--Thunder Bolt--

"I don't care how much you guys like Spike.  Next time I hear somebrony say something about a 'cute little dragon' I'm gonna burn some muthafukkaz down!"

"Go ahead.  Call me an ass one more time."

Fukushima Pony is not amused.

"Oh, hello there.  You're wondering why I'm crouched like this?  That's because you just missed your one chance in life to see me do a triple-flip jump off of that high ledge up there.  Regrets, eh?"

*Legend of Drunk Fluttershy Ninja*

"I never told anybody this...I hate animals.  Can't shtand 'em.  Only thing good about 'em is...they ain't ponies.  I jus' wanna see Equestria burn."

OT: Just curious, is your sig Fluttershy being Ophelia from Hamlet?

"That whole thing about 'People look like their pets?'  I'm tellin ya, it's just an urban legend.  B.S.  Totally."

"I wear this black suit on Nightmare Night.  When ponies see my head and legs walking along without a body--they freak right the hell out!  Hahahaha!"

*Scottish accent*

"I's just me an' me Tam O' Shanter,

"Epic Harmony, goin' fer a canter!"

"Ah'm gonna jus' run around with mah eyes closed an' see what happ--"

Team Leader: Sun Tzu: Master strategist, would help us deal with zombie hordes and rogue humans alike.

Weapons Expert: Miyamoto Musashi: Legendary Samurai sword-master.  He wasn't just be best of the best at wielding a katana.  He knew how to make them.

Brains: Don't remember his name--the guy on Man vs. Wild.  He'd give us a big edge in day-to-day survival.  Doesn't matter how good your team is at killing zombies if you don't know what to do when the bottled water and canned food run out.

Muscle: Goku (Dragonball Z): He's ridiculously overpowered, so he'd be able to keep us from getting overrun no matter how many zombies found us.

Medic: Hermione Granger (Harry Potter): If anybody could figure out how to cure a zombie bite, it's her.  Also, she's a stupendous badass with a wand.

Mascot: Pinkie Pie: C'mon.  There just isn't anyone better for the post.  Period.  In a world of constant doom, gore, filth, hunger, and walking death, she'd be what keeps us from wanting to blow our heads off after awhile.  Also: she can break physics.

B,S,

No such thing means you already lost.

So would i say on high average most people would consider murder to be Abnormal behavior?  Yes there are extreme cases like war, self defense but even than it's out of the ordinary.

I think people trying to say "define normal.,there's no such thing."

Are clearly trying to push something. 

 

There are high average accepted practices.  They exist.  tell me they don't.  If you can't retract your statement.

Making the giant leap from fashion conformity to laws against murder is an epic non sequitur.  If you think they're the same, what prison sentence do you think somebody should receive for wearing a pink pony shirt?  If you realize they're not the same, then maybe you shouldn't try to equate "there's no such thing as normal" stated in a context of talking about clothes to be worn on a special "dress-down day" at school with saying it's OK to kill people and hoist their heads on pikes in your front yard. 

No, I don't think the name Twilight Sparkle has anything to do with that other "Twilight."  It has to do with her symbolically representing the harmonizing principle (logos) that reconciles the duality and imbalance that had existed between Celestia and Luna.  It is Twilight's discovery of the magic of friendship that makes it possible for her to summon the Elements of Harmony and reconcile Celestia and Luna.  "Twilight" is the period that joins Day and Night, and her "sparkle" is the first (or last) stars, represented by her cutie mark.

If anything, Bella Swan is the anti-Twilight Sparkle.  Bella is a cypher with no real personality, interests, or goals of her own apart from her relationship to Cullen.  She's deliberately created as an empty vessel into which fans can pour themselves so they can vicariously experience being romanced by a sparkly vampire and a Native American werewolf.  Quick question!  What's the most awesome or likeable thing about Bella Swan? 

...

...

Anyone?  Anyone?

In contrast, Twilight Sparkle has wide-ranging intellectual interests and ambitions for mastering the arts of magic.  She has close relationships with her friends, and is not even in the same solar system with the "all about boys, boys, boys" attitude.  She has a great deal of power, her own power, plus the power and status (alicorn Princess) she earned through study, practice, and personal development under Celestia's tutelage.  Even when romance does appear in TS's life (as an aberration, in the non-canonical Equestria Girls), it never comes close to making her a Damsel like Bella.  Her priorities remain with her mission (get the crown back, stop Sunset, save Equestria, go home), and she remains the active heroine of the story, never the prize.

Unlike Bella, Twilight Sparkle fans can give plenty of reasons why they think she's "best pony."

As I understand it, Lauren Faust and the writing team for FiM intentionally created the show as a torpedo launched into the exhaust port of the kind of narrative-for-girls that the Twilight series represents.

"Darn.  If I was straight, I'd be really happy right now."

1) Why does "serious" have to equal "grimdark?"  Why can't a portrayal of a benign, functional society and lessons on how to live cooperatively with others in such a society ("Friendship" as the "magic" that "makes it all complete") qualify as "serious?"

2) There is already plenty of "seriousness" of the dark-ish sort in the show, it's just crafted so that its presence is open to interpretation.

Childhood Trauma:

Twilight appears to have been so traumatized by her experiences in Magic Kindergarten that the possibility of being late with a single assignment.  The prospect of being sent back there, no matter how remote, was enough to make her come unhinged and start using mind-control spells on children.  We can join the target audience in just enjoying the show as comedic cartoon fun.  Or, if we want to be "serious," we can start to wonder: just what do they teach in "Magic Kindergarten," and how do they teach it, if the experience is enough to leave a young mare scarred for life?  Alternatively, if Twilight is just extremely oversensitive and mentally fragile, is it wise to trust her with huge amounts of magical and political power?  Why is there no regulation of dangerous magic and no societal effort to keep it out of the horns of mentally unstable (Twilight) or criminal (Trixie in Magic Duel) individuals?

Twilight isn't the only one deeply wounded by her childhood.  In Cutie Mark Chronicles, we see that both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were bullied as fillies, apparently with no adult supervision to keep it in check.  The taunting drove RD to become so competitive that she doesn't even notice that the friend she entered the race to stick up for is plunging to her death.  If not for the "lucky" appearance of a flock of butterflies, and their wildly improbable ability to catch Fluttershy, RD's "victory" in the race could have had a very tragic outcome.  For her part, Fluttershy is quick to abandon her home and family as soon as she meets some friendly animals.  She's a young child when this happens, and no one tries to stop her or at least see to it that she has somebody to look after her.  What does this tell us about her prior life in Cloudsdale?  The explosions of pent-up rage that get out every once in awhile (especially in the Iron Will episode) are another indication that all is not well in the city of clouds and rainbows.  In the same episode, we're given a glimpse of a sad and miserable filly Pinkie (Pinkamena Diane) Pie, whose childhood left her with symptoms bordering on Multiple Personality Disorder.

Race and Class:

The culture of Equestria is aggressively pony-centric, even though there are numerous types of non-pony sapients in its world.  The place names, the language ("anypony," "nopony," etc.) the political structure (only ponies have political power) all point to a world where ponies are a highly privileged race.  We (English-speaking--not so sure about other languages, e.g. Chinese) humans, who do not share a world with other sapients like us (no elves, dwarves, orcs, griffins, dragons, etc.), employ a much more inclusive and species-neutral set of linguistic conventions.  As an audience, we could just Enjoy The Show and take all the pony-isms as a fun layer of flavor for a show about little candy-colored ponies...  Or, if we want "seriousness," we could view Equestria as a brutal pony tyranny, with most of the unpleasantness kept out of sight.  Consider: the Apple Family's livestock are people...of other races.  There's a term for that, I think it starts with an 's.' 

If we imagine aliens watching a show about life in the Palace of Versailles, but without seeing the exploitation and squalor that made it possible, perhaps they might think that Earth was a lovely fantastical utopia, start calling themselves Humies and fantasize about coming here to leave their own mundane, imperfect world behind.  Sun King...Sun Princess...  Hmmm.

And so on.  The "seriousness" is there, if you want it.  It's just subtly-placed enough that the viewer can choose to see it, or not, as a matter of interpretation.  Which is brilliant, IMO.

Moving beyond the "dark" aspects, there's plenty of other levels of seriousness in the show, such as the esoteric and scientific symbolism hidden in plain sight, or the chain of synchronicity linking the M6 together (Cutie Mark Chronicles) long before they ever met, implying a subtle form of transcendent guidance and intervention (in Fluttershy's case, acting to rescue her from a premature death by breaking physics with a flock of butterflies) in their lives.  There's metaphysics and myth and mystery aplenty.  The show is already very deep.  It doesn't need grit, zombies, more violence, or more evil to make it a serious show.

One more thing:

Question: Why can't FiM be more like [insert other cartoon here] with its scarier villains and more serious themes?

Answer: Because it's doing a very good job of being like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and it ought to stay that way.

"I'd like to tree a bee!  What?  Oh, no, I'm not drunk!  I've only had teen martwoni's!"

*Imitating Discord* "...and then I shall spread chaos throughout Middle Earth!"

*his own voice, while moving the hand with the Starswirl figurine* "You!  Shall Not!  PA--

"Oh...uh...hello Frodo.  I'm doing...very important wizardly things, if you must know!"

Hopefully you're not referring to the costumes used at the premiere.

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wo4y0SkTqXU/UgPwt35iA6I/AAAAAAABfHU/sIB0Lb93oFE/s1600/1.jpeg

 

[shivers]

Wow.  Now that's some Grade A Nightmare Fuel right there!  Now, if Sunset Shimmer had been able to create a zombie army of those things...!  [Rarity voice]Iiiiii-dee-aaaaaaaa![/Rarity voice]  Hey...@@PinkieShy10, if you could replicate enough of those to wardrobe a modest horde, you could totally redefine the Zombie Apocalypse genre. 

Aside: when the movie was coming out, I remember there was talk about what would happen when the two target demos for FiM met in the theater line.  "Mommy...why are there so many guys here without kids wearing Rainbow Dash shirts and carrying pony brushies?  Hey!  That one's got Vinyl Scratch!  No fair!  Moooommmyyyyyy!"  There was more than a little hand-wringing over the potential creepiness of bronies in the eyes of the soccer moms and their daughters, as I recall.  Then they bring out those horrors at the premiere?  Thanks, Hasbro!  I think  you just made the most over-the-top cloptastic extremists of our fandom look normal and wholesome.  And I thought the Equestria Girls dolls were creepy invaders from Uncanny Valley!

Heh.  I used the same idea as the basis for a "B.C." Alicorn character I made to use in a Pony Ancient Egypt roleplay. Hopefully I managed to pull off the feat of creating a good Alicorn character.  

OOC: This takes place right after the events in Merywset's pre-Canon era backstory. /OOC

Merywset could feel the eyes of the courtiers and guards upon her, as palpable as the rays of the new morning Sun, which were even now beginning to drive away the chill of the Long Night.  The alabaster paving stones and limestone columns of the Khepri Shrine sparkled with encrustations of frost crystals that had accumulated in the freezing dark.  Soon they would lose their battle with Re's warming light, but for now they glittered with defiant beauty.  Merywset could feel a new weight on her shoulders: physically, wings that she flexed experimentally; metaphorically, a heavy responsibility for restoring order and prosperity to the Two Lands.^[1]

Bowing her head to show respect to the Sun, she backed down from the dais as the ritual required, then turned to face the priests, Nomarchs, and the Royal Guards with their commander.  All had served Kheftiu-Re; most had benefited handsomely from his plunder of the ponies of the Two Lands.  Some of them were wide-eyed with surprise, others fear.  The eyes of some held calculation.

Kheftiu-Re glowered at her.  Without his towering Alicorn stature, his finely pleated royal cloak pooled around his feet like a grownup's garment on a foal.  His wings, shrunken to ordinary size, no longer manifested royal grandeur when spread in the traditional pose.  The Double Crown itself seemed diminished on his head.  His forehead was now smooth, bereft of the proud, backward-curved horn that had once protruded there.

"You have done your work," he hissed, "but I am still Per-a'a, the Living Herw, Lord of the Two Lands!"

"Are you?" Merywset replied.  "A Per-a'a who cannot steer the Boat of Millions of Years^[2] is no Per-a'a.  A Per-a'a who cannot wield magic to protect and care for the Two Lands is no Per-a'a.  And most importantly, one who will not govern in accordance with Ma'at^[3] is no Per-a'a."  With that, she levitated the Double Crown from Kheftiu-Re's head, rotated it as she brought it near, and set it on her own, sliding its forehead-notch neatly over the base of her horn.  I am Neferuhetep Ankhesenma'at, she thought in a deep state of concentration, conferring upon herself a Name of Power that only she could ever know.  There was a tingling in her hooves as the powers of Nature began to connect with her and she to them, like new lovers sharing a brief, blushing first kiss.  It would take time, meditation, and practice for her to truly unite herself with them.  I hope that I will have that time...

@,

"This is treason!  Treachery!" Kheftiu-re shouted, looking to the Commander of the Royal Guard for any indication of continued support.

NOTES:

1. This is a reference to Upper and Lower Egypt, the southern and northern halves of the realm, respectively.  "Upper" Egypt is so designated because it is closer to the source of the River.

2. The Sun.

3. "Ma'at" is a term that connotes truth, justice, and the proper order of society and the Cosmos.  In our world, it was embodied as a goddess with a feather held in her head-band.  The Egyptian judgment of the dead took place when the heart of the deceased was weighed against the Feather of Ma'at.  If the scales did not balance, the deceased was fed to a devouring monster and could not enter a blessed afterlife.

@@repsol rave,

Sunyatay opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out.  Does he mean cute cute, or just...'cute?'  What do I even say to that?!  Especially if he does mean...except, if he had a hangover that means he was at a party, and that means he probably has lots of friends, and at least one of them's probably a fillyfriend.  So he probably means 'cute' in a Derpy kinda way...right?  Anyway, I can't ask him if he has a fillyfriend, that would be--  She shook her head to pull herself out of her thoughts.  Repsol's question was hanging in the air awaiting a reply.

"Well...I am...kinda weird...  I mean, even when ponies don't think I'm a ghost...I still don't fit in very well.  That's...kinda how I got to be invisible in the first place.  I think you...probably fit in very well and have lots of friends.  So I would understand if you did want me to leave.  But I'm glad you don't.  Oh, and thank you...for, uh...thinking I'm cute," she said, her translucent pink flushing to a deeper color as she blushed, even at the remote possibility that he actually meant 'cute' in that way.

I think it has a lot to do with contrast.  A degree of contrast brings life to the thing having it (art, architecture, etc.).  For example, a painting of a vase of flowers will be more lively, more captivating of attention, if it has a variety of colors and shades, than if it is painted in tints of beige.  In art, contrast can also be done with light and shadow, or sharpness and blur.  In architecture, you have things like the contrast between the complex, organic scrollwork of a Corinthian column's capital, with the straight, elegant, fluted lines of the column's body.

In the case of FiM, there's at least two main levels of contrast: contrast with the mainstream of visual fiction (other shows and movies), and contrast within the show.  The current trend in fiction leans heavily toward grimdark, deliberate ugliness (especially in animation), or at least rough and gritty imagery.  The Dark Knight, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Thor: The Dark World, the Man of Steel movie with its grey Krypton (compare with the spotless white of the Crystal Spires and Togas utopia in Christopher Reeves' Superman), The Walking Dead (and the Zombie Apocalypse fad in general), cartoons with ugly characters inhabiting ugly worlds (even if they are funny, they're still ugly).

Then along comes MLP:FiM, with its lush, beautifully-drawn environments and adorable candy-colored ponies.  An unabashedly positive, happy world where characters still have flaws and face problems, but they address them and grow rather than slouching toward The Road or adopting a fashionable cynicism.  Result: a massive, unexpected fandom (bronies), many of whom wish they could live in Equestria instead of Earth.  That's the first level.

The writers were clever enough to introduce a second level, a subtle "Creepy Vibe" that's just dark enough to keep the show from overmodulating its overall positive atmosphere and becoming a pool of saccharine glurge.  The Creepy Vibe remains in the background, surfacing every once in awhile, but never so much that it takes over the show.  There's Twilight coming unhinged in Lesson Zero, Celestia's subtle chessmaster-like manipulation of events (like, Twilight's whole life...), the monsters that dwell in the shadows, the fate of the Pinkie clones in Too Many Pinkie Pies, Fluttershy's suppressed rage and aggression (the Iron Will episode) and mind-control power with lots of creepy potential (the Stare)...and Pinkamena. 

Pinkamena stands out as a Creepy Vibe contrast element because she has a unique design aesthetic that turns on and off suddenly, and it's a high contrast with Pinkie's normal self.  Twilight Unhinged is a messy, creepy version of Twilight, but doesn't have the kind of stand-out aesthetic that Pinkamena does.  I can't recall any other pony in the show having that kind of ruler-straight mane and tail style.  Angry Fluttershy is still Fluttershy, design-wise.  Angry Fluttershy is a sharp contrast with normal Fluttershy but does not have a unique design aesthetic (hence, no distinct name for the persona).  Twilight Unhinged has a different design aesthetic from normal Twilight, but personality-wise it's not so remote from normal Twilight with her compulsive list-making and by-the-book planning.  It's just what happens when that doesn't work out.  Pinkamena provides sharp contrast in both ways.  She has a unique design aesthetic that is opposite to Pinkie's in many ways, and her personality is the obverse of Pinkie Pie's.

A couple other things make Pinkamena interesting: it's arguably her normal (or at least initial) state.  It's the pony she was born and raised to be, until she saw the Sonic Rainboom and got her cutie mark as a party/comedian pony.  Also, there is implied metaphysical power.  When Pinkamena is talking with her "new friends" and the background changes to psychadelic Impressionist chaos, it implies that the High Strangeness is not quite "all in her head."  This is never made definitive; we don't see it as a field effect with a boundary or limits, or necessarily as something that "really is" happening out in the world of Equestria.  Even if other ponies (e.g. Rainbow Dash) don't experience it, we do.  With Twilight Unhinged, we see a character on the verge of madness, viewing her from the outside and at a safe distance.  With Pinkamena, we partake of the madness; we, too, are "seeing things."

@@repsol rave,

"Oh, no!  You haven't said anything wrong at all.  I thought...you might...want me to leave," Sunyatay said softly.  "I, uh...seem to be giving you another headache."  She started to feel a trickle of hope, that perhaps Repsol might not be about to decide she was a freak after all, and want her gone.

"Ah, my old nemesis.  You have won this time, Screen Capture.  But one day, I shall break free, and then my revenge shall be terrible to behold!"

Lucky Lass' art rocks, so 10/10

EDIT: I know next to nothing about Ace Attorney...but why does Dahlia use her umbrella inside a courtroom?  Are those butterflies flying around her?  An outdoor courtroom?

*hic* "An' then I threw up aaaaallll over Angel Bunny.  You shoultha seen the look on 'is face!"

I'm ready to start.