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 >>/11575/
> Tempest was going to be called Cosmos at first. Look at that leftover name now because it would be later be used for the red draconequus that would end up in an IDW arc.

> Supposedly, the movie was going to have more action, saving Equestria because of them, but that would end up being discarded so the mane 6 would save the world instead (with more violence by the way, this decision could have changed the age ratings)


All of these statements are indeed correct. I could only add to this that the sudden controversial act of Twilight trying to steal Novo´s pearl and clashing with her friends could have had its roots on this shift in order to accommodate the movie with the age ratings. 


>  I don´t have the emails that Meghan McCarthy sent to the Japanese company but the seapony word appeared in between the paragraphs and one of the reasons that could have prevented this offer was that the Sony employee asked what the word alicorn meant.


while I do remember the controversy around the ignorance about the alicorn term from the Sony employee, I haven´t heard of the seapony mention on that document until now.


>  And you look at their concept art, both in the hippogriff and seapony form, and you can tell a few differences, especially in their mouths and the colors. They still had the body type defined though:

>  Just that they looked too alien and thus, the art department had to change the perspective and suit them more for this universe. Otherwise, we would have ended up with an even more exotic orthodox design that only the changedlings could reach at the time.


Absolutely. However, as alien as they may look, one may criticise Hasbro for being lazy endlessly but when it comes to the design department, they genuinely were testing the waters with phantasy philosophy designs that wouldn´t be too out out of place in any RPG. It wouldn´t sound too outlandish to claim that they might have leaned close to what you usually see in Wizards of the Coast IPs. The movie might have its issues but most certainly, the design department didn´t lack artistic ambition during the creative process.

>  one would still be incorrect because the gen 4 designs didn´t exactly look like the ones that ended up appearing in the final product.


By the way, I should also note that the seapony labelling shouldn´t be extremely taken in a clear-cut manner, especially given that gen 5 designs display significant variants as well as the inclusion of trenchponies. It´s easy to tell them apart between the original gen 1 bath toy designs and the hippocampus ones from the 2010s/20s but when it comes to finding the exact boundaries where the gen 4 design stats and ends, it becomes increasingly blurrier. 

Given that this species can become so malleable, chameleonic and versatile at adding unique features, it is advised to consider this modern design as an umbrella term/spectrum that encapsules a paradigm on its own. 

This approach could help at avoiding a few headaches but I imagine that a random fan will inevitably judge everything on a microscopic lens at some point.