My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 569

And, my own essay on what I love about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic so far, even if a lot of it is stuff you've already seen critics saying before.

* The characters are unbelievably well-rounded for a kid's show, and at least adequately well-rounded for ANY show.

They straddle the line that makes the inner DM and NPC-designer in me go 'squeee!'. They are all solid archetypes while still being enough against type to totally avoid being stereotyped.

For example, let's take the first pony of the Mane Cast we see and the one who is essentially the Buffy of this ensemble cast, as it were. Twilight Sparkle, apprentice to Queen Celestia.

Twilight loves to read. Did we mention she loves to read? She lives in a library for pete's sake. She is first seen living in the Princess' palace at Canterlot, with the high status of personal apprentice to the Solar Queen Of All She Surveys, and she has no social life at all. Her episode 1 signature line is "I am her student and I will do my royal duty, but the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends!"

So, Twilight Sparkle is a book-loving socially awkward nerd. Filling in the rest of the mental blanks, this means she'll also be shy, lacking in leadership skills, and either bravely timid or just timid...

... wrong. Twilight Sparkle doesn't hide in the library because she's unable to deal. Twilight Sparkle lives in a library because she likes books more than parties, period. Twilight Sparkle is the team leader, the one who takes charge, the one who can organize an entire town full of ponies on a massive complex terraforming project ("Winter Wrap-Up") and make it look easy when the ponies who have been doing it all their lives have lost the plot. And Twilight Sparkle is the one who, when confronted with the legendary Nightmare Moon, the dark goddess who once plunged the world into Eternal Night and is like a billion times more powerful than her, doesn't even blink before putting her horn down and charging straight at her throat. Twilight Sparkle is a badass.

And yet she's the same pony who will spend an entire episode having an anxiety attack about knowing various things about her friends that she promised not to tell her other friends, even if life would be so much easier if her other friends knew about the misunderstandings with her friends, but she promised not to, and if she breaks that promise then (gasp) she won't have any friends!. When, of course, real friends entirely don't end friendships over things that petty, but how would Twilight Sparkle know? This is the first time she's even had friends. So yes, Twilight Sparkle, smartest pony in Ponyville, can still sometimes be spectacularly dumb and yet in believable fashion... and yet still totally subverts her trope.

And then there's Rarity. On a girl's show, Rarity is the girliest of the girl characters. She doesn't willingly step hoof out of her house without having spent oodles of time curling her mane and arranging her make-up just so. She's the resident fashion plate who obsesses on clothes and shoes. (In fact, she's also the town's tailor, dressmaker, and fashion designer, andmakes fancy clothes professionally.) She can't stand dirt, she's obsessive-compulsive, and she's all about bringing elegance and beauty and refinement.

So, she's the snobby, bitchy cheerleader straight out of high school drama, right? Wrong. Rarity is one of the most generous people in Ponyville. At least two episodes have their plots driven by the fact that Rarity sometimes goes overboard trying to do nice things for her friends. She doesn't snub anyone for being poor or un-fashion-conscious (except maybe that one time with Applejack), she doesn't look down on anyone, and she's not too 'important' or 'refined' to work; Rarity spends multiple occasions pulling obsessive all-nighters to make her business run, and when she commits to deliver you X # of dresses on time and to spec, she will deliver X # of dresses on time and to spec or die trying. Even if her customers are insane.

For the love of God, one of the episodes I mentioned above ("Suited For Success") is about the girliest member of a girls' show cast trying to sew enough dresses in time to give to all her friends so they can put on a fashion show for a famous designer and help Rarity live her dream while at the same time giving all her friends free dresses for the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala, and by this point you think anybody with a Y-chromosome would be dying from the pure girly overload, and yet its one of the show's more critically-acclaimed episodes, especially by those segments of the brony demographic that you think would be most violently allergic. I don't even know how the hell that works, yet it does.

* The characters are flawed, human people... who happen to be ponies.

Nobody's perfect on this show. No one. Rarity is a hardworking generous soul who just genuinely wants everything around her to be beautiful, but if she loses her perspective re: priorities she'll spend half a day trying to tweak a single birds' nest to be 'just so' and ignoring every other aspect of the project going on. Or she'll get so caught up in the rush of a new experience that she'll completely forget she was there to support someone else in the first place, and instead starts competing with them. Twilight Sparkle has the cojones to try and solo the Dark Goddess herself, but can mentally lock-up at the thought of even minor embarassment or failure in front of her mentor and/or start thinking that she's so smart that nobody else can be smart too. Applejack is the epitome of hardworking and down-to-earth, but she's also stubborner than a mule and too proud to let other people help even when they want to. Rainbow Dash is a genuinely loyal friend, a total ace at what she does, and has balls of steel... but she also has the tact of a lead softball bat wrapped in barbed wire and her signature quote might as well be "LEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRROOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYY JEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINSSSSSSSSS!" Pinkie Pie is the happiest person anywhere and knows everybody and just wants to spread happiness and joy... but she's so hyperactive even her friends can only take her in limited doses, and she has issues. And Fluttershy is the most lovable and adorable thing ever... but that doesn't mean she's immune to either errors of judgement, or that epic stress-induced blowout in the season finale that cannot be described, only witnessed.

In the course of 26 episodes everybody has saved the day at least once, and everybody has been the problem at least once. Because is nobody is right all the time, nobody is perfect all the time, and sometimes your strongest character trait is in fact the least useful way to handle something, and you need to let someone else take the lead against it. Nobody is the writer's pet (even if some come slightly closer than others), and nobody's the butt monkey (even if some fans think Applejack could headline more episodes, that's nowhere near the same thing as Applejack being dumped on, as she ain't).

And since its inevitable that you will screw up at least once, being mortal, the important thing is... what do you do then?

This show remembers that. And addresses it.

And in line with the less unrealistic expectations it tries to impose on the impressionable little kids, we have...

* There is no One True Way to be either a 'proper girl' or a successful or happy person in general.

The producer, Lauren Faust, has been known to vent her spleen on this very thing; so many times, a girl's show is all about being whatever the show-runner's vision of a 'proper' young lady is, period. And usually that vision is unrealistically saccharine.

And this show explodes the living hell out of that treatise. All of the six Mane Cast members are presented as successful, responsible young women in control of their own lives and prospering by their own talents, and not one of them is remotely like any other one.

Twilight Sparkle is, essentially, a graduate student on an extended field assignment/research grant, and she's a type-A organizer and bureaucrat who's also a giant nerd with little interest in conventional socializing. She's also the personal apprentice of the immortal god-queen, the effective leader of the town (there's a Mayor of Ponyville, but when the [stuff] goes down everybody looks to Twilight Sparkle, not to the old gray mare), and one of the most powerful wizards known to ponydom.

And then there's Applejack. Applejack is a much humbler pony; her and her big brother Macintosh run an apple farm, and take care of their kid sister Apple Bloom. And yet Applejack stands nose-to-nose with Twilight Sparkle, feeling no shame at being 'just' a farmgirl... and given that she's one of the toughest ponies in Ponyville, the steady reliable rock of the group, and thoroughly enjoying the living hell out of a life that some other ponies might find boring and plebeian, the message is clear; 'This is just as valid as the other, even if it's not as rich, not as important, not as powerful. Because its not easy either, and its worth doing, and if you like it, then it's what you like'.

Rarity, who owns and runs a dress shop, we've already mentioned. Like Applejack she's an entrepreneur, even in an entirely different field. And she also loves what she's doing, and making her own way doing it, even when that means not flinching from a ton of hard work.

Rainbow Dash, whose day job (moving the clouds around and managing Ponyville's weather) actually doesn't remotely fully engage her talents or her time, is also presented as a role model. Because while she's a brash cocky jerkass, she's actually as good as she claims to be, and she doesn't just loaf at her job (even if she did seem to pick her job precisely because it has so much free time). Because she's got a huge ambition; to make the Wonderbolts, Equestria's #1 stunt flying team (think the Blue Angels), and Rainbow Dash knows that she's not going to make that just by flying around talking about all the awesome she's going to bust loose next month; she's got to be training. So Dash is presented as the person just whiling away in a local job while they train and train and dream the Rocky Balboa dream of becoming a star athlete, if they can just ace the tryout... and yet the show neither takes the tack 'Oh, sure, you're guaranteed to succeed even at impractical odds if you just believe!', nor does it take the tack of 'Oh come on, be realistic and don't even try something this insane'. Because Dash... well, that's spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, the message is adequately presented in that while the odds of actually making it to the major leagues are poor, that shouldn't stop you from trying if you actually have the talent for it... if that's what you want to do, and you accept the risks. (And if you can still earn an honest living for yourself in the meanwhile instead of just bummin' around.)

And Fluttershy, the show's resident Woobie, Shrinking Violet, and Friend To All Living Things. She's early Hinata with pony wings. (Except when you mess with her friends, and then you've got Team 8 Hinata in your face instead). She's horribly shy, soft-spoken, diffident, and just wants to cuddle all the cute animals she can. (Of course, since she's the town veterinarian, forest ranger, and wildlife control officer, she earns a living doing that...) And yet... suffice it to say, the pitfalls of this stereotype are avoided as well.

And then there's Pinkie Pie, the show's random incarnation of random, perky, party-throwing happiness.

... actually, Pinkie Pie's hidden depths stay largely hidden except for 'Swarm of the Century' and 'Party of One', wherein her tragic past is revealed, so I won't get into that. Short version; while she is the character who approached closest to the line of 'Oh, are they ever going to be wrong about anything?', she avoids it too.

This is how the show rolls. 'You are not your stereotype, and there is no One True Way'. You can be a successful, useful, self-supporting human being in any one of multiple fashions, and whichever one of those you want the most is the "right" one. This isn't just a slogan the show says (in fact, they don't lampshade it explicitly much at all), its just the example the show sets, all day every day.

Hell, there isn't even any racial stereotypes. The Mane Cast has two unicorns (Twilight Sparkle and Rarity), two pegasi (Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy), and two earth ponies (Applejack and Pinkie Pie)... and each of those pairs of ponies is as dissimilar as the sun and the moon. 'You cannot judge by race, either'.

That's the thing about this show. The messages are good. The subtext is good. The writing is good. All of the shallow saccharine brain-destroying [manure] that used to be known as "girls' television" is something that the producer absolutely hated, and MLP:FiM is her very subtle, very subversive, very very very determined search-and-destroy mission against every little bit of it...

... while still being a happy, cheerful, genuinely innocent show, instead of some kind of lame-o deconstruction or grimdark.

Friendship Is Magic, what can I say?