>>12673
I am not arguing that Discord is a pony as such, but I do think that at least as this episode is written, Discord appears to be being treated as a sort of pony-god. Or, rather, since we don’t really have concepts of divinity present in the show, he is rather a powerful entity equivalent, but opposite, to an Alicorn (also a type of pony). A sort of corrupted reflection of Celestia, as it were. In fact, Discord acts more or less as fandom has liked to humorously depict and theorise Celestia acting, interestingly enough, down to being a tyrant when he ruled Equestria. So he works quite well as Celestia’s ‘dark side’, I think. Incidentally, I recall John de Lancie saying that when he started getting emails about his work on the show from fans, he didn’t initially recall having even done voicework for the show, which I find easy to believe both because I’m sure he was running around doing all sorts of work at the time, but also because frankly… He doesn’t sound like he’s giving it his A-game in this episode. The evil chuckle during the opening scene, and the monologue to the ponies here, both sound half-hearted and disinterested to me.

As the Six approach the maze, where Twilight believes Discord has hidden the Elements, Discord removes the wings of Dash and Fluttershy, and the horns of Twilight and Rarity, then explains the rules of his game so that there’s no cheating. This is where I begin to take issue with how Discord has been written. He’s set on preventing cheating, but then goes on to cheat himself: I understand that he is chaotic and does not adhere to the rules of others, but given that this is the case, he could easily just not give the Six any chance to get the elements and just take over Equestria. Discord is perhaps not motivated by things like that, instead acting purely for his own amusement, in which case the actions of the Six are what he’s interested in, thus why he’s toying with them. But what he’s about to do, discording five of them and overriding their will to make them into their opposites, totally contradicts this as well. So on two counts, Discord is already being used very sub-optimally, which is a great shame because there are practically infinite possibilities for how you could use him as a villain, endless ideas of fun obstacles he could create or present. I would even go so far as to say that I think both are also out of character for what we have seen so far. Given Discord’s primary motivation of amusing himself, and his self-professed fondness for ‘laughter’, I would say that far more in line with his powers, motivations and character would be for him to have a sense of fair play about his games. That is to say, he objects to the rules of reality, but not to rules in general, and that he ought to be twisting the natural order of things by putting the rules of his game above other rules, not by ignoring rules altogether. That is not to say he should feel totally bound by his rules, but to instantly break them, in spirit at least, is silly in my opinion. Discord strikes me as a bad loser and someone who bends the rules, but he does not strike me as a cheat, especially since he is exceedingly powerful (the most powerful being we have yet seen in the show, and theoretically the most powerful that we EVER see) and exceedingly powerful cheaters will tend to simply grab what they want as soon as possible.