Episode Four: Applebuck Season

 In which Applejack is a stubborn mare. More importantly, "Not baked goods, baked bads!"

Wow, this episode man.

Actually, I'm going to admit, this isn't my favorite episode, indeed far from it, but I guess I'll review it anyway.

Right, to work!

First, we'll take a quick aside to examine how this show uses the time-honored (and time-mocked) style of the Spaghetti Western in some of its scenes, recalling the days of Wild Indians and Evil Bandits riding across a Black-and-White Wild West. Next, we'll consider a few of the more interesting details of the world the story takes place in, including the communities expectations, and how it is reminescent of an idealized American Dream. Also, we should tackle the issue of Earth Ponies, and what makes them so special compared to Pegasi and Unicorns, who have obvious edges on the other varieties of ponies. Moving on to various literary devices used in the show, we see the great and surprisingly expressive and useful yet overlooked (that's a lot of adjectives...i mean pronouns...verbs...apples? Well, you get the point) art of background music. We also unfortunately have to discuss the less-than-subtle art of retconning, which fortunately the show's creators manage to pull off really well. In the actual symbolic interpretation section, possibly the coolest section, we will begin a discussion of why Applejack isn't the Element of Loyalty and Rainbow Dash the Element of Honesty, when Applejack might seem like the more Loyal of the two. Next, we'll examine Twilight's increasing control of magic, and what the thematic implications of such an increase mean. Also, we must take this time to discuss the Aesopian style of story telling. Lastly, we'll examine the letter to the princess that was written at the end of this episode.

The Spaghetti Western is one of the most memoriable styles of television, and also one of the few uniquely American-influenced styles. The Spaghetti Western evolved from a mix of the previously isolatedly American Western style and the Italian culture, as a number of Italian directors began to take the American Western style and idealize it. This unique blend of cultures finds disaproval from many "serious" critics, who believe that the style cheapened the previously serious style of Westerns and created an innaccurate, idealized version of the American West devoid of any real humanity. Then again, these are the same critics who wasted their life getting an English major and actually read and enjoy books like Catcher in the Rye, so...take that as you will.

If you like Catcher in the Rye, I recommend that you get over yourself and read some good literature. Either that, or just watch more My Little Pony. Either way, stop reading crappy literature. Now, enough insulting my readers, I've got to get back to reviewing this episode.

The most obvious influence of the Spaghetti Western style is the Cow Stampede Scene, in which Applejack exhibits a number of the traits of the archetypal cowboy, a character archetype handed down from the first frontier legends. Her mannerisms and appearance harkens back to the cowboy heroes, and stopping a stampede from overrunning a town full of innocent people screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off: pretty Spaghetti Western. Even the way she stands in front of the sponatenously generated sunset that dissapears in the next scene, returning to midday, is influenced by the Spaghetti Western.

Skipping ahead, we see the Spaghetti Western style later in the series a couple of other times. The entirity of Over a Barrel is done in the Spaghetti Western style, from the town and its populace to the War Preparation Sequence and the War Sequence itself. In addition, one could argue Spike in that one owl episode is reminescent of the bandit archetype of Spaghetti Westerns, but personally I got more of a V for Vendetta feel. Personally, I've never seen V for Vendetta, so I could be totally off. I'll probably watch that movie as part of my research for that episode, which could for all I know be a direct reference (one could say, an extended allegory...you know, if one were an asshole like that).

Uh, right, I'm reviewing episode 4.

Let us examine the world, more specifically a set of scenes from this episode, and the level of community involvement, as well as community expectations as a whole. First, we see the first Stampede Episode, in which we see Rainbow Dash seeing the stampede and acting as an early warning system for the town. When Applejack sees the stampede, she puts herself at personal risk to save the town, even though her farm was in no danger what-so-ever. Now, both of these instances can be interpreted as required community involvement, but they could also be interpreted as fulfilling personal desire. Rainbow Dash could easily have yelled out her warning in order to protect those she cares about, or even just out of terror. Applejack could have taken action out of a altruistic desire to save those closest to her from personal harm, or she could have acted selfishly, trying to protect the largest buyers of her crops and her primary source of supplies.

The next scene I want to examine is the awarding ceremony. We see how a number of the town's citizens aid in setting up the celebration, and even more would be needed to gather materials and spread the word to seemingly everpony in the entire town and probably the surrounding area too. While we could just assume that the mayor paid for all of this, one look of how happy the ponies seem to be to help shows how clearly this is beyond any amount of money. Twilight Sparkle represents an interesting case, being on a government payroll. Even though she came to Ponyville to research the magic of friendship, she clearly not only is asked to, but is gladly willing to spend her time preparing a speech and the hundreds of note cards she needs to go along with this speech.

A few last things I would examine, less of a scene and more just a fact, is that Fluttershy is doing an Official Bunny Census. That's right, this shy, withdrawn pony who lives in harmony with nature gladly, even excitedly, taking an official government census. Another example of community involvement in the show is how Twilight Sparkle offers to help in the urgent care, something that would simply not be allowed in the real world.

So why have I just spent three paragraphs detailing such high levels of community involvement? Well, as with all literary analysis, I'm going to use this information to derive a statement about humanity. Let's start with how happy all of the ponies seem to be to help their community. This clearly shows a sense of fulfillment derived from community involvement. We also see how happy the ponies seem to be pretty much whenever there isn't some variety of horrible disaster going on, which points to a utopian society. From all that I've just stated, I can easily show how the shows creators are stating this truth about the human experience: Community involvement creates happiness, both directly and by creating a nearly perfect society.

Bam!

On a totally different topic, something I've often been asked is, "What makes earth ponies so special?" To explain, the people who I try to explain the show to fail to see what makes earth ponies equal to pegasi, who can fly, and the unicorns, who have fucking magic. Actually, so do a lot of the fans of the show. As a reviewer of the show, I take on the great burden of explaining community questions with simple, totally valid answers.

The first answer I give is that the earth ponies control the food system, as the only farmers, but this answer never seems to be satisfactory to others.

Our actual proof for what makes earth ponies special lies in the pony-pult scene. When Applejack jumps from the platform, she starts at a height of about 25 feet and reaches a maximum height of about 30 feet. The catapult is a lever in which the force pushing down is on one end, the fulcrum lies almost exactly in the middle, and the exit vector for the force is on the far side of the lever. Such a design should create an almost exactly transfer of force, meaning that Applejack's velocity times weight should equal Rainbow Dash's velocity times weight. However, we see Rainbow Dash fly thousands of feet into the air, arcing across the town.

I would like to thank the pony physics presentation for most of this info, as can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVfidujxRg.

Let's just assume that Applejack and Rainbow Dash would both have well-developed muscular systems, based on both of their lifestyles being full of physical activity. I know it's a stretch, but let's just assume. (I'm having a lot of fun italicizing things!) However, we see that Applejack's velocity is far smaller than Rainbow Dash's, which if we plug into the formula above means that Applejack's weight must be far larger. So, what we can prove is that earth ponies are special because they are really, really big.

For those who would point out that I should be saying mass and not weight in all of my physics talk, instead of going back and making really easy edits, I'll prove that it's totally okay for me to use weight. First, under approximately one atmosphere of pressure (in other words, the amount of pressure felt underneath the atmosphere), which is about what the ponies would be experiencing being on the ground, weight equals mass. Second, you can stuff your high school physics class graduation certificate and shove it up--

Er, I mean, take it and come down from your high shelf. Assholes.

Now that I've sufficiently wasted your time with unnessecary details, let's discuss the literary methods used in this episode, and in a number of other episodes. First, I feel like this would a great episode to discuss the importance of background music. Background music is actually an incorrectly used term, the actual term for this being incidental music. Background music includes incidental music, but also includes any music not designed to be the primary focus of attention, such as music being played by musician's at a fancy dinner.

Incidental music is often overlooked, purposely designed to fade into the background and create emotional overtones. Although some critics have said that background music creates an unrealistic effect by adding a source of emotional charge to a piece, I personally think that they're wrong. Like  Background music plays a crucial role by replacing a lost feeling that one would feel if they were part of the real world. Background music attached to a location or activity replaces the natural feel created by senses that we simply cannot feel sitting all alone in our parent's basements, but would in the pony world. The same goes for people, although the senses are not as obvious when we talk to someone. In our lives, we meet all kinds of people who give us a weird, unexplicable vibe, either positive or negative. However, these feelings are dulled when we watch a character on screen, because no matter how realistic a person may seem on screen, the human mind is really effective at distinguishing between the real and the fake.

I could spend pages and pages talking about the awesome background music use in this episode, and the show as a whole (hell, I could create myself a whole blog about it...hm...nah, I'm too busy), but I've decided to limit myself to five examples. Definitely five, I counted them myself. Of course, I've never been wrong or lied to you before, have I? Those five are: Rainbow Dash's incidental music, Pinkie Pie's incidental music, Fluttershy's incidental music, the incidental music during the hospital scene, the incidental music during the Bunny Stampede, and the incidental music whenever Twilight writes a letter to Princess Celestia.

Definitely just 5.

Let's scroll over to the speech scene and watch as we see the incidental music changes from character to character. It's hard to draw much from Twilight's music, because it's difficult to tell the difference between her music and event incidental music, but we can easily draw characterization from the other songs. Rainbow Dash is both first and easiest to evaluate, because her presence always has an effect on music. In this scene, the music is a fast-paced, beat-heavy piece, showing primarily excitement. However, this also creates an almost undetectable aura of desire to look awesome, masked as just awesomeness. This detail, seemingly minor, actually has massive implications on her character. Rainbow Dash is obsessive about achieving the greatest heights of awesomeness, which in her mind would be joining the Wonder Bolts. However, as I've discussed earlier, we've been given very subtle foreshadowing that this will never happen. Rainbow Dash's emotions, therefore, are becoming ever more fragile, and we'll see her break later in the season.

Pinkie Pie's incidental music is, admittedly, just as happy and random sounding as you would expect, and I don't really know how much information I can pull from that. However, I can use this to prove that incidental music can be carefully crafted to assure that the music increases the character's personality and not merely her existance. When Pinkie Pie takes a few moments to consider the question Twilight Sparkle presents her, we hear the music stop. When her personality returns and she answers the question, so too does the music return.

Fluttershy's music in this episode, and a number of episodes to follow, her incidental music simply shows how shy she is. However, as she becomes less shy and the show progresses, her incidental music changes from this episode to this. I don't know, maybe this is because incidental music is an extremely effective tool for showing character change. Maybe incidental music is such an effective tool for showing character change because it allows expression of mood in one scene separate from previous moods, but can also be used to show a continuity by doing things like using the same instruments and style, like they use here. I don't know, I'll let you decide.

But the answer's yes.

The next scene I want to discuss, and therefore am going to discuss, is the hospital scene. Here, we see the ponies in a state of horrible illness, in horrible pain and with heavy vomiting, among other symptoms. While the show cannot create all of the terror of an actual hospital during an epidemic, it can reclaim enough of it to get across the horror without having so much that children get terrified and run screaming to their rich parents who then try to sue Hasbro. Or something like that. Anyway, hospital scene's horror is aided by the music, which due to it's uncomforting key and style and the high-pitched strings, creates a sense of horror and disgust without showing anything horrible or disgusting. Pretty amazing, I know.

The next scene I have to review is the bunny stampede. The music in this scene also creates a sense of terror, but for a slightly different purpose. This scene allows use to connect to the ponies on a deeply emotional level, allowing us to feel what they feel. A bunch of humans wouldn't be that terrified of a bunny stampede, which we could easily irradicate like the pestulance that they are. In contrast, ponies are terrified of a bunny stampede. Besides creating the needed emotions for us to evaluate the scene in a strictly literal sense, it also causes us to throw our values into question. The ponies are scared because they know the damage that bunnies can do, but they can't easily get rid of bunnies like humans can. This leads us to question the morality of the way we deal with animals we don't like, often by scaring, harming, or even killing them. We see how while the ponies have a respect for all kinds of life, we don't even have a respect for human life, as we kill those who break onto our property, even sometimes without making sure that it is incidental.

Near the end of this episode, Twilight dictates a letter to the princess, while everypony is bucking apples. This music plays a number of key roles in the show, which is why I chose this episode to discuss incidental music. The first and most obvious role it plays is to connect each of the letters to each other, showing that they are written when Twilight has successfully dealt with her problems and achieved a calm, elated state of being. This connects to show how the music creates a positive feel to wrap up the piece and show just how much learning from, and enjoying, friendship can create a positive feeling in all of us.

However, the most important purpose of this music is that it is recognizable. By creating recognizable patterns that repeat each week, the show's creators can keep up excitement about a show over a week and even over months between seasons. This is extremely important because the show is so episodic in nature, unlike many shows cliffhangers can't be created to keep people coming back each week. The use of episodic style allows the shows creators to completely wrap up an idea each episode and allow the episodes to be universally understood without an understanding of the episodes that came before or after. One could say that friendship is very similar in this regard. Could that be why they used an episodic format?

Yes. Yes it is.

I've talked a lot about musical numbers before, and I will again whenever they show up in the series. However, I want to take this more unique opportunity to show the connection between incidental music and full-blown musical numbers. I've already discussed how both represent the emotional state of characters in a show, but they're clearly used in different manners. Musical numbers are more full-blown, and therefore must represent something more than incidental music, and they do indeed. A musical number represents and overflowing of emotion, when a pony is extremely excited or happy or angry or sad or scared or any other emotion, while incidental music represents constant emotion. In addition, a musical number tends to remove a feeling of seriousness from a scene, while incidental music adds to the tension and seriousness of a scene.

Something that we must unfortunately discuss with this episode is the less-than-subtle art of the retcon. Perhaps you missed it, because the people who design the show actually know what they're doing. Can you find it? Oh god, where was it? Fine, I'll tell you. Applejack, in the very first episode, presents her family to Twilight Sparkle and the show derives humor from how large her family is. However, this removes too much tension from the family, where if they had a small family of, say...I don't know, four ponies or so, then even a single injury could create enough tension to allow for the creation of an episode about the farm, which is pretty hard to do, the farm being so out of the way. So the show's creators do it, they retcon and have Applejack explain that her "family" are just a whole bunch of people there for a family reunion. Why wouldn't Twilight have learned that after eating a massive meal with these people in the very first episode. We know that she's not anti-social enough to not talk to ponies, because she talks to the ponies who tell her about Moon Dancer's get together in the west courtyard. Unfortunately, the show's creators wrote themselves into a corner, and had to retcon to escape.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Just comment if you see what I'm missing.

Finally, we get to the fun part of evaluating the thematic implications of this episode. One extremely integral thematic detail that we have to consider is the Elements of Harmony. A big debate that appeared early in the series was that Rainbow Dash didn't deserve to be the Element of Loyalty, and should have been swapped with Applejack and her Element of Honesty. This episode shows how loyal Applejack is, but this is only the most obvious conclusion, which unfortunately does not line up with the rest of the series. Applejack tells everypony that she'll help them with things and stuff (really CopperToken, really? things and stuff?), and she keeps her word. One could certainly say that she wasn't lying.

In contrast, Rainbow Dash does lie in the series. We'll evaluate and highlight those when we get to those, but we can already prove how loyal she is. All one has to do is look at her obsession with the Wonder Bolts, and how she works so hard to impress them. Every episode so far, she has mentioned them in some way or another. In the first episode, she's simply taking a break from training, and allows her work to slide for her practice. In the second episode, she asks the Shadow Bolts to mention their complements about her to the Wonder Bolts. In the third episode, she reveals that joining the Wonder Bolts has been a life-long dream. In this episode, she's doing new tricks "that are sure to impress the Wonder Bolts". Clearly, she is extremely loyal.

Now I don't want to say that somehow Applejack isn't loyal, when she clearly shows that she is. She attempts to provide for her family and aid her friends, but her form of loyalty is far more unhealthy than Rainbow Dash's. She doesn't believe in receiving aid when she needs it, only in giving it. Already in this series, this causes her emotional and physical harm.

In this episode, we see that Twilight is gaining more control of her magic. Where before she could only use her teleportation in fear, now she can use it at will and with far greater control. We also see her coming out of her emotional weakness and offering help to her friends instead of receiving help for once. Now, if we accept that friendship is synonymous to magic, as stated in the title of the show, could we say that her increasing control of magic and her increasing control of friendship are related, and possibly even that her magic in becoming better because she is harnessing the power of friendship? We could, if you know, we felt like being correct.

This episode is a great example of Aesop-ian story telling. This style is an ancient art first truly mastered by Aesop, although it certainly goes far back before that. We see how a bunch of talking animals have a rather normal adventure and learn a valuable life lesson. In this regard, we can see how the whole show uses this style. Why? Stop asking stupid questions, I'm about to tell you. This show, officially written for children, needs to be full of easily understandable characters and styles, and the Aesop stories are some of the most universally understandable characters. Also, using a certain style like this provides a useful chassis for each episode in an episodic show, like police dramas in which the cops find out about a crime, look into solving it, and then find and bust the murderer.

We're almost done here. First though, we have to evaluate the letter to the princess. I quote:

"Dear Princess Celestia,
My friend Applejack is the best friend a pony could have, and she's always there to help any pony. The only trouble is, when she needs help, she finds it hard to accept it. So while friendship is about giving of ourselves to friends, it's also about accepting what our friends have to offer.
Your favorite student,
Twilight Sparkle."

We'll see lessons related to this throughout the season, and this sets up an understanding of giving throughout the series. For example, in the best episode (well, Suited for Success anyhow), we see Rarity give away expensive, hand-stitched outfits, but eventually her friends drive her ragged. Clearly, it is important to set up this idea of give and take early in the show, creating plenty of area to explore in the field of friendship.

Or something like that.

At the end of the bunny stampede, we see a reference to the Lion King when the bunnies run around the unconscious body of that one background character. Even the music matches up.

Copper Token. We're done here.

Sorry

Sorry it's been taking me so long to update this website. Recently, I've been going through some tough times, between finals studying and illnesses in the family. Soon, though, that will all be sorted out, and I should have the next episode review up by next Monday.

Let me just say that I am truly honored that people are actually reading my blog.

*yay*

Episode Three: The Ticket Master

In which the episodic pattern is set up and the mane plot begins to develop.

This episode is the first to set up the episode pattern that will be used throughout the series, and also the first for a number of other things. With this episode, I would like to discuss five things. First, I must discuss the classical influences in the show, namely with the chase scene. With two new (admittedly short) songs, this episode is a great chance to discuss the use of musical numbers in cartoons, from the very first. On to actual thematic evaluation, we get a great chance to evaluate the mane six's past and personality through their dreams of the future.  Also, we get to see how the creators of the show set up the characters for eventual disappointment, and how the expressing of dreams is always full of foreshadowing. Lastly, we have the obligatory job of evaluating the letter to the princess, and the thematic importance of the lesson learned.

Although the style is uniquely talented, the show draws a lot from classical influences. Namely, the chase scene is done in a style that most of you should be able to recognize from watching cartoons on Saturday morning. From the very early days of movies, back when sound was still a dream, and color even farther away, the silent film industry made easy money by speeding up a scene of characters chasing after each other, and could easily add in the slapstick that was the gold of the industry in those days. With the rise of cartoon animation, back when Mickey Mouse was first on the rise, characters continued to chase each other. With the slapstick comedy of the era having a great influence on everything, it makes since that the chase scenes were always saturated with slapstick.

As the cartoons advanced, the slapstick died down to be largely replaced with more subtle comedy, although some of the jokes were still based on slapstick, and still are today. The chase scene, in contrast, retained the same slapstick style, and was considered the gem of the early days of cartoons. Then one show appeared, an obscure show called Scooby Doo. Scooby Doo ended up becoming so popular, it set the tone for the entire industry for the last 42 years. One of the most important things it solidified was the chase scene, creating a number of important syntaxes necessary elements. One of the most influential was the background music, in which a fast, upbeat song was played to add to the slapstick style of the chase scene. Another influential element that was not included in this scene but was included later in the series was the door scene, in which characters move in and out of doors in an often inexplicable manner.

Musical numbers in cartoons date back to the very first cartoon, named Steamboat Willy. Let me assure you, if you haven't seen it yet, it's not worth seeing. Music in the cartooning industry would have a major part to play for decades, eventually climaxing in the Disney Princess era, when you couldn't be a real villain, hero, or princess without singing at least a few musical numbers.

However, with the advent of computer animation, music became a backstage thing, as cartoons tried to mimic real life. Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy musical numbers, they hardly ever happen in real life, and therefore had to be cut out of the cartoons as well. In addition, another force against the musical number was a movement to make cartoons more accessible to "normal" people above the age of ten, so that these "normal" people would be more likely to take their kids to see the movie in theaters, paying more money. Sadly, the cartoon companies viewed musical numbers as being something that "normal" people don't like.

Luckily, any show with the name "My Little Pony" can't exactly be geared towards "normal" people, giving the creators of the show a lot more leeway in what they do and do not include. Luckily for us, they did decide to go with putting in really awesome musical numbers into the show.

Music within a show has a number of handy uses. The most important one is it allows the creators to deliver far more emotion for a short amount of time. This is why songs often accompany scenes with high emotional value, such as when Pinkie Pie gets really, really excited about the gala. Another important use is to create something for the fans to rock out to.

Onto actual thematic analysis. In this episode, we get a lot of characterization from the dreams of the characters about the gala. On an obvious level, this presents the viewers with hard information about what the characters want from life. However, on a deeper level, we get a lot of valuable information from the appearance of the scene. Whenever a character dreams about the future, unlike flashbacks to the past, they cannot help but infuse them with copious amounts of emotions, in this case desire. For example, when Rarity shows her dream, it is infused with pinks and purples, colors often associated with love and romance.

Starting with the first pony to reveal her dreams, Applejack's dream creates a very interesting portrayal of the character. The money she dreams of making, she dreams of using to replace things around the farm. However, the things she wants to fix don't pertain to her, or pertain to her only because they pertain to the whole family. This shows a devotion to her family, a devotion that comes before her own desires. A symbolic object you may have missed was the chest in which Applejack puts her bits. The design of the chest, up to and including the stacking of the gold coins, is very reminiscent of the treasure chest hunted by so many pirates in the old pirate stories. This has great implications, as one might point out how if the pirate does get his treasure, it's only after great struggle and usually does not leave the character fulfilled, and if the pirate doesn't, he's still not fulfilled.

Rainbow Dash's dream is pretty much on par for Rainbow Dash, in which she dreams of joining the Wonder Bolts yet again. This routine is pretty amazing, and I do really want to see a Buccaneer Blaze. Joining the Wonder Bolts is actually a really important part of Rainbow Dash's character, as her fandom is the greatest display of loyalty I have ever scene, which is pretty important on account of how Rainbow Dash's Element of Harmony is Loyalty. However, when she does become a member of the Wonder Bolts in her dream, her tail blaze does not change to match the rest of the team, staying a rainbow. Does this represent how she will almost achieve her dreams, but is inevitably doomed to fail? Does this represent how Rainbow Dash couldn't subjugate her unique personality, even to achieve her lifelong dream? I'll let you decide...but the answer is yes.

Pinkie Pie's dream is a sugar-fueled acid trip, but what else did we really expect to see inside of Pinkie Pie's mind. While her desire to party is admirable (by which I mean awesome), this scene has a number of unrealistic details, even for a Pinkie Pie number. Streamers and confetti fall down and balloons fall up from apparently no source, highlighting how unrealistically excitement-filled this imaginary party. Also, clearly Pinkie Pie has never heard of a Gala, on account of how most Gala's don't have clowns.

Rarity's dream is full of romantic symbols. Besides the copious amounts of pink and purple, one might also note all the flowers, the hair blowing in the wind, the dancing surrounded in a large circle by onlookers, and even the marriage scene. Prince Blueblood (Pony Jesus?) sure seems a likable person in this dream, but unfortunately this is only based off of his handsome looks and stories of Prince Charming, really the only information that Rarity would have on Prince Blueblood. Unfortunately, this whole story sounds like something from the Prince Charming stories, something from the romance novels which a character like Rarity would probably read. It sure would be devastating if this weren't the case.

(Am I laying on the fact that each pony is going to be let down heavy enough yet? More on that latter. Now let's see, where was I? Oh yes...)

Fluttershy's dream is, first of all, extremely adorable. The garden is an actual thing, but that the Flora is all in bloom on the night of the Gala sounds a lot like a rumor. In addition, Fluttershy has clearly never seen a gated garden, on account of how wild and uncontrolled everything seems to be. I don't...actually have much else to say about this one except for HOW CUTE!

Twilight Sparkle's dream is the best of the six. If you don't remember this great scene, then let me just say "HOW COULD YOU?" Actually, though, you're not alone, on account of how her dream is never shown to us, and is actually kept a secret until the night of the Gala, in the season finale. Let's just assume that this is not an accident, and actually has thematic importance. Well, if we were to assume that, we could then extrapolate that this is because Twilight Sparkle cares greatly about her friends, and doesn't therefore feel like she should burden them with her thoughts and dreams. This could then point to a low self-esteem problem, which we might have to discuss again later in the series.

Whenever a character reveals there dreams of the future, they are foreshadowing. If the dream is reasonable, like getting back home and getting back to teaching students about archeology, not to mention getting rid of a certain arc that the character has been trying to get a hold on for archeology, then the character has a pretty good chance of reaching there goals. Whether or not the success of the dream is fulfilling depends on the dream's content, not reasonableness. A dream involving getting a lot of money or fame will have to either change and/or leave the character unfulfilled, on account of how these desires subjugate the human social drives and represent human flaws. In contrast, a dream which goes along with the human social drives, like saving the princess from the horrible beast (although, if this is brought down by (usually implied) sexual desire, it goes in the fame and fortune category), it will often leave the character fulfilled.

However, an unreasonable dream has a very different nature. When a character, for example, wants to be the most famest or richest, or even just wants to sell a massive amount of apple-based snacks or court a Prince Charming, this dream can become a foreshadowing of future disappointment. This is one reason why most villains are doomed to failure. Note that the difference between a reasonable dream and an unreasonable one is often only in the gut, as a dream (such as to be the very best, like no one ever was) may seem reasonable in one story and not in another.

Now, to examine the thematic importance of the letter to the princess. For those of you who don't remember, this was the letter:

Dear Princess Celestia, I have learned that one of the joys of friendship is sharing you're blessings, but when there's not enough blessings to go around, having more than your friends can make you feel pretty awful. So, though I appreciate the invitation, I will be returning both tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala. If my friends can't all go, I don't want to go either.

WOW! That was, to say the least, unexpected. The thematic value of this shows just how much Twilight Sparkle has grown to depend on her friendship with her friends, to the point where them being sad makes her sad as well. This emotional connection is the most important part of friendship, showing great character development already.

[Credits Song]

For you who didn't notice, when Rainbow Dash is talking to Twilight Sparkle from the hole in the sky, they drop a Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail reference.

Episodes One and Two: The Mare in the Moon

And so a legacy was born.

With this episode, I would like to focus on three topics. First, this episode, as well as the series, can be understand best through the lens of archetypes, an idea first espoused by Carl Jung. In addition, this episode sets up a number of motifs, which provide plenty of material for discussion. As with all motifs, understanding them creates knew insights into the series. Lastly, and possible most importantly, I would like to force you to sit through a short discourse on magic, as well as the vitally important thematic message held within the title.

Archetypes, as described by Carl Jung, are universally understandable characters, sequences, colors, or images, which each have their individual associations. For example, the color black is identified with evil, darkness, and corruption.

However, within the terms of this show, the most important archetypes are character archetypes. Each of the six mane character represents a standard archetype, and has a counter-character that represents the opposite.

Twilight Sparkle represents the archetype of the studious researcher, who subjugates all other personal desires and creates powerful inhibitions in order to continue research and accumulate knowledge. This can be seen even in her appearance, notably her hair, which one might note is brushed perfectly strait, and her normally calm, even voice. Her mane is purple, a color long associated with knowledge and power, two things which these episodes set her up as having.

Often to the initial disappointment of the character, a studious researcher archetype is doomed to character development. Archetypes are so universally identifiable because they represent something within all of us, and unfortunately for the researcher archetype, she represents a failing. Humans are, above else, social creatures, and the destruction of these social desires is seen as a human failing. Such a failing is part of the menace of the lich, a creature who was once human, but subjugated the most human part of itself for its research: its ability to die. As all archetypes that represent a human shortcoming, both must be changed into a purer form. For the lich, this means death and damnation, because a lich cannot be saved. However, Twilight Sparkle can be changed, and as such learns the value of friendship.

Indeed, Twilight Sparkle is analogous of the "Gygaxian" wizard, as first created in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. A compilation of the Tolkien wizard and the "Vancian" wizard from the Dying Earth series and similar stories, the "Gygaxian" wizard is different because it begins the story as a withdrawn figure, seemingly doomed to be lost among books, but eventually must come to open up to the party, and thereby learn the magic of friendship.

This largely developed from the fact that if the wizard of the party failed to work with the fighter, protector of the weaker party members, and the cleric, the party healer, they would die extremely quick. A wizard would usually have no more than 4 or 5 hit points at first level, not advance in hit points or defenses quickly at all, and was extremely easy to hit and kill. Still, that doesn't mean that the thematic influence is any less important.

As stated earlier, each character has an opposite, a counter-character. For Twilight, the intelligent but socially cold researcher, is Pinkie Pie, the inhibitionless, excitable party pony. From her cutie mark to her color, everything about this pony says FUN! Also, Pinkie Pie, as a crazy character, is the only pony with the ability to access things like hammer-space, the ability to hold things in spaces they shouldn't belong, and teleportation to the most humorous locations available.

Besides being enjoyable to watch, having this lovable partier archetype presents an interesting situation. Should anything negative happen to Pinkie Pie, the viewer will enter a depression. Characters like Pinkie Pie are considered "comic relief", because they're hilarious characters used to diffuse overly emotional scenes. This allows the other characters to draw up more emotion without being accused of overacting. However, when something bad happens to the comic relief, the viewer becomes depressed. The reason for this is that the comic relief archetype is representative of all things good and lovable about the world. Without the character, a darker shade falls over all the scenes she would otherwise be in, and does an excellent job of creating a sense of depression in the viewer.

Applejack is a very interesting archetype: the farmer archetype. The farmer archetype is often suspicious, but is also often the most reliable, honest character. This archetype is represented in her profession, but also goes deeper than that. For example, orange, the color of Applejack's fur, is archetypal for stability and a certain reliability.

The farmer archetype is actually one of the oldest archetypes. The first step upon the path of creating a sociology complex enough to contain universal archetypes is agriculture, the ability to stably and safely produce enough food for everyone without having to employ everyone in the production of food. Whenever a society experiences an agricultural revolution, it is often followed by a cultural revolution, as a large spike of new thinkers is introduced into the cultural pool. Eventually, these thinkers are absorbed into the middle class, and carry their ideals throughout a culture.

Applejack's counter-character is Rarity. Rarity, a pompous fashion designer, is a form of the cultured aristocrat archetype, a form stuck in (and dissatisfied by) a small town and/or rural environment. Much like Twilight, Rarity is doomed to character change from the very beginning. A viewer simply cannot stand the idea of a pompous aristocrat for too long, because the pompous attitude is considered to be a failing of the human social drive, the core of all archetype development. That's why books like Pride and Prejudice

One might note that their are other cultured aristocrat archetypes, but they tend to not make likable characters. However, one royal archetype that is likable is that of the benevolent ruler, found in Princess Celestia. Another archetype that is used, the counter character to Princess Celestia, is the malevolent ruler, embodied in Nightmare Moon. The malevolent ruler is also almost exclusively an autocrat.

The heroic sports archetype is claimed by Rainbow Dash. As with all characters in her archetype, Rainbow Dash represents the desire to succeed, a universal desire. We root for her to succeed at her sports and feels bad when she fails because she is such a noble character. The most accurate counter-character to Rainbow Dash would be the devious sports archetype, a character who cheats at sports and competitions to win. The viewer finds himself rooting against the character, and we rejoice at the character's failures. While the heroic sports archetype represents a competitive drive tempered by a moral code, the devious sports archetype represents a competitive drive that has grown too strong and overridden the moral code, the "superego".

The heroic sports character is originally based off of the knight in shining armor archetype. With the death of chivalry during the Hundred Year's War, people couldn't put the same moral bravery into soldiers, who came to represent different things. In order to mend this, people turned to the next most violent yet justifiable thing: sports. Over time, the knight in shining armor became the sports player in your colors. This competition element grew with the rise of nationalism, which split people along country, "state", and town lines. The devious sports archetype grew out of the evil knight, who had subjugated the moral code for success, in this case military success and power over others.

The protagonist counter-character of the bold sports archetype, and therefore Rainbow Dash, is the shy gentle archetype, impersoned in Fluttershy. Fluttershy represents shyness, which is yet another failure of the human social drive. As such, Fluttershy is doomed to character change, character change that will make her a more outgoing character. Unlike Twilight Sparkle and Rarity's character change, this character change must take place over a far longer amount of time, because if it goes too fast we miss the important value of having a shy character at all.

The number one benefit of putting a shy character into the series is that shyness is connected with vulnerability. Seeing ourselves in Fluttershy, we connect with her on an emotional level, and therefore open our emotions up. When Fluttershy succeeds, we feel wonderful, because we see ourselves succeeding. However, when Fluttershy is hurt, we feel hurt, because we see in it ourselves getting hurt.

Motifs are much like archetypes, and often archetypes are used as motifs. A motif is a property, like a color, or a thing, like a location, that has a specific meaning within the context of the show (or book, or play). There are two motifs that stand alone in this show that I would like to discuss, namely stars and rainbows. Many motifs can only be fully understood in their opposite, as they represent opposites of each other. The two pairs I want to discuss are day and night, and Equestria and the Everfree Forest.

Stars are an important and often overlooked archetype in this show. However, they have the greatest impact within this episode. The Elements of Harmony are presented in the introductory story as gems embedded in stars, in a pattern that is almost exactly the same as the pattern on Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark, a single star surrounded by five smaller stars. The stars represent the effects of friendship, as they hang in the night sky as the only thing in opposition to the moon, a symbol connected with Nightmare Moon, who represents the power of hatred. Note that the magic of friendship overcomes the magic of hatred, and in doing so becomes even more powerful, just as the stars shine more brightly when the moon is not in the sky.

One might note that the stars come into importance at one other time in the series. On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars allow Nightmare Moon to escape from the moon. What, or more accurately who, these stars represent is still under question, and will hopefully be revealed later in the show.

A rainbow in the series represents an immensely powerful discharge of energy. When the ponies use the elements of harmony, it creates a rainbow to destroy Nightmare Moon, and when Rainbow Dash pulls off a sonic rainbow later the series, it is a sonic boom, a large blast of energy, accompanied by a rainbow. Rainbow Dash's mane is colored in a Rainbow, and represents the amazing speed and sharp turns she manages to pull off, which require amazing amounts of energy.

Rainbow Dash's mane has nothing to do with her sexuality. In fact, her sexuality is not important. If I ever tell you that Rainbow Dash is lesbian, unless this has been set up in the show, you will know that I've been killed and replaced.

Day and night, light and dark, sun and moon, are all part of a pair of motifs. This ancient archetypal motifs represents good and evil, and for good reason. When the sun is out, one can see, and plants grow. However, most crops will wither and die without sunlight, and the shadows of night are often indistinguishable from evil things trying to kill and eat us. For example, while Nightmare Moon's design is full of black, the only black on Princess Luna's design is her eyes.

Equestria and Everfree Forest are an interesting dichotomy with interesting social and political implications. Equestria is represented as a place with "harmony for all the land", while the Everfree Forest is considered to be "dreadful" and not "natural". However, the harmony is put in place by the royalty, especially Princess Celestia and, to a smaller degree, Princess Luna. The rule of Princess Celestia is notably like that of an enlightened ruler. She tells people how things are and are not, and expects complete deference from her subjects. While she is unlikely to meddle in the matters of others, preferring to watch and collect information, she will act with surprising harshness when challenged. One example of her style of rule is that the only book that contains the fact that Nightmare Moon is about to escape is Predictions and Prophecies. The book she's reading when the story begins tells that Nightmare Moon was banished permanently. The idea that rulers should use knowledge that is hidden from the people was believed in by the Enlightenment philosophes.

In contrast, the Everfree Forest has people who do everything by themselves. This system represents anarchy. Instead of being ruled through an extensive bureaucracy, like the plants and animals are controlled by the ponies in Equestria, the plants and animals in the Everfree Forest fight for the power and right to exist. By setting up this dichotomy, the creators of the show seem to state that the only alternative to anarchy is a enlightened monarchy.

Magic is another motif, connected with hatred and friendship. Gary Gygax, besides revolutionizing the gaming genre, also set up a systematic organization of active magic. Active magic can be organized into three categories: inherent magic, divine magic, and arcane magic.

Inherent magic is the magic that recides within someone because of their species. This exists in the show, as all unicorns are able to use a small degree of telekinesis, usually related to their cutie mark.

Divine magic is magic that is derived from the blessing of a higher power, essentially magic installed in peopleonies from a god or demon's inherent magic. Divine magic is not really an issue in this show, because nopony has magic given to them from blessings.

Arcane magic is magic that must be studied or taught in order to use and control. In this show, very few ponies have arcane magic. In fact, the only ponies with arcane magic are Twilight Sparkle and Trixie. Twilight's magic is fueled by friendship, and therefore becomes far more powerful. More on that later.

People who are familiar with the works of Gary Gygax would incorrectly try to correct me on two points. If you really couldn't care less for arguments on the semantics of a game you may never even have played or even heard of, scroll down past the next two paragraphs. First, arcane magic does not have to come from study, they would say. They would say that sorcerers and warlocks also use arcane magic. I would tell them that the reasons for this are to create a sensible and easy to explain gaming experience. Sorcerers should be using inherent magic, but the designers didn't have the time or money to design inherent magic in addition to divine and arcane magic. Warlocks should be using divine magic, but the designers wanted to separate the powers granted by gods and by demons to create different encounters. A group of players wouldn't want to fight both an evil cleric and warlock if they have the same spells, so to prevent too much spell overlap, the designers made warlocks use divine magic.

The same people would rule that psychic magic is a fourth category, separate from the other three. To that, I would tell them that psychic characters should be using inherent magic, seeing as how it comes from their lineage, but since inherent magic was never laid out like divine and arcane magic, they couldn't go back on this without people wondering why sorcerers use arcane magic. Psychic magic is just inherent magic set up in spell form. I would then kindly but forcefully ask them to leave.

Welcome back, everyone who skipped the last two paragraphs!

These categories describe active magic, magic with a definable source. Active magic tends to do things like defy gravity and teleport people and things places. However, it's opposite is destiny, fate. For this blog, I will be using the term latent magic to describe such magic. Humans feel a natural desire to discover the source of things, and therefore latent magic was replaced in legends with the works of gods, and later explained by science.

Latent magic has importance, however, in explaining the implications of the statement friendship is magic.

Twilight can draw magic from her friendship, making her spells more powerful. However, the inverse effect can also happen, but not active magic. Friendship itself is formed of magic, but more specifically latent magic. In other words, the people you are friends with are the people you are destined to be friends with.

That is the true friendship of magic.

The Great and Powerful Introduction

Eventually this blog will be used to publish episode over-analysis, but first I would like to discuss the show itself.

More importantly, I would like to discuss a question my friend asked me soon after my discovering the show:

[Incredulous Voice]"MY LITTLE PONY? You want me to watch My Little Pony? You do realize that we're sixteen-year-old guys and not six-year-old girls?"

He then stripped me of my man card.

I tried to explain to him how beautiful of a show it was, how Lauren Faust is the Shakespeare of modern cartoon animation. Somehow though, there was a disconnect, a bridge I couldn't cross. One could say that there was a language barrier. I was talking about how beautiful and cute and well written this cartoon animation was, but all he could hear was: MY LITTLE PONY!

Since then I looked into what separated people like him and people like me. While I understand that many of the bronies are women, a lot of us are men as well. Quite frankly, a disproportionately large amount. So what is it that allowed me to enjoy the friendship found by my little ponies, while my close friends all recoiled in horror?

The most obvious thing that separates us from the neighsayers (besides the fact that they don't like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) is that we're pretty open to this kind of thing, or just weird things in general. You have to be in order to watch and appreciate a show like this. It's not exactly something that the kids these days would consider to be "funky" or "poppin".

I'll admit, I originally hail from the dark waters of 4chan, a place I have long since disavowed. One day, while lurking on 4chan, I found a thread talking about some show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. As originally stated by this brony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRsVGQv_13k&feature=player_embedded, there are five stages of Brony-dom.

At first I was in denial: God, these people are weird even for 4chan. Although, I gotta admit that is some really good artwork...

Then I was angry: Man, these people are all hating (already, the virus was setting in, I was annoyed by hatred) over some stupid show?

Soon, I was in bargaining: Well, maybe they should be hated on, but I better watch the first episode first.

Well, suffice it to say that I shot strait past depression into acceptance. Well, more of a pony-induced nirvana. I had found a show that was simply amazing, and I wanted to spread happiness and cheer and rainbows to all of my friends...after another episode, of course. And so I found my way into a community based on love and tolerance. Somehow, I had found a calm island in the middle of the s*** storm that is the internet.

Luckily, I have almost no self-respect. It has its advantages, including that I was never shamed by watching this show. Now, I'm not saying that people who watch this show have no self-respect, in fact I would say that the 4chan-ers who knocked the show have no self-respect.

However, I am willing to say that many of the people who watch the show have a fair amount of...call it disillusionment, if you'll let me use a "literary" term. Many of us find that the real world is full of hate, full of disappointment, full of failure. It does us good to watch this show, because it proves that maybe, just maybe, there is some good in the world, and that sometimes, friendship truly is magic.

Sethisto over on equestriadaily.com recently ran a poll. The question was,

Trixie offers to turn you into a pony and teleport you to ponyville. There is no going back. Do you do it!?

At first I thought, "no way, I've got way too much going on for me here." And then I thought, and thought, and thought, and I realized that I really don't. I'm an average student, no extracurriculars, feel awkward to the point of isolation around more than two or at most three people, have a frail sickly body, not to mention more than my fair share of psychological problems. So I voted yes.

Yes, I would leave my entire life behind, if in exchange I could go to ponyville and become a pony.

Now, not everyone would do this. 74% of the voters would, however, and I thank that that's what drives us to the show. We love the show because it is such a contrast to what we see. We can escape.

That's what this show would be called: escapist fare. Means that we watch it to escape the darkness of reality.

It will be a while before I can get any actual reviews up, but once July rolls around I should be able to put out two or three a week.

You can contact me at coppertoken@derpymail.org.