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TwilightIsMagic

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They couldn't have picked a more funny point to force Eclipse onto everyone if they tried. Literally as I was designing my new birthday-card greetings to deliver to all the artists with displayed birthdays, with some of their pages already up for posting but others not, DA forcibly switched everything to their beloved Eclipse... which, as it so happens, does not have anything like the handy personal notification homepage and dashboard. And without the dashboard warning me of all the birthdays, I regret to say that I can't quite continue my over-half-a-decade-long tradition of greeting people on their birthdays in my customary pony style and sincerely wishing them all the best in life.


This is quite sad and annoying - I frankly liked doing that (and I'm sorry if some artists didn't appreciate it as much as I hoped). With fewer community features like this, I definitely have a lot less reason to use DA by itself - I'll still log in and everything, but without doing my daily birthday greetings, I'm more likely to come in by outside links to pictures hosted on the site, than discover more through the site itself. Which is ironic, considering that Eclipse was touted as facilitating precisely the community and discovery sides...


Regardless, I remain sincere in my best and warmest wishes to all who might miss out on my greetings going forward, and I also sincerely hope that DA pulls their heads out of their proverbial and allows us to see each other's displayed birthdays again, that I may return to my happy tradition.

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While everything else is going on, my good old mate :iconeverlastingjoy: has been putting out pony animation projects for some time, and has lately been hard at work combining and refining his editing skills on a genre of video that should be more popular out there - YTPs. Pony YTPs have been criminally few in number in the last few, so I and :iconekardshadowreaver: were happy to pitch in with his production and assist with ideas, QA (such as there should be for a YTP) and assorted helpful contributions wherever we could. EJ did all the actual work, though! And I think his work should really be signal-boosted more, so here you go and do enjoy!

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Rainbow Dash and clone mirroring each other 2020 1 by TwilightIsMagic

They're changelings, remember?
They're changelings, remember?


Given the uniqueness of today's opportunity, I wanted to have a little fun celebrating the rare occasion on the calendar. Next time we can do it that'd be just as zero-perfect is 03/03/3030, while the absolute closest is 12/12/2121, so I didn't want to wait for next time. Fun waits for no-one, after all! (Pinkie should say that.)

Also helps to insert a somewhat sweeter journal entry this time around. I like it when the current journal has occasion to be nice. So, have a happy total-mirror-date day!
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    The Cutie Map - remember when it was a kind of benign, alien mystery, seemingly prescient and nigh-omniscient, able to send the girls literally across the world in just the kind of combinations that would be needed to solve a problem that no-one would even knew existed?
    Yeah, so what happened to it? No clue. Not even a reference to, say, the Map going dark and never turning on again after the tree just went "pop" after a single poke. Wasn't the castle tree an autonomous seed from the original Harmony tree, though? So what happened to it, did anyone consult the map again? We never find out where it got its prescience from, whether it was the Tree controlling it all along or if it was its own separate entity, or something else entierly. No malign or benign influence. Just dropped off the radar altogether, despite being right there in the castle at all times.

    The Tree of Harmony itself - S8 revealted to us it was sentient and developed self-aware intelligence and a personality. So what happened after it was instakilled by a poke, then rebuilt by a bunch of racial token kids playing house with its sacred remains, into a form catering exclusively to said kids and not everyone else in the world or at least the Mane 6?
Remember, it tore up and half-demolished the historic Castle of the Two Sisters in the process - deeply symbolic in- and out-of-universe as the site of Equestria's most momentous tragedy and the place where it was set right a millenium later, and where the Friendship is Magic show essentially began. So what about this mysterious, seemingly prescient and extremely powerful entity, how did it factor into things, what answer do we get to its tantalizing secrets? And what tradeoff did we get for such a desecration of a site, its turnover to a just-introduced cast of Scrappy Doos; did it accomplish something meaningful and significant enough to justify the drastic, sudden, destructive change?
    Well, the diversity kids ran away to it to be alone twice, once to be blushy-crushy and later to just be a major oblivious-smartarse pain in the ReeR. And... nothing more! The personality and sentience of the Tree of Harmony? Lol, who has time for that? Gotta show Twilight and Pinkie failing at friendship and social interaction 101, and the Mane 6 being useless almost all season instead! And why put it into the finale in any way, shape or form either? Just forget it and move on, right?

    Celestia and Luna - so what happened to them after their (yet again bottom-tier) performance in the final Endgame crisis, where they, with all their phenomenal cosmic power, were only useful as distractions easily tricked by someone's creator-pet lolicon fantasy?
    Why, nothing. Why should we care to know what two IMMORTAL (literally or effectively), ANCIENT, powerful entities and major staples of the show's underpinnings and framing end up doing after suddenly abdicating their thrones? They apparently ship themselves off to A LITERAL, ACTUAL RETIREMENT HOME. What the flying goose? Not royal advisors (however loosely the term is applied), not some sort of divine ascent that justifies their absence, but just... going away? Seriously never doing anything of consequence again? Even IRL presidents have more significant roles and presence for the rest of their lives after they leave office, and they aren't millenia-old magical demigods. Did they remain immortal and powerful, or did they somehow lose it, or give up their powers to Twilight alone, and are now going to die too? Why is this left unknown and uncertain, too?

    The CMC - a major staple of the show, a strong second cast that's been doing stories Mane 6 cannot due to being adult for years, ever on their own inspiring journey of growing more mature and wise as they grow up?
    Not even around in the finale, not in any significant capacity - and I didn't notice them in the background much either. They didn't play any part in convincing ponies to snap out of sudden-onset extreme racism, despite each of them representing one of the three core pony races - instead, two random, unknown, unnamed kids did. They're only shown to be bland-arse teachers in the black-hole "School of Friendship". Cutie mark counseling, being experts and rapid-response psychologists to ponies who struggle with their destinies or are unable to understand theirs (which has always been a metaphor for understanding yourself as a person, for knowing your own strengths and weaknesses)? Who cares about that? Everyone's gotta be teaching at the School now! Even the brash and adorably irritating traveling magician abandons her lifelong career and cutie-mark calling to be a sensitive and patient psychologist counselor for it! (That bit, by the way, further undermines cutie marks as a concept, leading me to think they're another bit S9 just kind of forgot about.)

    "Twilight won't outlive her friends" - surely a foundational promise made by Meghan McCarthy, the show's co-founder and effective true guide for the vast majority of its lifespan, at the point of the fans' greatest fears and worries about Twilight changing subraces and becoming a possibly immortal princess, would be upheld for the show's ending?
    Sike! The ending is literally the "nightmare scenario" the "haters" at that point in time posited - Twilight has to leave Ponyville for arbitrary reasons and the Mane 6 break up, and they never again become the real circle of friends we fell in love with in S1, and proceed to grow old and wither as Twilight remains alone and sees her once-friends she can no longer be with age away? Yeah, that's supposed to be "canon" now... the actual heck of it. All of it thrust upon us not as a series of developments, but a sudden swerve, told to us AFTER THE FACT via confusing and inconclusive flashbacks. And on top of her friends growing old and randomly being shipped with each other and side cast members (again, all of it offscreen, and committing the cardinal, deadly sin of inter-Mane 6 shipping NOW IN "CANON"!), she also becomes a lazy, palette-swap recolour of Celestia, as if the official artists simply pulled assets from some of the earliest fan imaginings of "Twilight as a princess" circa S1-S2.

    Basic social dynamics of Equestria (and in general) - ponies have always been shown as a society that is, while imperfect and still prone to most problems human societies experience, on average "better", brighter, more upbeat, more pleasant. Criminals and thugs and villains exist, and ponies fall victim to them still, but average ponies are fairly happy, positive, placid folk who live in general contentedness and harmony with their neighbours, regardless of which subrace they belong to. The pony subraces themselves have been cemented together for over a millenium, since before the rule of Celestia and Luna - a clear object lesson of necessity to stick together and combine their talents drilled into their collective minds and cultural memory by the terror of the Windigoes, something which every single Equestrian citizen annualy gets reminded of by the festival of the Hearth's Warming Eve. This has always been shown as essentially unshakeable - even if there were "racial" disagreements in whatever distant past but after the founding of Equestria, we never heard of them, which means the modern ponies did not, either - which, in turn, means even if something happened, it either never took deep root or no longer has any impact whatsoever.
    So why do "racism and xenophobia" spread among ponies at the slightest provocation? "Racism" is treated like an extremely virulent disease that no-one save for the main protagonists has resistance to, spreading as easily and surely as being "it" in a game of tag, except everyone becomes "it", and taking over the victim instantly with no incubation period. Racial divisions, discontent and hatred have to be founded on something, and to be fomented and spread for many years, usually decades, in order to take root if they were not originally present. And we were not shown any of that - indeed, everything the Legion of Doom suggested they did to spread it was minor acts of sabotage baselessly blamed on an entire race, setbacks and problems that sound like nothing out of the ordinary, day-to-day problems in the D&D-esque magical world ponies live in at that, comparable to issues like vermin infestations or accidental cafeteria food poisonings in our human world in scope. In the finale, "racism" looks and feels a lot more like mind control, total and overriding, making ponies forget all of their friendships and bonds and act with singleminded hostility towards everyone who's not of the same subrace as them. And it could have at least been explicable had we seen Chrysalis using mind control magic to effect that change - which is, if you don't remember, something she's fully capable of, and it could've made her a much more credible threat if we saw her do it on such a mass, populace-wide scale. But no, we did not see mind control magic ever being used - the point, apparently, being that "the real evil is the ponies themselves", a very happy idea for the magical world of Equestria indeed.

    "You are going to rule Equestria together" - surely a key line said at the outset of S9 itself would be meaningful? Surely something that most sane fans have been envisioning would come to pass, and with Celestia and Luna would give way to the Mane 6 occupying key positions in the Equestrian hierarchy, together forming a multi-node network of rulership with Twilight discharging administrative oversight but others also significant in the Equestrian life? Surely the duties of Luna and Celestia together are a bit too much for just one pony to handle, and the Mane girls, Twilight's friends, would become instrumental in making sure they get fulfilled without, say, the dreamwalking side of things being neglected?
    Lol nope. Twilight rules alone, she's the sole princess. Everyone else meets with her very, very rarely - at the most frequent, once a month, and at the rarest, once a year. Twilight only has Spike by her side, and no other assistance aside from general palace staff. What about the duties she discharges? No clarity whatsoever. Meanwhile, the Mane 6 get jack diddly squat as their "final reward" for their years of excellence - AJ just inherits the farm, Fluttershy seems to have abandoned society and live in the staff's dream Fluttercord dimension only popping out into her sanctuary, RD is a butch lesbo Wonderbolt captain (remember how it was cool that Rainbow, a cool tomboy girl, was not lesbian or trans-something, how her example also showed you don't have to "be a boy" or "be a butch" if you are a sporty, active, tomboyish girl, that you can remain "girly" and feminine and cute while at it? Lol nope! Get in the template or else, if you see rainbow colours then it's gay!), Pinkie has the dumbest mess in her hair and is just a baker housewife now, and Rarity is literally a lonely old grey mare. They get absolutely nothing to show for their heroic roles as paragons of friendship and magic - so long, and thanks for all the crack shipping!

    The Pillars - the original "Avengers" team of Equestria, ancient demigod heroes of myth and legend, the Equestrian Herakles and Theseus and what-have-you equivalents! Mighty, powerful figures, enough to inspire ponies to keep carrying tales of them for many generations! The teachers of Celestia and Luna themselves! Surely they'll be able to contribute to the final fight at hand?
    Lol nope. Why'd you think so? They're not even Worf - they're just bowled over and made to only boost the villains with their very presence as rich sources of power, power which they themselves were not even able to use it to any effect. They're worse than useless - they're useful for the villains, and their performance is weaker than that of average ponies. That's on top of being essentially awkwardly tucked away and written out of the show in S8 without resolution and never brought up again during S9 except in two passing phrases in Growing Up. What a sad joke.

And finally...

    Show, don't tell - remember how, throughout the vast majority of its history (definitely up until the S8 openers at the very least), one of the key foundational elements that made FiM so great was its ability to believably show characters undergoing emotions and changes and behaving in a lifelike way? Even when the introduction was sudden (say, Shining in S2 finale, or the Mane girl parents we hadn't seen before), interactions and relationships between characters used to SHOW them truly acting out the stated connection they had, it was all readable in their behaviour. You could believe what you saw onscreen as generally lifelike actions, reactions and feelings performed and experienced by the characters, and so their growth and changes felt natural. Even the response to the fairly sudden and out-of-the-blue (no matter the point of "well the whole show was the setup for that point", even though it's technically valid, it's also irrelevant) Twilicorn was shown in-universe, explored and visited, not "told" to us. We lived the characters' lives together with them, and those characters really felt like they were living personalities, lifelike and believable - this is what made us bond to them so deeply.
    Now, S9 in general and the final three episodes quintessentially so have been doing little but "telling". We aren't shown a relationship between Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich - we're just told they have a kid now. We aren't shown Appledash - we're told it. We aren't shown Fluttercord - we're told it. Nothing is earned, not even to the same degree as the "background relationship" of Lyrabon (which in itself has issues). We aren't told anything GOOD, either - we just get a disappointing, disheartening downer ending, which seems to be tinged not with celebration of true friendship, but a regret and nostalgia for friendship long gone. It's not "friendship forever" - it's "friendship that was". And if you ask me, that is not the sort of feeling this show ever had, or should have ever had. There are times and places, and other works, where a grim and "negative realism" sort of approach could be in order, and where a "well, you don't get what you wanted, or what you hoped for, and life can turn out sad and sh!tty" ending would have worked well - but seeing FiM end like this feels exactly as wrong as seeing Revenge of the Sith end with a Bollywood dance party would have been. This is not a show meant to make you sigh in reverie and want to pour yourself a long drink and muse on the vagaries of life - this was a celebration of the good sides of it, of friendship and brother/sisterhood and communion being rewarded, not anticlimactically downcast.

And mind you, that is not a truly complete list either. Just off the top of my head.


Yeah... screw this. I'm not accepting this as a "canon" ending. None can force me to accept my beloved ponies ending in a shitshow of tell-don't-show downer fates and crack shipping and key elements of the show being literally forgotten about and downplayed and characters destroyed and made mockeries of. This is anything but a satisfying conclusion, it does not tie off loose ends and only leaves a lot more weirdness open, it destroys or denigrates key characters and feels thematically tone-deaf and clashing with all of the show before S9 (yes, even with most of S8, and I'm disavowing and denouncing that season too). This is akin to Last Jedi and Game of Thrones season 8 making a baby together - thematically out of touch, weird plot-twists out the wazoo, characters stealing one another's spotlights and long-standing plotlines ruined or literally forgotten about. It would have been much, much better had they simply cut the show short with no clear ending, than ending it like this.
We Fandom Menace now. This ending is impossible for me to accept. Our fandom will continue - but with this move, "canon" has been shattered, and so we will simply have to remain fans of the characters and the 'verse now, with our own interpretations alone guiding us. No longer is a guiding rail of canon able to unite most of us.
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Because why should it? I'm still here and have no plans of going away anywhere if I can help it. And I hope so are you~
Poners are still here too, all the pony stuff we got over the years and so much more fanwork to make (hopefully I'll have time to get in on that too!).
Then, we'll get to see what the next generation will be like. (Hopefully not dappled horses and magicless Twilight. The minimalistic cartoon pony look FiM has is really the best the franchise's been visually, and I don't want to see Twi as Scootaloo writ large.) But even if it won't pan out well, we'll always have our Friendship is Magic.
If anything, glad it wasn't Samurai Jack'd.
Onwards, not-quite-steeds!
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