Analyzing “Dragonshy” and “Dragone Baby Gone”

Dragonshy is an excellent episode, and the turning point wherein the series hits a stride that would bring it the renown it now knows. It prominently features all of the mane six ponies and almost no one else, gives them a lot of fun dialog and animation moments, and has an adventurous feel with a big payoff. The pacing is air-tight, there’s a tiny musical number, and it expands on the lore in what were big ways at the time.

In terms of analysis, there’s not much to say. It’s a super-straightforward episode, and most of the dialog is more humorous or expositional than character-building. What I can analyze, though, is why I would say this when the episode is actually the first of only a few big Fluttershy episodes, and the most important for establishing her character.

I’ve always felt that Fluttershy is the least interesting of the mane six ponies. It’s not that I don’t like her, but there’s not much to her character, and what’s there doesn’t catch my attention. It’s not that she isn’t deep or doesn’t develop—those aren’t the kind of things that I look for in characters. I think that Fluttershy and Applejack are the two ponies who are the easiest to understand without any kind of analysis—but Applejack is a ton of fun to me, whereas Fluttershy isn’t.

Fluttershy is passive to the point of weakness and lives her life by finding ways around confrontation and hardship. Only when her back’s to the wall and it really counts does she spring into action and prove to be very able. She’s like… Shinji Ikari, ponified.

Throughout this episode, Fluttershy doesn’t want to face her fear, but is too passive to speak up, and gets dragged along by her friends until she’s face to face with it. At the last minute, everyone finally realizes that she’s actually afraid (they’re a bit more understanding than Shini’s dad), and tries to go into battle without her (like Rei). When her friends are beaten, Flutters is all like (Imusn’trunaway) HOW DARE YOU?! and wins.

The other characters don’t do anything interesting in this episode, but they’re entertaining because of who they are. This is the first episode in which all of the characters feel very well-realized and more or less embody the “standard model” of themselves throughout the show. Also, no one really learns anything.

Let’s talk about something else—Friendship Is Witchcraft.

Friendship is Witchcraft is probably one of the best-known and indeed highest-quality fanworks of MLP:FiM. It’s built in the style of an “abridged series,” repurposing footage from the show and rewriting the characters. However, it doesn’t follow the usual Yugioh Abridged school of abridged series, which is to exaggerate or invert the characters and make lots of pop culture references and dumb jokes (though it has a bit of that stuff).

Friendship is Witchcraft isn’t an abridged show so much as a whole new show which uses the original as a springboard. The characters have a shade of who they originally were, but are fully realized as these new characters beyond the point of just parody. As one of the jokes in this episode goes:

Applejack: “All of us have *some* depth to our characters!”

Rainbow: “Not me!”

Applejack: “…most of us.”

This isn’t in reference to the actual show—it’s in reference to Friendship Is Witchcraft’s characters, who indeed all have some interesting depth (except Rainbow).

Twilight Sparkle is a self-centered, egotistical otaku. She’s obsessed with writing fanfics and cosplay, but is slightly more obsessed with joining/replacing Celestia on the throne and becoming a princess. And she does.

Fluttershy is a soft-spoken and well-loved but violent and terrible cult leader. I love the balance they struck with Fluttershy. In an interview with the Griffin Lewis and Jenny Nicholson (the show’s creators), they explained that the “Fluttershy is evil” joke is nothing new, but they found the “secret evil character” archetype boring. Instead, Fluttershy’s violence and cruelty is what makes her a respected member of the community, and it lends her a strangely commanding presence in a lot of the episodes.

Rarity plays off of Fluttershy well, being an ex-soldier who suffers from PTSD, and is a die-hard fanatic of Fluttershy’s cult because it has helped her to get through her issues over the years. She’s also as much of a fashion diva as ever and has a fun relationship with her robot sister Sweetie Belle in Neigh, Soul Sister.

Applejack also plays off of Rarity, having fought alongside her in the war, but being a warmonger who mercilessly killed many ponies. Applejack is a respected hero, and a nice person sometimes, but also kind of a hard-ass and maniac under the veneer of social responsibility.

Pinkie Pie is an orphan with a horribly grimdark past who no one really wants to talk to, but they don’t hate her (whereas everyone hates Spike). She becomes a gypsy on a quest to resurrect her dead parents.

And Rainbow Dash… well she’s a nearsighted idiot. A hilarious one, though.

Besides the characters, the show also has a fascinating world, developed bit by bit through the dialog over the course of the series. It’s set in a strange post-war police state wherein knowledge is frowned upon, and loyalty to community takes precedence.

The show is backed by a completely original score, including original vocal numbers which aren’t even based on songs from the show.

So anyways, Dragone Baby Gone is one of the better FiW episodes (of the seven, I’d rank them 5>3>6>4>2>7>1). A lot of what makes it good is the same stuff that made the original good, which is impressive because the pacing and story are completely overhauled. It’s not just good because the original is good, but stands on its own.

Both versions have a lot of great visual and dialog gags, and both are about Fluttershy overcoming her fear of the dragon. The big difference is that in the original, Fluttershy is expected to be afraid of the dragon because she’s a scaredy-cat. In FiW, everyone is surprised that Fluttershy is afraid because she’s, “slayed dozens of dragons before.” As it turns out, this dragon is actually her father. (“Dragonness is recessive,” you see.)

In both versions of the episode, the characters are fun because they embody their core aspects in strong ways. Pinkie tries to get the dragon to party with her in the original, and in this one, she tries to get him to adopt her. In the original, Twilight tries to use diplomacy to convince the dragon to leave, whereas in FiW, she claims to be a princess and commands him to.

There still isn’t much to analyze about this episode. As interesting as the characters in FiW are, the show is also self-aware and not a kids’ show, so everything that makes the characters deep and interesting is explicitly evident, whereas I have to sink my teeth into the original to pull out some of the cool stuff. I just think it’s neat that both versions of this episode are good in similar ways while being completely different.

Additional notes:

Rainbow jokes that Rarity’s scarf isn’t going to keep her warm on top of the mountain in this episode. A similar gag about cold and Rarity’s scarves appears 42 episodes later in the season three premiere.

Analyzing “Boast Busters” Some More

This is a good time to tell you all that I post all of these episodic analyses on my main site, and over there they generate great discussions and stuff, so I recommend reading on there instead of on here. 

So this is a comment I made to extend my points on there.

No one was morally right in this episode, and I don’t talk about morals anyways (or at least I don’t mean to)—what I mean by being the better mare is less a moral thing and more a maturity thing.

Trixie has been called a “pony troll” by some, and if you follow this analogy, you can easily translate this episode into an internet argument. Let’s say Trixie storms into an MLP board and announces that Avatar is the best cartoon ever—better than MLP, in fact. The Ponyville civilians who were entertained by Trixie are MLP boarders who also like Avatar, and are interested regardless of the trolling nature of the poster.

AJ, Rarity, and RD are the MLP fanboys who immediately attack the Avatar fan because they don’t like her attitude. They claim that Avatar isn’t any better than MLP and that the poster is an annoying tool. The poster then excellently trolls them with hate speak, and they all bite. Flame war. And it happens that in this case, the hater was the one who had better evidence to back their claim that Avatar was the better show, so she ends up making the MLP fanboys look like idiots even to other members of the same board.

In all of this, Twilight is a user who loves MLP, doesn’t care about Avatar, and ignores the hater, because she doesn’t give a shit about their opinion and isn’t an idiot. That’s what I mean by her being the better mare—she’s the intelligent adult who isn’t interested in a cock-measuring competition between the shows, and is fine with letting Trixie go on believing that Avatar really is the better show.

There was no good reason for Twilight to talk to Trixie, because no matter what she’d say, it would just be feeding the troll. But let’s go further with this analogy to make it work with the actual episode:

Twilight is, let’s say, a badass on this particular message board. She’s a member everyone knows and respects, who’s known to be deep and shit. If she wanted to, she really could railroad Trixie with reasons that MLP is the better show, but she knows that this won’t actually accomplish anything. Twilight thinks that doing this won’t make her any better than Trixie, and it runs the risk of making her look like an asshole. I can understand this well enough. It’s the same reason I hold back from responding to youtube comments most of the time—I don’t want to come off as pretentious or not put enough thought into a statement and then have to deal with a bunch of replies from idiots about bullshit. I steer clear of clusterfucks out of a similar social repression to Twilight’s, albeit with less immediate fears of abandonment (this is as close as I can analyze to the episode’s letter. I can’t go all the way because it’s just not well written enough).

For the Ursa Minor scenario, we have to stretch the analysis, because the episode is stupid. So let’s say the troll is claiming that Avatar is so good it cleans viruses, because she’s a troll and trolls say stupid shit like that. Then some thirteen year-old on the board unleashes a virus onto the boards and the troll’s like, you fucking idiots I was being facetious. But then holy shit, MLP DOES cure viruses, but only Twilight knows how to make it happen! This sounds incredibly stupid because this episode SUCKS.

The lesson should’ve been that MLP and Avatar are both good in their own ways, just as Trixie’s magic and Twilight’s magic have their own strengths, and that not all magic is comparable. This actually would’ve been a GREAT message, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Analyzing “Boast Busters”

Let’s be honest. This episode is fucking terrible. It is one of the worst episodes of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. It was written by Chris Savino, who’s only other episode was Stare Master (decent), and I think it’s pretty clear why. But this is still the Trixie episode, so I cracked open a bottle of hard cider, watched the piece of crap, and here’s some words about it.

I. LOVE. TRIXIE. Don’t get me wrong. Trixie is a horrible one-off character whose sole memorable traits are her amazing facial expressions and her obnoxious voice and dialog. Of the characters with speaking roles in this show that the fandom has taken off and run with, Trixie is the one who most bafflingly was transformed from this ridiculous character in this terrible episode into one of the most hilarious and lovable portraits of failure that I’ve ever seen.

Even though I watched this episode twice very early into my fandom and found it horrible both times, Trixie is as fresh in my mind as ever. I’ve seen all of her facial expressions in countless videos and images, and heard all of her dialog sampled in countless songs and quoted in a hundred memes.

Trixie was the first character from this show to make me appreciate the character sub-fandoms perpetuated by fanmade content (as detailed here), and she’s still my favorite pony outside of the mane six.

Source: http://miketheuser.deviantart.com/art/Trixie-face-328399241?q=favby%3Adigibro%2F48561343&qo=4

Here are some observations about Trixie by the fandom that I consider canon. Trixie’s cutie mark talent is that she’s a stage magician. In a sense, both she and Twilight are unicorns whose power “is magic,” but in Trixie’s case it’s magic in the realistic sense (operated using magic of the fantasy sense), whereas Twilight’s magic is more like I Am God And Can Do Everything magic.

Trixie probably travels from town to town drawing the crowds. The fandom has made a million variants on her backstory (many of which are grimdark, naturally), and most versions of her story in the wake of this episode involve her name having been completely tarnished by the event in Ponyville. Personally I doubt that Trixie is important enough to have news travel about her in a meaningful way, and as long as she stops using that lie to brag about, her talent is still interesting, and should still draw crowds.

(By the way, my favorite version of the events following this episode is the fanfic, The Great and Powerful Trixie Falls in Love With A Pine Cone.)

When you put any thought into the episode, some of this stuff is obvious—but it’s so fucking horribly written that it gives no real sense of what Trixie’s magic is or what she really does. The only decent things to come out of this episode’s dialog are the revelation that unicorns have a limited amount of magic pertaining to their talents (which blew my god damn mind on this rewatching because I didn’t remember that at all), and the French and Powerful Trixie.

Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were lucky not to be in this episode (man does that feel weird. I can only guess that Andrea Libman was out sick when they recorded the episode or something), because Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash get to suck ass in this episode. They’re all quick to anger over Trixie’s showboating (dude, it’s a show, just fucking watch it or go home), and of course they all give in to Trixie’s calls for a challenge.

God, distract me from how bad this is…

No no—keep on that train of thought, but make her French again…

Anyways, AJ, Rarity, and RD deserved to get shown up like that. They’re the ones who saw Trixie bragging and said, “you ain’t hot shit, I’M hot shit!” and then were proven wrong. Way to go. Only Twilight shows maturity by not taking the bait.

EVEN STILL, THE DIALOG FUCKS THIS UP, because they try to make it seem like Twilight’s reason for not fighting back was that she thought her friends would hate her if she did, because they hate Trixie the same way. It would’ve been better if Twilight just was the bigger mare the whole time (which she is, but they don’t sell it). For what it’s worth, I think this is an in-character fear for Twilight, both because she’s got a history of paranoia, and because she’s new to this whole friendship thing, but it just leaves the whole episode so thematically weak that the whole fucking thing is hopeless.

Studio B just barely salvaged the episode by taking the atrocious script and buttering it up with some good moments of animation. Mind you, there’s nowhere near the level of personality in animation which was displayed in Applebuck Season, but the effort put just into animating Trixie almost makes up for it, especially at this early stage in the show. Her expressions have so much energy and life, and it just sells her as this obnoxious but still kind of awesome pony who just might actually be as cool as she thinks she is (despite having a couple of dumbass toadies).

There’s also the Ursa Minor and Ursa Major, which are pretty fun. I remember finding the Ursa Minor to be a real spectacle the first time I watched the show, and was so impressed with Twilight conquering it that I’d felt it salvaged the episode. Of course, looking back, it’s an all but humble monster and scene. You can’t come back to this after A Canterlot Wedding and expect to still be intrigued. It’s only enough to save the entire series from crashing and burning very early in.

Seriously, when my brother and I first watched this show, we were close to dropping it after this episode. After not having enjoyed The Ticket Master, but having loved Applebuck Season, the one-two punch of the just-okay Griffon the Brush-Off and the abysmal Boast Busters was almost enough to take me out of the entire show that I now love so much. Had it not been for that Ursa Minor, followed by the excellent Dragonshy which came next, I might not have made it this far.

OKAY NOW RAP.

Analyzing “Griffon the Brush Off”

Griffon the Brush Off is a fairly unpopular episode. Out of all the non-pony and one-off characters in the show, I’ve probably seen less fanart and love for Gilda than any other character, which is understandable because Gilda’s a total bitch. Griffons as a general race are more popular as an idea than Gilda, but even then, not so much that they feel like a big part of the pony world.

Besides the fact that Gilda’s a bitch, it’s also an early episode, meaning it comes with the usual problems of early episodes (characters not fully realized, show not at the peak of quality, etc.). That said, I’d only seen this episode once before today, and upon rewatching it I thought it was solid. I see the episode accused of being weak on a thematic level, since the lesson is basically, “don’t be a bitch or let people be a bitch to your friends,” but of course I think there’s more to it than that, and I found the statements that the episode makes about the characters interesting enough.

First, let’s ask ourselves: why is Gilda such a bitch? Obviously because she’s a mean-spirited bully—but why does she act that way? It’s because she’s horribly inauthentic. That’s why Pinkie Pie is her perfect enemy—Pinkie is completely authentic to the core. To pull a page out of my own life, I would say Gilda is to Colony Drop as Pinkie Pie is to myself (lolololol).

Everything about Gilda screams “douchey teenage try-hard,” from her hairstyle to her voice performance. A similar, more realized human character would be Robbie from Gravity Falls. They are the stereotypical asshole teen who thinks that they’re too cool for everyone else, and in both shows, they’re put in a position wherein the interesting authentic characters make them look like idiots.

Gilda has a fairly threatening presence in MLP though, since it’s a cute and fun show, and she’s a pushy, violent, dramatic character, with nothing that makes her enjoyable like Discord, Queen Chrysalis, or Trixie. Her presence in the show has weight, whereas Robbie in Gravity Falls is kind of there for us to laugh at douchey teens. In Gilda’s case, the show is making an honest effort to dissect her and show how inauthentic she is.

Gilda works as a character because she’s genuinely friends with Rainbow Dash. She doesn’t hate ponies, she doesn’t hate pranks, and at the start of the episode, Dash even gets her to do something embarrassing (the junior speedsters chant) which she says she’d do, “only for you, Dash.” This betrays the fact that somewhere inside of her, she likes ponies and other embarrassing things, she just won’t admit it. You could have a field day applying this to bronies vs. haters—and I would find it completely uninteresting, because it applies to absolutely everyone.

Gilda is every time someone says, “I don’t play video games, I’m an adult,” or (and this is a direct quote from a coworker), “a real man doesn’t use a weak-ass PS3 controller, they use a 360 controller.” It’s a tough-guy fabrication to make them look better and anyone who isn’t them look worse. It’s everything that I dislike about everyone I dislike anything about.

The Gilda vs. Pinkie Pie conflict is made interesting by the presence of Rainbow Dash, who is the antithesis of Gilda, at least in the context of this episode. For all that Dash is full of herself and at times incorrect, she isn’t much of a liar. Throughout this episode, Rainbow Dash acts completely out of authenticity, and shows us how despite having the same interests as Gilda, she manages to be a much more mature and decent person.

At the start of the episode, Rainbow Dash is actively avoiding Pinkie Pie, but she isn’t being bitchy or inauthentic about it. She straight-up tells Pinkie that she doesn’t want to talk to her—that she’s busy—and she outright runs away from her. Pinkie is the one who is forceful and can’t take the hint, in her usual Pinkie way. But what happens when Pinkie reveals her prankster nature? Rainbow Dash instantly admits that Pinkie is a good prankster and becomes interested in hanging out with her. She even says, “you’re not as annoying as I thought.” When faced with evidence that Pinkie was cooler than she thought, Rainbow Dash embraced her as a friend.

Gilda is not open in this way. She wants nothing to do with Pinkie, and only grows to hate her more and more, turning the connections that they have against her. When Rainbow Dash is pranked by Pinkie, Rainbow finds it hilarious—when Gilda is pranked by Pinkie, she views it as an attack.

I love the way that throughout the episode, Rainbow Dash is pretty stoked about the idea of having Pinkie and Gilda both around, like a supergroup of her best friends. Rainbow expects Pinkie and Gilda to gel as well as Rainbow and Pinkie did, because she doesn’t realize how pathetic and inauthentic Gilda is. It’s part of growing up, really. If Gilda never returns having learned to be a better person, then it’s actually kind of dark of the show to have her be a bitch to the end.

‘Cause seriously, did you notice that NO ONE LEARNED ANYTHING in this episode? The closest thing to a lesson is Twilight realizing that she should’ve trusted Pinkie’s judgement, which is such a small part of the episode that it’s barely ancillary to the main point. Pinkie and Rainbow Dash learned that Gilda is a petty asshole, and Gilda learned nothing. The best it does is to teach kids that if you’re inauthentic, then you come off as a complete tool.

I enjoyed this episode more than I expected to just because it showed so much integrity on the part of Rainbow Dash, and showed how despite her usually fun and uncaring personality, Pinkie Pie gets serious when one of her friends in involved. I would say that it shows she knows how to have fun without hurting the fun of others, but I don’t know how true that is. So far, Pinkie always gets her way in the end, so I guess she knows what she’s doing on the level of a grand scheme.

Next episode is Trixie. I hope my body can take it.

Analyzing “Applebuck Season”

Dear Princess Celestia, where do I begin? Applebuck Season remains one of my favorite episodes of My Little Pony. As a person who really appreciates this show for the high density of things it has to offer, it would be correct to assume that the more I like an episode, the more things there are to say about it.

However, what makes this episode amazing is very straightforward. Whereas my enjoyment of Pinkie Pie episodes comes from analyzing her down to the core and finding the deeper meanings that the show can’t reach, my enjoyment of Applejack is as straightforward as her character. Applejack is my second-favorite pony after Twilight Sparkle, and both of them are the most straightforward, easily-understood characters in the show. The reason I love them is that their personalities are so enjoyable on a basic level. Probably because they both fail in such intense ways while being smart enough to realize it themselves.

All of the ponies fail in big ways: Pinkie Pie doesn’t understand other ponies’ way of thinking very well and has trouble empathizing with them (i.e. she can be a pest); also she’s probably got some kind of depression or anxiety disorder. Rarity and Fluttershy are both paranoid—Fluttershy reclusive and shy, Rarity bombastic and dramatic—and both of them tend to get pretty lost in their own heads. Rainbow Dash is full of herself and doesn’t think things through at all.

Besides Fluttershy, I think that those ponies are relatively unaware of their problems. Rainbow Dash sees herself as flawless, Pinkie Pie doesn’t bother to think about it, and Rarity is a drama queen. Fluttershy understands that she has a problem and works to combat it sometimes, but her default mode is still pretty much hikkikomori.

Just throwing this out for consideration. Original art source: http://mi-eau.deviantart.com/art/Mane-6-and-Elements-328308022

So this brings us to Applejack and Twilight Sparkle, who are the most self-aware and grounded characters in the show. Applejack is stubborn and a bit closed-minded, but she seems to be aware of this. Even here in Applebuck Season, she knows going into it that she’s making a mistake, but her pride is too strong to admit it, and the deeper she gets in, the harder it is for her to admit what an idiot she’s being. It’s a massive failure that works so well because she’s an otherwise sensible pony. This is something we’ve all probably experienced at some point—unwillingness to abandon our past feelings and actions and admit that we’re stupid and wrong. I know this is something I’ve done countless times.

Twilight is similar to Applejack in her self-awareness, but I also think Twilight has some personality disorders that she hasn’t come to grips with that factor in a lot of the time (especially her paranoia regarding Princess Celestia). Sure, there are some ways that Applejack isn’t self-aware, mostly in how she tends to see herself as knowing what she’s doing and being unwilling to take advice from others, but again, this is always something that she has to come to grips with by the end of the episode, and gets better at each step of the way.

This doesn’t make Applejack a better or more interesting character, nor does it make her my favorite (I love her more for her innate qualities). My point is simply that anyone can see why this episode is excellent. I don’t have to bust it wide open and suck all the juices out like a Pinkie Pie episode. Applejack’s failure is simple, and the episode’s comedy is simple—it’s just done with a density and brilliance that is as good as this show’s writing ever gets. If I go into everything I like about this episode, It’ll mostly be, LOOK AT THIS THING, ISN’T IT GREAT?! And yet, I don’t hate the idea of doing that. Sometimes I just wanna gush, Egoraptor style.

DUDE, ISN’T IT AWESOME how Applejack is supposed to be uneducated and stuff, and she rejects Big Macintosh’s “fancy mathematics” (which by the way, “one pony plus hundreds of apple trees just doesn’t add up,” I think he meant “hundreds of apple trees divided by one pony”), and yet she uses the phrase “bumper crop,” which sent me to the dictionary? Because like, she’s not educated about things like math and fashion and high society, but she knows her craft super-well, and actually has a really sharp wit, so the reality is that she’s a highly intelligent pony whose knowledge simply is in another place…?!

ISN’T IS INSANE how the animation quality has made such a gigantic leap from episode three?! I mean, remember in my last post how I said that the ponies had neutral expressions and poses most of the time, and there aren’t many big changes to the basic character models? Well now in this episode, it totally opens up and there’s a shitload of original animations! Many of the animations and a ton of the facial expressions are exclusive to this episode, and I don’t just mean standard Applejack faces with extra lines under the eyes, though I do love those. I can’t point all of them out without adding a visual element that I don’t feel like doing, but just watch the episode!

ISN’T IT INTENSE how they originally intended for Applejack to be hitting the trees with her head to knock down apples, and that’s how they conceptualized this episode, but then they realized how fucking insane and dangerous that sounded and created the totally awesome concept of applebucking which became an integral part of the show’s worldbuilding?! Also how hey still have Applejack hit her head a couple of times, which marks noted progression on her road to insanity?!

ISN’T IT A WEIRD INCONSISTENCY how Applejack tells Big Macintosh that she can do all the work in a day, but a week actually passes between her rounding up the cows and attending the award ceremony, according to Rainbow Dash? But it’s even better this way because Applejack probably hasn’t slept in a week, and I have friends who do this sometimes and act exactly like Applejack does here!

THE SPEECH SCENE IS SUCH A GREAT CHARACTER EXERCISE, starting with Twilight organizing her cards in this totally OCD way and getting all nice and prepared to speak, but then the inconsiderate Rainbow Dash interrupts her, followed by Pinkie Pie being ridiculous, and then by Fluttershy who honestly isn’t that considerate anyways, just really shy, so this still says something about her character!

ISN’T THE CONSTANT dry comedy surrounding Applejack’s tired state just the funniest shit you’ve ever seen?! Her dialog, her performance, and every little thing like the horrible grinding as she drags the statue away, and there’s no music for most of the whole scene!

PINKIE PIE: SHE SEEMED FINE TO ME! WOO! WOO! «ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS IN THE ENTIRE SHOW.

WHY IS TWILIGHT TELEPORTING AROUND FOR NO REASON?!?!?!

Okay, calm down…

Check this fucking shit out! (NO DON’T IT’S TERRIBLE)

This is the episode wherein I reach a meta/memetic appreciation of this show. Most of these first few episodes are too early and not dense enough to have a massive amount of fanmade content, but this is the first episode where I connect to it on that level, because of this video that I’ve seen a lot of times, and which I call back to when watching it.

MAN I LOVE how when Applejack tries to help Pinkie bake, she totally doesn’t understand why Pinkie is using such ridiculous ingredients, but she’s too tired to question it and is just like, “what the fuck am I doing?” She even rationalized, “wheat worms,” as, “fancy talk for earthworms,” because that’s what exhaustion does to you!

NO! NOT BAKED GOODS! BAKED BADS!

Bunny rampage! Alliteration jokes! Applejack passing out in her tipped-over cart! I mean seriously, these aren’t just funny, these are classic jokes to me. We’re talking about my favorite episode of my FAVORITE SHOW, can you see where I’m coming from here?!

At the end, Twilight makes you think… man, she could do Applejack’s job in minutes. What a god-modder.

I’m real glad the town gave me the pony pony pony award… but the real reward is having CELERY!

Analyzing “The Ticket Master”

Before I start with this post, another shout-out to the excellent analysis of The Ticket Master by Misfortune-Dogged over on his own blog. In it, he compares the episode against a similar episode of My Little Pony Tales, and uses it to dissect what’s so interesting about the presentation of themes in Friendship is Magic. I won’t be restating much of what he said, so I recommend you read that post as well.

The Ticket Master begins innocuously with a conversation between Twilight and Applejack. Notice that when Spike reads the letter they get from Princess Celestia, he says that the Grand Galloping Gala takes place, “on the 21st of, yada yada yada.” A sneaky way of not making Equestria have the same months as the real world, as well as keeping the show from having a definitive timeline.

The presentation of the conflict between Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s reasons for going to the Gala is quite interesting. When I watched it the first time, I thought that the show was making Applejack out to have the better reasons, but in reality, the show doesn’t suggest anything like that. It presents both of their arguments on equal grounds—I was the one making the value judgement at the time, based on what little knowledge I had of the ponies and what they were suggesting about their ambitions.

I know that a lot of people consider Applejack to have the better reasons, but that’s just a projection of their morals. The episode never makes this decision for the viewer, which is something I’m very happy about. I’ve always hated cartoons wherein a character with controversial habits and interests is treated like a complete asshole by the rest of the show (see: Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends with regards to Bloo). It would’ve been so easy for the show to paint Rainbow Dash as selfish, but it doesn’t do anything more than present her as who she is and leave the value judgement in the air.

It pulls this off by not having Twilight pick a side. Rainbow thinks her reasons are better and Applejack thinks hers are better, but there’s no one else pressuring the arguement in one pony’s favor. Does Twilight actually think that one of them deserves it more? She might, and just isn’t saying anything because she’s afraid of hurting one of her friends.

Breaking away from that chain of thought entirely, I want to talk about the animation in this episode in comparison to the most recent episode, Too Many Pinkie Pies, just because this is as good a time as any. Most of this will likely apply to a lot of the early episodes, and I think it’s important to take apart.

There’s a pretty cool editorial on The Round Stable (one of the few sites that seems to be taking an in-depth look into this series) called The Very Models of Cartoon Individuals, which dissects how it’s possible for the ponies in this show to have such ultra-distinct personalities, despite the fact that they all share the same character model. This post talks about how each pony has a lot of unique expressions and mannerisms which none of the other ponies would ever be seen making. The author compares it a lot to Ren and Stimpy as a sort of benchmark for character animation, but doesn’t mention (perhaps unaware) that show director Jayson Thiessen is a huge Ren and Stimpy fan himself.

Indeed these unique expressions are a huge part of what makes this show great, even as early as episode three. But what’s really mind-blowing is to go back and watch this episode after seeing Too Many Pinkie Pies, and see how far the show has come.

In The Ticket Master, the majority of shots feature the ponies in neutral poses and making neutral faces. This doesn’t dilute their personalities, though, since every moment of unique expression stands out and adds depth to their character. By the time we reach season three, almost every single shot has some kind of unique pose or expression. Obviously this is because the studio has grown to understand the characters and how to express them perfectly, has gotten altogether better at their craft, has a higher budget to work with, and generally care a lot about their show, even more so than before.

It’s a very clear line of improvement that happens all throughout the show, wherein each new season and episode presents even more unique animation and expression until we’ve forgotten that there ever was a neutral pose and expression for the ponies. Looking back, I’d just about forgotten that they ever moved this similarly before.

Back to the episode: Twilight continues to be neutral about the other ponies’ reasons for wanting to go, but I love that she actually gets pissed at them and tells them all to go away and let her figure it out. It was like a scene out of real life…

Out of all the spontaneous pony favors, Applejack certainly does the best job, providing food, which Twilight actually wanted. Obviously she only did it because apples are kinda her thing, and everyone tries to use their thing to convince Twilight—if she’d presented it more as concern for Twilight’s hunger, she might just have been set. BTW, I think Applejack was all-around best pony this episode. Just sayin’.

In spite of how much Misfortune Dogged was able to say about this episode as an example of what sets the show apart from the older MLP and makes it fascinating, I don’t have much to say about it as an episode of the show. You could use any episode, or the show as a whole, to explain the broad strokes of its appeal, but as an individual episode, this one is pretty thematically weak, and occurs too early for the characters to have developed any strong chemistry or depth. (Which they develop in the next episode.)

One thing I can do just for fun though is to contextualize the desires of each pony into what I know about their characters from having watched the whole show until now.

Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity are all thinking about long-term benefits from the gala, although only Rainbow and Rarity would have a truly life-changing experience if things went according to plan. Of course, like most things that are supposed to change your life forever, their plans are also the most far-fetched. Rarity expects to fall in love with some dude she never met, and Rainbow Dash expects to bust in on the Wonderbolts’ live performance and show them up somehow.

By the time we reach The Best Night Ever, I think the writers must have realized how much of an ass Rainbow would look like if she honestly tried to show up the Wonderbolts like she explains in this episode, and instead she mostly tries to hang out and get face-time with them, impressing them with some tricks here and there. She ultimately makes no progress whatsoever. Rarity meanwhile ends up negating the possibility she sought altogether, since Blueblood turns out to be an asshole.

Applejack is looking for pragmatic solutions to her immediate concerns. While this is a noble ambition, if you think about it, her reasons aren’t as imperative as Rainbow’s and Rarity’s. While the Gala could be a boost to sales and set her forward a bit, either way we would assume that Applejack will eventually make the money and get the farm shit fixed. This is even confirmed with some very subtle development over the series. (See image.)

Applejack’s life followed the same course that she plotted it to follow at the gala, only slower. Meanwhile, notice how both Rainbow and Rarity stress that this is their ONE CHANCE to possibly achieve their dreams. In Rarity’s case, that really might have been true, but only because she isn’t actively seeking to get with Blueblood, whereas Rainbow Dash is honestly trying to get into the wonderbolts. It’s like the difference in hoping that you’ll win the lottery, and hoping that you’ll write a bestselling novel after years of training.

Pinkie Pie just wants to have fun and make some fond memories. She has the least need to go to the Gala. Sure, it’s supposed to be the ultimate party, and she would’ve made great memories, but Pinkie is constantly making great memories, and she probably would’ve thrown her own party that night either way. While she does put in effort to win Twilight’s favor like the others, she also probably would’ve been the least disappointed and upset if she hadn’t gotten to go, given her natural lack of seriousness.

Then we have Fluttershy, who wants to see a garden of creatures. Again, like Pinkie, this is just an opportunity to have a particularly fun night doing what she loves. It’s more likely for Fluttershy to get something out of it since there are genuinely animals there which she can’t find elsewhere, and she could probably cross something off of her bucket list with that. Pinkie could probably throw a better party than the gala if she tried, but Fluttershy can’t find these animals elsewhere. Still, it’s hardly a life-changing desire like Rainbow’s.

So with all that said, from an idealogical standpoint, I think Rainbow Dash had the best reasons to go to the Grand Galloping Gala, even though her plans of what to do there were obviously flawed. Of course, it turns out that everyone’s plan was deeply flawed, so in the end none of it really matters.