The purpose of the court wizard (at least in most fantasy settings that have one) is to perform acts of magic for the king/queen/whatever that said ruler can't do themselves. That doesn't quite apply to Celestia.

What would a court wizard do, though? We haven't seen anything that really requires that or seen that such a position even exists. Unicorns are generally specialized enough that you wouldn't need one particular one to handle everything. That's why I'd see her being a magical theory teacher; it's an area that allows her lack of particular magic focus to be an asset.

And yeah, the CMC thing should be addressed eventually. They can stall the issue by giving the group some non-cutie mark related plotlines, but I do think they should cover it. I still want to see an episode where one of them gets a CM and see what it does to their relationship.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:34:39 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Maybe in the season 3 finale, they'll finally get their Cutie Marks.

Finally caught up! Now I'll come home after work to find a load more pages again!

Also, am I seriously the only person whose opinion on Pinkie was improved by A Friend in Deed? Was everyone else's opinion on her that much highr than mine that I thought that she was behaving better than normal and everyone else thought that she was behaving worse than normal?

Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that my sister and I had to help look after my sick mother when we were children, so Pinkie has always come off as way too irresponsible to me.

I don't even know what I come here for.

What's the current line of dialogue?

Maybe, I mean Pinkie was basically a big meanie pants wit half a brain to Yankee Doodle. The Song helped improve opinions of her but the episode itself sort of did her no favours.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:38:26 PM by MousaThe14

I want to ask why, but I don't think it would yield any useful answers.

I can't imagine how, given that she displayed an utter disregard for personal space. But I'm not going to go off on that rant again.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:41:01 PM by JapaneseTeeth

How'd Scootaloo end up as the fandom's punching bag? Every time I read a fanfic with her as the main character she's either an orphan, abused, hospitalized, or a victim of the Slender Man.

I personally liked Pinkie Pie more after that episode, if only because I appreciate that they decided to emphasize her character flaws that had in the past been brushed off in favor of "even if she's crazy, you should listen to Pinkie."

edited 9th Sep '12 8:46:01 PM by PerpetualLurker

Yeah, Pinkie was a jerk in AFID. I think you're supposed to sympathize with Cranky.

I know how bad she was, but none of that made me bat an eyelid as it's exactly what I'd come to expect from her.

She's never shown regard for personal space, privacy, ownership, responsibility (with the exception of Baby Cakes, which was a huge improvement IMO as well), etc.

EDIT: And Perpetual gets it. They finally show the negative consequences of her behaviour and have her try and improve.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:45:15 PM by Sereg

@Mio, I dunno, Ask this bloke, he invented her, I just made her a human. I believe his original intent was that DT would have the most to lose as a character if she were to become overweight, being a prissy rich popular alpha bitch and all. That all fell off a cliff pretty quickly, though.

True, but even after Twilight specifically and explicitly told her the proper lesson she then proceeded to forget everything she said, continue to bother the man and get exactly what she wanted scott-free.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:45:21 PM by MousaThe14

I think she was definitely behaving worse than usual, but at the same time I enjoyed her a lot more because of it. I seem to like the characters more when they're being assholes.

Pinkie disregarding personal space is like clouds raining. It may be annoying when it happens, but there's nothing you can feasibly do to stop it, so it's probably best to just live with it.

@doineedaname: Well, it all more or less started when Lauren Faust said that Rainbow Dash would not make a good sister, which gave spawn to the Scootabuse meme. From then it's all downhill.

Really? From here it seems that she was always meant to be a "hilarious" Fat Bastard type character, to avert the whole "aw I'm fat now, woe is me". It's really kind of annoying.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:47:36 PM by Mio

I made an edit agreeing with Perpetual.

@doineedaname

She has no backstory, no known family, and is canonically the only pegasus confirmed to be unable to fly. The absence of a backstory lets people run wild, and the absence of a family leads people to believe that she has none. Combine that with one of the most tragic background implications in the show outside of the question of Applejack's parents, and it's a perfect breeding ground for depressing fanon.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:47:46 PM by PerpetualLurker

Because she can't fly and has no apparent parents (technically AB doesn't either but she at least has a family). Also, Scootabuse originally stemmed from a comment by Faust that RD would not make a good older sister.

She is a homeless urchin.

There's nothing in canon to contradict it.

@Perpetual, Sereg: I really liked that fact as well. It was great that they treated it as a problem. My issue was that there were never any consequences for it. She basically spent the entire time making Cranky miserable, but as soon as she reintroduced Mathilda everything was apparently okay. The other thing is that the only part of the issue that got addressed was the "you need to learn that some people need space". That's entirely true, but she never gets called out for stuff like rifling through his possessions against his will or breaking into his house. They call her out of the fact that she's being annoying, but nothing past that. Like "Pinkie, if somebody tells you to stay out of their house you stay out of their house". (I also think that she's usually a bit better behaved and that the Innocently Insensitive aspect of her personality was exaggerated to the point of being a bit OOC, but that's just me)

edited 9th Sep '12 8:54:05 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Having the CMC actually get their cutie marks strikes me as something to save until the final season.

Unfortunately, given the way these TV series work, the showrunners probably won't get much say or advance notice about when the series ends. So as much as I'd like to see the show tie up the loose, status quo-altering plot threads (the CMC getting their marks, RD getting into the Wonderbolts, Rarity making a name for herself as a designer) it's unlikely to happen.

Being the character with absolutely nothing that supposrts her living a half-decent existence allows for the fandom to turn her into their punching bag to fill in the gaps, like how we filled in the Luna-shaped void between season 1 and 2 with a "Woe is me, I am shy and socially awkward because I have been imprisoned for 100 years! What is "Sandwich" of which you speak of?"

Be fair, that was entirely in alignment with her, um, twenty seconds of screentime.

I bet Hasbro will eventually give the green light for continuity to be injected.

Yeah, Woobie Luna I can understand because people were extrapolating based on what we saw of her. Scootaloo is a bit odd because there's nothing in the show indicating that she's any worse off than anyone else.

It would certainly be interesting to see how they handle it.

edited 9th Sep '12 8:55:24 PM by JapaneseTeeth