OMG PONIES
Hey, folks, suffering through another one of my typical pervasive can't-write fits. Normally I just pull the covers over my head and wait these out, but I've got deadlines to meet, including a self-imposed deadline on "…Starbuck Avenger", and I actually have to muscle through my block this time. And the only way I know of to do that is to start typing something, anything, just to get my fingers back into the habit of moving. In the interest of this, I am now going to rank-order and annotate a story-spoilery list of the core cast of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. From this description, you already know if you want to click on the cut tag. The rest of you, seeya next post.
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6. Rarity. Oh, Rarity. A.K.A. Cordelia, for you Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, or Veronica, for you Archie fans, or Eric, for you Dungeons and Dragons: The Animated Series fans, Rarity manages to lever herself slightly out of the spoiled upper-class waste-of-space character pit by actually having a smidge of creative talent and work ethic, but that's about it. The one time she really gets to play hero, she accomplishes it by whining incessantly until the bad guys get so sick of her they are willing to part with entire wagons full of gemstones just to be rid of her hateful presence. The only time I can stand her prissy white unicorn butt is when she's doing her obscenely catchy Sondheim song about dressmaking, and that's mostly because, hello, obscenely catchy Sondheim song.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Generosity. Applicability: Low. Rarity is not overwhelmingly generous. She scored the Generosity amulet by cutting off her tail to repair the flamboyantly homosexual sea serpent's moustache, but as she made it clear she was simply addressing a crime against fashion, I'm just not seeing it.
5. Fluttershy. Sorry, Fluttershy aficionados, but the timid little yellow Pegasus Pony just doesn't do it for me, which is strange, because she really is pretty hardcore. She achieves something very close to a Crowning Moment of Awesome when she tells off the sleeping smog dragon, and it takes some serious fuzzy little pony balls to go eye-to-eye with a cockatrice. But she really does lose control without much provocation (YOU'RE… GOING… TO LOVE ME!!!) which raises the suspicion that maybe her whole squeaky innocent thing is an act, and a not-very-convincing one at that. I don't know quite what she's getting at, but the fact is, she seems less than genuine, and she rankles me in a way that Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls never did. Plus, she sort of embodies the in-universe truth that nothing in Equestria can even take a crap without Ponies being involved, and you gotta admit, that fact is at least a little creepy. I mean, seriously, the animals would hibernate forever if Fluttershy didn't yell down their burrows and wake them up come Spring? Really?
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Kindness. Applicability: High. Genuine or not, she does seem to actually care about her little furry and feathery charges.
4. Applejack. Applejack is slowly growing on me, but maybe not fast enough. It's just that her character theme seems a little scattered, y'know? She acts like a rodeo / cow pony, but spends her days tending an orchard, and is furthermore obsessed with selling apples. I'm sorry, but what the hell? As we learn from both history and the musical Oklahoma!, farmers and cowmen are two very different breeds and are furthermore quite antagonistic toward each other. To try and combine these two archetypes into a single character seems a little schizophrenic, and dropping the entrepreneur factor on top of that makes things even sloppier. But despite it all, the broad, overdone East Texas accent amuses me, and I find myself looking forward to her appearances more and more. I just wish there were more to her. Plus, she misuses the word "y'all", and that gets under my skin.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Honesty. Applicability: Moderate. She's blunt, which is kind of like honest, but aside from that, she seems only marginally more honest than your average pony. She was inexplicably given the Honesty amulet for asking Twilight Sparkle to trust her and let go of the edge of the cliff without actually telling Twilight that the two Pegasus ponies were right underneath her to catch her. Memo to the writing stable (pun unintentional): the fact that Applejack did this doesn't show that Applejack is honest. It shows that Twilight is trusting -- for her, the far greater achievement.
3. Pinkie Pie. There's not much you can say about Pinkie. Inveterate bouncy party animal Pinkamina Diane Pie is the Gracie of the team; the writers play her for easy, cheap ditz laughs, and I hate to admit it, but it works. Gags don't always have to be new or challenging to be amusing, I guess. Anyway, like every literary Fool out there, she's capable of greater leaps of insight than practically anyone else in the cast, which makes her pretty respectable. Her unhappy childhood on the sad gray rock farm is probably the funniest thing in the series so far, and the fact that she is only one failed party away from complete psychological collapse is actually kind of charming.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Laughter. Applicability: High.
2. Twilight Sparkle. It'd be easy to dislike Twilight, but I'll be frank, she pushes a lot of my character buttons, which is to say, she's a bookish girly astronomer who's actually a lot less grown-up than she thinks she is. Actually, she's kind of like Scully from "The X-Files". Dropped into a strange world beyond her understanding, she does her best to tread water and keep up with alien concepts that her crazy friends keep throwing at her. The major difference is that with Twilight Sparkle, these concepts involve things like friendship and caring; while with Agent Scully, these concepts involve things like oh my god, is there seriously such a thing as a human/flukeworm hybrid living in the septic system, really? And, while I know there's a lot of Princess Celestia hate going on out there, I find Twilight's unabashed glowy-eyed hero worship of her mentor quite touching.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Magic. Applicability: High. Twilight shows more magical talent than anyone in the entire series save the Princesses. Magic isn't really a virtue, though, so she doesn't really have to demonstrate anything, character-wise, for her element to be applicable, so she gets an easy A here.
1. Rainbow Dash. Dash is at least 20% cooler than the next coolest pony. Two words: Sonic Rainboom. That's all I'm saying.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Loyalty. Applicability: Moderate. Dash is relentlessly self-aggrandizing and competitive, which actually tends to stand in the way of any real expression of loyalty on her part. But when the chips were down in the Everfree Forest, she didn't hesitate to let the evil shadow-duplicates of her beloved Wonderbolts know that friends come first, and in my mind, she earned that damn amulet.
Honorable Mention: Spike. That I can stand Spike at all must be a testament to some vast well of charisma on his part, because I usually hate people occupying his character slot with the passion of a burning sun. But, on the other hand, at the end of the day, don't we all want a little purple dragon secretary? The answer to this question is yes.
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There we go. Thanks for indulging me there; that actually did help.
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6. Rarity. Oh, Rarity. A.K.A. Cordelia, for you Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, or Veronica, for you Archie fans, or Eric, for you Dungeons and Dragons: The Animated Series fans, Rarity manages to lever herself slightly out of the spoiled upper-class waste-of-space character pit by actually having a smidge of creative talent and work ethic, but that's about it. The one time she really gets to play hero, she accomplishes it by whining incessantly until the bad guys get so sick of her they are willing to part with entire wagons full of gemstones just to be rid of her hateful presence. The only time I can stand her prissy white unicorn butt is when she's doing her obscenely catchy Sondheim song about dressmaking, and that's mostly because, hello, obscenely catchy Sondheim song.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Generosity. Applicability: Low. Rarity is not overwhelmingly generous. She scored the Generosity amulet by cutting off her tail to repair the flamboyantly homosexual sea serpent's moustache, but as she made it clear she was simply addressing a crime against fashion, I'm just not seeing it.
5. Fluttershy. Sorry, Fluttershy aficionados, but the timid little yellow Pegasus Pony just doesn't do it for me, which is strange, because she really is pretty hardcore. She achieves something very close to a Crowning Moment of Awesome when she tells off the sleeping smog dragon, and it takes some serious fuzzy little pony balls to go eye-to-eye with a cockatrice. But she really does lose control without much provocation (YOU'RE… GOING… TO LOVE ME!!!) which raises the suspicion that maybe her whole squeaky innocent thing is an act, and a not-very-convincing one at that. I don't know quite what she's getting at, but the fact is, she seems less than genuine, and she rankles me in a way that Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls never did. Plus, she sort of embodies the in-universe truth that nothing in Equestria can even take a crap without Ponies being involved, and you gotta admit, that fact is at least a little creepy. I mean, seriously, the animals would hibernate forever if Fluttershy didn't yell down their burrows and wake them up come Spring? Really?
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Kindness. Applicability: High. Genuine or not, she does seem to actually care about her little furry and feathery charges.
4. Applejack. Applejack is slowly growing on me, but maybe not fast enough. It's just that her character theme seems a little scattered, y'know? She acts like a rodeo / cow pony, but spends her days tending an orchard, and is furthermore obsessed with selling apples. I'm sorry, but what the hell? As we learn from both history and the musical Oklahoma!, farmers and cowmen are two very different breeds and are furthermore quite antagonistic toward each other. To try and combine these two archetypes into a single character seems a little schizophrenic, and dropping the entrepreneur factor on top of that makes things even sloppier. But despite it all, the broad, overdone East Texas accent amuses me, and I find myself looking forward to her appearances more and more. I just wish there were more to her. Plus, she misuses the word "y'all", and that gets under my skin.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Honesty. Applicability: Moderate. She's blunt, which is kind of like honest, but aside from that, she seems only marginally more honest than your average pony. She was inexplicably given the Honesty amulet for asking Twilight Sparkle to trust her and let go of the edge of the cliff without actually telling Twilight that the two Pegasus ponies were right underneath her to catch her. Memo to the writing stable (pun unintentional): the fact that Applejack did this doesn't show that Applejack is honest. It shows that Twilight is trusting -- for her, the far greater achievement.
3. Pinkie Pie. There's not much you can say about Pinkie. Inveterate bouncy party animal Pinkamina Diane Pie is the Gracie of the team; the writers play her for easy, cheap ditz laughs, and I hate to admit it, but it works. Gags don't always have to be new or challenging to be amusing, I guess. Anyway, like every literary Fool out there, she's capable of greater leaps of insight than practically anyone else in the cast, which makes her pretty respectable. Her unhappy childhood on the sad gray rock farm is probably the funniest thing in the series so far, and the fact that she is only one failed party away from complete psychological collapse is actually kind of charming.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Laughter. Applicability: High.
2. Twilight Sparkle. It'd be easy to dislike Twilight, but I'll be frank, she pushes a lot of my character buttons, which is to say, she's a bookish girly astronomer who's actually a lot less grown-up than she thinks she is. Actually, she's kind of like Scully from "The X-Files". Dropped into a strange world beyond her understanding, she does her best to tread water and keep up with alien concepts that her crazy friends keep throwing at her. The major difference is that with Twilight Sparkle, these concepts involve things like friendship and caring; while with Agent Scully, these concepts involve things like oh my god, is there seriously such a thing as a human/flukeworm hybrid living in the septic system, really? And, while I know there's a lot of Princess Celestia hate going on out there, I find Twilight's unabashed glowy-eyed hero worship of her mentor quite touching.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Magic. Applicability: High. Twilight shows more magical talent than anyone in the entire series save the Princesses. Magic isn't really a virtue, though, so she doesn't really have to demonstrate anything, character-wise, for her element to be applicable, so she gets an easy A here.
1. Rainbow Dash. Dash is at least 20% cooler than the next coolest pony. Two words: Sonic Rainboom. That's all I'm saying.
Corresponding Element of Harmony: Loyalty. Applicability: Moderate. Dash is relentlessly self-aggrandizing and competitive, which actually tends to stand in the way of any real expression of loyalty on her part. But when the chips were down in the Everfree Forest, she didn't hesitate to let the evil shadow-duplicates of her beloved Wonderbolts know that friends come first, and in my mind, she earned that damn amulet.
Honorable Mention: Spike. That I can stand Spike at all must be a testament to some vast well of charisma on his part, because I usually hate people occupying his character slot with the passion of a burning sun. But, on the other hand, at the end of the day, don't we all want a little purple dragon secretary? The answer to this question is yes.
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There we go. Thanks for indulging me there; that actually did help.