Twilight Sparkle Alicorn Controversy

Editor’s Note: This entry may contain spoilers.

About

Twilight Sparkle Alicorn Controversy refers to an event in which one of the main characters of the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Twilight Sparkle, turns into an Alicorn (combination of pegasus and unicorn). After the announcement of the event weeks prior to the actual airing of the episode in which it occured, the event managed to spark large discussions amongst the brony fandom.

Background

The first official information confirming Twilight Sparkle turning into an alicorn was in an exclusive article on Entertainment Weekly^[1] released on January 29th, 2013, containing an interview with the show’s head writer Meghan McCarthy. According to McCarthy, this was a planned event as Twilight Sparkle "was set up from the very beginning to be on an important journey”.

The event was also covered the same day by various brony hubsites such as Equestria Daily^[4] and Derpy Hooves News.^[5]

Pre-Announcement

Rumors and speculations about the event already made their round on various places prior to the announcement. On September 30th, 2012, Funrise, an officially licensed plushie manufacturer, placed a picture on their Facebook (shown below, left) page showing a shot of their office as they were working on new plush toy releases for My Little Pony.^[2] One of the plush toys for Twilight Sparkle on this picture was shown to contain wings. On October 17th of the same year, Brand Licencing Europe shared a picture on their Twitter (shown below, right) of an event with a poster on the background on which the vector for Twilight Sparkle was shown to have wings.^[3] Although neither were ever confirmed to be related to the show itself, both events managed to spark discussion amongst the brony fandom whether it was going to occur or not.

Reception & Spread

The show development was met by a large variety of responses. Fans positive about the change mainly looked forward to the episode and asked others to wait and give it a chance first. Those negative about the change found the event too much of a change, being a risk of damaging the show more than it does good and turning Twilight Sparkle into a Mary Sue.

A poll on the MLP Forums^[6] (shown below, left) posted November 1st, 2012, resulted in a majority of voters having a negative opinion towards the speculation. An Equestria Daily poll^[7] (shown below, right) released on January 20th, 2013, showed that although more voters disliked the situation than preferring it, the majority was still neutral towards it.

Shortly after the announcement, the header of 4chan’s /mlp/ (ponies) board^[10] was changed to “WHERE IS YOURGODNOW” (shown below, right). A GIF posted by Tumblr user bronychilensis-gwain (shown below, right) on January 30th, 2013, pointing out /mlp/’s overall calm approach in comparison to other websites, managed to gain nearly 1,900 notes within 5 days.^[11]

A thread on The Round Stable forums^[8] was created after various “Thanks, Obama!”GIF edits replacing Obama with M.A. Larson, the writer of the episode, started making their round on various sites, satirizing those who approached the situation in a more extreme and negative fashion. In less than 3 days, the thread managed to gain over 80 replies, excluding positive replies by M.A. Larson on his Twitter account.^[9]

Creator Response

Various creators and other people involved with the production of the show have been given reactions or their Twitter and Facebook accounts, most notably episode writer Mitch Larson and the voice actor for Twilight Sparkle’s Tara Strong. Most of these related posts approach the controversy in a more joking matter, and imply that fans who approach the situation from a negative viewpoint shouldn’t worry. These tweets are commonly shared amongst the fandom, and result in artworks related to them on occasion.

The developer of the series, Lauren Faust, has implied through her Twitter that the current course of Twilight Sparkle don’t match her original intentions for the character, but also shared that she has no intention to undermine the current writers as she is no longer involved with the production of the show since the third season.