@GrimChariot  
unless Fluttershy is his Janeway

@Background Pony #4E5F  
I can’t blame them, but Discord’s a dick.
 
Him being “Pony Q” unfortunately doesn’t make him any less of a horrible person.

@GrimChariot
 
Can’t blame them

@Background Pony #4E5F  
But Discord is blatantly meant to be a reference in multiple places, and carries a lot of Q’s popularity courtesy of his VA.
 
The number of people in the fandom that equated the two is part of why it’s relevant even if he isn’t 1/1 by design.

@GrimChariot  
Q not that dumb

@Red-Supernova  
Nah he was just a jerk because it was fun

@Red-Supernova  
It’s less the shows morals and his popularity that justified his special treatment.
 
Discord being the Pony equivalent to Q on top of his generally witty personification basically fast tracked him to special treatment.

@GrimChariot  
I really wanted more development on his motivations and past. It would have been perfect for any of his episodes as he tries to fit in with everypony. But because I was expecting too much out of a show that was made to teach morals to kids and nothing else, its my fault for thinking like this.

@Phoenixflambe  
If Cosmos mattered he wouldn’t have decided to be a colossal dick and land himself in rock again or continue pulling the exact same shtick he took the blame for for chuckles.
 
He at his very core did not and would not care about anything save his own amusement, only “protecting” people to guarantee he had fodder for his games at a future date.
 
Doesn’t make him better, it makes him selfish and cruel on top of being basically as incompetent as a 4 year old trying to do electrical work.

@Background Pony #205D  
The princesses probably did not know about this because they may have been too young. From the IDW comics and books about the princesses’ foalhood, we know that Celestia and Luna did not rule in the beginning, when they had Star Swirl as their teacher and regent for several years. According to the IDW comics, the attack on Timbucktu happened during Celestia’s reign, possibly when Luna was either too young or banished to the moon. I believe in the first, as Celestia was several years older than her sister, and was so long ago that she did not recognize Chrysalis at the beginning of the show. S.M.I.L.E. was disbanded by Celestia in recent times - just after Twilight came to Ponyville - because the monster problem was solved after a thousand years, the show only showed a small part of Tartatus that was crowded with monsters that were not killed by S.M.I.L.E.

@GrimChariot  
You don’t remember Cosmos?

@Red-Supernova  
His sob story canonically is “I have no friends because I torment people for my own amusement, and single out the ones who called me out on it.”
 
He literally had no reason in the slightest, material or metaphysical, save laughing at their pain.

@Background Pony #520F  
I strongly doubt we’ll see anything about the monster hunters running outside of Equestria’s control or something. I expect this is as much as we will ever hear of the matter because it’s all about making us feel bad for Chrysalis. Explaining how her revenge was misguided and unjustified would take away from that, but openly stating the princesses wanted the changelings dead would go too far as well, so it’ll probably never be addressed at all.

Still better than Discord’s backstory. Whatever his sob story is.

It is very strange that many reacted strongly negatively to such a background story and took a total rejection without taking over the fact that this fanon story is produced as an alternative explanation.
 
That King Vorak was a jerk is old news from the first IDW story that revealed Tirek’s background in a brief glimpse - confirmed by Discord himself in the S9 final. I still believe that Vorak hid something vital that could explain his treatment of his son who was strong in magic. It was not a normal upbringing for Cozy Glow who experienced that her parents were obviously not suitable for child rearing with an indifferent and apathetic mother and an antisocial and violent father. We know from the show that such were not unthinkable - to be honest, it would have been very strange if everything is just glitter and rainbow in a society with hundreds of thousands of individuals.
 
There are too many examples of “evil” and morally dubious ponies through both the show, the movie and the comics to be in the belief that the ponies who generally will not succumb to evil deeds, brutality and immoral acts. Although the MLP G4 is relatively mild, it has its dark spots - and the MLP G1 was not exactly much better, sometimes far worse. In fact, ponies are as capable of committing atrocities as humans - as the writers of the show had tried to contradict by bringing in the windigos, who “force” the ponies to be kind and good to each other. But when these are absent - especially with non-ponies and when there are no tribal conflicts - one can avoid the curse of these icing spirits. The problem for the writers from Hasbro is that they sometimes go a little too far into the world of naivety.
 
Here the monster hunters had attacked completely unprovoked without knowing the changeling’s capacity in advance, the dark scenes probably showed dead changelings, the destruction of the egg chamber and the death of the last two hunters. From what Steeltrap had said before his death, crushed by the alien dragon-Chrysalis, suggests that he was hired to exterminate monsters by an official agency. This could be S.M.I.L.E. which may have been created by Star Swirl while he was regent of Celestia and Luna who were too young to rule Equestria. S.M.I.L.E. may have lost control so that Steeltrap and his colleagues could take matters into their own hands or hover after Star Swirl disappeared under the Shadow Pony arc.
 
Then there remains only one question; happened the destruction of the first hive before Chrysalis and her swarm went mad by attacking the known world? The changelings were completely merciless when they attacked Timbucktu, that an entire tribe was extinct and not seen again. There was never an explanation for the ravages of the changelings in the beginning of the legend about them a thousand years ago, they just appeared and attacked ponies that were sucked empty of their emotions (and in effect kill them in the process). It was very close that Emperor Incitatus survived, after being rescued at the last minute by Celestia.
 
My interpretation is that the changelings were simply predators who regarded the others as prey, and thus saw nothing wrong with attacking, but Timbuktu’s fate had made me ponder why Chrysalis went out so dramatically there. It was a slaughterhouse. If it had happened after the attack on the first hive and after rebuilding its trunk again, it is easy to understand why. Vengeance.

@Phoenixflambe  
No… I just don’t like having to do what is akin to Homework or a Scavenger Hunt in order to find out about a plot. I had to do that back in Highschool, and thanks to both Science and History Class; I can no longer look at movies like The Core or Amazing Grace the same way ever again.

@Ohvist  
Guess you don’t like season 10 or something.

@Phoenixflambe  
Still doesn’t lessen the sting anymore. Plus, if you have to go into other source material in order to fill in the gaps from the main series without fundamentally adding to the overall substance, than the story is both flimsy and weak…  
…  
…  
…  
…Just like KennedyFilms.

@Sanagi 蛹
 
@Magic Man  
It’s also the escalation that’s problematic. Vorak was presented as just a judgemental jerk who never explained stuff, Cozy’s parents could pass for mostly normal, if sh*tty people, but this here, this is inventing some Joker-level psychopaths so Chrysalis can look better.

The upvotes disagree with the negative comments  
and that make me happy

@Ohvist  
It took until season 10 to really do it.

So this is what set her on a dark path. I can see ponies being a lot more agressive about their mistrust at this period and because of that it would make sense for morally bankrupt bounty hunters to find work. Good backstory overall, strange that people seem to dislike it so much. I wonder if this is the Badlands in a pre-barren state or the changelings will end up migrating there.

@Background Pony #6425
 

 
‘Unrealistic’ is one word for it. I’d lean more towards ‘cliched’ and ‘rudimentary’. It’s not, by rule, a bad backstory, but it’s told in a way that just feels so by-the-numbers and passionless that I find myself simply not caring. All it does is point at a couple of strawmen and shrug, “they did it”, expecting the audience and ponies to go after them.
 

 
But ya see, here’s the thing: I’ve never been opposed to exploring the idea that, yeah, perhaps ponies’ prejudice meant their first interactions with the changelings could’ve been handled much better, but malicious actions by the latter under Chrysalis’ leadership only solidified/ justified said prejudices. It would be interesting to see whether or not Chrysalis ever did try and reach out to Celestia in earlier days (somepony who we know would have at the very least heard her out), but I have my doubts, knowing the former as we do. Like with most things in life, I wouldn’t be surprised if early Equestro-Changeling history was more of a grey area, leaning on the lighter shade.
 
It’s more the execution where stories like these fumble, where instead of introducing genuine moral greyness, it flips the script and pour all the antagonistic potential into the ponies to make the changelings look better. The changelings in canon in every single instance were the aggressors, that is a fact, so I role my eyes whenever I see historical revisionism introduced like this.
 
But on your second point… uhhh, changelings shapeshift to hide themselves because, well, they’re changelings. The shapeshifting is their tool to blend in and sneak love, because they’re, or were, parasitic predators. It’s not like they developed this ability because they were being discriminated against. The discrimination wasn’t even necessarily just because of what they were, but because their leader declared war on Equestria and up until the end of Season 6, they still were. Prejudice against them aside, for all they knew, Thorax was a spy or a harbringer of a new invasion.
 
And you know all it took to convince Shining and Cadence, the two ponies who had Every right in the world not to trust Thorax that he was not a threat? Spike’s song and dance. That’s it. I mean, the idea of this systemic discrimination can’t be That strong if that’s all it took for Thorax to get accepted, can it?

Some scenes are missing.  
Probably not something we want to see…

@Sanagi 蛹  

 
I would argue that the one group mentality has for the longest time been ingrained in the minds of the Ponies until Twilight Sparkle came to town. Tell me something, have we ever seen any Diamond Dogs after their one appearance in the series? Haven’t the Mane Six tried to reach out to them at any point between Seasons 1 and 9? And NO! That business Spike said he did in the finale doesn’t count in the slightest.