Caligari

Twilight Sparkle: Fluttershy, this is delicious! What kind of stew is this? Fluttershy: Rabbit.

Before I offer my thoughts, this is a super valid argument. So what I am offering here is not so much a counter argument, but an alternative reading. Having been reading about Mad Studies, which is about research and understanding the perception of people consider mad. I think a case can be made for a pro-Mad studies reading. Pinkie Pie performs in ways other read as insane crazy, or well mad. We Seen this various times. In this episode, all though Pinkie's perception and sense of knowledge do not immediatley make sense to others, they learn to value and respect her madness. It is not a tragic flaw, but a way of knowing and understanding the world. Twilight, who occupies the role of the sanist, a role founded on limited ideas of rationality and marginalizes folks considered mad, still needs to learn to respect Pinkie Pie like the other ponies in the episode. Throughout the episode, Twilight Sparkle either invalidates Pinkies claims, or tries to scientifically study Pinkie Pie to make sense out of Pinkie Pie from her own perspective. She has to learn that Pinkie Pie has her own way of knowing things, and even though she(Twilight) herself may not understand it, she can respect Pinkies Pie's perceptions and understandings as valid.

Still deciding how I would rank this. From a world building perspective, I appreciate the presence of the camp fire stories, as the lore they provide is nice. I think my favourite moment was when Rarity played with light and shadow on the cave wall. Something I took a class on once was Proto-cinema, which was how we made motion pictures before the invention of film cameras. This included things such as panoramas, magic lanterns, etc. It is thought that cave painting might have been one of the very first forms of this, as when you move a light source, such as a torch, past the cave walls, it makes it look like the images are moving. It was interesting to see a reference to this in the context of digital animation, showing how far animation and media technology have come. That being said, I do not assume the creators of the episode were going for this, they might not have been thinking about it at all. But seeing Rarity animate images across cave walls with light and shadow is a cool way of calling attention to this history.