YMMV / Harmony Theory

• Alternate Character Interpretation
  • Is Charisma a tragic and pitiful character who would have been an innocent pony, if not for forces outside her control? A sadistic Blood Knight who may have been a innocent child, but grew up to be the monster she is on her own, regardless any outside forces? Or just flat out insane from the get go? Also, does she have enough self control to resist her blood thirsty urges, but gives in willingly, or was there no hope of her ever fighting them, and what little control she has, will inevitably falter?
  • Was Max Cash just a ruthless if eccentric crime lord before he got a hold of the elements, or was he never a normal pony to begin with? Is he even the same pony, as he was before he started using the Elements, or have they just turned him into a hollow shell of whoever he used to be? Not only do they all have evidence, but recent chapters have implied he has some connection to Discord, if he isn't Discord himself
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: What was Blaze doing holding a bunch of bowls when an entire town was being destroyed?
• Crazy Is Cool: Trail Blazer is a Plucky Guy with so many of Pinkie's mannerisms, readers have sworn he has to be her descendant from his introduction onwards.
• Creepy Awesome: All three of the main villains are this to some extent.
• Cry for the Devil: Charisma, after finding out that the talent she's had for most of her life, is constantly telling her to kill everyone around her, whether she wants to or not. It's kind of hard to say she she ever had a chance of being anything, other than the psychopathic killer she is today.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Charisma. Though she does have a sympathetic backstory and a few redeeming moments,^note It also helps that she's possibly the most badass character in the story. Charisma is still a sadistic blood thirsty monster, who does enjoy killing and torturing ponies For the Evulz, even if it was forces outside of her control made her into what she is. Yet, throughout the whole story, readers have been hoping she would make a Heel–Face Turn and join the heroes.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • It's hard to pin-point exactly when Cash crossed the line, but a good candidate is when he ordered the massacre of a whole town, including driving the communication crystal operator to commit suicide and setting the school on fire, while exposing Calumn, to pin the blame on a Changeling attack, all to cover his own escape.
  • Charisma as well, for willingly going along with this and slaughtering a whole crowd of ponies.
    • One comment even mentioned this trope by name.
• The Woobie: Many.
  • Rainbow Dash. She wakes up stranded in a Crapsack World, with none of her friends and is thrown into all the hell the future has to offer.
    • When Rarity and Applejack started waking up, they had to face the same problems, but with one sad difference: Their families are gone.
    • Fluttershy. She comes in on Max Cash's disemboweled corpse, and later sees Rainbow Dash kill Charisma.
  • Star Fall: Being the first Pegasus in modern Equestria, with magic talents, has caused her to be a political pawn in the kingdom for a large portion of her life. Starting with her being taken from her parents (Though at least, by a future parental substitute.) and later, leading to her being forced into an Arranged Marriage by the king, hoping she could produce an Alicorn offspring. Later, she's forced to banish her own parents, so they can't be used to get to her, while they think she's simply disowning them. Then, it's revealed that her mentor/Parental Substitute was a traitor.
  • Calumn: As a Changeling, he naturally relies on deception to achieve his goals. But, after he starts to become attached to the mother of the soldier he's impersonating and finds a Morality Pet in Trail Blazer, he has a huge identity crisis and questions what it means to be part of his species.
  • Melody loses everything she cares about, is betrayed by a pony she trusted and looked up to, and is driven insane, after Max Cash manipulated her master into helping him. He then brainwashes her into standing by him, even after he is nothing more than a rotting corpse, and she can do nothing about this but wait for help. After she finally catches up with Max, he bluntly tells her that he does not even remember who she is, before killing her in cold blood.

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