Yep! I sees it!

The problem is that's not really what happened-- Twilight is told these things, but before she can acknowledge that her friends are right and that she really can experience jealousy and that's OK (and apologize to Discord for unjustly thinking ill of him, even if he didn't have the best of intentions), we're distracted by Discord saying "see, I knew I could make you jealous! Isn't that a great a friendship lesson?"... This muddles things because suddenly Twilight (and the audience) have reason to believe that she had good reason to be jealous and therefore the way she jumped to conclusions about Discord might actually have been right...

And STILL instead of having a positive end, Twilight and the girls pull some "turnabout is fair play" B.S. on him (when they really know better, as they are the experts at friendship and he is not)... and literally belittle him by ostracising him and cause him to feel terrible and panic as he doesn't understand what's happening. And then we're supposed to believe that making a meta-reference to an inside joke here with zero explanation sets everything right in literally the last 10 seconds of the show. Heck, if they'd cut out even 30 seconds of the boring filler and repetition of pop culture references (which are only funny the first time) in acts 1 and 2 they'd have given Twilight a chance to apologize both for reacting poorly to her jealousy, and for treating Discord cruelly by purposely leaving him out of the inside joke in the end.

Heck, even having Twilight say, "You know what Discord? You were right that I can be jealous. And although I didn't really like the way you showed this to me, it was a lesson I needed to learn."... would have been so much more satisfying, and a ground-breaking development for both Twilight and Discord. It would also have strengthened their already tenuous friendship (which really needs to happen).

So Twilight is robbed of her victory and then she and the other Mane 6 do something really cruel to Discord and then the episode ends. Frankly, that sucked.

I'm with you I think on pretty much all the points on this, with a couple more:

* Repeated pop-culture references in a single episode. Really? They're only funny the first time.

* Twilight's friends were very oddly unsympathetic to her throughout the episode (as if they'd learned nothing from Lesson Zero). It could have been a much richer episode if they'd sped up the boring bits in acts 1 and 2 and left some time for the rest of the Mane 6 to realize and deal with their error, too. Or, you know, don't write them out of character in the first place. :P

* The ending was terrible and it didn't have to be! The moral and resolution were forced and confusing. People who do wrong to their friends fess up and apologize, even if they didn't mean to do wrong... but especially if they *did* mean to and are sincere about wanting to right that wrong. Instead of Twilight even admitting she was wrong in how she reacted to her own jealousy (and be the bigger pony, as it were), she and her friends pull some "turnabout is fair play" B.S. on Discord, make him feel terrible (by his own admission), make a meta-reference to an inside joke (the orange) and then everyone laughs as if it's all OK at the end.

Discord wasn't feeling jealousy-- he was feeling singled out for ostracision (the poor guy even starts to panic and is literally belittled as he doesn't understand what's going on). What the ponies did to him was arguably worse than what he might have done to Twilight, if for no other reason than *they knew better*. To me the message at the end was "you screwed up and we're going to make you pay because we don't really like you" rather than what it should have been "you screwed up, but we forgive you because we like you and know you're still learning about this whole friendship thing." This was extremely cruel to someone who has trouble with friendships in the first place. Seriously, WTF show was I watching?

* Beyond that, I was fairly bored with the episode, was frustrated myself that the "inside jokes" we weren't privy to really weren't funny-- we were being told "this is funny" rather than being shown. Maybe that was the point-- inside jokes aren't funny to those who aren't privy to them-- but that still means *the audience isn't going to find them funny*. If you're going to go down that road, you're going to have to work a lot harder to keep the audience entertained (and you'd probably end up with something which is very much out of place in the MLP franchise anyway). Seriously, as a writer, how can you not be aware of this?

Both of these songs are full of all kinds of awesome, eh!

Actually I think this just proves my point: Hasbro moved relatively quickly to come up with a licensing agreement with Shapeways once they figured out how to get money out of the deal (and produce something that more directly competes with the hand-made fan market that they so far have been unable to touch).

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your point by bringing up the Shapeways 3D printing deal?

Fun fact: Almost all the mergers and acquisitions that happen in Internet Technology today are ENTIRELY based on intellectual property. We're talking billions of dollars each year that get spent on this.

There are entire companies with multi-million dollar revenue who make it their job to snap up patents especially and sue the crap out of anyone who tries to make anything similar to the patent (usually with zero previous knowledge about the existence of such patents).

Also, our bought-and-paid-for congresspeople are totally uninterested in this right now. Heck, it's hard enough defending Net Neutrality laws, eh! (We were really close to not getting that much.)

So while I absolutely agree that we need reforms in our intellectual property laws, we've got a BIG fight ahead of us. It starts by convincing people not to vote corrupt a-holes into office.

Hasbro could grant a limited license to Jan. They just don't care to... because they just don't care. Heck, I'm willing to bet Jan would be OK with making sure the content he produces meets their standards and practices. I suspect the motivation for not doing this is purely financial. Why bother accommodating someone that isn't going to make you money when you could just trap him behind a wall of bureaucracy and delays until he gets too discouraged and moves on. Heck, without making any kind of public statement about this, you don't even have to deal with pissed off fans (not that this fandom has a very long memory any... ooh! Shiny!)

Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Well, those things obviously wouldn't fall under that license. But his Button Mash content (excepting perhaps Bar Buddies), as well as the content on the ask crusaders blog is benign and charming. I never saw the animatic for Pony Rock Anthem or any of the Emerald May stuff, so can't really say-- but I'd trust your word if you said it was too risque.

The way he presents himself on his tumblr, it feels like he's having his career threatened over this, which is very Not Cool, Hasbro.

Hasbro granting a license to Jan to create his works doesn't give carte blanche to everyone else, and doesn't put Hasbro's IP rights in jeopardy.

So this strikes me more as Hasbro being unwilling to grant such a license for whatever reason. (And they may be justified-- some of Jan's work is a little risque. However, they could grant him a license to create stuff that they need to approve of prior to him publishing it-- but again, they're probably not willing to do this.)

You're probably right that having acknowledged him they can't now ignore him and claim plausible deniability... So while my opinion differs as to whether they would want to back down (I don't think they care really), they now have to do something. Or nothing-- they could just put him behind endless red tape and bureaucratic delays hoping he'll just go away and we'll all forget about this (which is what I suspect they're actually doing).

Good idea! I'll ask Jan whether he thinks starting a kickstarter to pay for a license would be worthwhile.