dat fanart.

Alright, here are my complete thoughts on the finale. It’s not going to be pretty.

This episode upset me, and I find myself growing to dislike it more and more as time passes. Has this episode “DESTROYED MLP 5EVER!!11111!”? No, it hasn’t, but it has started the show down a path that, if continued upon, will probably ruin the show for us. Why do I think so? The only reason we like mlp is because the new direction Faust took it on, and this episode would have been right at home amongst earlier gens. Yeah, I fucking said it. This finale was a pile of colorful vapid shit, and I sincerely doubt any of us would be fans of the show right now if this was the storytelling style that Faust used to open with.

My main complaint is that I feel this episode abandoned the wit and solid storytelling typical of G4 in favor of the mindless glamor and spectacle more reminiscent of earlier gens. In place of good writing, we get music and animation, in place of a logical series of events leading to a meaningful conclusion, we had Twilight transformed into an alicorn because FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC! (and princesses are money!)

The whole talent switching thing wasn’t very well thought out or developed. Twilight reads a set of words and it has some effect on the elements of harmony which in turn has some effect on the mane six and their talents/destinies/personalities/memories/some shit. It isn’t really defined exactly what…happened. Twilight makes a statement that it’s not their memories that have been altered, but their true selves, but apparently not since they still suck at doing what they’ve apparently been altered to do. What exactly that spell did and how it was corrected is left really vague. A question I kept asking was why Twilight was immune to this spell, and more bizarrely, why was Spike? Every pony in Ponyville has been apparently affected by the spell because they don’t see anything wrong with the mane six doing this bizarre shit.

And then came the alicorn part.

So apparently Starswirl’s masterpiece is a teleportation spell because that’s all that happened when Twilight completed it. Celestia was the one who cast the spell making Twilight an alicorn (raising the question where this bitch gets off having a spell for immortality and hoarding it, but whatever.) Actually, that might not be true. Perhaps Starswirl’s spell is what transformed her and the thing with Celestia was just a dream sequence. I don’t know and neither do you because we aren’t told.

So Twilight returns as an alicorn but the fun doesn’t stop there, because Twilight, neither desiring or deserving, has now been deemed ready to take up the burdens of a ruler! The office and powers traditionally held by immortal sky deities are TOTALLY appropriate for this pony.

And…everypony is perfectly fine with it! Is there ever a moment of incredulity, confusion, or doubt? Nope, bitch has wings now /end. Rainbow Dash is happy to have a new flying partner and Pinkie wants to throw an alicorn party. Her family is so proud and everyone unquestioningly accepts the new monarch.

None of this. Makes. Sense. Your first reaction when you find out your best friend has been imbibed with the powers of Zeus isn’t to ask him to throw a sweet light show. Your first reaction as a citizen of some country when being informed that there is a new God-Queen isn’t to hold a pleasant coronation ceremony for the new monarch and go on with your life. My only conclusion that I can draw when I see characters acting so drastically out of character and societies operating on rules of complete nonsense is to reject it entirely, to completely and fully acknowledge I’m watching some goofy cartoon. I can't take the characters seriously, I can't take the setting seriously, I can't take any of it seriously, and so I stop caring.

In place of logical coherence, this episode just shoved a whole bunch of light and noise into your sense organs and hoped that you would be too distracted to examine the vague plotline closely. I hear everyone talking about how much they liked all the music in the episode. Folks, I like music probably more than any of you, but if I want to listen to music, I’ll pop in an album or go to the symphony. When music is being used to simulate emotion not as a supplement, but as a substitute to that which should be coming from the drama, it might be lovely music, but it’s still bad drama. To quote William Shakespeare ““It Is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

What really bugs me about this episode, as stated earlier, is just how fucking reminiscent it is of earlier gens. The characters were plastic, the storyline was nonsense, it was covered in a bunch of self-indulgent music and animation, and it was all designed to sell toys. That IS old mlp. Faust managed to pull pony up from the depths, and with this episode, I see it going straight back down to the shameless toy commercials of yore.

I have faith that the writers will be able to pull the show away from this direction and keep it more in line with what Faust was doing, but if they don’t, if I see many more episodes like this one, then I’m done with this show.

tl;dr: Season finale was like old school mlp. Writers, please never do this again.

The episode aired, which means that all those mean spoilers are finally gone. Please don't tell me now, that you are already discussing season 4…

Yeah you could argue that those alicorn rumours where floating around even before season 3 has started and it was quite unnecessary to avoid those spoilers, which actually meant avoiding pony news and any sort of discussions. In the end the twist didn't really surprise me much, because I have thought about this idea before. I never like the idea and I still don't like it much after watching the episode. The look of those unfolded alicornwings just leave me quite ah unenthusiastic. Nonetheless I am looking forward to what's going to happen in the next season.

Was it really worth it to stay away from those spoilerific material and the discussions? Well I don't really know, but it's going to be fun to reread all those pages now. It's not even that much, I just missed 17 pages. That's not even a page a day, what could have happened in those three weeks?

I actually didn't enjoy the episode that much. It was average for me because it took the problem with Keep Calm and Flutter On and magnified it several times. It seemed far too rushed and seemed to have a few problems with the plot I didn't mind so much, but came together to kinda ruin it a bit. I still enjoyed it a bit, but it didn't exactly live up to the shitstorms or the hype surrounding it. For me, neither side was right, since it was an average episode, that will probably have lasting impacts.

Then again, Meghan McCarthy did say that it was technically a three-parter, so for all we know it could feel rushed because it's not over.

Beyond just the plot, I felt like they overdid it with the music. I usually enjoy the songs, but there were just too many here, and they were all very sub-par, in my opinion. They felt like generic crappy songs in a cartoon musical, rather than the songs that MLP has had in the past, that are almost always stellar. Some of it was okay, but when it's a key focus of the episode like it is now, being okay is going to leave the episode feeling okay.

There were some parts that I found funny, but I also felt that the episode was lacking a bit in that department. Probably a bit more disappointing is that I felt like the Mane 6 were acting a bit odd when they saw Twilight as an alicorn. It felt like they weren't being themselves (ironic, since they just spent five musical numbers finding who they truly were…) Maybe I'm just a bit hard to please or something, but it felt out of place and rushed.

I did notice Derpy my first go through and thought that was a nice time to show her to say "We still care about the bronies, even if we care more about making a profit because lolBusiness". I don't particularly blame anybody for the alicorn Twilight deal, because it isn't inherently bad. I do blame them for making an average episode, though. Which, really, isn't such a bad thing since every episode can't be stellar. I still like it more than Wonderbolt Academy and a few others, at least, so I'm not going to banish it from my headcanon any quicker than that episode.

I feel like what (I think it was) Fifths said a few pages ago about the alicorn mythos being cheapened might have a bit of truth to it. With a new alicorn being introduced in half of the season finales, it feels like they're less of an oddity or something less, I dunno, fantastical. It seems to me that they're having a lessened impact on everything, or something. I don't know how to say it, exactly, and I'm not trying to say it's a bad thing to have them be less amazing, really, it's just that it feels like the world is being changed a bit. Really, that's not such a bad thing, it just kinda paints Hasbro as trying to earn a profit first and foremost. Something I don't blame them for, as a note, but it does make me care less about the world, like (I think it was) Fifths said.

Really, I don't know if the whole alicorn deal is going to negatively or positively impact season 4 yet. It sounds like they might have a two-parter with Twilight realizing she doesn't really want the princess stuff and going back on it. Then again, they might have a two-parter with Twilight overthrowing the other princesses and becoming Big Sister, ruling over Equestria with an iron fist. There's always the possibility that her heart doesn't have the needed power to pump blood to her new wings and they begin to die, and she gets some weird infection and dies, or something.

Maybe she'll just keep carrying on in Ponyville as a princess. Or something. Maybe, to make the princess title less… cheap?, the rest of her friends move to Canterlot to stay near her. Though that seems like a bad move for Fluttershy and Applejack.

Fuck, I dunno.

I might be rambling, but I feel like now is as good a time as ever to rate the finale, even if we have until Fall (Hrngh) to do it.

@We "Really Hate" Ponies:

2/10 didn't laugh

@Season 4:

Eh, most of my time watching the show has been in hiatuseseseses, so I should probably be fine. I mean, I'll just play vidya gaems for a few months and lazily browse the Pony General thread and image gallery, maybe sometimes peaking into EqD or derpibooru.

So, basically what I already do, except I have twenty-two extra free minutes on the weekends.

I'm bored, so have some human Octavinyl.

YAY NEW EPISODE

That was… a fairly decent one I suppose. Seems like a perfect way for the writers to close off the season, is what I'm thinking. I didn't think the writers would do it, but they did. Princess Cadance all makes sense now.

I'm not going to write a huge TL;DR analysis because that would take forever. So many things happened in those 22 minutes. The fandom is going to be discussing, creating art, writing fanfics, everything, for a long, long time. All I'm going to say is this: this needed to be a two parter. Even three. I felt like the alicorn thing was kind of shoehorned into the other destiny swapping plot (which was done well), and it just felt really rushed is all.

EDIT: So apparently this is technically a three parter. Let's just see about that.

While the songs were memorable and amazingly well done, I can't help but feel as if they detracted from the plot. We lost a huge amount of explanation and emotion from all the time they took up. What happened in the episode was so momentous and series changing, and what we had in place of a solid storyline was a metric tonne of songs. Suspension of disbelief was impossibly hard to maintain with the sheer overload of joyous happiness, to use a double synonym.

This marks a entirely new path for the show. I'm confident that the writers will be able to do it. MLP will live on, and season 4 will be great. But the question then, is "where is it going to go from this point?" The show, as we know it, is gone. Nothing is going to be the same with Twilicorn, try as her friends might. Nothing.

Everything that comes after this will be bittersweet nostalgia for times long past.

I come back after lunch, and see this.

But here’s the best part:

I read it all anyway!

Having just recently started participating in the forums, I gotta say, I didn’t expect how much depth you guys gave to your posts.

Brohooves for all of you.

Why don't you just calm down Snuffles?

@Chowzburger below

Season 3 is the weakest season so far in my opinion. I rank the episodes in the following order.

1: Sleepless in Ponyville
2: Magic Duel
3: The Crystal Empire
4: Keep Calm and Flutter On
5: One Bad Apple
6: Too Many Pinkie Pies
7: Games Ponies Play
8: Apple Family Reunion
9: Just for Sidekicks
10: Spike at your Service
12: Magical Mystery Cure
13: Wonderbolt Academy

Ok, let's give the season finale and the entire season a score. Also, I would like to see your rankings of the season going from the best to the worst.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

Aww man it's that time of the year again, this episode ends, makes me feel, makes me want to watch the episode again, episode ends up on Youtube and I watch it several times. Then the feel hits me….it's Pony Hiatus time. Now the depression of no new pony hits and now I don't care which days I work anymore. It was so easy with Season 1 as I didn't start watching the show until July-August of 2011 so well….pony was right there a month later.
Then Season 2 was harder as I had to sit through the hiatus with the rest of the fans for once.
Now Season 3 will be even harder as the season ended much earlier and not only that but the season ended on a note that could make or break the rest of the series depending on how Season 4 goes.
The only thing that's supposed to 'hold us over' is that Equestria Girls show (if be true) and looking at 'how well' Littlest Pet Shop is doing I don't think this will be their next killer show either (I'll give it a chance but until then it might just end up like Littlest Pet Shop 2.0).

Welp….here's hoping for an August-September 2013 date for Season 4 and not have to wait until all the way till November of all months! (man that's almost as bad as the Dragon Ball Z Hiatuses from when we were youngins.) and hopefully we get some stuff at ComicCon again!

@Fifths While I don't agree with your opinion on this episode (almost like not at all) I'm still upvoting your comment because it sucks to see someone get unjustly downvoted over their opinion.

That was a glorious episode. Loved the songs, and the Derpy sightings you guys have posted really made me happy.

However, were it not for the fact that the season 4 opener will be a continuation of this, I would have hated it. Given that fact, I was able to enjoy it knowing that the status quo can potentially be restored… in fall. Fucking fall.

The waiting game sucks.

>MFW I see a lot of people having intricate and informative posts on how the finale sucks life out of the show and I don't have a long explanation for liking the episode so much.

It's making me feel like an idiot, but I like the finale a lot. I just really like it…

Who decided to post drunk again? Take responsibility for your own actions.

You really don't need a wall of text to explain why you like/dislike the episode. What's important is the fact that you liked it fine and dandy, if people make you write a wall of text to explain your reasons or attack you for said reasons that's more their fault than yours. Do you need to explain why you like Pepperoni Pizza by writing a book the size of the largest Harry Potter book? Well as much as I would LOVE to read a book about why some guy loves Pepperoni Pizza we all know the answer here is no. But you can, but there is no law that says you need to write a book.

One part of the episode I did like was when Twilight and Celestia walked through the surreal thing and all the memories flashed. But that was mostly being hit with nostalgia and the fact that the background immediately made me think of this song:

Because reasons…

Now, as for the rating of the episode, I'd put it at about 6/10, relative to the other episodes of the show. It's worse than most of the episodes, in my opinion, but they're all fairly good.

The rating of the season itself… Well, it had a bunch of good episodes, but it was shorter than the other two seasons. I'd peg it as the worst, in my opinion, mainly because it had several rushed episodes and fewer than others. There were a bunch of good episodes, really, but the other seasons had more.

The episodes of the season are hard for me to rank, really, but I guess they go as follows:
1. The Crystal Empire (might have something to do with the hype of the season)
2. Magic Duel
3. One Bad Apple
4. Keep Calm and Flutter On
5. Too Many Pinkie Pies
6. Just For Sidekicks
7. Games Ponies Play
8. Sleepless in Ponyville
9. Apple Family Onions Reunion
10. Spike At Your Service
11. Magical Mystery Cure
12. Wonderbolt Academy

It was actually fairly difficult to choose the top spot, but I gave it to the Crystal Empire because I felt the world-building, characterization, etc. was pretty nice, and I remember a lot of spots I found funny. The rest was easier to choose, but still difficult. The main exception being the end, particularly the last two.

I thought that the episode was good. It was a bit concise, but I think the writers really went through with this one. Also, I'm quite a fan of musical episodes. I can't wait for what the next season holds for us.

1. Magical Mystery Cure
2. Magic Duel
3. Just for Sidekicks
4. One Bad Apple
5. Keep Calm and Flutter On
6. Games Ponies Play
7. The Crystal Empire – Part 2
8. Sleepless in Ponyville
9. The Crystal Empire – Part 1
10. Too many Pinkie Pies
11. Wonderbolts Academy
12. Apple Family Reunion
13. Spike at Your Service

And here's some dancing Twilight:

I'm also quite impressed that we fit an entire season into one thread.

1: Keep Calm and Flutter On
2: Just for Sidekicks
3: Magic Duel
4: Wonderbolt Academy
5: One Bad Apple
6: Too Many Pinkie Pies
7: Games Ponies Play
8:Sleepless in Ponyville
9: The Crystal Empire
10: Apple Family Reunion
12: Magical Mystery Cure
13: Spike at your Service

I'm not going to say this a weak season- a lot of my favorite episodes ever are here. However, I will admit the finale and opener were surprisingly sub-par compared to everything else.

>p. 148 New fighting is Magic video
>Fluttershy – yes finally
>clicky: This video is private
>hm strange
>mane6.com
>cease and desist message from Hasbro

Scheiße Scheiße Scheiße

This may sound quite stupid now, but this was seriously the only game I was looking forward to in 2013. I am not sure why, but I have stopped playing anything since about 3 or 4 years ago. The last games that I've picked up were Crysis and Bioshock. I mean, I got a well running system here, a good graphics card in my desktop and I know that there are a lot of damn good games that I could pluck as bargains, but I just don't have any motivation to do so.

And that cease and desist just hits me quite hard right now. Yeah the game was always in a gray zone and yeah you could see those legal actions coming like alicorn wings, but I have always hoped for a happy end. Perhaps the EVO thing and all the media attention was too much, but it's also possible that Hasbro just thought before: "Oh a fan game, it does look quite good, but they will never finish it – No big fan game does and we can C'n'D em every time we want, so let them do their thing. There is no need for any action, fan games come and go."

The game was so close to making it and the team was really determined to finish it. I am quite sad right now and I have no hopes that this game is ever going to be published. I guess some of you are waiting for another leak, but I guess that the mane6 won't do it intentionally. They have acted so professional before, which means that I am quite sure that a leak is not going to happen.

And I couldn't even see Fluts fighting…

Why twilight changing doesn't contradict Faust's vision for the series

@Bruno

See, here's the thing that's so fucked up about Twilight being a princess. She is simultaneously overqualified and underqualified for the job.

She's overqualified to be a Traditional Disney Princess

Twilight was a smart, independent, unpretentious young pony. Her personality does not at all deserve to be subjugated to the impotent role of a princess, which is mostly just an object of ceremony and the state. Twilight deserves more than to preside over tea parties, smile at official events, and get married off and dicked until she pops out more princes and princesses.

She's underqualified to be an Equestrian Princess

In Equestria, princess has another connotation. In addition to presiding over tea parties aforementioned, Equestrian princesses also perform actual statecraft, raise the heavenly bodies, serve as religious icons for their citizens, and live forever. Twi is still far too young for that shit. Hell, I think AJ would be better qualified to run the damn country.

So really, it manages to contradict Faust's vision and commonsense at the same time.

To tell you the truth, I didn't think of the Twilight Zone at all. The colors, and then seeing Twilight's memories in screens…. You know what it felt more like?

Yeah. The Animus.

I think I can safely say that this was not only the worst episode this season, but the single wrost episode ever crafted by humanity for any show ever. My ears bled, my eyes developed cataracts to block out the incoming atrocities, and I became so overcome with fury that lost control of my bodily functions. Abandoning the fandom is not sufficient. I must abandon the world if I ever want to truly escape the horror. Though, I suppose you guys were right about one thing: it could have been worse. I mean, while the urge to commit seppuku is overwhelming, I don't really feel mass homicide prior to my self-sacrifice is necessary.

To quote William Shakespeare ““It Is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Wow. Well, my respect for the writers of The Venture Brothers just shot up. I knew that quote sounded familiar when I first heard it on the show, but I'm just now realizing that they somehow managed to work a quote from Shakespeare into a fart joke. I never imagined highbrow humor about defecation was actually possible.

@Bruno's "How to Become a Princess"

That's definitely an interesting take on the situation. I can agree with Fifths' notion that she is still under qualified to be an Equestrian Princess, though. Funny thing is, it undermines Faust's vision by setting the princess title in high regards and encouraging young girls to all desire to be a princess, but it actually kind of helps further her efforts by giving the title some meaning that it's lost with all the dreck that the media has put out in the past.

Applejack is still more suitable for the position, though.

I think the resolution of the alicorn drama has been beautifully summed up with this video:

One thing I don't get: why do people assume "alicorn" = "immortality"? Yes, Celestia and Luna definitely have some longevity on them, but from what we've seen of Cadance, she ages just like any other pony: the fact that no one in canon has brought up whether or not she'll outlive Shining casts doubt on the possibility of her no longer physically aging at some point and being immortal/long-lived just like the Celestial Sisters. With this in mind, why assume that Twilight will outlive her friends just because she has a pair of wings and the ability to garden?

Now he just needs to write a Rarity episode.

It's coming…