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Let's Talk About 'Starlight the Hypnotist'


ManaMinori

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NOTE: The thoughts that are expressed in this op are not my own. I was given permission to post them by a deviantArt user by the name of NuvaPrime. Any and all credit to the thoughts and ideas expressed in this opening post go to him

source: https://www.deviantart.com/nuvaprime/journal/Let-s-Talk-About-Starlight-the-Hypnotist-786583548

 

I find it appropriate to go into more detail in a comprehensive analysis and breakdown of the problems with the short.

 

Issue #1 Twilight’s Irrational Fear of Ladybugs

Twilight’s freakouts are nothing new, about as flanderized as a character can get. Usually though, her freakouts are at least tied to something like stress over an imperfect situation or something beyond her control, something that at least makes sense if one considers ‘Lesson Zero’. A panic-induced terror of Ladybugs, however, is something new. This is a very specific fear of something tied to what is really mostly just mild childhood trauma. Now that in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even by the standards of Twilight its possible she could have something like this -look no further than her unexplained fear of quesadillas established in season 5 [to be fair, we don’t know the extent of this fear and it could be argued that her fear of quesadillas ties into her fear of collapsing situations as quesadillas to Twilight might represent an imperfect that just rubs her the wrong way -an overzealous justification for her just not liking the taste of them, in other words] HOWEVER, it’s the way in which the short goes about exploring this phobia where things start to fall apart.

    Problem #1.  Twilight is [supposed to be] the most logical and booksmart of the main characters, so her developing such a fear of something as simple and mundane as LADYBUGS and then never getting over it after so many years just really seems off. Did she never once come across a book on Ladybugs and come to realize that they’re harmless [she loves books so much, why not?]? she never tried to use booksmart logic to counter the tiny, harmless menace? Did no adult figure in her life ever decide that her crippling fear was silly and try and sit her down and try to help her get past this? Not her parents, not her foalsitter, not Princess Celestia? Not even her BBBFF as he got older? To that end, she explains that her fear was set by a ladybug infestation of her home when she was a filly and Shining Armor told her that the spots were really eyes looking at her. Again, no one ever thought to help her get over this? She herself just never bothered to try and deal with it in any way? She never even used some kind of bug-repellent magical shield spell to keep the little blighters away? Please understand that the way that the fear is introduced makes it look like it just came right the flick out of nowhere and has SOMEHOW remained just as crippling a phobia as when she was a little filly

    Problem #2.  Even if you forget that, Twilight has lived at LEAST three years in a rural farmtown; how has this extreme phobia NEVER ONCE come up? I mean heck; one of her best friends loves practically every living thing and usually lets anything that lives crash at her house on the regular; you honestly mean to tell me that Twilight has NEVER ONCE encountered a ladybug in the entire three years minimum she’s lived in Ponyville and visited Fluttershy’s house? And that none of her friends were even remotely aware of it? [keep in mind, now, that Twilight’s phobia was recently triggered by Fluttershy -one of Twilight’s best friends, assigning the students to befriend ladybugs for a week] Once again, this irrational fear seems to spring from almost nowhere just so that Twilight can freak out over something irrational because Rule of Funny and What Even IS Continuity, Anyway?

    Problem #3.  Also, as many have already pointed out, the greeting chant she does with Cadence mentions ladybugs, but I’ll get into even greater detail with this later. Lastly, I’d just like to point out that Yona the Yak had almost the exact same problem in ‘What Lies Beneath’ when it was revealed that she had arachnophobia, but in that episode she got over it on her own and befriended the spiders with relative ease, so why an adult princess is incapable of doing the same thing is beyond me

 

Issue #2 Starlight the Hypnotist

We could argue the ethics of making Starlight the school guidance counselor and of Twilight going to Starlight for help rather than the friends she has known for much longer until the cows come home. Frankly, however, giving that Equestrians don’t seem to really HAVE counselors in general and most have CLEARLY never seen a therapist or psychiatrist in their lives, so Twilight going to a Counselor to get help for her problems I have to say is actually an improvement… even if it is Starlight. Starlight’s questionable reliability based on evidence from prior to this short are also somewhat irrelevant [again, we could argue that until the cows come home] The point is that she’s supposed to be helping ponies deal with their problems, and in a more competently written short, she would succeed… However; Starlight’s first solution is Hypnotism, which she has been practicing only recently. Hypnotism. Generally, hypnotism is only considered an option when other options have proven ineffective, generally people try other methods before resorting to mind-altering manipulation. She doesn’t consider maybe exploring why Twilight has held onto her crippling fear for so many years to try and get at the root of the problem in order to eliminate it, she doesn’t try any form of immersion therapy to get Twilight used to the idea [I’ll come back to this] -she doesn’t even recommend that the students keep their ladybug friends at a distance from Twilight until the matter can be resolved. No. Her first solution… is hypnotism.

    Problem #1.  Now, this in and of itself isn’t necessarily so bad, I’m sure other children’s programs have had doctors recommend hypnotism without even presenting any other options. But this is Starlight Glimmer we’re talking about. Starlight’s biggest character flaw is her tendency to use magic to inflict her will upon people. Now that’s not to say that this flaw is unique to Starlight; certainly, members of the main cast have inflicted their will upon others with selfish and ill-thought-out intent. However, the thing of that is that these instances more often than not are occasional lapses in logic; Rainbow Dash acting stupid and Twilight Sparkle acting irrational are not inherently linked to imposing one’s will upon others no matter how they intertwine. But the issue with Starlight is that almost all of her major conflicts have revolved around or heavily involved her doing exactly that, which is the exact same behavioral problem she had when she was still a villain [furthermore, not only did she use brainwashing techniques to torment her followers into adhering to her mindset, but in a later episode she would mind-control her supposed friends]. Argue that this is just a quirk all you want, but if nothing else, her immediately resorting to HYPNOTISM just goes to show that she hasn’t fully grasped that maybe she shouldn’t be bucking around with the minds of others, given that literally every time she’s tried that, its blown up in her face something spectacular

    Problem #2.  But if we want to ignore Starlight’s track record, ok. However, making matters worse is the fact that there are plenty of other, safer methods of dealing with crippling phobias that Starlight could have tried -as they clearly want to portray her as the more rational and level-headed pony in the short. Considering that the assignment with the students was to befriend ladybugs for a week, Starlight could have had Twilight try and try to spend time with at least one ladybug at least once a week, or so, maybe suggested that Twilight read up on books about ladybugs to start the process of feeling more comfortable around them, or perhaps talk to Fluttershy and get the students to keep the ladybug friends at a safe distance from Twilight until she’s comfortable with them. Honestly, I think doing marijuana would have been a less risky and unpredictable option over hypnotism

    Problem #3.  In general, gradual immersion therapy would have made for a much better short and would have still had been funny; imagine if you will Twilight slowly trying to befriend a ladybug over the course of the short and succeeding… only for the short to end with the one ladybug being joined by two and this causes Twilight to freak out and back out of the room at a rapid pace going ‘Nope nope nope nope!’ with Starlight looking on in exasperation remarking that while they’ve made progress, this is still going to take a while. Now while I will attest to my dying day with a guttural cry that Starlight is one of the most horribly handled characters in the entire franchise, many more have gone on to praise both Starlight and her ‘development’, often resorting to the defense that such things more realistically take a lot longer to properly and fully resolve themselves; so in essence Starlight remarking with exasperation that Twilight’s progress will be slow would to many mirror the slow ‘progress’ Starlight supposedly underwent for two seasons. Effectively, nothing would be lost by removing the hypnotism from the short story

 

Issue #3 The Implications

Now that we’ve established all the problems with the setup overall, I think we can see some of the really unsettling implications of this short that -without counter-evidence, make this hodgepodge of a short story even worse

    Problem #1.  The show has had a less than favorable track record with the portrayal of rather delicate subjects like dead parents, bad parents, mental health, bullying, dealing with trauma, etc., and this short is sadly no different, effectively trivializing what is clearly a crippling and traumatic fear of an insect all for the sake of a joke. If this was a recently acquired phobia, then I could forgive making a joke out of Twilight’s terror for a few seconds as the problem would effectively be dealt with quickly enough; but this terror is established to have started from childhood, so that means she’s reacted this way to ladybugs almost her entire life. Looked under that light, I suddenly do not find her reactions funny, I find them somewhat unsettling and I almost feel bad for her. I’ve heard a couple defenses for this, like associating her fear with the fear of eyes or holes [I looked it up and immediately got three pictures of living body parts riddled with tiny holes. If you value your sanity, do not ever look it up] but that just falls back onto the problem of trivializing a clearly crippling phobia for the sake of a joke [again; do not look up the fear of holes if you value your sanity. Just imagine what someone who actually has that phobia would feel (shudders)]

    Problem #2.  Its something of a recurring joke among critics of this short that Starlight is resorting to her typical mind-messing-with ways when she decides to use hypnotism to cure a phobia. Now I’ve already presented my thoughts on that, but let’s take it a step further, shall we? Consider the fact hat Twilight’s sudden phobia seems to come right the buck out of nowhere, and then when she goes to Starlight, Starlight’s first and thus far only solution is hypnotism, even claiming that she’s been practicing some of the methods, though we don’t get any more information than that. I’ll cut to the chase and say that my theory is that Starlight hypnotized Twilight into having this irrational fear and even gave her a false memory because Starlight is secretly a sadist and a sociopath who enjoys messing about with other ponies. This plan of hers doesn’t even blow up in her face due to her shortsightedness; its due to Pinkie interrupting the process, so we don’t even know what a successful end result would have looked like. That theory may never come true, but can you honestly blame me for thinking that? The evidence is all there. The only snag is that Starlight got the idea from reading a book on how to get rid of phobias though hypnotism, but even then, she could have reverse-engineered the methods, or something

 

So I wanna’ close out this rather unpleasant, rage-induced take on an MLP short by presenting my alternative to this story; so I briefly touched on earlier how Twilight’s fear of ladybugs since childhood seems to run counter to the special greeting she and Cadence have had since childhood [“Sunshine, Sunshine, Ladybugs Awake! Clap Your Hooves and Do a Little Shake!”] and I realized that they had the perfect opportunity to flesh out the history between Twilight and Cadence.

The short opens with a ladybug infestation of the Sparkle home and young Shining Armor teases little Twily by saying that the ladybugs all have eyes and are staring at her. Even after the bugs are cleared out, this causes the little filly to scream in terror whenever one of the things gets near her. Twily explains the situation to her foalsitter, Cadence, who shoots Shiny a condescending look of disapproval [and Shiny nervously runs off to avoid future disapproving looks from his marefriend] So Cady begins the process of getting Twily to not be afraid of the little buggies, starting off by reading a book on ladybugs with Twily and showing her through the book that ladybugs are actually harmless and that the spots aren’t eyes [also, something about them always awakening in the sunshine]. Next Cady convinces Twily to gradually befriend a ladybug, and soon Twily’s phobia is gone. The short ends with filly and foalsitter doing their special greeting - “Sunshine, Sunshine, Ladybugs Awake! Clap Your Hooves and Do a Little Shake!”, giggling as a ladybug lands on Twily’s muzzle.

 

I honestly cannot believe how incompetently the writers are presenting their material; they had the perfect opportunity to create a meaningful short story that would fill the gaps many have criticized for years now and present a good lesson about learning about the things you’re afraid of rather than just running away from them. But not once did any of them even apparently consider the idea.

 

Heck, if they REALLY wanted to use that ‘Starlight the Hypnotist’ title card so badly, they could have EASILY had a comedy short where Starlight is playing a part in Trixie’s magic act in which Starlight hypnotizes someone and has to keep trying to hypnotize them back to normal, hypnotizing them to thinking they’re someone or something different every time, and you don’t even have to have a happy-ending resolution, or even a resolution at all.

 

But… no… just… no. I really don’t want to criticize a product based on what it COULD have been, but when its so bad and so full of holes, I just can’t help myself.

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1966512__safe_starlight+the+hypnotist_g-

I think getting angry about a 3 minute short is kinda pointless, since they are only there for the animators and writers to have fun. Alot of people already know about the ladybug continuity error and they don't mind it, because they just see the shorts as just silly fun.

No offense, but i think you need to chill.

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30 minutes ago, Nightmare Muffin said:

Problem #1.  Twilight is [supposed to be] the most logical and booksmart of the main characters, so her developing such a fear of something as simple and mundane as LADYBUGS and then never getting over it after so many years just really seems off. Did she never once come across a book on Ladybugs and come to realize that they’re harmless [she loves books so much, why not?]? she never tried to use booksmart logic to counter the tiny, harmless menace? Did no adult figure in her life ever decide that her crippling fear was silly and try and sit her down and try to help her get past this? Not her parents, not her foalsitter, not Princess Celestia? Not even her BBBFF as he got older? To that end, she explains that her fear was set by a ladybug infestation of her home when she was a filly and Shining Armor told her that the spots were really eyes looking at her. Again, no one ever thought to help her get over this? She herself just never bothered to try and deal with it in any way? She never even used some kind of bug-repellent magical shield spell to keep the little blighters away? Please understand that the way that the fear is introduced makes it look like it just came right the flick out of nowhere and has SOMEHOW remained just as crippling a phobia as when she was a little filly

Can I just point out that Phobia's are not really logical at all, and in my personal experience have a tendency to resist those things? I have a really bad fear of dentist's, due mostly to one really bad experience as a kid. I've been to the dentist multiple times since then and none of my experiences have been anywhere close to as awful as that bad one, most of them have actually been pretty alright, with understanding dentists, minor amounts of pain and discomfort, etc. Yet every single time I have to go to the dentist, I get a pit in my stomach, I feel sick, I start having nightmares and begin envisioning all the ways things could go wrong, everything from being in pain to even just outright dying on that chair. I still often go and end up getting nothing done, because no matter how much I logically realize dentists are usually helpful, that one bad experience has affected me so badly. Like I said, I have been to the dentists multiple times, forced myself to face my fear, had drills and needles put in my mouth, had a tooth removed. Yet every single appointment I have to go through the routine of trying to get over the fear again, and again, and again.

 I'm also a pretty anxious person, and I have a tendency to freak out over my own health and go into panics over what illnesses I might have developed. I once became genuinely convinced I had diabetes, and despite multiple doctor's visits to do tests which all came back conclusively that I didn't have it, and despite buying a Glucose meter and checking every day for weeks, all of which came back just fine, I was still somewhat convinced both the doctor's and the meter were wrong and I had diabetes. I logically knew at that point that I obviously didn't, yet there was a part of my brain which just didn't care about the logic or reasoning, it just continued to panic.

 So, it doesn't really matter how logical or reasonable Twilight is. She knows the Ladybug's spots aren't eyes, she knows they are harmless, she's probably tried various ways to cope and faced her fear before, heck I've even seen people offer up the headcanon that Cadance's song might have been an attempt to help Twilight past her fear, which ended up not working, even though she liked the song and dance. Fears and phobia's and anxiety don't really care much about logic. Plus, Twilight's not always that rational anyway, she tries to be, but this is still the pony who became totally convinced she was gonna get sent all the way back to Magic Kindergarten for one slightly behind schedule friendship report.

 I could comment on other aspects of the post, but I don't really feel like it. The phobia part here was just the one that stood out to me the most.

Edited by BasementSparkle
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This is why I keep to my position that one of the best inventions ever is 'secondary canon'. My Little Pony was never meant to be taken too seriously and these shorts, much less.

I would have no problem with the idea of Twilight being afraid of ladybugs. It's meant to be funny, just like Celestia being unable to act. It's a quirk that doesn't affect the character at all and the fact that Twilight has faced actually very dangerous creatures and villains, just make it all the more funny. If we were talking about an episode where Twilight was unable to do something important to the plot because she's afraid of ladybugs, then we'd have a problem.

Now, with Starlight, I do have a problem. I understand that people love her and all that, but if I can suffer Celestia sucking at everything when anything important is going on, then people should be able to to stomach the idea that Starlight Glimmer doesn't belong anywhere near that school and that the only thing she should be is Twilight's friend and, and at most, her student. But t's that stupid gimmick season eight had of putting the main characters in positions within the school. Honestly, Luna would've made much more sense, with her dream powers than Starlight Glimmer and this hypnosis thing that came out of Berrow's head... But... GLIM-GLAM!

In the end, whatever. These shorts, to me, are as relevant as a fanfiction.

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So where is my Gremlin Slayer short? I mean, we're just having fun, aren't we. I wanna join this fun too. Butt of horse it would be child friendly ... Oh, I'm sorry, our glorious writers. I didn't know it was you who was having fun with these shorts by wasting H-Bro money on stupid, uninventive shit. My bad 3Y6uKBJ.png

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2 hours ago, Nightmare Muffin said:

I’ll cut to the chase and say that my theory is that Starlight hypnotized Twilight into having this irrational fear and even gave her a false memory because Starlight is secretly a sadist and a sociopath who enjoys messing about with other ponies.

MARIO IS A MURDERER

MARIO IS ACTUALLY A PSYCHOPATH

This isn't exactly a badly written critical piece, and I appreciate how it at least offered constructive criticism on what could've been improved, but it's hard to take seriously when the person writing it is taking a comedic short way too seriously. And of course, the writer of it doesn't like Starlight. What is this trend of people who write these crazy DA journals having an agenda against Starlight? :yeahno:

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31 minutes ago, CloudMistDragon said:

MARIO IS A MURDERER

MARIO IS ACTUALLY A PSYCHOPATH

This isn't exactly a badly written critical piece, and I appreciate how it at least offered constructive criticism on what could've been improved, but it's hard to take seriously when the person writing it is taking a comedic short way too seriously. And of course, the writer of it doesn't like Starlight. What is this trend of people who write these crazy DA journals having an agenda against Starlight? :yeahno:

These people will use any excuse they can think of to hate on Starlight.

It's sad really.

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@BasementSparkle wins best post award. I was coming into this topic armed with APA research, but I'll let it go because that post pretty much handles the ladybug dilema.

 

It is definitely one thing to humorously point out the strange juxtaposition between the past ladybug centric scenes and short, but its another entirely to focus on it like its a universe breaking element. Now I wonder how many people watch a Nostalgia Critic review where he humorously nitpicks a film only to say it wasn't that bad ... and their take-away is that it must be a bad film because he nitpicked it. 

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Some people take animated programs way too seriously for their own good sometimes, but I suppose it's only natural given how there are those who love to nitpick at every little inconsistency within them. In this case, I see the whole ladybug fear as a fun little idea that was accompanied by some hilarious reactions courtesy of Twilight, and Starlight contributing in a manner that doesn't make her out to be abusing anything. G.M. Berrow and Basement Sparkle both said it best in their own respective ways regarding this whole thing.

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This short is actually a bit realistic. Take my sibling, for example. My sibling has had an irrational fear of all birds ever since a little one landed on their head at the pool (The bird didn’t attack my sibling, it just wanted a neat or something). To this day, my sibling is still terribly afraid of birds despite the fact that most birds don’t usually go up to people. Everyone has tried to eliminate the fear, but the fear is still their, like Twilight’s ladybug fear. Irrational fears are very hard to get rid of despite how simple they seem. Even I have one (I’m scared of trolls with the long hair, something about them really frightens me and I don’t know why), so to say the fear is completely unrealistic doesn’t make much since (sure there’s the whole “ladybugs awake” thing but fears have certain limits. For example, I’m not scared of the trolls from Frozen because they don’t possess the traits in trolls I find unsettling). 

 

TL;DR  Sometimes we have strange fears or other emotions we just can’t control. Twilight has a haunting image in her mind she can’t unsee which resulted in the fear.

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8 minutes ago, ExplosionMare said:

TL;DR  Sometimes we have strange fears or other emotions we just can’t control. Twilight has a haunting image in her mind she can’t unsee which resulted in the fear.

tell me about it? I don't have a fear of snakes, like the average person does. But i get the creeps everytime i hear buzzing bugs around me. It dosen't even need to be a bee, just a normal fly is enough.

Phobias are in it's nature nonsensical. Even the bravest person in the world probably has a silly phobia.

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7633BB40-0FAC-4031-A983-A181F1D69739.png.b8fab7fc2f2bd5a355a6fd14a753d658.png

Either they just forgot it, or got lazy enough to not find out there were any incidents before that where she encountered any ladybugs. Buy even if it wasn't specifically ladybugs, they don't seem to get the characters or get the story right either.

And about how much the writers should be serious about this, I think they should be damn serious about it even when they are making jokes. Not in a sense of the tone of the show or being super nerdy and nitpicking all the details. I mean, even when they make a short story about a ridiculous joke, they should have some degree of affection and respect to the series, a certain level of standards. Even it's a 3 minute short, it still contributes to the whole show. They should treat the series as if it's the best show in the world. (at least for them)

I don't think this was a shitty short, I thought it was fun. But it could have done things right while being fun, not sacrificing something at the expense of fun. I don't think the writers should write stories with their eyebrows frowned and hunch over MLP wiki pages and pay most attentions to every small details or minor continuities. But the fact that people pick up something's not right quite easy even in the 3 minute short where it isn't supposed to be that serious and the writer of the show instantly replies with 'It's just a silly show, just relax', is kinda ridiculous. We all know it's a light 3 minute short that's supposed to be fun.

Edited by Sepul-Coloratura
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I can enjoy a bit of over-analyzation on some things, but for something that amounts to a bunch of cute & funny scenes relating to a joke...isn't this a tad overkill? For the longest of times I had a fear of spiders, yet the small brown spiders on the outside of my window never bothered me.

Just...why? It's a short. Let the writers have fun for god's sake.

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I have an nervousness when going to places with dogs. Yet, as long as they don't bark and try to chase me, I'll be fine.

Edited by Will Guide
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9 hours ago, CloudMistDragon said:

MARIO IS A MURDERER

MARIO IS ACTUALLY A PSYCHOPATH

This isn't exactly a badly written critical piece, and I appreciate how it at least offered constructive criticism on what could've been improved, but it's hard to take seriously when the person writing it is taking a comedic short way too seriously. And of course, the writer of it doesn't like Starlight. What is this trend of people who write these crazy DA journals having an agenda against Starlight? :yeahno:

I agree that the argument presented by the Original DA is just as ridiculous  as Game Theory's Mario is Mental nonsense!

Edited by Will Guide
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Also want to add this. I keep seeing some complaints that boil down to two different things. They forgot or they were lazy. There are other options. She said “Screw it. I don’t care. I’m gonna write what I want and even though I’m smart enough to come up with something else I want ladybugs.” 

In fact, that thing above is exactly why you see inconsistencies. It’s not lazy writing. They simply like something they came up with later and like the concept better than preserving some hard and fast canon when it’s really insignificant continuity. 

When I watch a show or franchise I love looking for these like I love hunting Easter eggs. I’ve yet to find one series that didn’t purposely ignore something in the past. 99% of the time they follow the rule that a good story now is better than holding to continuity. I get that some people hate this, but I guess it’s like hating taxes. It isn’t going to change as long as a writer is god of the universe they work in. 

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Why do people have to get mad at a silly three minute short.

I'll give you the secret to enjoying these more. Stop taking it so seriously.

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On 2/21/2019 at 11:26 PM, imawesome said:

it's just a harmless short.

We already know Twilight is afraid of snakes (and Quesadillas), so it's no stretch to learn she's afraid of Ladybugs. That wouldn't mean she's afraid of a rhyme with the word "Ladybug" in it. 

 

Case in point. I have a strong phobia about roaches. I can't even look at a photograph of a roach without feeling dread. Yet, I absolutely LOVED the "Tiny Tonns Adventures" episode where the singing trio, The Roches, played themselves, but as cartoon roaches playing a gig in Hampton's kitchen!

 

 

Edited by cuteycindyhoney
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