VitalSpark

This is a silly pic I made. I hope you like it.

I think you maybe haven't watched many pre-school shows recently. They're not all about singing the alphabet. Tree Fu Tom has a target audience of 2 to 6 year olds. It has plots, and villains (the mushas), though I'll leave it to you to judge whether they're awesome villains or not. Most episodes are stand-alone, but some do refer back to earlier episodes, creating something of a timeline. The first couple of seasons had David Tennant too. :-) Topsy and Tim has a slightly older target audience. Probably around 3 or 4 to 6. It's pretty much a soap opera for kids, so it very much has a timeline. The plot line of them deciding to move house, looking around new houses, selling their old house, and packing up their stuff, ran for the whole first season (25 episodes I think?). At the beginning of the season, Tim's best friend's mum is pregnant, and later on in the season she has a baby. There are other multi-episode story arcs too (the cardboard box, the school play, etc). Definite timeline. The first episode of the second season has them moving into their new house, and as the season progresses, deals with Topsy and Tim starting school. Katie Morag probably has a similar target audience to Topsy & Tim, though I hear the next season is going to be aimed at a slightly older audience. It also has a timeline. Her teacher leaves in one episode, and she gets a new teacher a couple of episodes later. Her mum has a baby. Katie's neighbour falls in love with Katie's grandmother, and they get married in a two-part finale. Old Jack's Boat has villains, Kitty Cutlass being the most regular antagonist. The Christmas special even dealt with the implied death of Jack's wife. (Old Jack's Boat is a pretty awesome kids' show for anyone who is a fan of Doctor Who. It stars Bernard Cribbins and Freema Agyeman, and some episodes were written by Russell T Davies, including the aforementioned Christmas special.) Just looking at the CBeebies TV schedule for this morning, out of 27 shows broadcast this morning between 6am and noon, only four are what would be called "traditionally educational" (i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic). Which is not to say that the other 23 will not teach children anything - many of them do - but it's things like not to be afraid of thunder and lightning, or not to be upset when you drop your favourite book in the bath and it gets ruined. Speak for yourself. I do. Plenty of dads do. Some of the ones I mentioned above are actually rather good. Preschool fans are (unsurprisingly) not very active on this forum. Yet there are a lot of them.

They would have preferred the balls?

I'm a fully paid up member of the Unicorn fan club.

The main target audience seems to be girls at pre-school and primary school age. However, the writers recognised that it's also important to cater to the parents of the target audience, as they're going to end up watching it anyway. Why is this important? My kids like My Little Pony, and my kids like Cloudbabies. I like My Little Pony, but I frickin hate Cloudbabies. Do you want to guess which show I encourage the kids to watch? Do you want to guess which small plastic toys I'm more likely to buy for the kids? My Little Pony is certainly not the first cartoon to recognise the importance of parents as a secondary audience. There's a whole bunch of examples at ParentalBonus and ParentService at TV tropes. Why change a winning formula to try to hold on to departing fans when there are a brand new batch of 2 year olds every year?

Kissy, kissy Trixie... Sources: http://datnaro.deviantart.com/art/Twilight-Sparkle-259903222 http://datnaro.deviantart.com/art/Trixie-261329253

In my opinion, the mane 6 are all within the normal range (with one possible exception). Twilight Sparkle is particular, yes, but not anywhere near obsessive enough to call it a disorder. Fluttershy is shy, but shows too much empathy for the other characters to have any kind of autistic spectrum disorder. (A key feature of autism is the inability to recognise or understand other people's emotions.) Pinkie Pie could possibly be diagnosed with cyclothymic disorder, which is a mild form of bipolar disorder. So that's the possible exception. Outside of the mane 6, Trixie is a sociopath, but Derpy I think probably just has a lazy eye.

This one is fairly similar: (Source)

Great minds think alike. The one I chose in the end was this: For my laptop, I have this Frozen-inspired wallpaper: Because Frozen is my favourite and my best.

Like Shimmering I spent a little while taking some Rainbow Rocks screen captures the other day to find the perfect wallpaper for my phone. Here are some of the nicer Sunset Shimmer ones...

Hey, lookee... unicorns! Hmmm.... an ocean of blue that one. Sunset Shimmer, we need you! That looks a little more balanced. Not sure I like the font, and the background is pretty dull. Anypony got any suggestions? Credits: based on these images... http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131120145546/mlp-gameloft/images/4/4e/Twilight_Sparkle.png http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130216054121/equestria/images/a/af/Rarity.png http://th01.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2012/117/4/e/shining_armor_vector_by_aeroytechyon_x-d4k1tiq.png http://th00.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2013/284/4/4/trixie_lulamoon_by_subjectbubblegum-d6q1zlk.png http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131102181452/mugen/images/4/4c/Princess_Luna_S2.png http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130713144215/villains/images/6/60/Sunset_shimmer_by_memershnick-d686don.png

Well duh... Twilight will give Dr Hooves a seed in season six, and he'll plant it.

Attempt to escalate things?

I can't imagine Twilight in particular taking sides against Celestia unless Celestia had done something pretty bad. In which case I'd be on Twilight's side. Come to think of it, I'd always be on Twilight's side.

Of course. How could I forget? 1000? Really? Russia launched its first manned space ship in 1961. So you're saying that Canterlot/Ponyville is technically on par with European society of (roughly) the year 961 AD? Really? Really? I'd say that in most regards it resembles late 19th century, early 20th century Western society. In some areas they seem behind that, but in others further forward. This can mostly be explained by unicorns and pegasi. Unicorns have magic, so less incentive to develop, say, electrical items. Pegasi can fly, so they don't need to develop jet engines. I would say that if they set their goal on space exploration, they ought to be able to develop the technology in well under a century.