March Madness is what they call the NCAA basketball tournament for the national championship. But I had a bit of March Madness of my own when I cranked out five reports on five ponies in a rather short time frame. I started out small, but the last three on Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity each began to take on a life of their own once I started going on them.

Some of you said my reports were well done, especially the three big ones at the end. My points probably looked random to most of you. But I wonder if anybody noticed a pattern in my essays? There was indeed a system I used. This was something I was taught in high school or college. By the time I got to the reviews on Twilight, Pinkie, and Rarity, I decided to draw upon some of those lessons. Anybody with good basic writing skills can take advantage of this. Here it is:

Point one. Start with an important widely agreed upon point to engage your audience and establish your credibility. Initiate a theme that will run throughout your presentation.

Point two. Throw out a curveball or an ironic thought somehow related to point one. If you have something unpopular or not well-understood to explain, now is the time to do it. Because you already have credibility in the reader’s eyes, they will hear you out.

Point three. Go back to another widely held belief. Don’t risk alienating the audience by bringing up two potentially controversial items in a row if it can be helped.

Point four. State an opinion of a relatively light-hearted nature. Chances are points one through three were all about fairly serious stuff. It’s time to let your reader come up for air. This is a good place for humor.

Point five. Save your best point for last which should be based on the theme that has been present throughout. You also want to wrap up as many of points one through four as possible to bring it all together.

Because I wrote my Fluttershy essay well before the others, I didn’t use this formula there at all. If I were to write one about her today, the organization of points, at least, would be different. But I did follow this paradigm for my reports on Twilight, Pinkie, and Rarity. The only big deviation from this was point four in Pinkie’s analysis. Her character proved to be quite complex and there wasn’t really room for an innocuous observation there. I know I didn’t always follow this system to the letter in other posts, but I was more or less loyal to it.

Here are links to and the locations of my six posts:

Applejack

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4725-applejack-fan-club/page-10 See post 188.

Message: Life is short. This is what drives AJ to excel at everything she does and to put others’ needs ahead of her own.

Fluttershy

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4731-fluttershy-fan-club/page-8 See post 143.

Message: Fluttershy’s kindness is due to her strength, not her weakness.

Pinkie Pie

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4726-pinkie-pie-fan-club/page-10 Right at the top of the page!

Message: Fun and games aren’t a joke to Pinkie. They are her tools for helping others to live life more fully.

Rarity

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4729-rarity-fan-club/page-12#entry1292103 Go to post 226.

Message: More than many people realize, Rarity is living up to her Element of Generosity.

Rainbow Dash

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4900-rainbow-dash-fan-club/page-23 Post 457.

Message: Winning means everything to Rainbow Dash. Incredibly, being loyal and helpful to others means even more to her.

Twilight Sparkle

Location http://mlpforums.com/topic/4724-twilight-sparkle-fan-club/page-14 Scroll to post 272.

Message: Twilight would have been a good leader no matter what. But friendship has made her an outstanding leader.

I realize my posts on Rainbow Dash and Applejack (especially) were rather short. They were my initial reaction upon seeing these old fan club threads pop up out of nowhere. At this point in time I don’t have the desire to make either one bigger. If you’d like to see more on AJ and RD, check out these commentaries which were written by my friends. They are just as thorough and gripping as my full-size overviews for the other ponies and I highly recommend them. And even if you read them before, they’re worth a re-read!

Applejack http://mlpforums.com/blog/463/entry-2986-archived-essays-hurricane-fluttershy-and-why-applejack-is-best-pony/

Rainbow Dash http://mlpforums.com/blog/448/entry-2418-why-i-like-rainbow-dash/

I didn't think it could happen, but this process has caused me to revise my list of 1 thru 6 favorite ponies!

Before

1 Fluttershy

2 Rainbow Dash

3 Applejack

4 Twilight Sparkle

5 Rarity

6 Pinkie Pie

Now

1 Fluttershy

2 Rainbow Dash

3 Applejack

4 Rarity

5 Pinkie Pie

6 Twilight Sparkle

This is mostly because my appreciation for Rarity and Pinkie grew significantly as I was preparing my reports on them. And while I am proud of Twilight for achieving her destiny, I liked her much better as a unicorn. She still means a lot to me, but she’s currently number 6 on my list. Just consider this to be unfortunate collateral damage from the whole alicornification controversy. Go ahead, tell me it's not fair and it's not her fault she became a princess. Guess what? Life's not fair. Deal with it.

Hopefully nobody thought I was a Fluttershy fiend who wouldn't or couldn’t write about anypony else. But until recently almost all of my big posts dealt with the yellow pegasus and I was in danger of typecasting myself. While I still love Fluttershy the most, I am not blind to her faults. I acknowledged her failings readily as I was writing these essays. Oh, and I noticed Flutters somehow found a way to get a significant mention in ALL of my large overviews. If I were to enlarge my spiel on Applejack, she’d probably somehow work her way into that as well. I might mention AJ's willingness to take her around the mountain in Dragonshy.