My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

[Verreaux]

"To look at the quality of most girls’ cartoons, it would seem that not one artist really cared about them. Not one designer, not one background painter, not one animator. Some of the more well-meaning, more expensive animated productions for girl audiences may look better, but the female characters have been so homogenized with old-fashioned “niceness” that they have no flaws and are unrelatable. They are so pretty, polite and perfect; there is no legitimate conflict and nothing exciting ever happens. In short, animated shows for little girls come across as boring. Stupid. Lame."

"This perception, more than anything, is what I am trying to change with My Little Pony."
-Lauren Faust, Executive Producer for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, from My Little NON-Homophobic, NON-Racist, NON-Smart-Shaming Pony: A Rebuttal

Lauren Faust's vision for My Little Pony was radically different from what has come before. Earlier incarnations were thinly veiled commercials with little substance or merit of their own. But Faust committed herself to creating a show featuring strong, intelligent female leads. A show that would entertain not just children, but the parents watching with them. A show with genuinely clever humor and real stories, self-contained and worth watching on their own. Nobody, not Hasbro, not Faust, not even the Bronies themselves, were prepared for how successful her efforts would be.

Articles about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic tend to come in two flavors: "WTF" articles written by people who haven't seen the show, and "I Can't Believe This is So Good" articles by people who have. That alone should tell you something. For my part, I find the show genuinely interesting, funny, and happy. But all this is just laying the groundwork. I know the score. Simply telling you the show is good won't get you to look it up on Youtube. For that, I have to bring out the stars. I have to introduce you to the characters. Let's start with the "Mane Six".


Twilight Sparkle is the straight-woman of the series, and it's through her eyes that we are introduced to Equestria. She is a bookish, socially awkward, and much put-upon unicorn studying magic under the direct tutelage of Princess Celestia. Twilight unearths a prophecy warning of the imminent return of an evil Alicorn of Darkness. But when she tries to warn her mentor, Celestia tells her to stop spending so much time reading dusty old books and packs her off to Ponyville to oversee preparations for the Summer Sun Celebraition and to make some friends. Nevermind that the very idea of socializing makes Twilight's eye twitch. Twilight's favorite things are books, magic, Princess Celestia, astronomy, and peace and quiet. Twilight Sparkle is highly skeptical of supernatural phenomenon.



Pinkie Pie is a special pony. And when I say special, I mean she eats a different sort of grass than the rest of the herd. Her talent and goal is bringing ponies together the only way she knows how: through parties! Pinkie is excitable, outgoing, energetic, and can be quite random. If you hear someone knocking on the fourth wall, it's probably Pinkie Pie. Her favorite things are parties, streamers, friends, baking, eating, practical jokes, parties, and ohmygodlookatthat! Pinkie Pie doesn't suffer from ADHD; she enjoys every minute of it.
Video Clip: Pinkie and the Brain


Fluttershy is a timid, gentle, softspoken pony who tends to the animals living near her cottage by the Everfree Forest. Although normally girlish and retiring by nature, Fluttershy can push back when pressed, sometimes quite hard. She has been known to make a full-grown dragon cry. Fluttershy's favorite things are animals, sewing, and music. Her best friend is a rabbit named Angel. Angel is not a very nice bunny.

Ep. 22: Can you spot the Lewis Carrol references?

[Verreaux]

Rarity is an up and coming fashionista who runs the Carousel Botique. She is a lady at heart. Elegant, classy, mature and beautiful, concerned with her appearance and reputation. In any other girl's show, Rarity would be an antagonist, bent on foiling the heroine for her own vain reasons. But Rarity is a better pony than that. She is generous with her friends and clever with her enemies and willing to go to lengths for others in need. Although often simply one of the herd, she has moments of sheer awesome where I can't help but cheer for her. Rarity's favorite things are designing clothes, relaxing at the spa, and dreaming of being courted by Prince Blueblood. In the final episode, Rarity redeems three generations of women with a single stroke of her hoof.
Video clip: Rarity sings The Art of the Dress
Video clip: Not your usual damsel in distress


Rainbow Dash is a tomboyish pegasus mare who dreams of one day joining the famous stunt-flying team, the Wonderbolts. Her true passion in life is racing, and she likes to think of herself as the best and fastest flier around. Dash's favorite things are racing, cloudbusting, practical jokes, stunt flying, and racing. The internet would have you believe Rainbow Dash is a lesbian.


Applejack is a hard-working earth pony who runs the Apple Acres orchard with her brother, Big Macintosh. She's a southern cowgirl by trade and by speech, energetic, outgoing, strong-willed, and quite competitive. Her competitions with Rainbow Dash can be quite spectacular. Applejack is eager to help others, but often has trouble accepting help herself. Her favorite things are harvesting apples, baking apple dishes, rodeos, competitions, apples, and apple accessories. Applejack is an expert at herding stampeding cattle. Bunnies, not so much.

[RaharuAharu]

I love the shit out of some of the new MLP.

Ive got my whole stream watching it, and a good number of them were pony haters until they watched a few episodes. Its really is one of the more quality cartoons on TV right now.

People say Im too old for cartoons... Screw that. I like what I like, and enjoy what I enjoy.

[Verreaux]

I'm surprised more people here haven't picked up on this. I'll give it one more try. I'll keep it simple this time and just say why people should watch this.

MLP doesn't make my brain cells feel like committing suicide for trying to think down to its level. The show doesn't feel dumbed down, despite originally being a little girls' show. It's actually very clever. The way the characters relate and react to each other isn't just interesting, it's downright hilarious. And the characters themselves are a welcome rescue from the tsundere idiot-stick fourteen year old can't-think-of-an-original-character-design-to-save-my-life Japanese schoolgirls that have flooded anime like an open sewer on curry night. When it comes to personality, the ponies show up their eastern counterparts in every way. If you have any fondness for anime, I think you'll enjoy this thoroughly. You'll laugh and feel happy, and chances are you'll find a pony whom you wish was your girlfriend. They're that freaking adorable.

Everyone's skeptical at first. That's normal. Just watch an episode, if only to prove me wrong and mock me for my unmannish obsession. I can take it. It doesn't really matter which episode, save that 1 and 2 are a two-part exposition and introduction.

Go on. Take a look for yourself. The Herd will welcome you.

[Lead Salad]

I discovered this on July 3rd and have been watching episodes on youtube nearly every evening since.

[Tychomonger]

This is a great show, for reasons I find hard to articulate. I suppose it is just the humor and good characterization.

[arex]

I have a few friends that have lost their very souls to this show. It saddens me.


Hnngh.

[RaharuAharu]

I have a few friends that have lost their very souls to this show. It saddens me.


Hnngh.

Its a Fun show Arex,
Join us..
JOIN US...

[Anna]

I have a few friends that have lost their very souls to this show. It saddens me.


Hnngh.

Its a Fun show Arex,
Join us..
JOIN US...

...resistance is futile!

[Verreaux]

Thankfully, the show is nothing like that.

Well... Except for that one bit... At the end of episode 2. But it was just that once!

[Lead Salad]

Ok, should I post my take on the show now? I just saw the last episode yesterday, the one "at the gala". Yeah I think I can give a couple cents of appreciation or whatever.

Interesting show. I gotta say at first the vector animation was really distracting. Then I kinda started getting used to it. The recent vector cartoons have been getting better. Still weird though. I grew up with cell animation on film. Heck cell animation with the new digital process is nice(er) too. But vector? Monster high webisodes are vector too. I guess it's what everyone's going to these days.

I wouldn't count myself as a brony. Not just yet. I'm actually just outside the 18 to 35 age bracket. The show doesn't fill my every waking moment like it does my brony brother. He's got it bad. In his own words he said, and a quote, "I was botched for three days". Referring to July 3rd through the 6th after we discovered the show. It was kinda interesting the way it happened...

You see he uses deviant art and would sometimes want me to go and check out some of his or others' similar stuff. I'd kinda sit back and be like whatever. About a month ago I noticed some of the group buttons on the far right and saw one called "pony girls". I requested he click it. Some of them triggered the uncanny valley. Some didn't. I was only slightly curious so wasn't seriously interested or anything. Well, word got around that I had a thing for pony girls. I was like what kind of crack are you smoking? Since when was I... oh yeah, right. So as a joke I'd always ask him to search for pony girls whenever he needed me to see something on his computer, and eventually forgot there was even a group button there.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. I sat myself down at my own computer and looked at deviant art specifically for pony girls (typed it in the search bar). This was to get it officially out of my system. What I noticed was something of a similarity across several peoples' pictures. There was always a blond girl with a cowboy hat and there was always another with rainbow hair. Curious, I looked at more pictures. More of the same and/or similar. What was going on? Some kind of conspiracy? Is this some new show or book or something that I'm like totally ignorant about? Either way, I wasn't curious enough to care enough to dig deeper. Remember, I set out to get it out of my system, not get into it even more. There was one that was kinda good looking though, a pony one, not a human form one; I'll get to that later.

Satisfied, I didn't think about the subject again until July 3rd. You see, that evening my brother invited me to look at some of his new deviant art stuff again, so as a joke, I once again asked to look at pony girls. This time the curiosity got us both. There were too many similar character traits across too many folks' pictures for it to be a coincidence. Something bigger was going on. Then it happened. One of the pics I clicked on mentioned MLP FIM being the latest internet meme. Ok, I knew what MLP stood for, but not FIM. So over to youtube armed with two acronyms. What popped up were just AMVs that users had made with video from the show. Well, we didn't know this. At first I wondered if somebody animated it themselves? It looked very vectored and you know how computers keep getting more powerful every year... who knows, it could have been a college animation project... Then clicked one or two more and could tell it was some new real show neither one of us had ever heard of before.

It was late and we were going to have a big day tomorrow so I called it a night. I was going to look into it more on my own computer before heading off to bed, but was getting tired. My brother sent me an email and then ran outside to knock on my window, which is completely out of character, just to tell me it is a real show and that FIM stood for Friendship Is Magic. I should search for that and watch the pilot episode! So I did! And it seemed kinda slow! Then I had trouble falling asleep. I'd close my eyes and see ponies!

[Lead Salad]

I watched part two of the pilot episode the next day and I gotta say it wasn't terrible. It was good enough to keep me watching.

There were good episodes, great episodes and some I didn't really care for. But maybe it depended on the mood I was in while watching. Like some my brother totally loved but I didn't like. Then there were others he thought were annoying but I actually liked. Fair enough.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to discuss the particulars of what I liked and didn't like on an episode by episode basis, so instead I'll bring in some Pinkie Pie randomness and just talk about some of the more interesting observations I've had through this first viewing of season 1. Oh and I've seen some eps twice.

I always notice more stuff when I see an episode a second time. Maybe it means I'm still trying to keep my mental distance from the show, to keep from becoming a brony. lol Maybe it's just matter of time. Scary thought.

This forum is probably one of the only places on the internet where I can say their hooves remind me of pseudopods. Well, hardened at the tip. But they can still grasp things sometimes.

You kinda forget that they're horse people until they have to use their teeth to grab something. Not having hands on creatures that clearly are intelligent enough to use them is kinda weird for me. Their world appears to have been built similar to ours, and you expect every day objects to be manipulated with hands, but they use teeth, hooves, or sometimes their whole head (to knock on a door or push something). Kinda uncanny valley maybe. Their soda bottles have to have drinking straws. Their cameras have to have a neck brace/holder thingie. Earth ponies seem to be at a disadvantage with no wings or unicorn horn magic! Of course Pinkie Pie does pretty well.

I look for Derpy Hooves in every episode, like Where's Waldo.

In the winter wrap up episode where it's mentioned that Dipsy Doo went the wrong direction to get the birds was recorded back before that background character was renamed Derpy Hooves, so because the voice tracks are recorded in advance of the animation, they changed the colors of that particular pony from original gray with blond hair to a heliotrope color and normal eyes, signifying to bronys that Lauren Faust listens to fans.

If you're curious, just watch the pilot episode for the animation mistake that led us to Derpy hooves. Or look on Wikipedia.

They say Derpy will have a slightly bigger part in season two. One can hope. I actually like this character for some reason. Kinda cute with messed up eyes.

Actually they're all pretty cute. I think that was part of the redesign. Make them simple looking and make them 20% cuter. Childlike. With large heads, small bodies. Huge eyes. I spent the first several episodes distracted by how cute they looked. I had to force myself to pay attention to what was going on in the storyline. They're really small too. My "little" pony. They can sleep in presumably a human sized bed, and are actually pretty small compared to horses, as briefly seen in ep 26 right before the cyclops pony, lol (animation mistake, like Spitfire's pink eyes a couple minutes later).

Some college student calculated the G force it took to make the rainboom, assuming they're 250 to 300kg. It would lead to organ failure in humans. Heh. But are they really that heavy? I'd assume a pegasus pony would be lighter than usual because they can walk on clouds and their wings are hardly big enough, must be flight magic, not too dissimilar to the unicorn horn magic.

Man that always gives me chills, watching the AMVs of Rainbow Dash doing that rainboom. The animators, for using vector, did an excellent job on the timing and the other effects. And I'm not the only one, it turns out.

What's a wingboner? I've seen that in several comments across several videos. Another meme perhaps?

Which pony or ponies are my favorite? Do I have a favorite? Do I have a favorite episode? A least favorite episode? Do I like any of the songs? My brother has some opinions on such things. But do I?

Am I a brony?

[Verreaux]

Lead Salad:

You are standing tiptoe at the edge of a crumbling cliff leaning over to look down into the raging river of Bronydom. The only difference between you and a true Brony is you haven't admitted it to yourself yet. If you want to avoid becoming a full-fledged Brony, then you must erase everything Pony from your hard drive, re-register as a Tea Party Republican, and never have anything to do with cartoons ever again. At this point, surgical removal of your inner child is your only hope.

Wingboner: This is when a pegasus pony's wings stick up due to sexual arousal.



Edit: Something I'll work on for fun. Just some things off the top of my head.

You might be a Brony if:
You've seen more than one episode of Friendship is Magic.
Your Pony folder is growing faster than your Porn folder.
Madmax is a girl.
Princess Luna has an abacus.
Your legal name is Alexi Rainbow Dash.
You have ever used the phrase "twenty percent cooler".
You have ever said "everypony" in actual conversation. Even by accident.
You have ever discussed the physics of Rainbow Dash's flight maneuvers.
You have ever bought My Little Pony merchandise.
For yourself.
And you're a boy.

[Wic]

You forgot Celestia. She's the saddest pony ever. Sends Twilight to learn about friendship... While sitting in her castle all alone.

And is way too royal to use her wings. Or show up on time.

[draque]

Watched the first couple of episodes then two random other ones and I simply cannot see the appeal. It seems like a fairly high quality, decently funny kids' show, but that's pretty much it for me. And on top of that, I'm kind of hung on on something from the first two episodes.

Celestia strikes me as evil. Her younger, weaker sister rebels against her older sister because she got the short end of the stick when it came to divvying the kingdom up. She tried to take the country for her own. Power struggle ensued, and she predictably lost. Because she is not as strong as Celestia. Moral high ground notwithstanding, Celestia won because she was older, wiser and stronger. This is where she loses the moral high ground entirely. Her response, after proving that her younger sister is weaker than her is to imprison her younger, weaker sister in the moon, alone for a millenia. I don't know why, but that really bugged me. When the younger sister escaped (and was predictably upset), her sister saw fit to show her that after 1000 in solitary, that her royal servants were now stronger than the younger sister. Only after a second thrashing did the Celestia even see fit to speak with her younger sibling. And she demanded an apology, which her cowed sister wasn't in a position to refuse. It seems to me that perhaps there's a hatchet to be buried, but it was buried pretty deeply in the younger sister's forehead, and that seemed unnecessary.

That bothered me a lot. I couldn't get past that broken Aesop at all.

[Verreaux]

Thanks for giving the show a chance. I don't expect that it's for everyone, but a surprising number of people really enjoy it.

You're not the only one who thinks that Luna's incarceration was incredibly harsh. Celestia has been depicted by fans as anything from a benevolent dictator to an absolute tyrant.

[draque]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who noticed it, then ^^(). Also, given that Luna escaped after 1000 years... it kind of seems like her imprisonment was originally just going to be for all time. Which again. Seems kinda harsh.

[mwchase]

But having it foretold in a stars-are-right kind of way sort of implies to me that, I don't know, the princesses are actually some form of eldritch abomination whom the ponies view as majestic and terrible winged unicorns, because to perceive their true forms would drive them to the brink of madness.

Or something, I dunno, that was all spur of the moment.

For some reason, I feel like I should read A Study in Emerald now. Um, after work, I guess.

[Wic]

You're all assuming Celestia actually had a choice. I think when she lost her crown her powers were stripped she was weak and unable to beat the little sister (she overtook her power just like that when she escaped as well). So she had to get some freaky harmony thing which probably amounts to something of an atomic bomb; it's all or nothing. Eternal banishment or eternal darkness.

That doesn't really explain why Luna wasn't banished again when the ponies used the same weapon. Perhaps now it was different when it wasn't in the stone form anymore.

[Wic]

Alright, I have got to share this. NSFW, btw.

http://askpinkaminadianepie.tumblr.com/

My personal favorite pony, the murderous Pinkamena Diane Pie answers your questions. In pictures. I found this one to be the best pony tumblr.

You'll probably need some background information as well since this Pinkie Pie's alter ego is not canon: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cupcakes- ... fanfiction

Edit: And here's the artist's tumblr. I'd like to say his(?) work would be less disturbing than the Pinkamena blog, but... It's not.