I’ve said it a million times, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is my favourite TV show that hasn’t been cancelled yet. It’s cute, funny, compelling, and has a stellar cast of characters.

The second season closed just a few months ago, and the community hasn’t responded by dying down. Every day, more fan art and fan fiction is posted to Equestria Daily as we all wait in anticipation for season three. I know I’m looking forward to it. This is a show that’s never failed to impress. With 52 episodes and counting, this show has always remained in top form for its entire run, and it’s all credit to the amazing cast and crew. The voice actors, animators, storyboard artists (including Raven M. Molisee, who I accidentally insulted once), and writers are all hard-working and passionate, and responsible for the high quality content we’ve come to expect out of My Little Pony, and I thank all of them for it. I have no doubt it’ll only get better from this moment forward…right? …right!?

Well…no. It seems what we’re likely going to get instead, is the writers jerking off the fans until they come white hot nerd. Allow me to explain:

Ever watch Neon Genesis Evangelion? It’s one of the greatest Animes to ever come out of Japan! Well…greatest-it’s on the shortlist, at least. It’s one of my favourites, the characters are fantastic, it maintains a complex and dark post-apocalyptic plot line, while still having those nice and fluffy moments that everyone loves, and has the greatest theme song of all time!!! I own the Platinum Complete Collection, which has every episode from the original run, and director’s cuts of episodes 21-24 which do a good job of leading into the film, End of Evangelion.

But that’s all footnotes, what I really want to talk about is this: Every episode ends with a preview of the next one. It’s a bit redundant in the DVD box set, but that’s not what bugs me. This is what bugs me: several of these previews have a voiceover announcing the next episode will have more fanservice, and I punch a hole in the TV screen.

I got news for all content creators across the board. If you are only doing something because the fans really want it, you’re a tool. There’s no exception to this. Of course, naturally, you should entertain the people, but gratuitous pandering is never a good thing, whether the pandering be sexual in nature (like it is in most Anime) or simply bringing the fans what they want for no other reason than: They asked for it.

It undermines the core integrity of artistic development. If everyone merely creates what their fans want, we won’t have creativity. All we’ll have is the machine that pumps out work based on polls and requests from the public. That’s not art, that’s math.

Perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic. But I’m not wrong here. If we are to have shows/songs/paintings/whatever, that challenge us, like good art should, it won’t come out of fan requests, I can tell you that.

So, what does this have to do with My Little Pony? Where should I start?

I guess I have to go back a few weeks to the San Diego ComicCon, or as I like to call it: FanWank 2012. It’s the biggest “fan convention” (whatever that means) in the US, and probably the world. Of course the people behind my favourite TV show were there, where they had a Q and A panel, and since the questions weren’t screened before hand, many of them related to season three. If you ask me they should have opened with the following announcement: “We refuse to answer any questions regarding season three.” But they didn’t.

So a lot of information was revealed, and some of it is kinda interesting. (Warning, there will be a few moderate spoilers.) For starters one episode will feature Fluttershy transforming into a dragon. Which sort of steals my idea, they just apply it to a different character. I’m kinda intrigued, since I don’t know what they’re going to do with it. I just hope it isn’t completely pointless and instead results in some type of character development. Unlike many of the episodes featuring Fluttershy.

Also, we might be seeing “Octavia” get a speaking role…maybe. I hope not, but if they do, they should pick a different name. “Octavia” sounds pretty stupid. Rainbow’s sexuality is in the air, but I don’t really give a toss. Derpy ain’t going anywhere, she will remain the show’s version of Waldo (I still hate that).

But the real thing that bugs me is this announcement: Trixie will be making a reappearance. That’s right, a minor one-shot villain from season one will be making a return appearance. Everyone seems to think this is a really great thing. I, on the other hand, think it’s a really bad omen. After all, this was a character who didn’t really do anything except piss off the entire town. Why bring her back? I don’t see what reason they would have to do such a thing. Okay, that’s not true, I see one: because the fans want it.

Out of all the minor one-shot characters, Trixie is the most popular. Try looking for fan art of Gilda, the Diamond Dogs, or those two dragons that nearly killed our heroes. You’ll probably find a few, sure. But look for fan art of Trixie and it will dwarf the competition.

Not that I have anything against the character, but as I said earlier, if their only reason for bringing her back is because the fans want it, that’s a bad reason.

Though who knows, maybe something great will come out of it. Maybe they do have a good reason, like a great story idea. Maybe it’ll end up being season three’s greatest episode. But I doubt it.

There were more announcements of course.

We got to see two big musical numbers from the premiere. At least I think it’s the premiere.

We get one that basically says Twilight is feeling overwhelmed, and the other is just simply confusing. I don’t know what to think about it. Except this: if we are going to have another musical season, I’ll be greatly annoyed. Here’s the thing about musicals: they all suck. I’ve never seen someone break into song randomly in real life, so how would a musical ever make sense from a story perspective? I guess we’re supposed to ignore the musical numbers and pretend the characters calmly explain everything without singing, or the musical numbers take place in their head. But my point is, My Little Pony was better when they understood that. When the characters would react to Pinkie’s singing with confusion and disbelief. That ended in season two and it still pisses me off.

I have no faith in the next season, I’ll tell you that much. But who knows, perhaps most of the episodes will be amazing pieces of work. Epic adventure with exciting conflicts. I mean, so far all I’ve talked about probably only adds up to four or five episodes. Right? It’s not like that’s half the season.

Well, unfortunately, it’s very close. Season three will only have 13 episodes. So basically, we’ll be getting a half season. Why? I know-I know…there will probably be a season four afterwards. But it probably won’t be released until the following fall. Which means a very long wait. If it was going to be released sooner they would have just made it a part of season three.

I don’t think you understand how depressed this makes me, I’m going to cry here. This might be the saddest thing to ever happen regarding the show, especially considering what other news has been released.

My heart is breaking here. Primarily because I also know that due to the small episode order, it’s very likely we won’t get what I really want to see: a Scootaloo episode. She’s the only member of the main cast (if you include the Cutie Mark Crusaders) to not get an episode all to herself, and that saddens me. I want to see her get some character development, because so far she has absolutely none.

It’s not all bad news though. There’s also news of a My Little Pony comic book series that I honestly don’t know what to think about. It seems interesting. But I don’t know how it will tie in with the rest of the series.

I wish I could be more hopeful, but I just can’t. I don’t see this next season comparing positively to the first two, and if it’s the last, that would be horrifying to me. Especially if we don’t get a story that focuses on any of the characters that have been neglected in seasons past; like Scootaloo, Luna, and Celestia. I know people will mention Luna Eclipsed, which focused on Princess Luna, but in that episode she pretty much just acted as a foil to Twilight Sparkle. She could use some more development on her own.

But at least we still have the last two seasons to enjoy and re-watch if we want, and if we have a comic books coming out of it there’s a good chance that Friendship is Magic will never truly die. After all, there are still, to this day, comics being made about the first generation of Transformers. But I’ll have a hard time taking the comics seriously, because I don’t really like comic books that much. I’ll probably end up comparing it to any of the Stargate or Doctor Who novels which I’ve never read and have no desire to because some of the summaries I’ve read online make them sound really stupid.

But what do I know? We’ll see how things go when the season three of My Little Pony is finally released, because I really hope I’m wrong on this one.