I love Discord.
Those of you who have given in and seen what the Brony phenomenon was all about will know what I’m talking about, but for those who haven’t, allow me to explain why I’m proclaiming love to such an abstract, and rather negative, concept. Discord was an antagonist in the critically acclaimed children’s television show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. While it sounds like it would be the last show you would find an interesting villain in, it’s tended to defy everyone’s expectations throughout its 3-year run.
Discord is the spirit of chaos and disharmony, similar in terms of character to the archetypical “Trickster God” often found in many cultures’ mythologies, although is more direct inspiration came from the character of Q, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, with whom he shares a love for cruel, twisted games, similar powers, and an identical method of using said powers: snapping his fingers. Oh, and of course, the biggest thing they share: both are played by the same actor: John De Lancie.
Discord is a fan-favorite for many, myself included, for much the same reason the Joker has such widespread appeal: he directly defies the rules imposed upon the world he inhabits in grand and flamboyant style. The fact that he bends the fabric of reality to his whim in the progress only makes it more enjoyable to watch. Discord’s design represents his character very well; he’s essentially a chimera: a mish-mash of various creatures, but it referred to in the show itself as a “Draconequus” a creature with the “Head of a pony, and a body made of all sorts of different things.”
But I should get to the point, I’ve rambled for far too long. The more astute readers out there may have noticed that I said Discord was an antagonist. He recently made his return in the episode Keep Calm and Flutter on, at the end of which, he reformed and offered his services to the benevolent, motherly leader of the show’s setting. As you may already know or had guessed, this caused a bit of a shitstorm. Nothing too severe, but the usual cries of “Ruined Forever!” and “They killed his character!” rang out.
The few with a decent enough head on their shoulders to come up with valid reasons were few and far between, but I, personally, was alright with the change. Had he remained an antagonist, it would’ve simply been a repeat performance, and changing his role like this opens up some interesting opportunities for future episodes to explore.
Now recently, I’ve been trying to find art and videos resultant of this major change in Discord’s character. Music videos using clips from the new episode, art and stories depicting Discord trying to adjust to living a somewhat more normal life after being reformed etc. It was during this search that I discovered “Chaos.avi”.
I found it on one of the lesser MLP boards, certainly not one that I’d’ve gone on had I been doing anything other than searching for new content, in a thread talking about Discord’s recent reformation. The discussion was hardly civil, the few decently constructed arguments overshadowed by name-calling and baseless claims about Discord’s character. One post however, caught my eye. It was by a user named simply Discord. He had registered quite recently from the looks of things, and this seemed to be his only post upon inspection. His avatar was simple still shot of Discord from near the end of the recent episode, gazing rather happily at nothing in particular. This betrayed the nature of the actual post however.
If this was someone simply pretending to be Discord, I had to give them credit: they had style. Every single letter in every single word of the post was either disproportionately sized or a different color. It simply read as follows:
“I’ve just about had it with you “Bronies” complaining I’ve gone soft. I assure you, the actual situation is quite to the contrary. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.”
This was followed by a Mediafire Link, (Now defunct if you’re curious) that led to a download of a file called Chaos.avi. I quickly clicked on the link and started downloading it, curiosity quickly piqued. I glanced at some of the posts after it and read them. Reactions ranged from “Dude…what the fuck?” to “That’s some freaky shit! How did you even make that?” There weren’t too many other replies, so I prepared myself for something fairly strange, but not disgusting or otherworldly.
The download finished, and I clicked on the new file to watch it in Windows Media Player. It took a little while to start, but that was normal; my computer can be a bit slow if I leave it on for too long. Once the video started I was greeted by a screen of light-blue checkerboard pattern. Such was characteristic of Discord having corrupted the ground of an area, but otherwise held no significance as far as I could tell. It remained like this for a few more seconds. A still screen of a simple pattern. But suddenly, the squares began to shift. They twisted and bent, then detached and began flying around the screen wildly. The view began to pan up, the squares now seeming to be twirling through the air in a Discord-ified version of Ponyville.
Eventually, the squares came to rest on the ground (which was of a similar pattern as the squares had started out on but in shades of purple), but then, the truly strange nature of the video began to reveal itself. Without warning, the shape of a pony’s face seemed to try and stretch the top of one of the squares outward, mouthing inaudible cries for help and pleas for mercy. Then similar protrusions appeared on one of the other squares. Then another, and another. Eventually all the squares where writhing about on the ground, agonized faces pressing hard against their blocky prisons.
THUMP
I jumped at the loud sound, as a large hoof suddenly stomped down on one of the squares, silencing its mute cries. This was followed by a much quieter sound of the snapping of fingers, and then the sound of burning as every single one of the animate squares spontaneously burst into flames. The view then panned up once again to reveal the Draconequus himself looking down upon the sight with a twisted, gleeful grin. Discord then looked surprised for a moment, as if noticing something, and then he looked at the “camera”. His smile returned. In a slightly hoarser, more aged voice than usual, he uttered but a single word: “Chaos.”
Suddenly, everything was a whirlwind of color and sound, static and frantic mashing of the keys on a pipe organ overwhelmed my ears, while an indescribable mixture of every hue imaginable assaulted my eyes. The buzzing became more erratic and distant, and a faint laughter could be heard in the background. As I attempted to avoid having a seizure looking at the madness in front of me, I noticed two red dots, one slightly larger than the other, appear on the screen amidst the chaos, then a grinning mouth. Suddenly the screen cut to black. A new image appeared before me; it was a pony…or rather, two ponies, fused together at their middles into a hideous abomination, anguish on their faces. It changed, now showing a pony with gills in the middle of flopping around on land gasping for air, another image, a pony, a unicorn this time, with a strange growth on the end of its horn, seemingly with a small mouth filled with sharp teeth on its end.
And it went on and on and on. A horrible menagerie of twisted abominations of equines, all in some sort of pain; a Pegasus with so many wings that when it tried to fly it could only injure itself, an earth pony, aging to dust, a unicorn whose horn kept stretching in impossible directions at an unending and breakneck pace, nearly impaling him multiple times. It seemed as if it would never end.
When suddenly, it did.
All that remained was white text on a black screen.
“SO STOP COMPLAINING AND BE GLAD I’VE NO INTEREST IN HUMANS… YET”