>>12674
Even if we were to assume that Discord, again seeking primarily his own amusement, finds it more amusing to discord ponies rather than to observe what they will do in a given situation, he could still then simply discord Twilight straightaway and be done with it because we see that even though Fluttershy isn’t buying into his nonsense at all he can simply override her completely. Unless we are to assume that somehow Fluttershy was susceptible to that and Twilight isn’t? In which case we just get down into the weeds of what discording even is, and that leads us into trying to figure out what the extent of Discord’s powers even are which just seems totally contrary to the entire point of Discord: the point is not that Discord presents a threat of a certain power-level that needs to then be overcome, the point is that Discord is for all intents and purposes all-powerful, and so you need to outsmart him. Brains and not brawn, a perfect challenge for Twilight. So really I just find this whole situation with the maze totally bonkers and frankly I think this entire section needed a fairly thorough rewrite. It really is such a waste of a good villain, and it’s such a shame since the episode up till now has been rather good. I certainly understand the intent. Splitting up the Mane Six and turning them against eachother undermines the teamwork on which they rely so heavily, so it presents a challenge that directly targets their primary strength. However. That to me ought to have been a separate consideration from Discord altogether. Discord is completely sufficient in and of himself to present a challenge, and one can almost certainly find another theme to fit with that if strictly necessary. The theme they are going with, the undermining of teamwork, is fine and even quite interesting in principle, but I think it would have been much better suited to another villain. In fact, we will later get an ideal villain for just such a theme in the form of Chrysalis! The changelings could have perfectly undermined the teamwork of the Mane Six by impersonating some of them after splitting them up. So really, I feel that Discord and Chrysalis almost got their themes mixed up. Furthermore, if we switched aspects assigned to the two of them like this, we could have perhaps better emphasised Discord overpowering Celestia here, and instead had Chrysalis and the changelings act more surreptitiously and insidiously in their episode so that they don’t have to knock Celestia out of commission yet again. But that’s a little off-track, and I’ll try to add a charitable note: perhaps Discord was primarily interested in Twilight, in how she would fare without her friends to rely upon. That’s the most charitable way I can read it, but he didn’t seem especially interested in her in the palace or outside the maze to me.

So ratings-wise… Does the Discord thing bug me? A little, yeah. This is in a lot of ways a ‘solid’ episode. Discord is interesting in most respects, everything leading up to the maze is fantastic, and then the maze itself is fine but just has the things that bug me about it. So, I think it’s an 8 for enjoyment episode that got derailed by a -0.6 irritation buff for what I feel was a waste of an outstanding villain idea. I’ll give it a 7.4, overall, placing it on par with Party of One.