I… LOVE… DISCORD! Seriously, when I first watched the Return of Harmony, the very second this guy started talking in the stained glass window scene, he instantly became one of my favorite characters. Not only is he my favorite antagonist in the show, not only is he my favorite non-pony character, he’s probably my favorite character outside of the mane 6 (Who are all ironically ranked in the same spot on my favorites list).
 
I love how strange this guy is, I love how mischievous and fun loving he is, I love how manipulative he is, I love how he never does anything violent or aiming towards any particular goal and instead just fucks with our heroines’ emotions, and I love how everything he does he does solely for his own amusement. Top that all off with both the beautiful performance of John DeLancie (Right up there with Mark Hammil’s joker as one of the greatest vocal performances for a cartoon bad guy), as well as the fact that he is probably the most visually creative and inventive character in the show, with both his unique asymmetrical design, his strange abilities and beautifully surreal imagery he conjures up with his reality warping powers, and you have one fucking awesome antagonist!
 
It’s just too bad that most of this awesomeness was limited to HIS FIRST FUCKING APPEARANCE!
 
Seriously, after the Return of Harmony two-parter, I loved Discord so much that I wanted to see more of him and more of what he could do. So when I heard he was gonna make a second appearance in the 3rd season, you can just imagine how excited I was.
 
Then when I finally watched Keep Calm and Flutter On, well… how can I put this nicely? I DIDN’T LIKE IT!
 
I mean really, the whole concept of Discord turning good? It seriously rubbed me the wrong way. For me, it’s essentially trying to fix what was never broken to begin with. What made Discord such an awesome character in the first place, was that he was essentially like Equestria’s equivalent to Loki or Eris. He fucks around with everyone and everything, bends the rules of reality, makes up his own rules and conjures up his own bizarre images, and does all of this solely because he enjoys it. So… turning him into a nice guy just completely ruins the whole point of his character for me. And the way he turned good was both sappy AND contrived, he suddenly redeems himself at the last minute because “He never had a friend in his life”… www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_RmS
 
I know the whole show is about the value of friendship, hence the show’s title, but to do it with a character like Discord, who fucks with everything just because it’s fun, as well as gags at the thought of friendship being magical… IS BULLSHIT! So yeah, as you can imagine, I was really irritated with the fact that a cartoon that actually takes a lot of risks and tries to do a lot of new and creative things for being based on a little girls’ toy, would tone down what is arguably it’s greatest antagonist. That just seems like a HUGE step backwards to me. Oh, I still enjoyed Discord’s creative antics and visual gags in the episode as well as the way he was animated, and DeLancie did a wonderful job as expected, but what it led up to did not sit right with me at all. In fact watching the episode again, it almost seems like even writer Dave Polsky didn’t like this idea. Why would Celestia of all ponies wanna bring him back and have him reformed anyway? Didn’t she hate Discord more than anything?
 
You know what I would have done with Discord for his return? I would have written him so that he’s not really a bad guy OR a good guy, but rather somewhere inbetween. He’d be more of a recurring annoyance than a threat to the mane 6, and still delights in trolling them and spreading some fun-loving chaos, and maybe occasionally gives his own weird form of sage advice that would end up helping the ponies in a way. True, that just makes him more like DeLancie’s other well-known character Q from Star Trek The Next Generation, but seeing how Q was Discord’s inspiration, I think that route would have worked much better than just making him a nice guy altogether.
 
Someday, I might write my own fanmade episode, with a head canon intent on undoing the damage done to the awesomeness that is Discord, but for now, here’s my interpretation of the character in my style, while still remaining true to what made him so much fun. ;)
 
MLP: FiM (c) Lauren Faust