Talk:Magical Mystery Cure/@comment-15617-20130403020148

So, has anybody heard about and read "Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell"? It was released today, apparently.

I'm not sure if it counts as canon, or how canon the books and comics are...I imagine, when it comes to being canon, it's pretty far down on the misc category, and probably won't be reflected within the show, if at all.

There is a review, which is essentially a brief summery, on the Amazon page from which you can buy it....copy and pasted (these are not my words, but the words of the writer):

''The book starts off where the ending episode of Season 3 left us, exactly the day after the coronation of Twilight Sparkle and her transformation into "Alicornhood". Our pony girl, Twilight Sparkle is having some trouble on how to handle her transition into royalty. She even tells many of her acquaintances around ponyville including her friends to drop her title of "Princess" when addressing her. At one point in the story, the author jokingly says, "Maybe she should put a banner in the town square telling every pony to treat her as they normally would. "I'm just the same old Twilight, really". So as usual Twilight goes and does what she excels at and researches the subject in her private library, lol. She figures out with the help of Ms. Cake to ask her Pegasister-in-law (The author actually used this), Cadence.''

''So she goes to the Crystal Kingdom and ask Cadence for help. Princess Cadence talks to Twilight about her past (In my head: I yelled, YESSSS!!). So it turns out that Princess Cadance was actually an orphaned pegasus before and she was raised by earth ponies. (Go Figure! XD). She tells Twilight that she earned her Alicornhood from defeating Prismia an evil enchantress from her earth pony village. Upon defeating her, she is transported to the what I will call the "Astral" plane aka Celestia's Domain. Celestia transforms Cadance into an Alicorn and (*cough* kidnaps *cough*) put her under her wing after seeing her potential defeating Prismia. Further she tells Twilight that she never was born a leader rather she learned it through the help of the Crystal Heart Spell. Cadence gives Twilight a Heart Pedant that Cadance claims was Prismia's which should aid her in her search.''

''With this information Twilight writes letters to her (PFF - Pony Friends Forever aka her gangster friends) and they try and help her decipher how to find this elusive spell by giving her ideas of how to run a kingdom. Twilight dismisses their ideas and gets ticked off that her friends ideas aren't exactly helping her. Gilda drops by after all of Twilight's friends leave their secret meeting, and tells her to only listen to herself and forget her friends. Twilight takes this to heart goes to search for the crystal heart spell by herself, this leads to her being consumed by hatred and doubt in her friends as well as herself. Using her pegasus wings, Twilight flies over back to the Crystal Kingdom empire to look at the books in their library for the Crystal Heart spell. At this point, Twilight is in trouble since she is consumed by negative thoughts she was regressing. Cadence sets Twilight straight and the mane 6 reassure Twilight that their friendship remains strong.''

What do I think of it from the sound of it?

Well, firstly...good grief, Cadence's history is getting messier and messier, or maybe not necessarily but they are now trying to actively make her history for the first time, instead of going around it. For instance, Twilight referred to her as a "Unicorn" during the flashbacks in the Wedding episode, even though she plainly and hilariously was NOT at the time, or ever was -- though I suspect that has more to do with the show shying away from labeling the Celestia's race of beings, even though the fans have primarily been using "Alicorn" for ages (it wasn't until "Alicorn Amulet" that the first word was even brought up) It's also doubly ironic that Cadence was born a Pegasus, in an Earth Pony village when, again, the show referred to her as a Unicorn...even though she was an Alicorn >_<.

So yeah, there is a lot of inconsistency on that department, which leads to me believe we are supposed to retcon, or otherwise ignore, those little things since it now seems that Cadence's history is now actively being worked on (assuming this whole book is canon in the first place). To make an example, it's plain, with her history here, that the writer was trying to work with this new change in direction the show is going, with the whole "earning" the role of Princess (assuming you even like what Meghan Mccarthy said in the first place, which a lot of people didn't and tore it apart), which basically makes up this book in the first place...going further into Cadence's history and, indirectly, explaining how pony's could become Alicorn's in the first place. Is it perfect? It's up to you, though I could perfectly understand why it's not at all.....much of it has to do with if you like the changes in the first place: if you even like this episode, or Meghan's reasoning in the EW magazine (which I personally was iffy about, even though I believed, at the time, that people shouldn't have dissected her words so much) The rest...I don't know - the impression I get reading this review/synopsis, is a pretty chaotic one, and again, I think it goes back to being forced to cope with the massive change in the narrative -- the mechanics of Twilight's change and what it means to even be an Alicorn, nevermind Cadence. It could also be that this one little book tried to tackle far too much, in such a small package.

The mention of Gilda also seemed abrupt...but I think what I honestly intrigued me the most from this synopsis, is that bit about Twilight's brief "regression"....that maybe Alicorn's could lose their power, and status as one, if people no longer believed in them or they no longer loved "their little ponies" - there is only so much we can take from this review without just reading the book ourselves, but it intrigued me...of course, tying that in with the canon is something else - for example, if Alicorn's lose strength with their friendships are strained, how does Luna fit into that? She became corrupted when she felt ponies didn't appreciate her night, not necessarily regressed...then again, she was much smaller in stature in Episode 2, though that may have been because of the Elements of Harmony. It could be that this "regression" only applies to Twilight, given the emphasis on Friendship and that's most likely what she stands for as a Princess...that all Alicorns gain power from what they stand for, and when Twilight's friendships were getting strained, she began to lose power.

I don't know, it's certainly worth thinking about and really makes me think of the same thing I got from Magical Mystery Cure in the first place...what I got from when I learned all of these massive Alicorn changes were happening in the first place: The less I think about it, the better....the problem I have with that mentality, is that it's the exact opposite of, well, so much....of what drew adults to this show in the first place -- you can argue that this show as also very flimsy on the details, which enabled both the show writers, and fanfic writers, to develop their own elaborate head-canons and justify how the show writers could make massive changes to the characters or the show (because they were hardly developed in the first place - Discord went from being a malevolent chaos god to misunderstood: How could they get away with that? Easy, because he was only shown one time, remember?), which we may love or hate....that being said, Bronies love the show for the depth they feel it has, and for the characters....that, to enjoy the changes the canon is going through, you basically have to turn your brain off and not dig deep for all the details...it's not really an appealing idea.

Overall, this book sounds interesting....Will it be canon, within the show? I sincerely doubt it...the show, as we all expect, is going to delve into Alicorns, Twilight and all the rest their own way - which probably makes this story just a curious side-story to read...unless of course, this IS a book adaptation of the first episodes of Season 4, in which case, it basically is a spoiler for the opening...I doubt that though - the writer is someone named GM Berrow: unless there is something somewhere that says the original writer was someone in the show, and he had permission to adapt it into a short little book, I think we can take this as un-canon.