MLP:FiM Season 2 Discussion (WARNING! Spoilers Within!)

[aspect]

 As a result, I am going to call it a day (I'm nocturnal) and probably finish my thoughts about this episode in a follow-up post tonight.  In the meantime I would absolutely love to hear about what all of your reactions to the episode were so far, and I'll catch you all later!

Sounds just about perfect.

But then on the flipside you have Cheerilee seemingly shirking her responsibility of actually teaching anything or acting as authority figure at nearly every opportunity, whether it be to cancel the day's lesson to watch Applebloom spin hoop-de-loops out in the school yard to the most recent incident of her "advising" her students on how to run their student newspaper by calling out to them "have fun!" and then quickly skipping out the door as quickly as she could.

I really enjoyed the animation at that moment, with Cheerilee bending her hoof around to close the door as she left. It looked pretty difficult and I sort of like it when the show makes me think about what it would be like to try and do stuff with pony limbs.

Anyway, my opinion of Cheerilee's carefree attitude is that she's a kid's ideal teacher, not an adult's. She's willing to suspend her own idea of what's important and engage the kids at their level. Which makes me wonder what she actually teaches them:




As you can hopefully see in these images, the chalkboard has had the same vaguely physics-y equation on it for quite a while. My feeling is that Cheerilee left it up because she was impressed enough with it that she didn't want to erase it.

The second reason why I was so excited about seeing this episode was the Cutie Mark Crusaders themselves.  I'm sorry, but they are just so much more interesting, funny, and fun to watch than the Mane 6 are most of the time!  In addition, their motivations are always clear, and it is their unending determined quest to procure their cutie marks that lead them on the most wild of adventures and perform the most zany of antics.

While I agree that their motivation and episodes are good, the CMC do not have as interesting a dynamic for me as the 6. I mean, they don't have a Pinkie Pie interrupting things with zany enthusiasm, a Twilight getting obsessed with research or trying to braak out of her sometimes antisocial shell, a Rainbow Dash keepin' it real... they don't even have a Spike.

It's also funny how they never learn the central lesson, that earning your cutie mark is about finding something you really care about, not just something you, I dunno, happen to be good at or whatever.

The whole symbolism cutie mark thing ... is interesting. I mean, how many of us actually find one single purpose in life we'd be willing to wear tatooed for all to see? And how many of us do so during childhood? Yet it *is* a big part of our culture that we're supposed to find some sort of a calling. ...I can see I'm about to google a bunch of sociology stuff and make this into a big rant, but I think I'll cut myself off. I have to be somewhere at 4 and I'd rather have this posted than not.

... there was definitely one thing in this episode that just didn't feel right to me, and that was the behavior of the ponies in town after it was revealed that "Gabby Gums" was really the three fillies Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo.  Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, and especially Big McIntosh are all supposed to all be responsible *adults* and trusted mentors to the fillies, but the way that they treated Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo after they found out that they were Gabby Gums was truly unacceptable adult behavior.  Blocking the children with force fields, dumping rain on them, giving them the silent treatment, and angrily telling them to "go away" is just not the way that adults should be reacting to small children.

You have to admit the force field thing was awesome. Back in Boast Busters Twilight Sparkle knew 25 spells; I what the count is like now? And I bet the force field was selective against the CMC, too!

But yeah, overall I totally agree on that particular montage. The way everyone automatically forgave them upon even seeing their picture in the newspaper was equally troubling, since really apologising doesn't necessarily make everytihng better; they should have also admitted the articles were mostly lies.

The Rainbow Dash/ raincloud thing was also pretty funny but a little too mean.

I'll have to write the rest of what I have to say later. Some quick points: 1) There's a Rainbow Dash doll in the CMC clubhouse! I don't know whether we've seen that before. 2) I think Plot Point 1 would be when Sweetie Belle notices Snail and Snips stuck together with gum. There's even the sort of dramatic music before it to set it up as an important moment. 3) Yay Celestia was in this episode!

Later Bronies!

[Ziel]

CMC episodes are win.

That's about all there is to say.       

[Ziel]

Sorry for the double post, but this one starts discussion of today's episode, MMMystery on the Friendship Express.

First, puns-a-plenty. My favorite was probably Mulia Mild. Then you have the other nods and references to other things, including Anything Goes (DeLovely), classic silent films, and James Bond.

But beyond that, the episode felt incredibly flat to me. There was nothing especially funny about it at all. And the resolution wasn't right. It's not like Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy to do something like eating that cake. Particularly Rarity and Fluttershy. And I find it even less believable that any of them would go as far as tricking/deceiving Pinkie Pie just to get a bite of cake that they know they shouldn't touch. And that they'll get to sample the following day anyhow.

And in the opening scene, why didn't they just have Twilight carry the cake with magic, or teleport it to the train?

[Shim]

And in the opening scene, why didn't they just have Twilight carry the cake with magic, or teleport it to the train?

In 'Putting Your Hoof Down', why didn't Fluttershy just FLY OVER THINGS?

[Narei Mooncatt]

I loved all the puns and references too, but I also think the overall plot was lacking. I don't know if they were trying to overcompensate by using all the one off gags, or if the whole point of the show was for the gags with a little plot thrown in for a story. I must say that I liked Rarity's hair over her eye. 

Not a lot else I can say about this episode right now. Been a long day and it's bed time for me. 

[Hoagiebot]

The Hoagiebot is back... with a vengeance!   

Well, here we are on the eve of what has probably had to have been the most hyped My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic event ever, the Canterlot royal wedding.  So monumental is this event going to be in fact that it has even forced me to finally re-emerge from my dark computer-laden cave to type out a post after a 20-day-long absence from this thread.  Why am I finally making a re-appearance now after all of this time?  Well, I have been actually been simmering and stewing over this upcoming royal wedding season finale for a very long time.  Ever since I first learned about the upcoming royal wedding season finale, Princess Cadance, and Shining Armor from an Equestria Daily post that was made way back on December 13, 2011, I have been secretly nerd-raging about the whole darn thing.  I had been wanting to discuss my thoughts and concerns about the upcoming two-part special season finale here ever since that time, but I held myself back for two reasons.  First of all, even though this is a spoiler-friendly thread, I have perceived over time that the prevailing sentiment amongst the regular posters here is that the majority of everyone here doesn't really want to discuss things that are happening more than a few days in advance.  There were posts here about members wanting to steer clear of this forum for a few days to avoid accidentally reading spoilers when the episode "Hearts and Hooves Day" was accidentally leaked onto iTunes days before it was supposed to air, for example.  An even more pertinent reason for why I haven't fanboi-ranted about the upcoming Canterlot Royal Wedding before now was because I was already far too involved with writing my exhaustive text-walls on all of the other new episodes that premiered this season.  With my episode review posts taking more and more hours to write, with some of them having to be written across several days because of that fact, I just didn't have the drive left in me to then go ahead and start writing a second massive text-wall about this upcoming season finale once I had finished one of those posts.  And while I definitely would have preferred to have written my concerns about this upcoming 2-part event well before now so that we all could have had some time to discuss them, I unfortunately just couldn't find the time to do it.  Since many of you will have probably seen the new "A Canterlot Wedding" episodes before you ever read this post anyway, I guess you will just have to see how many of my predicted misgivings turn out to be correct and how many of them turn out to be completely unfounded, and then precede to tell me how right or wrong that I was.

Now, before I begin ranting let me say that I know next-to-nothing about these upcoming episodes other than having seen a few of the leaked and promotional tidbits about them that have been posted on Equestria Daily.  In fact, I may even know less about these upcoming episodes than some of you might, because I haven't been following the new 'Pony developments as much as I should have been over the past few weeks, and apparently there were some exclusive preview clips of the upcoming episode that were released that I never got to see before they were taken down.  However, I have seen and heard enough about this upcoming two-part episode to get my fanboi nerdiness in a twist about some things anyway, which can pretty much be summed up in three main points:

I. Princess Cadance is a Winged-Unicorn

As those of you who have read my previous posts in this thread probably remember, there is one central subject of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic continuity that is sure to switch me from out-of-universe story-structure analysis mode into in-universe ranting fanboi mode whenever it gets screwed with, and that is the continuity that was established by the very simple "Mare in the Moon" story that was told in the opening minutes of the very first episode of season 1, "Friendship is Magic Part 1".  I really liked that story, and I felt that it setup the magical land of Equestria beautifully.  According to the story, you had two magical regal winged-unicorn sisters, one who controlled the sun and created the day, and the other who controlled the moon and created the night.  Together they kept the Kingdom of Equestria in balance and harmony, and watched over all of the unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies that were their loyal subjects for at least a thousand years.  While this backstory is fairly simple, I have still always really liked it as a strong base foundation for this show.  It has a very nice yin-yang kind of balance about it, and it has a very magical and legendary feel to it.  It established that there were two regal winged unicorn sisters, that they were each at least 1,000 years old and possibly even immortal, that they had magical powers that rival gods, and that they treat their pony subjects as if they were their protective charges, almost as if all of the ponies of Equestria were like their children.  For me it worked really well.  But it seems that as soon as Lauren Faust left he Executive Producer role after the wrap-up of the first season that many of the staff writers decided that this backstory was just too simple and elegant for their tastes, and that they just had to add to it and complicate things.

The first change to this simple and elegant backstory was the addition of the villain Discord at the beginning of the second season.  While I was never really a huge fan of Discord as a villain (I always kind of thought of Discord as being too much of a generic doomsday-style villain and almost suicidally overconfident), the writer M.A. Larson did a pretty good job of working Discord in so that he really didn't disrupt the original backstory of Equestria as portrayed by "Friendship is Magic Part 1."  After all, it was never really touched upon in "Friendship is Magic Part 1" about what Equestria was like before the two winged-unicorn sisters appeared and introduced order to the world.  Who is to say that before Celestia and Luna could use their magic to establish balance that they didn't have to combat an ancient spirit of disharmony first?  While up to that point I kind of viewed the two sisters as kind of the "creators" of Equestria, who is to say that when they brought order to chaos that chaos wasn't actually a personified being?  So in that case, my nerd rage was pretty much averted since the "Return of Harmony" episodes were so thoughtfully done.

But then a less than careful writer came along, and also decided to take a crack at retconning Equestria's ancient past: Merriwether Williams.  Her episode, "Hearth's Warming Eve," was borderline blasphemous as far as I am concerned, and put me in a nerd rage at right around Christmas time when I should have instead been filled with the spirit of love, giving, and goodwill.  According to Ms. Williams's tale, the ponies no longer needed any god-like winged-unicorns to establish Equestria, control the sun and the moon, or maintain balance and harmony.  Now the regular old unicorns could raise the sun and the moon by themselves.  Now I don't know about you, but it has been fairly well established that Twilight Sparkle is one of the most gifted magical unicorns that Equestria has ever seen, and thus far we haven't seen her as being capable of moving anything that is much larger than a Ursa Minor or a water tower around with her unicorn magic.  While those are impressive feats in their own right, that is nowhere near moving something as large as moving the sun or the moon.  So the idea that unicorns can control celestial objects all on their own without the help of a pair of winged-unicorn living-gods doesn't sit too well with me.  In addition, if the unicorns did have this ability all along, than the villain Nightmare Moon would have ceased being such a serious threat as the unicorns could have stood up to her and possibly raised the sun anyway.  Instead you see or hear about no such possibility-- the unicorns seem to be as helpless against Nightmare Moon as everyone else.  In addition, if the ponies were already ruling themselves before the regal sisters came, then why would the pony kingdoms willingly submit to Celestia and Luna's rule?  It makes Celestia and Luna suddenly appear to be almost like mafia bosses or gangsters, moving in on the separate rulers of the earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn rulers' respective turfs, muscling them out with their more powerful magic, and then extorting the three kingdoms for their "protection."  You know, kind of like how Saddam Hussein maintained control over the three separate Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish territories in Iraq through his strong-arm tactics, or how Tito held together the various Socialist Republics that made up the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  And to make Hearth Warming Eve's rewrite of Equestria's ancient history even more aggravating, they then decided to carelessly show a banner for the new unified pony kingdoms that had the regal pony sisters displayed on it even though the Hearth's Warming Eve story was stated to take place before the reign of the regal pony sisters.  *sigh*

Now, with the upcoming Canterlot royal wedding we have another potential wrench being thrown in the works through the introduction of Princess Cadance.  It's not that I don't like her because she is a princess-- we were previously introduced the the unicorn Prince Blueblood during season 1 after all.  Instead, Princess Cadance raises my ire because she is a third winged-unicorn.  You see, winged-unicorns are not exactly your typical mill-of-the-run ponies. They're special, and up until now there have only been two of them, and they have been the foundation of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's entire universe.  Based on what we already know about winged-unicorns from previous MLP:FiM episodes, three things can be said about them:

1. They can live thousands of years
2. They have absolutely immensely powerful, almost god-like if not god-like magical abilities
3. They have a tendency to be in charge of controlling something, such as absolutely massive celestial bodies

The fact that the writers decided to throw precedent to the wind and make Princess Celestia's newly invented niece another winged-unicorn forces me to now have to ask the following tough questions:

1. How old is Princess Cadance?  Is she thousands of years old like Celestia and Luna?  Are we going to have a similar situation with her marrying a regular old mortal unicorn like we did in The Lord of the Rings trilogy when an immortal elf fell in love with a mortal human, as in will Shining Armor live his life, grow old, and die while his bride seemingly doesn't age a day?  And, since Cadence is possibly immortal or practically so, has she married mortals before?  Shining Armor could potentially be just one in a long line of stallions that she has married and outlived in an endless cycle stretching thousands of years.  In fact, for all we know that could actually be the shocking "dark secret" about Cadance that Twilight Sparkle discovers and then has to warn her older brother about.  If that actually somehow does turn out to be the case, the plot will be an example of what TVTropes.org calls, "A Bride with a Past."

2. Does Princess Cadance have god-like magical powers like every other winged-unicorn princess that we have previously seen?  While Princess Celestia seems to be fairly subdued when it comes to flexing her unimaginably powerful magical muscle, her younger sister, Luna, has never been so restrained.  From her we can see that winged-unicorns can move immense celestial objects, shapeshift into several separate sentient entities at one time (The Shadowbolts), create mist, storm clouds, thunder, and lightning, repel royal guards with said lightning, make cliffs collapse underneath other ponies' feet, turn into mist herself, make inanimate objects come to life (the toy spiders from the Nightmare Night carnival game), and other such terrifying feats.  How much of this kind of immense power does Cadance have?  If her dark secret is that she is some kind of an antagonist, would she end up using her powers?  It seems that in the teaser scenes that the HUB has been showing that Cadance is going to be played off as some kind of manipulative character, such as TVTrope's "The Vamp."  However, how will she react when she gets backed into a corner?  Will she continue to attempt to manipulate those around her by pulling off something like a "Wounded Gazelle Gambit," or will she resort to using her god-like magic to such a degree that only the Elements of Harmony could have a chance at slowing her down?  Hmm, maybe that's were all of the doppelgangers of the Mane 6 that I saw in a teaser clip of this episode came from...

3. Does Princess Cadance have control over any kind of celestial object?  As I stated above, I always like the simple yin-yang sort of quality that Celestia and Luna had controlling the sun and the moon.  How is the presence of a third winged-unicorn going to disrupt this?  Will she control only a minor celestial object, like shooting stars or Venus or something, or will she have no celestial object-controlling responsibilities at all?

4. What the heck is Cadance a princess of, exactly?  Trottingham?  Las Pegasus?  Some other kind of rival pony kingdom that lies outside of Equestria?  Inquiring skeptical Hoagiebots want to know!

All I can say is that if the MLP:FiM writers are going to do something as potentially world-shattering as making Princess Cadance a full-blown winged-unicorn, in my opinion they had better have a darn good plot-crucial reason for doing so.  And that reason better be something more significant than to give Hasbro's merchandising arm a new princess pony to sell.  Winged-unicorns are significant characters that underpin the backstory of the entire MLP:FiM series.  In my opinion, the writers shouldn't take messing around with them lightly, and the Rule of Cool better apply to their inclusion.  Oh, that and Merriwether Williams should have a legal restraining order against her ever being able to create a new one.  With that said, as much as I try to never let myself know who wrote a MLP:FiM episode before I get to watch it, somewhere it came out that Meghan McCarthy wrote " A Canterlot Wedding" parts 1 and 2, and I accidentally read it.    While I would much rather have M.A. Larson be responsible for the handling of new princess winged-unicorns due to the really good job that he did with expanding the character of Princess Luna, hopefully Meghan McCarthy will do alright.  On one hand she has written some pretty good episodes in the past such as "Dragonshy," but on the other hand she is also credited with helping Merriwether Williams with the story for "Hearts and Hooves Day," which is too few degrees of separation between Megan McCarthy and the mess that is Merriwether Williams/"Hearts and Hooves Day" for my comfort.  I guess that we will just have to wait and see how well all of this gets handled.

II. Twilight Sparkle has a Previously Unmentioned Older Brother

I absolutely hate it when a show suddenly introduces a new never before seen or ever even mentioned sibling or parent character into a plot.  It is a form of the trope, "Remember the New Guy," and it absolutely aggravates me to no end, especially if the character doesn't have some absolutely massive "Rule of Cool" appeal or massive importance to a plot that is entertaining enough that it causes me to forgive the transgression.  We are now 50-episodes into the show, and never once has Twilight Sparkle been seen with an older brother, even in flashbacks or photographs, or even mentioned the existence of an older brother.  In fact, due to her lack of socialization skills with other ponies her age early on in season 1 (she had to look up a book on how to have a slumber party for crying out loud), you would be hard-pressed to convince me that she has been anything other than an only child let alone a younger sibling that could have benefited from watching her older brother experience things first while growing up.

Even more damaging however is the level of importance that her older brother has been said to have-- according the the MLP:FiM Wiki, he is the Captain of Celestia's entire Royal Guard!  At the very least, this new revelation could potentially throw the first two episodes of season 1, "Friendship is Magic" parts 1 and 2, on their head!  Why?  Well, if Princess Celestia didn't believe Twilight's warning about the Mare of the Moon escaping, then why didn't Twilight then proceed to warn her older brother?  He is the Captain of the Royal Guard, Princess Celestia's bodyguards, after all, and he could have still taken precautions to protect the princess whether Celestia believed in the potential threat or not.  And being Twilight Sparkle's brother, he would have been potentially more likely to have taken her warnings seriously.  And where was he when it actually came time to protect Celestia from Nightmare Moon?  Why wasn't he attempting to engage Nightmare Moon with his troops?  Then there are all of those times when Twilight was thrown in potential conflict with the Royal Guards, such as when Fluttershy bird-napped Philomena, when Twilight was trying to sneak into the "Starswirl the Bearded" wing of the Canterlot archives, etc.  If Twilight always had a direct line to the Captain of the guards, then you would think that she might have a bit more influence over them, or be able to ask her brother for a favor to help her and her friends get out of their binds with them.

Like with my comments about the writers adding a new winged-unicorn princess above, adding a previously unmentioned sibling of the series's primary antagonist is a pretty dramatic and sweeping change, and it better not have been made lightly.  As with all big troubling changes to continuity, it can be made to be worth it if its contribution to the story is entertaining enough.  However, the bigger the alteration to the show's established continuity the bigger that the addition has to pay off to be considered to have been worth it, and giving Twilight Sparkle a "Remember the New Guy" brother is a pretty tall order to make pay off.  The introduction of Shining Armor as Twilight Sparkle's brother better be absolutely essential for an totally awesome plot, because if the only reason that he is there is to provide a convenient excuse to get the various members of the Mane 6 involved in the wedding party and nothing more then you're going to have a very upset Hoagiebot on your hands.  

III. They are Taking Way to Much Imagery from Prince William and Kate Middleton's Real-Life Royal Wedding

Shining Armor's uniform.  The ridiculous wedding hats.  The newlyweds having the traditional first wave and kiss in front of their adoring royal subjects.  The fact that there is going to be a royal wedding at all.  All of this reeks of an episode plot that has been "ripped from the headlines."  I expect this sort of thing from cop shows such as "Law & Order" or "Criminal Minds," but I hate it when it appears in animated fantasy works.  While all fiction is inspired in one way or another by a writer's past experiences, since MLP:FiM is supposed to be "fantasy," I don't exactly want to find it mirroring the recent current events of the modern world.  I am watching fantasy shows to try to escape from reality, at least briefly for 22-minutes, so I don't want to see any references to current events in the real world suddenly reminding me of what it is that I am trying to escape from.  While I suppose that I can maybe be made to swallow the fact that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is having a royal wedding less than a year after a member of the British royal family had one, I wish that they didn't use so much imagery from the recent British royal wedding in it or to promote it.  Equestria is a mythical fantasy land of magic-wielding ponies for crying out loud, so they should be able to do so much more amazing fantastical over-the-top stuff with their weddings than any real-world counterpart could ever hope to achieve.  Let's have magical shape-shifting dresses, gryphon-pulled coaches, floating alters in the sky, amazing magic powered-firework light shows, and other amazing magical displays that would put Gandolf the Grey from The Lord of the Rings to shame.  This is a royal Canterlot wedding after all, so lets turn the spectacle to Great and Powerful Trixie levels times 1000!  But instead, from what I have seen from teaser screenshots of the upcoming episodes anyway, it all seems to look way too much like last year's real royal wedding did, and that is both very lazy and a shame.  In a land as magical as Canterlot the ponies should be capable of so much more.  In any case, since I haven't seen more than a few seconds of footage from this episode I could definitely be wrong and there could actually be some amazing visual wonders in store for us, and I am absolutely hoping that that turns out to be the case.  But so far this royal wedding is turning out to look fairly mundane to me, and if that turns out to be true it would be such a waste of potential.

As a bonus rant:  While this isn't one of my three primary concerns about the upcoming "A Canterlot Wedding" episodes, there is one very important character that I have yet to see in any of the promotional screenshots or clips that I have seen thus far: Princess Luna.  It seems that with the sole exception of the "Luna Eclipsed" episode, poor Princess Luna has been completely given the shaft by the writers ever since the Mane 6 saved her from her evil path with the Elements of Harmony way back in the second episode of the first season.  I am starting to wonder if Princess Luna even lives anywhere near Canterlot, or if she has her own castle somewhere else hidden on the other side of the planet or something, because we never see her, not even at large events where her sister is present.  She wasn't even around for the huge Grand Galloping Gala!  Hmm-- Maybe she lives on the moon... or, maybe her evil sister Trollestia re-imprisoned her on the moon or something and that's why we never see her...  Anyway, I digress-- All I can say is that with this being a massive royal wedding and all, and with Princess Luna possibly being Princess Cadance's aunt (or maybe even more), she had better be there at the wedding.  I pray that Megan McCarthy gave Princess Luna some kind of role in this wedding plot or at the very least some kind of a bit speaking part somewhere during the course of this two-part story.  And if Princess Luna doesn't end up at least appearing in the episode, even if only just in the background, well, that would be an unforgivable sin.  So I pray that poor Princess Luna isn't given the shaft once again, and that she finally gets to take her rightful place along side her sister, because it would be a crying shame if this show pulled a "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome" trope on a full-blown princess, and an absolutely awesome princess to boot!

Well, those are my fanboi nerd-rage concerns that I have been carrying around since last December for this absolutely massive upcoming MLP:FiM event.  With the premier of these episodes now only a little less than three hours away, D-Day is upon us, and H-Hour is growing near.  Hopefully all of the misgivings that I mentioned above turn out to be completed unfounded, and that the "A Canterlot Wedding" episodes turn out to be the most epic MLP:FiM episodes that we have ever seen in our entire existences.  After all, according to Sethisto from Equestria Daily, who got to actually watch a screening of these episodes early:

I'm sure you are all curious about the actual screening of the episode though!  For the sake of spoilers, the only thing  I can say is that it is seriously the most epic two part we have received so far.  Back to back, it feels like a Lion King style high budget Disney movie.

Man, saying that the "A Canterlot Wedding" episodes are like Disney's The Lion King in any kind of capacity is one heck of an endorsement, so these episodes may really be something if they live up to the hype.  And while I highly doubt that there will be a Lion King-esque Elton John-sung "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" love scene with Spitfire laying on her back in the grass to make this hopeless-romantic Hoagiebot's dreams come true, with 44-minutes to work with this episode definitely has plenty of running time with which to pull off something truly amazing.  We'll just have to wait and see what happens, and you can bet that afterward there will be a massive Hoagiebot text-wall review of the whole shindig coming over the next few days once I get a chance to knuckle down and write one!  

Until then!

[Narei Mooncatt]

My reaction after part 1 so far?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKWpGJ4Xhw8

[Narei Mooncatt]

Ok, just finished watching it live for once. YAY! Sooooooo much to say about this that I'm not even gonna start. Other than to simply say I was worried that they were going to use the old "Elements of Harmony" trick again but nice job on the resolution. That and the best pony came back. Vinyl Scratch!

[Shim]

I'm currently watching part 1, and this is interesting to me because I completely understand what Twilight is going through.

I have an older sister getting married in a few months ! (No worries! He's an awesome, amazing guy!)

[aspect]

Good episode! I felt like the beginning was kind of slow, maybe because I didn't sympathise with it like others might (if Twilight hasn't heard her brother is getting married, it's probably because Twilight never leaves the library or writes to anypony but Celestia). But as soon as I found out Cadance had a love spell she started to seem sinister and the wedding seemed very suspicious! Of course it turned out her love spell wasn't manipulative at all, but it still hooked my interest and things seemed that way for a while.

Shining Armor did appear in the FiM world out of the blue but I guess I just don't expect as high of levels of continuity as Hoagiebot does. I liked that he had some abilities similar to Twilight's.

Cadance herself was... just a random alicorn (also a princess I guess!), which means Luna and Celestia are goddesses who happen to be alicorns. (I can't help but use the term alicorn for winged unicorn.) This vaguely opens up the possibility that there are many other alicorns, which I certainly don't mind so long as none of them are goddesses. Also "Princess" seems to be a pretty generic title in Equestria I guess I can accept that.

Of course, the changelings are the most interesting addition to the setting. I guess they're some sort of pony-shaped insect? They're pretty cool looking and I'm sure they'll make good external threats in fanfic. I wonder if there are any other odd pony-shaped magical creatures out there?

The first song didn't catch my interest all that much but I really liked the "this day is going to be perfect" piece! Especially the animation at the beginning of it.

One thing that bothered me was, despite Luna and Celestia both being in the episode I really didn't feel like anything was done with them. Luna's lines were so odd and irrelevant. -"Rest, my sister. As always, I will guide the night." She just needed to point out she doesn't spend her time at another castle as Hoagiebot suggested. -"Who goes there? Stay indoors, Twilight Sparkle!" didn't make much sense to me actually; was there a curfew or something Twilight was disobeying? Didn't seem like it! -"Hello everypony, did I miss anything?" seems like another 'remember Luna still exists!' sort of line. I guess Luna's thoroughly nocturnal but I still would have liked her lines to actually mean something.

As for Celestia, she had more of a part in the plot, and a few good moments (for example Twilight didn't cry until Celestia reprimanded her for calling Cadance evil, which makes sense given how much Twilight respects Celestia), but she just turned back into the all-too-perfect ruler at the end. She clearly needed to apologize to Twilight, which would have been interesting given that Twilight would have difficulty conceiving of the fact that Celestia might ever need to apologize for anything.

[Foxxhoria]

Holy hay that was an awesome episode.

The first part was a bit slow but it set everything up nicely; I didn't really like the brother song, it was a bit cheesy for me, but that was just a part of the episode. The cliffhanger was kind of awesomely out of nowhere and was when you knew things were about to take a turn for the awesome.

And they did; the caves, the villain song, the changelings, and then the awesome battle.
The ending was kind of abrupt, but I had a fun enough time.

It was a bit disappointing that there was so little mane 6 action; it was definitely a Twilight episode, though I guess that does kind of make sense considering it revolved around her brother and all. Still it could have done with more...
But what bits they did do were awesome and fully appropriate to their characters - it was awesome that Rainbow Dash got to do what she loved and pull of another sonic rainboom at the end. After all she had thrown at her this season, it was a refreshing return to what made her Dash. I could just feel her enjoyment!
Despite their lack of screentime, they were all wonderfully in-character.

This was a very epic way to end a...rather interesting season.

[Ryffnah]

I enjoyed this finale a lot, though I feel like all the hype had my expectations a little too high.  I'm definitely curious to see Hoagibot's take on it.  I'm not sure it will fare well stacked against the concerns he had going into it.

[Ziel]

I actually felt like the quality definitely lived up to the hype they put into it. I've discussed this with Shim quite a bit, and we seem to agree that these two episodes combined have easily been the high point of season 2, and may be some of the best writing we've seen in the show over both seasons. Frankly, it was 2/3rds of the way to being a legit movie. And I feel like they could have easily slowed down the second episode to show a little more detail in certain spots.

That said, if you were expecting 'just a two-part wedding episode', you would have been in for quite a surprise. I could see Twilight's (Twilee's ) disapproval of the wedding coming pretty early. And it was quite obvious fairly early that the first Cadence you meet is fake. But I can't fault the show for being predictable or a bit transparent and/or overly obvious with the foreshadowing. I mean, it is made for kids after all, and they need to be able to pick up on these things, too.

I've read complaints by some people (other places) that called the finale 'too Disney'. And sure, it does feel very Disney, but it was still awesome. I grew up watching Disney movies, so seeing a cartoon like this mimic the formula (successfully, I might add), brought back some memories.

So, yes, I would put these two as a pair as my personal high point for this season. I still say it's hard to compare anything from season 1 to season 2, though.

[Narei Mooncatt]

I just watched (most of...) it again and I do have a couple of small complaints. In the beginning, Twilee was talking about how close her and her brother was and that *AFTER* she moved to ponyville, they saw less and less of each other. You'd think if that was true, we should have seen, or at least heard about him, in the begining. Granted, the writers then wouldn't have likely known this finale would happen. Instead, they should have had a different story that didn't make it seem like he should have been in prior episodes. 

...

...

...

Crud. I forgot what my other complaint was already. XD

[aspect]

I rewatched the episode too and there were two important things I didn't notice last time:

1) Princess Luna is actually still living on the moon! She doesn't just wake up at night; she was shown coming down out of the sky at night! Seeing as Celestia doesn't go sleep on the sun as far as I know, I feel this is a little unfair.

2) Twilight shrugged in response to Rarity's "...not only a princess, but a captain of the Royal Guard?" right after the first song. Seeing as Shrugpony is probably the most famous pony image (well, pony "reaction image") there is I can't help but think this was a deliberate nod. But Twilight's shrug looked pretty awkward compared to the standard shrugpony pose! She was holding her hoofs facing down instead of up. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the pose?

[Ryffnah]

I don't really have any complaints against this finale.  Like I said, I really enjoyed it.  However, it didn't blow me away the way that the season opener with Dischord did.  The songs didn't impress me like Fluttershy's song in "May the Best Pet Win" or the super-brilliant Music Man parody in the Super Cider Squeezey episode.

The changelings did look really neat, but the concept of changelings isn't a new one in any way.  I suppose that Dischord -- chaos personified -- isn't that new of an idea either, but I felt like they did a really excellent job with him.  All the weird things he created really felt amazingly chaotic, and the way that he turned each of the ponies against their fundamental nature was really, really entertaining to see.  Whereas, when the changelings all attacked, they didn't seem to do anything particularly surprising or clever -- they just turned into sort of clone armies.  Which was, admittedly, entertaining, but it didn't end up being essential to the plot at all, since the main six basically failed.  The final solution -- Cadence breaking the spell on Shining Armor with love -- was actually completely disconnected from the clone army antics.  At least, that's what I remember.

I should probably watch it again.

[Ziel]

The changelings did look really neat, but the concept of changelings isn't a new one in any way.  I suppose that Dischord -- chaos personified -- isn't that new of an idea either, but I felt like they did a really excellent job with him.  All the weird things he created really felt amazingly chaotic, and the way that he turned each of the ponies against their fundamental nature was really, really entertaining to see.  Whereas, when the changelings all attacked, they didn't seem to do anything particularly surprising or clever -- they just turned into sort of clone armies.  Which was, admittedly, entertaining, but it didn't end up being essential to the plot at all, since the main six basically failed.  The final solution -- Cadence breaking the spell on Shining Armor with love -- was actually completely disconnected from the clone army antics.  At least, that's what I remember.

I should probably watch it again.

I wouldn't say they were entirely disconnected. The 6 went for the elements to defeat Chrysalis. Had they gotten them, I firmly believe they would have been powerful enough to take her out. However, they couldn't get to them because there were simply too many changelings. They got surrounded and just had no way past them to the elements. So the changeling army brought them back to their queen as prisoners. This is the key to the whole thing. The real Cadence was stuck and couldn't get to Shining Armor in order for their combined magic to work. Twilight needed to be brought back after they failed in order to let her out to get him.

It's a small connection, but it did fit (and was necessary). And it certainly was better than 'oh, they got the elements of harmony, game over' again.

What I thought was interesting was that Chrysalis was feeding off Cadence's love for Shining Armor, but ultimately it was their love that ended up defeating her.

[Ryffnah]

I wouldn't say they were entirely disconnected. The 6 went for the elements to defeat Chrysalis. Had they gotten them, I firmly believe they would have been powerful enough to take her out. However, they couldn't get to them because there were simply too many changelings. They got surrounded and just had no way past them to the elements. So the changeling army brought them back to their queen as prisoners. This is the key to the whole thing. The real Cadence was stuck and couldn't get to Shining Armor in order for their combined magic to work. Twilight needed to be brought back after they failed in order to let her out to get him.

It's a small connection, but it did fit (and was necessary). And it certainly was better than 'oh, they got the elements of harmony, game over' again.

What I thought was interesting was that Chrysalis was feeding off Cadence's love for Shining Armor, but ultimately it was their love that ended up defeating her.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just let Queen Chrysalis (such a great name, by the way) catch them in the first place?

[Ryffnah]

I think this comic does a decent job of capturing why I think that Dischord is a better villain than Queen Chrysalis (again, despite the excellent name):  http://discorderlyconduct.tumblr.com/post/21566911691/discord-is-best-queen

[Ziel]

Wouldn't it have been easier to just let Queen Chrysalis (such a great name, by the way) catch them in the first place?

I think you're missing the point. That's kind of like saying about any movie "why did they go through all the plot development instead of just defeating the bad guy to start with". I suppose it would make all movies take about 15 minutes to watch.

The thing is, they didn't know Cadence and Shining Armor would have such a strong power of love that they could do what they did. But the elements of harmony are a known power. And as I said before, I fully believe that they would have defeated her had they gotten to them. They didn't know they were going to run into such a large changeling army. They fought their best, but just got outnumbered too hard. What's better, giving it your all and fighting for it even if you fail, or saying from the start 'eh, there might be a big army out there that'll capture us if we go, so we'll just chill here and see what happens'?

Was this part of the episode rushed? Yes, quite. I'll give you that. They could have easily put another 10 minutes into that part of the episode to convey some things a little better. But unfortunately they didn't have time.

[Hoagiebot]

This weekend I didn't get a chance to watch the two-part MLP:FiM "A Canterlot Wedding" season finale until very late on Saturday night/Sunday morning after I got back from my monthly "Lake Area Furry Friends" bowling meet.  Luckily, out of my two brony friends that were also at the meet, one of them hadn't yet seen the new episodes yet either (in fact we both actually greeted each other by saying how we hadn't seen them yet and to not spoil anything for one another), and the other brony friend, who had watched the new episodes, was smart enough not to say anything beyond telling me that Luna did end up making an appearance in the episodes, and that I would end up hating Tori Spelling before the night was over.  Naturally, he was right on both accounts!  

When I did finally get to watch the episodes, I made as big of an event out of it as I could-- I made sure that the rest of the family was long in bed so that I would have no distractions, I proudly wore my Derpy Hooves t-shirt while I watched, I had a bag of steaming-hot Taco Bell by my side so I could enjoy one of my favorite guilty-pleasure meals while I was watching, and I had my faithful lap-cat Merlin comfortably curled up in my lap.  As Iron Will would say, I was ready to rock!    As you all know, I have had a lot of concerns for a long time about this upcoming season finale.  And one of the very first things that I noticed while watching the season finale was how the writers/production crew of this episode seemed to at least attempt to address some of them.  In fact, I very much got the impression that somewhere along the line during the production of this episode that there must have been some sort of big powwow by all of the production staff where they all gathered around and had a discussion about what they should do about all of the backstory revisions that they were making, and I have a feeling that this conversation went somewhere along the lines of this:

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Production Person #1: "Hey, um, the writer wants to invent a new older brother for our show's main character, Twilight Sparkle."

Production Person #2: "Seriously?  But we have already produced 50-straight episodes of this show where Twilight Sparkle has acted like an only child.  In 1,100-minutes of running time we have never even hinted at her ever having a sibling-- we have only ever showed her with her parents!  Creating a new older brother now would be creating a "Remember the New Guy" trope, and one that is related to our show's main character no less!  All of the 20 and 30-somethings that live in basements and complain endlessly on Internet forums about this show are going to roast our butts over this for sure!"

Production Person #1: "I know I know, but the writer doesn't want to have to come up with a more creative way to involve the entire Mane 6 in her royal wedding plot.  If she makes the wedding involve a family member of Twilight's, then that provides a convenient way for both Twilight and her friends to be invited to the wedding and get involved."

Production Person #2: "I get it, but what are we going to do about those 20 and 30-something fans that have no lives and live in basements?"

Production Person #1: "I know what we should do!  We can introduce our backstory revisions through song!  We will just have Twilight Sparkle sing about how much she loves her older brother and how close they are, while at the same time showing a flashback montage or something!  Everybody loves Daniel Ingram's songs!  Even those godforsaken 20-something Internet know-it-alls, who are the bane of our very existence, can't badmouth a Daniel Ingram song!  It would be almost like blasphemy for them to do so!  That will shut up those whining over-analyzing fanbois!  I'm telling you that it will work!  It's genius!"
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While naturally I have absolutely no idea if such a conversation ever took place, I am going to tell you right now that introducing the Shining Armor backstory revision through song didn't really work for me, and that I am still going to whine about it!  I pretty much have to!  I live in a basement and have no life, so what else better do I have to do?  

Anyway, let's go through all of the concerns that I had before these episodes aired, and lets see where my fears were founded, unfounded, and addressed.  This means that I will get to quote a lot of stuff that was written by my absolute most favorite person on these forums, myself, and that you will all get to be treated to some real hardcore Hoagiebot on Hoagiebot action!  

II. Twilight Sparkle has a Previously Unmentioned Older Brother

While I am addressing my concerns out of order, since I already brought up Shining Armor I guess that I will start off with him.  To be completely honest, I am actually feeling a bit divided on how hard I should tear into his introduction into the series.  On one hand, as an amateur writer myself I have always felt that telling an entertaining story should always be a writer's primary priority, and that if a writer needs to make some additions, revisions, or outright retcons to a pre-established continuity as a necessity to pull that off then they should do so.  Or in other words, the ends can sometimes justify the means.  At the same time however, messing with continuity can be a dangerous thing, and even if you do have an awesome story idea in mind you should mess with continuity as little and as respectfully as possible.

To explain further, I am going to reference some ideas that were mentioned by Eric Burns in his absolutely awesome essay on story retconning, "Retconning: Just Another Day Like All The Others."  In the essay, Eric Burns writes:

[Retconning] is a tool, in other words, but it is one that should be used very, very, very rarely, because it deliberately breaks the emotional investment your fans have in your core product: your story. You take a significant risk that your fans will not then reinvest every time you do it. Which means you'll lose some of your fans every time you do it.

It's also a tool to be used sparingly because the retcon will always feel like fiat, whereas the continuity it replaced was organic. It grew and built over the course of months or years or decades. The resulting patches will be weaker, and won't take the strain the original would.

And it is a tool to be used sparingly because once you start to retcon, you start wanting to do more. It's a rare writer or editor who does what he feels is a necessary retcon who won't then throw in a bunch of flourishes just because they thought it would be cool. And even if the retcon could have worked all right, the flourishes inevitably cause destruction and lay waste to all they touch.

Shining Armor is an example of what Eric Burns calls a "Category One Retcon," or a "Now Revealed! A Lost Tale of the Hero!" type of retcon.  Category One retcons are generally the least damaging and least likely to be poorly received by longtime fans because they are not actually contradicting anything that has already been established over the course of the show, but are instead adding to the established history of the show by shoehorning additional history or backstory in.  These retcons tend to take the form of, "while we never explicitly showed you or told you about X before now, he/she/it actually existed all along!"  In other words, it tends to work only because the writers never explicitly said at some point that X wasn't there or couldn't happen.  Often times such a small addition to a show's in-universe history can be done well, and can be well received by fans.  But just as Eric Burns warned, once a writer starts to retcon, it can become very easy for the writer to forget that they should be changing things as little as possible, and they start adding "cool" flourishes to their retcon which further complicates things, adds additional strain to their long-time viewers' emotional involvement with the fictional world and the characters, and increases the risk of ruining things and alienating fans.

I think that it is all of the flourishing that Megan McCarthy did with Shining Armor really ruins it for me in this case.  In "A Canterlot Wedding," she introduces him as Twilight Sparkle's older brother.  O.K., that's bad enough, especially since as I mentioned above, Twilight Sparkle is essentially this show's main protagonist.  But then we are told that Shining Armor and Twilight have always been extremely close, and that he is the best and closest friend that Twilight Sparkle has ever had in her entire life, even though she has never mentioned him before.  O.K., that's a lot worse.  But *then* the writer has Twilight Sparkle mention that she has still been seeing him this entire time, albeit less than she used to, while she has been living in Ponyville.  O.K., that's even worse still!  But then the writer goes even further, and says that Twilight's brother has an extremely prominent and super-important job as the Captain of the entire Royal Guard, a group that we have encountered quite often over the course the series!  For crying out loud!  Enough flourishing already!!!  Holy cow, it was bad enough that they were introducing a never-before-mentioned older brother, but why did the writer have to then go ahead and embellish Shining Armor's past involvement in Twilight's life, and his current involvement in Equestria now, and lay it on thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker!

If you think of a retcon as an unpleasant pill that you as a long-time fan have to swallow, the writer just kept on making the Shining Armor pill bigger and bigger and bigger and then covered it with shards of glass!  I mean seriously, did they have to shoehorn all of that into MLP:FiM's continuity?  Couldn't they have still made this episode's plot work with less?  Maybe the story could have still worked if Mister Captain of the Royal Guard Shining Armor was actually just a close first cousin of Twilight's so that we wouldn't have to swallow that Twilight had a prominent older brother that we just never knew about before now.  Some cousins can grow up together and be really close friends, you know.  It could happen!  Or how about explaining her older brothers' absence by saying that he was in Celestia's Royal Guard, but that we hadn't seen him or heard about him before now because he has been stationed at a far-away outpost for all of these years, and has been since Twilight was a filly.  That might have been made to work too.  I am sure that there are plenty of ways that the writer could have decreased the amount of all-out revisionism that she had to introduce to shoehorn in Shining Armor.  The point is that in my opinion, when the writer should have been doing everything in her power to minimize the amount of retconning that she had to do to make her story work, she instead seemed as if she was doing everything possible to increase it as if having Shining Armor as a prominent figure in the show was her own personal crusade or something!  I still think the overall story could have still worked if they didn't build up his prominence in Equestria and Twilight's past so much, making his sudden addition so darn glaring!

I. Princess Cadance is a Winged-Unicorn

Cadance herself was... just a random alicorn (also a princess I guess!), which means Luna and Celestia are goddesses who happen to be alicorns.

I too noticed that despite being a winged-unicorn, Princess Cadance didn't seem to have anything along the lines of some kind of over-the-top winged-unicorn magical powers.  She showed none of the terrifying and overwhelming magical might of Princess Luna, she didn't seem to have any kind of royal responsibilities over some kind of celestial object in the sky, and since we saw a young Cadance in the flashback of her being Twilight Sparkle's foal-sitter, apparently she isn't thousands of years old either.  All of this leads me to ask why she was made to be a winged-unicorn to begin with.  Having her be a member of this extremely rare and exclusive super-race of ponies adds absolutely nothing to the story, and it isn't touched upon much in the story if at all.  Princess Cadance could have been portrayed as a regular old standard unicorn with a talent for love spells, and the change wouldn't have effected the outcome of anything!  So once again, a change was made to the universe of MLP:FiM that was probably a bit more "flourished" than necessary.  I just wish that I knew who was responsible for this particular decision so that I knew who to blame-- is Cadance as a winged-unicorn an invention of Megan McCarthy, or is Cadance as a winged-unicorn an invention of Hasbro's toy-line and then shoehorned by the Hasbro executives into the show?  The fact that I read that "Cadance" was actually named after a Hasbro executive's daughter makes me start to wonder if the latter group is to blame, but still, there is nothing that I saw with Cadance that justified breaking the two winged-unicorn regal sisters yin-yang that the writers had going in Eqestria up until now.  They could have just as easily made her a unicorn like they did previously with Prince Blueblood.

It seems that in the teaser scenes that the HUB has been showing that Cadance is going to be played off as some kind of manipulative character, such as TVTrope's "The Vamp."  However, how will she react when she gets backed into a corner?  Will she continue to attempt to manipulate those around her by pulling off something like a "Wounded Gazelle Gambit," or will she resort to using her god-like magic to such a degree that only the Elements of Harmony could have a chance at slowing her down?

To pat myself on the back a bit, I so nailed that one!  The "Queen of the Changelings" Princess Cadance was definitely an example of "The Vamp" character trope, so much so that she was literally feeding off of the love of Shining Armor!  And I was also correct in predicting how she would react when she got backed into a corner, in this case by Twilight Sparkle.  Just like I figured, the evil changeling Cadance pulled the "Wounded Gazelle Gambit" when Twilight Sparkle confronted her-- not once, but twice!  And when the evil Cadance was finally confronted by the real Cadance and could pull off her manipulative charade no longer, she finally did reveal her true form, bust out her god-like magical powers, and throw down!  Apparently, I had this character's number!

Speaking of the Queen of the Changelings resorting to using her god-like magical powers when being backed into a corner, that lead to the most disappointing confrontation that I have ever seen in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in my entire life.  It was so disappointing in fact, that for me at least it overshadows all of my other complaints about this two-part episode.  In fact, it may be the biggest let down that MLP:FiM has ever done to me.  Of course I am talking about the (anti-)climatic confrontation between Princess Celestia and the Queen of the Changelings.  To understand the root cause of my massive disappointment with this confrontation, we will have to take a step back to some of the comments that I made during the beginning of Season 2 when I was still fairly new at being a brony.  During that time I went on and on in these forums complaining about how I was let down by the villain Discord in the season premier because to me he was just an over-glorified "Generic Doomsday Villain."  My discontentment over Discord however did inspire me to at least attempt to put my money where my mouth was, and try to come up with a MLP:FiM villain that was better, and didn't share any of the problems that I saw with Discord.  I brainstormed for months coming up with ways that a villain could threaten both Equestria and the Mane 6, and do it without having to resort to using generic doomsday villain-style overwhelming might, anti-magic, or other such over-the-top "story breaker powers."  And believe me, it turned out to not be the easiest of mental exercises because if you really sit down and think about it, the villains of this show have the entire deck of cards stacked against them.

To explain, the first obstacle that any MLP:FiM super-villain on an Equestria-threatening scale would have to deal with is the godlike powers of the regal winged-unicorn sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.  As I mentioned in my last post, Princess Luna has shown us a few times over the course of this series that the two regal winged-unicorn sisters are pretty much incomprehensibly powerful and able to perform incredible magical feats such as moving immense celestial objects, shapeshifting into multiple separate sentient entities simultaneously, creating severe weather events, making cliffs collapse from beneath other ponies' feet, attacking with lightning, turning into clouds of mist to travel, attack, and evade, making inanimate objects come to life, and so on and so on.  Now think for just a second about just how difficult it can be for a writer to come up with a villain that can somehow stand a chance at being a credible threat to an all-powerful being like that without said-villain being incinerated into his/her component molecules by Celestia or Luna almost instantly.  It's like trying to find a way to have a villain stand up to the all-powerful Old Testament Hebrew God and somehow survive-- just ask the Ancient Egyptians of the Exodus story about how well that worked out for them!

And to be honest, I don't think that the MLP:FiM writers ever did a good job with creating a large-scale villain that could take on Celestia and Luna.  To explain what I mean, in the past the MLP:FiM writers overcame this almost insurmountable challenge in two ways, both of which were basically cheating.  First, they decided to make Celestia's mind-boggling magical powers put in check by having her being challenged by an equally-powerful Nightmare Moon.  While having two evenly-matched opponents lock horns in battle could have lead to some interesting results, in a cheap move we were never really shown how Nightmare Moon overpowered and captured Celestia in the "Friendship is Magic" season 1 premier episodes.  Instead, that event happened off-screen, and was left as a mystery to the audience.  However, since Nightmare Moon was another all-powerful winged-unicorn, we could at least take some satisfaction in the fact that if anything could take out an all-powerful living god it would be another all-powerful living god.

For the beginning of the second season, the question of "How in the heck can we have a villain somehow still be threatening with that darn all-powerful Princess Celestia around?" was answered by making the new villain, Discord, the living embodiment of just about every single story breaker power known in existence.  I mean seriously, look at the powers and abilities that Discord had that are also listed on the TVTropes.org "Story Breaker Power" list:

• Anti-Magic - He was able to negate or otherwise render ineffective the magic of Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Princess Celestia.
• Reality Warping - In fact, that is probably the primary power that all of his other powers stem from, and the one that he exhibited the most often.
• Mass Mind Control - Shown when Discord became frustrated with trying to convince Fluttershy to turn on her friends and just plain forced her to turn mean with a touch of his finger instead.
• Teleportation - He pops in and out of various places even more easily than even Twilight Sparkle, probably again thanks to his reality-warping abilities.
• Weather Manipulation - Chocolate rain, guys!  Chocolate rain!
• Voluntary Shapeshifting - Hey guys!  I'm in a stained glass window!  Now I am a talking bunch of apples!  Now I am a talking balloon!  Now I am a talking butterfly!  You get the idea...

Dodging the "how do we get an all-powerful Celestia" out of the way by giving the villain special reality-warping and Celestia-magic nullifying powers is sooooo cheap.  It doesn't take any real thought or ingenuity at all.  And then having this insanely powerful villain essentially only get defeated because of his own stupidity and suicidal overconfidence is even worse!  And that, in a nutshell, is why I have never liked Discord...

Moving on, even if you do find a way to get the all-powerful and almost godlike regal pony sisters out of the equation, you still have to have your villain deal with the Mane 6, who are pretty formidably powerful in their own right.  First, lets take a look at Twilight Sparkle.  She is capable of performing powerful magical feats herself, such as telekinetically moving water towers, creating force fields large enough to surround a building, teleportation, and her most powerful form of magic of all, creating mustaches.  Throughout the entire series she has always been a force to be reckoned with, and ever since the Merriwether Williams episode "Dragon Quest," Twilight Sparkle's powers have been leveled-up even further, and we have been shown that Twilight Sparkle now has the ability of being able to teleport herself and several of her friends long distances and out of danger at pretty much anytime.  (Having Twilight Sparkle be able to instantly teleport herself and others long-distances and out of danger is of course a complete story-breaker power as well, and one of the reasons why I can't stand Merriwether Williams's writing.)  In fact, after "Dragon Quest," pretty much the only way that you can have Twilight Sparkle not ruin every story is by having her conveniently forget that she can teleport her and others long distances as a whim.  In part 2 of "A Canterlot Wedding" for example, when Twilight Sparkle got trapped inside the crystal caves beneath Canterlot castle by the Queen of the Shapeshifters, all I could think to myself was, "How is this even remotely a problem?  Thanks to Merriwether Williams, Twilight Sparkle can teleport where ever the heck that she wants whenever she wants.  This might slow her down for I don't know, maybe a couple seconds or something."  But, for the convenience of the plot, Twilight Sparkle's teleportation abilities seemed to have taken a serious downgrade in power from what we saw in "Dragon Quest."  In "A Canterlot Wedding," it appeared as if she could only teleport somewhere if she could physically see it, such as across a room or up onto a ledge.  Since I hated the fact that Merriwether Williams upgraded Twilight Sparkle's teleportation powers to story-breaker levels to begin with, this little de-powering of Twilight Sparkle didn't bother me as much as it otherwise would have because in the long run I tend to want to forget about just about every single thing that Merriwether Williams has ever done.  However, at the same time, it's not like I still didn't notice..

Moving onto the rest of the Mane 6, any villain that you write for the show also has to contend with the very capable Rainbow Dash.  While Rainbow Dash isn't quite as much of an obstacle as Twilight, she is still extremely formidable in her own right.  She can fly so fast that she can use her speed to punch rainbow-colored holes in the sky in the form of sonic rainbooms.  Should she perform her sonic rainboom near a ground structure, she can obliterate the structure with a rainbow-colored mushroom cloud.  And if that wasn't intimidating enough, Rainbow Dash has been shown to be a practitioner of the martial arts, and has punched, kicked, and bitten her way through heavy wood beams and the occasional cave-dwelling dragon's face.  In fact, if it wasn't for the fragility of her wings, she would almost be the kind of superhero that TVTropes.org calls, "The Flying Brick."  Then there's Applejack, an amazing athlete in her own right, and could probably kick the skeleton straight out of just about any villain's skin with her two back legs, "Bucky McGillycuddy" and "Kicks McGee"-- and that's if she hasn't already hogtied you with her lasso first.  Rarity, including in this latest episode, has shown that she too can really put the hurt on in a brawl, and even shy little Fluttershy has shown that she can be a force to be reckoned with as long as she has listened to some Iron Will assertiveness seminars first.  And don't forget Pinkie Pie with her "Pinkie Sense" and Bugs Bunny-like reality-warping powers of her own.  In other words, it is not exactly easy to write a villain that can take on the entire Mane 6 and have a hope of winning, let alone take on Princess Luna and Princess Celestia too!

However, as I wrote above, I pretty much made it one of my own little side-hobbies to come up with ways to have a villain be able to believably become a threat to the Mane 6 and Equestria, without necessarily resorting to cheap tricks and story-breaker powers to get there.  Because of my extreme fascination with this sort of thing, I was *extremely* interested in seeing how Megan McCarthy was planning on having her villain take on Princess Celestia and survive.  In fact, I was actually on the edge of my seat when the Queen of the Changelings actually decided to reveal herself right in front of Celestia, in her own castle no less!  I even started yelling at my TV when the Queen of the Changelings, now transformed into her true form, went on a 2-minute-long villainous monologue without Princess Celestia butting in and putting and end to it.  "Where in the heck was Celestia!?", I exclaimed to my poor startled lap cat.  "Did they conveniently decide to 'remove' her from this scene!?"  But then all of a sudden I heard Celestia yell "No!" and I became excited once again-- it looked like it was going to be on like Donkey Kong, and that the epic battle that I was waiting for between Celestia and the Changeling Queen was finally going to take place!  And then...  And then...



What the heck just happened!?  That's it!?  That's how easy it is to take out Princess Celestia?  Where is all of her magical lightning, wind, and thunder?  Where's her ability to transform into mist?  Where is her ability to stomp her hooves and make the ground suddenly crumble beneath her opponent!?  Where's her ability to shapeshift into multiple sentient entities!?  Heck, her energy beam stand-off with the Queen of the Changelings wasn't even very impressive!  (If you want to see an impressive energy beam stand-off, this is how it's done!)  I spent all of these months straining my brain about how to defeat a winged-unicorn living god, and in the end all she is is some kind of giant white paper tiger!  What is she made of?  Marshmallow!?  Heck, from the looks of this episode, all some pony needs to do is sneeze and she'll fall over!  No wonder they never showed how Nightmare Moon was able to take down Celestia in season one-- it was probably almost instantaneous and boring!  From the looks of this, all it takes to topple over Celestia's regime is a stiff breeze or something!  Arrgh!  Why did I ever waste my time coming up with clever ways to take Celestia out!  This episode makes it all for not!  No one will ever believe my fan fictions if I ever write them now, as I made Pincess Celestia too tough in them!  Newborn kittens can threaten Equestria from the looks of it!  You'll have to excuse me, because now all I want to do is bang my head against my keyboard for the next several minutes!

*BANG!*  *BANG!*  *BANG!*  *BANG!*  *BANG!*

Speaking of "bang my head against my keyboard" moments, we have had yet another MLP:FiM super-villain get defeated because she was as thick-as-a-board stupid again!  In fact, I am having a hard time deciding if our Queen of the Changelings is even stupider than Discord was.  At 29:43, right after the Queen of the Changelings burns Celestia's precious little horn and then rips through her like a wet paper bag, she happily discovers that Shining Armor's love for Princess Cadance was so strong that it was even stronger than Celestia's magic, and yet, only five minutes later the Queen of the Changelings disregards the power of Shining Armor and Princess Cadance's love as only being a "worthless sentiment."  Really, Queen of the Changelings?  You are now disregarding the same power that you *just used* to gain the upper hand as now being only a "worthless sentiment?"  *Tactical Facepalm!*  If anyone should have known the power of that couple's love it should have been the Queen since she was only feeding off of it for God knows how long!  I mean really, is it soooo much to ask to finally have a villain that isn't a complete moron for a change?  I can't believe that I am saying this, but I can't wait for Diamond Tiara to grow up, because so far that little school-aged sociopath has proven to be the only evil force in all of Equestria that isn't also as dumb as a brick.  In fact, I bet you anything that in 20-some-years-time from now that Diamond Tiara will actually conquer Princess Celestia and destroy Canterlot, only instead of accomplishing this feat through some kind of evil magical means it will be because Princess Celestia defaulted on Canterlot Castle's mortgage and Diamond Tiara bulldozes it to put up luxury condominiums.  I realize that that is not as flashy as making the sun never rise again or something like that, but hey, Diamond Tiara is a villain that actually gets things done!

One thing that bothered me was, despite Luna and Celestia both being in the episode I really didn't feel like anything was done with them. Luna's lines were so odd and irrelevant. -"Rest, my sister. As always, I will guide the night." She just needed to point out she doesn't spend her time at another castle as Hoagiebot suggested. -"Who goes there? Stay indoors, Twilight Sparkle!" didn't make much sense to me actually; was there a curfew or something Twilight was disobeying? Didn't seem like it! -"Hello everypony, did I miss anything?" seems like another 'remember Luna still exists!' sort of line. I guess Luna's thoroughly nocturnal but I still would have liked her lines to actually mean something.

I couldn't agree more, Aspect.  In fact, the whole awkward inclusion of Princess Luna made me imagine yet another imaginary conversation that may or may not have actually happened amongst the show's production staff during the creation of this episode:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Production Person #1: "Hey, um, all of those mouth-breathing still-live-with-their-parents brony fans are wondering if Princess Luna is going to be in this episode."

Production Person #2: "Who?"

Production Person #1: "You know, Princess Luna.  Princess Celestia's sister."

Production Person #2: "Who?"

Production Person #1: "You know, the pony with the star-field hair that M.A. Larson put into his episode, 'Luna Eclipsed?'"

Production Person #2: "Wha?  I thought that star-field chick was just some one-shot pony that that writer had made up for that episode."

Production Person #1: "No, she's canon.  That and the fans really want to see her."

Production Person #2: "But we all ready have this episode 98% animated!  It's too late!  She's not going to be in there!"

Production Person #1: "But she's a princess!  She really ought to be at a royal wedding, don't you think?"

Production Person #2: "No."

Production Person #1: "But all of those 20 and 30-somethings are going to write angry blogs about this!  And I can't stand to read any more angry blogs-- they make my spirits fall faster than Princess Celestia does in a magic fight!"

Production Person #2: "Whoa, that's fast!  Grrrr!  Fine!  We have like 30-seconds worth of footage that we haven't animated yet.  Maybe we can shoehorn this so-called Luna character in there somehow..."
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Once again I have absolutely no idea what-so-ever if a conversation like this ever actually took place.  However, in my brain it certainly did because that's what Luna's inclusion felt like to me while I was watching these episodes-- like her inclusion was some sort of last-second afterthought.  I mean, I know as well as anyone that Princess Celestia is supposed to be the princess that is responsible for the day, and that Princess Luna is supposed to be the princess that is responsible for the night.  However, since when does that have to mean that Luna can never appear during the daytime?  We have seen Princess Celestia after the sun as gone down before, after all.  For example, during the Grand Galloping Gala Princess Luna didn't suddenly enter the castle, tag Princess Celestia, and then say, "I am taking over since the sun has gone down."  No, instead we saw Princess Celestia and only Princess Celestia during the entire gala.  So really, why couldn't they have had Princess Luna standing along side Princess Celestia up at the alter during the royal wedding?  Is Cadance not Luna's niece too?  I see no canon reason for why Luna couldn't have also been there.  Add that to the fact that since Luna, as Aspect mentioned, was given no role with any kind of importance during this episode's plot, and I really think that she truly was only added as an afterthought, just like she was in my imaginary conversation above.

And while I am still on the subject of the princesses, what the heck is up with this:


Seriously?  Is that how the princesses really "guard" all of Equestria?  And how well did it work out for them?


Oh.

I guess no one was around to man the telescope during the wedding itself to see those thousands of changelings repeatedly slamming themselves against the force field, huh?  Now don't get me wrong.  It's not that I expected to see a phased-array RADAR up on that castle tower protecting Canterlot or anything, but this is a land of magic after all, so I figured that Celestia and Luna would have something better than just a plain old telescope to watch over Equestria with.  I mean seriously, the Wicked Witch of the West had a magic crystal ball to see potential threats.  In Snow White the evil queen had a magic mirror.  In ThunderCats, Mum-ra the Ever-Living had some kind of magic pool that allows him to spy on everything from afar.  And in The Black Cauldron there was some kind of magical oracle pig that had the ability to reveal hidden information.  A pig!  So you see, there are plenty of magical options out there people!  Is a telescope really the best that they could have done?  *sigh*  And at the very least, could they have at least had some royal guards watching through the telescope or something while the wedding was going on?  I mean you would think that thousands of changelings suddenly surrounding the castle would be kind of hard to miss!

And that reminds me about an unexplained loose end in this episode hat has really been bugging me.  We are told at about 7:40 or so into part 1 by Shining Armor himself that the reason why the security around the castle has been heightened so much is because an anonymous "threat has been made against Canterlot."  Um, O.K., there is something that is seriously out of place that is going on here.  Who in the heck made this anonymous threat against Canterlot, forcing them to dramatically increase their security measures?  It certainly wouldn't make any sense if it was the Queen of the Changelings who made the threat.  Her ultimate goal was to have her changelings invade Canterlot.  While one of the potential reasons why the Queen of the Changelings chose Shining Armor to feed off of was so that she could use her powers to weaken his force field spell and ultimately cause it to fail, at the same time, wouldn't it have just been easier for her to invade Canterlot if there was no force field around the city at all?  So there is absolutely no advantage what so ever to the Queen making the threat, as it only adds an additional obstacle for her.  And if it wasn't her who made the threat, then who?  The Queen's plans of masquerading as a pony princess relied completely upon secrecy for it to work, so I would think that if there was somepony else out there who was tipping off Princess Celestia about her plans that the queen would be desperately trying to find out who.  It also starts to lead me to wonder if there is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem that is happening here, as in what happened first?  Did Canterlot get tipped off about the upcoming ominous threat first, causing Shining Armor to "raise the shields," which then forced the queen to have to feed off of him to neutralize him?  Or did the queen choose to feed off of Shining Armor first, and when he had to "raise the shields" to respond to the unknown threat later on it had just so happened that the queen conveniently had already chosen to feed off of the one pony that could create those shields?  I dunno, but it was a loose end that I really wished that they had tied up.

III. They are Taking Way to Much Imagery from Prince William and Kate Middleton's Real-Life Royal Wedding

Luckily, this fear of mine turned out to be pretty much unfounded.  Most of the imagery showing the ponies emulating clothing and scenes from last year's British royal wedding pretty much only showed up in the promotional material for the season finale, and not in the season finale itself.  However, there was definitely one case where I saw some truth in television-- the manipulative evil Cadance actually reminded me very much of my last business partner!  

Luckily, my post about this episode isn't going to be entirely made up of my griping.  It will be mostly made up of my griping, since all I have pretty much done is gripe so far and at this point I am getting really tired of typing, but there was definitely a lot to like about this episode as well, and I will try to mention as much of it as I can before I wear down completely and pass out at my keyboard.

First of all, I would like to say that as always, I found the episode to be very well done.  The animation was for the most part pretty exquisite as usual, the music was very good (especially the song "This Day Aria"), and the story, my nerd rage and nitpicking aside, was fairly pleasant.  I really liked some of the gags in this episode, such as Spike constantly playing with the figurines of the bride and the groom, how he wanted to throw a bachelor party, etc.  Probably my favorite joke of all was when Princess Cadance and Twilight Sparkle were trying to escape from the crystal caves and were confronted by the evil bride's maids.  The fact that they got by the bride's maids by throwing a bouquet made me laugh out loud, and is probably yet another example of "truth in television!"    To make a side comment, I personally could think of worse ways to die than at the hands of three cute unicorn bride's maids!  In fact, they just may become my new Windows destop background!    Seeing Princess Celestia wake up in a giant butterfly chrysalis was somewhat satisfying, especially after she had so disappointed me with her weak efforts to save her kingdom earlier.  The only thing that would have made Princess Celestia's capture even more satisfying is if the changelings had laid eggs in her chest leading to this, but I doubt that they would have shown that in a children's program so I'll take what I can get.  I also saw one piece of MLP:FiM continuity in this episode that never seems to get contradicted, and that is that the royal guards are *still* completely useless.  I swear, I don't know why Celestia even keeps them around.  (Well O.K., I do have an idea, but I would need to start a thread in Furtopia's adult forum to explain it.   )

And how about those photos that they showed from the wedding reception, eh?

This one ought to throw a wrench into the ideas of all of those Appledash, Twi-dash, Raridash, Spitfire-dash, and all of those other <<insert a mare's name here>>-dash shippers out there!  And as a side benefit to me, it might also throw a wrench into the works of all of those Spitfire-Soarin' shippers out there!  Spitfire's all mine do you hear me?  MINE! 

And how about this scene from the reception:

It makes me wonder if this is the start of Spike falling into what TVTropes.org calls a "Settle for Sibling" romance trope!   

So anyway, once again there was really a lot to like in this episode, and it was a pretty decent season finale.  Despite my nitpicking, I definitely liked this episode a whole heck of a lot more than I didn't.

I've read complaints by some people (other places) that called the finale 'too Disney'. And sure, it does feel very Disney, but it was still awesome. I grew up watching Disney movies, so seeing a cartoon like this mimic the formula (successfully, I might add), brought back some memories.

If the complaints about this season finale "being too Disney-like" revolved around the fact that its plot was very reminiscent of the second act of Disney's The Little Mermaid were both Ariel and a shape-shifted Ursula are both vying for the Prince Eric's hand in marriage, then yes I can see where they are coming from, since there are definitely some similarities between the two.  If the complaints are more about the "style" of this episode being too "Disneyesque," then I would personally take that as a compliment.  Walt Disney Feature Animation was the world leader in animated feature films for several straight decades for a reason, and that reason was that they were at the leading edge of their craft.  Personally, I can't think of any other animation house that I would want to be compared to more.  So if there are actually people out there that are complaining about how MLP:FiM have actually upped their game to the point of being comparable to Disney, then I don't know what the heck that they want out of the show.  Do they want MLP:FiM to be more like South Park perhaps, because if they do maybe they're watching the wrong show!  Geez, there is just no pleasing some people, and that's coming from me!  

Speaking of Disney...

Man, saying that the "A Canterlot Wedding" episodes are like Disney's The Lion King in any kind of capacity is one heck of an endorsement, so these episodes may really be something if they live up to the hype.  And while I highly doubt that there will be a Lion King-esque Elton John-sung "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" love scene with Spitfire laying on her back in the grass to make this hopeless-romantic Hoagiebot's dreams come true...

Well what do you know.  It's not Spitfire laying on her back in the grass, but what the heck!  I'll take it!!!  

And on that bombshell, I'll think I'll end my post here!  I've already put 14-work hours across three days into typing this thing, so despite the fact that there is still more that I could comment on I think that I will give my typing fingers and your reading eyes a break!  

[Ziel]

I too noticed that despite being a winged-unicorn, Princess Cadance didn't seem to have anything along the lines of some kind of over-the-top winged-unicorn magical powers.  She showed none of the terrifying and overwhelming magical might of Princess Luna, she didn't seem to have any kind of royal responsibilities over some kind of celestial object in the sky, and since we saw a young Cadance in the flashback of her being Twilight Sparkle's foal-sitter, apparently she isn't thousands of years old either.  All of this leads me to ask why she was made to be a winged-unicorn to begin with.  Having her be a member of this extremely rare and exclusive super-race of ponies adds absolutely nothing to the story, and it isn't touched upon much in the story if at all.  Princess Cadance could have been portrayed as a regular old standard unicorn with a talent for love spells, and the change wouldn't have effected the outcome of anything!  So once again, a change was made to the universe of MLP:FiM that was probably a bit more "flourished" than necessary.  I just wish that I knew who was responsible for this particular decision so that I knew who to blame-- is Cadance as a winged-unicorn an invention of Megan McCarthy, or is Cadance as a winged-unicorn an invention of Hasbro's toy-line and then shoehorned by the Hasbro executives into the show?  The fact that I read that "Cadance" was actually named after a Hasbro executive's daughter makes me start to wonder if the latter group is to blame, but still, there is nothing that I saw with Cadance that justified breaking the two winged-unicorn regal sisters yin-yang that the writers had going in Eqestria up until now.  They could have just as easily made her a unicorn like they did previously with Prince Blueblood.

But what she has is a very rare ability, and the show has made this clear in the past. We've been shown that there is no spell for love. But Cadence has the ability to spread love through magic. This is extremely powerful, and rare, which would be fitting of a royal or pseudo-royal position. I mean, it was her ability that ended up saving the day. She was just very weak and needed the extra spark of power from Shining Armor to pull it off. The only valid complaint I could see here would be that she has the ability to do something which was previously said to be impossible.

[Narei Mooncatt]

It may not be that she can make people love each other, but that she can some how enhance love that's already there.  It may be a rare ability, but way different than actually creating love. The only two times we see her use that power, it's on a couple that's already in love but just not showing it at the moment.

[Hoagiebot]

But Cadence has the ability to spread love through magic. This is extremely powerful, and rare, which would be fitting of a royal or pseudo-royal position.

Stating that Cadance's powers are what makes her fitting to be royalty is backwards.  Princesses get their titles through one of three ways-- conquest (as in if you conquer a nation you can pretty much give yourself any title that you want), genetics (i.e. being born into a royal family), or by marrying into a royal family.  Genetics is how Cadance became a princess-- we were told in the episode that she was Princess Celestia's niece, which means that she is the daughter of one of Princess Celestia's siblings, whoever that may be.  (I would have speculated Luna, because that's the only other sibling of Princess Celestia that we currently know about, however she was imprisoned on the moon during Twilight Sparkle's childhood so unless they allowed conjugal visits on the moon there must be yet another royal sibling of Celestia and Luna that's out there.)  Because Cadance is genetically a princess, she would still be a princess whether she had the god-like powers that other winged-unicorns have been shown to have, or no powers at all.  It is the bloodline that makes her a princess, not her powers, even if they are allegedly unique.

And I say "allegedly" unique because in the "A Canterlot Wedding" episode you basis for that assumption comes from Twilight Sparkle's line, "How many unicorns can just spread one where ever they go?  I only know of one."  This could mean that Cadance is fairly unique, but it could also mean that she's not and that Twilight Sparkle just doesn't happen to personally know of another pony with her powers.

But what she has is a very rare ability, and the show has made this clear in the past. We've been shown that there is no spell for love.

Also, I am not quite sure how the show has "made it clear in the past" that there are no "love spells" in MLP:FiM.  I say this because we have had two other episodes in season 2 alone that involved love spell-like magic.  First of all, the 800-lb. Gorilla in the room is that the entire plot of the episode "Hearts and Hooves Day" revolves around the "Love Potion" trope.  I suppose that you could try to fight with me over semantics and say that a love potion/poison is not technically a "spell," but at the same time Apple Bloom herself actually calls the love poison a spell during the episode at the 18:50 mark, and that is convincing enough evidence that it counts as a spell to me.  In addition, in the episode "Lesson Zero," Twilight Sparkle places a "want it need it" spell on her stuffed animal, "Smarty Pants," to get the Cutie Mark Crusaders to fall in love over the stuffed animal and fight over it.  There are even little pink hearts floating off of Twilight Sparkle's horn while she is casting it, hearts floating off of the stuffed animal after it gets enchanted, and hearts in the eyes of everypony that looks upon the stuffed animal, causing them all to desperately want it.  I suppose you could once again try to argue with me over semantics and say that the spell wasn't specifically called a "love" spell, but with all of the heart-related imagery involved with it I don't think that I am going out too far on a limb by saying that it seemed kind of like a love spell to me.  So at least in season 2 seems to indicate that casting love spells is not out of the question.

And if that is still not enough to illustrate to you that the show has definitely not made it clear that you can't have love-related magic in the show, I will also refer you to the article on "Magic" on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic wiki.  It lists every single spell and rule of magic that has been shown or mentioned in the series thus far, and makes no mention of their being any kind of rule against love spells.  If the show has mentioned specifically somewhere that love spells can't be done you are going to have to provide a link to where it does for me, because it appears pretty clear from what I have seen thus far that the prevailing precedent thus indicates otherwise (and I have taken the time to link to sources that back up my position).

[Ryffnah]

I think the idea that there aren't love spells in Equestria actually comes from the very two love spells that you site, Hoagiebot.  Both of those spells went horribly wrong and wouldn't have been used in the first place by a wise, clear-thinking pony.  So, that suggests that -- perhaps other than for Cadence -- there aren't useful, successful love spells in Equestria.