>>12661
>My possible (not 100% certain yet) favorite scene in this episode, Celestia giving the backstory on who Discord is and Discord making his dramatic appearance.
It is a great scene when I think about it. It's just that in the moment, I always end up finding myself too distracted by Discord's voice in the scene, I find it hard to hear and understand what he's saying here.
>Discord's appearing on the stained glass windows, it was all pretty elaborate and creative by the show's standards and I wonder how complicated it was to pull off.
From a concept perspective, it makes me sigh for missed opportunities, like Discord wreaking havoc by entering Twilight's books and appearing as the hero in the illustrations, messing up signs in Ponyville and such. But as much as I lament the perceived loss of more creative shenanigans with Discord, the logistics of actually pulling that all off was not something I'd considered.
> This is going to sound stupid, but I didn't really click how this directly parallels Friendship is Magic with Nightmare Moon directly tempting and attempting to mislead the Mane 6, expect this time it works...
I also didn't notice this. It's another example for me of how it all works neatly and cleverly from a writing perspective, but I still would have preferred the end result, I feel, if they just threw all the cleverness out the window and went for a fun episode. Having said that, I have an ironclad preference not just in MLP but in general for escapism. I'd even say it's one of the main things I pursue in life, weird as that is to say (it's too long to get into fully, but the short version is that I view humans as experiencing-machines, that's fundamentally what we do and whether you ascribe fundamental meaning or total lack thereof to reality, both inherent and self-created sources of meaning rest upon experiencing things, and so, to me, escapism is a more logical way to go about finding personal meaning because it provides a vastly broader array of experience than reality can) so the thematic depth of the episode, whilst I acknowledge it's value, is of a much lower priority for me. Speaking of which!
>>12662
>This is what I mean by the morality being complicated a bit: Fluttershy does not take the bait at all. Discord, impatient, just pokes her and she is cruel now
Here the episode is in a way poking fun at it's own idea. Fluttershy isn't playing ball not just with Discord, but with the thematic concept at the heart of the episode here, so Discord simply forces the matter. I always read the scene as essentially a joke, that everyone else gets tempted, but it's harder to tempt Fluttershy so they simply lampshade it. This is also the issue with having Discord tempt the five ponies: what does he fundamentally have to offer that Nightmare Moon didn't? If anything he's in a much worse bargaining spot that she ever was. Furthermore, if they do become tempted, they then have to stay tempted, and then also have their betrayal patched up in the end. That's a very tall order, and so in comes what is in this show, as it is in so many, a gimmick to make the conflict work more smoothly: mind control. With mind control, you can have your temptations, your betrayals, and your redemptions all much more quickly, cleanly and efficiently than with characters functioning as they normally would. I'd hesitate to call it a lazy form of writing (although in 99% of cases where mind control is used I'd argue it absolutely is being used in a really, really lazy way) but it is still here to solve a logistical problem with the writing which I feel has been forced by the aforementioned pursuit of theme. It's not so bad or egregious that it isn't worth it as a trade-off, necessarily, but for me personally I just find it very depressing that to make the plot work, the minds and wills of these characters was simply overwritten to pave the way for it.