Twilight Sparkle: All of this just raises more questions… It clearly didn't matter that it was out in the open for 1000 years.
Princess Celestia: It was in storage for about a century and a half in the middle, actually.
Twilight Sparkle: What I mean is: Why has this thing – Discord – only escaped just now?
Princess Celestia: To put it simply… My sister and I are no longer the chosen bearers of the Elements of Harmony. You are.
Twilight Sparkle: What does that have to do with anything, though?
Princess Celestia: My sister and I were worthy once, in a bygone age. With their power, we cast a powerful enchantment on Discord. But, in essence, our wills were a key component of that spell. Now the Elements have bonded to a different group of ponies. The magic that used our bond, not yours, is weakening.
Rainbow Dash: You couldn't have given us a to-do list?
Princess Celestia: Until now, I didn't know about this… feature. The point is, in that environment… all Discord needed to revive his spirit was a little push.
Fluttershy: Was it the army of exotic animals storming a high-society party to find the leader of the criminal underworld who was also royalty? Was that the little push?
Princess Celestia: Well… I didn't want to point hooves…
I like this reasoning for Discord's escape a little (just a little) better than "the CMCs done did goofed again and doomed us all," for several reasons. Man, that's another vintage show/fandom thing: The CMCs as constant harbingers of accidental doom and destruction. That was their "bit" for the longest time. I like the new direction for them from Season 5 onward, though. It's late as I type this and I'm rambling.
Honestly, that would have been a really interesting route to take with them, all of their attempts ending in releasing sealed monsters and ancient nightmares of the universe.
Admittedly, the show writers had no idea what to do with the CMC. Maybe Lauren had a bigger plan for them in the original vision, but the shift towards more episodic content did not do them any favors.
I don't see a post in the comics around that time claiming this. Did I miss it?
Although - NS, while checking I found comic #18 (the closest before that date) and similar are getting infested with spam comments toward the bottom. IDK if you have an easy way to clean them out.
I'm calling it now: Fluttershy's player starts developing a crush with the second GM who I imagine is playing as discord, and he develops one on her, and it bleeds into how discord gets to stick around instead of being destroyed, and under her watch.
Why can't it be both? It could be entirely possible that Discord was just one little push away from being free. As such, when the field trip came by, he used just a little bit of his power to make the CMC argue, resulting in the fight which he then used the chaos from to break free.
...That is now my headcanon.
Wait a second. You have Fluttershy admitting she might have been the catalyst to release Discord, but you missed a perfectly good opportunity to call this strip "The Fluttershy Effect"!
Wow, I like that explanation a lot better than what the show gave. Not that the show's explanation was bad, this just... fits right in and adds more continuity than the show did.
IIRC, it's more or less the same explanation that the show gave. But as usual, Newbiespud took a bare bones explanation and elaborated on it in detail to make it look more plausible. Kinda like why the Sixth Element is called "Magic" and not "Friendship".
Sometimes the players just know when it's their fault... but to be fair, it often is. Nothing can mess up a GM's future plans like players trying to creatively solve the problem in front of them.