Wow…you fucking suck.

@Background Pony #0E25
 
Are you being a moron boy?

I always assumed if Celestia spent two minutes sobbing loudly non-stop in S04E02, it’d not have gotten a green light. However, I just now remembered Tanks for the Memories… Ah, well. XD

@moonlightaveger  
Yes, however, there is no reason to believe that what is wrong is not a trait borne by those requiring justification rather than the perspective of those feeling obliged to provide it.

@moonlightaveger  
The way I see it, the confrontation scenario that Twilight witnessed just doesn’t make much sense without any sort of buildup. Celestia isn’t as confused or surprised as she should be, and yeah…
 
It always struck me as the final private confrontation with a former friend/ally that was discovered to have betrayed you.

@Somber Star  
@Amethyst_Crystal  
The problem is that everything WE say is headcanon. As far as I know, from the show, there is nothing preventing stuff from having happened before the flashback, but there is nothing saying that it did happen either. To me, the fact that we keep trying to justify stuff says that there is something wrong.
 
But hell if I don’t like to think that Luna’s regret is justified.

Some people have a problem distinguishing real regret from emo whining. There might well have been a reason NMM and Princess Celestia were fighting in an empty city, and their home castle now lies in ruins, aside from the happy possibilities most likely presume.

@moonlightaveger  
Actually, I’ve heard complaints before about the flashback in the season 4 premiere being too rushed, but I never really thought of it that way.
 
Mostly for two reasons.  
One, I presumed this was more like a final battle situation,  
that Luna had already been causing trouble as Nightmare Moon before that point to.  
There’s no evidence for that, but that’s how it came across to me, like the sisters both knew what was going on.
 
Two, the whole flashback sequence didn’t feel short to me either. Maybe it just did a good job of impressing me with jam-packed intensity, I dunno.
 
In comparison, I can’t help but feel that Luna’s emotional confession and patching up was rushed. Thus my whining about it!

@Amethyst_Crystal  
Yes. But look at the flashback to when Nightmare Moon “happened”. That is so stupidly rushed that it makes all this drama seem exaggerated. “Eternal Night” lasted less than two minutes. I have a lot of fun nitpicking at this sort of stuff, but I guess that the intention is that Luna was suffering a lot but managed to put behind her because of her friends. It’s a beautiful message, it’s just that it need to fit a TV-Y 20 minutes episode. Frustratingly rushed. Yes.

@moonlightaveger  
Actually, I went with this angle too when I first saw it.  
She’s a hyper-intelligent god-like being and stuff, so she doesn’t have to dwell on insight too long like a mortal.
 
But,  
it was still absurdly too fast and too smoothly tidied up. Just a quick pat on the back and its done.  
Maybe plausible, but still unsatisfyingly rushed, IMO.

@Background Pony #2406  
I think that every time an author desmystifies a character or an event the chance that the audience will be disappointed is always big.

@Amethyst_Crystal  
I think that the idea is that Luna is very intelligent. All she needed was an insight she couldn’t see because she was blind with her sorrow, but her friends provided it to her because they can think with a clear head. Come on! It may be exaggerated but it’s still beautiful.

@klystron2010  
That’s my take on it as well, though it would’ve been nice if they had made that explicit in the episode, as in “Filli Vanilli” and “Equestria Games”.

@Amethyst_Crystal  
Yeah, pretty much. I like to think that since Tantabus re-entered her at the end, it means that the guilt still remains within her in a subdued form, and will never completely go away.

Luna’s big dramatic angst moment was pretty terrible.
 
Because RD and Twilight just had to say
 
‘lol get over your issues, we think you’re cool now’
 
And Luna’s like ‘oh ok thanks’.
 
That’s some pretty quick healing of centuries old emotional scars!
 
So yeah. Great fun dream/nightmare style episode.
 
Absolutely crap execution of Moon princess drama.

This was probably the weak point of the episode for me.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
I’m sure that the intention behind the flashback was to show something and that thing is that Luna was serious and wanted to go through with her plan and could go through with it. But the execution was flawed because it was rushed, because there wasn’t enough attention to detail, or whatever reason.  
(Actually, the intention in that scene was to give newcomers some insight into what the Elements of Harmony are… But you get my meaning…)
 
I mean… I’m sure that Nightmare Moon is supposed to be seen as a deadly monster hell bent on exacting revenge over Equestria for not giving her due reverence. As much as I’m sure that the intention is that both her and Celestia are insanely powerful entities that could floor anything that challenged them on normal circumstances. But because of time restraints, age restrictions, and the fact that the writers aren’t perfect, sometimes they don’t look like that in the cartoon.
 
I’m sure that the writers were going for showing Luna as a terribly tormented, broken soul, flooded with guilt and sorrow and shame because of her past. The intention behind the episode was to tell the audience that she couldn’t forgive herself and because of that she ended up making things worse. That the intention was to have Twilight provide to Luna a single insight so that she could finally let go and the visual portion is so beautiful with Luna’s expression.
 
What I’m trying to say is that we, as the audience, are supposed to try and see what is the actual message without fixating too much on the “flaws” In the execution. It’s just fun to sit on a computer and waste time overthinking stuff.

@Background Pony #2406  
@moonlightaveger  
oh okay than.

@warrior_stew  
Didn’t you get the memo? That is what fans are for. XD  
For me it’s part of the fun!
 
 
@Background Pony #1D55  
Self-harm is ALWAYS serious because people are hurting themselves, regardless if they do it just because they want attention. And even if they just want attention, they need to be taken seriously because they must be suffering.

@moonlightaveger Maybe Luna is some kind of….dreampony hypochondriac?  
Anyway yeah, the big problem with the flashback is that she still feels like she was holding back.  
Luna really needed to go #FullAzula to justify feeling this way, but I get what they were going for.

@Background Pony #1D55  
Could be either.

@RaineV1  
I’m confused. Is self-harm as serious as people put it, or is it just people begging for attention?

@moonlightaveger  

And this is my main problem with that flashback in “Princess Twilight Sparkle”; DHX just couldn’t make that confrontation as serious and dire as it needed to be within the confines of a rated-Y show.
 
Anyway, yes, there is a discontinuity between what we were shown in PTS and how Luna feels about it in DPDoMS?; watching how fans address (or avoid) it has been instructive, to say the least.

That whole scene was just heartbreaking. Poor Lulu.

@moonlightaveger  
Holy shit we’re digging deep into a show aimed at little girls…